Maxwell’s Match Read online

  ‘Ah,’ Maxwell took the man’s hand. He was a rather cadaverous young man, like the corpse in the Death and the Maiden painting by Baldung, only with more hair. ‘My friends call me Max.’

  ‘Max. I’m Tony.’

  ‘This brown stuff is what passes for coffee at Leighford, Tony. Join me?’

  ‘Why not? It’s good of you to give up your Sunday.’

  ‘I live here anyway,’ Maxwell said. ‘How was the journey?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You drove?’

  ‘Yes. I’m parked by the steps. Is that all right?’

  ‘Perfect.’ Maxwell rattled the mugs in his hunt for the school spoon. ‘Especially if you’re in the space marked “Head”. Tell me … Tony, are you happy about this? The exchange, I mean?’

  ‘Well … er …’

  Both men laughed.

  ‘No,’ Maxwell broke the ice. ‘Me neither. Your Head a particularly deranged sort, is he?’

  ‘Off the wall. Yours?’

  ‘As a wagon-load of monkeys. Still, I suspect I’m getting the better deal.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, the food can’t be worse than Leighford, believe me. Word to the wise,’ he patted the side of his nose, ‘real people don’t eat quiche.’

  Graham laughed again, taking Maxwell’s proffered seat. ‘That’s Jesus,’ he pointed to the Head of Sixth Form’s scarf, dangling from the door handle.

  ‘I’m impressed. Don’t tell me you’re a Cambridge man?’

  ‘Peterhouse.’

  Maxwell’s face fell. ‘Ah, not quite, then. What did you read? Legs said you were a Housemaster.’

  ‘Legs?’

  ‘Diamond. You know, the gangster. Actually, anyone less like a smooth psychotic killing machine I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Well, I’m a linguist at heart. French with German. I’m not quite sure how I drifted into the pastoral bit.’

  ‘Ah, indeed. Drift is the right word for it. The Geographers use it a lot, don’t they? Tectonics or something. Seems to go with the vagueness of the subject. How’s the coffee?’

  ‘Fine,’ Graham smiled.

  ‘Liar,’ Maxwell growled.

  Graham was taking in the room. ‘Now, don’t tell me you’re a film buff?’

  ‘I dabble.’ Maxwell was modesty itself.

  ‘Me too,’ Graham enthused. ‘You know, they ought to re-release The Informer. Wonderful stuff. We’ve got a film society at Grimond’s. You must go to one of their screenings. I never miss.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Maxwell said. ‘I will. Now, come on. Let me show you round the zenith of flat-topped sixties kitsch, over a school built for four hundred that now houses three times that. A learned institution where our Maths GCSE results have been known to reach double figures.’

  Graham looked oddly at him.

  ‘Just kidding,’ Maxwell slapped the cadaver on the back and led him out to the harsh light of the mezzanine day. ‘They never have.’

  The lights along the Shingle twinkled in the black-purple that stretched away from 38 Columbine. Maxwell was sitting in his swivel, the modelling chair in which he escaped from the cares of the 21st century. He’d cracked Eleven Zed’s explanation for British appeasement in the ’30s, resisting the urge to consign the lot to his wastebasket having smothered their books in red ink. Unable to face yet another explanation of the outbreak of plague in 1665 from Year Seven, he pushed their pile of books out of sight and trundled up to his attic, that Holy of Holies on top of the world where another quarter of his life stretched out under the lamplight.

  Three-hundred-and-twenty-three plastic horsemen, immaculately modelled and painted, sat on their troop-horses patiently, waiting for word from the Sapoune Heights. On the desk in front of him, under the fixed magnifying lens, lay William Perkins, number three-hundred-and- twenty-four.

  ‘Trumpeter to you, Count,’ Maxwell said, although to be fair, the cat hadn’t asked.

  The great beast was dozing, dreaming of the rat-haunted night and the crack of bones in his jaws. Why the idiot who provided the tinned stuff should closet himself up here with those weird bits of white he proceeded to stick together and change their colour, Metternich couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Hence, oh, bugger …’ the tiny bugle slipped from Maxwell’s fingers and vanished somewhere in the darkness of the carpet. Why, oh why had he bought a brown one? He joined the piece of plastic on the floor, patting the tufts in the blackness until he found it. ‘Oh, shit. Sharp, aren’t they,’ his crimson head bobbed up again. ‘Plastic bugles? As Perkins was in the 11th, he’d have spent most of his time playing Coburg on this instrument. Coburg, Count, it’s the slow march of the 11th Hussars, in honour of their Colonel, Prince Albert. Of Coburg. Get it? What do we know of Trumpeter Perkins, I hear you ask? Not a lot, really.’

  Maxwell concentrated, frowning as he stuck the plastic bugle onto the plastic back. ‘He enlisted in 1846. Rode the Charge of course, hence his inclusion in the Diorama of Fame. Became a Trumpet-Major eventually. Lived in Forest Gate, Essex – well, I suppose somebody had to. Do you know …’

  That black plastic thing shattered Metternich’s peace. The sharp, metallic ring it made always evoked the same response in his Master. Sure enough, as Metternich watched, Maxwell reached across and started talking into it. At least that made the ringing stop.

  ‘… he was a bog attendant at an underground lavvy somewhere in the City? Fancy that. War Office?’

  ‘Max. Sylv.’

  ‘Nursie, darling.’

  ‘Is this a good time?’

  Maxwell laid Trumpeter Perkins down on his face to let his bugle dry. ‘Always a good time for you, Sylv.’

  There had been a time when Sylvia Matthews’s heart would have leapt at those words. Now, it just gave her a warm glow. She’d loved Peter Maxwell once and loved him still in a way. But there was her Guy and his Jacquie and an ocean of ifs in between. It had been time for them both to move on. They had. But Sylvia was still Matron at Leighford High, the Florence Nightingale of the comprehensive system, patrolling the corridors with her lamp and Morning After pills.

  ‘Thought I’d fill you in on your swap-mate.’

  ‘Tony? You bitch, I’d thought you’d never ring. Do tell.’

  ‘Well, he seems very nice. Not at all the snob I thought he’d be. Into films, just like you.’

  ‘Now, Sylvia Matthews, wash your mouth out. Snob, indeed. There but for the grace of a careless job application thirty odd years ago …’

  ‘You’ve never taught in the Private Sector, have you, Max?’

  ‘Amazingly, no. The nearest I’ve come is a Grammar School. I’m looking forward to Grimond’s. The staff there will all be Oxbridge by way of MGS.’

  ‘MGS?’

  ‘Mighty great shitheads. You know the type.’

  ‘Well, Tony’s not like that.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s not,’ Maxwell reached across for his nightly tumbler of Southern Comfort, the amber nectar glowing in the half light. ‘Will he cope, do you think? At Leighford?’

  ‘Will he be doing any teaching?’

  ‘That’s up to Legs, I suppose. Can he, d’you think?’

  ‘Ten Bee Four might have him for elevenses,’ Sylvia was surmising, knowing her charges as well, if not better, than Maxwell. ‘Incidentally, while I remember, you won’t be seeing Michelle Whitmore for a while.’

  ‘Termination?’

  ‘Septic piercings.’

  ‘Ah, the curse of the artistically challenged. And don’t tell me where on her person; I haven’t long eaten. What of Private Tony?’

  ‘Bit of a mummy’s boy, I’d say. Daddy was a civil servant.’

  ‘Retired?’

  ‘Dead, I believe.’

  ‘Well, that’s the Civil Service for you.’

  ‘He’s got a way with him, though.’

  Maxwell felt rather than heard the silence. ‘Oh?’

  Sylvia could hear his eyebrow rising. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just a wa
y he has of … oh, focussing, I suppose.’

  ‘Focussing?’ Maxwell repeated. ‘Come on, Sylv. I invented body language, remember? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, he looks at you. Listens. Really listens. You know Legs, how his eyes are always glancing everywhere else in case somebody more important is passing …’

  ‘You’re being unkind, Nurse Matthews,’ Maxwell scolded. ‘He’s put his personality down somewhere and can’t find it, that’s all.’

  ‘And Maurice Bell,’ Sylvia went on. ‘He’s always just staring at my cleavage.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ Maxwell patted his chest. ‘I thought it was just mine.’

  ‘Well, Tony really cares. Or if he doesn’t, he’s a bloody good actor. And ideas. He’s really full of them. I must admit, I’m a fan. He was very taken with you.’

  ‘Aw shucks!’ Maxwell rolled his head in the best Slim-Pickens-deep-South anyone was likely to see East of the Pecos. ‘I jest bet he says that to all the good ol’ boys.’

  ‘No, seriously. He said you’d fit like a hand in a glove at Grimond’s. Said you were larger than life. The sort of master he’d had at school.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Maxwell chuckled. He’d heard that before. ‘The vanishing breed.’

  ‘I told him the kids call you Mad Max.’

  ‘As well they might. Here I am, fifty-something, in the prime of my life, with another desperate round of GCSE and A-levels imminent and I’m going to waste my time doing … what? Buggered if I know.’

  ‘You’re going to enjoy yourself, Max,’ Sylvia told him. ‘Relax for a bit. You owe it to yourself.’

  ‘Sylv,’ he said. ‘I am feeling guilty.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Foisting Tony on you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she blustered. ‘It’s not so bad. It’s only for a fortnight.’

  ‘Keep me posted,’ Maxwell smiled and hung up, shaking his head. ‘Methinks, Count,’ he looked wryly at the cat, ‘the lady doth not protest nearly half enough.’

  Maxwell said his farewells as dawn climbed behind Leighford abattoir, as it normally did about that time each Monday morning.

  ‘Well, I think that’s the lot, Count.’ He glanced across the hall at the piebald beast who sat in the way that cats do, his left hind leg upright behind his ear, his nose up his bum. Rather there than somebody else’s, Maxwell always supposed.

  ‘Now, it’s not for long.’

  No sound but the slap of fur on fur.

  ‘Look, this is a man thing, Count. When two old chums say goodbye, well,’ he shrugged, ‘they don’t get all girlie and dewy eyed. They just say “Sayonara”. That’s if they’re two old Japanese chums, of course. Otherwise, they just say “Ciao”. But of course, that makes them Italian … oh, bollocks, Count, you know my views. Jacquie’ll be in with the goodies tonight. And, yes, Mrs B. is still coming to clean on Wednesdays, as per usual. Now, you behave yourself. And remember …’ he wagged a warning finger, ‘any lady friends in and you make sure you’ve got protection, okay?’ And Maxwell left.

  Metternich had barely time to lift the other leg behind his ear when his master reappeared. ‘Oh, but I forgot. That’s why I had you done all those years ago, wasn’t it? So that we wouldn’t hear the scamper of tiny little pads? No, no,’ he gushed. ‘Don’t thank me now.’ And the front door clicked behind him.

  He was on the train. Along with a few hundred others, wondering if they’d ever get to work that day, next day, sometime never. He’d done his homework, he reflected, as the Hampshire fields flew by, already a pale green with the Spring sowing. Jedediah Grimond had been a nabob, one of those scions of the none too honourable East India Company who had sailed to the subcontinent two centuries ago with not much more than the clothes he stood up in and a writing slope full of unbridled optimism. When he came back, he had somehow acquired a small fortune and become carriage folk. Grimond’s was his country pad, a modest little thousand hectares or so with grooms, under-butlers and tweenies without number. But death and taxes caught up with Jedediah Grimond and his descendants, as they do with us all, and the house sold to pay death duties. It was a convalescent home for officers during the Great War and had become a school during the ’30s.

  ‘Coffee, sir?’

  Maxwell turned from the window to peruse the cornucopia of delights available on the Southern Train trolley. It didn’t take him long.

  ‘Mr Maxwell?’ He turned at the sound of his name, glad to be off the train with its mobile-phone users and terminal coughers and on the windy platform at Petersfield. A tall, sandy-haired young man stood there, hand extended.

  ‘David Gallow. I’m Head of History at Grimond’s.’

  ‘Mr Gallow.’ Maxwell shook it.

  ‘David, please. I gather from Dr Sheffield you’ve come to do a spot of observation.’

  ‘Observation?’ Maxwell followed the younger man through the station concourse. ‘I had hoped for a spot of teaching, even. Who knows?’

  ‘You’re familiar with AQA courses?’ Gallow checked, flicking his electronic remote as they reached the car park.

  ‘My dear boy,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘I wrote most of them.’

  Gallow’s laugh was brittle. ‘Well, we’ll see. How was your journey?’

  ‘Please,’ Maxwell scowled. ‘There are some things that are just too painful. You have a Head of Sixth Form?’

  Gallow looked sideways at him, helping him load his bags into the car boot. ‘After a fashion.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘No, no,’ Gallow laughed again. ‘I’m not being Machiavellian; it’s just that, as you may know, Grimond’s has not too distantly joined forces with a girls’ school, St Hilda’s.’

  ‘I read your prospectus,’ Maxwell clicked into his seatbelt.

  ‘Two different systems – our Houses versus their Years – vertical and horizontal. It hasn’t been easy. Noses can so easily be put out of joint, can’t they?’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Maxwell grunted. ‘Do you live in?’

  ‘Yes, I’m an Assistant House Master. I used to have a little place here in Petersfield. Not far from Churchers, as a matter of fact, so there was not much respite from the sound of leather on willow. Are you a cricket man?’

  ‘Not since the Don,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘But isn’t it … what? The Cross Country season still?’

  ‘Till Easter, yes,’ Gallow crunched his way through the gears of his Audi, ‘Then it’s back to flannels.’

  ‘Oafs at the wicket, eh?’ he smiled at the Head of History, who didn’t seem to take the misquotation at all well.

  It was a pleasant drive, as a pale sun at last climbed its way above the morning mist. The road snaked out before them and they purred north-west under the rising ground of Butser Hill with its Iron Age ghosts, past East Meon with its half-timbered cosiness and the wraith of Izaak Walton, the Great Fisherman, dozing by the river bank.

  ‘Over there,’ Gallow was providing the running commentary, ‘is West Meon, burial place of Thomas Lord.’ He noted Maxwell’s blank expression. ‘As in Lords,’ the Head of History patronized. ‘You know, the cricket ground.’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘As my memory serves,’ he said, ‘he’s rubbing shoulders – and let’s hope nothing else – with dear old Guy Burgess, friendly neighbourhood defector and spy.’

  The running commentary came to an end.

  It was much as Maxwell expected; a smallish Palladian red-brick pile, Jedediah’s old house, dwarfed by a plate-glass add-ons not unlike his own Leighford High. He knew at once, though, that here, things were different. There was no patronizing County sign “Learning to make a difference”; no burnished-spray graffito telling the world what it already knew, that “Diamond is a wanker”; no crèche for unmarried Year Eleven girls by the school gate. Instead, there were ancient gateposts and an elegant coat of arms emblazoned on both, where wrought iron lions roared defiance in the sun. That would be right. Maxwell’s homework told him that old Jedediah Grimond
had bought his K along with everything else that wasn’t his birthright. And the College of Arms wasn’t above adding to its coffers by drafting the odd heraldic design in exchange for a little folding stuff.

  Gallow’s car crunched on the Grimond gravel and he unhooked the boot. ‘Mr Maxwell,’ he said before he opened his door, ‘You’ll enjoy yourself here, won’t you?’

  There was something odd in his delivery, a tone that Maxwell couldn’t place for the moment. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he told him. Then the younger man was out of the car and on the steps, worn and cracked, that led to the glazed double doors.

  ‘Parker!’

  A middle-aged man, rather thick-set, with horn-rimmed glasses and extensive white hair appeared from nowhere.

  ‘This is Parker,’ Gallow said. ‘Our steward. Parker, take Mr Maxwell’s things to Tennyson, would you? And see that Mrs Oakes sets a place for lunch with Dr Sheffield.’

  ‘High table?’ Parker checked.

  ‘Of course. Mr Maxwell, just in time for coffee.’

  The staff room at Grimond’s could not have been in greater contrast to Leighford. There was no sign of the TES anywhere. But then, presumably there weren’t eighty odd people – and at Leighford they didn’t come much odder – looking for job vacancies as an escape route from Grimond’s. The furniture was elderly and there was more than a hint of pipe smoke wreathing around the pigeon holes where everybody’s letters were addressed to people with letters after their names and the words ‘Cantab’ and ‘Oxon’.

  Gallow introduced Maxwell to a dozen or so, the men outnumbering the women. Alan Somebody was Head of Chemistry; Colin was Languages overlord; Bruce dabbled in Politics. At the mention of the word ‘comprehensive’ he noticed all of them shift a little and one or two edged away, eyeing him with curiosity or disdain. He read their minds; what was this oik doing here? What was he – some pinko-liberal? It wasn’t catching, was it? Had he heard of Oxbridge at all? He smiled benignly at it all.

  ‘Well,’ Dr Sheffield sat back in the opulence of his study a little before lunch. ‘What do you make of Grimond’s, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘Very civilized, Dr Sheffield,’ Maxwell told him. ‘A little of a culture shock already and I haven’t met the kids yet.’