Authors: M.J. Trow
He hauled Surrey’s handlebars in the tight circle that took him into Columbine and home. Number 38, he mused, had rarely looked so lovely, his front lawn sprinkled with the pink petals of the season. He heard his tyres hiss as he swung gratefully out of Surrey’s saddle, landing on his good leg and sliding the sleek beast into the awning alongside his shed. He patted the saddle and jerked free the panniers that carried his marking and his empty lunch box. What it did not carry was tomorrow’s lesson preparations. Peter Maxwell had not prepared a lesson in 800 years.
He watched the Great Man from the afternoon shadows, eyes narrowed to slits. He could kill him at a stroke – well, three or four. Teeth that would gouge his throat; claws that would rip his abdomen open. He settled for raising his leg in the air and licking his own bum. This time, Maxwell, you can live.
This
time. But there will come a day, and it won’t be long now, when you’ll turn too slow. That chain will come loose, those brakes will fail. And
I’ll
be waiting. Blood on the mat.
‘Afternoon, Count,’ Peter Maxwell raised his shapeless tweed cap to the black and white Tom licking his arse under
the acacia.
He glanced at the mail on the mat as he threw open the front door. Saga holiday offer; be bored to death in the company of really old farts – incontinence no object. Promise of another gargantuan prize draw from Tom Champagne; imagine, Peter Maxwell, a brand new Lexus GTI FX84 pulling up to the kerb outside 38 Columbine. A red reminder for the electricity bill; surely he’d paid one of those a couple of years ago? He threw his hat and scarf vaguely in the direction of the stand and took the stairs two at a time. Off with the jacket, tie and cycle clips as he skirted the lounge, a quick detour to the kitchen to pick up a clean glass and he was on, up to the next floor, beyond his bedroom to the Inner Sanctum that was his attic.
There they sat under the skylight, the 54 millimetre
plastic
warriors of the Light Brigade stretched out on the
diorama
table, with sand glued to its surface, looking for all the world like the dust of the Causeway and the Fedioukine Heights in that distant Russia of the good old days. At their head, astride the chestnut Ronald, Lord Cardigan fretted and fumed, all dash and fire, waiting for his fourth order on that fateful morning in October, so long ago and so far away. The order that was now coming to him, in the flying plastic hoofs of the troop horse of the 13th Lights, ridden by the impetuous Captain Nolan, pelisse flapping behind him, sabre bouncing on the animal’s flanks. ‘He was an ugly man,’ someone who knew him had written, ‘and he made an ugly corpse.’
Maxwell crouched to see them all at ground level. Three hundred and eighty-nine to go and he’s collected the set. Would he make them all, all the riders into the jaws of death, before death took him too, or would the paltry
pension
that teachers got these days freeze his assets and leave
him with half a brigade, the glittering squadrons under strength? He relaxed into his modelling chair, pulling down the gold-laced forage cap he’d bought in Brighton years ago and tilting it on his thatch of greying hair. He reached across and poured himself a stiff one, the amber nectar that was Southern Comfort and which lent a cosy, rosy glow to the world.
He picked up the grey plastic figure on the desk in front of him. ‘Private Ryan,’ he said softly. ‘No one to save you, was there?’ He fitted the plastic body onto the plastic head, muttering to nobody in particular. ‘Enlisted, 1847. Sailed for the Crimea on the troopship
Shooting Star
, April, 1854.’ He placed the rider into his saddle, careful to get the
balance
right, buttocks to leather. ‘Seriously wounded in the Charge… Died of wounds at Scutari. When can their glory fade? Shit!’ Maxwell slammed the horseman down and the soldier’s unglued busby rolled onto the desk. The Great Modeller was on his feet, the forage cap back on its hook, the Southern Comfort untouched in the cut glass, Private Ryan waiting impatiently on his horse without stirrups, weapons or reins. The best laid plans of mice and men. And there was a damning note burning a hole into Peter Maxwell’s pocket. He had places to be.
‘Eleanor, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’
‘Peter Maxwell, from Leighford High,’ the Head of Sixth Form tipped his legendary hat. ‘Is John in?’
‘Um…yes.’
Eleanor Fry was a good-looking woman, in a flowery dress that was rather eighteen months ago and smacked of the M and S Revival period. All a little too Stepford Wife for Peter Maxwell. She led him through the hall of the
unadventurous semi in the leafy, shady side of Duncombe Street and into the kitchen. Beyond the sliding doors, John Fry was sitting in a steamer chair, a lager in his hand and shades hiding his eyes. He was thirty-something, like his wife, with a floppy, Hugh Grant sort of hair-do and a laid back manner synonymous with being head of Business Studies. He always wore a suit when Visitors were around or he was appointing somebody new to his Empire. Like Vespasian with no class.
‘Mr Maxwell, John,’ Eleanor announced him as though she was the housekeeper.
‘Maxwell…’ Fry was on his feet. ‘Good God.’ This was a first. Along with half the kids at Leighford High, John Fry had always believed that Peter Maxwell lived in a cupboard somewhere on the History floor.
‘We know where you live,’ Maxwell winked, sensing the man’s surprise.
‘Clearly.’ Fry wasn’t smiling. ‘Er…d’you want a drink?’
‘No thanks,’ Maxwell told him, although the three or four fingers of Southern Comfort he’d just left behind wouldn’t have come amiss about now, ‘I’m cycling.’
‘Are you? Oh, of course, you can’t drive, can you?’
Maxwell smiled. He smiled at the memory of a pretty, dark-haired girl and her baby. Their faces smiled back at him every time he opened his wallet. Their faces said, ‘We’re still here, darling. Darling Daddy.’ But they weren’t here. Not any more. They were dead, slewed across the wet tarmac on a deadly bend, long, long ago. And ever since, Peter Maxwell had never sat behind the wheel of a car.
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘No, I can’t.’
‘Well,’ the Frys stood in their back garden looking at Maxwell as if he were a Jehovah’s Witness. ‘What do you want?’
‘Er…oh, it’s boring stuff, John. Those AVCE students…’
‘Who?’
‘Duke of Edinburgh Award. Bronze. Just crossing t’s, dotting i’s you know. Bernard Ryan’s been on my back.’
If John Fry had not been suspicious before, he was now. Bernard Ryan was Leighford High’s Deputy Head and Fry knew that rather than being on Maxwell’s back, he was
usually
under Maxwell’s shoe. And as for the Duke of Edinburgh Award, Leighford High hadn’t gone in for that since the said Duke of Edinburgh got engaged to the Princess Elizabeth.
‘Get me another, then, El, would you?’ Fry raised his empty can in the air and they watched his wife turn on her heel and go indoors. ‘We don’t do Duke of Edinburgh, Max,’ Fry said. ‘What’s all this about?’ He waved the man to another chair opposite his.
‘Annette Choker.’ Maxwell cut to the chase, checking that, Eleanor Fry-wise, the coast was clear.
‘Who?’
‘Well, I don’t know why Bernard wants the report now,’ he suddenly said, a little too loudly. ‘Some sponsorship bid or something. It’s all about kite marks these days, isn’t it? In my day, a kite was something you went out with on a windy day.’ Eleanor Fry had emerged silently and with alarming speed onto the patio steps and hurried past Maxwell to bring her husband his beer. Her body language said it all and a line of G.K. Chesterton crept into Maxwell’s mind. ‘Silence itself made softer by the sweeping of her dress.’
‘Yes.’ Fry’s smile was frozen behind the shades. ‘Yes, it is. So, what do you need?’
Eleanor had gone again, the door clicking behind her.
‘The truth.’ Maxwell leaned forward. There was a hedge
to his front and a hedge to his back and God knew how many neighbourly eavesdroppers beyond each one; the kind and the caring who also doubled as the vigilantes of the Neighbourhood Watch.
Fry wasn’t having any. He lolled back on the steamer, hissing open his can. ‘You’ve lost me.’
Maxwell had expected this. He pulled a crumpled note from his jacket pocket and passed it to his man.
‘So?’ Fry shrugged. It was easy to hide behind dark glasses, even if the eyes had it.
‘It’s your writing, John.’
‘Bollocks,’ the Business Studies teacher snapped.
‘I’ve had more memos from you than hot dinners,’ Maxwell was patience itself. ‘Remember last year? Taffy Iliffe gave you a special award at the Christmas dinner. You were the Memo King, weren’t you? The man voted most likely to pop pointless pieces of paper into everybody’s pigeonhole. I just want to know two things. Where is this confined space of yours? And who else is involved?’
Fry was sitting upright now. ‘Look, Max. This…note or whatever it is,’ he handed it back, ‘is nothing to do with me, and what’s it got to do with Annette Choker?’
‘So you do know her?’
‘I know of her. She’s in Year Eleven, isn’t she? I don’t teach her myself.’
‘John,’ Maxwell began, ‘…look, will you take those bloody glasses off? I need to see the whites of a man’s eyes.’
Fry took his time, then he whipped the shades away. ‘Just what is it you’re accusing me of?’
It was Maxwell’s turn to sit back. ‘Got any kids, John?’ he asked, looking round at the neat garden, with its
borders
, its shrubs, its privet boundaries.
‘No,’ the Head of Business said.
‘Maybe, if you had…’
‘Unless you’ve got some specific allegations,’ Fry was on his feet, ‘I’d like you to leave.’
Maxwell glanced across to the kitchen window where Eleanor Fry was moving about, wiping this, polishing that. Displacement for the displaced. He stood up, then closed to Fry, toe to toe, head to head.
‘I’d like to think you’re the victim of a vicious schoolgirl scam,’ he said softly. ‘The sort the
Mail on Sunday
dredges up occasionally. But I’ve got a nasty feeling you’re a pervert meeting a couple of fifteen year-olds for sordid sex
sessions
. Starting to sound pretty
News of the World
now, isn’t it? I’ll see myself out.’
He toyed with going back through the house, making his excuses, commenting on the lovely microwave, engaging in small talk, but the side gate suddenly seemed strangely appealing.
Bernard Ryan stood in the foyer of Leighford High School that morning, still, for reasons only he understood,
wearing
his name badge. He had been at the school as Second, then First Deputy, for too many years now and time, that Grand Illusion, had passed him by. He wasn’t really old enough for redundancy, but he’d asked the Head anyway if he could go, on the grounds of his obnoxiousness and
ineptitude
. In a moment of unusual and dazzling quippery, the Head had told him no; he was not quite incompetent or obnoxious enough.
‘Forgotten who you are, Bernard?’ Maxwell tipped his hat as he swept past him.
‘Morning, Mr Maxwell,’ Bernard Ryan bridled; he had all the sense of humour of a walnut.
The Head of Sixth Form hopped down the main corridor, removing his cycle clips as he went, much to the delight of a gaggle of Year Seven girls on their way to registration. ‘I’ll have you know,’ Maxwell rounded on them, ‘that this dance was all the rage back in the Summer of Love. Called the Bee Hip Hop. Ask your granddads about it.’ Just a little more confirmation, were it needed, that Peter Maxwell was mad. And he was gone into that Inner Sanctum, that haven of peace that is the staff room. Bolt-hole of sanity, oasis of calm.
‘I don’t give a flying fuck!’ were the first words that Maxwell heard. ‘You sort it out.’
A decidedly rattled John Fry crashed past him,
shoulder-barging
Maxwell aside as he disappeared through the doors.
Dierdre Lessing stood there, open-mouthed. She was the Senior Mistress at Leighford High, or Head Procuress as Maxwell occasionally called her when he was feeling very tried. Live cobras hissed and writhed on her head and most people avoided her deadly gaze lest they be turned to stone.
‘Dierdre,’ Maxwell whispered, smiling. ‘Mouth. You’re gaping, dear.’ It was like talking to his cat.
‘Did you hear what that man said?’ she shrilled, hands on hips, still staring at the still-flapping door.
‘I did,’ Maxwell nodded, tutting. ‘Most un-Businesslike. What did you say to upset him?’ It was the sort of stupid question the sillier Year Heads asked the pulverized victims of bullies.
‘Well, nothing.’ Dierdre was mentally unravelling the conversation of the past few minutes. ‘We were talking about progression; you know, Year Eleven into Year Twelve. Each Department Head is supposed to… I just asked him to be a little more proactive…’
Maxwell inhaled savagely, recoiling and clutching his
throat, steadying himself against the wall. ‘You…you used the p-word?’ he hissed in disbelief. ‘Dierdre, how could you? I must rush and console Mr Fry. Poor dear, he’s in need of counselling.’
Dierdre Lessing’s face said it all. ‘You’re the end, Maxwell,’ she growled and stormed out, to a gentle ripple of applause.
Maxwell bowed to his assorted colleagues and turned to his pigeon-hole. Ben Holton, the Head of Science, was at his elbow. ‘Wanker,’ he chuckled. Holton was bald as a badger, the wrong side of a messy divorce and would never see fifty again. Laughs didn’t happen often in his life.
‘You talking about me, Dierdre or John Fry?’ Maxwell didn’t glance in the man’s direction, but started to sort his mail.
‘Take your pick,’ Holton said.
Maxwell laughed, carrying a telephone-directory’s
thickness
of bumf to the bin. ‘Let’s do Thursday.’
The slope of the headland above Leighford that was called Staple Hill was like a battlefield. Vehicles lay at rakish angles, among them Leighford High’s minibus, the ghastly Nineties logo emblazoned on the side, sponsored by
everything
from Nike to Leerdammer. Tents littered the skyline, canvas flapping in the stiff spring breeze, straining against the guy-ropes, like those of Maxwell’s beloved Light Brigade in the Crimean Autumn in olden times.