I began to think she’d been spending too many hours in front of reality TV squirrel-cheeking E-numbers, and that she now resolutely believed every meeting had to end with minutes of suspense and a sad piano, followed by a sweaty loser trooping away to weep into the shoulder of a gurning co-host.
“I fully furnish you with a challenge. A pistol of your calibre should be extending himself, not, uh, well…” Her hands waved. “I want you, simply and plainly and straightforwardly, to make St Paul’s risen in the grand eyes of the public’s gracious consciousness.” Arms toward the ceiling, worshipping the artex.
“I’m not sure I understand. You want…?”
“I want a— I want the college to have an elevatored profile.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “You realise, of course, of the budget cuts?”
“Of course. Squeezed hither and yon. Less money overall, and also fewer applicants thanks to higher fees.”
“Exactly. More fees, less applications, fewer cash.”
I suppressed my stabbing instincts.
“And the eyes and wherefores,” she continued, indicating the camera watching us, “these consume above their weight. Our dear Bursar weeps at the leakage in that direction. I fear floods bothly with nary a sandbag of the vicinity.”
I thought for a moment. “You would like me to be a fundraiser? Do we not already employ a fundraiser? Kevin, nice man, unhealthy moustache?”
“I announce that Kevin has been made, regretfully, redundant.” The biro drooped.
“You made the fundraiser redundant. To save money.”
“Redundancy, regretfully, was the only activity course to avoid redundancies.”
I spluttered. “I’m sorry, Amanda, your reasoning escapes me.”
“Dr Flowers,” she soothed me with the most condescending of looks, “the sunlit uplands of academica are but an alien jungle to cold, hard accountancy and the vivid fluctuations of the markets. This is dusted and done. Please, allow me progression.”
I shrugged.
“I desire you to raise funds, but not through fundraising. Fundraising means a fundraiser, and we no longer have a fundraiser because we made him, regretfully, redundant, and we cannot replace him with a fundraiser, since that would mean he had not been, actually, regretfully, redundant and he might become, actually, regretfully, litigious.”
That, actually, regretfully, made some kind of sense. This approximation to lucidity was alarming and unexpected.
“And so, Spencer, it is profile that we must raise,
profile
,” arms heavenward once more, “in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of funds. For profile begets publicity, and publicity begets interviews, and interviews begets conferences, and conferences begets cetera, begets cetera. And all these things will begetting students and donors.”
“I see. And you are offering me the opportunity to help.”
She removed her spectacles and folded them slowly on the blotter, and then parted her lips and bared her teeth in what I took to be a smile. “In my mind’s eye I don’t recall I can believe saying the word
offer
. Or the word
opportunity
.”
That’ll teach me to bum in a bush.
I began to contemplate how I might submerge this entire festering gizzard under the tottering pile of work I retained for such purposes: but she hadn’t finished.
“Think not of this as a third chance, for two wrongs do not make a muckle. This is a matter of
gross
importance, a matter of death and life. I want your focused intelligence thereupon, the, uh,
laser insight
I hazard to recollect from a certain interviewee’s
curriculum résumé
.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Ah yes, indeed, so might you express in that fashion. Not, as it were, bonkers yet.”
She stood quickly, then fumbled mole-like on the desk for her spectacles.
I realised the grilling had mercifully ended and rose to leave. “I’ll mull it over this weekend,” I said, scrambling to lower expectations while the opportunity allowed.
“Mull? I expect a severe deal more than a good mulling.”
She squeezed with a grunt between desk and wall to the proletariat side of the office and ushered me, all bony hands, towards the door. Shoved and hustled along by Voldemort’s gran and enveloped in her sweet odour of decay I became quickly nervous, anticipating an exit via a fifty-foot cartoon cliff drop.
Here it came: “Monday afternoon, two o’clock. There is a committee. You are its new chair. I congratulate, there is no salary. Work begins. You must, I would suggest, encourage and fully, be prepared.”
“The… the fundraising committee? But, that’s—”
“No, Dr Flowers.
No
.” We stopped at the door. Her proximity was overwhelming, like a great-aunt’s distorted needlepoint face salivating over your cot. “Of the fundraising committee there is regretfully no further sign.
Timpani allegro
. There is, in complete and legal contrast, St Paul’s Immediate Action Now. Or SPAIN.”
“Isn’t that—”
“SPAIN, Dr Flowers.
SPAIN
.”
I saw no point in arguing further. I wanted to escape before I had to draw breath. But I had one question: “May I ask… does the new committee have the same membership?”
She laughed, the flavour of laugh that means
I’m not laughing, and by the way neither are you
. “Sat you upon the fundraising committee? I trust you are respectfully answered. Good evening, Dr Flowers.”
I was summarily ejected into the ancient, grey, windowless corridors of the Admin dungeon, deep under Drybutter’s Court at the southernmost tip of the college. It was early on a dank Friday evening in the grim fag-end of October and I stood alone under oppressively low wattage, breathing and blinking and processing. Through the closed door behind me I could hear Amanda shuffling back behind her desk, the dragon returning to rest upon the pile of dwarven gold. There was a clatter and a curse and then the muffled bawling of Lulu began to snake around me, a virtuous siren warning me away from the rocks.
There went my weekend, I thought. But first: booze. The idea relaxed me, releasing the tension from my shoulders. I rubbed my face and headed along the corridor.
As I made my way out of the dungeon I crossed the path of a lanky young gentleman venturing towards the bone-strewn duelling ground from which I had just escaped. He was new in college — a fresher I supposed, given his unfashionably regional blond locks and saucer-eyes. He wore a laptop bag upon his back, perhaps as some variety of shield against Amanda’s attacks.
“You might protect your front portions also,” I suggested with a smile and a vague wave.
He gave me a bemused, lopsided grin that I believed would fare him well among the college cockerati. “I’m sorry?”
“Posture, confidence, use your height advantage, watch your flanks and— may I ask your name?”
“Beardsley. Jay Beardsley. I have an appointment with Professor Chatteris.”
“Well, Mr Beardsley. Chin up. Set your jaw. Always keep her in your sights. And above all,” I leaned in with a hand on his shoulder, “never let her appoint you to a committee.”
I went off in search of gin.
“Conor, lad, I want you at the Union,” the editor had said on the phone. “Got a tip-off, looks legit. Could be a demonstration, or maybe a ruck, full-on handbags. The gits there get pissy about cameras but flash ’em your pearlies and a bit of yer old blarney and squeeze out a couple if it kicks off.” I’d called him a cock-er-ney arsehole under my breath for ruining my Friday night, and hung up. It was always either Geoff or his Evil Henchman Simon sending me out on one pointless little goose chase or another, and ruining the chance of a night of booze with the boys. I doubted they’d forget me, I was hardly a stranger, but it was the principle of the thing.
After a couple of rounds of therapeutic swearing and a change of shirt, thirty minutes later I was heading north, dodging between headlights and bike lights and dead-eyed pedestrians leaning into the squally drizzle along Sidney Street. The warm and sultry lights of Sainsbury’s were beckoning students into a last-minute beer grab before the traditional Friday binge. I slipped quietly through the swarming toffs like a Henley pickpocket and nodded to the
Big Issue
seller, who gave me a sly wink. Good source, that man.
I’d been to the Cambridge Union several times before — but only as a reporter. I’m not one of that bunch. It’s a debating society, where arseholes who want to be MPs argue with other arseholes who want to be MPs and get lectured by arseholes who
became
MPs. Occasionally there are arseholes who became comedians, and sometimes these aren’t the same as the arseholes who became MPs.
I took a right after the short colonnade of shops just before the Round Church and zipped along the path to the Union Society building. It’s well secluded behind the church, a Victorian gothic red-brick beastie in a city of old, fancy, fiddly, stuffy stonework. It’s the type of building that belongs to a man in a rubber mask in seventies
Doctor Who
, and usually gets blown up by Tom Baker in episode forty-nine. It’s got a coffee shop for the tourists, of course — everywhere’s got a coffee shop for the tourists. If you stand still in the street long enough someone buys up your franchise and sticks a cafetière up your arse.
But the Union’s a pretty anonymous place. There’s nothing outside the building to suggest two hundred years of history, or that its doors have calmly welcomed multicoloured arseholes of all politics and all beliefs, no matter how bat-shit insane. Everyone who was and wasn’t anyone has pontificated here, on expenses, with an agreeable lunch. I wrote an article for the
Bugle
on its history once. The editor spiked it. Can’t think why.
I ran a hand through my hair to tidy myself up a little, then skipped up the steps into the entrance hall and planted my face in the office window, cranking up my most ingratiating smile. In a rare moment of actual effort the editor had cleared me with the society in advance and all I had to do was sign in and show my press card to an old fella I’d seen there before: haggard, charcoal pinstripe suit, military ribbon. He was a member of staff, possibly since the place was founded. He didn’t ask about a camera but peered at my bag through inch-thick lenses for long enough for me to notice, and for long enough for him to know I’d noticed.
“It’s all standard equipment, your honour,” I said. “Notebook, camera, bolt cutters, lock picking kit, big brown envelope of tenners, teddy bear with one arm missing, semtex.”
I liked to put that one in last. With my accent, guaranteed a reaction.
He gave me a look and I mimed a gunshot with my hand. “Gotcha,” I said.
“No photos, sir,” he said. “Standing order of the Society.”
“What about the semtex?”
He blinked twice, slowly, and smiled as if to a child. “That would be fine.”
He buzzed me through the inner door into the main lobby and back in time about a century. Wood panelling, photos of dead people, a deep burgundy carpet, and a wide staircase up to a gallery. The smell of money, and booze, and… chips?
Ahead, three sets of doors leading into the chamber and used for voting:
Ayes
,
Noes
, and
Meh
, I guessed. I could hear the debate already underway, and hoped I hadn’t missed whatever Geoff was expecting to happen.
I bounced up the staircase three at a time to the gallery, since the chamber itself was out of bounds to lesser mortals like me. I snuck through the upstairs
Aye
door as smoothly as I could with my big bag of bits. Nobody else was up here — I had my pick of the shit seats. They ringed the chamber, two rows of bare wooden benches behind a balcony you wouldn’t dare lean against in case it was riddled with woodworm. The place must smell like a monkey sanctuary when it’s full, I thought.
I didn’t want any doors behind me so I scooted along a bench for a good vantage point on the right-hand side. The floor creaked, the seat creaked. Great anti-surveillance system: I might as well have let off an almighty fart and be done with it.
Once I’d settled I could take a good look at the stucky-ups below. The debating chamber, a century and a half old, had been designed to look like the House of Commons. Both had seen better days. Rows of benches, tired purple leather slowly cracking in a bitter attempt to escape the monotony, were lined either side of an empty space just like in the Commons. Photos of old debates, or so it looked, hung on the walls around the chamber. There were a couple of despatch boxes all miked up, and the speaker’s chair at the top of some steps like a throne. Except, as I wrote in the report Geoff spiked, it was a president not a speaker. Like I said, arseholes.
Some poor little suited gobshite sitting by the despatch boxes looked like he was transcribing speeches and pretending desperately that his life had meaning. He was the secretary, I remembered. The sequence, if you sucked enough cock, was something like this: secretary, vice president, president, merchant banker, PR consultant, special adviser, MP, Baron Arsehole of Taint-in-the-Midden, supersized pension, and houses in forty-nine countries.
The debate:
This House Believes That Music Be The Food of Love
. Jesus wept, I wanted to shake them all by their hundred quid haircuts and teach them a lesson about the real world. The first speaker was haw-hawing in favour, with one old Etonian hand on the despatch box and the other barely avoiding a Hitler salute, and looking like a twelve-year-old in his dad’s DJ trying not to piss his mum’s M&S knickers. A bunch of other no-chins were lined up to follow, for and against, on either side.
It was all little boys and little girls playing talkie-talkies with their lives mapped out, from here to the Cabinet table in twenty-five years or less or your money back.
What the hell was I doing here?
I thought.
A tip-off
, said the editor.
It might kick off.
Kick off? This place wouldn’t kick off if you smacked the Queen in the nose and kneed her in the bejesus. But god help you if you breached the etiquette. Try to make a point of
order
when it should be a point of
information
and you’d be skinned and flailed and you’d never get into the Athenaeum or the Carlton or the MCC old bean, no matter how many fifties daddy threw.