[vile] Wrong background colour in vile

[cl]

I'm using vile on a new (to me) Linux shell service via an ssh
connection in an rxvt window.

After setting the vile.keywords file correctly I now get the colours I
expect but all of the background is set black rather than being
unchanged (pale grey).  How do I tell vile (or the terminal) not to
change the background colour when the foreground colour is changed?

-- 
Chris Green (address@hidden)