Shades of Grey

School, Poetry, Co-op

The school was situated at the back of the village, two streets behind the town hall and opposite the firehouse. Due to the architectural infallibility of the Rules regarding school design, no better building could or would be thought of, so every school in the Collective was identical. I immediately knew my way around, and the place had an eerie familiarity about it.

I paused in the main hall next to the bronze bust of Munsell and read the school’s oft-quoted mission statement: “Every pupil in the Collective will leave school with above-average abilities.” It wasn’t until I had studied advanced sums that I realized this could not be possible, since by definition not everyone could be of above-average ability.

“It’s a historical average fixed soon after the Something That Happened,” my mentor, Greg Scarlet, had explained when I dared broach the subject. “How else would you be able to compare one year with another? Besides, an average pegged to a time when education was considerably worse than it is now ensures that no pupil is ever stigmatized by failure.”

This was true, and since one’s career path was never decided by ability or intellect, it didn’t much matter anyway. Lessons were generally restricted to reading, writing, French, music, geography, sums, cooking and Rule-followment, which meant sitting in a circle and agreeing on how important the Rules were. Most pupils referred to the subject as “nodding.”

I made my way to the head teacher’s office and tapped nervously on the door.

“Glad you could make it,” she said as soon as I had explained who I was and what I was doing there.

She introduced herself as Miss Enid Bluebird. She was a slight woman who was dressed in shabby tweeds and carried the benign expression of the inwardly harassed. This was not surprising, as her office was knee-high in stacks of dusty and much-faded examination papers.

“I’ve managed to bring the backlog down to a mere sixty-eight years,” she announced with some small sense of achievement. “I hope to be able to start marking the papers of pupils who are still alive by the end of the decade.”

“A very worthy aim,” I replied, thinking carefully about how I could apply queuing theory in this instance.

“Excuse the impertinence, but wouldn’t it be better to reverse the queuing order so that the oldest papers were last marked? It would allow pupils to know their results sooner, and as far as I can see, would not be against the Rules, since queue direction is not specified.”

She stared at me oddly, then smiled kindly after having given the matter no thought at all.

“A fine idea, but since everyone is above average, improvement to the system is really not that important.”

“Then why mark them?” I asked, emboldened by the rejection of my suggestion.

“So we can make sure the education system is working, of course,” she replied as though I were simple.

“If I work really hard I might be able to clear the backlog to the fifty-year mark by the time I retire—and we can know just how well we were doing half a century ago. If we commit ourselves wholly to the task, in twenty years we might know how well we are doing right now.”

“You must have very little time for teaching.”

“No time at all,” she replied airily, “which explains why Useful Workers like you are now essential to the smooth running of the school. Why, we’ve not had a teacher actually teaching for over three centuries.

She introduced me to the class, and I gave the afternoon lesson. Because Munsell had attempted to make the world knowable for everyone by simply reducing the number of facts, there wasn’t that much to teach. But I did my best, and after doing some long-division practice and talking a little about my home village, I set them a puzzle in which they had to estimate how many Previous there had once been by using Ovaltine sales projections of the year known as 2083. Following that, we discussed why the Previous might have been as tall as they were, which foodstuffs made it through the Epiphany, then possible reasons why the Previous had apparently denied the future by ranking their year system without a double-zero prefix. After that, we had a general Q&A session, where they asked me stuff about Riffraff eating babies, and why the Previous’ tables had four legs rather than the more stable three we used at present. I answered as best as I could, and after giving them a brief introduction to the skill of reading bar codes, we ended up talking about the rabbit. I was very glad that I had earlier found an article in Spectrum that described a visit to the rabbit six years ago. I sounded almost expert.

We finished up with a song of praise to Munsell as the clock moved around to four, and as soon as I dismissed them there was a flurry of banged desk lids and they were all gone.

I was rather pleased with myself, and after pushing in the chairs and placing their homework in the waste bin, I went to find Miss Bluebird, who asked me how it went without much interest, and then gave me positive feedback and ten merits.

“Find anything useful to teach them?”

Jane was waiting for me outside the school. She looked almost pleased to see me, and that instantly made me suspicious.

“I . . . like to think so,” I replied cautiously, looking around to see if there were witnesses in case she tried something.

She picked up on my nervousness and raised an eyebrow. “What are you so worried about?”

“The last time you smiled at me, I found myself under a yateveo.”

She laughed. The sound was lovely—yet quite out of character. It would be like hearing a fish sneeze.

“Honestly,” she said, “are you going to drag that up every time we meet? So I threatened to kill you.

What’s the big deal?”

“How can you not think it’s a big deal?”

“Okay, I’ll demonstrate. You threaten to kill me.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Come on, Red, don’t be such a baby.”

“All right: I’ll kill you.”

“You have to say it like you mean it.”

“I’LL KILL YOU!”

And she punched me in the eye.

“Ow! That hurt. And how could that possibly demonstrate that it’s no big deal?”

“You might have something there,” she said thoughtfully. “It could have been a bit rude of me. But let’s face it, you are a bit pointless, and the world will certainly carry on spinning without you.”

I rubbed my eye. “You really have a winning personality, don’t you?”

“Steady,” she said, again with a slight smile. “I’m supposed to be the sarcastic one.”

“What in Munsell’s name is going on?” Miss Bluebird had just walked out of the school. She was carrying a huge pile of papers, and had a look of shocked disbelief on her face. “Did I just witness a lethal threat and an up-color assault?”

It was time to think fast, and when it comes to making up lieful deceits on the spot, I soon realized that Jane was even better than Tommo. “Far from it,” she replied innocently. “Master Edward and I were discussing the best way to mock-fight in Red Side Story.”

“We’re attending the auditions together,” I added, “aren’t we, Jane?”

She gave me a brief grimace, but nodded.

“It was most convincing,” replied Mrs. Bluebird, full of admiration. “I’m adjudicating this evening—perhaps you might demonstrate the technique for us all?”

“As many times as you want,” replied Jane happily.

“Splendid!” replied Mrs. Bluebird. “See you there, then.”

As soon as she was out of earshot, Jane turned to me and said in a low growl, “We’re not going to the auditions.”

I had to agree, as being punched endlessly wouldn’t be much fun. In fact, I’d prefer to just lose an eyebrow and be done with it.

“We should keep moving,” said Jane, “before we raise any suspicions. If anyone comes within earshot, talk to me about what you’d like for dinner, and then castigate me about the poor starching of your collar.”

We walked off, and after a moment of silence I said, “You were waiting for me. Did you want something?”

“No,” she said, “but you do. Word in the Greyzone is that a sad Red wannabe with no imagination and a lump in his trousers needs help to get his leg over some unobtainable Alpha crumpet back home.”

“Aside from the subtly imbedded ‘I don’t like you’ message hidden in your statement, what does that mean?”

“It means I heard you wanted some poetry written.”

“And you’re the best poet in the village?”

“By a long way.”

I attempted to take advantage of the narrow window of opportunity that had just opened, and asked if she’d like to discuss it down at the Fallen Man over a d’nish pastry.

“I’d sooner stick a bodkin through my tongue.”

“You really don’t like me, do you?”

“It’s not just you. You might say I am impartial in the politics of the Colortocracy—I despise all Chromatics equally.”

“Would there be any point in asking what’s going on in Rusty Hill, and how Zane and you relate to Ochre and the selling of the village swatches?”

“None whatsoever.”

“I thought you might say that . . . and we should have mutton on Wednesday,” I said, as Yewberry was walking past, deep in conversation with the Colorman about pipeline routing, “and with salad, not vegetables.”

Yewberry acknowledged my presence with a nod of his head, but the Colorman actually greeted me with a polite “Edward.” I replied, “Matthew,” which I could see impressed Yewberry.

“Right,” said Jane as soon as they had passed, “poetry. Who’s the bunny?”

I took a deep breath. “The ‘bunny,’ as you so indecorously call her, is an Oxblood, Constance Oxblood, and her father runs the stringworks in Jade-under-Lime. We’ve been seeing each other for several years, and we’ve even—”

“Do I look as though I’m interested?”

“Not really.”

“You’re right. The details of your hopeless quest to sacrifice your individuality on the altar of Chromatic betterment is about as exciting to me as pulling clodworms out of the juniors. Do you love each other?”

“I’m sure that in the fullness of time we will come to regard each other with—”

“That’s a no, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied with a sigh. “She needs the Red, and my family need the social standing.”

“How awesomely romantic! Have you told her? It would put the union on a business footing, and you’d save a small fortune in flowers, chocolates and poets.”

“She knows. It’s just a game, really. Besides, the old-color Roger Maroon is the odds-on favorite—despite his lack of Red, intelligence, charm and looks. Here,” I said, handing her a letter I had been drafting, “you may like to use this as a basis.”

“Drivel,” she said, scanning the words quickly. “Were you really going to send that?”

“The bit regarding the Caravaggio was okay,” I replied a bit stupidly, “and I thought it important to mention the queuing. Should I scrub the paragraph about the rabbit?”

“It’s all sheep and no shepherd,” she remarked and started to write on the back of my letter as we walked. She scribbled, crossed out and then wrote again, a bit like an artist trying to capture a likeness.

She looked quite lovely, and it wasn’t just her nose. The hair that wasn’t tucked into her ponytail dropped in front of her eyes several times, and she pushed it out of the way behind her ear, where it would stay for perhaps twenty seconds or so before making its way out again. I could have watched her for several circuits of the village, and fervently hoped she was a slow poet. Unfortunately, she wasn’t.

“There,” she said a minute later, and handed over the finished product.

Rouge of my heart, intertwined with double-hued destiny, Thread of my thoughts, constant and rubicund legacy, Filament of my future, endeared unto my expectation, Cord of my emotion, seared with eternal elation.

“That’s . . . beautiful,” I murmured.

Although the meaning wasn’t at first obvious, it seemed to have the right sort of words in it. Fairly long and not used that often. It also sounded intelligent, and had a lot of string references, which would go down well with Constance’s mother. More important still, it was a lot better than I could do. “Should I place it at the beginning or the end of the letter?”

“This is the letter, numbskull. You just put Tim or Peter or whatever your name is at the end. No Xs, no kisses and none of that ‘My heart yearns for you, poopsie’ nonsense.”

“It’s ‘honey bear,’ actually.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing. What do I owe you for the poetry?”

“You can have Constance on me. All I need is a favor.”

I looked across at her. “I have a feeling it’s probably not to scratch your back or put up some shelves.”

“No. What do you know about this Matthew Gloss character?”

“You mean His Colorfulness? Not very much.”

“But he’s kin, living in your house, and you called him Matthew in public. You wouldn’t have done that unless he’d allowed you to.”

“We’re getting along okay,” I conceded.

“I’d like to know what he’s doing here.”

“A Magenta feed-pipe leakage, he told me.”

“I heard that, too. But we’re not on the grid. He’s been invited to conduct the Ishihara, but that’s not for three days. I want to know what he’s really doing here.”

“ You want me to spy on a National Color operative? Someone Colorful? ”

“Wow,” she said, “you got it. I thought I was going to have to explain that one for a lot longer.”

“I can’t spy on my fourth cousin!”

“Of course you can. And you will.”

“You seem very confident about this.”

She leaned forward. “You’ll do this for me, Red, because despite Constance, you’re in love with me.”

And there it was. She’d said it. If I’d wanted to deny it, there was a half-second window in which to do so. But I paused too long, and all hope of believabilitywasgone forever. “Oh, sure,” I said inan unconvincing manner, “I’m on a half promise to an Oxblood, and I let myself fall for a Grey girl who not only despises me but is up for Reboot in under a week. Does that sound remotely sensible to you?”

“Love isn’t sensible, Red. I think that’s the point.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and thought hard for a moment. “You want to know what the Colorman is doing here?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll see what I can find out. But you have to stop threatening to kill me and punching me in the eye and stuff.”

“This is the new me,” she said, and gave me another smile. I was being used, but then I didn’t mind—and I didn’t actually have to do as she asked. In under a week she’d be pacing the yard at Reboot.

We turned the corner into the main square and came across a small crowd outside the town hall. It looked like an allocation ceremony, so we wandered over to dutifully offer our best wishes.

I had been nine at the time of my own allocating, and up until then I’d carried a nondescript BS3 code from the open pool that was held by the prefects. With the increased importance of family and inheritance, a loophole had been drafted to allow residents to transfer a relative’s postcode to a junior member of the same family. The RG6 7GD code that was now scarred into my chest had been my grandfather’s. I’d have liked any child of mine to have had my mother’s old code, but that had been reallocated to someone named Holland Claret, and I’d never liked him because of it. The Oxbloods had elderly relatives in abundance, so any children of Constance would almost certainly carry an SW3—Oxblood through and through.

We were standing at the back of the crowd of perhaps fifty or so people. DeMauve was conducting the ceremony, and it seemed that young Penelope Gamboge was having her allocation on the last day possible—her twelfth birthday, which lent a double sense of occasion to the proceedings. Old Man Magenta back in Jade-under-Lime treated allocation as the formfillery it was, but at least deMauve was making an effort. The whole Gamboge clan, which numbered eight as far as I could see, were beaming happily and even shedding a tear or two, which I never thought Yellows could do.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” whispered Jane. “A new life to an old postcode. A connection to our past, and to the future.”

“You can be quite sarcastic sometimes, can’t you?”

“It’s more than sometimes.”

“How did you get to Rusty Hill this morning?”

It was a daring question, but she had promised not to thump me. As it turned out, her answer was as matter-of-fact as it was impenetrable.

“The highway obeys my every wish.”

“What?”

She ignored me, and the ceremony came to an end.

“Aren’t you going to give a donation?”

I wasn’t planning to, but said I would so as not to appear cheap. I placed the smallest coin I had in the jar marked PENELOPE DAFFODIL GAMBOGE, TO3 4RF, which I noted was already half full of low-denomination coins, and quite a few buttons.

“There,” I said, “happy?” But I was talking to myself. Jane had slipped away in the crowd, her job completed. I looked at the poem again. It was the best I’d seen, and I wished she had written it to me, and not for me.

I stopped off at the telegraph office to send Jane’s poem to Constance. Mrs. Blood was impressed and congratulated me on the quality of my words. “You’re smarter than you look, young man. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say your Constance is a lucky woman, she might conceivably do worse.”

“You’re very kind,” I replied. “I just needed to get into my groove.”

And then, despite what Jane had told me, I wrote after the poem: I take my Ishihara this Sunday. All my very best, Edward.

“There,” I said, handing over the completed telegram form and counting out the money. “That will sort out Roger Maroon once and for all.”

I went next door to the Co-op to buy some pudding rice and found Tommo behind the counter, bagging some lentils for Carlos Fandango.

“Hello, Edward,” said the janitor, placing a custard powder tin on the counter to be refilled. “What did you think of Imogen’s information pack?”

“It was most impressive,” I said, “especially the unicycling.”

“Then you’ll be contacting your friend?”

“It’s at the top of my list.”

“Excellent.”

He turned to Tommo. “Put this on my account, would you, Spoonpacker?”

Tommo said he would, and as soon as Carlos had gone, Tommo opened the accounts ledger and took a pencil from behind his ear.

“One tin of custard powder . . . one hundred twenty pounds of lard . . . a haunch of lamb . . . two licorice sticks.”

He snapped the book shut, handed me a licorice stick and took one for himself.

“That should sort him out. Did he offer you a one percent finder’s fee?”

“Two percent.”

“He must have liked the look of you. If Dorian was still Lilac and had six grand kicking about, there might be a happy ending. He’s Grey and has only thirty, so there won’t be. Tears all around. Did you have a particular Purple in mind for her?”

“There’s only Bertie Magenta back home.”

“The elephant trick guy?”

“The same. But I’m not going to help out. Fandango intimated that a prospective purchaser could have her in the wool store on appro.”

“What a fantastic sales gimmick,” he said in admiration. “When I hear stuff like that it makes me proud to be in retailing.”

“I say it’s vile odiousness. Would you do that to your daughter?”

“Technically speaking, it’s not his daughter. If I’d brought up another man’s girl for twenty years, I think I’d be due some sauce for my investment.”

I could see I was wasting my time arguing with Tommo over this one.

“Even so, it’s just not right.”

“There is no right or wrong,” said Tommo. “Only the Rulebook makes it so. Do you want a banana?”

“Not really.”

“Reserve judgment until you see it.”

He reached behind the counter and produced an ordinary-looking banana—but in a beautiful dark yellow shade that was delightfully nonstandard. It was one of the new Chromatically Independent bananas I had seen advertised in Vermillion’s Paint Shop.

“Wow. Where did that come from?”

“The regional fruit and veg allocations manager owed me a favor. I was going to keep this one for myself but instead thought I’d sell it to some shallow dope who’s impressed by this sort of thing.”

“Like me?”

“Like you.”

I stared at the fruit from several angles and wondered if I could send it to Constance as some sort of love token, then dismissed the idea as quickly—sending bananas to young ladies really only meant one thing, and you could expect a face slap for it. Or in Constance’s case, six.

“How much?”

“To you, thirty.”

“Come on! An uncolorized one is only five cents.”

“That was a special price because I like you—everyone else paid forty.”

“Fifteen, then.”

“Done.”

The shop bell tinkled and Violet deMauve walked in. We both instinctively gave a respectful bow and she returned our greeting with an almost imperceptible inclination of her head.

“Ah!” she said. “The new bananas are in. Just what I was after.”

She opened her purse.

“How much, Tommo? If you try to overcharge me I’ll poke you painfully in the eye.”

“I’m so sorry, Miss Violet,” said Tommo, enjoying the pleasure of seeing her disappointed, “I’ve just sold the banana to Master Edward here.”

“Oh,” she said, turning to me, “then I will buy it from you. I am prepared to be generous—I will be more than happy to pay two cents over the price charged by Tommo.”

“It’s not for sale,” I said as Tommo moved away to look busy elsewhere.

“How funny!” exclaimed Violet, blinking rapidly. “For a moment there I thought you said it wasn’t for sale.” She lowered her voice to a growl. “Now—how much?”

“I’m sorry, Miss deMauve, but I’m keeping it.”

A look of incredulity seemed to well up inside her; then, after a moment or two, she smiled.

“It’s another one of your ‘no’ jokes isn’t it? Like at lunchtime?” She rested a hand on my cheek for a moment. “You’re so sweet—but I’m really in a dreadful rush and if I’m not back in a few moments, Papa—Head Prefect Papa—might be miffed. Do you want to see a head prefect miffed?”

“Not really.”

“Correct answer. Now, how much?”

“It’s not—”

“Tommo?” she said, beckoning him over as you would to inform a tea shop attendant that you’d just found a dead mouse in the teapot. “Is there something wrong with Russett? He doesn’t seem to quite get it.”

Tommo stayed where he was, skulking behind the picture-postcard display rack.

“Russetts are like that, Miss Violet,” came Tommo’s voice, “contrary.”

“A demi,” I said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

She stared at me again, took a half-merit coin from her purse, stuffed it in my hand and walked huffily out of the shop. I stood there for a few moments until she returned, took the banana and walked out again.

“Wow,” said Tommo, coming out from behind the display, “I like you. You’ll suffer for it later, but anyone who tries to annoy the deMauves is a friend of mine. What can I get you?”

“I’m going to need a half pound of pudding rice,” I said, “and peaches, boot polish, a quince, one large turnip, a tin of sardines and a bag of sprinkles.”

Tommo took out a notebook and scribbled in it.

“Problems?”

“Not at all,” he answered, “but with all those ingredients I’m just reminding myself never to dine with you.”

I walked back across the square to put on the rice pudding, have a bath and ready myself for the Chromogentsia. I looked into the bathroom on the way past and noticed that the shower curtain had been pulled back. Of our unknown lodger there was no sign. But that wasn’t strictly true. Lying on my bed was a pre-Epiphanic snow globe of the sort that might change hands for hundreds of merits. I shook it, and the white flecks floated upon a scene of tall buildings and a woman holding a torch in the air. It wasn’t mine, and I’d never seen it before. But I was willing to bet it hadn’t been blown there. “You’ve stolen my snow globe!” came a voice from the door.

I turned to see the Apocryphal man glaring at me.

“I did not!” I declared indignantly. “I found it on my bed.”

The Apocryphal man stared at me for some moments in silence. When he spoke next, it was with a voice tinged with sadness.

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

I shook my head.

“It means I’m not invisible!”