The Pink and the Grey Read Online Free Page A

undergraduate, for sure. Maybe a postgrad? He was leaning forward, forearms resting on the balcony with hands clasped in front of him, looking intently at the toff whining away below. A little stressed, maybe? Or was I projecting?
    This had to be the guy, I thought. He was probably the one who’d tipped off Geoff. I realised I should’ve asked Geoff more about the caller, but then again he was the old hand — if it was important he should’ve told me.
    I decided the interloper had almost certainly seen me and figured out who I was, which was why he’d sat directly opposite me, and he was busy winding himself up to kick things off as promised. He had that shifty fake-relaxed look about him, the one you get when some lad notices you’ve been checking him out — that oh, what an interesting ceiling look with a nervous whistle. The same one a straight guy gets when his girlfriend asks him to hold her handbag.
    I had no idea what dastardly act the interloper had planned. If he’d told Geoff, Geoff hadn’t spilled the beans to me. He wasn’t likely to pitch a tent there and try to occupy the Union, not by himself, and no amount of pepper spray could make a decent, photogenic difference from up here. A banner, or a flour bombing? I couldn’t see any bag. That ruled out the cricket bat mayhem too. Was he going to piss all over them? My editor might still use a picture of that, give or take a censoring blob. He was restless, and shifting, which didn’t rule out a full bladder. I felt sure something was brewing.
    I took a chance and raised my camera to the balcony. Not high enough to be seen from below, but high enough to focus on the interloper. It was an SLR, digital of course, which meant I had to look through the viewfinder. I attempted a subtle, slow slouch, no sudden movements to alert anyone in the chamber. Down, down, down, approach, squint, zoom, focus…
    The interloper was looking directly at me.
    OK, I thought. This was either very good, or very very bad. I froze.
    He aimed a nervous smile towards me, a dainty wave. More than a touch of the gays about him, if you knew the signs. No flamer, just what my grammy would call theatrical or a little light in the loafers with jazz hands and a fey little kick back. He’d pass in a crowd as long as you didn’t throw him a ball. A Waitrose balsamic kind of guy. His face definitely showed more than a hint of eastern promise in his past, maybe a scandalous interracial one-nighter a few gens back in the far east. It worked, I thought. I decided I probably would , under different circumstances, and not, you know, while being caught papping him in the upstairs gallery of the Union chamber.
    It was then that I noticed the silence.
    And, through the viewfinder, I saw the interloper point at the president’s chair.
    I sat up slowly and saw my zoomed-in lens overlapping the balcony edge. Shit. Below, a sea of amused muppet-toff faces gazed up at me. I could almost hear the show’s deep sax intro in my head. It’s time to play the music… or face it.
    The president was standing, holding the order paper, and staring at me. “Can I help?” he said.
    Both sides of the chamber erupted in laughter and clapped for the ritual ten seconds, just enough for a light nasal browning without descending into outright rimming.
    There was nothing I could do but brazen it out. I called out: “No, no, you guys carry on with… whatever it is you were doing.” Not so much of a laugh. “Mutual masturbation, wasn’t it?”
    Someone coughed. It was almost a laugh. On a good day, one-to-one, it might’ve been a cough-laugh or a laugh-cough or maybe as much as an honest snigger. But not this time.
    “I think, sir, you ought to leave,” said the president sternly. The secretary dutifully wrote something down, as if this were Nuremberg and they’d just passed sentence.
    I cut my losses, packed up my camera and shuffled quickly to the Noes door, glancing across to the interloper whose expression