Maxwell's Grave (2 page)

Maxwell could hear his phone ringing in his office and trotted along the corridor, past the fluttering notices of the History Department. Cambridge was offering essay prizes again. And a new course was burgeoning at Thicko University – Double Honours History with skateboarding. The queue must be round the block. Maxwell caught sight of the cleaner out of the corner of his eye.

‘These bleedin’ kids get worse, Mr Maxwell,’ he heard her grunt between inhalations, No-Smoking school though this was. ‘I could fill a slot machine with the bloody
chewing-gum
they leave behind – and the toilets! Well, you don’t wanna go there, honest you don’t.’

‘They do indeed, Mrs B.,’ Maxwell waved at her without
turning round. ‘Yes, I’m sure you could. No, I’m all right at the moment, thanks – bladder like a battleship, you know the type.’ Mrs B. doubled up as Maxwell’s cleaner on the Mezzanine floor at Leighford and his private apartments at home; what that woman didn’t know about Peter Maxwell could be written on the back of a UCAS form. ‘Hello?’

He tried to do that thing all women and most men can do, cradle the receiver between his shoulder and his ear. It fell out, but he caught it with a dexterity surprising in a man who would never see fifty-five again, a dexterity born of the Slips and Silly Mid On. Long years ago Peter Maxwell had indeed been a flannelled fool at the wicket. Now, he was just a fuddled oaf in a hole.

‘Mr Maxwell?’ a male voice said.

‘Indeed.’

‘Mr Peter Maxwell, Head of Years Twelve and Thirteen at Leighford High?’

‘The same.’

‘Peter Maxwell who is in the History Department?’

‘Yes.’ Maxwell’s tether-end was never terribly far away. ‘Look, who…?’

‘I’m so sorry. This is Dr David Radley,’ said the
disembodied
voice. ‘Wessex University. Would you be interested in a corpse at all?’

Chapter Two

‘Well, I have to admit,’ Dr David Radley was saying, ‘there is an ulterior motive.’

‘Which is?’ Peter Maxwell passed him a coffee mug.

‘Recruitment. Retention. Resources. The new Three R’s of the twenty-first century.’

‘Say on.’ Maxwell lolled on the nasty L-shaped piece of county-bought office furniture they’d let him have back in the heady days of 1975. Radley had rung the Great Man only yesterday and here he was, bearded, fresh-faced, the epitome of everything everyone expected from an
archaeologist
of international repute, except he wore shoes rather than sandals and seemed to be able to afford a tie. ‘I assume,’ Maxwell went on, ‘we’re talking bums on seats?’

‘That’s about the size of it. The more budding
archaeologists
we can have, the more of the research grant cake we get. Cynical, but the way of the world. You must have the same problem.’

‘Ah, well,’ Peter Maxwell was the Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High School. He’d seen it all, done it all for all those years that he’d clung to the chalkface. He’d begun as an oik in a grammar school History Department, making the tea, doing the marking. Taking the classes nobody else wanted – the Remove and Lower Classical Six Ex. Then, Wham! The Maoist revolution, a little red book and the great leveller called comprehensivization. It had come later to Maxwell’s school than many, but it had come
nevertheless
. The more stoic of Maxwell’s superiors had stuck it out for a while, but they had been no match for the egalitarian explosion of flower power and free love and people
bonking
in Hyde Park. They’d quietly done the decent thing and shot themselves and Peter Maxwell found himself as a
Head of History in a bog standard comp (as people who didn’t teach in them called such schools). His drift into the Sovereignty of the Sixth Form was another story, but it gave him the nicest job and the nicest office in the school. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘we have this little scam called EMA – an old-fashioned bribe to keep the hopeless off the streets and out of the dole queues for that teensy bit longer.’

‘You sound disenchanted, Mr Maxwell,’ Radley said,
gazing
at the film posters that filled the man’s office walls. Was that Clark Gable holding up a snow-swept Loretta Young in
The Call of the Wild
? And surely Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor weren’t canoodling on
Waterloo Bridge
? In a similar vein, Gene Tierney and Don Ameche had clearly decided that
Heaven Can Wait
. ‘Do I detect a man who has rather missed his way?’

Maxwell looked at the archaeologist, with his Gucci loafers, his corduroy trousers, his engaging smile. When professors were younger than you, it was time to hang up your trowel. Then the Great Man laughed. ‘How very
perspicacious
of you,’ he chuckled. ‘And it’s not often I get to say
that
these days. Yes,’ Gloria Swanson leered down at him from
Sunset Boulevard
and an unrecognisable Katherine Hepburn peered over the leaves that choked the passage of
The African Queen
. ‘Yes, I wanted to be Steven Spielberg before they invented Steven Spielberg. Instead of which…well, it’s a long story.’

The door swung open and a good-looking woman stood there, silver flashing at her waist. It was difficult to say how old she was and she wanted it to stay that way. Under the starch of her frontage beat a heart of gold and a bosom, as the old pop song had it, like a pillow.

‘Sylv.’ Both men got to their feet. ‘Dr David Radley, this is Sylvia Matthews, our school nurse. Dr Radley is
Professor of Archaeology at Wessex.’

‘Professor?’ Sylvia Matthew’s face said it all. However old she was, she was within syringe distance of Peter Maxwell’s vintage and David Radley had to be all of eleven.

Radley smiled. ‘That’s David, please,’ he said, shaking her hand.

‘Problems, Nursie?’ Maxwell asked. It wasn't often that the Florence Nightingale of Leighford High wandered, lamp ablaze, into his particular ward.

‘No, no, nothing vital,’ she smiled.

‘David’s trying to get me to bring a few of the Sixth over to a dig he’s working on.’

‘Oh, how exciting,’ Sylvia beamed. ‘Sort of
Time Team
. I’ve got a real thing for Mick Aston. That cotton-wool hair!’

Radley’s face said it all this time. ‘In a manner of
speaking
,’ he said. ‘So. Max, isn’t it? This time tomorrow, then. I think I can promise your students some excitement.’ He finished his coffee and shook Maxwell’s hand. ‘It’s okay. I’ll see myself out. You guys must have a ton of stuff to sort.’

‘Is it all right if I bring our Head of History, Paul Moss?’ Maxwell asked. ‘Archaeology isn’t quite his bag, but I’d hate to leave him out of the loop.’ And of course, Maxwell failed to add, Moss was quite a useful driver of the school minibus.

‘Of course,’ Radley said. ‘The more the merrier,’ and he smiled and was gone.

‘I’m sorry, Max,’ Sylvia perched on the edge of the man’s desk, sliding a wodge of essays to one side. ‘I didn’t mean to break up the meeting.’

‘No sweat,’ Maxwell was switching on the kettle again, hunting for a cleanish mug. ‘Cup of the brew that cheers?’

‘No, thanks,’ she was rummaging in her pockets. ‘Any more caffeine today and I’ll be hanging from the
chandeliers
.’ They’d been queuing up all day, the lame and the halt. She who suffered little children had seen more suffering than usual since nine that morning. Two morning-after pills; one fainting in Health and Social Care; overturned wheelchair on the Business Studies ramp circuit; and a Chemistry-test-induced general malaise (eight kids at once).

He looked at her. There had been a time, she’d told him, when Sylvia Matthews and Peter Maxwell had been an item. He’d never actually been aware of it himself, but she had, and it hurt. That had been long, long ago, before she’d met Guy and he’d met Jacquie. Love had changed, as the poet said, to kindliness.

‘What do you make of this?’ She passed him a piece of folded paper from her pocket.

He looked closely, held it to the light, sniffed it. ‘Consortium,’ he nodded. ‘Lined, narrow feint. A4
certainly
…’

‘Max,’ she growled, her eyebrows curling to reach her hairline.

‘Sorry,’ he sniggered, like the overgrown schoolboy he was. ‘God.’ He was reading its contents now.

‘Exactly.’ Sylvia sat on his sofa with the air of a woman who’s been proved right. Not that that, in this particular instance, gave her any satisfaction.

‘Where did you find this?’ he asked her, crossing his office to close the door.

‘It fell out of a folder carried by a girl in Year Eleven. She didn’t know she’d dropped it.’

‘Who?’ Maxwell wanted names. He wanted details.

‘Max, I’m not sure…’

‘Sylv,’ he looked into her eyes. ‘If this little missive is genuine, it could mean the end of a man’s career. You know that as well as I do. Isn’t that why you brought it?’

‘You know the handwriting?’ Sylvia asked.

The Head of Sixth Form nodded. ‘As do you. It’s the Memo King. It’s John Fry. Who’s the girl?’

She sighed. Sylvia Matthews had been the school nurse at Leighford High for more years than she cared to admit and she’d seen it all. Tears and tantrums and love affairs and hatreds and suicide bids and knife attacks – outside the staff room, it was even worse. Kids had told her things in the quiet confines of the Nurses’ station that would turn white the hair of the most blasé confessional priest. She wiped eyes and blew noses and slipped morning-after pills when she judged that that was best. She could have made a fortune writing for any Agony column in the land. But this was different.

‘What worries me is the “we all” bit,’ she said. ‘There’s two of them.’

‘I’ll settle for a single name, Sylv.’ Sylvia Matthews looked at Peter Maxwell. She knew that tone. She knew when the man she’d once loved was serious.

‘Annette Choker,’ she said, afraid suddenly that Katherine Hepburn and Gene Tierney and Don Ameche high on their respective posters might be listening.

Maxwell nodded. ‘Annette Choker in Eleven See One?’ It was a pointless distinction to make, really. Leighford High School didn’t boast any other Annette Chokers – life would just be too confusing. He could picture her now, a cheeky little girl with large teeth and big knees who had grown up, as so many do, into a surly tart with attitude and a bum that half Year Twelve would die for.

‘I’m sorry, Max,’ Sylvia said. ‘With all my experience, I
just didn’t know what to do with this one. Giving it to Annette’s Year Head would be like signing John’s death warrant.’ Maxwell nodded in agreement. Graham Hackett was surprisingly old-school for a young man. Ex-soldier, he was also a Methodist lay-preacher and his absolutism was of the distinctly black and white variety. ‘Giving it back to Annette,’ Sylvia was still outlining the possibilities, ‘smacked of procuring. Giving it to John…well, I haven’t got the bottle to give it to John.’

‘Unlike Annette, apparently,’ Maxwell mused.

‘It might not mean…’

‘“See you tomorrow night,”’ Maxwell read aloud, ‘“usual place. There’ll be enough room. We can all have some fun. No knickers.” Yep, sounds like a whist drive to me.’

‘What will you do?’ She looked into his sad, dark eyes, into the face that had launched a thousand problems for the Senior Management Team.

Maxwell looked at the clock on the wall. ‘I shall go home,’ he said, pocketing the note and neatening the pile of reports on his desk. ‘It’s the end of another perfect day. Let me sleep on this, Sylv. There’s some weighing up to do.’

‘Eleanor Fry,’ the Nurse nodded solemnly, standing up and straightening her dress.

‘And a little thing called under-age sex. Annette’s still
fifteen,
isn’t she?’

‘What’ll he get?’ Sylvia asked.

‘You know as well as I do. Loss of job,’ Maxwell said. ‘Pension up the Swanee. His name on the Register. Time probably, during which he’ll be the target for every “
normal
” thug on the inside. Razor to the genitals whenever he goes to the bog. Then, when he gets out, assuming he does, that’s when his troubles really start. The paparazzi, local and national, will have his photo, his name, his address, his
inside leg measurements. He’s a teacher, so he’s fair game. Tagging will be the least of his worries.’

Sylvia sighed. ‘I thought you’d say that,’ she said.

He reached forward and patted her hand. ‘You did the right thing, Nurse Matthews,’ he said. ‘My problem now.’ He brightened, changing the subject. ‘You out on the
razzle
tonight? You and Guy?’

‘Wednesday,’ she mused. ‘Bathroom. Grouting.’

‘Ah, you young things,’ he punched her shoulder
tenderly
. ‘Never a dull moment, eh?’ He winked at her,
catching
the worry behind her eyes. ‘I’ll sort it, Sylv. Go home.’

And she did.

White Surrey lay at a rakish angle in the little niche that Mad Max had made for himself. He’d named the bike after the courser that carried the much-maligned Richard III on his helter-skelter charge against Henry Tudor at Bosworth. When he was a younger man, Peter Maxwell could get up to the original’s speed on the contraption, down hill and with a tail wind. He wasn’t sure it was much of a contest any more. When the cares of the day became too much and the prattle of the staff room lost its allure, knives glinting dully in the sun, the Head of Sixth Form would come here, wedge himself into the old chair he’d half-inched from the old Head’s study, in the days when Heads were Heads and teachers were glad of it, and chew wistfully on his banana sandwiches. He had a good view of smokers along the North hedge and if he stood on one leg on Surrey’s saddle and leaned left, he could just catch a glimpse of the sea. Faithful Surrey waited near him, patiently waiting for the off, as now. And if the old metal animal could have pawed the ground in its puissance, it would have. Maxwell’s cycle clips flashed silver in the afternoon sun as he swung his
good leg over the cross bar and pedalled out of the quad (Surrey was his quad bike in moments like these) and
hurtled
out of the gates with a hearty ‘Hi-ho Silver’.

‘Who was that mad man?’ passers by would stop and ask each other.

‘That’s Mad Max,’ someone in the know would say. ‘Step wide of him. For all sorts of reasons.’

Knots of children were wandering homeward as he sped past them, snatches of their conversation coming to him on the breeze.

‘He fuckin’ did. I fuckin’ saw him.’

Maxwell half-turned in the saddle. Janet Ekington, daughter of the Unitarian Minister.

‘It was Ronaldo’s call. He bloody blew it.’ That was half Year Ten.

‘You bastard!’ Could have been anybody.

‘But Utilitarianism is essentially a hedonistic concept.’ He half-turned again, but there was no one there. Had he just made that one up, or was old Mr Senility coming to call at last? He took Antrim Road at a steady pace, feet like beeswings, scarf, even in the glad, mellow days of May, flapping like a battle flag in the wind of change. The colours of his old College, Jesus, Cambridge, proudly floating even this far south. It was nearly five as he reached the flyover, slow with traffic as the inaptly named rush hour crawled by like years. He sliced past them, dicing with death, waving at their merry horns and smiling at their scowls. All this and no road tax either. What a boon for cyclists like him and other lycra-minded people. Then he was breasting the hill over the Dam, that happy-hunting ground of winos, weirdoes and wildlife that every seaside town boasted. He heard the irritating toot of the Dotto Train far below him, newly unwrapped from its mothballs,
and could almost smell the floss of the candy wafting up from the Front. He took in the breakers’ sparkling silver to his right and the far green of the Downs to his left. He heard the gulls cry as they wheeled, like him, into the evening, gold of the dipping sun gilding their razor wings. Then he’d gone into the dip, the sea a series of dappled snatches now through the tall towers of the Barlichway Estate, the sink of iniquity out of which half his kids crawled every day. In all the south, this was a black spot, one of the poorest wards in Europe, a blot on the scutcheon of Wessex. But it was probably listed in some ludicrous EU diktat and it would never come down.