by M. J. Trow
She’d slept on and off and the chair had taken its toll. She ached everywhere, she realised, and stood up and stretched, hearing and feeling her spine click back into place. It was as she turned that she heard the voice.
‘What’s a man got to do around here to get a corned beef sandwich?’
‘Daddy’s fine.’ Jacquie was rubbing noses with her little boy, kissing him over and over again.
Now, Nolan Maxwell didn’t like to call his mother a liar, but that…thing in the bed didn’t even look like Daddy and he sure as hell wasn’t fine. He was sitting up, certainly, but he had this white thing where his hair should have been and his eyes were all puffy and purple. There was an angry red line across the bridge of his nose and what made it certain that it wasn’t Daddy is that Mummy wouldn’t let Nolan touch him. That was because, she said, Daddy was sore all over. Daddy had come off his bike. And for Nolan, that settled it. He’d been riding around on this bloke’s saddle for weeks, putting his young life, literally, in his hands. Well, no more. He’d learn to walk now if it killed him.
‘Max, you cannot be serious.’ It wasn’t a very good John McEnroe as they went. ‘A party?’
‘Why not?’ He was already dialling the number. ‘Just what I need after what I’ve been through.’
‘You’ve been through a plate glass window,’ she reminded him.
‘Oh, that little thing.’
Actually, Peter Maxwell couldn’t remember what he’d been through. He remembered hurtling downhill towards some traffic lights and that his brakes weren’t responding. After that, nothing. Until he’d come to and seen his Jacquie, silhouetted against the dawn light like a Jack Ventriano painting.
‘Hello, Aaron? Now how did I know you’d be at your desk at the chalkface when all the rest of us are enjoying a well-earned break?’
‘Max!’ said Hampton’s Deputy Head. ‘How the Hell are you? I heard there was spot of bother.’
‘Did you?’ Maxwell tried to frown, but thought better of it. ‘Bad news travels fast.’
‘Look, I’m sure there’s nothing to it. You and I go back a few years, don’t we?’
‘We do,’ Maxwell conceded. ‘Ever since you were a wet-behind-the-ears NQT not quite knowing which way was up.’
He heard Felton chuckle, ‘I wasn’t that bad, was I?’
‘No,’ Maxwell attempted the same, but ended up wheezing like an old pair of bellows. ‘You were a bloody good teacher. That’s why I was particularly appalled when you opted out of the profession by becoming Senior Management.’
‘Oh, ha,’ Felton said, ‘Well, I just want you to know that if there’s anything I can do…’
‘Well, actually, there is.’
‘Character witness?’ Felton cut in. ‘Certainly. I mean, obviously, I have no actual knowledge of the case itself…’
‘What are you talking about, Aaron?’ Maxwell asked. ‘You didn’t see the accident, did you?’
‘Accident?’ Felton repeated. ‘Well, that’s a slightly odd way of putting it, but…’
‘Whoa up, Aaron,’ Maxwell reined in the conversation. ‘Can we back-track a little? What do you think I’m talking about?’
‘Well, the incident, surely?’ the Deputy Head explained. ‘The way I heard it you’d been touching up a couple of students. I knew that was bollocks, Max. If you’d wanted to do that, you’d have got some Roman orgy re-enactment going, involving the whole class. Ofsted likes that sort of thing.’
‘Thanks for the show of support.’ Maxwell was determined to manage a frown from now on, pain or not. No other facial movement did the trick.
‘Nothing elitist about you, Max. A couple of students, indeed! Who’s making the allegations?’
‘Who indeed?’ Maxwell was trying a smile now. When he’d attempted it earlier at dawn, when Jacquie was crying all over him and when Nolan insisted on biffing him on the nose, he’d found it difficult. But it just got easier every time. ‘But all that was so twenty-four hours ago, Aaron. I am speaking to you from my hospital bed.’
‘Hospital? For God’s sake, Max. You don’t believe in doing things by halves, do you? What happened?’
‘Came off my bike,’ Maxwell told him.
‘I knew it!’ Felton thundered. ‘I don’t want to sound ageist about this, Max, but for Christ’s sake! This is God’s way of saying stop riding the bloody thing. That bike of yours has been a death trap for years.’
‘I won’t hear a word against Surrey,’ Maxwell insisted with as much vehemence as he could with a swollen lip. ‘And to make up the slur, you can bloody well invite me to a party.’
‘A party, Max?’ There was a pause. ‘Look, old man, how badly are you hurt?’
‘I’ll let you know at the party,’ Maxwell grunted. ‘Look, Aaron, all joking apart; I’d like you to do me a little favour…’
They kept Peter Maxwell in overnight for the usual tests and how’s-your-father. Nolan’s father was bloody lucky, in fact. He was back on solids by Tuesday night, complaining about the hospital cabbage. He was back on form by Wednesday morning complaining that there was no full English option on the menu for breakfast.
‘What’s this?’ he asked the auxiliary with dreadlocks.
‘Breakfast,’ she told him, wondering if the expected brain damage might not be a factor after all.
‘Yes,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘But specifically.’
‘It’s a croissant.’ She gave it her best French accent.
‘When we took in the Free French government during the war and were incredibly nice to the repellent Charles de Gaulle and got his country back for him from those nasty Nazis, little did we know he’d repay us in the years ahead with curved bits of cardboard at our breakfast tables and endless televisual ramblings about va-va-voom. Take it away and bring me a kipper.’
The dreadlocked auxiliary thought that was a tie her dad used to wear, but she took the croissant away anyway.
The entire hospital staff were delighted when Peter Maxwell was able to hobble out with the minimum of aid that Wednesday lunchtime (before he had a chance to complain about the lunch), not merely because head injuries like his could make or break a life and his results were extraordinarily good, but because Peter Maxwell well was appreciably more of a handful that Peter Maxwell poorly. He was, in fact, a pain in the arse, even if other parts of his anatomy were giving him the greater gyp. A young houseman shook his good hand and asked if he might write a paper on him; he’d never seen so spectacular a recovery. Maxwell agreed, but only as long as he could proofread the thing for spelling mistakes and have full casting rights for the movie; perhaps Brad Pitt would be available for the Maxwell character.
Exactly how Peter Maxwell got up to the War Office under the eaves remained one of those little mysteries that niggle at the doorways of logic, along with who built Stonehenge, how do they get toothpaste into the tubes and why, when sweeties taste of all sorts of flavours, worms only taste of worm? That last conundrum was one that Nolan Maxwell was still trying to work out. He was lying doggo on another sweltering night on the floor below. Jacquie had been with him until he’d dozed off – her turn for the night-night story. Then she’d been with Maxwell until she dozed off and he’d let her head fall back softly on the pillow. She was worn out, what with the worry and the lack of sleep. Henry Hall permitting, he’d let her lie in in the morning.
‘She who is to have a lie-in doesn’t approve, Count,’ Maxwell said. ‘But then, what’s new, pussycat?’
Metternich had heard that one before. He didn’t understand it then and he didn’t understand it now. But what did he care? It was another hour or so before the next rat-raid behind the abattoir, so he could get in a bit more zizz. Maxwell couldn’t get the pillbox cap on over his dressing, although Nolan had been pleased to see that his daddy still had hair when he’d staggered home earlier in the day. ‘No alcohol,’ the cheeky young houseman had told him. ‘Not for another forty-eight hours at least.’ To a hardened modeller like Maxwell, this was tortur
e. ‘How’s a man supposed to model, Count, when he’s stone cold sober?’
He’d decided, at least, on his next challenge. And the houseman had said, with the consultant’s blessing, that limited close work might be good. Maxwell was a teacher, wasn’t he? Didn’t he have any books to mark? That sort of thing? Maxwell was aghast. Ruin the holiday with the intrusion of the day job? Never.
So Lieutenant Daniel Hugh Clutterbuck of the 8th Royal Irish Hussars lay in dismembered pieces of white plastic on the desk in front of him. ‘Hit in the right foot during the Charge, Count, by a shell fragment. He pulled through, of course, like we all do, and the Queen, God Bless Her, presented him in person with his Crimea medal on Horse Guards Parade the following spring. We know what he looked like, as an old boy at least. Kindly eyes, smiley mouth, set of Piccadilly Weepers to die for…’ he glanced up at the Great Beast. ‘Yes, I know,’ Maxwell said. ‘He’ll have to go some in the whiskers department to outdo yours.’
He placed the right arm against the torso. ‘Bit of pyrogravure on that, I should think,’ he said. ‘Just give it a little bend in the other direction. No,’ he changed the subject, ‘what the Mem doesn’t approve of is the whole party vibe. What a killjoy, eh?’
‘I’m not being a killjoy, Max,’ she said. ‘But from what you’ve told me—’
‘All I’ve told you is speculation, darling heart,’ he said. ‘It’s about as far from hard evidence and actual proof as Black Bishop to White Knight.’
‘But this is so risky, darling.’ She held his purple and black face between her hands, very gently.
‘Tish, tosh,’ he took them away just as gently. ‘Now, remember; midnight. If you’re a minute after that, I’ll have turned into a pumpkin or whatever and there’ll be Hell to pay. You,’ he turned awkwardly to the boy strapped in the back seat, ‘shortarse, look after your mother. Don’t let her worry. And don’t let her talk you into a game of Snap – she cheats.’
He kissed them both and did his best to stride out across the lawns. Jacquie watched him go with something akin to dread. She knew what each step cost him and she knew why he was doing this. Conventional police enquiries could still take weeks. And they didn’t have weeks. Even so, it could all go horribly wrong. It could either achieve nothing. Or Peter Maxwell’s life could be in danger. Worst-case scenarios wherever you turned. She drove off into the night.
Maxwell cut quite a figure tottering through the bar in the Club House that Thursday night. He was swinging one leg that was catching him just behind where his knee used to be and his left arm was stiff at his side, braced as it was to prevent his shoulder from pinging out again. At close quarters, people could see his face was a rather prismatic melange, purple turning yellow with a scattering of red-brown where the glass splinters had had to be tweezered out.
‘Jesus!’ Aaron Felton was the first to hail him. ‘It’s worse than I thought. Max, are you up to this?’
‘Just pour me a drink, mine host, and I’ll be as right as rain.’
To the Deputy Head of Hampton School, Maxwell appeared to be three sheets in the wind already. ‘This one’s on me, Jock,’ Felton said and a Southern Comfort miraculously materialised on the bar’s mahogany surface.
‘Your very good health, Mr Felton,’ Maxwell said and raised his glass to him. Many others followed.
The Wilbraham Golf Club wasn’t all that old. The décor in the Club House was mock Twenties, though the exterior screamed 1984. Golfing memorabilia filled glass cases and shelf tops and there were framed, signed photographs of the great and the good of the golfing world – Henry Cotton, Jack Nicklaus, Severino Ballesteros, Nick Faldo – none of whom had ever played here. The place was full of men in blazers and old school ties despite the warmth of the evening and the sun sank like a golden orb behind the terrace.
‘Good God,’ one of them said. ‘You can’t be a member. I’d have recognised…all that.’
‘No, no,’ Maxwell slurred. ‘Here by personal invite.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘I’ve heard all about these parties.’
‘Have you?’ The member blinked. ‘Good for you. Er…look, I’ve got to ask – have some trouble in the bunker, did you?’
‘No,’ Maxwell discovered he was able to chuckle tolerably well. ‘But I like a bit of rough. Know what I mean?’
The member clearly didn’t and wandered away.
For what seemed like months, Maxwell got himself involved in a conversation with two other members on the finer points of casual water. Even when Maxwell staggered off to pass some of his own, there they were on his return, still engrossed in the topic.
But Peter Maxwell had not come here to talk golf. Although no one knew it apart from Aaron Felton, this was his party and he’d pry if he wanted to. And on the other end of the bar, as July seemed to melt into August, was a face he knew.
‘Rodrigo,’ he extended his good hand. ‘How good to see you again.’
‘Max,’ the Spaniard shook his hand. ‘I keep saying this to you “What are you doing here?” And more to the point, what happened to you?’
‘Oh, this,’ Maxwell waved vaguely in the direction he took his head to be. ‘I had a little misunderstanding with an irate husband.’
‘An irate husband?’ Mendoza frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
Maxwell closed to him. ‘Come off it, Rodrigo,’ he muttered. ‘We’re both men of the world. Don’t you have flings in Spain?’
‘Flings?’ Mendoza repeated. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘You see, my partner, Jacquie,’ Maxwell was leaning on the bar, seeing triple about now. ‘It’s a bit of a cliché, I know, but she just doesn’t understand me. You see,’ he was leaning as close to the man as he could, ‘I like ’em a bit younger. Now, Juanita. There was a little cracker…’
‘A cracker?’ Mendoza looked even more confused.
‘Went like a train,’ Maxwell assured him. ‘But I don’t have to tell you… Oh God, no. Rodrigo – whatever happens in the next few minutes, play along, yes?’
‘Please?’ The Spaniard was even further out of his depth now and was quite glad to step back to allow a newcomer to muscle in on the conversation.
‘Mr Harris?’ Maxwell raised a glass. ‘A pleasure indeed.’
‘Mr Manton.’ Chester Harris couldn’t believe it.
‘Maxwell,’ Maxwell groaned. ‘Remember?’ He tried to make various movements with his eyebrows, but only succeeded in looking as though he was having a fit.
‘Er…of course, yes. Maxwell. How silly of me. At the risk of asking the obvious, what the Hell happened…?’
Maxwell closed to him. ‘My little weakness,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘A drink!’ Maxwell did his best to shout above the hubbub. ‘A drink for my very good friends Mr Harris and Señor Mendoza.’
‘Thank you, no,’ Mendoza smiled. ‘I have to drive, Max.’
‘I’ll join you,’ Harris beamed, then closed to his man while the barman was fixing his usual. ‘What little weakness?’
Maxwell looked around furtively, trying to focus, trying to see who was in earshot. ‘S and M,’ he whispered.
‘Really?’ Harris’s eyes widened. ‘But you’re a policeman.’
Mendoza had lost the plot of all this completely, but Maxwell had warned him – play along, whatever happens. So he did.
Maxwell’s laugh sounded like a donkey with asthma. ‘What’s that got to do with the price of baby oil? No, no, Mr Harris, I’m strictly off duty tonight. Checking this place out.’
‘The Wilbraham?’ Harris asked. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Maxwell’s eyes bulged in his head. ‘The tottie, dear boy, the tottie.’ He edged his stool closer as their drinks arrived. ‘Look at that piece over there – the brunette in the red dress. Is she wearing any underwear, would you say?’
‘Probably not.’ Harris licked his lips. ‘That’s Sadie. Quite a corker, isn’t she? Specialises in oral, I understand.’
‘Really?’ Maxwell nodded.
‘But for your sort of interests,’ Harris went on, ‘you might try…ah, there she is. Redhead. White top. Look at the biceps on that. She swings any way you like. Pony Girl, whatever.’
‘I didn’t realise you were a regular here.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Harris almost drooled. ‘And the best part of it all is, it’s a perfectly respectable golf club as far as the management is concerned. Take that tosser Felton over there, for instance. Actually comes here to play golf. Er…who are you, by the way?’
‘I am Rodrigo Mendoza,’ the Spaniard said, straight-faced. ‘That…tosser…is a colleague of mine.’
‘Is he? Oops,’ and Harris downed his pink gin. ‘Well, all’s fair in love and golf. My shout!’
‘You aren’t into all this, are you, Rodrigo?’ Maxwell asked.
‘I just got my invitation from Aaron,’ Mendoza said. ‘A sort of farewell party. But apart from him, oh, and you, there is no one here that I know.’
‘Soon put that right,’ Maxwell clapped the man as best he could on the shoulder, ‘Drinks are on me, everybody!’ There were whoops of delight all round and he was all but crushed against the bar.
‘Hello,’ Sadie’s pert breasts were within nodding distance of Maxwell’s nose. ‘You look like you could use some tlc.’
Maxwell peered downwards. ‘Now where have I met you two before?’ he asked.
‘Max, you look like shit,’ Jacquie’s comment was cruel, but fair.
‘I’m sorry, Jacquie.’ Aaron Felton’s face loomed though the passenger window. ‘I didn’t realise he’d had so many.’
‘Neither did I,’ Maxwell straightened up now he was out of sight of the Club. ‘Thanks for that, dear boy.’
‘Max?’ Felton took half a step back. ‘You’re sober as a judge.’
‘Even more so,’ Maxwell drew the line at trying to wink; that was a bridge too far. He shook the man’s hand. ‘You have a good holiday, Aaron,’ he said. ‘And thank you for arranging tonight at such short notice.’