Maxwell's Island

by M. J. Trow

  Maxwell smiled down at her and squeezed her hand. ‘It is,’ he said, almost keeping the surprise out of his voice. ‘You’re not disappointed, are you? Really? We can still go somewhere else later, if you want.’

  ‘If I had any holiday left, we could,’ she said. Was this the right moment to talk about her promotion prospects? Perhaps not; that conversation would be best kept until they got home. ‘Never mind; my allocation starts again after Christmas. Perhaps we can get away in February.’

  ‘That would be nice.’ He dropped a furtive kiss on her ear. All the kids were looking down at the ground, and anyway, surely one could kiss one’s wife’s ear even on a school trip. ‘You are a lovely woman,’ he remarked.

  ‘Indeed I am,’ she said. ‘And I must say, it’s nice not to have the phone going all the time.’

  Maxwell looked around, at the cliffs and the sea stretching away to the misty Dorset coast, hardly visible in the distance. ‘As you may know,’ he said, ‘my name is not exactly a byword when mobile phone technocrats gather, but I would be surprised if you have a signal here.’

  She pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned it, squinting in the sun. ‘For once,’ she said, ‘you are right. Nothing. Not even one bar.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, releasing her hand and draping his arm across her shoulders. ‘It’s not as if anyone would be trying to get in touch with us. And don’t mention “bar” to Pansy.’

  Suddenly, the air was split by a scream.

  Sasha had found the crab.

  Chapter Five

  At the top of the cliff path, Maxwell regrouped his troops and inspected them and their finds. One girl in particular had managed an amazing haul of fossil coral and was full of plans for a career as a palaeobotanist. So, thought Maxwell, if that’s all that comes of this week, it has been a success. He remembered her from when she had visited the school in Year Six; it wasn’t often a ten-year-old was so adamant that she wanted to be a nail technician. Onwards and upwards. Nolan had some good finds as well, even discounting the crab, from which he had been separated with a few tears on his part. The crab had been quite grateful to be put in a rock pool and didn’t show any distress at the parting. Jacquie took the opportunity to edge away from the group and check her phone. Maxwell looked after her and stifled a sigh. Once a woman policeman, always a woman policeman was his guess. He saw her bend her head and put her finger in the other ear. He heard her say, ‘Are you sure?’ and, ‘Is he all right?’ His heart slowed and then sped up far beyond its usual rate. He had all he loved within sight, so the news couldn’t be too bad – not for him at any rate. But he could never forget the loss of his first wife and his daughter; a siren, a flashing blue light, an unexpected phone call, the woman he loved with solemn face and a finger in her ear – any one of those things could make him feel sick with apprehension.

  She turned back to the group, pocketing her phone, looking thoughtful.

  ‘Mr Maxwell,’ she called. ‘Could I have a word with you?’

  The distance couldn’t have been more than a few yards, but it felt like miles. He cleared his throat. ‘Certainly,’ he said.

  When he was by her side, she held his arm. ‘That was Henry. He had texted me to ring him.’

  ‘Do you have to go?’ he asked. Relief flooded through him. No one was dead. It was just work. Annoying, but there it was; he had been half expecting it anyway.

  ‘Well, it depends.’ She looked over his shoulder. Nolan was playing happily with the others and was out of earshot. ‘Mrs Troubridge has had an accident. It seems she fell down the stairs. The neighbours from across the road found her. Metternich was sitting outside her door meowing.’

  ‘The Count? Meowing?’

  ‘I think the term used was caterwauling. The neighbour went over to give him a smack round the head to shut him up. Then he realised that Metternich was outside the wrong door and got suspicious. He looked through the letter box and could just see Mrs Troubridge’s foot on the bottom stair.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s in hospital. She is in quite a bad way, but stable.’

  Maxwell felt awful about the next question, but he had to ask it. ‘And the Count?’

  ‘Ah, now that’s the thing.’

  ‘The thing?’ Maxwell could hear his voice from a long way away. He and the great black and white beast had shared a lot. The lonely times and the good. He could see him now, a tiny scrap of black and white, foisted on him by a particularly persuasive pupil. The old chap wasn’t getting any younger, but he wasn’t ready to part with him yet. ‘What thing?’

  ‘He’s in a cattery. It was done before Henry got there. Apparently he’s furious.’

  Maxwell smiled. Fancy old Henry caring about his cat. ‘That’s good of him.’

  ‘No, Henry’s not furious, although I expect he was a bit annoyed. No, Metternich is furious. Totally livid and giving them hell at Happy Paws. They’ve had to give him his own cubicle.’

  ‘I should think so too. I think he’s best there, though, don’t you? He took ages to accept Mrs Troubridge feeding him. He’ll take even more umbrage if he gets palmed off on the Other Side.’

  The Other Side had never really gelled with the Maxwells. Or indeed anyone in Columbine. Something in their demeanour seemed to suggest that their other home was Windsor Castle. All of Metternich’s little gifts had been left on the step in vain. Something suddenly occurred to Maxwell and he gripped his wife’s arm.

  ‘It wasn’t Metternich, was it? You know, who pushed Mrs Troubridge downstairs?’

  She shook him off. The ghost of Henry Hall rose up, reminding her not to let Maxwell get involved. ‘Max! Firstly, she wasn’t pushed down the stairs. She obviously tripped. She’s old and doddery. Secondly, Metternich is a cat. They don’t push people downstairs. But if I understand you and you are worried that she tripped over him, no, she didn’t. He was outside on the step, remember? He couldn’t have got out if she was unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.’

  Maxwell blew out his cheeks. ‘Thank goodness for that. Not that it makes it any better for the poor old soul. But … you know. After the Incident. It would have been a bit difficult.’

  ‘Indeed it would. Anyway, I’ve asked Henry to drop in some flowers for us.’ She read his mind. ‘To Mrs Troubridge, not Metternich. He asked if we had Araminta’s address. Do we?’

  ‘I’m not sure that Mrs Troubridge has her address. She flits about a bit, does Araminta. But, surely, Millie’s address will be there somewhere? She only went home the other day.’ It had been a happy day chez Maxwell. The dull booming noise coming through the wall as Millie chatted to Mrs Troubridge had become quite wearing.

  ‘I told him that. They have been checking phone numbers from the log on the phone. Not too many, poor little thing. There’s a mobile, but it doesn’t answer. Henry’s checking it out.’

  Nolan wandered over and tugged at the hem of his mother’s coat. ‘Wassup, Mums?’

  ‘Wassup?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Wassup? What kind of talk is that? Mrs Whatmough would be appalled.’

  ‘I think they call it jive,’ Jacquie said calmly. ‘Don’t say that, Nole, there’s a good man. See how Dads has gone a funny colour? We don’t want that, do we?’ She leant down and swung him onto her hip. ‘We were just talking about Mrs Troubridge. She’s had a bit of an accident.’

  ‘Is Metternich all right?’ Nolan’s tone was anxious.

  Like father, like son. ‘He’s fine,’ she reassured him and gave him a kiss. ‘He’s gone on his holidays.’

  Rather unexpectedly, Nolan burst into tears, burying his face in his mother’s neck. Through the sobs, they could just hear, ‘I don’t want the Count to go on holiday, like Plocker’s dog.’ He gave a huge sniff. ‘And his granny.’

  His parents looked into each other’s eyes and the light dawned. ‘No, not holiday, mate,’ Maxwell said. ‘Actual holiday. Like us. He’s got his own chalet and everything.’

  The boy raised his
head, pausing only to wipe his nose on his mother’s shoulder. ‘Real holiday?’ he checked, with another resounding sniff.

  ‘Definitely,’ Jacquie said.

  He slid down her to the rabbit-cropped turf and turned back to Year Seven. ‘You’d better be right,’ he said, truculently, standing like an ox in the furrow, legs apart.

  They watched him go. Maxwell turned to his wife. ‘I just hope he never wants to invade anywhere,’ he said. He put his arm round her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Packed lunch and then on to Blackgang Chine. Don’t forget you promised us both a carry if our legs get tired.’ He looked down at her and gave her a kiss. ‘Don’t worry. She’ll be fighting fit by the time we get back. She’s a tough old besom. It was just a tumble down the stairs.’

  She smiled back, but she wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t shared everything with Maxwell. She hadn’t, for example, told him that Mrs Troubridge hadn’t woken up properly yet. Although she did sometimes cry out in her sleep. She hadn’t been very coherent, but one phrase had come through loud and clear. And it was ‘Don’t! Oh, please, don’t!’ which seemed to her an odd thing to shout as you fell accidentally down the stairs.

  The ward was quiet in the early afternoon lull between the lunch delivery and the post-clinic consultants’ rounds. All wards at Leighford General experienced this quiet period, but none more so than Lady Elizabeth Molester, named after a long-dead benefactress, and now full to the brim with little old ladies, broken and bent after some disastrous accident. Some, like Mrs Troubridge, Bed 7, had fallen downstairs and by some miracle lived to tell the tale. Others, like Mrs Fiddymont, Bed 6, had tripped on a bathroom rug and as a consequence of a fall of less than a few feet was hanging between life and death, with an increasing leaning towards death. To the untutored eye, they all looked much the same. Fluffy white hair. Softly lined faces, slack, snoring mouths and blank eyes. Even the ones who had arrived at God’s A&E with all of their marbles intact tended to let them loose when left in Lady Elizabeth Molester for more than a few days.

  It was fairly easy to spot Mrs Troubridge, because she had a policeman sitting by her bedside. Not just any policeman, but Detective Chief Inspector Henry Hall. Henry would have been horrified if someone had told him he was caught in a time warp, but it was true. He still sometimes wore the three-piece he’d bought when he’d made inspector and that was so long ago he found himself nodding with approval at the less-than-PC antics of dear old Gene Hunt. He was tall and solid, with less hair than he used to have, and his glasses endlessly reflected his surroundings, hiding the eyes behind them. No one who knew him in a work capacity would have said that he was a particularly sensitive man. His wife and sons knew him as someone who had interred the boys’ dead goldfishes with tears, who helped lame dogs over stiles to further order; but he more or less kept that side of himself hidden from colleagues. But they all knew that he had a soft spot for Sergeant Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell. And Mrs Troubridge was Sergeant Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell’s next-door neighbour and he was sitting in the place he knew she would have occupied, had she been in Leighford and not gadding about on the Isle of Wight. He had a notebook on his knee, for the look of the thing, but so far there hadn’t been much to write down. She seemed to be counting under her breath, but really big numbers, hundreds of thousands, millions even. She even shouted ‘Count!’ sometimes, but Henry Hall was fully aware that that was probably the cat, Metternich.

  He let his mind wander back to his visit to Happy Paws just before his arrival at the hospital. He hadn’t liked the look in Metternich’s eye even though there was steel-reinforced basket between him and the curmudgeonly quadruped, and he knew deep down that his next visit to 38 Columbine was going to involve clawed calves at the very least. Suddenly, he jumped.

  ‘Count!’ yelled Mrs Troubridge. ‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine! Don’t!’ She sobbed and a tear rolled down her cheek. ‘Oh, please, don’t.’ Henry Hall, kind man, wiped the tear away and then held her hand, patting it as if it were a small, injured animal.

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Troubridge,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t let anyone hurt you.’

  Jacquie didn’t have to carry Maxwell and Nolan by the end of the day, but it was a near-run thing. From a childhood visit, Maxwell had fond memories of Blackgang Chine but the thing he had forgotten was that it was so steep. Clinging to the edge of a cliff, and losing more and more through rockfalls and slippage every year, the paths wound back and forth between the different attractions, twisting and turning so steeply that, as they descended, Leighford’s finest in line abreast, the eyes of those at the front were on a level and with, and going in the opposite direction from, the feet of those at the rear. It was like taking part in a huge Escher optical illusion and it made keeping count very difficult. It was a relief to find when they all collected at the entrance that they still had the requisite number. There had been several school parties in the Chine and only time would tell if the correct number was made up of the correct children.

  No one except Nolan had been scared by Rumpus Mansion and only Ethan Whatsisface had got a nasty one negotiating turns in the Crooked House. What would stay with them all, in some cases until they had children of their own, was Mr Maxwell treating them to that shoot-out at the end of the Magnificent Seven. Luckily, leaping over bales of straw, fanning the hammer of his thumb-breaker behind the stagecoach and gunning them all down through the batwing doors of the saloon, he was doing it in Cowboy Town so they all saw the relevance. And little Nole was so proud of his Dads. Not a scratch on him and he’d shot them all! What was it the Big Children at the school called him? Mad Max? Why was that?

  The coach drew up and the Maxwell party dragged themselves up the steps. The eerie silence paid testament to a busy day; all of the staff and almost all of the students were sound asleep. Barton Joseph alone was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, sitting alongside the driver.

  ‘Hello, Mr Maxwell, Mrs Maxwell,’ he whispered, stagily. ‘Have you had a good day?’

  Jacquie rolled Nolan’s sleeping head along her shoulder so that she could look at the supply teacher. ‘Yes,’ she whispered back. ‘It’s been lovely. What about you?’

  ‘It was great fun,’ he said. ‘I must say, Mrs Donaldson sets a cracking pace. I don’t think I have ever walked Tennyson Down so quickly. She’ll be sorry in the morning, unless she does a lot of walking at home.’

  ‘She’s always sorry in the morning,’ muttered Maxwell, his trigger finger giving him a little gyp now, then, slightly louder, ‘Are you going to lead us home, Mr Joseph, or are we dropping you off somewhere?’

  ‘No, no, I’m along for the ride,’ he chuckled. ‘I only live a few doors along from the hotel. And anyway,’ he dropped his voice very low, ‘I don’t think the driver could find his arse with both hands.’

  ‘That’s quite a popular opinion,’ Maxwell agreed, settling into the front seat across the aisle. ‘I trust we will be having the pleasure of your company for the rest of the week?’

  ‘Well, that would be lovely,’ the man said, ‘but … erm … this is embarrassing, but when I’m not teaching I tend to do bar work, that kind of thing and so I can’t really afford …’

  ‘My dear chap,’ Maxwell said. ‘Has Mr Medlicott not discussed remuneration? I’m sure we’ll be able to do something. I’ll ring Leighford first thing Monday morning and see what’s to be done. Or, failing that,’ he fixed the driver’s ear with a basilisk glare, ‘I’m sure we can find the money from somewhere.’

  A dark blush crept up from under the driver’s uniform collar and swept over his balding head.

  Maxwell leant forward and patted his arm. ‘Home, James, and don’t spare the horses.’ He leant back in his seat and before you could say ‘Year Seven Getting To Know You School Trip’, he was fast asleep and snoring.

  In all his years of supervising school meals Maxwell had never before seen so many children eat so quietly. The loudest sou
nd in the room was that of feet throbbing and calves aching. In the age of the couch potato, there were very few eleven-year-olds who were as fit as Maxwell had been when he was a boy. Cycling, walking, ad hoc games of football – although admittedly not so many of those – had filled his days. His father, elderly as fathers went, had nonetheless always been ready for a game of French cricket in the evenings with little Peter and, when she unexpectedly joined them, his sister, Sandie. When he recalled his mother, the picture in his mind always included her bike, basket at the front, kiddie-seat at the rear, even after the kiddie in question was doing his O levels. It might come in handy, she always said, and if not for a child then at least for a bag of potatoes or, on one memorable occasion, the Christmas turkey. His parents now were a long-time dead and still he missed them sometimes; they would have enjoyed their little grandson, although being a hundred years old and rising might make their interaction rather difficult. They had lived long enough to see his only daughter born, but not long enough to see her die, for which he was thankful.

  But these kids, he thought, shaking himself back to the present, what memories would they have of their parents? Sharing a puzzle on a DS Lite somehow didn’t have the same power as a memory of sliding down the slope of Kenilworth Castle, to be swung high in the air at the bottom; of cycling breathlessly up a Malvern Hill and then, the inevitable corollary, freewheeling screaming down.

  He ate absent-mindedly, watching his charges eat. Even the ginger kid who had given him lip on the coach was quiet, jotting down, Maxwell was amused to note, every item on his plate, just in case he was getting tested later. Jazmyn sat listening; it was what she did best. The others just shovelled in the pasta salad, scarcely noticing it was good for them, followed by fresh-fruit salad, in some cases for the very first time. Five a day? Yeah, right. He had sent the rest of the staff to their rooms, to de-child themselves after a long and strenuous day. The Medlicotts had had the quietest time, sketching, but keeping a bunch of excited children from scribbling on each other was tiring in itself, not to mention endless ‘not too near the edges’ and keeping a lookout for telltale wisps of smoke from behind Federigo Gianibelli’s bastions. Sylvia and Guy had been squirrel-watching, again not exactly a walk on the wild side, but it too had proved to be unexpectedly hard work. Fortunately, Sylvia was carrying a comprehensive first aid kit, as walking through woodland, no matter how manicured, whilst looking at the tops of trees rather than the feet, carried its own risks and she was now completely out of plasters and Germolene. The removal of dog shit remained the problem of the kid concerned. It was easy to identify Pansy’s group: they were lolling insensible in their chairs and some had already been carried up to bed, their legs useless having seized up on the coach. Jacquie was upstairs putting Nolan to bed. This involved stripping off his clothes and replacing them with pyjamas. Washing is for mornings when on holiday, was a time-honoured Maxwell family motto.