by M. J. Trow
‘Whittled, Headmaster,’ Maxwell said. ‘Whittled to three. From how many? Ten? Twenty? Two hundred?’
‘Four, actually,’ Diamond said, tersely. ‘Senior posts are hard to fill, these days.’
‘Right,’ Maxwell beamed, not at all surprised to hear that. ‘Carry on.’
Diamond bridled. ‘I beg your pardon?’ There were limits, even for Legs.
‘Where are my manners?’ Maxwell asked, rhetorically, clicking his tongue. ‘Carry on, Headmaster.’ He beamed and closed his eyes, the better to snatch bad grammar and illogicalities out of the air.
‘What was I saying?’ Diamond appealed to his secretary, though probably not to anyone else, as she sat, as always, at his right hand.
‘Hmm?’ the woman asked. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Diamond. I wasn’t listening, I’m afraid. This isn’t a minuted meeting, is it?’ She looked momentarily frantic, her expression that of a passenger on an express train who has just seen her station flash past.
‘Oh, don’t bother,’ Diamond said, testily. Roll on Christmas. ‘I remember … Dierdre’s replacement. The interviews are to take place the day after tomorrow, Thursday. There will be a light lunch provided in the staff section of the dining hall, so that you can all meet the candidates.’ He glared at the soccer hearties lounging at the back. ‘If you could hold your department in check, Mr Massie, I would be so glad. Three sandwiches are adequate for anyone and the normal lunch menu will be available as usual to fill up any corners.’
The massed muscle of the PE department managed to look both huge and affronted at the same time. Their brain cells rattled. There was muttering and an outbreak of miming the eating of one tiny sandwich. This was followed by muffled laughter. The Newly Qualified Teachers looked horrified. Was this the Professional Conduct they had been told to maintain, the subject of a lecture every third Thursday?
Diamond had learnt over the years to let the staff room settle down in its own time. When the shuffling had reached the minimum possible, he began again. ‘Obviously, this early in the term, there are not too many notices. Departments have their SEN register for the new Year Seven. I’ve asked Subject Leaders for the usual results breakdown and Bernard will be number crunching by Friday. So if anyone has anything to add, now is the time.’ He looked out over the sea of faces and sighed inwardly. They were all so young, these days. If he’d had any culture at all, he’d feel like war-weary Stanhope in Journey’s End welcoming the green boys to the killing fields. He was beginning to have panic attacks when addressing serried ranks in case he was giving the Sixth Form his prepared speech for the staff and vice versa. There was not so much as an eyebrow quivering out there and thank goodness. He dismissed the meeting and reached behind him for his jacket. If he was quick, he might avoid being grabbed by …
‘Headmaster,’ Maxwell’s voice sounded as though it was actually inside his head, slicing through what passed for his brain. ‘Could I have a moment of your time?’
‘Not really, Max, no,’ Diamond said without turning round.
‘No problem. I’ll just leave this in your office, then.’
Diamond spun round. What game was this? Maxwell never backed down. He stood like an ox in the furrow. He would never be the first to blink. His eyes met the man’s smile first and then travelled down to the envelope in his hand. His resignation! Oh, frabjous day!
Maxwell was still smiling and the envelope was still being proffered. He wondered sometimes how Diamond had ever got this job. He sometimes seemed very slow on the uptake. ‘It’s a wedding invitation, Headmaster,’ he said, hoping to give his man a hint.
‘Oh.’ Even Diamond could tell that that response was a little dour. ‘I mean, thank you so much, Max. Congratulations. I assume it is for your wedding? Ha ha.’
‘Nolan is a little young as yet, Headmaster. But as soon as he names the day you will, naturally, be a guest of honour.’
‘What? Oh, yes, ha ha. Yes.’ Diamond took the envelope and waved it roguishly at Maxwell. ‘Well, as I say, congratulations, Max. Um. Well, I must be away.’ And he was off, like a rat up a pipe.
Sylvia joined Maxwell. ‘What was that about?’ she asked him.
‘I just gave him a wedding invite. You’d have thought I was giving him arsenic.’
‘Perhaps he thought it was your resignation,’ she laughed.
Maxwell looked thoughtful. ‘You may well be right, Sylv. But I’m not sure I intend to give him the satisfaction. I’ll see him out, you see if I don’t.’ It was pure Victor Meldrew at his most waspish.
‘Does Jacquie know you intend to stay here until you are ninety?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Until next year? Oh, she knows about that. It’s the fact that I’m staying till I’m a hundred she’s not ready for.’ He smiled at her. ‘Good night, Sylv. See you tomorrow.’
He made his way out to the bike sheds for what seemed like the millionth time, when in fact it could have been no more than the nine thousandth or so. He breathed in the smell of new-mown grass and sun-warmed tarmac and thought again that the fresh air at the end of the first day back at school was the sweetest air in the world. So he was in quite a good mood as he swung round the corner of the Science building to be hit square amidships by a trolley laden with boxes.
He went down under reams of recycled copier paper like a ton of bricks. He lay there, winded, and looked up to try and see what had happened. A face looked at him over the edge of the trolley. It looked like an extra from a Lord of the Rings film – wispy beard, deep-set, beady eyes and all.
‘Oliver Lessing!’ Maxwell wheezed, when he was able. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Volunteering,’ Lessing spat. ‘County delivery service. Look at what you’ve done. That paper is all bent now, thanks to you.’
‘Lucky you,’ Maxwell said, hauling himself up using the trolley for support. ‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t help you. I appear to have done something to my back.’
‘You should look where you’re going,’ snapped the old man. ‘This school isn’t what it was since my poor Dierdre went.’
Maxwell almost felt pity for him. He was a really horrible man, with no one to love now his niece was gone. But then the horrible old git ran over his toe with his trolley and his sympathy withered on the vine – which gave it something in common with Oliver Lessing.
Chapter Three
Maxwell was thoughtful as he pedalled White Surrey home. The bike was beginning to show its years; this one really had been made by Walter Raleigh. There was a persistent though quiet click with every revolution of the wheels which had become a subliminal speedometer in the recesses of Maxwell’s brain. The brakes came with their own built-in alarm and many was the pedestrian who had collapsed panting on the pavement, watching in panic as Maxwell sailed past, waving his apology as he slowed, noisily and just a bit too late. The saddle had been given expert attention during the holidays. It was one thing for a bike to give off random noises. Incipient castration was not a fault with which Maxwell cared to become familiar.
The start of term at Leighford High was always a mystery and a wonder. The wish list of Post-16 students which Maxwell compiled in his head in quiet moments in the watches of the night never quite materialised. The high-flyers went elsewhere, to the Martin Bormann comprehensive down the road; the low-flyers, flying so low they went under any bar he could set, turned up in vast numbers. There were always a few staff missing; in previous years they had included the lottery winner, the one with all those knives in his back; the rather mousey woman from Art who had married a Masai warrior and was living in his hut, on the proceeds of the donation from the Mail on Sunday; and any number of men and women now living quiet lives courtesy of Eli Lilly and his little pills. But none had left a hole so gaping as had Dierdre Lessing. True, she had been gone for almost two terms already. But somehow, the beginning of a year flagged up changes like these and Maxwell missed her, in his way. When he tired of baiting Diamond, she had always been there, snake-hair coiling in the wind
s that shook her world. When Bernard Ryan came out with an especially banal banality, she had always backed it up with just a little bit more. Like Archimedes, Maxwell needed a long enough lever to move his world. And Dierdre had been his lever. When Maxwell opened his mouth to speak, she was the fool everyone heard. And yet, he found himself thinking, she wasn’t such a bad old stick. Oh, God! He was turning into his granny.
Never mind. Had he not been bowling down the slight incline that led into Columbine he would have rubbed his hands together. Her replacement might be fun. And not necessarily in a good way – fun in a good way was no fun at all.
He stowed White Surrey neatly in the garage. He didn’t have to be neat – the inside of the garage at 38 Columbine was a car virgin. Until he met Jacquie, Maxwell had no recourse to cars and over the years the garage walls seemed to have thickened out, with layers of Notes To Self, bent hammers (used for unblocking drains), bent screwdrivers (used for opening paint) and bent saws (Maxwell himself couldn’t understand that one, but they were bent nonetheless), and there was no room even for Jacquie’s tiny Ka.
The door from the garage into the hall had long ago healed up, so he had to go outside again to get into the house. Humming almost silently to himself, he put his key in the lock and as he turned it a voice, at the same time both raucous and virtually inaudible, came from the level of his elbow. It was as if a mouse had laryngitis. Without turning, he answered it.
‘Mrs Troubridge. Hello.’ Beaming, he turned to her, doffing his shapeless tweed hat. ‘How is Miss Troubridge?’
His neighbour sniffed. ‘I really couldn’t say,’ she said, giving herself the kind of all-over body shake that a wet dog would do. ‘She’s on holiday somewhere and as yet has not honoured me with a postcard.’
‘Well, I’m sure it’s on its way,’ he placated. ‘You know what the post is like.’
‘Indeed I do,’ said the old lady. She raised a small claw holding a sheaf of envelopes. Almost all were open, or at least severely mauled. ‘The postman put these through my door by mistake.’
He took them from her, but warily. ‘What are they?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘mostly replies from people you have invited to the wedding. They can all come, except your cousin, Jennifer, is it? Hmm. She will be away over Christmas. There’s a statement of your pension as of this December 31st. I must say, it’s very generous, Mr Maxwell. I had no idea. And some junk mail. I didn’t open that; it’s such a waste of time and paper, isn’t it?’
He stood there mutely, holding the scraps of paper. ‘But, and I know you won’t mind my asking you this, Mrs Troubridge, but why did you open the ones you did open?’
She looked up at him, aghast. She had always assumed he was moderately intelligent and indeed, if the salary hinted at in the envelope marked ‘Strictly Confidential’ was anything to go by, he was certainly paid as though he was. And yet, here he stood, asking yet another silly question. ‘Because they seemed quite interesting, Mr Maxwell,’ she said, as though speaking to a child.
‘Indeed. But they don’t have your name on, Mrs Troubridge, do they?’
She cocked her head at him, an interrogative eyebrow raised. Had she been Kaylie-Louanne from Nine Zed Queue she would have shifted her gum to the other side of her mouth and muttered ‘Whatevah.’ The effect was identical and the meaning exactly the same. So, his response was the same also.
He looked down at her, shrugged one shoulder, turned on his heel and went into his house, all in the time it took him to say one word. ‘Random.’ He closed the door gently in her face and stood just inside, riffling through his post. She was right. Invitation replies and a pension statement. She was wrong on the generosity, though. What Gordon Brown’s government proposed to buy him off with wouldn’t pay for Surrey’s oil. That’s what you get when you have a Chancellor of the Exchequer called Darling – familiarity breeding contempt.
Metternich was waiting at the top of the stairs, in a furry, black-and-white sort of way, rather testily waving his tail. He took a half-hearted swipe as Maxwell passed and then tried his usual murder attempt; his theory was that he would be deemed innocent when the man was found at the bottom of the stairs, trouser cuffs dusted with cat hair. What could be more natural than a fond pet weaving in and out of his master’s ankles of an evening? There again, he seemed to remember the Old Duffer warning him once that they used to put animals on trial in the Middle Ages – and hang them. But that was the Middle Ages – Maxwell was far older than that. But, yet again, Maxwell’s nifty footwork foiled him and he curled up to wait for Jacquie, although she usually protected herself by hiding behind The Boy.
Maxwell and Jacquie had had surprises before in their lives, living happily together day on day being one of the biggest. But none had been as huge as the amazing discovery that Metternich loved Nolan with every fibre of his evil feline being, and didn’t seem to want to eat him at all. From the time Jacquie had brought the little bundle home from the Maternity Unit, it had been protection at first sight.
The house was silent, apart from a slight drip from the kitchen tap and the hum of the fridge. It had been a long day, the longest of the year, though only perhaps for an old teacher, climbing into the harness of the Autumn Term for one more time. He sat down in his favourite chair, lay back and just rested his eyes.
He was still resting them when all hell broke loose on his lap. He leapt awake just as Nolan shared his ice cream with him by the time-honoured method of ramming it up his nose. Maxwell’s eyes swam into focus as Jacquie and Nolan both doubled up with laughter and skipped away into the kitchen. Another conspiracy. At least, in theory.
‘Hello, dears,’ he said, wiping the drips from his chin with his handkerchief. ‘Good day?’
Nolan came running back, his latest oeuvre from Nursery Art Class clutched in a rather sticky hand. It depicted a cow, or at least it may have been a cow, had it not been for the rather numerous legs. Alongside it stood a man in bright blue, with what looked like a house on his head. Maxwell smiled encouragingly. ‘That’s lovely, mate,’ he said, giving the boy a hug. It was a generic response but hadn’t let him down thus far.
‘Sodjer,’ Nolan announced.
Maxwell bridled. ‘Jacquie,’ he called. ‘Did you check out that nursery? He seems to be picking up some bad language.’
Jacquie was in the room like a shot, holding the kettle aloft. ‘What? What did he say?’ She bent down. ‘What did you say, darling?’ she asked the little boy.
He looked at her rather sternly and smoothed out his paper. He turned to his father and adopted a sterner tone. For the second time that day, Maxwell was addressed as if he were a backward child. ‘Sodjer!’ Nolan said. ‘Daddy’s sodjer!’ Maxwell felt his eyes fill with unbidden tears and couldn’t look at Jacquie, who he knew would have the same problem.
He pulled his son to him and kissed the top of his head. He got another small dose of ice cream as a bonus. ‘Soldier,’ he whispered.
Jacquie coughed and said, her voice a little croaky, but with a laugh there somewhere, ‘So, that proves it. He’s not the milkman’s after all.’
‘So,’ Jacquie said, kicking off her sandals with a sigh and putting her feet up in Maxwell’s lap. ‘How did it go today?’
‘Usual,’ Maxwell said. ‘Loads of kids we didn’t want back. Loads of staff we didn’t want back. Building not finished. Loads of children posing as NQTs.’
‘Same old, same old.’
‘As you say. Oh, Sylv and Guy are getting married in December.’ Jacquie went to sit up, but he pushed her gently back. ‘Not the same day as us, the following Saturday.’
‘That’s good. We must reply. Are you a bridesmaid?’
‘No, but they want Nole as pageboy.’
‘How sweet. Shall we let him?’
‘As long as he can dress as a hussar.’
‘I’m not sure he’ll settle for anything else.’ She smiled at him. ‘Wasn’t that lovely? His picture.’
‘I can someti
mes hardly believe my luck, you know,’ he said, stroking her ankle.
‘We’re lucky too,’ she said. ‘And I must say, it’s been nice to have such a lovely quiet summer, just a bit of planning …’
He looked at her disbelievingly. ‘A bit of planning? A bit of planning? Are you having a laugh? There hasn’t been a day without a call from your mo—’
The phone rang, perfectly on cue. They looked at each other in horror. How many more details did the woman need to confirm? It was still nearly four months before the wedding and she already knew the shade of napkins for the reception.
‘Well, answer it,’ he said.
‘No, you answer it.’
‘No, you. It’s your mother.’
‘How do you know? It might be for you.’
‘I recognise the ring.’
‘It always sounds like that.’
‘No,’ Maxwell insisted. ‘It’s shriller.’
With a sigh, Jacquie reached for the phone. ‘Hello? Oh, hello, Helen.’ Triumphantly, she held the phone out to Maxwell. ‘It’s for you. Helen.’
‘Don’t call me Helen,’ he muttered and took the handset from her. ‘Dear heart, how can I help you?’
Helen’s voice came loud and clear down the phone line, through Maxwell’s head and out into the room. Jacquie could hear it as a disembodied squeak, but she could get the sense of it, crouched as she was on the arm of Maxwell’s chair. ‘I’ve decided, Max. I’ve definitely withdrawn my application.’
‘How many does that leave in the field, then, Helen? Legs mentioned three.’
‘Well,’ came the squeak, ‘that’s what decided me, in fact. The ignorant pig didn’t even include me in that number. I checked. Apparently, he didn’t think I counted, quickly altered to didn’t think I would want people to know before the day.’
