The Pink and the Grey Read Online Free PDF

scale of one to ten,” I repeated.
    She paused and sighed. “How many?” I could hear the husband muttering darkly in the background, probably cursing me up and down as he packed his bag with hoovers or dusters or whatever it was he sold.
    “A good 9.2, maybe 9.25.” I’d decided the scale was asymptotic, never hitting or breaching ten, otherwise I’d exaggerate wildly into the thousands. I’d secretly reserved the full ten-point-oh for planet-sundering events such as births, deaths, and obtaining a boyfriend.
    She sighed again. “I bet it isn’t. I bet it’s low eights. There hasn’t been a nine since the play with Anita and that thing with the understudy.”
    “Oh yes, the understudy with the underwear. He was… a challenge. No, I’m telling you, it’s unquestionably above nine.”
    “What is it, then? I’m not coming unless you give me some kind of reason.”
    “Gin. Gin is a reason.”
    “Gin doesn’t score above nine, my dear. Gin doesn’t score anything, we agreed that.”
    “It’s Professor Chatteris. Lady Macdeath. I was caught, well, rather knob-handed I’m afraid.”
    “Again?” She laughed, and I made out her muffled voice passing the story on to her husband.
    “Claire! This is serious!”
    “It’s not even low eights, it’s somewhere in the fives at most. Hang on.” The phone muffled again as her husband spoke. She relayed it to me: “We should get you a chastity belt for Christmas, apparently.”
    “Sadly negated by the lock-picking kit I already own. Listen. Being caught, fine. I tongued toes and made the right grunts. But she’s installed me as chair of some nauseous committee. I’m supposed to conjure up a grandiose plan to raise the college some cash.”
    “Can’t you just—”
    “Monday. By Monday. I am dangerously inflamed. You need to come and help me drink through it.”

    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 hither 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