Shades of Grey (31 page)

“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!”

“Y
ou mean,” said the Apocryphal man, once I had explained that he had been ignored only because of an arcane rule, “I’ve been walking around the town naked all these years and people saw?” “Pretty much. But since you don’t technically exist, there can’t be any embarrassment, either.”

“Oh,” he said, much relieved, “thank goodness for that.”

I stared at him for a moment. Apocrypha could be anything from the tangible, like that notoriously unlisted big bird with the long neck that was twice the size of an ostrich, to the abstract—such as a forbidden idea or taboo discussion point. But this was the first human Apocrypha I’d encountered. The thing was, he didn’t look any different from us—except for his postcode, which was truncated. He had NS-B4 scarred just below his collarbone. I was going to ask him why, but it seemed rude. Besides, he spoke first.