Maxwell’s Movie Read online

  Bernard Ryan was a bully. Like most of the new managerial class of teachers, he’d been promoted quickly and had come from nowhere because he knew what a CD ROM was and spoke warmly of GNVQ. He knew more buzz words than a whole hive of bees and he had the words ‘Pushy Bastard’ tattooed on his forehead.

  ‘This is serious, Anthea,’ were the first words he spoke to her, ‘very serious.’

  ‘Have you heard from the Parsons?’ she asked him.

  ‘They’re in with Mr Diamond now. I have to say you handled this badly. Very badly.’

  He watched with evident delight as her face crumpled and her shoulders shook. And he was enjoying himself so much he positively jumped when his office door slammed shut and Peter Maxwell stood there, like the Angel of Death. Anthea felt an arm around her shoulders and caught her breath. The 7th Cavalry had arrived.

  ‘Nearly nine, Anthea,’ Maxwell said softly. ‘Better cut along and register 8ED or they’ll demolish B Block.’

  She tried to smile, but it didn’t work.

  ‘Just a minute,’ Ryan frowned, ‘I haven’t finished …’

  Maxwell ignored him and tapped his watch. ‘It really is about that time,’ he said to Anthea. She shot a glance at the Second Deputy. ‘I’m sorry, Bernard,’ she just about managed before she dashed through the door that Maxwell had opened for her.

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Ryan exploded, his neck crimson and his eyes watering. Maxwell had not yet closed the door and he smiled sweetly at two astonished Year Seven kids scurrying past at that moment on their way to registration.

  ‘It’s a role play exercise,’ he said to them. ‘You know, the sort of thing Mrs Baker gets you to do in Drama lessons.’ Then he turned on Ryan and the Heavens fell. ‘Second Deputy,’ he growled. ‘That’s one up from the bloody groundsman, isn’t it?’

  ‘Now look …’ but Ryan’s heart was in his mouth and his voice had lost its fire. Maxwell was just beginning.

  ‘Point that finger at me again, Ryan, and I’ll shove it up your arse, along with the rest of your arm. Don’t you suppose Anthea feels shitty enough without you behaving like some pubescent Adolf Hitler? What was she supposed to do yesterday? A member of staff goes missing along with one of my sixth form. She conducted a search, nay, several. She contacted the appropriate security forces. She contacted the police. She rang you. That’s all she could have done. I’d have done exactly the same and so would you.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Now, if you want to earn those metaphorical pips on your shoulder, you’ll do what a pastoral deputy is supposed to do and that’s look out for the welfare of the kids, not shit on staff who can’t defend themselves.’ Maxwell had snatched open the door. ‘And if you want somebody to kick around, Bernard, it was my trip in the first place. So when you find some bottle from somewhere, you come and kick me around. All right?’

  Ryan looked as though he’d just been hit by the school bus. And he was still looking that way when Maxwell slammed the door and was gone, shouting to no one in particular, ‘Hello, cruel world!’

  Maxwell should have worn his Hush Puppies, the silent moccasins he habitually wore in the exam season so as not to disturb the kids in hall or gym. True, he didn’t regard SATS as exams. After all, they were only the government’s attempt to reimpose the eleven-plus and to enable them to draw up League Tables. He didn’t regard ‘Keep Out, Hall in Use’ signs as relevant to him either, so he squeaked his way across the polished floor in his lace-up brogues and didn’t even wince when the Hall door crashed behind him.

  An anguished Ben Horton, the Head of Science, looked up and two hundred and thirty-eight heads swivelled to see what the commotion was. Then they turned back. It was only Mad Max on his way to see the Headmaster.

  James Diamond had been the Head of Leighford High for four years. In that time they’d introduced GNVQ, they’d started calling probationer teachers NQTs and the world had become a plastic set of initials. But there was nothing more plastic than Mr J. Diamond, BA, M.Ed. The man was a physicist by training – not the best start in life – and anyone who had the crassness to call him a Master of Education was indeed exposing himself to public scorn. Because he was well brought up in the traditions of the old school and not because he had any veneration whatsoever for his Headmaster, Maxwell tapped briefly on the door before gatecrashing the interview with the missing boy’s parents.

  ‘Ah, Max,’ Diamond looked as grey as his suit, ‘there you are.’

  ‘Just straightening Mr Ryan out on a few points, Headmaster,’ Maxwell said. ‘Mrs Parsons,’ he shook the woman’s hand. ‘Mr Parsons,’ he shook the man’s. ‘Peter Maxwell.’

  The introduction was superfluous really. Everyone the length and breadth of Leighford and Tottingleigh knew Mad Max or knew of him. He’d taught them or he’d taught their kids and many was the rising young politician or entrepreneur or professional who, in their heart of hearts, owed it all to Mad Max.

  ‘I was just saying to Mr and Mrs Parsons,’ Diamond went on as Maxwell settled into the Head’s spare plastic chair, ‘that I’m sure there’s some simple explanation. And, of course, absolutely no cause for alarm.’

  Maxwell looked at Mr and Mrs Parsons. She was a mousy woman with peroxide hair. He wasn’t, but there the differences ended.

  Maxwell had noticed over his four centuries in teaching how wives started to look like their husbands and vice versa. Or perhaps it was just the fusing of features in the face of their offspring that did it.

  ‘No, I’m sure not,’ Maxwell nodded, ‘I’m sure the Headmaster has asked you this already, Mr and Mrs Parsons, but can you think of any reason why Ronnie should run away?’

  Mr Parsons looked blank, as though the idea had never occurred to him. Besides, he left the upbringing of the kids to Mrs Parsons. This was the first time he’d set foot inside Leighford High in seven years.

  ‘No.’ Mrs Parsons bailed him out, as she always did. Ron Senior was a good provider, but he didn’t know his children, deep down He was never there to know them, endlessly on the road as he was, from one building job to another. The kids were hers. She’d speak up for them. ‘No, I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘No trouble?’ Maxwell prompted her. ‘No rows at home?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mr Parsons stirred himself a little. He was happy to leave all this school stuff to his missus, but when there was some sort of insinuation in the offing, he thought he’d better do his bit.

  ‘It happens, Mr Parsons,’ Maxwell said. ‘Family tiffs. Oh, they’re nothing in themselves, but in the minds of kids, they loom out of all proportion. Things become distorted.’

  ‘You know, do you?’ Parsons snapped. ‘Got kids of your own?’

  ‘Ron …’ Mrs Parsons reached across to pat her husband’s hand.

  Jim Diamond opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was, it wasn’t quick enough or relevant enough for Peter Maxwell.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Head of Sixth Form. ‘Two hundred and thirty-eight of them, at the last count,’ and he regretted that slightly, because now, without Ronnie, it was two hundred and thirty-seven. ‘I’m father to all my sixth form, Mr Parsons; they’re all my kids.’

  ‘No.’ Such a notion made no sense to Ron Parsons. Bricks, mortar; these were the things he understood. A teacher’s relationship with his charges? That was beyond him. ‘No, I mean kids of your own.’

  For a moment, there was a silence. Jim Diamond squirmed a little. To him, Peter Maxwell was a bachelor, too wound up in whatever it was that bachelors did to have much of a life. But he didn’t know Peter Maxwell. He didn’t know about the little girl who had died, all those years ago, as a police car, hurtling out of control around a deadly bend on a wet road, had ploughed into her, killing her and her mother instantly. At least, Maxwell hoped it was instantly. For twenty-four years he had hoped his wife and daughter never knew what hit them. It was all that had kept him sane.

  ‘No,’ Maxwell said softly. ‘No kids of my own.�
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  ‘Well, there you are.’ Ron wouldn’t leave it alone. ‘How can you know, how can you possibly know what it’s all about, then? Coming in here telling us it’s our fault.’

  ‘That’s not what he said, Ron.’ Mrs Parsons made a pretty decent 7th Cavalry herself when she put her mind to it, thundering to Maxwell’s aid. ‘Mr Maxwell is only trying to help.’

  Ron Parsons sat there for a moment, on the Headmaster’s plastic chair. Then he folded. His shoulders relaxed and he relented before his wife’s cajoling and the steady gaze of Mad Max. ‘Yeah, well … all right, then,’ he said.

  ‘No, Mr Maxwell, there was no row,’ Mrs Parsons told him. ‘We didn’t see much of Ronnie the night before he went, to be honest. He went out to see his mates for a drink, but he was in by ten. You was watching the football with him, wasn’t you, Ron?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Ron corroborated.

  ‘And he seemed his usual self?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary?’

  Ron Parsons couldn’t really say what was out of the ordinary for his eldest boy. Ronnie was clever and lots of dads would be proud, but Ron Senior didn’t really understand the boy. He was doing Business Studies and History and Geography. It was all Greek to Ron. In the absence of an opinion, the boy’s father shrugged.

  ‘Have the police been in touch?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘The police?’ Mrs Parsons flashed a glance at her husband. This was a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake up. And she’d just entered some new and terrible depth in it. The Headmaster’s pastel walls stretched up like the slabs of some dungeon. And the light at the top got smaller and smaller. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Just routine,’ Maxwell said, sensing the rising tide of the woman’s panic. ‘They’ve got to ask some questions, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Parsons said. ‘Yes, of course.’

  Maxwell was on his feet. ‘Look,’ he said to them both, ‘please don’t worry. I have to be somewhere else now, but Ronnie will turn up. I’m sure of it. We’ll make some enquiries of our own. Headmaster,’ and Maxwell nodded briskly to the man before shaking the Parsons’ hands and making his exit.

  He flicked open the file on Ronnie Parsons. Seven very average GCSEs, played soccer for the school in Years Seven and Eight. A dog-eared Incident Form bore witness to the fact that Mr Diamond, no less, had caught him smoking beyond the tennis courts in Year Ten. A copy of his Centigrade Form gave evidence that his leanings were towards business or administration. He’d had measles, all the relevant jabs and his doctor was old Edgarson, in the sea-front practice. Maxwell shook his head as he’d done countless times over the inadequacy of the system, the flimsiness of the files.

  ‘Where are you, Ronnie,’ he muttered to himself, ‘you annoying little shit?’

  3

  Peter Maxwell’s feet were on the pouffe and his knees were under the table; the former literally, the latter metaphorically. Sylvia Matthews, the school nurse at Leighford High, didn’t usually entertain strange men on Thursdays. And they didn’t come much stranger than Peter Maxwell.

  He’d grabbed a lift with Ben Horton, pretending to be vaguely interested in the man of science’s verdict on the SAT paper for Year Nine. Then he’d fed Metternich the cat, soaked himself for half an hour in the bath, steeped in Radox, and saddled White Surrey for the twenty-minute ride to Sylvia’s flat.

  She’d welcomed him with his usual Southern Comfort and let him take off his shoes on the strict understanding that one sign of a hole in his socks and the brogues would be back on again. Odd for a nurse, to have a thing about feet. He’d partaken gratefully of her cheesecake and sat back on the sofa, his eyes closed, his hands clasped round his glass.

  ‘This is an honour.’ She brought through the cafetiere and two cups on a tray.

  ‘What is?’ He didn’t open his eyes.

  ‘A visit from you.’

  He opened his eyes. ‘Pressure of work,’ he said. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he reached into his cardigan pocket, ‘for you.’

  She put the tray down and took the brown-wrapped box, frowning. ‘Maxie,’ she said, ‘you remembered.’

  He wagged a finger at her, laughing. ‘Now, careful, Sylv,’ he said, ‘that Celia Johnson is frighteningly good. Any minute now, I’ll just have to give you my full-blown Trevor Howard and then we’re all in trouble.’

  She reached across with the perfume he’d given her and pecked him on the forehead. It was as close as she dared get to Peter Maxwell, the man she loved. ‘Thank you,’ she smiled, ‘you shouldn’t have. Although I suppose you’d say that’s a cliché.’

  ‘Au contraire, Matron mine,’ Maxwell said, ‘that’s a gospel fact. Have you seen the price of that stuff lately? I suppose it’s because it’s tested on humans. No, seriously, Sylv, it’s just a little something for leading me away from death’s door the other day.’

  ‘It’s nothing that any highly trained member of a caring profession wouldn’t have done,’ she said, suddenly afraid she’d dropped a few too many negatives in there. She was always afraid of these things with Maxie; not that he’d ever upbraided her or even commented on an infinitive more split than a raspberry.

  ‘No, no,’ Maxwell said, ‘it was beyond the call.’

  ‘Well, that’s because …’ and she stopped herself in mid-sentence. In mid-hope. ‘Coffee?’ One day she’d tell him. One day when she stopped being a stupid little girl in his presence. One day she’d tell him the truth, blurt it all out. But she daren’t. She daren’t in case he turned his back and made his excuses and left. One day would come one day. But for now, there was coffee.

  ‘Thanks.’ He took the cup from her, having drained his glass.

  ‘Well, are you going to tell me or not?’ She curled up on the chair opposite him.

  ‘You rather pinched my line there, Nursie,’ he told her.

  She knew that look. The twinkling eyes. The wry smile.

  ‘You know I rely on you for all my gossip. Where’s Ronnie?’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you transparent old Head of Sixth Form! And I thought it was my cheesecake you couldn’t resist. Either that or my body …’ She bit her lip, hoping he hadn’t heard, hoping he’d move the conversation on, hoping the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

  ‘You’re the grapevine, Sylv.’ She was in the clear. ‘Countless urchins flock to your room every day with everything from period pains to paranoia. If you don’t know what’s happening at Leighford, nobody does.’

  ‘Well …’ she said, enjoying the moment, the power.

  He twisted his face, indulging the pregnancy of her pause.

  ‘What did Leila tell you?’ she asked him.

  ‘Leila Roberts? Not a lot. She seems more bewildered than upset. Anthea too, I suppose. It is bizarre.’

  ‘They were an item, of course.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Leila and Ronnie.’

  ‘Were they?’

  She raised her eyes heavenward. ‘Oh, Max,’ she said. ‘Do you notice nothing?’

  ‘Well, I did catch Debbie Whatserface with her hand in the Acheson boy’s trousers last year. That was quite a coup, I thought.’

  ‘Yes, but you missed the gang bang with her and the First Fifteen, didn’t you? No, no,’ she laughed, ‘just my idea of a joke. Leila and Ronnie were going out all last summer.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was her type,’ Maxwell mused.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well,’ he rationalized, ‘she’s not anybody’s type, really, is she, Leila? I mean, she’s seventeen going on forty-eight. I’ve never seen a spinster school ma’am in the sixth form before. I’d have thought she’d be fonder of her hockey stick than Ronnie Parsons.’

  ‘That’s a dreadful thing to say!’ Sylvia scolded him. ‘And anyway, I never noticed much difference between Ronnie and a hockey stick.’

  ‘What, you mean bent or wooden?’ Maxwell asked her. ‘Or both?’

  ‘I mean, I always had Ronnie down for a bi
t of a non-event.’

  ‘Good-looking lad, though,’ Maxwell ventured, ‘isn’t he? To women, I mean?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Sylvia smiled. ‘Very. But I think Leila wants more than just a pretty face. Did Anthea say anything about them on the trip? I mean, was there a row or anything?’

  ‘Anthea said not,’ Maxwell told her, ‘but you know how it is, Sylv, fifty screaming idiots in paroxysms of delight because we’ve let ’em out for the day – and a day of the Science SATs too. I blame myself

  ‘Now, don’t be silly, Max,’ she scolded him. ‘You were burning up with fever. It simply wasn’t possible for you to go. How are you feeling now, by the way?’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing like a double disappearance for reducing the temperature and the size of my glands. Anyway, that Oriental Bezoar Stone you gave me was pretty powerful stuff; not to mention the old eye of newt and wool of bat. Old Maxie’s pulled through again.’

  ‘What about Dannie?’ Sylvia suddenly asked.

  ‘Dannie?’ Maxwell was lost. ‘Who’s Dannie?’

  ‘Dannie Roth. Don’t you remember? She left two years ago.’

  ‘Dannie Roth!’ Maxwell clicked his fingers. ‘Ah, how soon we forget. The siren of Year Ten, luring doomed male members of staff onto the rocks of their marriages.’

  ‘There wasn’t any truth in that, was there?’ she asked him. ‘Alan Tullet and Dannie?’

  ‘Well, you know what those Drama types are like.’ Maxwell sipped his coffee with all the bigotry of an historian. ‘Into nymphets in a big way. Certainly he was unwise to be seen going to the theatre with her.’

  ‘He was quite dishy, too,’ Sylvia remembered with a wistful smile.

  ‘If you like men too bone idle to shave properly, then, yes, I suppose he had a certain something. Scarcely got my blood racing, though. I shared a locker with the man for a term. He read Barbara Vine. But what’s he got to do with Ronnie Parsons?’

  ‘Not him,’ Sylvia said. ‘Dannie. Ronnie carried a torch for Dannie.’

  ‘Along with half the lads and staff in the school,’ Maxwell nodded.