Free The Pink and the Grey by Anthony Camber Page B

was the longest-standing college official, supposedly sixty-nine but with a birth year that crept up annually and had done so for all the years I’d known him. The unofficial estimate was eighty-five, giving rise to the recurring and eternally changing college joke about a calendar year being sixty-nine eighty-fifths of a St Paul’s year.
    For a man of either age he was skeletal of frame, and nary a grey hair on his head remained, but he was surprisingly robust behind the standard augmentations of his vintage: round-lensed spectacles of thin silver, and an unobtrusive aid in one ear. He always had a kind word — about most.
    He chuckled, sweeping his ever-present gown around him. “Still up and about with your shenanigans startling people, eh? You know startling’s not good for me. Not at my age, at my age, you see?”
    “Sixty-nine, Dennis? Barely more than a tiny little puppy.”
    “It’ll be my birthday soon, I’m sure, I’m sure.”
    I wasn’t so sure. “Already? Well, when the time comes, we should have a party,” I said, noticing the alcohol had switched on my touchy-feely arms. I consciously restrained myself. “Externally catered, of course. Unless you want a cake with melted polystyrene as an ingredient, in which case college would be fine.”
    “No fuss, no fuss,” he said. And then conspiratorially: “How’d you get on with the Master?”
    “Marvellously, if she’s listening,” I said. Then a whisper, close up: “I should come over for tea. We’ll have a splendid natter about the old— the old times. She told me you were upset and all a-quiver.”
    “If only, lad, if only. My quivering days are long gone. Sorry I had to drop you in it. She rather strong-armed matters. It’s the cameras, the cameras.” He stabbed up at a metal sphere nesting in a nearby eave.
    “Oh, it’s absolutely fine, all my own fault,” I said. “No hard feelings.”
    “No, I don’t get those any more, either.” His head drooped.
    I laughed. “Then why are you up so late, my dear Praelector? A touch of the Drybutters?”
    “The wretched SPAIN thing. Research, research, as ordered.”
    I drew back. “You too? Amanda led me seriously to believe I was to be the chair. Shouldn’t I be doing the ordering?”
    He thought better of something. “I’m saying nothing. I’m saying nothing.”
    “Well, I order you henceforth to your bed. And no naughty business.”
    I was too far gone to be overly concerned about the Praelector’s words. The ubiquitous cameras straddled both the Archivist’s and the Master’s domains, and although officially they were for security and long-term insurance, unofficially and most obviously the Master kept the closest of tabs upon both her favourites and her least favourites. Regardless of all that bumfluff, I was already utterly aware that Amanda’s hands would be on SPAIN’s tiller however the formal roles were dealt. All I could do was puff hard on the sails and try not to vomit over the side.

    My college room was silent, cold, orange and spinning. The walls leaned in ever closer. I weaved to the window and drew the useless curtains to darken the orange, and then attempted to identify the cleanest glass in my vicinity: it was the most recent to contain gin, unsurprisingly. I necked the few drops it contained — never one to waste the magical elixir — and clutched it the few metres along the creaking, distorting corridor outside to the shared kitchen: narrow, drab, cluttered, lit by an unforgiving neon strip, also spinning, but with a cold tap that worked and a hot tap that was several years past its prime.
    I hung on desperately to the miniature stainless steel sink as I filled the glass, downed its contents, and repeated a few times until my stomach overflowed. Were I tremendously lucky I might stave off the worst of the upcoming throbbing, and my head might not explode brain all over the sofa bed like neuronic popcorn. I thought back to the bar, to my embarrassing failure