Maxwell's Inspection

by M. J. Trow

  Peter Maxwell didn’t get out much. What with all the marking and the preparation, the endless worry over his three hundred charges in the Sixth Form, well, there just weren’t enough hours in the day, were there? At least, that was what he’d told Sally Meninger first thing this morning as they parried and riposted their way around the opening moves of a routine Ofsted inspection. He didn’t expect it to work for a moment. If the woman couldn’t sense bullshit when she smelt it, she shouldn’t have been on the team in the first place.

  ‘So, how was it for you, Miss Greenhow?’ he asked her, lolling his head briefly on her shoulder. ‘Much earth movement? Or are we talking whimpers rather than bangs?’

  ‘Mine was all right,’ she told the group between sips of her lager. ‘I think he said his name was Harding.’

  ‘Bald bloke,’ Paul Moss clicked his fingers, remembering him from a chance encounter in the corridor. ‘No offence, Ben.’

  Ben Holton had stopped taking offence years ago. Cheap jibes about the Crucible Theatre and the Benson and Hedges Masters passed him by these days.

  ‘That’s right,’ Sally said. ‘Reminded me of an uncle of mine.’

  Maxwell and Moss, the historians in the party, sucked in their teeth simultaneously. ‘Ooh,’ wailed Maxwell. ‘The worst sort. They lull you, you see, Sal. Find out in advance what your uncles look like and then send in a ringer. It’s an old Ofsted ploy, isn’t it, Paul?’

  ‘One of the oldest, Max,’ the Head of History nodded gaily.

  ‘Then, just when you think it’s safe to come into the classroom. Wham!’ he bounced the flat of his hand on the table and expertly caught the beer mat, ‘It’s a Scale 5. Retraining. Failing School.’

  Sally caught him one with her handbag strap. ‘They don’t award numbers any more,’ she said. ‘Too divisive, apparently. Seriously though, I hear Tommo had a hard time.’

  ‘Tommo?’ Maxwell looked at her aghast; Stuart Tomkinson was one of the best. ‘When was this?’

  ‘This afternoon. Lesson Four, I think.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Moss. ‘That would have been Ten Gee Three, the dirty thirty.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Sally said. ‘Except that Jason’s with us all week in the Slammer. Dave Barton’s under a two week suspension and rumour has it that Samantha Westerby’s gone to live with her granny in Edgbaston.’

  ‘Well, there is a God, then.’ As a scientist, Ben Holton had been looking for proof like this all his life. And to think, it had taken an incident in Leighford to confirm it.

  ‘Not like Tommo, though.’ Maxwell savoured the amber nectar as it hit his tonsils. ‘From what I know of the man, he’s pretty good.’

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t like Geography teachers,’ Moss suggested.

  ‘Got some taste there,’ Maxwell conceded. ‘Who did he have?’

  ‘It would be Sally Meninger,’ Moss reasoned. ‘She’s Humanities. Max, you had her this morning.’

  ‘Ah,’ Maxwell was at his most enigmatic. ‘Had in what sense, dear boy? My private life is my private life. A public schoolboy never divulges …’

  ‘’Scuse me,’ a young voice made Maxwell look up. A girl stood there, seventeen, eighteen perhaps. ‘Are you Mr Maxwell?’ Twelve teachers’ eyes were on her. Actually, eleven, because Jeff Armstrong had got something in one of his at the weekend and he was still wearing the NHS patch, much to the hilarity of his kids all day.

  ‘Indeed I am, Miss … er …’

  ‘I’m Tracey.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Maxwell beamed.

  ‘Duggsy says “Hello” and have you got any requests?’

  ‘Duggsy?’

  ‘Matthew Douglas. Over there.’

  The lead guitar and vocalist was gesticulating as much as he could while getting his fingers round a riff and his tonsils around Hey Joe.

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell chuckled, ‘that’s very kind, but aren’t I supposed to ask him?’ He caught the blankness in Tracey’s eyes. ‘Not the other way round.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ the blonde girl wobbled her breasts at him, grinning inanely. ‘Only he, like, remembers you from school. And just thought it would be, like, nice.’

  ‘Like, it is,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Tell him if he can’t do I’m a Pink Toothbrush by Max Bygraves, what he’s doing is just fine. Oh,’ he fished a tenner out of his wallet, ‘tell the lads to have a drink on me.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Mr Maxwell,’ and she scuttled away, her buttocks nearly as bouncy as her breasts.

  ‘Soliciting again, Max?’ Ben Holton muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘One of the perks of the job. Good God!’ The eleven eyes were fixed in the direction of Maxwell’s stare. Wobbling a little uncertainly on what Maxwell knew as Fuck-Me shoes, Sally Meninger, the Ofsted Inspector, giggled her way to the bar. Hooked on her arm was another of her number, loosening his collar and looking a little unnerved.

  ‘Christ, that’s Alan Whiting, the chief inspector,’ Sally hissed. It was. Maxwell had not seen Whiting today. Not in fact since his preliminary visit some weeks before. But it was him, all right; sandy hair, glasses, a rather thick-set bloke with pale eyes and the merest hint of an Irish brogue.

  ‘And that’s Sally Meninger,’ Maxwell mumbled.

  Jeff Armstrong was adjusting his patch. ‘Is it me or is she pissed?’

  ‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’ Holton asked. He was always of a rather Presbyterian frame of mind, for an atheistic scientist, of course.

  ‘Bloody Hell!’ Paul Moss was ever the master of wit and repartee.

  ‘I’m going to start giggling in a minute,’ Sally said.

  Maxwell moved her lager aside. ‘No more of those for you, my girl,’ he frowned. ‘I’m going to ask mine host for a large black coffee. Is there a Mrs Whiting?’ He was asking the company in general.

  ‘Is there a Mr Meninger?’ Holton countered.

  ‘Trust me, Ben,’ Maxwell was shaking his head. ‘She’s not your type.’

  Holton was watching the way the female Ofsted Inspector was perching on her bar stool, rather admiring the cut of her jib. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Got your mobile, Sal?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Just a quick call to Annette Holton and all the Little Holtons. Time she galloped to the rescue, I think.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Sally solemnly. ‘Shall I ring it for you, Max?’

  ‘Bollocks!’ the Head of Science growled. ‘All the same, she’s coming on a bit strong, isn’t she? For a colleague, I mean?’

  He glanced around. Sally Greenhow was the only female colleague in the party and whatever was going on in Ben Holton’s mid-life-crisis mind, it didn’t tally at all with what was in hers.

  ‘Perhaps it’s standard practice, d’you think?’ Paul Moss suggested. ‘After all, they’re far from home. Working hard. Perhaps they’re playing hard, too.’

  ‘They certainly are,’ Armstrong could tell, even with one eye. ‘She’s practically got his … Oh, God, they’ve seen us.’

  Sally Meninger was waving at them. One by one they looked away, except Peter Maxwell. He was public school. Dance, shipwreck, minor incursion, major disaster, slightly embarrassing situation in a pub – it was all one to him. He waved back.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Max,’ Sally hissed, suddenly fascinated by the bubbles in her lager glass. ‘What are you … Oh … er … hello.’

  Sally Meninger was swaying tipsily next to their table, her skirt rucked up a little, her cleavage just so. Public schoolboy that he was, Maxwell stood up.

  ‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ the Ofsted Inspector giggled. ‘Is this a regular haunt of yours?’

  She was met with a babble of platitudes. It was actually one of the few places far enough away from Leighford High not to be a magnet for half the kids in the school. Unless you included the Band of course.

  ‘Alan and I were just having a quiet little drinky.’ She waved in his direction and blew him a kiss. ‘Won’t you join us?
’

  More babbles as Maxwell sat down again.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Sally Greenhow looked steadily up at the swaying woman, ‘that that’s a very good idea.’

  For a moment, the ice refroze in Paul Moss’s gin, then Sally Meninger burst out laughing. ‘You know – and I can say this, can’t I, as one Sally to another – you’re absolutely right. Professional. That’s the key word. Alan’s favourite, in fact. Well, one of them. I can’t tell you what the others are – you see, it wouldn’t be professional, would it?’ And she turned on her Fuck-Me shoes and bounced away every bit as alluringly as Tracey.

  In between gulps of Maxwell’s round, Duggsy on his dais was attempting to belt out House of the Rising Sun. It was a long way from The Animals. Sally Meninger rejoined Whiting at the bar and whispered in his ear, running a manicured hand up his thigh. He looked taken aback, then shook his head. Suddenly, she’d yanked him to his feet and disappeared with him into the bowels of the Vine, clattering along the corridor.

  ‘Christ,’ Holton muttered. ‘I think I need a drink.’

  ‘I think we all do,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘My shout. Paul, be a sweetie and give me a hand, will you? I need to go to the Little Teachers’ Room. I’d ask Jeff, but with his current problem, the lot could go anywhere.’

  ‘That sounds like an occulist remark to me,’ Armstrong bridled.

  ‘So sue me,’ Maxwell patted him on both shoulders as he passed.

  ‘That really is bloody amazing.’ Moss was collecting the drinks from the bar as Cosgrove poured them. ‘I mean, they’re like a couple of kids. Whereas they’ve got to be …’

  ‘Past it, Mr Moss?’ Maxwell lowered at him. ‘Take great care. With ageist remarks like that, I may yet cut you out of my will.’

  ‘I just find it … bizarre.’

  ‘As a church,’ Maxwell agreed, thrusting a couple of notes into his Head of Department’s hand. ‘Pay the man, will you, Paul? Old Mr Wee-wee has come a-calling. Much more of this and I’ll bladder me tights.’

  The Little Teachers’ Room was around the bar to the left, then a sharp right by the dart board. The sign said, in Tudor script, ‘Gentlemen’ and Maxwell hadn’t the heart to tell them that, to get it right, it should have said ‘Generosi’. It occurred to Maxwell as he got there, that if Jeff Armstrong was taken short later, he’d need help finding it. One false move on the dodgy double step and he might lose his other eye.

  There’s something about a loo in a pub. Especially the gent’s. The tiles were an unlikely Cartland pink and there was that strange mixture that assaulted the nostrils – mimosa with a hint of carbolic and ammonia. All pretence at Tudor had gone here, presumably because Pub Décor ‘R’ Us had no idea what a Tudor privy looked like. It was just as well. Maxwell’s wrists tingled as he answered nature’s call; he didn’t realize he had been hanging on for so long. He blew outwards gratefully as men do when in extremis, secretly proud of that most masculine of skills – the ability to pee standing up.

  It was mercifully quiet here, the strains of Duggsy’s Street Spirit merely a rumour three and a half rooms away. At least in this one that idiot on the drums wasn’t playing – no doubt grateful to get his hands on Maxwell’s freebie drink at last. To Maxwell’s right, a slightly battered contraceptive machine promised Heaven and French Ticklers, ribbed for extra enjoyment. And sure enough, some wag had scrawled on it that the chewing gum in this machine tasted terrible.

  And extra enjoyment seemed to be emanating from the cubicle behind him. Arising crescendo of heavy breathing, exaggerated as though for effect and a rhythmic thumping on the thin partition walls. Maxwell zipped himself up as soon as was humanly possible and poured pink gunk over his trousers in a rushed attempt to wash his hands. He was still trying to get the pansy-embossed paper towels out of the dispenser as the door opened to his right. Instinctively he turned and came face to face with a flushed Sally Meninger, quickly pulling her skirt down her bare thighs. The head that popped itself round the doorframe next was that of Alan Whiting. He saw Maxwell and his jaw dropped. He swayed like a rabbit in the headlights before she took control of the situation. She smiled winningly at Maxwell, who had now abandoned the recalcitrant towel idea and she paused to check her hair in the mirror while the hot air absolutely refused to dry his hands. She swayed provocatively to the door. The tipsiness of moments ago seemed to have vanished and if Maxwell had asked her to walk a straight line, he felt she’d have had no problem at all with that.

  At the door, she met Joe Public, who looked less surprised than he might have done, all things considered. She flashed him a basilisk-style smile and hissed ‘Brilliant!’ before sauntering into the beer-fumed night and the strains of Don’t Fear the Reaper.

  The three of them stood in the Little Teachers’ Room; Peter Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form, Leighford High School; Alan Whiting, Chief Inspector, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate; Joe Public, who turned to the urinals and unzipped. For a second, it reminded Maxwell of that splendid three-way shootout at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, where the camera flashes from gun-butt to eyeball to gun-butt – you remember the picture. Except ‘Clint Eastwood’ had already emptied ‘Eli Wallach’s’ six gun – Joe Public had turned his back on them, whistling to The Reaper as he pissed half a day’s wages up the wall. Bad old ‘Lee Van Cleef’ aka Mad Max decided to see it out. He stood, iron-jawed and steely-eyed until Alan Whiting cleared his throat, straightened his tie and followed his co-operative colleague into the inner sanctum of the Vine.

  ‘All right, mate?’ Joe Public reached for the holdall he’d put on the floor.

  ‘Top hole,’ smiled Maxwell, still digesting the events of the last few moments. ‘You?’

  ‘Triffic,’ beamed Public in a passable Del Boy and then he too was gone.

  Maxwell found himself looking into the mirror again. Maybe, just maybe, he was too old for all this. Life was passing him by. Time to get home, to his cat, his slippers, his cocoa, his incontinence pads.

  The lights burned blue. Through his skylight, Peter Maxwell could see the moon in its silver quarter frosting the sea out beyond the Shingle. He lolled back in his swivel chair, the gold-laced pill box cap he always wore in this attic at a jaunty angle over his left eyebrow. How did they keep these things on, those soldiers of yesteryear, riders to hounds and masters of the gallop? Before him on the modelling table under the powerful glare of the lamp and the magnifying glass, his latest acquisition, sat his charger. Horse and man were still grey at the moment, the raw material provided by Messrs Historex, model-makers extraordinary. But under Maxwell’s expert hand, patience and the excellent colours of Messrs Humbrol, he would soon – perhaps by week Thursday – be Captain Bob Portal of the 4th Light Dragoons, complete with blue tunic and overalls and black oilskin-cased shako.

  ‘Freefolk House, Count,’ Maxwell was talking to his cat again. ‘Portal’s birthplace. Lovely name, isn’t it?’

  Metternich was curiously unmoved. Dunmousin was good enough for him.

  ‘He exchanged from the 83rd Foot,’ Maxwell was in full flow. ‘Must have cost him a bit, that transfer. Makes Rio Ferdinand look like an amateur. He’d been a captain for eight years by the time of the Charge. Oh, don’t worry, he survived – the 4th were in the last line, of course, Paget’s reserve. Horse got shot, though.’

  Metternich was ambivalent about that. The animal rightist in him could empathize, but horses were big buggers and they were so cack, it would be nothing to them to bring one great steel-shod hoof down on an unsuspecting feline. As far as cats could shudder at the thought, Metternich did. Damn! There was that shrill sound again, the one that shot through his eardrum to his spine and sent his tail into spasm. And sure enough, Maxwell did what he always did, reached across for that bit of white plastic.

  ‘War Office,’ he spoke into it.

  ‘Max. How the Hell have you been?’

  ‘Policewoman Carpenter. It’s been … hours.’

  ‘Sorry, Max. I’ve just got in. Ho
w did it go, darling?’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Now don’t be coy with me, Peter Maxwell,’ he heard her say. ‘I know you too well. For all your bonhomie, you’ve been shitting yourself for days over this Ofsted thing. I repeat – how did it go?’

  ‘Rather odd, really,’ he told her. Policewoman Carpenter was actually a Detective Sergeant. More than that, she was Jacquie, a flame-haired girl who could nearly have been Peter Maxwell’s daughter, had he been a true child of the Free-love generation he grudgingly admitted was his. More than that, she was his Jacquie and he loved her.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been grilled yet. Just a gentle ice-breaker, cosy chat thing with the Pastoral Person. Who by the way is also the Humanities Honcho. Who by the way enjoys sex in public places.’

  ‘What?’ Jacquie felt she had to check, in case Maxwell’s cordless was playing up as usual. ‘Say again.’

  ‘I kid you not, Policewoman.’ He rested his crossed ankles gingerly on the top of the bookcase, a move he’d had cause to regret on more than one occasion. ‘We all went out for a little drinky tonight ….’

  ‘Well, thanks for asking me,’ she whined, mock-hurt.

  ‘I knew it was your night for giving asylum seekers a good smacking down the nick,’ he explained. ‘Anyway, it was a Teacher Moment. “We who are about to die” – that sort of thing.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she snorted. ‘I might consider letting you off this time. And?’

  ‘And, there we were in the Vine, when who should walk in but the Pastoral Person and the Chief Inspector.’

  ‘That’s Chief Inspector in your sense,’ she reassured herself, ‘not mine.’

  ‘Indeed. Bloke by the name of Whiting. Anyway, they were all over each other. Smooching at the bar.’

  ‘Really? How old are they?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it. Fortysomething, both of them. But it gets odder – or better, depending on whether you write for the TES or the Daily Sport. They were at it later – in the Vine loo.’