by M. J. Trow
‘At it?’ he heard her say.
Maxwell sighed. ‘Well, you see, my dear, when your mummy and daddy decided to have you, they planted this gooseberry bush …’
‘God, you mean, actually, at it?’
‘With girls in blue like you, my darling, we tax-payers can sleep sound in our beds.’
‘But that’s bizarre. How do you know?’
‘Yes, that’s what Paul Moss said and he didn’t see the half of it. I happened upon them. Answering nature’s call, minding my own business, as it were. Not quite in flagrante, in that they mercifully had the decorum to get on with it in a cubicle rather than on the urinal floor. I could have stepped over them, I suppose.’
‘Did they know you were there?’
‘Oh yes. She came out adjusting her clothing, grinning like a sixteen-year-old.’
‘What about him?’
‘Hugely embarrassed, I’d say. If it had been me, I’d have wanted the ground to swallow me up.’
‘If it had been you?’ she growled. ‘What number are you in the queue, Mr Maxwell?’
He laughed, quoting, as he often did, from his favourite film, The Charge of the Light Brigade, ‘They say her pitcher hath been too often to the well.’
‘So what are you going to do about it?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s not a criminal offence … is it?’
‘Lewd behaviour in a public place. Yes,’ she told him.
‘Well, that’s as maybe,’ he said, ‘but with all due deference to Ms Sally Meninger, I think I’d better let sleeping dogs lie.’
‘Who else have you told?’ she asked him.
‘Just you, dear heart. Oh, and Martin Bashir of course.’
‘How can they face you tomorrow?’ she wondered aloud.
‘Ah,’ he chuckled. ‘I shall know them by the paper bags over their heads. Darling, I’ve got to go. Bless you for ringing. Are we still on for Thursday?’
‘Absolutely,’ she told him. ‘Pick you up at seven.’
‘I bet you say that to all the Ofstedees. Goodnight Jacquie Carpenter. Love you.’
‘Love you, Peter Maxwell.’
And he waited for the click of her receiver, before taking grey Captain Portal across to the centre of the room. He switched on another lamp and the whole diorama came to life. Three hundred and ninety-one officers and men of Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade, saddled and waiting to ride into Hell that cold October lunchtime back in 1854. He carefully placed the unfinished figure to the right of the line of the 4th Lights, slightly behind Lord George Paget, chewing his cigar, missing his wife and waiting for orders after half a day’s inaction. He eased Troop Sergeant Major James Kelly back a little to fit the troop commander in place and crouched to get the eye line right.
Maxwell straightened. He’d leave Portal there tonight, let him get used to his plastic comrades, find the ease of his saddle. He’d start the paint job tomorrow. Tomorrow and tomorrow …
‘Look lively, Ten Aitch Two, I’ve got an exam to pass.’
Mad Max was in his Heaven, but not all appeared right with the world. Before him in that theatre of nostalgia known prosaically at Leighford High as Aitch Eight sat that notorious bunch of misfits who had opted for History GCSE last year, because last year it seemed the right thing to do. Now, they weren’t so sure. And what it had taken them several months to find out, Peter Maxwell had known from Day One.
Beyond the dirty three dozen, squeezed awkwardly into a corner sat Sally Meninger. Gone was the come hitherness of the Vine. The Fuck-Me shoes were replaced by a sensible court variation, the raunchy frock that proclaimed her cleavage to the world swapped for the pencil-chalk suit and yet another silk scarf. She had Maxwell’s Lesson Plan on her lap, only the sixth he’d written in thirty-something years, and a deadpan look on her face.
‘Matthew Hopkins,’ Maxwell tapped the man’s name he had written on the whiteboard behind him. He secretly hated it – the glossy surface that stained at the drop of an aitch; the useless markers that dried up as you looked at them, so that in seconds, the purest sable became the most dismal grey and the most verdant green turned an odd kind of puce. ‘What do we know about him?’
The silence could have shattered glass.
‘Ah.’ Maxwell smiled at the assembled multitude. ‘How soon they forget. Jade?’
Jade was a bouncy blonde. Sitting next to Timbrel as she was, the sultry brunette, the pair were every Year Ten boy’s wet dream. Maxwell had intercepted the notes last term which left him in no doubt about how Dave felt about them and Tom and Jimbo and Fat Josh. Maxwell had doubted whether Fat Josh could really do what he claimed he could, but it gave him a chuckle before he consigned the note to the bin and Fat Josh to his Year Head for a good letting off.
‘Um … he was a witchfinder,’ Jade managed.
‘I’m glad you can read Timbrel’s book,’ Maxwell said to her, ‘but I’d rather it was written in yours. Better still, I’d rather it was engraved on your memory. Can you help us, Dave?’
Dave looked barely able to help himself. A martyr to catarrh, the boy’s mouth hung open and his eyelids drooped. Life, to Dave, was one perpetual sniff. ‘He used to catch witches.’
‘Classic, Dave,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘I like the keen thrust of your mind. When was this, Tom?’
To Tom, it could have been a week last Wednesday. ‘Er …’
‘I’m not being too picky here,’ Maxwell was reasonable. ‘I’ll settle for a century.’
‘Seventeenth.’ Dave was getting into it now.
‘Spot on, Davidovitch.’ Maxwell clapped his hands. ‘So those dates start with …’
‘Sixteen something,’ most of the class intoned. This drill was well-rehearsed.
‘All right,’ Maxwell moved through the fair – and not so fair. ‘We know who, we know what, we even know approximately when. How about where. Jimbo?’
Now if there was one subject which perplexed Jimbo more than History, it was Geography. ‘Um …’
Jimbo hated being put on the spot. Maxwell knew that, but a little grilling, mano a mano, was good for the soul. ‘Come on, Jim.’ Maxwell stood behind the lad, circumnavigating the room as he was. ‘Think East.’
East, West, North, South, they were all one to Jimbo.
‘Anybody?’ Jimbo’s shoulders visibly sagged. He was off the hook. Mad Max was a bastard, but he wasn’t a vicious one. The Great Man saw Sally Meninger scribbling away in the corner, no doubt damning him to all eternity.
‘East Anglia,’ someone called.
‘Nice one, Evelyn.’ Maxwell knew if he waited long enough, the class swot would open up her big guns. All year he’d been trying to persuade Paul Moss to promote the girl, because she was clearly misplaced, but there were set complications apparently. Social reasons. You couldn’t fight City Hall. ‘East Anglia,’ Maxwell crossed to the map in the far corner to point to it. He knew perfectly well that Ten Aitch Two were highly conversant with Orlando and Lanzarote – in a couple of years they’d be equally at home in Ibiza. But their own land? Oh, that was a foreign country – they did things differently there. ‘Witch country.’ He tapped the towns in turn. ‘Ipswich, Chelmsford, Colchester, Lavenham. In 1646, if you were an elderly lady in any of these places, if you’d ever crossed anybody, looked at anybody funny, then look out. Somebody would make a quick phone call and that was it – send for Matthew Hopkins and it’s a quick few hours being dragged around a room until you confessed. What’s wrong with what I’ve just said, Josh?’
Fat Josh was ready for this one. ‘It’s not right, Mr Maxwell,’ Josh said triumphantly.
‘Er … good,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Good. Like it so far. Why isn’t it right, though, Josh?’
‘Well, it’s rubbish, innit?’ Josh could have debated with Dr David Starkey. ‘Stands to reason nobody’s going to confess to nothing just being dragged round a room.’
‘No phones then, dickhead.’ Evelyn may have been the class swot, but nobody said she
was nice.
‘How does it go, Evelyn?’ Maxwell reined it all in.
‘Sorry, Mr Maxwell. But he is.’
‘Well, that’s something we can talk about later, isn’t it? Now, compadres, what’s it going to be?’ He stationed himself between the board and the telly. It could go either way. ‘Half an hour’s silent reading on the definitive study of East Anglian witchcraft by Professor McFarlane or a few minutes of Mad Vincent Price in The Witchfinder General?’
The hubbub gave him the answer he expected, and as a man, Ten Aitch Two slid sideways or clambered on desks for a good view of the screen.
‘We watching a video?’ How did Peter Maxwell know the question had come from Dave? He flicked all the necessary buttons, since the remote had vanished within minutes of its arrival at Leighford High, along with scart leads and a whole nest of mouse balls. Maxwell clocked Sally Meninger’s demeanour out of the corner of his eye. He’d followed his Lesson Plan to the letter so far – Paul Moss would be proud of him. Now, though, he was sticking his neck out. There were copyright issues about movies in schools and this one, grim little piece that it was, had an 18 category. He saw her write something down. He’d face the music later, reading the banner headlines in what passed for his mind ‘Pervert Teacher Depraves Young’. What a load of warlocks.
On the screen, a bunch of murderous seventeenth century villagers were dragging a hapless crone up a bleak windswept hillside while the priest, whose hysteria had caused all this, intoned mumbo-jumbo behind the lynch mob. The camera wobbled and jostled with the crowd as they hanged the woman from the make-shift gibbet and her body slumped, to dangle in the wind, the hempen rope creaking in its housings. The camera swept away and the orchestra crashed into life. Sitting his horse, cloaked in black, sat Mad Vince himself, Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General.
‘I’ve seen this,’ Dave said, although actually he was thinking of Plunkett and Maclean.
A bell shattered the moment and Ten Aitch Two descended into uproar.
‘All right,’ Maxwell switched off the set. ‘Leave your stuff, everybody. Jimbo. Leave that.’
‘It’s my football.’
‘You’re on form today, Jim,’ Maxwell told him. ‘But even so, it stays here. You go.’
‘What if it’s burned to death?’ Jimbo asked against the repetitious clanging of the bell.
‘That’s what God invented insurance for. Straight out, everybody,’ Maxwell called. ‘Double doors at the end. You know the drill.’ And he supervised them as they went, closing windows with one hand. At the door, he met Sally Meninger.
‘Is this planned?’ she asked.
Maxwell shrugged. ‘The Fire Master is Bernard Ryan,’ he told her. ‘Our revered Deputy. I can’t believe even he would be imbecilic enough to plan one of these, this week of all weeks. Unprofessional of me to say so, of course.’ But he had a feeling ‘unprofessional’ was Sally Meninger’s middle name.
‘Where do we go?’
He closed the door behind her. ‘Follow me,’ he said, and quickly abandoning the old joke, came out with the feed line anyway. ‘Walk this way.’
And he led her into the sunlight.
Chapter Three
The bell was still ringing as the hordes assembled on the tennis courts, just far enough away so that flames wouldn’t engulf them. All in all, they didn’t look unlike Maxwell’s Light Brigade, drawn up in his attic – except the uniforms, of course, and the swords – oh, and the horses. The Head of Sixth Form had taken his place ahead of his Year Twelve cohorts, mixing his military metaphors though he was, the Legatus Legionis standing with his arms folded while chaos sorted itself into a kind of order in front of him.
His own Year were neat enough, in approximate lines behind their respective Form Tutors, answering to the call of their names ringing out on that bright Tuesday morning. Year Seven as always were hysterical with the excitement of it all. Where’s the fire, sir? Where are the fire engines? Is anybody burned yet, stuck in one of the bogs? Who started it? What’s going to happen to him? It was always the same. Some wag, probably in Year Ten, would have smashed the glass somewhere, probably in the Art Rooms. Motive? Bravado. It was a rite of passage, really. Year Eleven had gone, their GCSEs over, into that glad goodnight that was forever composed of shelf-filling at Asda or Tesco. The main school had no head, no focus for delinquency. That was where Year Ten came in. And of course, this week of all weeks was a heaven-sent opportunity.
Maxwell could pinpoint it with reasonable accuracy. It could be Jason ‘The Torch’ Piggott of Ten Why Three, egged on by Squirt Tollfree from Sally Greenhow’s Remedials. Sanjit Singh, Mr Diamond’s nark, would already be standing in the corridor of power, all too anxious to blurt what he knew. You could bet your life on it.
‘All clear, Tutors?’ Maxwell called and one by one, they waved to him.
‘Kelly’s gone,’ Helen ‘The Fridge’ at his elbow told him.
‘No,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘Tell me it isn’t so.’ He was always staggered when Kelly showed at all. Mistress of the catwalk and the parachute pants, Kelly’s ambition was to get up early enough in the morning to hold down a part-time job in HMV. ‘Mr Smith.’
The finger of God beckoned Ben Smith across. ‘And the purpose of those shorts would be?’ Maxwell looked down at the lad’s nether wear. ‘Shorts’ was perhaps a brave choice of word. They actually reached to mid-calf and could have housed most of the kindergarten class at Leighford JMI across the road.
‘Summer, sir.’ Ben Smith was always deferential, especially when he was about to get a bollocking.
‘And your body is a temple, etcetera, etcetera.’
‘Sunshine’s good for you, sir.’
‘So it is,’ beamed Maxwell, more than a little ray of the stuff himself. ‘To that end, when this little bit of nonsense is over, you will sign yourself out at Reception and enjoy the sunshine on your way home to change. Clear?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘What’ll you miss?’
A cleverer or a braver man would have quipped back, ‘You, sir, always.’ But Ben Smith was neither clever nor brave and he came clean. ‘Physics.’
‘Then you will apologize to Mr Saunders and offer to make up the time at his convenience. You’ll do that for me, won’t you, Ben?’
‘Yes, sir,’ and the lad moved the regulation three paces backwards.
‘That’s about it, then, Max,’ Helen handed in the registers.
He winked at her. ‘Thou, good and faithful servant,’ he said and ambled with his armful across to the centre of the courts where the knot of Senior Managers darted hither and yon, doing their best to disappear up their own arseholes.
‘All clear, Max?’ Bernard Ryan asked.
Maxwell could barely disguise his contempt for this man. Not fit to run a jumble sale, Ryan had inexplicably risen to become Deputy Head of a large comprehensive school somewhere on the south coast. That was because he’d learned the jargon, carried Legs Diamond’s books and got his knees and his nose equally brown. It brought him forty-four grand a year and an ulcer the size of the Millennium Dome. He hadn’t slept since 1998. And it was beginning to show; wrinkles like the Grand Canyon, more bags under his eyes than were carried by the aptly named Ryanair.
‘As clear as it’ll ever be,’ the Head of Sixth Form told him. ‘This little walk in the sun your idea, Bernard?’
‘Certainly not,’ Dierdre Lessing, Leighford’s redoubtable Senior Mistress chipped in.
How could one describe Dierdre? A cross between Beowulf’s Grendel and a pit-bull with attitude wouldn’t really come close.
‘Didn’t see your lips move, Bernard.’ Maxwell wasn’t looking at her at all.
‘Somewhere in C Block, apparently,’ Ryan told him.
‘The Torch?’
‘We don’t know yet, Max,’ Ryan said, clearly sighting the end of his tether.
‘Miracles take a little longer,’ Dierdre told him.
He faced her for the first t
ime, smiling broadly. ‘Indeed they do, Senior Mistress Mine,’ he said. ‘When you and Mother Theresa here get to the bottom of it all, I trust there’ll be a public flogging? School paraded in hollow square, groundsmen laying on with the cat, that sort of thing?’
Bernard Ryan was called away with a query from someone in Year Eight, never normally the most inquisitive Year Group in any school.
‘It’s difficult to see how you can be so insufferable,’ Dierdre snapped at Maxwell.
‘It’s not easy, Dierdre,’ he admitted, stone-faced. ‘None of this comes naturally, you know.’
Dierdre Lessing, Maxwell had to admit in his more maudlin moments, had been a handsome woman in her day. In an Arnie Schwarzenegger sort of way. She was tall and elegant but her hair was so backcombed now that she was in danger of becoming a laughing stock. She and Maxwell went back a long way. He’d been a mere Head of History then and she Head of Business Studies. It did gall the Great Man a little that a typist should be promoted over his head, but he’d long ago decided it wasn’t worth the op to become Head of Girls’ Welfare. Every now and then, when she’d been particularly psychotic, he toyed with shopping her to the Equal Rights Commission. For Miss PC to be a woman in the post she held was akin to being a Nazi in the twenty-first century.
‘We don’t know who broke the glass,’ she said softly, her lips as tight as a gnat’s arse. She looked him up and down. The old reprobate had left his tweed jacket behind. And that ludicrous hat. But he still sported that fatuous bow tie and those ghastly suede brothel-creepers that had jarred as a fashion accessory even in 1975. ‘It wasn’t you, I suppose?’
‘I was just wondering,’ he ignored her, ‘what they think of all this.’ He nodded in the direction of Her Majesty’s Inspectors, standing apart near the Sports Hall wall, watching with interest the comings and goings of the gallopers feeding information from one command post to another. He could see Sally Meninger with her arms folded around his lesson notes, his academic future in her all-too-welcoming arms. She was staring at the tarmac.