Shades of Grey

My Last Evening Ignorant

I made my way to the Fallen Man, where long-established custom would find Carlos Fandango offering tea and scones to Bertie, and discussing potential dowries, feedback ratings and virtues. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I needed to do something.

Dorian was pacing around on the opposite side of the street, and before I could say anything, he punched me on the nose. It wasn’t that hard, but enough to stop me in my tracks.

“That’s for betraying my confidence,” he said. “I thought you were positive toward our predicament. And now I find you’ve invited this Magenta idiot to come over and feel the goods before purchase. What is Imogen to you? Ripe fruit?”

“Not my doing,” I assured him. “I think you should be looking for someone who would sell their own toes for a couple of extra merits.”

“Oh,” he replied with a look of sudden contrition, “Tommo.”

“In one.” I peered into the tearoom, where Fandango seemed to be in heavy conversation with Bertie.

Sitting between them was Imogen, who looked very delightful indeed in her Outdoor Informal with Hat #8. She spent her time glaring sullenly at her father and potential husband in turn.

“You can’t claim you’re totally free of blame,” continued Dorian. “I mean, Tommo must have found out about Magenta from you.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’m going to have to make this right.”

“How?”

I handed Dorian the unused railway ticket, and his eyes opened wide.

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 retrousse 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.