The teens in their t-shirts and mini-skirts tailgating each other toward The Regal ignored the ghostly drizzle wetting St Andrew's Street as I stood impatiently outside the college gate an hour and a half later. The ritual Friday night metamorphosis from shopper's thoroughfare to drinker's crawlway had begun and the porter on duty, Arthur with the amusing wig, had as usual rightly enacted the Friend or Foe protocol once reserved only for wartime and drag night. The century-old oak gates were closed and locked, with their inset door set to open only via college swipe card or special knock.

I hopped from foot to foot waiting for Claire. The gin deflected the cold but was losing its tussle against the bladder. I distracted myself counting the alternating pink and grey stripes painted into the stone around the gate. A small college shield was fixed above: its design showing two golden stags rampant by a central oak, within a border of pink and grey like the gate. Rather fussy and busy to my eyes. And the motto: ex glande quercus, from acorn to oak.

The street lights tinted everything toward the sulphurous. The rain sucked away the vibrancy. A camera watched.

"Finally!" I said as Claire surfed on a tide of teens around the corner from Emmanuel Street and then waded against the flow towards me.

Five years my senior and tapping upon the peeling and lightly scuffed door marked forty, Claire was a lady of means - her husband's - and always appropriately turned out. Tonight she sported an allegedly slimming black jacket with some green and black patterned nonsense wrapped around her neck. Her hair, as usual, was. .h.i.ther and yon.

"Where have you been, scruffbag?" I said.

"Sorry, my darling. I had to, you know, see Ken off. Properly." She smiled coyly.

"Oh, please! You two still-?"

"Spencer! Of course!"

We exchanged mwahs, both cheeks as ordained. "But, you know, he's pretty much spherical these days and you're, you're looking forward to Christmas. I'm not sure I get the physics. How does it all-?" I made two fists and cracked them together.

"Oh dear, you did start early, didn't you?" she said accurately, patting my hand. "I have lost weight, in fact, thank you for asking."

"You look ravishing, Claire, I'm sure."

"I do. And you seem to have mislaid your axe and a forest, as well as your razor."

"One can hardly wear black tie on a permanent basis. The checked shirt is, I am told, very a la mode." It was a mix of reds and blues and purples, under an admittedly tatty blue fleece. College dress code extended to attractive and decorous and placed no further burden upon you, and as ever some students delighted in testing its boundaries.

"Well," said Claire, "I shall alert you if I spot a beaver. Now, where are we going? The usual, I suppose?"

I nodded sheepishly.

"Fine, if we must," she sighed, and took my arm.

It was only a short walk at the slowest of paces, no more than a couple of minutes. I explained my present predicament as we strolled, hesitating on occasion to focus my attention upon any gentleman proportioned, scrubbed up and tailored within acceptable margins of error.

Our destination was Bar Humbug, hidden along a narrow pa.s.sageway where it could attract a more select clientele. By night it was unofficially rechristened Bar b.u.mhug: Cambridge's most c.o.c.ktail-friendly h.o.m.os.e.xual establishment, the watering hole of choice for those who are, those who might be, those who aren't but like to dabble, those who aren't but like to be dabbled, and unsuspecting tourists. By day it lowered its rainbow colours and used its more pedestrian name to draw in any pa.s.sing trade, so to speak. As the sun set the lights were dimmed and the music grew feistier, and the shirts lost a b.u.t.ton or two. It was usually busy and often packed, and any straights caught in the glare either promptly reversed and screeched away or were subject to trial by tequila. Some were found very guilty indeed.

My man Eddie was tending bar, as usual, with two of his imported minions. I say my man, we once enjoyed a minor dalliance. Brief, and yet something more, I thought, than the typical soulless encounter. He had an arresting effervescence and he amused me: but we had nothing in common. He was a fair distance along both the chunky and camp axes, not my usual preference at all. It could never have worked. I'd have drunk the place dry. Eddie never warranted a code ten, but our thing, whatever it was, was sustained enough for me to feel moderately protective during the lubricated dust-up the early hours inevitably brought.

My own drunkenness was never unduly troublesome. As Claire said often, I was verbal enough while sober and my bile was reserved only for those unable to distinguish "your" from "you're". The effects of alcohol manifested themselves in me purely via excessive and uninvited touching. The touching occasionally had its advantages, though, leading to further touching.

Pleasingly, Eddie had plonked a G&G&T on the long, scratched chrome bar - one of the few straight things there - almost as we stepped over the threshold, and it was still early enough to navigate the few metres to it without slicing through too many cosy groups. The usual vultures had, however, already begun to circle and to mark their territories: the haggardly optimistic, the over-dressed, and the under-dressed. Their prey - the twinks and the twonks - herded together for safety, with an occasional shepherding lesbian.

Dotted about the place were the weirdos and their hangers-on, such as the odd man beside us with the wispy salt-and-pepper beard wearing an exotic waistcoat and hat with detailed and expensive-looking embroidery - some kind of Arabian or Afghan contrivance, I shouldn't wonder. He always propped up the bar. There was often also an exotic creature possibly deposited straight from a shadowy Romanian castle, who stood large and lumbering with piercing blue eyes, and with whom I resolved never to make eye contact lest I fell into spinning hypnowheels and woke up in Bucharest minus my wallet and a kidney. Nevertheless I was proud to consider myself amongst their weird number: I imagined I was known as the posh loudmouth groper with the f.a.g hag, or similar. Entirely appropriate and indeed rather desirable. I preferred life as an outlier, not an indistinguishable generigay gasping for air amidst complex interconnecting social strata I neither knew nor cared enough to truly comprehend. And, yes, I was easy too.

"You, sir, are a life-saver," I said to Eddie as I claimed my drink.

"It's a gift," he replied, brushing his little finger against a dark eyebrow. "Pay me back in kind later if you like, darling."

I knew he was joking. "I suspect you'll have a rather better offer by then."

"Ah, bless you, sweetheart. And what can I get for the other lady?" He looked at Claire. "Same again?"

"Please no," said Claire. "White wine. I'm tiring of gin. I keep imagining myself an old crone in a Hogarth."

"It's the teeth, I imagine," I said, and she slapped my arm.

An hour pa.s.sed quickly, first at the bar and then hidden around the corner beside the hat man, in a cosy leatherette cubicle that after severe staring was finally vacated by a trio of hair product addicts aged twenty going on twelve, with their comedy multicoloured umbrella drinks. I had enlightened Claire on every sordid detail of the banished Scott - git, and on how St Paul's appeared to be in rather a precarious position.

"Tell me the ideas you've had already, then, my dear," said Claire. We were on our second bottle - I'd migrated from the gin. It was the house red, concocted from vintage rattlesnake venom mixed with sawdust, but at least it had the correct colour.

"Plan A," I said, holding up one finger. "Drink myself into a stupor, kill everyone with knives and run away."

"That would certainly raise the college profile, darling, but I doubt the money would start flowing in."

"I could just kill Amanda. n.o.body likes Amanda. Mind you, I think she might be some variety of robot not yet familiar with English. I might stab her and wires and springs and flames and dictionaries would gush out."

"Let's cross murder off the list, shall we? What other options do you have?"

"What I don't understand," I said forcefully, "is why Amanda hasn't strong-armed the Archivist into coughing up some grade A gossip. His little red-eyed battalion can spot a lapsing hetero at a dozen paces. He must have all manner of actionable materiel at his disposal behind those blessed doors of his."

Now as far as I was concerned, a gentleman, especially a gentleman seeking the very roundest of education, had every right to a free sample should he so desire. I'd even throw in a fourteen-day trial with no obligation. And of course, the occasional walk along Brighton pier wasn't illegal and hadn't been for several decades - and St Paul's had had its entirely deserved reputation for two centuries without excessive intolerance from either town or gown.

Hypocrisy was another matter. When poor dear Oscar was picking oak.u.m, and St Paul's, in a funk, admitted only the butchest of the butch, a far-sighted bursar - whose own college exploits if proven might have toppled several unmentionable establishment figures from their marble pillars into the Thames - took it upon himself to inst.i.tute an extensive record-keeping operation. Should a student of another college visit St Paul's to see a friend for afternoon tea and a nosh and later, perhaps many years later, raise a tabloid mob against unnatural vices, he might well wonder if some evidence of his behaviour were still extant, ticking, in our archives.

"Maybe there isn't any gossip," said Claire. "Not everyone is as open-minded about such matters as you might think - or want, dear. And anyway, didn't a lot of your type go to Oxford?"

"We have a sister college. Reciprocal arrangement. I'm told we had one of the first dedicated leased lines when the academic networks grew up, you know. Lots to share. Lots."

She turned eagerly to me. "You've seen it?"

I shook my head. "Insufficient clearance. I hear stories, of course. The Archivist, bless him, has been known to loosen his lips after the third or fourth port. Gets a twinkle in his eye and asks someone to name a year. 'Oh, yes,' he'll go, his hair dancing about, 'A very good year, that,' and then he'll lay down a clue or two. I couldn't possibly, of course. What happens in St Paul's stays in St Paul's."

"Except when it's useful for blackmail purposes."

"There's a tiny asterisk after 'stays'. All the way down the page in small print it says 'your career may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments'."

Claire refilled her gla.s.s. "There you go, then. Speak to the Archivist first thing in the morning and you'll have your money in no time."

"But don't you see, Claire?" I pressed my gla.s.s against hers until she refilled that one too. "Amanda might be one wheel short of a unicycle but she's well aware of the Archivist. You know the PM writes to the underground sailors telling them what to do if they can't receive the Today programme three days in a row? Whenever St Paul's appoints a new Master, the first thing they do is meet the Archivist. Then it's a mug of sweet tea and an hour alone in a darkened room."

"She already knows the gossip but won't use it, that's what you're saying?"

"n.o.body knows for a hundred percent what the Archivist told her. Probably just a broad sweep across, no photos. I would expect a worked example involving a long-expired historical figure, purely to set the level. I rather strongly suspect the Archivist wouldn't trust a freshly minted Master with contemporary information unless it was immediately to be deployed, torpedoes away, bellum collegium contra c.o.c.kpot."

"Perhaps Amanda thinks it too crude a tactic to use simply to beg for money." She took a long swig. "We women are more sophisticated thinkers than you. Not so phallocentric. I learned that in Merchant with Miriam, you know."

"Reserving the nuclear option? It's possible. It would certainly suggest the college is not in imminent danger of ruin and rack. Begone, foul accountants, ho, or something."

"Maybe she's just out to get you, Spencer." She laughed.

I sat back, finding the thought entirely plausible to my increasingly addled mind. We had, after all, locked horns on more than one occasion despite my proclivities being hardly of note in the span of college history or in its present. In comparison to those long-ago times before the college was forced to admit heteros.e.xuals, I was borderline celibate.

I decided to apply some logic. "Either she's after my rather attractive hide or she isn't. If she is, the best thing I can surely do is not fail, because then the Chatteris beast is defeated. If she isn't, and the college is indeed broke, then it is my sworn duty to save it for tomorrow's h.o.m.os. The h.o.m.orrows."

"That seems prudent, darling. Ideas, then."

We spent another bottle brainstorming. Most of the suggestions required upfront investment, which wasn't available, or too great a risk, or both. Even on his most successful days, would our founder Dryb.u.t.ter have wagered the college on the Derby? The ideal solution would involve the minimum of expense, the maximum of publicity, and a legally watertight side-effect of income. We couldn't stand bellowing on street corners with those awful buckets: that was fundraising, which Amanda would not countenance.

"How about some kind of college compet.i.tion?" said Claire.

"Compet.i.tion? You mean, sport? Vertical exercise with scorecards? Claire, have you seen-?"

"Not necessarily sport. Some contest between the colleges that you could win. Synchronised b.u.mming?" She laughed.

"While I have no doubt it's a compet.i.tion in which we would triumph - I refuse to say 'come first' - I suspect the university might raise a dusty eyebrow at such unG.o.dliness. An intercollegiate contest is attractive, though. We could b.u.t.ter the cost around the collegiate toast. We might even be able to locate a sponsor of some wealth and gullibility and spend precisely not one solitary."

"And to bring in the press, you could find a famous face and get them involved." She placed an excited hand upon my arm.

"Back to the Archivist, then. We want an A-list celeb, A for a.n.a.l. B for-"

"No, no need for that. Make it something to do with charity. Celebrities love charities."

I thought for a moment. "Yes. Yes, I think we have the glimmerings." I began to fumble drunkenly over the outlines of a plan. "Celebrity face, of the persuasion or not. Charity. Sponsorship. Colleges in compet.i.tion. That works for me. I p.r.o.nounce us winners."

I tapped a drum roll on the table and flicked my gla.s.s as a cymbal.

"What kind of compet.i.tion, though?" Claire asked.

I waved my hand at her. "Oh, goodness, that can wait. We've made some progress. I no longer feel homicidal, which deserves some kind of celebration. Would madam, by any significant chance, care for another bottle?"

Without waiting for an answer I hauled myself up and inched through the now-packed bar - past the silly-hatted weirdo who'd shifted barely a b.u.t.tock since we'd been there - and sought the attentions of Eddie the barman, who was looking a mite more attractive and less dressed than the previous bottle. He acknowledged me, nodding toward the patron to whom he was currently attending. I smiled at them both- all three- both. I'd seen that gentleman here before numerous times and I remembered we'd spoken briefly - well, I'd dangled an innocuous flirt and he'd batted it subtly away, no matter, hardly worth- He had what I called an autumnal mane, almost leonine: auburn, tinting enticingly towards red under any kind of illumination. A light beard, more than stubble but less than tramp, and pleasingly trimmed, I suspected all over. Irish, I thought, or one of those places. He appeared to be accompanied by someone, a d.a.m.nable shame, I decided, unless... Perhaps I could later encircle them both and demonstrate the Flowers manoeuvre, patent pending. Anyway. His name whispered from somewhere: Conor.

four.

The Question I nodded at the baldie beardy drunk around the corner of the bar trying to queue-jump to his forty-ninth bottle of wine. My smile said take your turn, buddy, you're in no danger of drying out just yet. Meanwhile he was so busy making googly eyes at Eddie the barman he didn't notice his standard-issue checked cuffs soaking up half a Stella spilled over the chrome. Cla.s.sic college bell-end, I thought: probably never held down a proper job, probably called himself boi on all the usual sites and chopped ten years and ten kilos off and talked about trust.

A few months ago he'd tried it on with me at Humbug. We'd exchanged mumbles and then he made a surprise lunge disguised as a trip over an invisible manbag. I'd deflected him onto an overmedicated friend of mine I particularly despised, and they groped off together like a ride on a Ghost Train. Two birds, one stoned.

The baldness of the guy I could deal with. The age difference was not an issue either. He was just a t.w.a.t.

The bar was pretty packed that night with town gays and gown gays mixing it up. It was always like that: the big n.o.bs wanting a crack at the servants, and the workers fancying a bit of the high life. Nothing wrong with that unless you make a habit of it and your profiles start laying down the law on salary expectations, or pedigree. Postman seeks peer for special delivery, please supply references (Debrett's).

It was a decent place though, especially when full to popping, the hardwood floor scuffed by a couple of hundred pointy shoes. A great long aircraft carrier of a bar with mirrored shelves stacked with every shaped and coloured bottle you could think of, and cute staff that knew how to handle them. I couldn't be a.r.s.ed with all that juggling s.h.i.te but some punters liked it.

Plenty of s.p.a.ce to spread out and hawk your wares if that's what you were into, or to talk and be talked about - high silver-coloured tables mostly, with low surfaces and comfy chairs around the corners for the old folk and the lightweights. It had wide gla.s.s doors along two sides that opened up in summer and doubled the size of the place. At this time of year the gla.s.s was pulled shut but you could still go out with your booze, for a f.a.g or a flirt, if you pa.s.sed inspection by one of the bouncers.

The barman finally delivered the goods, a couple of c.o.c.ktails, and shouted out a price.

"Let me buy these, Mr Geraghty," said the interloper above the noise. He was called Seb, he'd revealed on the walk here from the Union. It was the only thing he had revealed. It wasn't what you'd call a conversation, more a monologue from yours truly towards someone auditioning for Mount Rushmore.

Three letters wasn't a great deal of return on my Friday night investment. Since the initial greeting - and the promise of a story - he'd withdrawn into a silence, a coc.o.o.n. Perhaps, I thought, it was because I'd suggested we come here. Maybe he wasn't one of us after all - as if that would stop me testing the boundaries after a couple.

I graciously allowed him to pay. It was the very least I would let him do.

I shouted in his ear: "I doubt the editor would let me expense mojitos. I'm lucky if he lets me expense bribes."

He looked at me oddly.

"Joke. We're not like that any more. I'm as honest as the next guy sifting the bins."

Still nothing.

"Look, I'm trying my best here," I said. "You could at least smile politely, I'm not very good at spotting when I'm being patronised."

He got his change and nodded at the barman. "Shall we find somewhere quiet?"

"My place?"

"Don't be so nervous, Mr Geraghty."

"I don't like it when people call me Mr Geraghty. They either want my money or my da, and I haven't seen either for several years."

The crowds had us trapped at the bar. I held up my gla.s.s and began to squeeze through and around, apologising and smiling and placing my free hand wherever I felt it would make most difference. Seb trailed behind mutely, but I was getting used to that. We made it outside through Checkpoint Charlene and parked ourselves under the heat lamps where we could talk - if not privately then at least without yelling.

I placed my mojito on one of the high chrome tables and went to grab my notebook from my bag. Seb stopped me with a soft hand on my arm.

"Please, Mr Geraghty. Or Conor, if you prefer. This is off the record." The hand remained a fraction longer than necessary. Game on, I thought.

"Off the record doesn't mean I have to commit everything to memory. I'll need to write stuff down, even if I don't, you know, take down your particulars. At least, not yet." I gave him a grin and put the notebook on a dry part of the table.

"I must insist. Nothing in writing, or I walk away."

"How about if I write in code, like pig latin or polari or esperanto or something?" I flipped open the notebook. "I don't actually know esperanto, which might be a bit of a stumbling block, but I'm a quick learner."

Seb's eyes dropped and, briefly, I saw a reaction: disappointment. "Then I have made a mistake. Enjoy your mojitos."

He made to leave. I grabbed his arm. "Listen, Seb, if that's actually your name, I'm a journalist. I might be a c.r.a.ppy one but it's my job and part of that is to write s.h.i.t down, otherwise it fades away, replaced with a memory of a nice a.r.s.e or something. And funnily enough my editor really, really hates a.r.s.e poetry. So it's either the notepad or once upon a time. Write s.h.i.t down or make s.h.i.t up, what do you want?"

Seb stopped, and considered, and his arm relaxed a little. "If not off the record, then, perhaps, off duty? A chat about many things, about why we are both here. Think of us as new friends, getting to know one another. For the moment."