Maxwell’s Match

by M. J. Trow

  Maxwell’s Match

  M J Trow

  Text copyright © 2013 M J Trow

  All Rights Reserved

  First published by Allison & Busby.

  This edition first published in 2013 by:

  Thistle Publishing

  36 Great Smith Street

  London

  SW1P 3BU

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  1

  He stood in the doorway for a while, shoulders heaving with exertion, then half-stumbled into the pool of light. His shadow grew long on the floor and his face was a mask of terror. He still held the doorframe with his left hand, the long blade flashing silver in his right, tilted down. For a moment he stood there, swaying in a silence that was deafening.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ a voice boomed in the darkness, followed by the thud of a lib hitting the hall floor. ‘This whole bloody play is about blood. It drips through every speech, it’s smeared on every action. Macbeth is knee deep in the stuff. He actually says, does he not, Sanjit, “Blood will have blood”? Not that I’ve heard you say that since the read-through. The point is, I can’t see any. Donna!’

  A confused face appeared around a curtain and there were sniggers and whistles, while Sanjit, the Thane of Cawdor, took five.

  ‘Are you or are you not Make-up?’

  Donna blinked and grinned, the prerogative of make-up artists the world over. She who didn’t want the limelight was now staring blindly into it.

  ‘Did I or did I not specifically ask you to smear Macbeth’s dagger with blood? Tanya!’

  A second face appeared downstage left, as blank as the first. ‘Shouldn’t there be two daggers, dear? You being Props and all. Macbeth’s just dispatched the guards; careful to smear their weapons with Duncan’s blood, right? So where’s the other one gone? Two guards, two daggers. Can it really be so difficult?’

  ‘Er … that’s my fault, Paul.’ Another voice trilled, female this time and over the PA, more disembodied than Hamlet’s father, but that was another story. ‘I can’t quite put my hand on … Oh, thank you, Benny.’

  ‘Lights!’ Paul Nicolson had always seen himself as a latter day Cecil B. DeMille and, as they flicked on, he blinked in the cold reality of Leighford High School Hall, with its rows of assembly seats clamped together for opening night. All he lacked really was the pair of jodhpurs, bullwhip and multi-million dollar budget.

  ‘Tanya – two daggers. Donna – heavy on the ketchup, if you please. Take five everybody.’ He ignored the fact that Sanjit already was and the Great Director swept from the scene.

  ‘Fag, miss?’ Benny was the most enterprising props assistant Sally Greenhow had ever worked with. He was the charmer of the Special Needs group, as cuddly as you could be with acne, terminal psychosis and a fetish for his willy hat.

  Sally Greenhow loomed over the lad in the darkness of the wings. That was how Benny liked it, with Miss’s tits at his eye-level, modelling smarties under the purple ribbed jumper. He could certainly have a roll in that neck, but Benny was far too fly to let his libido show in his day job.

  ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ Sally said, tapping the lad’s outstretched hand, and taking the Lord’s name in vain at the same time. ‘You’ll get me the sack. Where was that knife?’

  ‘Sticking in Mr Nicolson’s back with a bit of luck,’ Benny grunted. Sally peered around the curtain to see the first and second violins fencing with their bows. How true. How true.

  There was only one other soul in the staffroom, that bastion of sanity from which knights valiant and ladies fair rode out to do battle daily with the dragons of indifference and the ogres of stupidity.

  ‘Tell me, Max,’ Nicolson threw himself down in the nearest soft chair, paid for by a lottery bid, ‘why didn’t I do Hello Dolly rather than the Scottish Play?’

  ‘Because, dear boy, you couldn’t have lived with yourself. Froth before the Bard, tat before pure gold … We’d have found you twirling from the rugger posts by now. Assuming, of course, that we had any rugger posts. Coffee?’

  ‘Ah, you darling man.’

  ‘Have a care,’ Max twirled with a practised hand to the coffee machine behind him. ‘In these politically correct days, the merest whiff of our torrid romance could spell Sunday serialisation for us both.’

  Peter Maxwell already had his shapeless tweed hat perched on his barbed wire hair, ready for the off. Paul Nicolson didn’t need to look down to know that his corduroy trouser bottoms were clipped for the pedals and he didn’t need to see the bike sheds to know that Maxwell’s bespoked steed, White Surrey, shone in the late afternoon sun, waiting for its master, champing at the padlock. ‘No sugar, I’m afraid. I’d offer to run up to the second floor and get some from my office, but I can’t be arsed.’

  ‘Nectar.’ Nicolson took the mug with both hands.

  ‘Dress jitters?’ Maxwell noticed the slight tremble in the fingers and the yellowing of the eyeballs. Tell-tale signs.

  ‘Don’t ask. Ever produced a show?’

  ‘Christ, no.’ Maxwell flicked open the Staff Suggestions Book, still, after all these years, dangling from its ancient string like some chained monastic tome, all part of a feeble ploy to make the staff believe that Leighford High was some sort of democracy where feelings were considered and opinions counted. ‘I don’t need the nightmares. Sam not cutting the mustard as he who is not of woman born?’

  ‘Oh, Sam’s all right, considering his dad’s chairman of governors and all. Sanjit’s fine as Macbeth – I knew he would be. And you were right, by the by, to advise not to do this as a modern dress Hindu-Muslim thing. And that juvenile bastard playing Duncan’s grown up since I read him his future in a tarot pack after he chose to misquote in the Technical.’

  ‘Misquote?’ Maxwell was mentally elsewhere, lambasting the Deputy Head in the Suggestions Book with a suggestion that was unlikely, probably illegal and almost certainly, physically impossible.

  ‘“What,” and I misquote, “fucking man is that?!’”

  ‘Ah, adolescent wit at its finest,’ the Head of Sixth Form smiled, but he tucked it away for later, just in case. He was, after all, Mad Max and he and one-liners went hand in hand.

  ‘Max,’ a bespectacled head appeared round the staff room door. It was the Headmaster, as Maxwell still quaintly called him, James Diamond, B.Sc., M.A., T.W.A.T. ‘Could I have a word?’

  ‘Black Rod,’ Maxwell beamed at Nicolson. ‘A fine ancient tradition we’d do well to implement here.’ Maxwell the historian knew perfectly well that the allusion was entirely lost on Diamond the biologist. And he hung the Suggestions Book back by the darts board. ‘A word only, Headmaster, I fear. My 1,265 hours were up last week and this half of the term’s only four days old.’

  James Diamond – ‘Legs’ to Peter Maxwell in memory of the Prohibition gangster of the same name – never knew when to take his Head of Sixth Form seriously. Usually it was when he stood like an ox in the furrow, his mouth set firm, his head sunk onto his shoulders. Always, it was when he heard the dread words ‘With respect, Headmaster …’

  James Diamond was pushing forty-five, but he seemed a different generation from Peter Maxwell. He was of the managerial school of head- teachers,
all clipboards and mission statements. He had no rapport with kids whatsoever.

  They stood in the draughty corridor of the mad March day, the Headmaster and his Head of Sixth Form. A slip of a girl from the front office slithered past, hoping to make a quiet exit.

  ‘Good night, Thingee,’ Maxwell’s eagle gaze had caught her, like a rabbit in his over-metaphored headlights.

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Maxwell. Goodnight, Mr Diamond.’

  ‘Goodnight, Sophie.’ Diamond’s artificial smile broke, Blair-like, across his blank face.

  ‘So that’s her name,’ Maxwell clicked his fingers. He’d only known the woman for three years. ‘The word, Headmaster?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Diamond took his Head of Sixth Form gingerly by the arm and led him towards his office. ‘You know I was on a course over half term?’

  ‘Were you, Headmaster? Such devotion. I was in the pub.’

  ‘Er … yes,’ Diamond grinned. ‘Well, I got talking, like you do, to this chap from Grimond’s …’

  ‘Where?’ the voice called from the kitchen.

  ‘Grimond’s. It’s a private school in north Hampshire. Petersfield way.’

  ‘Why you?’ the voice wanted to know.

  Peter Maxwell stretched his slippered feet out onto the pouffé, wondering how long it would be before his big toe finally worked its way through the plush. ‘Legs said it was because I went to a school rather like it. Not sure anybody else on the staff could cope with the culture shock.’

  ‘It’s not you I feel sorry for, it’s the poor bastard who’s coming to Leighford.’

  The voice appeared in the doorway, framed by the neon brightness behind her. Maxwell loved her most in those jeans, stone-washed and patched like those tatty, sad little teddy bears they sold nowadays, tufted and grey. Her head was on one side, her hair piled high on her head. He knew that face so well, even in the half light of his B&Q electrics, that warmth, that love.

  ‘Policewoman Carpenter,’ Maxwell arched an eyebrow. ‘I hope you’re not casting any kind of nasturtiums on that great centre of excellence, our local comprehensive school, whose sixth form, I might add, is led by a luminary of legendary legerdemain … sorry, am I talking bollocks?’

  ‘Coffee?’ she passed him a mug and sat next to him, nuzzling her hair against his shoulder.

  ‘That was mighty fine blueberry pie, ma’am.’ It was pure Alan Ladd to Jean Arthur, the mysterious gunfighter Shane thanking the loyal pioneer wife Marian Starrat for his home-cooked meal. Policewoman Carpenter was just a little young to notice.

  ‘But I still don’t understand,’ she nestled back into the strong arms that folded round her.

  ‘Conferences,’ Maxwell told her. ‘They’re all the same, especially residential ones. Some of those keynote speakers are bloody good and they enthuse their audiences. Away from the classroom, even the most jaded cynic gets carried away. Legs Diamond is, alas, not the most jaded cynic. In fact, he’s nauseatingly gung-ho. Kind of idiot who says he’s doing it all for the kids, you know.’

  ‘And you’re not, I suppose?’ She looked up his nostrils, digging him in the ribs at the same time.

  ‘You know I couldn’t eat a whole one, Jacquie,’ Maxwell said. ‘Anyhow, the idea apparently cropped up about sharing colleagues’ experiences from other schools. Best practice, that kind of thing. Probably took the Secretary of State for Education’s notion to heart about what we can learn from the Private Sector. Dear old Legs probably had his first drink during the week, got talking over the snowballs and crème de menthe and before you know it, wham, an exchange is on between Grimond’s and us. Talk about chalk and cheese …’

  ‘So who’s coming here?’

  ‘Here to Columbine, no one,’ Maxwell assured her. ‘I’ve had a word with Nursie …’

  ‘Max,’ Jacquie Carpenter sat upright, her head catching Maxwell a sharp one on his nose. ‘Oh, sorry. You’re not imposing on Sylvia Matthews …’

  ‘Sylvia Matthews’s middle names are Imposed Upon,’ Maxwell said. ‘We talked long and hard and she said she’d be delighted. Guy’s doing supply in Portsmouth at the moment and he can’t get back easily, so it’s perfect. Bit of company and pocket-money for her. And my swap-mate won’t have the chore of going out for his own takeaways.’

  ‘Men!’ Jacquie shook her head and reached forward for her mug. ‘Talking of which … hello, Count.’

  The large black and white Tom known as Metternich sidled around the lounge door. Named after the coachman of Europe who kicked ass in the Congress of Vienna when Maxwell was a boy, his feline namesake took no prisoners. Hunting was slow tonight. And he wasn’t about to tell these two he’d lost a field mouse up at the Rec. He merely twitched his iron-grey whiskers and shrugged his heavy shoulders. One little mistake. He knew he’d done it. And why. The third toss in the air, that’s always the one. He’d flipped too high and the terrified little bugger had bounced on the hedge and done a scamper. Well, the night was young. He’d get him on the way back. But now, time to bury his nose in some of the tinned stuff. Okay, it had E-numbers, but at least it stayed still in the bowl and didn’t give you fur balls.

  Metternich still wasn’t sure about Jacquie Carpenter. It had been six months since she and the old Duffer had cemented their relationship – whatever, to a neutered Tom, that meant. The smell of her was everywhere. She hadn’t exactly moved in to Metternich’s demesne at 38, Columbine, but things had appeared in Maxwell’s bedroom that Metternich had only ever seen dangling on other people’s washing lines. And after all those years of solitary bachelor life, Metternich shook his head. The writing, had he been literate, was definitely on the wall.

  Maxwell threw the arrival a cat nip mouse. The great piebald beast flicked an ear and padded upstairs for a quiet nap before resuming the hunt. He had no need of such artificial prophylactics. He’d call in to the kitchen for eats on the way out.

  ‘And when is all this happening?’ Jacquie settled back on Maxwell’s chest again.

  ‘Two weeks today. The Grimond bloke is coming down on the Sunday. I go up the same day. I imagine it’ll be sub-le Carré at the end; me and him being swapped back like spies on some windswept bridge.’

  ‘That’s assuming they want you back,’ she murmured and he pressed a cushion, lovingly, over her face.

  2

  It had to be said that Peter Maxwell was not cock-a-hoop with the idea, going into his place of work on the Sabbath. In the old days, when his hair was still chestnut and that nice Mr Bonar Law was at Number Ten, he had his own key to the door of Leighford High and came and went as he pleased. Many was the UCAS reference he’d scribbled in the dead of a Leighford night, huddled in coat and scarf against the Autumn cold, cocooned by the over-glassed, leaky box that some sixties architect considered ultra-chic.

  Now it was all alarms and pre-set buttons, CCTV cameras and electronics beyond his comprehension. The kids of Year Eleven had taken a deputation, stirred up by Peter Maxwell, to the Headmaster, on the suspicion that there were secret cameras in the loos.

  ‘Not my idea, Betty,’ the Head of Sixth Form said again to the long-suffering caretaker Bert Martin. Ever a stranger to others’ susceptibilities, Maxwell called a spade a spade. Earlier generations of kids and most of the staff called Bert Martin ‘Doc’ after the boots. Maxwell called him ‘Betty’ after ‘All My Eye of a Yarn and Betty Martin’, but since he knew the Latin original and its meaning, everybody, including Bert Martin, thought it best to let it go.

  ‘What time’s he coming, then?’ Martin asked. ‘This whatsisface?’

  ‘Graham,’ Maxwell waited while the keeper rattled his keys. ‘Anthony. Don’t you hate people with Christian names for surnames? Causes endless confusion in my book. Thanks, Betty. I’ll be in my office.’

  ‘I’m not a bloody receptionist, you know,’ Martin reminded him.

  ‘Right,’ Maxwell winked at his man, clicking his teeth. He bounced up the wide stairs that led to the mezzanine floor. Macbeth’s posters still f
luttered sadly in the post-production anticlimax. It hadn’t been too bad in the end, apart from everybody sniggering at the witches and Lady MacB drying up completely while washing her damned spots. Most of the comments were flattering enough. The Leighford Advertiser seemed to like it, allowing for the pre-pubescence of its editor. In the awful cold turkey of the after-show experience, both Donna and Tanya could be seen weeping buckets in the Sixth Form Common Room, along with Sanjit. Maxwell had risked his reputation and his career by putting an avuncular arm around both girls and they had sniffed their way to their lessons. With Sanjit he’d merely nodded wisely. It was a man thing.

  The Head of Sixth Form hauled off his hat in front of the photograph of the Secretary of State for Education with a nauseating Legs Diamond smiling over her left shoulder and genuflected as well as a middle-aged man in a hurry could, before rounding the corner to his own inner sanctum.

  He unlocked, banged on the kettle switch and threw his hat onto the desk.

  ‘Memos, memos everywhere,’ he murmured. ‘Christ, I need a drink.’ Around the walls of his magic den, the film posters that represented a quarter of his life stretched out in endless line. A tortured Victor McLaglen pointed a damning finger at him in The Informer; a distraught Vivien Leigh ran towards him from burning Atlanta in Gone With the Wind; Michael Caine stared blankly at him from behind his scenic shades in The Ipcress File almost mouthing the words ‘Hello, I’m an espionage expert’ and four terrified actors, wet and still hysterical, prayed to him in the roaring rapids in Deliverance.

  The Spring Term. Maxwell stretched out on the low chair and closed his eyes. Why didn’t they stop all this nonsense of the wandering Easter, the moveable feast? It played merry Hamlet with his revision schedules and for the first time since the introduction of pay for teachers, he actually approved of a government initiative – the six term year. Well, he was a funny age.

  ‘Mr Maxwell?’ The Head of Sixth Form jerked his eyes open. God. Had he dropped off? The years clinging perilously to the chalk face had clearly taken their toll. ‘Your caretaker showed me up. Anthony Graham.’