Maxwell’s Match (3 page)

‘Well, I think that’s the lot, Count.’ He glanced across the hall at the piebald beast who sat in the way that cats do, his left hind leg upright behind his ear, his nose up his bum. Rather there than somebody else’s, Maxwell always supposed.

‘Now, it’s not for long.’

No sound but the slap of fur on fur.

‘Look, this is a man thing, Count. When two old chums say goodbye, well,’ he shrugged, ‘they don’t get all girlie and dewy eyed. They just say “Sayonara”. That’s if they’re two old Japanese chums, of course. Otherwise, they just say “Ciao”. But of course, that makes them Italian … oh, bollocks, Count, you know my views. Jacquie’ll be in with the goodies tonight. And, yes, Mrs B. is still coming to clean on Wednesdays, as per usual. Now, you behave yourself. And remember …’ he wagged a warning finger, ‘any lady friends in and you make sure you’ve got protection, okay?’ And Maxwell left.

Metternich had barely time to lift the other leg behind his ear when his master reappeared. ‘Oh, but I forgot. That’s why I had you done all those years ago, wasn’t it? So that we wouldn’t hear the scamper of tiny little pads? No, no,’ he gushed. ‘Don’t thank me now.’ And the front door clicked behind him.

He was on the train. Along with a few hundred others, wondering if they’d ever get to work that day, next day, sometime never. He’d done his homework, he reflected, as the Hampshire fields flew by, already a pale green with the Spring sowing. Jedediah Grimond had been a nabob, one of those scions of the none too honourable East India Company who had sailed to the subcontinent two centuries ago with not much more than the clothes he stood up in and a writing slope full of unbridled optimism. When he came back, he had somehow acquired a small fortune and become carriage folk. Grimond’s was his country pad, a modest little thousand hectares or so with grooms, under-butlers and tweenies without number. But death and taxes caught up with Jedediah Grimond and his descendants, as they do with us all, and the house sold to pay death duties. It was a convalescent home for officers during the Great War and had become a school during the ’30s.

‘Coffee, sir?’

Maxwell turned from the window to peruse the cornucopia of delights available on the Southern Train trolley. It didn’t take him long.

‘Mr Maxwell?’ He turned at the sound of his name, glad to be off the train with its mobile-phone users and terminal coughers and on the windy platform at Petersfield. A tall, sandy-haired young man stood there, hand extended.

‘David Gallow. I’m Head of History at Grimond’s.’

‘Mr Gallow.’ Maxwell shook it.

‘David, please. I gather from Dr Sheffield you’ve come to do a spot of observation.’

‘Observation?’ Maxwell followed the younger man through the station concourse. ‘I had hoped for a spot of teaching, even. Who knows?’

‘You’re familiar with AQA courses?’ Gallow checked, flicking his electronic remote as they reached the car park.

‘My dear boy,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘I wrote most of them.’

Gallow’s laugh was brittle. ‘Well, we’ll see. How was your journey?’

‘Please,’ Maxwell scowled. ‘There are some things that are just too painful. You have a Head of Sixth Form?’

Gallow looked sideways at him, helping him load his bags into the car boot. ‘After a fashion.’

‘Ah.’

‘No, no,’ Gallow laughed again. ‘I’m not being Machiavellian; it’s just that, as you may know, Grimond’s has not too distantly joined forces with a girls’ school, St Hilda’s.’

‘I read your prospectus,’ Maxwell clicked into his seatbelt.

‘Two different systems – our Houses versus their Years – vertical and horizontal. It hasn’t been easy. Noses can so easily be put out of joint, can’t they?’

‘Tell me about it,’ Maxwell grunted. ‘Do you live in?’

‘Yes, I’m an Assistant House Master. I used to have a little place here in Petersfield. Not far from Churchers, as a matter of fact, so there was not much respite from the sound of leather on willow. Are you a cricket man?’

‘Not since the Don,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘But isn’t it … what? The Cross Country season still?’

‘Till Easter, yes,’ Gallow crunched his way through the gears of his Audi, ‘Then it’s back to flannels.’

‘Oafs at the wicket, eh?’ he smiled at the Head of History, who didn’t seem to take the misquotation at all well.

It was a pleasant drive, as a pale sun at last climbed its way above the morning mist. The road snaked out before them and they purred north-west under the rising ground of Butser Hill with its Iron Age ghosts, past East Meon with its half-timbered cosiness and the wraith of Izaak Walton, the Great Fisherman, dozing by the river bank.

‘Over there,’ Gallow was providing the running commentary, ‘is West Meon, burial place of Thomas Lord.’ He noted Maxwell’s blank expression. ‘As in Lords,’ the Head of History patronized. ‘You know, the cricket ground.’

Maxwell nodded. ‘As my memory serves,’ he said, ‘he’s rubbing shoulders – and let’s hope nothing else – with dear old Guy Burgess, friendly neighbourhood defector and spy.’

The running commentary came to an end.

It was much as Maxwell expected; a smallish Palladian red-brick pile, Jedediah’s old house, dwarfed by a plate-glass add-ons not unlike his own Leighford High. He knew at once, though, that here, things were different. There was no patronizing County sign “Learning to make a difference”; no burnished-spray graffito telling the world what it already knew, that “Diamond is a wanker”; no crèche for unmarried Year Eleven girls by the school gate. Instead, there were ancient gateposts and an elegant coat of arms emblazoned on both, where wrought iron lions roared defiance in the sun. That would be right. Maxwell’s homework told him that old Jedediah Grimond had bought his K along with everything else that wasn’t his birthright. And the College of Arms wasn’t above adding to its coffers by drafting the odd heraldic design in exchange for a little folding stuff.

Gallow’s car crunched on the Grimond gravel and he unhooked the boot. ‘Mr Maxwell,’ he said before he opened his door, ‘You’ll enjoy yourself here, won’t you?’

There was something odd in his delivery, a tone that Maxwell couldn’t place for the moment. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he told him. Then the younger man was out of the car and on the steps, worn and cracked, that led to the glazed double doors.

‘Parker!’

A middle-aged man, rather thick-set, with horn-rimmed glasses and extensive white hair appeared from nowhere.

‘This is Parker,’ Gallow said. ‘Our steward. Parker, take Mr Maxwell’s things to Tennyson, would you? And see that Mrs Oakes sets a place for lunch with Dr Sheffield.’

‘High table?’ Parker checked.

‘Of course. Mr Maxwell, just in time for coffee.’

The staff room at Grimond’s could not have been in greater contrast to Leighford. There was no sign of the TES anywhere. But then, presumably there weren’t eighty odd people – and at Leighford they didn’t come much odder – looking for job vacancies as an escape route from Grimond’s. The furniture was elderly and there was more than a hint of pipe smoke wreathing around the pigeon holes where everybody’s letters were addressed to people with letters after their names and the words ‘Cantab’ and ‘Oxon’.

Gallow introduced Maxwell to a dozen or so, the men outnumbering the women. Alan Somebody was Head of Chemistry; Colin was Languages overlord; Bruce dabbled in Politics. At the mention of the word ‘comprehensive’ he noticed all of them shift a little and one or two edged away, eyeing him with curiosity or disdain. He read their minds; what was this oik doing here? What was he – some pinko-liberal? It wasn’t catching, was it? Had he heard of Oxbridge at all? He smiled benignly at it all.

‘Well,’ Dr Sheffield sat back in the opulence of his study a little before lunch. ‘What do you make of Grimond’s, Mr Maxwell?’

‘Very civilized, Dr Sheffield,’ Maxwell told him. ‘A little of a culture shock already and I haven’t met the kids yet.’

The Headmaster was probably just the wrong side of forty, but he’d clearly founded the Young Fogeys’ Club. His tweed jacket looked like an old one of Jack Hawkins’ and his gown hung like an old one of Bela Lugosi’s on the back of his door. Maxwell’s office would have vanished without trace in Sheffield’s Inner Sanctum. He recognized it for what it had once been – Jedediah Grimond’s drawing room, in which the old East Indiaman had toasted his nuts against the unaccustomed cold of English Hanoverian winters. Its walls were a dark English oak and the volumes that lined them of faded leather and clearly bought by the yard.

‘James thought you might fit in quite well.’

‘James?’

‘Mr Diamond.’

‘Oh, Legs.’ It had been three days since Maxwell had seen his own beloved Lord and master. That was a lifetime in teaching. ‘Well, sort of. I went to Halliards.’

‘Really?’ Sheffield lit his pipe, an act of bestiality Maxwell hadn’t seen since he was a green probationer in the year the Germans had shot Edith Cavell. ‘They closed last year, didn’t they?’

‘They did,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘End of an era, in some ways.’

‘Sad,’ Sheffield nodded. ‘We can’t afford to lose schools like these. You’ll be staying in Tennyson House. Bill Pardoe’s the Housemaster there. I think you’ll be all right.’

‘I’m sure I will, Headmaster. Tell me, will I be doing any teaching?’

‘Teaching?’ Sheffield chuckled. ‘No, I don’t think so, Mr Maxwell. James thought you’d be able to …’

‘Pick up a few tips?’ Maxwell smiled.

‘That sounds patronizing,’ Sheffield said. ‘It isn’t meant to.’

‘That’s all right,’ Maxwell said. ‘I’m sure your Mr Graham will come back a changed man too.’

‘Ah,’ Sheffield smiled. ‘Tony can look after himself. Strictly between you and me, there are other colleagues at Grimond’s who could learn a great deal more from this exchange than he.’

A bell rang in the corridor of power. ‘Lunch, Mr Maxwell. Shall we join the staff for a sherry?’

The last time Peter Maxwell had seen sherry on school premises was when Eight Eff had discovered Sharon Claverhouse reeling around the bike sheds at Leighford High, off her face on Croft Original. Maxwell had carried her to Sylvia Matthews and Sylvia Matthews had force-fed her black coffee, hosed her down in sick bay and driven her home. Just as well Sharon Claver- house was Head of Food Technology; if a kid had got hold of the bottle, God knows what the upshot would have been.

‘Charming!’ Maxwell beamed.

Sherry was delightful. Old Peculiar if Maxwell was any judge. Lunch was food; hot and edible. Maxwell even found himself joining in the Latin grace, roared in stentorian tones by a colleague pointed out to him as the Head of Physics. The oik from the comprehensive sat elbow to elbow with Dr George Sheffield and watched the kids. He was pleased to see that they were kids, for all they wore blazers, ties, polished shoes and attitudes; they were kids for all that. Laughing and joking in the last careless rapture before the mortgage and the kitchen sink and the rat race took hold. Perhaps, however, Maxwell might have had the foresight to bring his gown. But then, he wasn’t really having to blend.

On his right, Bill Pardoe, Head of Tennyson House, was a giant of a man with a full beard, curling grey. He was Maxwell’s age, perhaps a year or two younger, with kind grey eyes and a gentle smile.

‘I used to teach in a comprehensive, Mr Maxwell.’ He was wrestling with a recalcitrant piece of bread and butter pudding.

‘Really?’ Maxwell was impressed.

‘There were people back then who said I sold out.’

Maxwell looked at his man. ‘Did you?’

‘I used to think so,’ Pardoe said, his gaze somewhere in the middle distance. ‘Swapped problem kids for boys with cellos and IQs off the scale. Now, I’m not so sure. You’re staying in Tennyson, I believe.’

‘So I understand,’ Maxwell accepted the extra custard from the white-coated girl hovering at his elbow. ‘Thank you.’

Pardoe paused. ‘There’s an inter-house Cross Country this afternoon. If you’d like to freshen up first, I’ll take you over. Rather a lot of standing around, I’m afraid.’

‘Goes with the territory,’ Maxwell remembered from his school days. ‘I’d be delighted.’

They crossed the Quad under the awning of the new chapel with its sandstone facings and its arty-farty cross, no doubt something by Basil Spence on a bad day. Boys in rugger shirts clattered past them in their studded boots.

‘Jenkins,’ Pardoe stopped one of them. ‘Twentieth man, eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Jenkins pulled up short.

‘Twentieth man is just as important as the first. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the boy smiled and Pardoe ruffled his hair.

‘I wouldn’t dare do that,’ Maxwell said as the lad dashed off to join the others. ‘I’d be struck off.’

‘Nonsense!’ Pardoe’s comeback was too fast, too abrupt.

‘Just an observation,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘One of those little differences that divide our worlds, yours and mine.’

‘Your loss,’ Pardoe held open an oak-panelled door.

‘Yes,’ Maxwell agreed. ‘I think you’re right.’

The Head of Tennyson swept into his study, as oak-panelled as the Headmaster’s and the door they’d entered by. The walls were hung with old photographs, the ones Maxwell remembered from his own schooldays, unsmiling young men with arms folded, sitting on their dignity, all tasselled caps, long shorts and incipient moustaches. Where have all the young men gone, long time passing? But it wasn’t the decor that caught Maxwell’s eye first; it was the full colour magazine open on Pardoe’s desk where two blond boys, of uncertain age, writhed naked on a wrestling mat. Pardoe saw it too and swept it quickly into the sleeve of his gown before turning to Maxwell.

The Head of Sixth Form had never seen a man age so fast. Pardoe was the colour of parchment. ‘Mr Maxwell, I … Could you wait here, please? I’ll have my Captain of House show you to your rooms. Excuse me.’

And there was no sound but the click of his heels retreating along the corridor.

3

That night, Maxwell perched under the eaves like a rather puzzled bat. The room must have belonged to the tweeniest of Jedediah Grimond’s servants, up a tight spiral twist of stairs. It had been tastefully done out, Maxwell guessed, in about 1958. Since then, it had probably doubled as a storeroom, where old Latin Primers had mildewed against the day that the Secretary of State for Education should see the light and reintroduce real Classics in schools.