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
