The Pink and the Grey Read Online Free Page B

was, I’d say, unreadable. Which was odd. Angry I could have understood, ruining his big night. Amused I could have understood, if his goal was to make me look like an arsehole, which I absolutely did. Unreadable suggested… I didn’t know.
    I rushed down the stairs two at a time, past the voting doors in the main lobby through which I could hear the debate continuing — with a joke or two at my expense, no doubt — and clattered through the inner doors to the office airlock.
    “Got a deadline, sir?” Mr Pinstripe said.
    “I’m lucky if I’ve still got a job,” I replied as I banged through the front doors. I thought about calling back “Count to ten and then duck,” but reckoned I’d caused enough trouble.
    Outside, the rain had eased and the temperature had dropped. I could see a few washed-out stars battling through the glare as I escaped the grounds of Hogwash onto the damp city streets. Under the colonnade, leaning against a jeweller’s shop window, I rang Geoff before anyone from the Union did: no sense prolonging the torture.
    He was an unhappy little cockney bunny.
    I had no photos and no story. If anything, I was the story. I paced back and forth, explaining, excusing, apologising, arguing. It was a stupid debate, nothing was going to kick off, it was just some bloke waving to his mates, his source was a flake, but hey, I wouldn’t claim for those hours because, well, oops, and all that.
    I was about to launch into a pointless but hopefully distracting plea to print my spiked history piece when the interloper appeared beside me, face still a blank canvas.
    “Hang on, Geoff. Two seconds,” I said, and muffled the phone against my jacket.
    “Quite some exit there,” the interloper said. Hint of posh, a bit like Donald Pleasence only not so much of the serial killer. Confident. Intense. Eyes of stone. Didn’t look like he’d just pissed over a balcony.
    “Shitty tip-off,” I said. “It happens. You test it out, make an arse of yourself, and move on.” I shrugged, and stuck out my hand. “Conor. Conor Geraghty. Your Majesty’s Press.”
    He gripped my hand and shook firmly. “Oh, I know who you are.”  

three
The Barman

    My college room enjoyed all the splendid comforts of home: to be precise, gin. Compared to the Master’s bunker I had just left it was grand and palatial. It had windows, heat, the lot.
    The accommodation nestled deep and high in the poky northern corner of New Court, about as far from the Admin dungeon as collegiately possible: T Staircase, room two. It had been in my possession for a few years but it was not my home , merely the ramshackle office for my day job as a Director of Studies — hence the gin.
    I was honoured to be the present keeper of the place, the latest in a long line stretching back over a century. Once, before one or other of the wars, it had been the office of the college astronomer, or at least of a fellow with a powerful telescope and a hobby requiring many hours outside in the dark. Another occupant, according to the oral history of college passed between the generations, began to supervise undergraduates dressed only in a toga in dubious homage to our classical forebears. A fierce winter and a window disinclined to form a seal reputedly brought that experiment to a noble and yet rapid end.
    I sympathised with that distress: the room was not a friend to the right-angle. The walls to left and right, half oak panelling, half crumbling plaster in an unforgiving cream, toppled very slightly inward and could induce a vague claustrophobia in the unwary or unsober. An attempt to disguise this tilt with floor-to-ceiling shelving helped somewhat but succeeded mainly in reducing the room’s effective width. At least the wall’s thickening with obsolete reference books and barely thumbed biographies obtained a certain amount of sound-proofing, for those within and those without.
    My desk by the white-rimmed sash window was varnished beyond redemption and