Maxwell's Mask

by M. J. Trow

  Sylvia laughed, ‘That’s what pregnancy will do to you every time.’

  ‘God, is she pregnant?’ Maxwell looked aghast. ‘How did that happen?’

  She threw a metaphorical cushion at him and was on her way.

  The rain set in early that night, sweeping from the west across the South Downs, bouncing off the coloured lights that swung and dangled across the High Street and the Front, soaking the hoardings that proclaimed that Freddie and the Dreamers were playing the pier back in July and a Perry Como tribute band was going to wow everybody early in October. The dark headland that was the Shingle was a shapeless mass that melted into the great grey ghost of the sea as Peter Maxwell stared out from his skylight.

  Any stray bird, winging homeward in the driving rain after a hard day’s worming, would have been struck by the odd sight on the dry side of the glass. Peter Maxwell was standing in the loft of 38 Columbine, his home now for the best part of twenty years, a Crimean officer’s pill box cap at a rakish angle on his barbed-wire hair and a glass of Southern Comfort in his left hand. In his right hand was a paintbrush, a little clump of sable that had never been anywhere near a squirrel. Under the fierce glare of the lamp and the modeller’s magnifying glass on the table in front of him, his latest acquisition was taking shape. Private William Pennington of the 11th Prince Albert’s Own Hussars sat his bay nonchalantly, waiting, in his own plastic, fifty-four millimetre sort of way, for the balloon to go up. Across the room from Maxwell’s modelling table lay Maxwell’s pride and joy, his lifetime’s work. Four hundred and sixteen soldiers of Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade were drawn up at the safe end of the Valley of Death, waiting for the Noble Yachtsman to give the order to ‘Walk, March, Trot’. Maxwell had been putting this collection together for ever. Other men fished, played football, went down the pub. Peter Maxwell collected, glued, painted and adapted model soldiers. It was, he supposed in his darker moments, an addiction of sorts. But he remained resolutely in denial, refusing to go to the monthly Modellers Anonymous meetings they held in Tottingleigh Village Hall, where sad middle-aged men sat in corners and tried to come to terms with their problem. ‘I am Peter Maxwell and I’m a Modeller.’

  Maxwell sat back down, flicking the gloss black onto Pennington’s sabretache and the slings that secured it to his sword belt.

  ‘Well, you’ve just got to start listening, Count,’ he murmured without looking up. ‘Because I’ve told you all this already. William Henry Pennington had served in the Merchant Navy before enlisting in the 11th…well, it was the nicer uniform, I suppose. Dublin, that’s where he joined up. What the hell was he doing there?’

  The Count had no answer. That was partly because he didn’t give a rat’s arse and partly because he was an eleven-year-old neutered tom cat.

  ‘Bit of a smartarse, this one. Survived the charge, thanks to a kindly old TSM in the 8th, and went on to become an actor. Wowed old Gladstone with his Hamlet, apparently. Became the Grand Old Man’s “favourite tragedian” – and I quote. But then, Gladstone also believed he could answer the Irish Question – Gladstone, that is, not Pennington. You going out tonight?’

  The Count stretched, yawning, just to show his Master his superior set of gnashers, sharp as needles and twice as deadly.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Maxwell nodded, glancing up for the first time. ‘Was the Pope a member of the Hitler Youth? Well, you’ve got to remember, Count, there’s a lady of the house, now. It’s not just you, me and most of the Light Brigade anymore. You come in quietly, closing the cat flap behind you, and you do not, repeat, not bring back any little chums, especially chums that will become a late-night snack for you later. The Memsahib doesn’t go a bundle on things that go squelch in the night. Get it? Got it? Good.’

  Count Metternich straightened, totally unimpressed by Maxwell’s immaculate take-off of Danny Kaye, and checked his nose was still there with the tip of his tongue. He slid down from the pouffe he had made his own, all fleas and claw marks, and swayed gracefully towards the trap door. He paused to munch something that had wriggled out of his forearm fur and lashed his tail twice in Maxwell’s direction.

  ‘You’re right,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘I have been putting off Thirteen Bee’s attempts to explain Volksgemeinschaft for too long. Time to beard the beasts in their lair.’

  He padded down the attic stairs behind the cat, avoiding the creaking one four from the bottom. In the dim light, he saw his Jacquie curled up under the covers and he caught Metternich in mid-air as the black and white bastard was about to leap onto the duvet beside her, just for jolly.

  ‘He’s OK, Max,’ she murmured, half asleep. ‘Let him stay.’

  ‘Sorry, heart of hearts,’ Maxwell said. ‘House rules. I don’t rip voles apart with my teeth or play football with pygmy shrews’ intestines – the Count doesn’t sleep on the bed. Savvy?’ He breathed a whisper into the cat’s twitchy ear. Briefly, Metternich considered twisting out of the Great Man’s grip and demolishing his face with a timely claw-swipe. Then the better side of his nature took over and he broke wind with deafening silence in his master’s hand. It had much the same effect and Maxwell dropped him like a hot cat. The Count bounced off the carpet and took the stairs three at a time. Mercifully for all of them, the Great Outdoors was calling.

  ‘I didn’t mean to wake you up, darling,’ Maxwell said.

  ‘What time is it?’ Jacquie was half sitting up, trying to focus on the clock, and trying to release her nightie before it strangled her.

  ‘Half-ten,’ he told her. ‘Now, back to sleep, young lady. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Marking?’ she slurred turning to face him. Whatever Sylvia Matthews thought, Maxwell did actually do some from time to time.

  ‘The teacher’s curse,’ he nodded. ‘Hate it or hate it, it goes with the territory.’ He patted her shoulder and made for the stairs.

  ‘Max,’ Jacquie was sitting up now, or at least on her elbows. ‘Are you sure you’re all right about this?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been marking for a long time now, Jacks. I think I’ll manage.’

  ‘I’m not talking about that,’ she said. ‘As well you know. I’m talking about this. Us. Me moving in with you.’

  He crossed back to the bed and sat in the curve made by her knees. ‘We tossed a coin,’ he reminded her.

  She reached out in the semi-darkness to find his cheek. ‘I don’t think that was a very adult way to settle things.’

  He chuckled. ‘It was your place or mine,’ he said. ‘We can’t bring up a baby in two houses three miles apart. Night-time feeds would be a bitch.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘But…well, you’re such a…’

  ‘Bastard?’ He was being helpful.

  ‘I was going to say bachelor, but yes, that too.’

  But Peter Maxwell had not always been a bachelor. In the darkest recesses of his wallet lay the battered photographic evidence to prove it. A beautiful woman. A lovely child. His first family. In a car on a wet road. A long, long time ago. The wrong time. The wrong place. Dead On Arrival. He looked at the girl in his bed. His new family, complete with bump. Another little girl to replace his Debbie? Perhaps. They’d both turned away during the necessary scans. Leighford General’s Maternity Unit knew the sex of Maxwell’s and Jacquie’s unborn child, but the doting parents didn’t have a clue. It was how they wanted it.

  ‘No,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘I’ve been a bachelor for long enough.’ And he kissed her. ‘Now, go to sleep, Woman Policeman Carpenter. Abyssinia.’

  Woman Policeman Carpenter. She still loved it when he called her that. And as she listened to his footfalls padding down the stairs, she heard again the laughter and the ragging at the party they’d thrown at the nick as she took her maternity leave of them.

  ‘Come back and see us, Jacquie,’ the guv’nor had said. And she thought, just for a moment, she’d seen him smile. But it was probably just the champagne or a trick of the light.

  ‘The lengths some people will go to t
o avoid night-shift!’

  ‘Who’s going to make the fucking tea now?’

  And she heard herself chuckling as sleep crept over her, and their faces faded into dreams.

  If he’d been perfectly honest, Gordon Goodacre would have admitted that he’d never really liked the Arquebus. It had been derelict for years, part of a row of abandoned warehouses that ribboned the twisting path of the Leigh, searching, as rivers will, for the sea. Arts Council grants and Regeneration money had turned it into a theatre and the great and good of West Sussex had patronised various productions and the place began its new life as a centre of dramatic excellence.

  Gordon wasn’t a thesp. Matilda, she was the one. Her Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter had been legendary; people said they’d never seen anything like her Yentl – but that went without saying. Gordon was a personnel manager by day. But by night, to keep Matilda quiet, he worked on sets at the Arquebus.

  ‘What can Gordon do?’ someone on the committee had asked Matilda. And Matilda, usually so voluble, had been stuck for an answer. ‘He can paint,’ she had said, in a sudden burst of desperation. And so here he was, that Thursday night, painting. Or at least, he was about to. Leighford High School were taking their Little Shop of Horrors on tour and the first whistle-stop was the Arquebus. But the Arquebus had just mounted Waiting for Godot and every flat in the place needed a lick of paint. Yes, it was nearly eleven. Yes, Gordon had been there since seven. Yes, it was bucketing down outside. But he still had…

  There it was again. That noise. What was it? Gordon Goodacre tried to rationalise it. In the half-light of this once-derelict building he didn’t like. Not the rain, certainly. That was coming down hard enough, but it was recognisable, rhythmic, pounding the reeded skylights overhead. This was…well, if Gordon was asked to pinpoint it…it sounded like something heavy being dragged. Then a sigh. Not quite human. Not quite real.

  ‘Is anybody there?’ Gordon straightened from the black paint pots at his feet.

  There was silence now. Then the dragging sound again. And the sigh. Not once. But twice. And a sound of falling. He couldn’t think of a better way to describe it. As though something was hurtling through the air to end with a snap. A creak, like a foot on a stair. Or the tension of a rope.

  ‘Look, who’s there? What do you think you’re playing at?’

  Gordon had let himself in. He had locked the doors behind him. The keys were in his overalls pocket now. If this was that stupid bastard Ashley… He walked to centre stage, where the light formed a pool of liquid blue. He glared out into the silent, empty seats of the auditorium. The house lights were full on. Only the area under the balcony was in shadow and there was nobody there.

  Gordon turned, first this way, then that. It was over there. Towards the Green Room. But somehow higher. As if there was a walkway. But there wasn’t a walkway, not anymore.

  ‘Look,’ his voice boomed out in the stillness. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  They say you don’t hear the bomb that blows you to pieces. You don’t see the bullet that bores through your chest. The one with your name on it is not the one you can read. So it was with Gordon Goodacre. And the ladder he didn’t notice. Until it was too late.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Deena Hamilton, Max.’

  Was this how it was? Maxwell wondered. When the Last Trump came and that Great Headmaster in the sky called you to account? Was it just a series of déjà vu’s and endless reminders of Kids You Love To Hate? Any minute now, he’d be hearing of Wayne ‘The Farter’ Bryson, who could clear classrooms; Wonky Wadham, on whom nature had played a cruel trick; James ‘Hell Boy’ Gardner – all of them locked in an eternal detention in the Classroom That Time Forgot.

  But he shook himself free of it. It was Friday morning – albeit the 13th – and a far from great headmaster sat across the desk from him. James ‘Legs’ Diamond had a degree, it was rumoured, in Biology, but after that all serious links with education were broken irrevocably and he had become senior management, worrying about initiatives, league tables, specialist status, that hellish group the Learning Skills Council and all the other gobbledegook that had knocked Peter Maxwell’s legs from under him over the last four hundred years. All he really wanted to do was to teach some History and nobody would let him.

  ‘Lovely girl, Headmaster,’ Diamond’s Head of Sixth Form smiled.

  For a moment, a look of panic and incomprehension swept over Diamond’s face. His problem – one of many, it had to be said – was that he never knew when Maxwell was joking.

  ‘She was here yesterday, at Leighford.’

  ‘So I believe,’ Maxwell nodded, fully able at his age to put the concepts of ‘here’ and ‘Leighford’ together. ‘I was, of course, mortified that she didn’t pop in to see me.’

  ‘You?’ Diamond blinked.

  There were times – many, many times – when Peter Maxwell had such withering scorn for Legs Diamond that he couldn’t be bothered to answer him. He’d left assemblies, staff meetings, working lunches, all for fear that he might lose his cool and put one on his headmaster. It was a terrible, but all too excusable crime, principicide.

  ‘I was her Year Head for two years, Headmaster – though I grant you, there were times when it seemed longer. I like to think I did my bit in getting her into Oxford.’

  ‘Oh, indeed.’

  ‘We haven’t had too many, have we?’ Maxwell saw an irresistible chink in his headmaster’s less-than-proof armour. ‘Oxbridge successes, I mean? Let’s see, the last one, before Deena, was Clive Moon. PPP, if memory serves.’

  ‘It’s not the be-all and end-all, you know.’ Diamond smiled awkwardly, never, in these sparring sessions with Peter Maxwell, knowing where the next attack was coming from. Truth be told, he’d forgotten what PPP stood for and he wanted to move on.

  ‘Indeed not,’ Maxwell asserted. ‘Clive went to Merton, Oxford, when he should have gone to Jesus, Cambridge.’

  ‘No, I meant…there are other universities.’

  ‘Are there, Headmaster? Do tell.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Four minutes till the balloon goes up, Headmaster. Nine Eff Two. I must needs set up my PowerPoint presentation on factory reform.’

  ‘PowerPoint, Max?’ Diamond sat back in amazement. ‘Er…good. Good. I’m impressed.’ Like everyone else at Leighford, James Diamond assumed that Peter Maxwell had stumbled out of Jurassic Park.

  ‘Of course you are,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘So…er… Deena?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Diamond pulled himself together in the corner of the bland office where school successes in Young Enterprise and Engineering Challenge shone proudly on the wall. ‘She came to help out, with the show, I mean.’

  ‘The show,’ Maxwell repeated, as if the word was new to him.

  ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ Diamond reminded him. ‘We’re putting it on at the Arquebus in October.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Thanks for the word. I shall book my ticket.’

  ‘Well, actually, Max, it’s a little more complicated than that.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Diamond had seen that eyebrow rise before and he didn’t like it. It was like a cobra spreading its hood, a tiger stalking in the tall grass. ‘Well, as you know, we were unable to appoint an Expressive Arts Supremo, so Angela Carmichael was having to cope on her own – well, with a little help from the Music Department, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Peter Maxwell knew exactly how little that help was. The Head of Music, Geraint Horsenell, was a good chum and a realist. But he was not a man you’d want beside you – or indeed anywhere near you – in a shipwreck.

  ‘Well, unfortunately, Angela’s having complications, with the pregnancy, I mean. She’s off for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘Oh.’ This time, Maxwell’s concern was genuine. Angela Carmichael was a nice woman. And his Jacquie was pregnant too…

  ‘So Deena’s arrival was a godsend.’

  Maxwell frowned. Not for the first
time, the machinations of what Diamond laughingly called a mind left him perplexed, confused. The Demon Headmaster was sometimes not of this earth. ‘It was?’

  ‘Well, she’s got a degree in Dramatic Arts, Max – from, you hinted at it yourself, one of the best universities in the country. She’s at a loose end and she worked on the production up at Oxford.’

  ‘But she’s not a teacher, Headmaster.’

  ‘No.’ Diamond squirmed in his plastic, County-bought swivel. He toyed momentarily with trying to climb inside his laptop for safety. ‘That’s right. And that’s where you come in.’

  ‘Where I come in? What, sort of…enter stage fright?’

  The muscles along Diamond’s jaw flexed and rippled. This man was so infuriating, so bloody obtuse. But there had been times, and not so very long ago, when he literally owed Maxwell his career. There was no going back now. He was staring into the Abyss. ‘I can employ Deena, but only on a part-time, untrained-teacher salary. She’ll need someone…experienced. An old hand, so to speak.’

  ‘Out of the question,’ Maxwell said and was on his feet. ‘Nine Eff Two, Headmaster. That PowerPoint won’t wait.’

  ‘Max,’ Diamond was standing too, edging round his desk, trying to head Maxwell off at the pass. ‘Max, I know this is an imposition, but unless you can work it, we’ll have to cancel.’

  Maxwell paused in the doorway. ‘If you’re attempting to blackmail me, Headmaster…’

  ‘No, for God’s sake, Max. You’ve done this before.’

  ‘Not for years.’

  ‘You were a legendary Cyrano, I understand, before my time?’

  The Head of Sixth Form nodded. Everything was before Diamond’s time, really. ‘Passing competent,’ he said, ‘even if I say so myself. Depardieu was on the blower asking for a few hints as his own modest effort went into production.’