Shades of Grey

Pickled Onions and Custard

We 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.

“I would sooner stick needles in my eyes. And why are you holding on to your eyebrows?”

“No reason. Anyhow, I can’t go home—deMauve’s got my return ticket.”

“You gave it up?” she said with incredulity. “I was wrong—you’re not as stupid as you look.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment. You’re far, far stupider.”

“Please,” I said, “keep on insulting me—I hope to develop an immunity. What have you got against the Order, anyway? In five generations your family might be prefects. Will they be complaining about the Order then?”

The directness of my question caught her off guard, but she soon recovered.

“Probably not, but I should hope the Greys under them will—and that my ancestors will have the wisdom to listen.”

“The sheep needs the shepherd, and the shepherd needs the sheep,” I replied, slipping into the Word of Munsell almost without thinking. “Apart We Are Together. There has to be some kind of hierarchy. The Purples aren’t lofty and superior because they’re Purple; it’s because they’re in power. You think Greys would be any different if the roles were reversed?”

“I don’t want Greys in power any more than I want the Yellows. I just think that everyone should be equal. Equal merits, equal Rules, equal standing within the village. Purple head prefect one year, Grey head prefect the next—or even no head prefect at all.”

“Equality is a proven myth,” I remarked, the well-worn arguments tripping off my tongue. “Do you favor a return to the ways of the Previous with their destructive myopia and Worship of the Me? Or simply a descent into the anarchic savagery of the Riffraff?”

“Despite what you read in Munsell, those aren’t the only choices. We deserve better that this. All of us.

We could run the village like we run the Greyzone. No spots, no rankings, just people. Why do I have to prove myself an upright member of society and deserving of full residency before being allowed to marry? Why do I have to apply for an egg chit? Why can’t I move to Cobalt if I wish? Why do I have to submit myself to any of the Rules?”

“Because Something Happened.”

“What?”

There was no clear or easy answer to this.

“Something . . . best forgotten. You may hate living under Munsell, but it has sustained for almost five centuries. Besides, your wholly demeritable thoughts and conduct place you firmly in the minority.”

She leaned closer.

“You say that, but am I really in the minority?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but couldn’t. Since visiting the library I had pondered upon the usually unassailable wisdom of the Leapbacks. What was in The Little Engine That Could that might cause a damaging rift in society? What was so wrong with the telephone that it had to be withdrawn? Why was Mr. Simply Red no longer listened to? Why no more crinkle-cut chips, bicycles, kites, zips, yo-yos, banjos and marzipan? But I had paused, and that was enough for her.

“I don’t need you to agree with me,” she said quietly. “I’ll go away happy with a little bit of doubt. Doubt is good. It’s an emotion we can build on. Perhaps if we feed it with curiosity it will blossom into something useful, like suspicion—and action.”

She stared at me for a moment.

“But that’s not really your thing, is it?”

And she left me alone in the kitchen with my thoughts. They were confused mostly, but I was at least glad my long-held doubts finally had a use—it made Jane happy.