Maxwell's Crossing

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Yes. It’s all true. Apparently,’ and Maxwell gave a small mock preen, ‘I look like a man who knows how to have a good time.’ He smiled at her. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘if you were a cartoon you would have an exclamation mark and a question mark over your head right now.’

  ‘Make that two question marks,’ she said. ‘You’ve just gasted my flabber.’ She gave one last flap at his hand and moved away slightly. ‘But, seriously, Max, don’t you worry about how Hector is going to settle in?’

  ‘I did, for a while, but I think he will fit in really well. He is obviously totally different from the O’Malleys, and I count Camille as an O’Malley, because that is how she counts herself. How on earth they ended up together I can’t imagine. The Count and I had a long chat today and he can’t see it either. I think Hector will consider his hours at Leighford High each day as a pleasant interlude in the rest of his awful life.’

  The idea was so poignant that they both sat and stared into the flames for a moment. Then, Jacquie broke the silence.

  ‘Poor man,’ she said.

  ‘Too right,’ said Maxwell. ‘Poor man indeed.’ After another silent vigil for Hector Gold, the Head of Sixth Form leapt up and rubbed his hands together. ‘Drinkie?’

  ‘You’re very bouncy, standing there in your ’jamas, all washed and brushed. If you think dressing as Nolan is going to get you all the details of today, think again. And yes, I will have a drink, thank you. Something sticky and Christmassy. Benedictine. That would be nice.’

  Maxwell turned to the drinks on the side table, where drinks had been placed in his house at Christmas since time immemorial. His eyes had a predatory gleam. While her husband poured her drink, Jacquie marshalled her thoughts. The day had been long and fairly fruitless. Sharing her added knowledge with Henry Hall had taken a while, and while he was grateful, it had advanced the case not even an inch. Even so, it had given them a slightly longer list of suspects, all of whom were immediately struck off again, by virtue of being dead, out of the area visiting far-flung families or, the last man standing, Peter Maxwell. There had been the usual sighs and glances when his name had come up, but a murder enquiry without him would not have seemed like Leighford at all.

  She looked up to find him standing there, proffering her a glass. ‘Oh, sorry. Miles away.’

  He flung himself down in his chair and picked up the dregs of his Southern Comfort from earlier. ‘Thinking about the case, I expect.’ He smiled, innocently, or so it would have seemed to anyone but his wife.

  ‘Case?’

  ‘Yes. The case.’

  ‘I’m starting my New Year resolutions early. No more talking about cases. I’m an inspector now, all grown up. You have heard your last case notes, Mr Maxwell. It’s a brave new world.’

  Maxwell narrowed his eyes. A challenge for the new year. Oh, goodie!

  Chapter Six

  There were not usually too many new kids at Leighford High at the start of what was amusingly called the Spring Term. This year, there were fewer than usual, due to the fact that another Coldest Winter Since Records Began had the whole of the South Coast in its vicious grip and the near-peninsula that was Leighford even more harshly than its softer, more cradled cousin, Brighton & Hove. Quite a few school buses had not even left the garage, let alone arrived with their cargo, and Pansy Donaldson and her depleted staff had telephones permanently glued to their ears, phoning out to outlying parents and taking calls from most of the rest. The stalwarts who had arrived were being marshalled into something approaching year groups and the staff were being allocated as best they could be.

  Maxwell was there (albeit without the less-than-trusty-these-days White Surrey) because Nolan had gone in to school; and anyway it gave him yet another opportunity to point out how absurd the concept of Global Warming was. Mrs Whatmough had personally phoned every single parent the previous day and her message was clear; be there or there would be serious trouble. No matter that polar bears were rifling through the rubbish bags outside. She didn’t give a hoot that the glaciers were marching, creaking and calving, across the downs. Ymir may be leading his frost giants down the High Street, but Mrs Whatmough would not be making allowances for anyone who was absent on the first day of term.

  Jacquie was also at work. The case had not progressed much and the usual Christmas family feuds had almost knocked it off most people’s desks, but enquiries were continuing, if a trifle sluggishly. No one felt much like catching someone who, in their opinion, had done the whole town a favour. ‘They should give him a bloody medal’ and ‘Remind me again why they abandoned the death penalty’ were just two muttered phrases that captured the ethos of the day.

  Hector Gold was also at work. He was a little taken aback that so few people had come in to school, seeing as how there were just a few measly feet of snow on most roads. He was only a Californian by residence; he was a Minnesotan by birth and a workaholic by constitution. He had walked in, as the O’Malleys were stuck in the house, looking out wide-eyed at the snow. Coming from Los Angeles, they had heard of snow, of course. They went looking for it at reasonable expense twice a year, with skis tied to the top of the car. The idea of it coming to them was rather novel, though, and they had decided to wave Hector off and think about going out later.

  Hector was currently enjoying James Diamond’s hospitality. He was used to a Principal who sat behind an enormous desk with not a single piece of paper on it, with a picture window overlooking the softball pitches, yelling orders into the tannoy system that permeated every corner of the school. Although James Diamond liked to consider himself rather a hard taskmaster, in fact his approach left Hector wondering when the real Principal was going to arrive. Surely this bland quiet man could not be in charge?

  ‘And so, Mr Gold,’ Legs Diamond concluded, ‘I’m sure Mr Maxwell, or Max as I’m sure you will end up calling him, will look after you well. Our Mr Maxwell is a backbone of the school and you will learn a lot from him, I’m sure.’ During this speech, he had come round from behind his desk and was ushering the man to the door. ‘Any problems, my door is always open.’

  Hector Gold found himself standing in the corridor. Remembering his manners, he turned to say thank you to the man he would never learn to call Head Teacher, only to find that the door had been closed oh-so-gently behind him. Ahead of him was another door, half glazed with frosted glass, although the school building was so cold that he wondered if the frost was not in fact the real thing. He knocked tentatively.

  ‘Yes.’ It wasn’t a question. He only knew it was a word because he doubted that English schools kept Rottweilers on the premises. He knocked again. ‘Yes!’ Now the voice, or dog, sounded annoyed, so he summoned his courage and went in.

  Sitting behind a desk was a huge woman, with a face like a big and angry scarlet moon. ‘Yes? What is it?’ She looked more closely. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m …’ Hector was on familiar ground with bullies and in a strange way he felt calmer than he had since setting out that morning, slipping and sliding in his thin Californian shoes across town to the school. ‘I’m Hector Gold, the US exchange teacher you may have heard of me I’m here to teach history I’ve been to see Mr Diamond …’ He ran out of breath at the same time he ran out of punctuation and the room swam a little.

  Pansy Donaldson leapt out from behind her desk, her maternal and first-aiding buttons having been well and truly pressed by the fragile-looking man standing there. ‘You poor man,’ she said, as she grabbed his hand. ‘You’re frozen. And your shoes and trouser bottoms are soaked.’ Turning her head she called over her shoulder to Emma, the morning receptionist, the girl who Maxwell always called Thingee One. ‘Leave the phones, fetch Mr Maxwell, fetch a cup of coffee, fetch a towel, fetch Nurse Matthews, fetch Mr Diamond.’

  Emma sighed and turned from the switchboard. ‘In any particular order?’ she asked.

  Pansy was incensed. ‘All at once, of course,’ she said. ‘Mr Gold may be suffering from hypothermia. He com
es from sunnier climes and I’m afraid our winter doesn’t suit him.’ She put a beefy arm around him and gave him an encouraging squeeze. ‘I shall have more than a few words to say to Mr Maxwell, making the poor man make his way in in such weather.’

  Hector Gold opened his mouth to explain that in fact Peter Maxwell had rung the night before to tell him that attendance was scarcely mandatory in the prevailing weather and that whenever the roads were clearer would be more than adequate. He would also have liked to say that he would rather crawl over broken glass than stay another day in what still struck him as a poky house with inadequate sanitation with his in-laws. He sometimes thought of his wife as one of his in-laws as well, so little did she seem bonded to him, but thought that this kind of conversation was perhaps one which could come later in their acquaintance, if at all. He decided that it would be better not to say anything, and he shut his mouth with a small snap.

  While they waited for Emma to fulfil all of her tasks, Pansy Donaldson filled him in on the ways of Leighford High School. Had his hair not been ultrashort, ultrafine and thinning, it would have curled. He had been told that schools in England were soft and easy options, and here was this gigantic woman – who seemed to wear the same perfume as his mother-in-law as the general ambience was very similar – telling him of drug dealing, sex, violence and worse. As far as he could tell, she was implying that these all took place in the staffroom, but her embrace was beginning to stop the flow of blood to the brain, so he may have got that bit wrong. He heard voices and hurrying feet coming down the corridor outside and then – heaven be praised – there was Peter Maxwell, smiles and wiry hair in equal measure, bearing down on them and finally Pansy Donaldson’s death grip was released and he almost fell into the Head of Sixth Form’s arms.

  ‘Hector, my dear chap!’ Maxwell led him away, leaving Pansy protesting in their wake. ‘I wasn’t expecting you today.’ He glanced down at the man’s feet. ‘Did you walk here in those shoes?’

  ‘In these shoes?’ Gold asked. ‘I don’t think so … sorry, I couldn’t help that.’ He smiled his unexpected Californian smile.

  ‘Kirsty MacColl fan?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘I am. I sometimes can’t help finishing quotations, even when it makes the conversation nonsense. I mean, of course, yes, I did walk here in these shoes.’

  ‘Don’t you have anything …’ Unusually, Maxwell was stuck for a word. Thicker? Stronger? More suited to a country where it rains more than it doesn’t and that’s when it isn’t snowing?

  Gold raised one foot then the other, ruefully examining shoes ruined beyond repair. ‘Jeff said we didn’t need anything else. That we would be driving everywhere. That Britain had a moderate climate …’

  ‘And you believed that?’ Maxwell was aghast. The man was clearly a moron and yet here was his son-inlaw hanging on his every word.

  ‘Well,’ and the smile flashed on again. ‘No, of course not. Jeff is an ass.’ He left Maxwell to decide whether he was meaning ass as in donkey or ass as in arse; either would fit the bill. ‘But Camille … well, you may have noticed how it is with her and her dad. She did the packing. There is a perfectly good pair of walking boots in the closet at home, I guess. Unless she gave them to the Goodwill. Or exchanged them for something more appropriate. Perfume. Lingerie. Something useful.’

  Maxwell looked at him sideways. ‘I thought Americans didn’t do irony,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no, Max,’ Hector said, straight-faced. ‘We do irony. We just can’t pronounce it.’

  Maxwell laughed and clapped the man on the back. ‘Do you know, Hec,’ he said, pushing open the door to his office to the welcome blast of hot air, ‘I think we’re going to get along really well.’

  ‘I’m glad about that, Max,’ Hector said. ‘Really glad.’

  A head with bronze curls popped round the door. ‘Hello, Max,’ it said. ‘Emma told me we had an American dying of hypothermia.’

  ‘Sylv!’ Maxwell crossed to the woman and kissed her. ‘You know Thingee. Always keen to make a drama out of a crisis. I’d like you to meet Hector Gold – Paul Moss’s exchange for the year. Hec – this is our very own Florence Nightingale, Sylvia Matthews.’

  ‘Charmed,’ Hector smiled and shook her hand.

  ‘You and me both,’ she smiled back. ‘You’re looking pretty well for somebody at death’s door.’

  ‘Pioneer stock, ma’am,’ he drawled for her benefit. ‘Pioneer stock.’

  Sylvia Matthews and Peter Maxwell went back a long way. She’d loved him for years but he hadn’t really noticed and now that she had Guy and he had Jacquie – not to mention Nolan – her love had mellowed to that between two very good friends. Hector Gold didn’t look much like Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans, she couldn’t help thinking, but you couldn’t have everything.

  ‘How was Christmas, Max?’ she asked.

  ‘Great,’ he said, adding mentally to himself, except for this man’s family. ‘Yours?’

  ‘You don’t really want to know.’

  But she told them both anyway.

  Mrs Whatmough was not amused. She rarely was, but at that moment she was so far from amused she very nearly came out the other side. The woman standing in front of her in her office was close to tears, but tears were just a waste of salt as far as the Headmistress was concerned and she was having none of it.

  ‘Sarah,’ she said, her voice a little colder than the icicles outside her window, which tinkled in sympathy. ‘This is not some kind of … pawnshop.’ She said the word as though it were poison. ‘I do not give advances on salary. I have no say over salaries, you know that. Was there an error in your last payslip, perhaps, that you find yourself so financially embarrassed now?’ The woman shook her head and muttered, ‘No, Mrs Whatmough.’

  ‘Then why, in only the second week of January, are you saying you have no money?’

  The woman shrugged her shoulders. ‘I just don’t have any, Mrs Whatmough, and … well, I have a pressing need for some.’

  The Demon Headmistress pushed herself back from her desk, arms straight, and looked down at the single sheet of paper in front of her. She stayed like that for a moment and then seemed to come to some kind of decision, but clearly not a happy one. ‘Sarah,’ she said, ‘I am not an unreasonable woman. I am not, I hope, an unkind woman.’

  To Sarah Gregson’s surprise, she realised that this was so. All of Mrs Whatmough’s apparent coldness came from her wish to make everyone perform to the best of their ability, to help them make a silk purse out of what may otherwise be a sow’s ear. ‘No, Mrs Whatmough, you are not,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Sarah. So, because you are clearly upset and because I do not want you to be working at anything other than your utmost in my school, I am prepared to make a loan to you, to help you out. This is not from the school, you understand. I have governors and shareholders to consider. This is a personal loan, from me.’ She reached down and picked up her handbag, the size of a small suitcase and never far from her side. Staff and pupils alike believed that she slept with it. The Reception Class thought she slept in it. She snapped open a clasp and brought out her purse, which looked like a calf of the handbag. Another snap, and it was open. She looked up, enquiringly. ‘How much?’ she asked.

  Sarah Gregson swallowed hard. Her mouth had gone horribly dry. ‘I didn’t want you to …’

  Mrs Whatmough brandished her purse. ‘It is this or nothing, Sarah,’ she said. ‘I will not involve the school in this. When you are feeling better, perhaps you can explain to me why this money is needed so urgently.’ A wintry smile crossed her face. ‘When you pay me back, perhaps. Now, how much do you need?’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty would be very helpful, Mrs Whatmough,’ the teacher said.

  The Headmistress’s eyebrows rose. ‘But you would like …?’

  ‘Five hundred?’

  There was a pause. ‘Very well.’ The woman opened the purse and to Sarah Gregson’s amazement pulled out ten fifty-pound notes,
one after the other. Mrs Whatmough looked up. ‘Please close your mouth, Sarah. It is not attractive to stand there with it open. I don’t usually have this much cash on me, as a matter of fact, but I have bills to pay this evening on my way home, so got some out this morning on my way in. With the weather so inclement, it seemed unfair to pay by cheque when people might not be able to get to the bank. Never mind, that will have to do now.’ She held the notes out. ‘There you are.’ She shook them at the woman, impatiently. ‘Take it. Pay me back when you can. I trust you to do so at the first opportunity.’

  The teacher stepped forward and took the money gingerly, as though it might suddenly spontaneously combust. A tear crept down her cheek. The Headmistress was looking down, making terse marks on the piece of paper. After a moment, she looked up.

  ‘Why are you not in class, Sarah?’ she asked, as though nothing of the last few minutes had happened.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Whatmough,’ she said and turned for the door. ‘Thank you.’

  The Headmistress flapped her away with one hand, not looking up. When the woman had gone, Mrs Whatmough leant over and opened a drawer. She pulled out a small notebook and opened it. Checking her watch, she made a note and replaced the book in the drawer, then resumed the checking of the piece of paper. Her face showed nothing, but her hand was trembling, very, very slightly.

  Maxwell’s xenophobia was taking quite a hit the more time he spent with Hector Gold. Physically the two could hardly be more different. Hector’s accent sounded like someone doing a bad take-off of someone doing a bad take-off of an American, so clichéd was it. Maxwell, of course, spoke nothing but received pronunciation, even though the words he chose were sometimes not always what might be expected on the Nine O’Clock News, so the pair were very nearly two buttocks of one bum. They sat that lunchtime in Maxwell’s office, their postures perfect mirrors, their coffees both white, no sugar, their unwrapped Kit Kats balanced on one knee, and chatted about this and that. In the Sixth Form common room across the landing, the dulcet tones of The Coast were belting out the retro numbers that Maxwell rather liked. The Sixth Form had voted unanimously for Radio Appalling but Maxwell had vetoed it – after all, they were not called Maxwell’s Own for nothing. And he deliberately misquoted Winston Churchill – ‘Democracy is the worst system in the world.’ What he ‘forgot’ to add was ‘except all the others’.