by M. J. Trow
The woman looked down at her, but only slightly. It was unusual for anyone to be almost Mrs Troubridge’s height and it gave them the appearance of an optical illusion. ‘Hi,’ she drawled. ‘Camille.’ With that, she walked forward, making the Maxwells break ranks, and she made her way to the stairs. ‘Up here?’ she asked and Jacquie hurried to follow her in.
The next to appear was a man built so differently that he appeared to be another species. He was huge, with wide shoulders, powerful thighs and a bull neck on which his head, buzz-cut to the scalp, appeared to balance like an egg in its cup. The general effect of scarcely controlled power and aggression was slightly offset by a huge gut which preceded him by some way as he came up the path to the by now fragmented welcoming committee. Maxwell felt Mrs Troubridge shrink into his side and he shared her trepidation. If this was Hector Gold, he would be going off sick for a year. At least.
The man thrust out a hand which seemed at least as big as the turkey now taking up half the fridge upstairs. ‘Jeff,’ he boomed. ‘Jeff O’Malley. Glad to have you know me.’
Maxwell’s knee pressed lightly into Nolan’s back. Many viewings of The Aristocats had made J Thomas O’Malley almost seem like a member of the family, and although this huge man was not much like him to look at, Maxwell knew his son and a bit of a reminder at this early stage could prevent some serious embarrassment down the line. A faint humming of a familiar tune from just above knee height confirmed that this early intervention had not been wasted.
Trying to keep the relief from his voice, Maxwell took the proffered hand and shook it back. ‘Peter Maxwell. Delighted to meet you.’ He stood aside and ushered the man through. ‘Do go up. I’ll be with you in a minute.’ The Head of Sixth Form glanced down, checking that Nolan and Mrs Troubridge had not been swept up in the giant’s passage. They were both there and he could give his attention to the next arrival, a woman so colourless and insubstantial that she was hardly there at all. She was clearly the wife and mother of Jeff and Camille in that she was cowed enough and skinny enough, but there was little else to say about her. Maxwell sincerely hoped that, should the woman go missing during their stay, he wouldn’t be called upon to describe her, because he would not have been able to do it.
Mrs Troubridge leapt into action, having finally recovered from the volcanic eruption that was Jeff O’Malley. She extended a tiny hand and said gently, ‘Hello, I am Jessica Troubridge, Mr and Mrs Maxwell’s neighbour. And this,’ she put a hand on Nolan’s shoulder, ‘is Nolan, their son. Come with us, there are mince pies upstairs. And sherry.’
Maxwell was a little disconcerted to see a flare of interest light the woman’s eyes. He hoped that it was because she loved mince pies.
‘Alana,’ the woman breathed. ‘Alana O’Malley.’
‘How lovely,’ chirruped Mrs Troubridge and she shepherded her little flock towards the stairs. Maxwell looked at her fondly; despite all her strange little ways and the years of bridling and unbridled nosiness, she was almost as much a part of his family now as Metternich, although she didn’t tend to bring in quite so much dismembered livestock of an evening. He was brought out of his reverie by a soft touch on his arm.
‘Mr Maxwell?’ The voice was apologetic and gentle. It was like being tumbled headlong into an episode of the Prairie Home Companion. Looking up, he expected to see a Garrison Keillor lookalike, tall and gangly, hunched over from the Minnesota winters of his Lake Wobegon childhood. Instead, a small neat man stood there, his thinning blond hair stretched smoothly across the top of an almost impossibly high forehead. His eyes, behind his gold-rimmed glasses, were pale and apologetic, but his smile was real and he was the only one of the four who seemed genuinely glad to be here. It was probably the snow making him feel at home.
‘Hector?’ Maxwell smiled back. He had to fight to keep the relief out of his voice. ‘My dear chap, how lovely to meet you. Come on in.’
‘You have a lovely home,’ Hector told him, gently. ‘Please call me Hec, all my friends do.’ And so they made their way up the stairs, with Hector finding time to exclaim about some small thing on almost every step. Metternich, scooting down at a rate of knots, was scooped up and admired from nose-tip to tail-tip. To Maxwell’s amazement, he didn’t take the man’s face off with one swipe, but tolerated it as the lesser of two evils. Metternich didn’t usually do strangers. He ate them occasionally, but only if they were of the rodentular persuasion.
Upstairs was becoming a little hard to take. Now Maxwell had time to listen, the noise levels had reached something approaching a large jet on its final descent, made up in equal amounts of Jeff O’Malley’s strident roar and his daughter’s descant whine. He looked round at Hector Gold, who was following him with a smile of pleasant vacuity on his face. He had clearly learnt over the years to filter the noise out and to rise above it. Maxwell was heartened; this should mean that Leighford High and the perils of Pansy Donaldson would hold no fears for a man who could live with the rest of this particular family. Squaring his shoulders, he led the way into the sitting room, temporarily become the Seventh Circle of hell.
At Christmas, the Maxwell sitting room always seemed smaller than usual, because with every year of Nolan’s life, the tree had got bigger and bigger. When the extra tinsel and various manifestations of Santa were taken into account, it was only just adequate for a party of normal people, but when the party involved Jeff O’Malley, it seemed genuinely cramped. He was standing, legs apart in a positively Henrician posture, with a mince pie dwarfed in one massive hand, a glass of sherry looking like a toy in the other. He turned as Maxwell went in.
‘Hey, Peter,’ he yelled, ‘I was just telling the little woman here how I like your little home. Cute as a bug, ain’t it?’
‘We like it,’ Maxwell smiled through gritted teeth. He was not used to being called Peter at the best of times, and when it appeared to be spelt with a ‘d’ in the middle, it was even worse.
‘Ah, you English,’ O’Malley shouted. ‘You’re always so polite. Say, can I call you Pete?’
‘Er … no,’ Maxwell said, still smiling, still with teeth gritted. ‘But you can call me Max, everyone does.’
‘Max it is, then,’ the big man said and spread his arms still wider, to engulf everyone in the room it seemed. ‘Ain’t this swell? Christmas in England. I never thought I’d do it. And snow as well. It’s just perfect.’ He smiled around the room. ‘And new friends too.’ He threw the mince pie in whole and Nolan had to be shushed covertly; he knew these people were guests but he also knew bad table manners when he saw them. O’Malley chewed twice and swallowed. ‘What the hell—oh …’ he threw a glance at Nolan, ‘sorry, little feller, what in blazes is in these things? I’ve had I don’t know how many since we got here and I don’t think two have been the same.’
Maxwell, who avoided mince pies as if his life depended on it, started compiling a list of ingredients in his mind, but the look in Jacquie’s eye stopped him from sharing. ‘Mincemeat,’ he said. ‘Fruit. Suet.’
O’Malley swirled a sausage-sized finger round between his teeth and gums to remove the glutinous remains. ‘Is that so? Well, I think I’ve had enough of them now to know I don’t really like them.’ He glanced at Jacquie. ‘No offence, little lady,’ he said dismissively. ‘Just don’t like them.’
Maxwell was appalled to think that he and O’Malley had anything in common, and to cheer himself up, turned to Hector, but no sooner had he opened his mouth than O’Malley was off again.
‘I was saying, as you came up the stairs, Max, what was it your little gal here did for a living? Camille here was saying that surely she didn’t stay at home all day, with you just being a teacher and all. Camille has her own business at home, because of Hector being a teacher and only bringing home enough to keep her in shoes, more or less.’ Maxwell had never actually seen a man castrated in his own sitting room before, but he supposed there had to be a first time for everything. The man paused, and finally Jacquie spoke.
; ‘I am a detective inspector,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’ drawled Camille. ‘You have people to inspect detectives over here? Isn’t that a bit specialised?’
‘No, honey,’ O’Malley said, fetching her a slap on the shoulder which should have felled someone her size, but she had obviously been brought up to it, because she barely flinched. ‘A detective inspector in England is the same as a lieutenant in LA. Sort of.’
The woman looked vaguely at Jacquie as though she were some exotic creature in a zoo. ‘Don’t say,’ she said. In the silence that followed, she added, ‘I run a nail bar.’ She threw a glance at her father. ‘Daddy bought it for me, when he retired.’
‘Retired from what?’ said Jacquie politely.
‘Why, from a lieutenant in the police,’ he laughed. ‘Didn’t old Hec tell you that on all those forms he filled in?’
‘I don’t believe that there was a space for father-in-law’s profession,’ Maxwell said quietly and turned to where Hector had been last, just behind him. The man had wandered away and was nodding gentle approval at a Spy cartoon of Gladstone which was just peeping out from behind the Christmas tree. ‘How long have you been retired, Jeff?’ he asked.
There was a tiny noise, as though a very quiet mouse had snorted, and only Mrs Troubridge heard it. It came from Alana, who was sitting on the arm of the chair Mrs Troubridge was occupying, with Nolan tucked down the side, like a cushion. The old woman looked up sharply and saw a smile just fading on Jeff O’Malley’s wife’s face. ‘Retired?’ she heard her say. ‘Retired?’ and the tiny snorting mouse snorted again. Mrs Troubridge looked down at Nolan, who did a whole body shrug which could mean so much between them. On this occasion it meant that he, Nolan, knew that she, Mrs Troubridge, thought that something was odd and that he acknowledged her right to do so. But, that said, he had no idea what she was thinking and if she wanted to tell his mum, now was the time, because she was forgetful and he was only five.
‘Oooh, five or six years now, hon, isn’t it?’ O’Malley appealed not to his wife, but his daughter.
‘More like seven,’ she said. ‘Because, if you remember—’
Nolan could see this going on for ages. ‘Mums,’ he suddenly announced. ‘Mrs Troubridge would like to see you in the kitchen.’
‘Really, darling,’ Jacquie said, brightly. ‘Well, all right, then. Help her up, poppet.’ Nolan wriggled down behind his friend and hoisted her up by pushing with his knees.
Mrs Troubridge popped out of the chair like a cork out of a bottle, nearly dislodging Alana, whose balance didn’t seem to be all it might. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s about the stuffing.’
Jacquie flicked a glance at Nolan, who looked innocent, and at Maxwell, who for once actually was innocent. O’Malley and his daughter were stalled in a conversation about realtors, Alana was looking glazed and Hector had wandered still further, in search of a little culture now he was nearer to it than he had been in years. The party was pooped, well and truly.
In the kitchen, Mrs Troubridge sat down at the table. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s anything to make much of, but I don’t like that man.’
‘Heavens above, Mrs Troubridge,’ Jacquie said, pouring some gin into her sherry glass and knocking it back. ‘I didn’t need to come out here to glean that piece of info. None of us like him.’ She looked over her shoulder in sudden horror, to see Hector standing there. ‘Oh … I do apologise … well …’ she stuttered to a stop. ‘Mr Gold, what can I say? I’m so sorry.’
‘Please,’ he said and his smile slowly spread to light up his face. ‘We all hate Jeff. Go right ahead.’ And he wandered up the corridor in search of more history. ‘And do call me Hec,’ they heard him mutter, ‘everyone does.’
Jacquie and Mrs Troubridge were transfixed and it took the younger woman a moment to get the conversation back on track. ‘Where were we?’
‘I can’t remember, dear.’ Mrs Troubridge looked confused. ‘I’ll retrace my steps. Hold on.’ She closed her eyes and her lips moved and her arms waved as she bobbed and ducked her metaphorical way back into the sitting room. Her eyes opened. ‘I remember, dear. It was Alana, poor soul. She was very sarcastic when her husband and daughter said he had retired. I wondered if there might be a story there, something we should know if these people are going to be living nearby.’
Jacquie looked at her neighbour quietly for a few seconds. Her gossip-gleaning skills had been honed for years on the grindstone that was the life of Peter Maxwell. She didn’t miss much. ‘Thank you, Mrs Troubridge,’ she said. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
The general hubbub across the landing reached a kind of crescendo and Nolan came into the kitchen and leant nonchalantly on Mrs Troubridge. ‘The Count has brought a vole in,’ he remarked. ‘He gave it to Meal.’
‘Meal?’ Mrs Troubridge asked.
‘Camille,’ Jacquie told her, in an aside. ‘And that’s Mrs Gold to you, young man.’
‘S’right, Meal,’ said Nolan, intent on the story. ‘She is screaming quite a bit, so they are all going home. Dads said to come and say.’
‘And of course we must go and say goodbye,’ Jacquie said, scooting round the table and heading for the door.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mrs Troubridge, adding to Nolan as he helped her up, ‘before they change their minds.’
The silence was so profound that the Maxwell family could almost feel it still ringing in their ears. Mrs Troubridge had left with the Gold O’Malley brigade, helping Alana down the stairs and quietly removing the almost empty sherry bottle which she had secreted in her bag. Mrs Troubridge had identified a troubled soul and she and the American woman had bonded in the silent fellowship of lonely people everywhere. Although Mr Troubridge had been noted for his quiet elegance and self-effaced courtliness, his widow could still feel some fellowship with Alana O’Malley; years of lonely nights, knitting furiously and pretending that you didn’t care that he hadn’t come home. Mrs Troubridge had had no children; Alana had had Camille, but she was so much a daddy’s girl that it was doubtful that she had helped the loneliness much. At least when Mr Troubridge did get home from his absences, he could give his attention to his wife – Mrs Troubridge blushed to even think the word ‘attention’ with its attendant implications – but she imagined that in the O’Malley household it would be difficult to get a sheet of paper between Camille and her father, let alone a whole wife, no matter how thin. So she had seen them off at the door with an understanding pat on Alana’s shoulder, and had then gone back to her own house. Apart from anything else, she suspected the sherry had run out apart from the dribble in the recovered bottle and there was also the risk of washing up.
Maxwell looked around and could hardly believe that a room could empty so quickly. He gathered up a few glasses and made a cursory search for the sherry bottle, which appeared to have gone missing. Nolan was taking plates out to the kitchen, one by careful one. Jacquie was out in the garden, disposing of the vole. Maxwell turned as he heard footsteps on the stairs. Something about the combined voices of Jeff and Camille had made him jumpy.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said to his wife as she came in, voleless.
She couldn’t be bothered to do the murder mime they usually did in honour of the television crime cliché that normally preceded ‘What are you doing here?’ and a knife/axe/bullet to the head. Instead, she settled for, ‘Who else were you expecting?’ She went over to the fire and rubbed her hands together in front of the flames.
He shrugged. ‘Who knows, after this afternoon? That was a strange experience and no mistake. Have you seen the sherry?’
‘Mrs O’Malley put it in her bag,’ Nolan informed him from behind the sofa.
‘Quisling,’ Maxwell muttered, but he was proud of the boy’s observational powers nonetheless.
‘Ah,’ Jacquie said, with the air of someone putting two and two together.
Maxwell cocked an eyebrow at her and then looked at Nolan, in a significant sor
t of way.
Jacquie sighed. There was little her son didn’t spot; she sometimes suspected he might have the house comprehensively bugged. She sat down and hauled her son onto her knee. ‘I sometimes think we put too much on this child.’
Maxwell looked round the room, spinning round and looking under clocks, table mats and behind the curtains before asking, ‘What child is that?’
Nolan laughed like a loon and flung himself back onto the sofa. Jacquie made his hysteria worse with some well-aimed tickling. Eventually, they all calmed down and Nolan, slipping two fingers into his mouth and squeezing his ear lobe, said solemnly, ‘I think I’ll go and have a bit of a quiet moment,’ and left the room heading for his bed, followed by the cat.
They watched him go and Maxwell re-raised his eyebrow.
‘Mrs T seems to have taken to Alana,’ Jacquie told him, ‘and heard her make a sarky comment when Jeff and Camille were talking about when he retired.’
‘I can’t see how a comment, be it ever so sarky—’
‘Yes, I’m with you there,’ Jacquie agreed, ‘but I must admit I have my doubts about Jeff O’Malley, Police Loo-tenant. He seems a bit like a character from a sitcom.’
‘Heavy on the sit, fairly light on the com, I think, don’t you?’
‘They’re horrific. Hector seems all right, though. And can’t stand his father-in-law.’
‘He told you that?’ Maxwell had heard that Americans could be rather blunt about things, but on a very short acquaintance it seemed a bit much, even for an American, and a Minnesotan at that.
Jacquie blushed and told him about her little faux pas. ‘But he really didn’t seem to mind, Max,’ she said. ‘I mean, I hope you would at least pretend to stick up for my mother …’
‘Dearest heart, I would stick up for your mother. I do stick up for your mother.’ There was a brief silence as they both remembered the incident at Jacquie’s cousin’s wedding the previous summer. And he had put in a good word for her at the Nuremberg trials. ‘Did he not, then? Hector? Not stick up for your mother, obviously, but I’m sure you catch my drift.’
