by M. J. Trow
Nolan was on the horns of a dilemma. He knew how she worried about him and did his best to shield her from his little ups and downs. And anyway, she had never struck him as a woman with times tables at her fingertips. So he smiled at her and shook his head. ‘Nothing, mums, thanks. Better go – mustn’t be late.’ And he shouldered his satchel, which seemed far too big for his little body and clambered out of the car. He skipped off towards the gate, muttering ‘Nine sixes are fifty something, nine sevens are sixty three ...’ He felt better. If he could remember some of the dratted thing, perhaps the rest would just come to him. Who knew?
Jacquie watched him go and then turned the key in the ignition. Time to stop being a mother and start being a policeperson. It was mercifully quiet at the Nick at the moment but on the downside that did mean there was more paperwork than she had ever dreamed possible. Six months in to her new role and she was beginning to understand why Henry Hall sometimes had a faraway look in his bland eyes. He was dreaming of a world without paper, the one they’d all been promised thirty years ago, when PC still meant a copper, not a personal computer and still less political correctness. Negotiating the one way system that was Leighford with hardly a hiccup, she was soon pulling into her designated parking space, something which still made her smile. Detective Inspector Carpenter-Maxwell. Like Wile E. Coyote, she liked the way that rolled out. No traffic jam. No one in her space. Today was going to be a good day.
‘Nolan Maxwell.’
He put up his hand and pinned on his best smile. ‘Yes, Miss.’
‘Let’s have the nine times, shall we?’
‘Once nine is nine.’ Going well. ‘Twice nine is eighteen. Three nines are twenty-seven ...’ He smiled at the teacher, relief written all over his face. Today was going to be a good day.
Metternich lay in the warm patch in front of the radiator on the first landing at 32 Columbine. It had all the advantages, as far as he could see. Not only did it keep the cold out in these last days of winter, but it also gave him a bird’s eye view of anyone coming up the stairs. Escape to the country? What would be the point? His grasp of days of the week was tenuous at best, but some memory lingering at the back of his cat-sized brain told him that when he had been surrounded by people for a couple of days and then they were gone, what usually happened next was that strange old woman who smelled of all kinds of foreign odours he couldn’t quite place would come and start pushing a big noisy thing around the house. But sometimes – and he could count the occasions on the claws of one paw – she brought lovely treats. And he wanted to be in a position to avail himself, should today be one of those days. Ah, there was that scritching sound outside. That usually meant that ... yes; it was her. But did she have anything with her, that was the question.
Mrs B clambered up the stairs, hauling herself along using the banister. It seemed to her the climb was getting steeper every week, but nothing would stop her coming to do for Mr and Mrs M; death itself would be the only barrier. She paused halfway up to catch her breath and give vent to a smoker’s cough that shook the house from rafters to foundations. Next door, Mrs Troubridge twittered in distress and started cleaning up. Mrs B did her after the Maxwells and it would never do for the cleaner to find anything dirty or untidy; whatever would she think?
Metternich, stretched out in his warm place, cursed the woman up in a heap and down again. Did she think he was made of stone? A cat had to keep body and soul together and all fifteen pounds of him tensed with the pressure. Did she? Didn’t she? The suspense was killing him. To show how excited he was, he flexed one paw.
The woman looked up and narrowed her eyes. She loved the cat as she loved the humans in this house, but it would be a cold day in Hell before she let any of them know it. ‘I know what you’re after, you great thing,’ she said. ‘You think I’ve bought you summat nice.’
The cat cocked an eyebrow. It didn’t do to show too much enthusiasm.
‘Well, as it happens, I have,’ she said. ‘But like as not it’ll be the last. That wet nit Diamond will be tellin’ ’em about now about what’s going on at Leighford. And it won't be pretty. People getting sacked off left and right. The nurse. Them snooty lot in the labs. Them computer kids.’ She reached into her bag and extracted a box of something gorgeous, should you be of the feline persuasion. ‘And me.’ She bent to stroke the behemoth along his rippling back. ‘Time I went, you might say, but nobody knows your ...’ she was momentarily stuck for words. Maxwell could hardly be described as Metternich’s master, after all. ‘Mr M like what I do. But who knows? He might be next for the chop. C’mon, Count. Waddya want?’ She turned the box to the light and squinted at it. ‘I got duck ‘n’ beef; lamb ‘n’ chicken; liver and rabbit ... I dunno, cat. There’s people don’t eat as well as this.’ And, grumbling to herself, she went into the kitchen and broke open the box.
Metternich, in his quiet way, was a bit of a student of human nature and he had detected that the woman wasn’t happy. But, then again, there was liver and rabbit. So, despite it all, it was a good day.
Mavis the lollipop lady was by nature a curmudgeonly soul but was universally described as a ‘lovely woman’. She ascribed this misapprehension to the fact that she led children and indeed anyone else who presented themselves at the kerb across the road rather than hurling them into the traffic, which was in fact what she would have very much preferred. She hated Mondays. She hated all days except the holidays, when she didn’t have to stand at the side of the road, unable to have a fag, wearing a stupid hi-vis coat that didn’t keep her warm in winter and sweated pounds a day off her in summer. She hated the hat. She hated the lollipop. But most of all, she hated Peter Maxwell, who, even as the thought entered her head was bearing down at her out of the early morning sun, like the Red baron in his Fokker. She didn’t have much grasp of history as a rule, but she had seen the film only the night before. Look at him, she thought to herself. Smug git. He could easily afford a car and at his age should certainly not be riding that ramshackle old bike. It was a good thing you could hear it coming, what with the skirling brakes and rattling chain, because he never seemed to make much effort to miss her, whether she was in the middle of the road or on the pavement. Yes, yes, look at him; straight at her, as though she wasn’t the most high visibility thing for miles. She stepped out, although there wasn’t a child to be seen. Yes, that had given him something to think about, mad old sod. Never mind. An evil smile crept across Mavis’s wind-tanned features. With all this academy nonsense, he was probably for the high jump anyway. He must be a hundred years old.
‘Morning, Mavis,’ the Head of Sixth Form yelled as he missed her by the customary whisker.
‘Morning, Mr Maxwell,’ she shouted back as he took the turn into the school drive, leaning over to make the angle and not crash into the gate. One of these days it wouldn’t work and he would either hurtle over the handlebars or turn himself into chips through the bars of the gate.
Now that really would be a very good day.
Maxwell chained White Surrey to the bike rack and bent down to undo his cycle clips, not something he always remembered to do until later in the day, but he had a sneaky feeling that today was going to be difficult enough, without loss of blood flow to his feet. Why he chained the bike up he would never know. The chances of it being stolen were slim and anyway, anyone who tried to ride it away would soon find that it was almost impossible to steer without several decades of practice. Even he had only just managed to miss Mavis this morning, although why the woman always chose to stand in his path was a mystery he thought he would probably never solve. He shrugged his shapeless tweed jacket straight, shoved his shapeless tweed hat more firmly on his barbed wire hair, slung his Jesus scarf more nonchalantly around his neck and marched resolutely into the school building, ready for the fray.
He hadn’t got far before he heard it.
‘Psst.’
He looked round for the source of the noise, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around so he took a
nother step.
‘Psst. Mr Maxwell.’
It was midway between a whisper and a cough and it was coming from his left. He went over to the Reception desk and leaned over. ‘Thingee?’
‘Mr Maxwell,’ the girl said, looking furtively left and right. ‘I’ve been looking for you. The ladies of the office would like a word.’
‘Why? What have I done?’ Maxwell was used to people wanting a word. It was usually due to some minor infringement such as they couldn’t read his writing on UCAS references, crumbs in the keyboard of his hated laptop, things of that nature. But they didn’t usually ‘psst’ at him. In fact, it was usually a case of a face off across a desk, with tight smiles and tighter voices.
‘Nothing, Mr Maxwell,’ the morning Thingee said. ‘It’s ... well, we’ve heard. About, you know ...’
He pinned on a friendly if bemused smile. ‘Sorry, Thingee old thing. You’re going to have to spell it out. Monday morning, first day back, not at my best.’
It fooled no one, but Thingee gave it a shot. She leaned forward and mouthed, ‘The Academy.’ The effect was something like reverse ventriloquism, but Maxwell got the gist.
‘Sorry, Thingee. I don’t know much more than you do. There is bound to be something in the meeting this morning, but other than that, I don’t see how I can help.’
The girl raised her voice a little. ‘There’s a rumour they are sacking all the staff and starting again,’ she said, her eyes wide.
‘I don’t think it will come to that,’ Maxwell said. ‘There may be a paper exercise, applying again for your job, leaving and being reinstated on the same day, that kind of thing.’ Despite his promises, Maxwell had done a little reading around the subject over half term and it seemed that gaining academy status was something of a curate’s egg as far as staff were concerned. As long as you got a good bit, you were happy. If you got a bad bit, you were left with a nasty sulphurous taste in your mouth and a whole lot of time for doing the garden. The girl looked stricken and he hurriedly added a rider. ‘There isn’t likely to be so much as a ripple, Thingee, really.
I shouldn’t worry about it – look, I’ll pop in after the meeting, would that be helpful?’
She nodded, her eyes still wide with worry. ‘Thank you, Mr Maxwell,’ she said out loud and made him jump.
‘That’s no trouble at all, Thingee,’ he said, feeling the hot breath of Bernard Ryan on his neck. ‘Just try not to drop them again where people might trip over them.’ Still smiling, he turned. ‘Mr Ryan!’ It was seamless. ‘How are you this bright, almost-spring morning?’
‘Well, thank you, Mr Maxwell,’ the deputy head said and he did indeed look well these days. With his private life finally in less turmoil, Bernard Ryan had become almost human. But only almost. He turned his attention to Thingee. ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘have you put all of those notes into pigeon-holes as I requested in my email?’
‘Yes, Mr Ryan,’ she said, all efficiency. It didn’t do to slack, not at times like these.
‘Colour-coded?’
Oh, oh! ‘Um ... we didn’t have any orange paper, Mr Ryan ...’
He smiled at her and she nearly fainted with shock. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I expect you used the next best thing. Thank you,’ and he leaned over a little, patted the reception desk smartly in a rapid tattoo and swung away, into the maelstrom that was developing as the lifeblood of Leighford High, as represented by the student body of the Breakfast Club, began to pour in through the doors. She wasn’t to know that, for the first time in his life, Bernard Ryan was truly happy. He had been seen off at his front door that morning by his lover, they had exchanged a loving kiss and who cared who was watching and the feel of him would stay with the deputy headteacher all day, the smell of his cologne, the touch of his hand. Yes, bring on Academy status – Bernard Ryan for one just didn’t care.
The staff room was strangely quiet that morning, with a doom laden air. Maxwell, the historian, was reminded of the Cuban Missile crisis, when the world held its breath. The usual cliques and cabals had formed of course, from the Back Row Element to the Young Mums Corner but, for once, there was not a guffaw, not the click of a knitting needle to be heard. Maxwell was front and centre as always, his legs stuck out in front of him and his arms crossed across his chest. He was Richard, he was Raymond, he was Godfrey at the gate. At the very least, he was Horatius on his bridge; attack or defence, Maxwell had the historical character at his fingertips. It was normally at this point that Sylvia Matthews pointed out he still had his cycle clips on; he could feel her absence like a cold spot in the middle of his back, where she usually sat with the PE staff. He looked behind him. There was no space. They had healed the gap already and his heart gave a sad little lurch. How soon they forget.
He turned back to look at the front with his normal steely gaze, which had been known to reduce James Diamond to gibbering incoherence and he suppressed a small scream. While he had been turned around, Diamond; Ryan; Jane Taylor, the deputy’s deputy and a strange woman had entered and were standing, like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, having left their steeds outside. If Bernard Ryan was Pestilence, Diamond had to be Famine. Jane Taylor, a perfectly pleasant woman but Maxwell believed in taking every metaphor and shaking till its pips squeaked, therefore had to be Death, if only because she was a bit pasty and had a tendency to wear a bit too much eye makeup. But the fourth person who stood there, she just had to be War. She had a combative air even when standing stock still and her smile had swords in it. ‘Come,’ Maxwell muttered to himself, ‘we will meet at Har Megiddo.’
Diamond fixed him with a glare. Maxwell knew there was no chance that he could have read his lips, his mind or the Revelation of St John the Divine, but even so he settled down, chin on chest, to await events. Diamond was quite bucked up – it wasn’t like Max to behave himself on such a slight reprimand. However, he already suspected it was too little, too late.
Diamond didn’t need to wait as he usually did for the room to quieten. You could hear a pin drop and the small sounds of the largely empty school came tinnily through the door. The clatter of crockery and cutlery from the dining room as the Breakfast Club got outside their Weetabix, the clack of a heel as the office staff ran errands before the madness began. Diamond cleared his throat.
‘Ladies,’ he said. ‘Gentlemen, I would like to introduce Fiona Braymarr to you all. Er ...’ Surely, he couldn’t be stuck for words this early in the announcement? And yet, how could he introduce her. Super Head sounded rather too Marvel Comic. ‘My replacement’ may yet be premature. He cleared his throat again. ‘Ms Braymarr comes to us from ...’
She stepped forward, almost imperceptibly, but it was enough. She had taken over. ‘If I may interrupt you there, Mr Diamond,’ she said, ‘I would like to be clear from the outset, so I think it would be best if I take over from here. Firstly, I am not Mizz. I am Mrs Braymarr and so I would like to be called Mrs Braymarr at all times. My name as Mr Diamond has revealed, is Fiona, but I don’t believe in forenames in the workplace. I don’t expect to be called by it. It is unlikely that I will be calling you by yours. Where I come to you from is immaterial. I do not judge anywhere by where I was before. I do not expect to be judged by my previous appointment. I come here as over-arching head of Leighford High School and a number of other schools in the catchment which have been given Academy status or have it pending. However, I shall be based here as the most central and the largest of the schools under my care.’ She leaned forward and some of the more fanciful staff thought for a moment they saw her eyes glow red. ‘There have been changes, as I am sure you are all aware. There will be more. Starting with the Monday meeting. Meetings will from now on be on a daily basis and will take place at four o’clock.’
‘But ...’ it was faint, but she was on it like a Ninja.
‘But?’ Her lips straightened so it may have been a smile. ‘May I ask who said that?’
The staff at Leighford had been together, by and large, a long time. This w
oman had just walked in and, for the purposes of the meeting, blood was thicker than water. No one spoke.
‘I see. Well, we are all very new to each other, are we not?’ she said. ‘But to answer the inevitable questions, yes, I can do that. Your contracts allow for hours over and above those stated as required by the senior management – 1265 was, after all, a long time ago – and that would be me, as I think you will soon come to discover. So, we won't have a meeting this afternoon, of course, but they will begin tomorrow.’ She shot her cuff and bent her arm at the elbow, looking with ostentatious concentration at the slim gold watch on her wrist. ‘I must be off now to my other schools. They have been happy to make arrangements to accommodate Leighford High School’s timetable, but let me make it clear, that there will be changes made and not all of them will be palatable. The sponsors of this Academy initiative have given me carte blanche and I intend to use it to bring this school kicking and screaming into ...'
‘... the Century of the Fruitbat,’ Maxwell murmured. He thought a little Terry Pratchett, may he rest in peace, could never hurt, especially when things were getting tense.
And now, as everyone would have attested, her eyes really did seem to glow red. ‘You would be Mr Maxwell, I assume,’ she said, shouldering her very efficient-looking bag and pushing back her chair. ‘I didn’t quite catch what you said, but unless it was “outstanding status according to Ofsted” then you and I are not thinking along the same lines. I will be interviewing you all in the coming weeks. Perhaps, Mr Maxwell, we could make an early appointment.’ She raked the room once more with her basilisk glare and in a clack of heels and the swing of a door, she had gone.
