Shades of Grey (17 page)

It would take me a while to get used to how rude Tommo could be—not just his flippancy, but divulging other people’s perceptions. It was the height of bad manners.

“How did you know I sold my own granny?”

“I didn’t. I was trying to be funny.”

“Ah. Listen, when you get to Rusty Hill, will you bring me back a pair of Male Outdoor Casuals?” He showed me his shoes, which were actually not shoes at all, but scraps of well-shined leather tied to the top of his feet.

“Okay.”

“Size nines.”

“Size nines it is.”

“See that guy over there?” He was indicating a handsome man, probably in his early thirties. “Ben Azzuro. Nice guy and a fine all-arounder, but nearly caused a riot in the henhouse by declaring himself. Personally, I’d like to see more like him in the village.”

“You’ll be declaring?”

“No. It would just tip the marriage market more in my favor. The way I figure it, if six more moved across, I might actually end up with someone quite pleasant. This might come as a huge surprise to you, but I’m not considered much of a catch.”

“Whyever not?”

“Careful of the sarcasm, sunshine. That’s the local salt lick over there. The woman behind the counter is Mrs. Crimson.”

He was pointing at the tearoom, always the busiest establishment in any village. It was called the Fallen Man, which was an unusual name, given that most tearooms were called Mrs. Cranston’s
.
I looked at the faded-to-monochrome painting on the board above the front door. It depicted a man sitting in a leather armchair while plummeting past some fluffy clouds, his tie flapping upward.

“Odd name,” I said, indicating the sign.

“Not for here,” he said cheerfully. “The other tearoom is called the Singing Coathanger. They both refer to local legends: the Fallen Man to someone who fell to earth quite near here, and the Singing Coathanger to a, well, a coathanger that started to sing.”

I’d heard about pieces of metal giving off a tinny noise that sounded like speech or song, but had never witnessed the phenomenon myself.

“Singing bits of wire and fallen men are all we’ve got in the legend department,” added Tommo. “What about you?”

“We have the Lapper Venus
,
” I explained, “though it’s more unexplained artifacture than folklore, to be honest. But,” I added, “there
was
the Night of the Great Noise. The elderly still talk about how in the morning everything was covered with something resembling cobwebs, and all the ladders were missing.”

“I’m almost sorry I asked. That’s Daisy Crimson,” he added, indicating a young woman who was walking past. “Nice girl and from a good family, if a little low-hued. Her father runs the village’s heat exchangers
.
Some say Daisy giggles too much and her nose is a little
too
pointy, but it’s never troubled me—or her, come to that.”

We had arrived at the flak tower, which was entirely typical in its construction. Square in plan but with a slight taper to the apex, where flat-lobed projections stuck out on all corners. The bronze doors had been removed long ago for scrap, and the unchecked Perpetulite had grown across the aperture, so all that remained was a vertical scar and a rough dimpling, like on unbaked bread. Another couple of hundred years and there wouldn’t even be that.

Tommo walked to the side where a series of bronze pitons was clear evidence of how the crackletrap builders had managed to get to the top. At chest height someone had left a length of steel piping no thicker than a man’s fist in what had once been a window. Tommo placed sandwiches in the pipe, followed by an apple, while I stared at him, confused.

“Sandwiches,” he explained, “for Ulrika of the Flak. I think she’s Riffraff.”

“You mean there’s—”

“Shh!” he said. “You don’t want to frighten her.”

When he wasdone, he beckoned me away, and inanswer to my doubtless quizzical expression, said, “What’s your problem?”

“How did she get in there?”

He shrugged.

“Then how do you know she’s Ulrika? Or a woman? Or even Riffraff, for that matter?”

“Eddie,” he said, pulling me closer, “if I want to have a pet Riffraff called Ulrika who lives in the flak tower and gets fed through a pipe, then I will, and no low-end, slow-end rabbit watcher is going to tell me otherwise. Do you understand?”

I said that I totally understood—now—but didn’t mention that I too had an imaginary friend who needed feeding. I called him Perkins Muffleberry, and he lived in a hollow beech at the edge of the village. I know it sounds childish, but the food was always gone by morning.

W
e were supposed to have dinner at seven. Dad hadn’t appeared by the time the meal was ready, so Jane threatened to throw the supper out the window if he wasn’t at the table in five minutes flat.

“Really?” he said when I dashed over to the Colorium to inform him of this, and I assured him she probably meant it, too.

His work could just as easily be done at home, so he locked the swatch safe and we walked back across the square together.

“I’ll need to fill out the order to National Color,” he said. “You can help me.”

This wasn’t good news. I had been hoping Dad would fill out the requisition on his own so I’d have a very good reason
not
to double-order the Lincoln for Tommo and Courtland.

“Right,” I replied uneasily, “love to.”

I had earlier received an assurance from Jane that nothing unpleasant had been added to the food. In fact, although a bit sharp, this evening she seemed vaguely pleasant. I asked her why, and she replied with a shrug that my father had “shown compassion,” which I took to mean his stance on bed rest for the sniffles and Mr. G-67’s early retirement. To somehow ingratiate myself into her confidence, I almost asked her out for tea at the Fallen Man, but my nerve failed me, and the moment passed.

“Why don’t you join us?” Dad asked Jane as soon as she had laid the dinner out on the sideboard.

She looked around to see whom he was talking to, then realized it was her. I don’t think she’d supped at a Chromatic table before. “Thank you, sir, but there’s not enough.”

“Not enough?” he exclaimed, pointing to the steaming pot of broth. “There’s enough here for four people!”

Before Jane could answer, the door swung open, and the Apocryphal man walked in. He was wearing nothing but a grubby string vest.

“I could have been a contender,” he mumbled to himself, “and before this decade is out, we aim to land a man and open the box or take the money.”

He then picked up the tureen and was out again before we could blink. We wouldn’t have minded so much, except that we hadn’t helped ourselves yet.

“No one just ate our dinner,” said Dad with a sigh. “Is there anything else in the house?”

Jane bobbed and went to have a look while I answered the doorbell. It was Red Prefect Yewberry.

“We were just sitting down to dinner,” I explained, and Yewberry, mistaking my comment for an invitation to a free meal, gratefully accepted.

“Smells excellent,” he said, for the aroma of the broth had lingered, even if the broth itself hadn’t.

I laid him a place, and he looked around expectantly. “Broth, is it?” he asked.

“It
was
,” replied my father. “How are we honored by your presence?”

“Two things. First, the Caravaggio.” Yewberry explained that it had been brought to the Council’s attention that
Frowny Girl Removing Beardy’s Head
was still at Rusty Hill. It was unusual that the village had a Caravaggio; Red Sector residents generally looked after the Turners and Kandinskys.

“No one’s seen it for over four years,” continued Yewberry, “and it should really be taken into protective custody before it falls prey to poor weather, or the Riffraff. You know how they like old paintings.”

Dad told the prefect he didn’t have time to search for Baroque master-pieces, but Yewberry had other ideas.

“The Council has decided to extend the movement order to include your son.”

Tommo had come up with the goods after all. Dad asked me if I was willing to go, and I said that I was. I looked up to find Jane staring at me.

“I can make pickled onions and custard,” she announced, still staring at me. “It’s all we have left in the house.”

“Perhaps I won’t stay,” said Yewberry, getting up to leave.

“You said there were two things?” said Dad.

Yewberry snapped his fingers and looked at me.

“The Colorman arrives on Saturday, and he’s showing the spots on Sunday at noon. The Council wants to know if you’d like to take your Ishihara here, or wait until you get home?”

I felt a flush of excitement run through me. Having my Ishihara results three weeks
before
Roger Maroon had a serious advantage: If I scored well, it might push Constance to agreement before Roger’s results were known. Even if she initially deferred me, I could probably force her hand by feigning interest in Charlotte de Burgundy, whom she loathed. If I scored badly, then it wouldn’t matter much knowing now or later. I nodded enthusiastically.

“I’ll put your name on the list,” replied Yewberry. “Good luck tomorrow, and if you see a pencil sharpener at Rusty Hill, would you do the decent thing? Cheerio.”

And he was gone.

“You got your own way after all,” said Dad, handing me the order form for the replacement swatches. “Looks like Roger Maroon will be searching elsewhere for his wife.”

“I almost feel sorry for him,” I said with a smile. “Almost.”

Jane, meanwhile, had vanished into the kitchen, where we heard some crockery being dropped.

For the next twenty minutes Dad dictated the order while I jotted his instructions down. I am glad to say that when it came to ordering the Lincoln, I resisted the pressure of Courtland and Tommo, and wrote in a “1” as instructed. I would have to find another way of paying Tommo back for the Rusty Hill gig. Like some shoes.

“I’ll also need some 293-66-49 for general inflammation usage,” Dad continued as he consulted his handbook, “and a 206-66-45 for controlling overproduction of earwax.”

I wrote down the numbers.

Jane came back in with the pickled onions and custard, which tasted a lot better than I’d imagined, but then I’d imagined they were inedible, so anything was an improvement.

The meal didn’t take long, and Dad adjourned to his office to complete the death and postcode-reallocation paperwork for the Grey who had been caught up in the power guillotine down at the linoleum factory.

I left Dad and went to watch the sunset in case it decided to show some red. I tried to avoid Jane, but she was waiting for me in the kitchen. I decided to say something first, to keep her from getting the upper hand. I wanted to say something intelligent, but it didn’t come out that way at all.

“I’m going to take my Ishihara on Sunday.”

“That’s a weight off my mind.”

“Is it?”

“No.”v

The failed intelligent approach hadn’t worked, but I wasn’t out of ideas.

“Courtland has no intention of marrying Melanie.”

I had thought the information might be welcome, or of use, but I had thought wrong.

“Information as currency? For what? To make me like you?”

It wasn’t the reaction I had expected, but she was right—I was trying to curry favor. She didn’t strike me as the sort of person you could woolpull, or even try. I decided to be truthful. “I thought it was a toxic thing to do and that she should know about it, that’s all.”

“That’s very caring and sweet of you,” she said, “but are you so unutterably stupid as to suppose that Melanie isn’t smart enough to realize this?”

“She . . .
knows
the promise is a lie?”

“Of course. If you were Achromatic, you’d see it all a bit differently. In the seething pit of sewage that is East Carmine, being the second pillow to the Yellow prefect-in-waiting is something of a coup. We have high hopes for what Mel might achieve.”

“He won’t be the prefect for years,” I pointed out.

“It’s a long-term strategy, Red. Have
you
ever made a sacrifice for the good of the many?”

“I once went without dessert for three months so we could afford some 259-26-86 to color the hydrangeas.”

“Well, then,” she said, “you must know
precisely
what Melanie’s going through.”

“You’re very sarcastic.”

“I know. Now: Why are you going to Rusty Hill?”

“To pick up the Caravaggio.”

“No other reason?”

I decided to meet like with like, and question for question.

“What other reason could I have for going there?”

She narrowed her eyes and stared at me, trying to figure out how much I knew, if anything. “Do you want some advice? Go home. You’re far too inquisitive, and here in East Carmine curiosity only ends one way.”

“Death?”

“Worse—
enlightenment
.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“No, you don’t. Believe me, cozy ignorance is the best place for people like you.”

“And who are people like me?”

“Unquestioning drones of the Collective.”

Usually, such a comment would be regarded as a compliment, but from her it sounded somehow
undesirable
.

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m warning you. As a
courtesy
to your father,” she added, lest I get the fanciful notion that she found me faintly tolerable.

“Would you extend that courtesy to having tea with me tomorrow afternoon?”

I don’t know what possessed me to ask her. To inveigle myself into her confidence, probably. In any event, her answer put paid to any thoughts of tea and Chelsea buns anytime soon.