Maxwell’s Flame

by M. J. Trow

  He nodded. ‘Strawberries and cream at Grantchester?’

  ‘You fell out of the punt.’

  ‘Only because some stupid punt pushed me in.’

  ‘That was me.’

  And their laughter caused heads to turn in the room.

  ‘Well,’ Valerie said to Sally, ‘your Mr Maxwell seems to have made a friend.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sally said, more surprised than she cared to let on, ‘it would seem so.’

  ‘How is it’, Maxwell asked Rachel, ‘that you can remember a poem from … what? Thirty-one years ago?’

  ‘You wrote it, Max,’ she said. ‘That’s why.’

  For a moment, the briefest of seconds, the crusty old Head of Sixth Form with the battered heart was there. Back there in that ghostly dawn, with the mist like a shroud over the lake the first Elizabethans had built at Kenilworth. His fingers were linked with a girl’s; the girl who stood before him now.

  ‘Tonight I walked with ghosts in Echo Fields,

  And heard their footsteps swishing through the dew,

  And stars fell on their ancient shields

  (The shields that shone in Echo Fields)…’

  ‘“And I was glad,”’ she interrupted him, ‘“that we were there and you were you.”’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ and he shook his head.

  ‘I still am, Max,’ she said softly.

  ‘What?’ he had to ask.

  ‘Glad that we were there and you were you.’

  ‘Your parents?’

  ‘Long gone,’ she smiled. ‘I haven’t been back to Warwickshire in years.’

  He put his cup down on the nearest table. ‘Would it be an appalling cliché to say, “You haven’t changed a bit”?’ he asked.

  ‘Not only an appalling cliché,’ she tapped his arm, ‘but a downright lie. The last but one time I saw you was in 1963, Max. It was the spring. You had the top floor of mum and dad’s guest house.’

  ‘Did I?’ he smiled.

  ‘Well, let’s just say you were supposed to have.’ She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Though I do seem to remember you found your way down to my floor quite often.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he remembered, frowning. ‘Well, that must have been because it was dark.’

  ‘Hello.’ Sally Greenhow had extricated herself from the manly Valerie and was hovering expectantly at Maxwell’s shoulder.

  ‘It was all the Profumo case, wasn’t it?’ Maxwell was years away. ‘Didn’t Stephen Ward kill himself that July? Funnily enough, I was just thinking about Mandy Rice-Davies the other day.’

  ‘Someone else whose room you kept stumbling into?’ Rachel smiled.

  ‘It was a great time for speeches,’ Maxwell remembered. ‘Martin Luther King had a dream. Kennedy was claiming to be a Berliner.’

  ‘I had a dream too, Max,’ Rachel said.

  He looked into her eyes and felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time. There was a rising in his heart, a pain in his throat and his head. But at that moment, he wouldn’t have been anywhere else in the world.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sally Greenhow again.

  ‘Ah, Sally.’ Max snapped out of it. ‘Sally, this is Rachel. She’s … an old friend.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Sally said, looking sourly at Maxwell while managing to smile at the same time. ‘I thought perhaps old Mr S. had come a-calling.’

  ‘Old Mr S?’ Rachel didn’t follow.

  ‘Old Mr Senility,’ Maxwell explained. ‘Apparently, there’s a secret book in our staff-room on when I’m going to go ga-ga in a big way.’

  ‘Sally Greenhow,’ Sally smiled, shaking Rachel’s hand.

  ‘Rachel King,’ the older woman said. ‘What school are you both at?’

  ‘Leighford High,’ Sally told her.

  ‘The comprehensive from hell,’ Maxwell qualified it. ‘And you?’

  ‘St Bede’s.’

  ‘What, Bournemouth?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘The same,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Good God. That makes us virtual neighbours. St Bede’s opted out last year, didn’t it? But … you aren’t Catholic, Rachel. Or did you take the veil after …’ And he paused. If he’d had the guts he’d have bitten his tongue off.

  ‘No.’ She managed to smile. ‘No, I’m not a Catholic. About half the staff aren’t. There’s quite a contingent from St Bede’s here. Our Head believes it’s time four hundred and fifty nice Catholic girls were brought kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.’

  ‘Oh, our Head doesn’t believe anything,’ Maxwell shrugged, ‘at least, nothing I tell him.’

  ‘I think we’re going into lunch,’ Sally said, noticing the coffee-drinkers wandering off in knots of two or three. ‘May I join you two, or will I be a gooseberry?’

  ‘Well, actually, Sally …’ Maxwell began.

  ‘Of course, Sally,’ Rachel said. ‘Max and I have all week to catch up on old times.’

  ‘Rach?’ A rather cadaverous churchman with loose spectacles was wringing his hands at Rachel’s elbow.

  ‘Yes, Jordan? People, this is Jordan. He’s our chaplain.’

  ‘Hello, Jordan,’ Sally and Maxwell chorused.

  ‘Hello,’ the chaplain beamed, his upper lip almost disappearing up his nose. ‘Rach, have you seen Liz Striker? She’s got all the photocopying stuff.’

  ‘No,’ Rachel said, ‘I skipped breakfast this morning.’

  ‘She wasn’t there,’ Jordan said, ‘at least, not while I was. I’ll have a word with Michael, shall I?’

  ‘I should,’ Rachel nodded. ‘Michael Wynn, Deputy Head,’ she explained to Sally and Maxwell, ‘our Protean Hercules.’

  ‘Your what?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Superman,’ Maxwell explained. ‘You know, the bloke who has so little time to change that he does it in telephone kiosks and then ends up with his underpants on over his trousers.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sally said.

  ‘You’ll have to forgive each other,’ Maxwell said, crossing his hands over his chest to point to the two women currently in his life. ‘Rachel went to Homerton and Sally’s in Special Needs.’

  ‘Learning Support,’ Sally hissed at him.

  ‘Poor Jordan.’ Rachel shook her head at his retreating, scurrying figure. ‘He’s an absolute darling, but couldn’t, I fear, run a bath by himself. God, I’m starving.’

  ‘I’m Valerie Marks,’ Valerie was saying, standing on the podium in the Huntingdon Suite. ‘Head of Business Studies at Richard de Clare School, Erdington.’

  ‘Strongbow,’ growled Maxwell, imitating the advert, and proceeded to make the noise of crossbow bolts thudding into the wood of a bar.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Sally hissed, trying to keep the old idiot quiet, while the mannish lass was droning on.

  ‘Richard de Clare,’ Maxwell explained. ‘Thirteenth-century big enchilada. His nickname was Strongbow. As in the cider of the same name.’

  ‘Thank you, Valerie.’ Gary headed the desultory clapping around the room. ‘Er … Rachel. I think you’re next.’

  The dark-haired woman at Maxwell’s side stood up and took her place on the podium. He looked at her again, as he’d been looking at her over lunch. Why, he asked himself – and not for the first time – why did he ever let her go? Her eyes were deep enough for a man to drown in. They always were. And most of the poetry he’d scribbled at Cambridge, he’d scribbled for her.

  ‘I’m Rachel King,’ she said. ‘I’m Senior Mistress, for my sins, at St Bede’s School for Girls, Bournemouth. I have a daughter, Helen, who’s married to a solicitor and lives in New Zealand. I like opera, nougat, white wine – oh, and I like walking in fields near castles with strange men.’ She was looking straight at Maxwell when she said it. But he didn’t hear the laughter. All he’d heard was what she hadn’t said. There was no mention of a husband. No mention at all.

  ‘Thank you, Rachel,’ Gary piped up. ‘Thank you for your candour. Er … Peter, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ Maxwell stood up. ‘It�
�s Max to those I reckon,’ and he crossed purposefully to the podium while Rachel resumed her seat. When he’d got the circle’s attention he introduced himself. ‘I’m Peter Maxwell,’ he said, ‘and I’m an alcoholic’

  There were murmurs and an inrush of breath. Sally covered her face with her hands, but Rachel was giggling.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Maxwell, clicking his fingers, ‘wrong conference. That must have been last week. Er … I’m the wrong side of fifty, Head of Sixth Form – I suppose that’s Years 12 and 13 to anybody under twenty-seven – and I have the privilege to teach at Leighford High. My ambition in life is to be better known than Godfrey Bliss …’

  In the pause that followed, Gary fell right into the trap. Sally should have called out a warning, but she didn’t until it was too late. ‘Er … who’s Godfrey Bliss, Peter?’ he asked.

  ‘At last!’ Maxwell clapped his hands in joy. ‘I’ve done it! I’ve made it! After all these years! Thank you, Gary, you’ve made an old man very happy. By the way, by an incredibly curious coincidence, I too like walking in fields near castles, with women who can be as strange as they like.’

  There was a chorus of ‘oohs’ that Maxwell didn’t hear. He was only looking into the smiling face of Rachel King. And she hadn’t heard it either. No mention of ‘wife’, ‘better half, ‘dearly beloved’. Could there really be no Mrs Maxwell?

  ‘Yes, well, thank you, Peter,’ Gary said. ‘Er … Andrew?’

  A slightly stooped man in glasses and corduroy jacket ambled nonchalantly on to the podium. ‘Andrew Moreton,’ he said.

  ‘Loved your book on the Royals,’ Maxwell shouted.

  Moreton scowled amid the laughter. ‘Dr Moreton,’ he continued, ‘Head of Science at John Bunyan School, Luton.’ And he sat down.

  ‘Oh. Um, Michael, I believe, penultimately.’ Gary Leonard was thrown by the man’s taciturnity.

  ‘Michael Wynn.’ The next speaker brushed past the returning Maxwell. ‘Deputy Principal of St Bede’s. I’m afraid you’ve all heard rather a lot of us this afternoon. The trouble is, mention a week of INSET in a plush conference centre on the coast and the queue among the staff goes half-way round the building. It’s a difficult decision to make, of course, but as the man who runs INSET, I want you to know it’s the merest coincidence that I am here today.’

  There were guffaws all round.

  ‘I have a wife, Gwendoline, two children and a dog. I like to fish, have an embarrassing golf handicap and I’m looking forward to working with you all this week.’

  There was applause as the big, bearded man sat down.

  ‘Did I detect a certain Welshness there?’ Sally asked Maxwell.

  ‘Hmm?’ Maxwell was whispering something to Rachel.

  ‘I said,’ what with her PMT and all, Sally’s patience was not as thick as it might have been, ‘do I detect a certain Welshness there?’

  ‘Geordie.’ Maxwell shook his head.

  Rachel leaned across him. ‘He’s from Newcastle.’

  ‘Told you,’ Maxwell nodded smugly. ‘Spender country. You know, Jimmy Nail on the telly. Tall bloke. Looks as though the midwife trod on his face.’

  ‘And last, but by no means least, I’m sure,’ Gary said, checking his clipboard, ‘Liz.’

  There was no one left. They’d been through the complete circle. All twenty-four of them. Maxwell looked at the space for the twenty-fifth.

  ‘“There will be”,’ he murmured, ‘“one vacant chair.”’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Sally said, ‘a line from Spender.’

  ‘No, a line from an American Civil War song,’ he told her. ‘Before your time, really.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Er … has anyone seen her? Liz Striker?’ Gary was still asking.

  ‘Well,’ Jordan was on his feet, ‘I’ve done my best.’ He looked as though he was going to burst into tears. ‘There’s no answer from her room and she’s got all our photocopying.’

  ‘Well,’ Gary said, ‘I’m sure she’ll turn up. She’s probably gone swimming or for a walk along the estuary. Is she a keen ornithologist?’

  Everybody looked at each other. Nobody seemed to know.

  ‘Well, never mind. Now, it’s nearly time for tea, which will be served in the Whittingham Suite downstairs. After that, Dr Brownwood from the University of Kent at Canterbury will open the formal proceedings in the Huntingdon Suite with a lecture entitled “The Entitlement Curriculum”. Thanks everybody. Great stuff.’

  ‘Great stuff?’ Maxwell growled. ‘This great differencing machine I call a brain computes that this will be the eighty-sixth time I’ve heard a lecture on the Entitlement Curriculum. Tell me, Rachel, do you still drink Southern Comfort?’

  ‘Good Lord,’ she laughed, ‘I haven’t touched the stuff in years.’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell held out his elbow to her to link her arm with his, ‘I believe I saw a bar on the ground floor, somewhere near the Inebriate Suite. Shall I reacquaint you?’

  And they sauntered off.

  Sally Greenhow stood by herself. ‘I drink Southern Comfort,’ she said softly, but the only person who heard her was Valerie Marks.

  ‘Of course you do, dear,’ she said, ‘but let’s you and me have a nice cup of tea, now, shall we? Do you crochet at all?’ And she led the tall, frizzy-haired kid away.

  3

  They wandered along the shingle, Maxwell and his lady, in the cool of a May evening. The sun was an orange fire behind the purple bars of cloud, reflected in the chiselled surface of the sea.

  The tall grasses brushed her bare legs under her dress and she felt his hand in hers. It felt good after all these years. And safe. She liked to feel safe. Needed to feel safe.

  ‘It’s not much like Midsummer Common,’ he said, watching the dying sun gilding the granite blocks of Dungeness A and Dungeness B.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s better.’

  ‘Better?’ He stopped her. ‘I seem to remember you spoke out against all that. All that nuclear stuff. Don’t I remember you in a duffel coat at Aldermaston?’

  ‘That was Michael Foot,’ she laughed. ‘Or was it Bertie Russell?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He walked on with her, trampling the stems of the sea pinks as he went. ‘It might have been Jane Russell for all I know.’

  ‘Whatever happened to Clive?’ she asked him suddenly.

  ‘Clive? If you mean of India, it’s likely he committed suicide.’

  He felt her empty cardigan sleeve slap round his shoulder. ‘Clive Spooner. Your old oppo at Jesus.’

  ‘God, yes.’ Maxwell threw his head back and saw the high clouds and the last vapour trail spreading out towards the gathering night. ‘The class of ’63.’

  ‘I’ve got this abiding memory of him in the Arts Cinema. Psycho, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was. He was all right in the shower scene, a little quaky when the detective got his – you remember, that overhead shot – and by the time we saw mother in the fruit cellar, he was hiding behind my seat. Or was it yours?’ And he sat down with her in the grass.

  ‘I don’t think Clive had a lot to do with women’s seats, if my memory serves.’

  ‘Ah, now that’s a gross calumny. Clive was nearly as other undergraduates.’

  ‘And who put the gross calumny about, Maxie?’

  ‘Er … me,’ Maxwell confessed, ‘purveyor of gross calumnies. As to what he’s doing now, God only knows. You lose touch.’

  ‘You do,’ she said, gazing out to the chiselled sea. ‘Tell me …’ He sensed it was the question he hadn’t dared ask her. ‘Is there a Mrs Maxwell?’

  He looked at her, the breeze blowing her hair and her eyes shining. ‘There was,’ he said, ‘once upon a time.’

  He could detect no change in her mood, no different light in her eyes. ‘It didn’t work out?’

  ‘No,’ he said, playing with the grass between his hooked-up feet, ‘no, a ton of police car saw to that on a tight bend one wet morning. I like to think my wife never
knew what hit her.’

  She turned to him, her face a mask of pain. ‘Oh, Max, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘No,’ he shrugged, patting the hand that held his, ‘there’s no reason why you should. What about you? Mr King?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ She took her hand away and rested her chin on her knees, wrapping her long summer skirt around her ankles. ‘Jeremy. One of life’s gentlefolk, Max. He first hit me on our wedding night. I’d made some silly remark about … God, I can’t remember now – his father, I think. The daft old duffer got over-merry at the wedding. He was harmless and so was whatever I said, but that wasn’t how Jeremy saw it. I’d never actually seen anyone’s colour drain before. He went completely white. And rigid. I thought he was about to have a fit. Or a fainting spell at least. Instead, he hit me.’ She buried her face quickly in her dress, then she was looking at the sea again. ‘He was sorry again in seconds, but that wasn’t the point. He’d broken my cheekbone. I was in hospital for over a week.’

  It was his turn to try to hold her hand, but he couldn’t reach it so he held her arm instead. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve both been saying that all day.’ She smiled at him.

  ‘You left Jeremy?’

  She shrugged. ‘We left each other, really,’ she said. ‘But what about you, Max? How did you manage? After your wife, I mean?’

  ‘History,’ Maxwell tried to sum it up, ‘and kids. It’s funny, I buried my wife and child and I buried myself in work. A bit of a cliché, I suppose.’

  ‘Child? Oh, Maxie,’ and she turned to face him, taking both his hands in hers.

  ‘Jenny,’ he said. ‘She was not quite sixteen months. Ah, we had such plans for her.’

  ‘They’d have come true, too,’ Rachel said. ‘I know you, Peter Maxwell. Do you still write poetry, Max?’

  He laughed, throwing back his head. ‘No,’ he told her. ‘I left all that behind years ago. It’s odd, I thought I had so much to say then, when I was actually so comfortable and so cushioned from the world. A staircase at Jesus was hardly a walk on the wild side.’

  ‘Yes,’ she chuckled. ‘I always rather envied Timmy. You remember Timmy?’