Shades of Grey (47 page)

He’d just had time to put the ticket in his pocket when Prefect Sally Gamboge walked up, bristling with indignation. She had Courtland with her, and they weren’t there to add me to their birthday list.

“What are you still doing here, Russett? I thought we agreed you’d take the train out?”

“Circumstances have changed.”

She glared at me. “I hope you don’t regret that decision,” she said coldly.

“Is that a threat, Madam Prefect?”

“Not at all,” she replied, “merely an
observation
.”

“An observation duly taken on board. I feel it is my duty to report that Miss McMustard has just taken the fifteen forty-three out of the village.”

“
What?
Bunty? A walkout? Impossible!” And after telling me she would “deal with me later,” Gamboge marched off to find out what had happened to Bunty.

“So,” said Courtland once his mother had gone, “it looks like you owe me a ticket. A deal is a deal.”

“The deal was I’d get on the train. And I did.”

“Sticking up for the Greys can be a costly business,” he said, glancing at Dorian. “I hope you’ve got deep pockets.”

“I’m going to make a point of discussing the whole Grey issue next week,” I murmured, “in the Council Chamber. I think we might see some changes around here.”

Courtland wasn’t that impressed with my bravado.

“Making plans for next week? How cheerfully optimistic of you.”

And he went off to join his mother.

“Here,” said Dorian, as soon as Courtland had gone, “have a flapjack. We ran out of syrup, so I used cod-liver oil.”

“Crumbly,” I said after taking a bite, “and a bit fishy.”

We both stood on the far side of the street and looked across into the window of the Fallen Man.

“Now that we’ve got two tickets, we’ll certainly take the Colorman up on his offer,” murmured Dorian. “We’ll be off on the Sunday train, straight after Imogen’s Ishihara.”

There was a pause.

“Eddie?”

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you take the train? You’re almost certainly going to disappear off into the Outfield tomorrow. And I know you can’t possibly want to marry Violet.”

“Do you want to know the real, honest, totally truthful answer?”

He nodded.

“Because there’s someone else here in East Carmine. Someone hopelessly unsuitable. It’s all a really bad idea and will lead to trouble of the worst sort. But no matter what, every minute in her presence makes my life a minute more complete.”

“Yes,” he said, looking across at Imogen, “I know exactly what you mean.”

We stood there for some moments in silence.

“Another flapjack?”

“No, thanks.”

 

I wrote several letters after I’d returned home. One to Constance, explaining that it was always my intention to marry her, and that we had both been the victim of an up-color Gazump. I wrote one to my father, telling him how much I loved him, and then one to Fenton, apologizing about the rabbit and enclosing a five-merit piece as compensation. I placed all the letters in my top drawer, to be found when my room was cleared out, then went downstairs to make supper. I made more than was necessary, and on two dishes, to make it easier for the Apocryphal man and his Extra.

There were periodic knocks on the door, and every time, my heart jumped as I thought it might be Jane come to tell me that she had changed her mind and would be coming with me to High Saffron. It wasn’t. It was residents who wanted me to do something for them in High Saffron. Like look for Floyd Pinken, who had vanished there a decade previously, or Johnson McKhaki, who had done the same twenty-three years before
that
. “I’ll call his name,” I said to McKhaki’s aged widow, who would certainly have won first prize in a deluded hope contest.

Lucy Ochre came around to wish me well. She had a message from the Greyzone.

“You have a new name: ‘He-who-runs-with-scissors.’ ”

I’d heard of the phrase before, and it referred partly to the “Home Safety and Sharp Objects” directive in section eight of the Book of Common Sense, but mostly to describe those who didn’t care what trouble they caused in the selfish pursuit of their own polluted ideals. It meant you had rejected the simple purity of the rainbow and were thus incompatible with the Word of Munsell. Beyond contempt, in other words, and well overdue for Reboot. From the Greys, a huge accolade.

“An honor like that,” I remarked, “is usually bestowed posthumously.”

“I think they wanted you to enjoy it, if only for a short while.”

“How thoughtful. Who sent the message?”

“The one with the retroussé nose who fights a lot. Have you and she got a thing going?”

“I don’t think she’s a ‘thing’ sort of girl.”

Lucy agreed with that sentiment, then asked me to take a pendulum with me to conduct a series of harmonic tests on the expedition.

“All my calculations seem to indicate that High Saffron is suffused with musical energy that seems to peak with the ball lightning cycle every thirty-seven days.”

I told her that while this was fascinating, I had enough on my plate, and she agreed, gave me a long hug, told me not to come back dead and went away.

 

“Tommo was right,” said Dad when he got in from work, “the deMauves are
seriously
oiled. We got ten grand for you, with two up front.”

I had gotten used to being treated as a commodity by now.

“Up front?” I said. “What for?”

“Tommo is an exceptional negotiator. George deMauve told me that he’d sign his daughter over as soon as he sees your Ishihara results. And I’m good for my word. Half the gravy will be yours.”

“And what if I don’t come back?”

“We’ll get you safely back somehow,” he said in a quiet voice. “We’re just not sure precisely how. How do you want to spend the evening? The Verdi concert?”

“What about Scrabble?” I suggested, thinking I should be in if Jane came calling. Dad agreed even though he didn’t much like Scrabble, and went to fetch the board.

The rest of the evening was something of a blur. I can recall the prefects’ coming in turns to wish me well, and to give useless snippets of advice that I could happily ignore. Even Sally Gamboge came around for form’s sake, but although her mouth uttered fond words, her eyes spoke only venom. The Apocryphal man graciously took the smaller of the dishes, and I had just achieved a triple-word score with
azure
when the dusk warning bell sounded.

“I’m supposed to be meeting Violet,” I murmured. “I’d better be off.”

“Glad you’re coming around to the idea,” he said. “She’s not half as bad as she appears.”

But instead of going to see Violet, which was what I’d implied, I went to hide in the broom closet, which was what I’d meant.

So that’s where I was when Violet was looking all over the village for me. It was warm and comfortable, and quite against my own expectations, I fell fast asleep, only to wake when the lights-out warning bell sounded two hours later.

I trod silently up to bed and had just changed into my pajamas when the world once more plunged into blackness. I lay awake for a while, listening to the Morse on the radiator. The gossip was once more about me—how I was either insane or fatally misguided to have volunteered myself. I listened for a while to the gossip channel, acknowledged the words of well-wishers, then turned my ears to the serial, where, as promised, Mrs. Lapis Lazuli had extended the broadcast to finish the chapter of
Renfrew of the Mounties.

I listened until all the Radtalkers had signed off, then settled down to sleep in the pitch-dark. Before I did so, I crept out of bed and fumbled my way around the bedroom to wedge a chair under the doorknob. There was someone in the village who could see at night, and I didn’t want him or her coming into my room.

I didn’t know who it was. In fact, I didn’t know lots of things. But that would all change, come the following day. I would achieve
enlightenment
, and then, in celebration of this, Jane would have me eaten by a yateveo. But it wouldn’t be personal. It would be a
precautionary
.

I
awoke with a start to find my bedclothes in disarray. I had slept badly, waking at every tiny sound that might, to my fuddled mind, have been a threat. The room had just been brought back to sightfulness with a glimmer of sunlight on the opposite wall. I checked the bedside clock—it was five in the morning. I rolled out of bed and carefully removed the chair from under the doorknob, quietly opened the door and padded across the landing to the bathroom.

I had a pee and walked back into my bedroom and almost yelled in alarm. Staring at me from outside the window was none other than Violet deMauve. When she saw me jump, she put a finger to her lips and made a gesture for me to raise the sash, which I did, foolishly realizing at that moment that with all my elaborate plans to safeguard myself the night before, I had neglected to note that my window was easily accessible by standing on the back-door porch below.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered. She didn’t answer, but simply clambered in, then turned and gave the thumbs-up to her unseen companion below, who took the ladder away. Violet then pulled down the window, jumped noiselessly onto the rug and started to remove her clothes, smiling coyly at me as she did so. I couldn’t deny that the fashion in which she did it was alluring. After all, Violet was not the sort of girl for whom anything could be left to chance, so she had doubtless rehearsed this often.

“You had no right to cancel my half promise to Constance.”

“That would have been Mother,” she said. “Goodness, she is
so
naughty. But when she has her heart set on her daughter wanting something, she’s pretty unstoppable.”

“It’s not just naughty, it’s unforgivable—and rude.”

“Tish, Edward. You stood me up last night, and that was
very
rude. If I weren’t so desperately in love with you, I might be offended.”

“Listen—”

“I’m not miffed, sweetness. The path of marriage can be rocky, and I am willing to forgive you, as you will surely forgive my mother for telling that beastly Oxblood tramp where to get off.”

“I don’t want to marry you, Violet.”

“Don’t be silly, darling. You get to jump up five hues and be Red prefect, I’ll eventually be
head
prefect and our strong Purple offspring get to preside over East Carmine’s residents forever and ever. What’s more, you and I and your father get some folding in our back pockets. And Daddy has jam. It’s a win-win-win-win-win situation.”

“So what are you doing here, if it’s all decided?”

“Father has made an offer depending on your bestowal, but I wanted to make sure you were the one. What do you think?”

She was by now entirely naked. Violet, it seemed, was giving me a private viewing. Naturally enough, I had seen many girls naked, and many had seen me—at swimming, changing rooms, communal showers. If there hadn’t been a punch-up at hockeyball, we would doubtless have seen each other in the changing rooms there. But showing one’s body to a potential partner in the context of premarriage courtship was quite a different matter. In this instance, Violet would be showing me not just her body,
but her desire for me to see it.
And I, for my part, would be expected to look at it in a way that showed I appreciated the gesture.

I tried not to look at Violet, but it was, I am ashamed to say, difficult. Her postcode had been expertly scarred using a typescript that looked tantalizingly just outside permissibility, and the rest of her was pretty much perfect. It was a difficult situation, and if I hadn’t been thinking of how much I wished she were Jane, she might have seen the whole thing as a washout and been gone in a second. As it was, she beamed happily at me, and before I knew it, she had slipped between the sheets.

“Violet!” I said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m just making
sure
. We wouldn’t want to get married only to find there had been a frightful mistake, now, would we?”

“The Rules—”

“My father
administers
them, sweetness.”

“Then what would your mother say?” I asked, in a feeble attempt to shame her.

“It was her idea.”

I looked nervously out the window. “She’s not watching, is she?”

“Of course not, sweetness. She said we must make sure that everything is functioning correctly—for dynastic purposes, you understand, and definitely
not
for physical enjoyment.”

“Of course,” I remarked sarcastically, “perish the thought.”

“Stop talking, Eddie, and do as I tell you. It’s not the time and place for our first argument, now, is it?”

“Look—”

“
I said no talking.
”

Apparently, I passed muster. Or, rather, as Violet put it, “We can work on your technique.” In any event, within no more than ten minutes and with only the minimum of talk—commands from Violet, mostly—we had committed a potential five-hundred-point demerit together. For me, the first time. Violet quickly dressed, kissed me on the forehead, told me she would report to her parents that all was well, then silently lifted the sash, lowered herself to the porch below and jumped to the street with surprising agility. I stared at the ceiling but didn’t move, my mind in something of a whirl. It had been
momentarily
pleasant, but I couldn’t help feeling a leaden sense of betrayal deep down. Not to myself or the Collective’s strict moral code, but to Jane.

I
rose, had a bath in the hottest water I could bear and donned my Outdoor Adventure #9s. I left my signet ring, my spot and my merit book with the prewritten letters in the top drawer, then padded quietly down the gloomy staircase. I fumbled for my walking boots, strapped on my gaiters and picked up the knapsack that I had packed the night before. Dad was waiting for me by the door, and although we weren’t huggy sort of people, we were this morning. Despite his previous night’s optimism, this morning Dad looked like a man who knew he wouldn’t be seeing his son again.