by M. J. Trow
Maxwell looked at the archaeologist, with his Gucci loafers, his corduroy trousers, his engaging smile. When professors were younger than you, it was time to hang up your trowel. Then the Great Man laughed. ‘How very perspicacious of you,’ he chuckled. ‘And it’s not often I get to say that these days. Yes,’ Gloria Swanson leered down at him from Sunset Boulevard and an unrecognisable Katherine Hepburn peered over the leaves that choked the passage of The African Queen. ‘Yes, I wanted to be Steven Spielberg before they invented Steven Spielberg. Instead of which…well, it’s a long story.’
The door swung open and a good-looking woman stood there, silver flashing at her waist. It was difficult to say how old she was and she wanted it to stay that way. Under the starch of her frontage beat a heart of gold and a bosom, as the old pop song had it, like a pillow.
‘Sylv.’ Both men got to their feet. ‘Dr David Radley, this is Sylvia Matthews, our school nurse. Dr Radley is Professor of Archaeology at Wessex.’
‘Professor?’ Sylvia Matthew’s face said it all. However old she was, she was within syringe distance of Peter Maxwell’s vintage and David Radley had to be all of eleven.
Radley smiled. ‘That’s David, please,’ he said, shaking her hand.
‘Problems, Nursie?’ Maxwell asked. It wasn't often that the Florence Nightingale of Leighford High wandered, lamp ablaze, into his particular ward.
‘No, no, nothing vital,’ she smiled.
‘David’s trying to get me to bring a few of the Sixth over to a dig he’s working on.’
‘Oh, how exciting,’ Sylvia beamed. ‘Sort of Time Team. I’ve got a real thing for Mick Aston. That cotton-wool hair!’
Radley’s face said it all this time. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said. ‘So. Max, isn’t it? This time tomorrow, then. I think I can promise your students some excitement.’ He finished his coffee and shook Maxwell’s hand. ‘It’s okay. I’ll see myself out. You guys must have a ton of stuff to sort.’
‘Is it all right if I bring our Head of History, Paul Moss?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Archaeology isn’t quite his bag, but I’d hate to leave him out of the loop.’ And of course, Maxwell failed to add, Moss was quite a useful driver of the school minibus.
‘Of course,’ Radley said. ‘The more the merrier,’ and he smiled and was gone.
‘I’m sorry, Max,’ Sylvia perched on the edge of the man’s desk, sliding a wodge of essays to one side. ‘I didn’t mean to break up the meeting.’
‘No sweat,’ Maxwell was switching on the kettle again, hunting for a cleanish mug. ‘Cup of the brew that cheers?’
‘No, thanks,’ she was rummaging in her pockets. ‘Any more caffeine today and I’ll be hanging from the chandeliers.’ They’d been queuing up all day, the lame and the halt. She who suffered little children had seen more suffering than usual since nine that morning. Two morning-after pills; one fainting in Health and Social Care; overturned wheelchair on the Business Studies ramp circuit; and a Chemistry-test-induced general malaise (eight kids at once).
He looked at her. There had been a time, she’d told him, when Sylvia Matthews and Peter Maxwell had been an item. He’d never actually been aware of it himself, but she had, and it hurt. That had been long, long ago, before she’d met Guy and he’d met Jacquie. Love had changed, as the poet said, to kindliness.
‘What do you make of this?’ She passed him a piece of folded paper from her pocket.
He looked closely, held it to the light, sniffed it. ‘Consortium,’ he nodded. ‘Lined, narrow feint. A4 certainly…’
‘Max,’ she growled, her eyebrows curling to reach her hairline.
‘Sorry,’ he sniggered, like the overgrown schoolboy he was. ‘God.’ He was reading its contents now.
‘Exactly.’ Sylvia sat on his sofa with the air of a woman who’s been proved right. Not that that, in this particular instance, gave her any satisfaction.
‘Where did you find this?’ he asked her, crossing his office to close the door.
‘It fell out of a folder carried by a girl in Year Eleven. She didn’t know she’d dropped it.’
‘Who?’ Maxwell wanted names. He wanted details.
‘Max, I’m not sure…’
‘Sylv,’ he looked into her eyes. ‘If this little missive is genuine, it could mean the end of a man’s career. You know that as well as I do. Isn’t that why you brought it?’
‘You know the handwriting?’ Sylvia asked.
The Head of Sixth Form nodded. ‘As do you. It’s the Memo King. It’s John Fry. Who’s the girl?’
She sighed. Sylvia Matthews had been the school nurse at Leighford High for more years than she cared to admit and she’d seen it all. Tears and tantrums and love affairs and hatreds and suicide bids and knife attacks – outside the staff room, it was even worse. Kids had told her things in the quiet confines of the Nurses’ station that would turn white the hair of the most blasé confessional priest. She wiped eyes and blew noses and slipped morning-after pills when she judged that that was best. She could have made a fortune writing for any Agony column in the land. But this was different.
‘What worries me is the “we all” bit,’ she said. ‘There’s two of them.’
‘I’ll settle for a single name, Sylv.’ Sylvia Matthews looked at Peter Maxwell. She knew that tone. She knew when the man she’d once loved was serious.
‘Annette Choker,’ she said, afraid suddenly that Katherine Hepburn and Gene Tierney and Don Ameche high on their respective posters might be listening.
Maxwell nodded. ‘Annette Choker in Eleven See One?’ It was a pointless distinction to make, really. Leighford High School didn’t boast any other Annette Chokers – life would just be too confusing. He could picture her now, a cheeky little girl with large teeth and big knees who had grown up, as so many do, into a surly tart with attitude and a bum that half Year Twelve would die for.
‘I’m sorry, Max,’ Sylvia said. ‘With all my experience, I just didn’t know what to do with this one. Giving it to Annette’s Year Head would be like signing John’s death warrant.’ Maxwell nodded in agreement. Graham Hackett was surprisingly old-school for a young man. Ex-soldier, he was also a Methodist lay-preacher and his absolutism was of the distinctly black and white variety. ‘Giving it back to Annette,’ Sylvia was still outlining the possibilities, ‘smacked of procuring. Giving it to John…well, I haven’t got the bottle to give it to John.’
‘Unlike Annette, apparently,’ Maxwell mused.
‘It might not mean…’
‘“See you tomorrow night,”’ Maxwell read aloud, ‘“usual place. There’ll be enough room. We can all have some fun. No knickers.” Yep, sounds like a whist drive to me.’
‘What will you do?’ She looked into his sad, dark eyes, into the face that had launched a thousand problems for the Senior Management Team.
Maxwell looked at the clock on the wall. ‘I shall go home,’ he said, pocketing the note and neatening the pile of reports on his desk. ‘It’s the end of another perfect day. Let me sleep on this, Sylv. There’s some weighing up to do.’
‘Eleanor Fry,’ the Nurse nodded solemnly, standing up and straightening her dress.
‘And a little thing called under-age sex. Annette’s still fifteen, isn’t she?’
‘What’ll he get?’ Sylvia asked.
‘You know as well as I do. Loss of job,’ Maxwell said. ‘Pension up the Swanee. His name on the Register. Time probably, during which he’ll be the target for every “normal” thug on the inside. Razor to the genitals whenever he goes to the bog. Then, when he gets out, assuming he does, that’s when his troubles really start. The paparazzi, local and national, will have his photo, his name, his address, his inside leg measurements. He’s a teacher, so he’s fair game. Tagging will be the least of his worries.’
Sylvia sighed. ‘I thought you’d say that,’ she said.
He reached forward and patted her hand. ‘You did the right thing, Nurse Matthews,’ he said. ‘My problem now.’ He brig
htened, changing the subject. ‘You out on the razzle tonight? You and Guy?’
‘Wednesday,’ she mused. ‘Bathroom. Grouting.’
‘Ah, you young things,’ he punched her shoulder tenderly. ‘Never a dull moment, eh?’ He winked at her, catching the worry behind her eyes. ‘I’ll sort it, Sylv. Go home.’
And she did.
White Surrey lay at a rakish angle in the little niche that Mad Max had made for himself. He’d named the bike after the courser that carried the much-maligned Richard III on his helter-skelter charge against Henry Tudor at Bosworth. When he was a younger man, Peter Maxwell could get up to the original’s speed on the contraption, down hill and with a tail wind. He wasn’t sure it was much of a contest any more. When the cares of the day became too much and the prattle of the staff room lost its allure, knives glinting dully in the sun, the Head of Sixth Form would come here, wedge himself into the old chair he’d half-inched from the old Head’s study, in the days when Heads were Heads and teachers were glad of it, and chew wistfully on his banana sandwiches. He had a good view of smokers along the North hedge and if he stood on one leg on Surrey’s saddle and leaned left, he could just catch a glimpse of the sea. Faithful Surrey waited near him, patiently waiting for the off, as now. And if the old metal animal could have pawed the ground in its puissance, it would have. Maxwell’s cycle clips flashed silver in the afternoon sun as he swung his good leg over the cross bar and pedalled out of the quad (Surrey was his quad bike in moments like these) and hurtled out of the gates with a hearty ‘Hi-ho Silver’.
‘Who was that mad man?’ passers by would stop and ask each other.
‘That’s Mad Max,’ someone in the know would say. ‘Step wide of him. For all sorts of reasons.’
Knots of children were wandering homeward as he sped past them, snatches of their conversation coming to him on the breeze.
‘He fuckin’ did. I fuckin’ saw him.’
Maxwell half-turned in the saddle. Janet Ekington, daughter of the Unitarian Minister.
‘It was Ronaldo’s call. He bloody blew it.’ That was half Year Ten.
‘You bastard!’ Could have been anybody.
‘But Utilitarianism is essentially a hedonistic concept.’ He half-turned again, but there was no one there. Had he just made that one up, or was old Mr Senility coming to call at last? He took Antrim Road at a steady pace, feet like beeswings, scarf, even in the glad, mellow days of May, flapping like a battle flag in the wind of change. The colours of his old College, Jesus, Cambridge, proudly floating even this far south. It was nearly five as he reached the flyover, slow with traffic as the inaptly named rush hour crawled by like years. He sliced past them, dicing with death, waving at their merry horns and smiling at their scowls. All this and no road tax either. What a boon for cyclists like him and other lycra-minded people. Then he was breasting the hill over the Dam, that happy-hunting ground of winos, weirdoes and wildlife that every seaside town boasted. He heard the irritating toot of the Dotto Train far below him, newly unwrapped from its mothballs, and could almost smell the floss of the candy wafting up from the Front. He took in the breakers’ sparkling silver to his right and the far green of the Downs to his left. He heard the gulls cry as they wheeled, like him, into the evening, gold of the dipping sun gilding their razor wings. Then he’d gone into the dip, the sea a series of dappled snatches now through the tall towers of the Barlichway Estate, the sink of iniquity out of which half his kids crawled every day. In all the south, this was a black spot, one of the poorest wards in Europe, a blot on the scutcheon of Wessex. But it was probably listed in some ludicrous EU diktat and it would never come down.
He hauled Surrey’s handlebars in the tight circle that took him into Columbine and home. Number 38, he mused, had rarely looked so lovely, his front lawn sprinkled with the pink petals of the season. He heard his tyres hiss as he swung gratefully out of Surrey’s saddle, landing on his good leg and sliding the sleek beast into the awning alongside his shed. He patted the saddle and jerked free the panniers that carried his marking and his empty lunch box. What it did not carry was tomorrow’s lesson preparations. Peter Maxwell had not prepared a lesson in 800 years.
He watched the Great Man from the afternoon shadows, eyes narrowed to slits. He could kill him at a stroke – well, three or four. Teeth that would gouge his throat; claws that would rip his abdomen open. He settled for raising his leg in the air and licking his own bum. This time, Maxwell, you can live. This time. But there will come a day, and it won’t be long now, when you’ll turn too slow. That chain will come loose, those brakes will fail. And I’ll be waiting. Blood on the mat.
‘Afternoon, Count,’ Peter Maxwell raised his shapeless tweed cap to the black and white Tom licking his arse under the acacia.
He glanced at the mail on the mat as he threw open the front door. Saga holiday offer; be bored to death in the company of really old farts – incontinence no object. Promise of another gargantuan prize draw from Tom Champagne; imagine, Peter Maxwell, a brand new Lexus GTI FX84 pulling up to the kerb outside 38 Columbine. A red reminder for the electricity bill; surely he’d paid one of those a couple of years ago? He threw his hat and scarf vaguely in the direction of the stand and took the stairs two at a time. Off with the jacket, tie and cycle clips as he skirted the lounge, a quick detour to the kitchen to pick up a clean glass and he was on, up to the next floor, beyond his bedroom to the Inner Sanctum that was his attic.
There they sat under the skylight, the 54 millimetre plastic warriors of the Light Brigade stretched out on the diorama table, with sand glued to its surface, looking for all the world like the dust of the Causeway and the Fedioukine Heights in that distant Russia of the good old days. At their head, astride the chestnut Ronald, Lord Cardigan fretted and fumed, all dash and fire, waiting for his fourth order on that fateful morning in October, so long ago and so far away. The order that was now coming to him, in the flying plastic hoofs of the troop horse of the 13th Lights, ridden by the impetuous Captain Nolan, pelisse flapping behind him, sabre bouncing on the animal’s flanks. ‘He was an ugly man,’ someone who knew him had written, ‘and he made an ugly corpse.’
Maxwell crouched to see them all at ground level. Three hundred and eighty-nine to go and he’s collected the set. Would he make them all, all the riders into the jaws of death, before death took him too, or would the paltry pension that teachers got these days freeze his assets and leave him with half a brigade, the glittering squadrons under strength? He relaxed into his modelling chair, pulling down the gold-laced forage cap he’d bought in Brighton years ago and tilting it on his thatch of greying hair. He reached across and poured himself a stiff one, the amber nectar that was Southern Comfort and which lent a cosy, rosy glow to the world.
He picked up the grey plastic figure on the desk in front of him. ‘Private Ryan,’ he said softly. ‘No one to save you, was there?’ He fitted the plastic body onto the plastic head, muttering to nobody in particular. ‘Enlisted, 1847. Sailed for the Crimea on the troopship Shooting Star, April, 1854.’ He placed the rider into his saddle, careful to get the balance right, buttocks to leather. ‘Seriously wounded in the Charge… Died of wounds at Scutari. When can their glory fade? Shit!’ Maxwell slammed the horseman down and the soldier’s unglued busby rolled onto the desk. The Great Modeller was on his feet, the forage cap back on its hook, the Southern Comfort untouched in the cut glass, Private Ryan waiting impatiently on his horse without stirrups, weapons or reins. The best laid plans of mice and men. And there was a damning note burning a hole into Peter Maxwell’s pocket. He had places to be.
‘Eleanor, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’
‘Peter Maxwell, from Leighford High,’ the Head of Sixth Form tipped his legendary hat. ‘Is John in?’
‘Um…yes.’
Eleanor Fry was a good-looking woman, in a flowery dress that was rather eighteen months ago and smacked of the M and S Revival period. All a little too Stepford Wife for Peter Maxwell. She
led him through the hall of the unadventurous semi in the leafy, shady side of Duncombe Street and into the kitchen. Beyond the sliding doors, John Fry was sitting in a steamer chair, a lager in his hand and shades hiding his eyes. He was thirty-something, like his wife, with a floppy, Hugh Grant sort of hair-do and a laid back manner synonymous with being head of Business Studies. He always wore a suit when Visitors were around or he was appointing somebody new to his Empire. Like Vespasian with no class.
‘Mr Maxwell, John,’ Eleanor announced him as though she was the housekeeper.
‘Maxwell…’ Fry was on his feet. ‘Good God.’ This was a first. Along with half the kids at Leighford High, John Fry had always believed that Peter Maxwell lived in a cupboard somewhere on the History floor.
‘We know where you live,’ Maxwell winked, sensing the man’s surprise.
‘Clearly.’ Fry wasn’t smiling. ‘Er…d’you want a drink?’
‘No thanks,’ Maxwell told him, although the three or four fingers of Southern Comfort he’d just left behind wouldn’t have come amiss about now, ‘I’m cycling.’
‘Are you? Oh, of course, you can’t drive, can you?’
Maxwell smiled. He smiled at the memory of a pretty, dark-haired girl and her baby. Their faces smiled back at him every time he opened his wallet. Their faces said, ‘We’re still here, darling. Darling Daddy.’ But they weren’t here. Not any more. They were dead, slewed across the wet tarmac on a deadly bend, long, long ago. And ever since, Peter Maxwell had never sat behind the wheel of a car.
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘No, I can’t.’
‘Well,’ the Frys stood in their back garden looking at Maxwell as if he were a Jehovah’s Witness. ‘What do you want?’
