Shades of Grey (48 page)

The village was quiet and sleepy. Dawn in the summer wasn’t the hub of frenetic activity that it was in the winter. In fact, I didn’t expect anyone to be up for at least another half hour, and then it would be only the baker, the postmistress and the mole catcher. I made my way to the statue of Our Munsell to wait for Carlos Fandango and the Ford. I didn’t have long to wait, for a disheveled figure soon ran around the corner of the town hall. He seemed to be doing up his shoelaces as he ran, which was an impressive sight. It was Tommo, and I frowned. Not only because of who it was, but what he was dressed in—his Outdoor Adventure #9s.

“Hello, Ed!” he said with an uncharacteristic display of cheery purpose. “Ready for the big day? Good morning, Courtland.”

I turned to look behind me. It
was
Courtland, and he seemed also to be dressed for adventure. I didn’t quite get it. If there was anyone in the village who
shouldn’t
be sent to High Saffron, it was Courtland.

“There’s been a change of plan,” he announced. “Tommo and I are coming with you.”

“Does Yewberry know?”

“Not yet.”

“The Council will be furious when they find you’ve volunteered yourself,” I remarked suspiciously. “Why the change of heart?”

“The Gamboges have a bit of a public relations problem at present, and I’ll need some sort of credibility if I’m going to be Yellow prefect. Besides, I could do with the cash.”

He looked pointedly at me. “After all, you never know when demerits might come one’s way. Good morning, Violet.”

Violet had indeed just appeared. She smiled coyly at me and gave my arm a squeeze. I felt a flush rise to my cheeks, and was glad none of them would be able to see it. But if Courtland going on this trip was a mistake, Violet would be a disaster—and a serious liability. If anything were to happen to the head prefect’s daughter, we’d lose every single merit we’d earn. Lower colors had a duty of care to see that those of the very highest hues came to no harm.

“This is utterly, utterly insane,” I said.

“Oh, hush, Edward,” said Violet, “This is just the sort of merry jaunt that will firmly cement our relationship. Once we bravely face the terrors of the road together and emerge victorious, we can take our places as East Carmine’s most celebrated couple.”

“There are eighty-three people who might disagree with that plan—if they could still speak.”

“You are
such
a whiner,” said Courtland. “Just dry up and relax. Where are we meeting Fandango?”

“Right here, but he’s late.”

In answer, there was the sound of a vehicle approaching, and the Ford rounded the corner from the direction of the flak tower. But it wasn’t the sedan; it was East Carmine’s second best: the shabby flatbed, but with the heavy crossbow removed. And Fandango wasn’t driving, but
Jane
. My heart rose and fell in quick succession. I was glad to see her but didn’t want her to know what had happened that morning. If, as Stafford had intimated, Jane actually
did
have feelings for me, doing the youknow with Violet would not go down well, if at all.

“Where’s Fandango?” asked Tommo.

“Some damn fool tricked Bunty onto the train,” replied Jane. “He has to pick her up from Bluetown in the other Ford. Got a problem with that?”

Courtland and Tommo exchanged glances.

“So where’s the relief driver?” asked Tommo.

“Clifton called in sick,” replied Jane, “and Rosie has a bad foot. George and Sandy were unavailable, so I took over.
Reluctantly
.”

She didn’t look at me at all, and I smiled to myself. She’d changed her mind. She was here for me after all.

I took my place in the cab, sandwiched uncomfortably between Jane and Violet while Tommo and Courtland sat in the flatbed. Without a word Jane moved off and took the western road past the flak tower, the silent linoleum factory and the railway station. Within a few minutes we had let ourselves out of the stockgate in the boundary wall, and five hundred yards farther on we stopped just past the Outer Markers and the image of the giraffe. Without anyone speaking, Courtland, Tommo and I took off our ties, carefully rolled them up and placed them in our pockets. Violet removed the bow from the top of her head and used it to tie her hair in a loose ponytail. There wouldn’t be any prefects out here, and we could slip them back on before we crossed back again.

We picked up the pace on the smooth roadway and sat in silence. I didn’t want to say anything to Violet in case she let the cat out of the bag to Jane, and I didn’t want to talk to Jane, because everyone would know that we had some sort of common understanding. But I couldn’t sit there and say nothing, so I asked Jane how far it was to Bleak Point.

“Less than an hour, if all goes well.”

“How are you, Jane?” said Violet, attempting to be friendly and magnanimous.

“A whole lot better if you’d keep your overhued trap shut.”

Violet instinctively opened her mouth to voice objection, but then realized where we were. Beyond the Outer Markers, all the Rules past volume three hundred and eight were null and void. Jane could say what she wanted. Actually, she said what she wanted
inside
the markers. The only difference was that now she wasn’t going to be demerited for it.

“Well!” said Violet in a huffy tone. “
That
was uncalled for. What have I ever done to elicit such rudeness?”

“Let’s just look at the highlights, shall we?” replied Jane. “When we were five, you pushed me into a muddy puddle and then claimed I’d hit you. When we were eight, you told Miss Bluebird that I had copied your homework after
you
copied mine. When we were twelve, you nearly drowned me during water polo because I had bested you. And when we were fifteen, you deselected me from the Jollity Fair tennis squad because I was likely to win. The same year you had me demerited because I failed to curtsy in your presence, even though I didn’t know you were there because I was asleep after a double shift at the factory. In fact,” went on Jane, “you’ve accounted for almost a third of my demerits over the years, something I’ve spent an aggregate five months of my life working to offset.”

“Greys,” said Violet, looking at me and rolling her eyes, “always
so
overdramatic.”

“Mind you,” she added, “we’re not totally ungrateful—the cash you pay my brother for youknow helps keep food on our table.”

I heard Tommo and Courtland stop talking and tune into the conversation.

“Wow!” I said, pointing at some bouncing goats that were leaping through the scrubby Outfield in a series of enormous bounds. “Look at them go!”

But my attempt to get Violet and Jane off topic didn’t work.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to be at one’s best for one’s husband,” continued Violet, visibly rankled by Jane’s indiscretion, “but now that I am to wed,” she said, patting me on the shoulder, “he will have to ply his wares elsewhere—and good luck to him; he has learned much from my expertise.”

Jane gave a snort of a laugh that, had we been within the Outer Markers, would have been branded impertinent. Out here it was just fair banter, one-on-one.

“What are you sniggering at?” Violet demanded.

“That you think you’re an expert at youknow. The sorry truth is that Clifton gave you good feedback only to increase return business. He told me you were only in it for yourself.”

There was an icky silence, and I could tell Jane was enjoying herself.

“Nonsense,” replied Violet as her self-denial kicked in after a millisecond of doubt. “I can’t think why he would want to lie to you, or why his moonlighting might be suitable talk for a Grey dinner table. But we can clear this matter up once and for all. Eddie, darling, tell Jane how
fantastically
good I was this morning.”

I closed my eyes and felt sick. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. My only consolation was that I had been thinking of Jane when it happened, which didn’t sound like the sort of excuse I should use.

“Well?” said Violet.

“Yes,” added Jane, with a mixture of hurt and anger in her voice, “how was it? Do tell.”

“Look,” I said, turning to Violet, “I’m not here to give you public feedback every time someone criticizes you.”

“Is that a fact?” she replied, her shrill voice rising. “Then what
are
you here for? Marriage is a couple mutually joined as one but doing what the higher hue demands. Didn’t your mother teach you
anything
?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m sure she was
going
to tell me how insanely bossy up-color girls could be, but then she got the Mildew, and it must have slipped her mind.”

“
I’m
going to be the wisecracking, acerbic one in
this
marriage,” retorted Violet. “You’re to be the long-suffering husband who supports his wife with quiet dignity.”

“I’m glad we got that small matter cleared up. Shall we make it part of the vows?”

“Don’t lip me, Russett. I can make this marriage bossy or five decades of living nightmare. Believe me, you’ll prefer bossy.”

We fell silent after that as the age-worn Ford crept slowly up the hill with a cacophony of growls and rattles, squeaks and groans. I looked across at Jane, but she was staring ahead, lips pursed. I needed to talk to her about recent events but didn’t see how I could. Not alone, anyway.

We had been driving toward the dam complex and had by now reached the top of the first one. The effort had been worth it. A shimmering expanse of water hemmed in by rocky valley walls suddenly appeared to greet us. It was spectacularly lovely yet also surprisingly bleak, as frequent rhododendron-halting fires had reduced the vegetation to nothing more than stunted scrub. The road was suffering, too. Where the Perpetulite ran across rock, it had thinned with malnutrition, and small rocky outcrops now poked through the roadway, requiring us to creep over some of the larger obstructions with care.

The road followed the eastern side of the reservoir, passed the remains of an arched bridge and carried on until it petered out into silted-up marshland, where the reed beds were home to waders, spoonbills and, most gloriously,
flamingos
.

We motored up a short rise where we found a second dam that had been breached long ago and was now once more a valley with a stream running through it. The road twisted and turned and rose, the vegetation became less burned, and pretty soon we were driving across open moorland. We passed a grove of stunted oaks, then two rusted-iron land crawlers, badly eroded by the wind and rain. Then, just when all seemed to be going well, the road abruptly stopped in an erratic plume of errant Perpetulitic growth, with six knotted plastoid tendrils stopped in their tracks by a series of bronze spikes. The Perpetulite had not taken well to the spalling and had gone into an ugly frenzy of errant growth. Lumpy roadway had bulged up, and the white center line had twisted about itself like cream being stirred into coffee.

Jane pulled off the road onto a grassy verge next to a Faraday cage.

“It’s called
spalling,
” said Tommo, since we were all staring at the panicked manner in which the road had attempted to rejoin with its lost section. “When Perpetulite catches plastoid necrosis
,
the only way to protect the road system is to amputate and then spike. I don’t think it likes it very much.”

“Like I give a ratfink what the road thinks,” said Violet. “Let’s get on with it.”

“I leave an hour before nightfall,” announced Jane, breaking out the oilcan from the toolbox. “If you’re not here, I go home without you. Have fun now, children, and don’t squabble.”

“You better be here,” said Courtland.

“I’ll be here,” she said, giving him a smile, “but will you?”

She was trying to frighten him, but it didn’t seem to be working.

We gathered our knapsacks, and with little ceremony we walked past the spalled Perpetulite and onto the track of the vanished road, which, despite being fully reclaimed as grassy moorland, was still visible as a flatter section of ground. Almost immediately, I made some lame excuse and hurried back to the Ford, which was being assiduously oiled by Jane with the oversize oilcan.

“I thought you were here because you changed your mind.”

“I thought so, too,” she said without looking at me, “right up until you couldn’t resist giving darling Violet your very best. You had me fooled. For a moment there I thought you were actually quite pleasant.”

“It was an accident.”

“Where did you mean to put it? Her sock?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why should you be sorry?” She took a deep breath. “Whatever it was, Eddie, it’s gone. I don’t care any longer. But since I owe you, here’s some advice: There’s a flak tower three foot-hours away. Don’t go beyond it.”

“I have to. That’s the point of the expedition.”

She shrugged, switched on the ignition, hand-cranked the engine, jumped into the driver’s seat, and without another look at me, moved off in a cloud of smoke.

I sighed, cursed my own weakness, then ran to catch up with the others.

We stuck to the easily recognized path of the gone-away road, and after a half mile of well-grazed moorland we descended a short hill and entered a forest of mature oak. A few trees had fallen across the road but nothing too dramatic.

“We’d get the Ford along here,” said Tommo, who had trotted forward to join me up front.

The road took us around a sweeping curve and then up a slight incline, where, standing forlornly in a sun-dappled glade, we came across a Farmall crawler such as might have been used to assist with logging. This was where the battle to reopen the road had ended thirty years ago, the Farmall abandoned when it was replaced by plow horses as motive power during one of the periodic small stepbacks. Enthusiasm for keeping the road open had seemingly died with it. I made a note in my exercise book.