Maxwell's Summer Read online

  ‘Flo likes a slow start to a book but I don’t really read books. Not whole books, anyway.’ As usual, Elliot was on the side of right, climbing to the moral high ground. ‘It seems all wrong to me, wasting time reading when you’re in a genuine oldy-timey house like this. I wish these gardens were a bit more ...’ he waved an arm in the air, ‘a bit more sensible, you know what I mean? I’m finding it hard to do my measured mile run; there’s all these trees and hedges in the way.’

  The ghost of Capability Brown gave a gasp and twirled in his grave. Maxwell had to answer this time. ‘These gardens have been returned to the state they were in when the last big change was made to the house,’ he pointed out. Then, to clarify, ‘No one went running for fun in those days.’

  ‘I say they didn’t!’ Elliot was scornful. ‘See the bellies on those guys in those pictures, they didn’t run anywhere, you can bet the farm on that.’

  ‘I suppose they had a lot to do,’ Maxwell had decided against going into detail about how many Hales and how many ffinches had served how many governments – he didn’t want to get into politics with these two; he had a very good idea where their loyalties lay and he didn’t want to delve.

  ‘That’s true, dear,’ Flo came back into the conversation. ‘They had to do everything themselves, don’t forget. No takeaways then. No pool boys, nothing. They had to do it all themselves. Imagine how busy you’d be without the help.’

  Elliot nodded slowly, clearly lining up the help in his head. ‘Say, Pete,’ he suddenly said. ‘I know what I was going to ask you.’

  ‘Ask away,’ Maxwell said. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘We’ve been around to a lot of oldy-timey houses this vacation and do you know what we’ve noticed?’

  Maxwell hardly dare guess.

  ‘No racoons. Now, tell me; how do you guys manage that? You got some kinda trap you set? Some kinda poison? Because back home, they’re in the trash, digging up the bulbs. You get one of them critters in your house, you’ll have to redecorate top to bottom.’

  ‘We ... we don’t have racoons in England.’ Maxwell was so surprised, he answered as if it were a sensible question.

  Flo’s eyes were like gobstoppers. ‘You mean you’ve ...’ She knew there was a word but couldn’t bring it to mind.

  ‘Excavated them?’ Elliot, as ever, came to the rescue.

  ‘We didn’t need to ... er ... get rid of them,’ Maxwell said. He gave himself a pat on the back. This diplomacy lark was easy, once you were in the swing. ‘We’ve never had them.’

  The two leaned back, book ends of amazement. ‘What, never?’ Elliot needed to be absolutely sure.

  ‘Well, possibly in prehistory.’ Biology wasn’t Maxwell’s strong suit. ‘But certainly not for the last couple of millennia.’

  Flo was struck dumb, but sadly, Elliot wasn’t. ‘I guess that means you have a skunk problem,’ he said. ‘Left a niche for the little critters to fill.’ Elliot watched the Disney Channel. He knew how nature worked.

  ‘No.’ Maxwell felt almost apologetic. ‘We don’t have skunks, either. Or muskrats. Or groundhogs. Or chipmunks. Our badgers are different from yours. So are our robins. Your robins are thrushes with red breasts. The early settlers saw the colour and called them robins because they were homesick.’

  Flo and Eugene sat silently for a while. ‘You got rattlers?’ Elliot asked hopefully, after a while.

  ‘No, sorry. We have only one poisonous snake, the adder, and it is very shy and we only have a couple of dozen biting incidents a year.’

  ‘Hey,’ Flo said. ‘That’s a lot. We only had a couple dozen fatalities in the whole of the last ten years.’

  Elliot was a little confused. Flo seemed to know something he didn’t and he wanted to know how that could be. ‘Flo?’ he said, with an accusatory tone.

  She leaned round Maxwell to explain. ‘Young Bobbie did a holiday project on them last fall semester,’ she said. ‘That’s how I know so much.’

  Elliot subsided muttering. ‘Excuse her, Pete,’ he said, quietly. ‘Things don’t stick in her head that well as a rule.’

  ‘No, perhaps I haven’t made myself clear,’ Maxwell said, hurriedly. ‘People don’t generally die from adder bites. In fact, I don’t remember a death for ... I can’t remember. I think it was when I was first teaching – the Downs around here have adders and they put up posters to take care.’

  Elliot was determined to find something they had in common, nature-wise.

  ‘Cane toads?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Eagles?’

  ‘Some, in the far north. I believe the Isle of Wight has reintroduced sea eagles, but they keep losing them.’

  ‘Vultures?’

  ‘No.

  ‘Cougars?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Elliot was almost cross-eyed with the effort.

  ‘Moose?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Be fair, Elliot,’ Flo said. ‘We don’t have moose where we live.’

  ‘No, no, fair point.’ Her husband was getting desperate; whenever he gave Flo the time of day, it was clear he was at the end of his tether. ‘Last one.’

  Maxwell smiled. This was getting to be fun. ‘Try me,’ he said.

  ‘Coyotes.’

  Maxwell got up and smiled down at the two. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry, no coyotes. Or timber wolves. Or buffalo, except on farms for milk. Now, it has been fun, but it’s nearly lunch time and I promised my little boy I would look in on him at the riding stable. So, if you’ll excuse me,’ he bowed slightly and walked off down the gravel path.

  ‘Elliot,’ he heard Flo whine behind him. ‘He’s got such lovely manners. Why don’t you have lovely manners, Elliot?’

  ‘Damn it!’ Elliot had thought of another. ‘Armadiller – I bet they’re overrun with them little critters. I should have said armadiller.’

  Flo sighed. She fished Northampton Abbey out of her bag and opened it at random and began to read. Sometimes, she wished they could vacation in Mexico, like all their friends. But Elliot was such a stickler for culture, so here they were so she had better try to like it.

  The walk between towering rhododendron bushes to the riding stables was cool after the hot sun of the physick garden but, more importantly, free of ‘guests’. Maxwell hadn’t quite got his eye in yet, but was pretty sure that Flo and Elliot were not typical. He didn’t know how much the Hale-ffinches were charging for the week’s stay, but it was probably reassuringly expensive, as a rather aspirational aunt of his used to say. He hadn’t risked asking Elliot what he did for a living, but he was beginning to wonder whether it might be something in the pest control line. He smiled as he sauntered through the shrubbery, imagining Elliot coming to a sticky end like John Goodman in Arachnophobia. He was chuckling as he turned out of the trees and into the almost unbearable heat of the paddock. There was no sign of anyone, human or equine but he could hear voices from a nearby stall so made his way over.

  He was about to pull the door open when he realised that the voices he could hear were not intending to be overheard and he stopped. Being a proper gentleman by nature and upbringing, eavesdropping didn’t come naturally (unless the conversation was between Year Ten students with rap sheets), but these were people looking after his son, so parental caution overrode his politeness.

  ‘And so, I said to her,’ one of the voices hissed, ‘pay me late one more time, lady, and I walk.’

  ‘What did she say?’ The other voice was breathy with amazement, more than with a desire not to be overheard.

  ‘Well, that was the thing. Stupid cow just said I could go if I wanted. There were dozens of girls out there who would happily play with horses all day for nothing.’

  Maxwell nodded to himself. ‘She’ – presumably Arianna Hale-ffinch – was right there. He could name twenty from Leighford High alone without engaging brain. If it was just two girlies whinging about pay, he didn’t need to hear more and he moved off, in search of his son.


  He was easily found, by following the smell of burger. It was coming from behind the stables, where Nolan and a couple of stable-girls were sitting on bales, getting up close and personal with something unspeakable in a bun, but mainly, chips.

  Nolan turned a ketchup-smeared smile on his parent. ‘Hello, Dads,’ he said, spraying crumbs. ‘We’re having an early lunch.’

  ‘So I see,’ Maxwell said. ‘Umm ... girls? He won't be having burger every day, will he? Perhaps we could do him a packed lunch ...?’

  ‘No, Mr Maxwell.’ He didn’t know either of them from the school, but they looked reliable enough. ‘We just thought that this was his official first day, we’d treat him to a burger. It’s salad all the way from now on.’

  Nolan’s eyes widened. ‘Salad? Every day?’ Maxwell’s heart went out to him – he wasn’t much of a lettuce man himself, if truth be told, but there was a limit to how many burgers a child could take in a summer holiday.

  ‘They’re good salads,’ the other girl cut in. She was older than the others around the stable yard and was wearing clothes which had clearly seen serious use, rather than the sparkling new ones bought specially as worn by most of the others. ‘Why don’t you tell me everything you like to eat, Nolan, and I’ll tell the chef. Then you can have special salads with lots of veggies but your favourite things as well.’ She caught his eye. ‘Except burger and chips.’

  Nolan looked mulish but nodded and got back to his burger.

  ‘Has he been good?’ Maxwell mouthed at the girls.

  ‘He’s great,’ the younger one said. ‘He’s been mucking out and everything. He’s been on a little hack through the wood with Jo. And ...’

  ‘He’s only been here two and a half hours,’ Maxwell pointed out.

  ‘I know.’ The girl smiled. ‘He doesn’t like mooching about, does he? Always busy. We like little boys like that – it would be no work at all if they were all like Nolan. We’ve got a birthday party in this afternoon and it’s going to be hell, I promise you.’

  ‘Is that all right?’ Maxwell asked. ‘If he’s here, I mean. I could get his friend’s mother to fetch him ...’

  ‘Is that Plocker?’

  Maxwell smiled sympathetically. No one could know Nolan for long without soon knowing all they needed to know about Plocker.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘His auntie’s cat’s had kittens.’ Jo came round the corner just in time to add the K word to the conversation.

  ‘Indeed she has,’ Maxwell said. ‘And no, Nolan isn’t going to have one.’

  Nolan swallowed a large mouthful of burger. ‘I’m not having one in any case,’ he said, affronted. ‘Metternich’s going to have one, if anyone is.’

  ‘Metternich is the cat,’ Maxwell began to explain.

  ‘We know,’ Jo smiled. She knew anyway, having had many a stare-off with the animal on baby-sitting nights. ‘But apparently, he has said he doesn’t mind.’

  Nolan was concentrating on his chips, trying to make the remaining ketchup go round. It was a close call but a ketchup-less chip was a chip wasted, in his opinion.

  Maxwell set his mouth in its strictest line, but no one seemed to notice. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Now, can I ring Plocker’s mum or ...’

  ‘Nolan is on lemonade duty this afternoon,’ the older girl said, getting up and brushing straw from her backside. ‘And then he’s helping us with the tack. Mrs Hale-ffinch tells me that your wife is joining you for dinner tonight, so Nolan is having his tea in the nursery.’ She caught Maxwell’s eye. ‘And a bath.’ She looked the child up and down. ‘Probably first. Then he can have a nap and nanny will have him ready for after dinner.’

  ‘Mrs Hale-ffinch is very organized,’ Maxwell remarked.

  The girls all chuckled and looked at each other. ‘You have no idea,’ Jo said.

  From the stables, it was a short saunter to the coffee shop and Maxwell got himself a sandwich and went up to his room. It wasn’t that he wanted to hide from the guests, but he needed to have a breather before launching himself into the fray again. The room was very pleasant, up under the leads of the West Wing as it was and the window opened wide onto a small balcony with a low balustrade. A health and safety notice was inevitably attached to the inside of one pane. ‘Please do not sit on the sill or step onto the balcony. The stonework is old and is not suitable – NOT SUITABLE – for seating.’ The repeated words in capitals were also in red. Maxwell sensed not so much a care for guests’ well-being as a caveat for any court cases which might arise.

  The bed looked comfortable but he resisted – it wouldn’t do to drop off and miss his first conversation and it also wouldn’t do to drop crumbs. So he leaned against the window transom and looked out on the sweeping grounds of Haledown House. He was not sure which he would prefer if he were in the Hale-ffinches’ shoes: keep the house and have it overrun with people or lose the house because it was too expensive to keep up. The park was now filling with day trippers and although they were not loud in the main, they still looked like ants crawling over the land below and sounded like muted parakeets. He remembered that sometimes, the trippers included Mrs Getty and although she was unusual, she wasn’t unique. So, with the law of averages taken into account, down below there was at least one mad old bat who needed a straitjacket. He shuddered, balled up the wrapping from his sandwich and prepared for an afternoon explaining, in words of one syllable, the history surrounding the lifetime of Haledown House.

  Maxwell walked into the cool of the hall and had particular pleasure walking past Maureen, sweltering in her kiosk, currently making the afternoon hideous for a family of five, who had exceeded the number for the family ticket by one. She managed to make it seem as though by having an extra child, they had broken some kind of law of nature. The father of the family, who had wanted to go to Diggerland anyway, was trying to pay and the mother was up for an argument. Maureen would savour this encounter when she got home, Maxwell knew.

  He made his way up the shallow staircase, winding up to the second floor and the portraits. It was easier to talk about history when you had chaps, not maps, to concentrate on and he soon attracted a small crowd as he précised the Peninsular War with reference to a couple of Hale men, one of whom made it home to his rolling acres, though admittedly minus a limb or two, one of whom remained in Spain. Not because he died, but because he met a rather lovely senorita and disappeared into obscurity to become an olive oil tycoon. The family didn’t really speak of him much – he was in trade and therefore beyond the pale. But there was a damp patch to be concealed, so his portrait would do as well as any other.

  To his surprise, Maxwell was rather enjoying the roving Socratic style of teaching. None of this silly chronology stuff like in the classroom. Here, he could take whichever question he chose and run with it. So in the couple of hours before the cocktail hour when the favoured few would assemble in the green drawing room for some cosmopolitans and culture, he managed to cover the entire English Civil War.

  ‘Roundhead buggers and Cavalier buggers, as the late great historian Peter Young would have it,’ Maxwell told the little throng, who were already hanging on his every word. ‘Now, I know what you’re thinking; looking at these portraits, nobody has a round head, do they?’

  From the looks on their faces, the audience was not thinking that; but, of course, they were now.

  ‘These are the Hale brothers, an unusual example of gentlemen who stood on either side of the political divide ...’

  He’d lost them already, rather like Eight Bee Pea of a Friday afternoon. ‘Think Missouri,’ he said. ‘The good ol’ Mason-Dixon Line splitting families left and right. The Confederacy and the Union. The Blue and the Gray.’ He had deliberately swapped the colours, just to see if anybody noticed.

  ‘The original Roundheads were London apprentices, low-lives who could be guaranteed to cause trouble on street corners. The Cavaliers, of course, were the supporters of the king.’

  ‘Which king is that?’
someone piped up.

  ‘The king of England,’ Maxwell told him, straight-faced.

  ‘Yeah, I know that,’ the visitor chuckled. ‘I meant ...’

  ‘I know what you meant,’ Maxwell chuckled back, ‘Charles I; Charles Stuart “that man of blood” as his opponents called him. But neither of the Hale brothers was an apprentice. They were gentlemen and in those days, gentlemen wore their hair long. They’d have fitted right in at Woodstock.’

  There was a ripple of laughter, especially from the most elderly, who remembered it well.

  ‘Was that war about state rights too?’ one of the more cultured asked. ‘Or was it slavery?’

  Maxwell’s heart sank. His thoughts had been very unkind to Eight Bee Pea earlier; by comparison with this lot, they were all Rhodes scholars, not that you could mention Cecil Rhodes today. ‘Neither, I’m afraid,’ he said and proceeded to tell them like it was.

  In the drawing room, chairs had been placed in approximate rows, with small tables scattered around. A lectern was placed discreetly to one side and Sally was standing to the other, ready to introduce their conversationalist. She still couldn’t quite believe he intended to do it without a PowerPoint. She couldn’t imagine that anyone could keep the interest of this lot without some pretty pictures. But still, it was his funeral and he had better have some planned for the next five weeks, or there’d be fireworks.

  Slowly but surely, the seats began to fill. Elliot and Flo took their places at the back and Flo gave him a little fluttering wave. He smiled back and gave her a small bow. She hadn’t a brain in her head, but she didn’t really deserve Elliot and he already had a soft spot for the woman. Some of the faces he recognized from his ad hoc talks during the afternoon and had a quick think to reassure himself there wouldn’t be too much repetition. Hopefully, they would either forget if there was, or they would appreciate the extra depth. For his first lesson ... no, conversation ... he had chosen: The Tudors and Where Netflix Would Be Without Them.