SUNSET 01

 Shades of grey

Janet Baldey

Until he arrived at this Godforsaken place, Gerry hadn’t realised there were so many shades of grey.  To while away the creeping hours, he has formed the habit of counting them. To date, he has reached thirteen.  His eyes track from the silver-grey sheen of the ice covering the permafrost, to the steely grey shadows etched on its surface by the bristle of aerials, the purpose of which he hasn’t yet deciphered. Not surprising.   After all he’s not a scientist or a geologist, just a grunt employed to service them.  He returns to his count - there is the dense charcoal bulk of the station itself and also the cosmos is not always entirely black. Sometimes it’s covered with swirling, frosted grey clouds of meteoroids which appear only to vanish within minutes.  But mostly it’s a ghost of a landscape. A negative that drains one’s spirits.  No wonder there is a resident psychologist with a plentiful supply of medication.

         As he turns away from the triple-glazed windows, he wonders whether strands of the same colour have appeared in her hair. Sooner or later, its glory will lose its vibrancy and she will get older like everyone else but he’s sure that, unlike others, she will never be anything other than beautiful.  He imagines her hair as a shining silver bob framing a face with skin as fragile as a rose petal.  He jerks his thoughts away. He mustn’t do this - although he is getting better.  Yesterday, he only thought of her three times.

         He glances at the atomic clock set into the wall. His shift is due to start in thirty minutes and he must focus.  Like, he imagines, all the other crew members, he has to press gang his body to leave the relative comfort of his quarters for the howling cold of the planet’s surface.  What a fool he’d been to sign up for this. But at the time he’d been desperate; he’d wanted to get away, far away and for as long as possible.  A familiar pain squeezes his chest, causing him to gasp for air.  It shouldn’t be this way. He’s been here for eight years already and he’d counted on the fact that the body renews itself every seven.  By now, he should be a new man and thoughts of her should have disappeared.

         She’d been so lovely.  He thought back to when he first noticed her. It was at school, in the sixth form. She wasn’t a newbie but he’d seen her through fresh eyes.  Miss Rother, the games mistress, who doubled for a man with her hairy chin and muscular legs, had chosen them as partners in a tennis double.  After a long, hard battle, they’d won and overcome, she’d flung her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth. He remembered his senses swimming as he breathed in her perfume, a mixture of ‘Mon Paris,’ sweat and something he couldn’t put a name to.

         After that, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.  Slim and golden haired, she slipped in and out of his line of vision like a ray of sunshine but it was a long time before he plucked up enough courage to ask her out.  He would remember that evening for the rest of his life.  He took her to the cinema and they’d sat watching ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League,’ his arm lying across the back of her seat like a dusty snake, slowly inching down before finally dropping over her shoulders.  After that, they were an item and went everywhere together.  They talked about marriage, she laughed but not unkindly, and he thought it was forever.

         That long ago summer was filled with hot, lazy days and cooling dips in river water from which they emerged with a sparkle of poor man’s diamonds decorating their bodies.  But he remembered the sunsets best.  Drunk from the heat, they would sprawl in deckchairs and watch that great, glowing orb first kiss and then sink behind the horizon leaving behind a landscape full of ash.

         But that was pre-Edward, post Edward it was quite different.  He’d adored his brother, still did really.  Edward was his elder by six years and when he was little, he was his satellite.  But Ed had been away travelling for two years and was not expected home before Christmas, so one evening it was a complete surprise to first hear the click of the latch and then see him bounding down the path towards them.

         “Hiya Bonzo”.  He’d felt his brother’s hand clout his head and he’d grinned with delight.  Bonzo was his childhood nickname and no-one but Ed called him that.

         “What are you doing back?” he yelped.  “Been deported?  ‘Spose it was only a matter of time.”

         They hugged, and he’d felt complete for the first time since his brother left.  Then he remembered his manners.

         “Leonie, this is my brother Edward.  Ed, this is Leonie.”

         He’d seen her eyes widen as she looked at his brother but had paid it no heed.  Later, he thought that if he had been paying full attention, he might have heard the sizzle of electricity as they shook hands.  It took him some months to cotton on. They tried to be kind but eventually it was obvious they had eyes for no-one else.  Heartbroken, he took his misery off to Uni.  He stayed away for three years but it was no better when he returned.  In desperation, he scoured the newspapers for jobs set in far-away continents.  An extra-terrestrial base was even better. He’d always been interested in astronomy, but with no qualifications in that field, he plumped for maintenance work on the Lox containers, waiting for the healing balm of time.  Surely, by the time his tour of duty ended he would be cured.  He’d imagined himself, freshly minted, watching the sun’s ostentatious farewell with a different girl by his side. 

         But that was before and now everything has changed. If only, he hadn’t been so desperate. If only he’d read the small print.  It seems that when it comes to contracts time is elastic.  Yesterday, the maintenance crews were summoned to a meeting. They were nearing the end of their tour so all thought it was routine.  But when he entered, the captain was not the captain.  This was a different man from the one who had welcomed them on board. Gone was the twinkly eyes and genial smile, instead a slab of granite had taken his place.  As he watched the man and saw similar hulks surrounding him, a feeling of foreboding hit him with the force of a meteorite.

         “Men,” rapped the captain.  “I have some grave news to impart….”

It seems they weren’t going home. Planet Earth was now defunct. A shell of a world ravaged both by flood and fire.  To prove it, a wall behind the captain exploded into lurid colour, showing cities blazing while others toppled into the sea.  The legacy of greed and neglect, their planet which had once been so lush and teeming with natural life was now virtually inhabitable.  And now they were learning the true purpose of their mission. They were to search the universe for a substitute planet capable of supporting human life. That had always been the aim and everything else they’d been told was a smokescreen of lies.  With difficulty, he’d dragged his mind back to what the captain was saying.

“Despite our best efforts, this planet had been deemed unsuitable.  So tomorrow, we begin another mission.  Our journey will be long and arduous but it is every man’s duty to endure any hardships that may be thrown our way.”

          His eyes scoured the group of no-hopers daring any to blink, let alone voice an objection.  There was none and Gerry knew they’d all guessed the penalty for dissent.

         As he pulls on layer after layer of clothing, Gerry suddenly realises that eventually memories of his previous life on Earth will become insubstantial, as if they'd never been.  Instead, this will be his life, cruising the universe. A space gypsy in search of a home.  Brooding thoughts of Leonie will fade and maybe he will also forget the evening sky slashed with lemon and rose as it darkens into night.  The colour grey will be the new normal and maybe he will learn to love its negativity.        

Copyright Janet Baldey