Maxwell’s Ride, page 10
part #6 of Peter Maxwell Series
‘See you, Uncle Maxie,’ Lucy waved at him. Tiffany was already somewhere else and his eyes rolled heavenward as he heard Irwin purr to her, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
A certain peace descends on High Schools come the business end of the summer term. Those heady weeks when Year 11 have gone and Year 13 are about to go. It had to be said that Bernard Ryan, the Deputy Head in charge of timetabling, the calendar and all that makes the heart of a great school beat, had got it wrong that year. He’d spent months telling everybody that it was a computer glitch and the stand-up row he’d had with Maxwell in the staffroom was still imprinted on the memories of those who heard it – ‘I don’t know a megabyte from a Jacobite, Bernard, but I know what comes next after Wednesday. It’s a pity you’re a little lacking in that particular set of basics, isn’t it?’
Peter Maxwell, one; Bernard Ryan, nul point, disappeared in confusion. So it was that the GCSE exam study leave didn’t actually start until Wednesday and some of them were actually gullible enough to believe it. Maxwell would have to go on telling them stories until then.
‘Gemma,’ he cornered a gum-chewing girl in the first lesson after break, ‘what, in your erudite and ever-welcome opinion, was the main problem facing the Weimar republic?’
Gemma looked blank, but at least she had the sense to stop her jaws working.
‘Well,’ Maxwell roamed the classroom, like a lion probing the defences of a herd of wildebeest. ‘Was it split ends, I wonder? Broken nails? Perhaps jogger’s nipple?’ He thrust a litter bin under her nose. ‘Spit it out, there’s a dear. And when you get home tonight, write out a thousand times: “I’ve got ten days until my GCSE History; I must find out something about Adolf Hitler”. Okay?’ He watched the grey blob ping into the metal. ‘Jolly good. Right,’ and he spun back to the wary, milling herd, ‘who’s got a brain? Nobody. Well, never mind. Simon, you’ll have to do.’
‘What was the question, sir?’ Simon felt his heart pounding.
‘Ah,’ luckily for Simon, Maxwell was feeling particularly generous that day. He’d let the boy live. He had reached the window and was looking at the staff cars parked below, ‘What indeed?’
He kept an eye on them, of course, as only experienced teachers can. The school timetable told him where they’d be and he acted on it. ‘Got any chalk, Ben?’ he asked the Head of Science in whose class young Lucy was conducting an experiment.
‘No, we use whiteboards here, Max,’ the Head of Science was confused, glancing at the gleaming wall behind him, just to make sure.
‘Of course you do,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘Silly me. I’ll see myself out.’
He breezed down F corridor, past the mezzanine floor where they kept Business Studies, removing with deft swipes of his hand the misspelt posters that proclaimed that Acne were playing at the Dog’s Head tomorrow night and that Melanie Stinks. He didn’t want to hear Acne (he wasn’t sure you could) and he already knew about Melanie anyway. He popped his head round the door of the French Department, where Tiffany had her head down over a book.
‘Bonjour, Monsieur Maxwell,’ chirped the head of Modern Languages, a reasonably pleasant woman in a bun, who shared that arrogant trait of language teachers everywhere that only their adopted tongue seemed to count.
‘Bonjour, Madame Da Farge.’
The reasonably pleasant woman scowled.
‘Got anything on the appalling performance of the Free French on D-Day?’ he asked, ‘Or how it was that 30,000 Germans could control the whole of France during the war?’
‘Er … I’m afraid not.’
‘Heigh-ho.’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Not to worry. Au revoir, Madame Guillotine,’ and he vanished.
Lunchtime comes but once a day and unusually, Maxwell was spending it in the staffroom, that strange cluster of assorted furniture to which hapless teachers retreated as a last resort, rather like the 24th Foot behind their mealie bags at Rorke’s Drift. Even more unusually, Deirdre Lessing appeared in her cloud of sulphur smoke to join him.
‘Max,’ she sat down to his right. ‘Oh, my God, what’s that?’
‘Oh, I do apologize, Senior Mistress,’ and he made great play in doing up his flies and pulling his sports jacket across his lap.
‘I mean,’ Deirdre Lessing had never let a little thing like levity spoil her morning, ‘that thing you’re eating.’
‘Oh, that.’ Maxwell studied it too. ‘Well, Edna in the kitchen assured me it was a pizza slice, but having sampled it, I prefer to keep an open mind.’ He winked leeringly at her. ‘Want a bit?’
‘Thank you,’ she sat back, but upright in the chair. ‘I think I’ll stick to my yoghurt.’
‘Very wise.’
‘Max, I’ve something to ask you.’
‘Oh?’ A thousand possibilities sprang to Maxwell’s ever-fertile mind, but a request to be allowed to commit hara-kiri loomed largest, preferably in the quad with the whole school’s company forming hollow square.
‘I have to go to a wretched Charts meeting tomorrow afternoon, in London. Could you come with me?’
Maxwell’s pizza slice toppled inexorably into his lap. ‘Well, I’m flattered of course, Deirdre,’ he said, extracting slices of pepperoni from his gonadal regions.
She turned to him with her Gorgon stare. If only he’d brought his polished shield with him that morning. ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘James insisted.’
‘Who?’ For the briefest of moments, he was nonplussed. ‘Oh, the Headmaster.’
‘Why do you call him Legs?’ she asked.
Maxwell could blush at will and he did so now. ‘Please, Deirdre,’ he whispered. ‘It’s personal.’
The staffroom door burst open and Tom Sugden, the Head of Technology stood there, fuming. ‘Bloody Ten C Six,’ he snarled at nobody in particular. ‘You know, sometimes I think Hitler was right.’
‘Only sometimes?’ Maxwell was retrieving garlicky crumbs from his corduroy. Deirdre’s glance failed to wither him. No sooner had Sugden sulked off to the coffee machine than Camp David arrived. ‘Do you know what that new girl in Eight B One asked me a few minutes ago?’
No one in the staffroom did.
‘“Are you homosexual?” I ask you!’ and he minced to his pigeon hole.
‘New girl, Ca … er … David?’ Maxwell had to ask.
‘Lucy something,’ David growled. ‘Stuck up little tart.’
‘Absolutely,’ nodded Maxwell. ‘And no judge of character whatsoever.’
‘How do you stand it, Uncle Maxie?’ Lucy asked, lobbing dishes into Maxwell’s dishwasher.
‘What, my darling, the decay of civilization or yet another television mini series starring John Thaw? Although, come to think of it, one is a sign of the other.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘Leighford High.’
‘Hey,’ he gave her his best Sly Stallone, ‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.’
‘I have tried it, Uncle Maxie,’ she reminded him.
‘Oh, yes,’ he chuckled. ‘Well, then, just thank your lucky stars that dearest Mummy and Daddy are loaded enough to send you elsewhere. And spare a thought, once you’re back there, for your dear old uncle. Where’s Tiff?’
‘On the phone.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Maxwell paled. ‘Not long distance?’ And he bounced into the lounge on some pretext. Sure enough, Tiffany was curled up on his settee, winding the phone cord round her fingers as surely as one day she would wind some hapless lad.
‘I don’t know,’ she was saying, ‘I shouldn’t think so. I’ll have to ask. Why?’ Her eyes widened and she laughed mischievously. ‘Certainly not.’ She covered her mouth briefly to giggle, then sat po-faced. ‘Out of the question.’ She snorted again, then said imperiously, ‘Perhaps, but never on a first date,’ and put the receiver down.
‘Wrong number?’ Maxwell asked, pointlessly straightening some books.
‘Mark Irwin,’ she told him. ‘He’s asked me out.’
Maxwell had never felt like this before. In one brief sentence he’d changed from Mr Pinko-Liberal to Mr Barrett of Wimpole Street by way of Attila the Hun. ‘What?’
‘Uncle Maxie,’ Tiffany scrabbled up from her seat. ‘You really should be careful, you know. You go a really funny colour when you’re cross.’
‘I’m not cross, dear girl,’ he assured her, ‘just careful. What, for instance, would your father say?’
Tiffany snorted again. ‘He wouldn’t even notice.’
‘Your mother, then?’
‘Mummy?’ Tiffany thought about it, running a pensive finger through her golden hair. ‘She’d give me a lecture.’
‘Good,’ Maxwell concurred.
‘Then she’d give me a condom.’
‘Jesus Christ Almighty.’
‘No need to blaspheme, Uncle Maxie,’ Lucy called from the kitchen. ‘You can get flavoured ones nowadays.’
‘Oh, joy,’ Maxwell said, horrified to find himself a father again after twenty-five years – and the father of call girls at that. ‘Just a minute,’ he said to Tiffany, ‘I didn’t hear the phone go. Who rang who then?’
‘I rang him,’ she confessed, without a hint of shamefacedness.
‘He gave you his number?’
‘No. I looked it up in the book. Uncle Maxie, this is 1999. We don’t sit around walls fanning ourselves any more in the hope that some bloke will ask us to do the gallop with him.’
‘It is about riding, though, isn’t it?’ Lucy called.
Tiffany raised an eyebrow, followed by a languid middle finger. ‘I thought he was rather impressive, Uncle Maxie – for a comprehensive oik, that is. Don’t you?’
Maxwell had known a lot of comprehensive oiks in his time. Some he’d welcome like public schoolboys, at dances or shipwrecks. Some he’d trust to cross the road by themselves. There may even have been one or two he’d have trusted with his life. But leave one alone with his niece? Never. He grumbled something impenetrable and trudged upstairs to continue work on the plastic fifty-four millimetre Sergeant Mitchell of the 13th Light Dragoons.
‘He’s not going to let you go out tonight, you know,’ Lucy said as her big sister swanned into the kitchen.
‘No problem,’ Tiffany said. ‘It’s tomorrow night he’s asked me out. I’ll have worked on Uncle Maxie by then.’
Uncle Maxie popped his head around the door. Neither girl had heard him come back down. He beamed at his elder niece.
‘Tomorrow night?’ he asked. ‘Is that when Hell freezes over? Because that’s when you can go out with Mark Irwin.’
By the time Chris Logan had watched the hot police video, it was late. He stretched on Maxwell’s settee and rummaged for his shoes. The girls had long since shuffled off to bed, Tiffany to dream of her new love and Lucy wondering who she could annoy tomorrow. Metternich the cat was curled on the pouffé, happy at last in the company of men.
‘Bloody Hell,’ was Logan’s informed and inestimably useful comment.
‘Now, Chris,’ Maxwell said, ‘I don’t have to tell you again that all this is highly confidential. There is no possibility of a story. I can’t compromise my source.’
‘You said you had nobody on the inside,’ Logan remembered.
‘I lied,’ Maxwell smiled.
‘So why did you show it to me, Max? I mean, I’m delighted you did of course. But I don’t see how I can help.’
‘I hoped you might know Bartlett.’
‘The psychiatrist? No, I don’t. Well, I did attend a press conference he gave in London. On the Critchley case.’
‘The abattoir killings?’
Logan nodded. ‘Very messy. I couldn’t face goulash for a while, I can tell you. I was impressed by him.’
‘What about this?’ Maxwell wanted to know.
‘Well … yes. I’d say he’s got his man.’ He caught a look in his old teacher’s eye. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
Maxwell shook his head. ‘Was A-level History all in vain, dear boy?’ he asked sadly, disappointment furrowing his brow.
‘Well, I …’
‘Hamlyn,’ Maxwell made the newsman focus, ‘what about his performance?’
‘Performance?’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s the only word for it. He’s acting.’
‘Acting?’
‘If you’d just killed a man, premeditatedly gone out and put a high velocity bullet into him, then walked into a police station to confess, would you be as calm as this guy? Wouldn’t you sweat a little? Shake?’
‘Ha,’ Logan stabbed the air with his finger, ‘but I’m not a member of the SAS.’
‘And we don’t know he is, either,’ Maxwell told him.
‘Ah.’ Logan had found his shoes and was slipping them on. ‘Anyway, Max, we didn’t see his face. He could have been showing any number of emotions.’
‘Body language,’ Maxwell said.
‘You what?’
‘Look at you, for instance.’
Logan did, quickly taking in his jeans, his Top Man jumper, his trainers.
‘You’re like a bow string,’ Maxwell said. ‘Taut as a pupil. Why?’
‘Er … I don’t know,’ Logan said, but he secretly admitted it was true.
‘Because you are a pupil,’ Maxwell bellowed so that Metternich twitched an ear. What was the old fart going on about? Only he, the great Count, was allowed to leave blood on the mat. ‘Oh, I don’t mean it in an unkind way, Chris, but it’s difficult for you. I told you what defenestration meant, for God’s sake. Taught you the joined up writing. Now I’m treating you as an equal. You’re sitting in my lounge, drinking my Southern Comfort, calling me Max and you can’t quite handle it, can you? Oh, on the surface, you’re fine. The firm handshake, the easy smile, the badinage. But deep down, I’ll always be “Sir” won’t I? Your body’s screaming it at me.’
‘Oh,’ was all Logan could think to say.
‘Now Hamlyn is another matter. Every answer he gave, every word he said is just like all the others. His head doesn’t move. I’ve been fast forwarding this and rewinding it over and over since yesterday. Bartlett’s bobbing about like a bloody cork on a wine-dark sea. But Hamlyn’s like a rock. His shoulders are square, his back’s straight, his voice is … well, dead in a way.’
‘Yes,’ Logan nodded, remembering it. ‘Yes, you’re right, Max.’
‘Is he on something, do you think? Heroin? Mescalin? Christ, Chris, I’m out of my depth here. Ecstasy to me is half an hour with Jean Simmons or Doris Day. That’s the kind of sad old bastard I am.’
Metternich raised his head to yawn. No surprises there, then.
‘Maybe,’ Logan nodded. ‘Max, forgive me, but this takes a bit of digesting, a bit of thought. I couldn’t borrow the tape, I suppose?’
‘Sorry, Chris,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘It’s not me I’m protecting.’
‘Say no more,’ Logan was on his feet. ‘I’ve been there myself. Look, let me sleep on it, will you? Do a bit of digging – don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I’ll ring you when I’ve got something.’
And he made for the door, worrying every step of the way what hidden messages his body was giving.
10
Maxwell stared out of the window, rushing along as he was, like troops in a battle. ‘So why, Senior Mistress mine, did our great and worthy Headmaster ask me to accompany you on this jolly?’
‘It is not a jolly, Max,’ she assured him, stirring her Stagecoach coffee with one of those whippy, bendy plastic things which have replaced spoons on all public services. ‘We are going to discuss plans for the new theatre.’
‘Assuming the bid is successful?’
Yes,’ she tutted, ‘though I have it on excellent authority that it will be.’
‘And my role is?’ He bit deep into his Genoa cake. It tasted like a Star Wars figure, all plastic and crunchy.
‘Tangential is as kind as I can manage,’ she said icily. ‘Here.’ And she unfolded a sheet of paper on the table between them. ‘This,’ her gold-ringed fingers stabbed at a series of lines, ‘is the proposed theatre. Stage, auditorium, green room, usual offices, box office. This,’ she poked about next door, ‘is that sink of iniquity, your sixth form block.’
‘Good God!’
“Max, you must have seen this before.’ Deirdre Lessing was at a loss.
‘In point of fact, Senior Mistress, no. Still, it’ll be handy to have a public urinal so close to my office.’
‘Today is your last chance to object,’ she told him. ‘That’s why I’m taking you along.’
‘Oh,’ pouted Maxwell, sitting back sulkily and kicking the padded seat opposite, ‘and I thought it was just for the ride.’
They rattled north, through Guildford and Woking, past the desolation that was Clapham Junction where a whole new language was sprayed in bold overlapping letters on every flat surface, through the site of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, where the first Georgians had been forced to amuse themselves until they invented television and Playstations and theme parks. Then, it was Waterloo where the IRA had brought about the disappearance of rubbish bins and pigeons flitted about in the Victorian rafters, ready to drop on the buggers below.
On the tube escalators Maxwell was careful to keep to the right, although personally he always dressed to the left and had the unenviable experience of being at eye level with Deirdre Lessing’s bum. Ferrets fighting in a sack. She nearly died when a huge Rasta with dreadlocks swept by and winked at her.
‘We could have taken a cab,’ he said.
‘Certainly not.’ She stood on her dignity on the escalator. ‘Men masturbate in taxis.’
‘Really?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘But it’s not compulsory, surely?’
They’d built the Garrick Club in 1831 when London streets were thronged with riotous mobs demanding the immediate implementation of the Reform Bill – ‘The Bill,’ they had shouted, ‘the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill.’ And now The Bill was on telly every week. What had the world come to? The Club stood in King Street, Covent Garden, then, but they’d moved it to Garrick Street by coincidence in 1862 when Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister for the second time and beer was tuppence a pint.
