Maxwell's Crossing (8 page)

The teacher stepped forward and took the money gingerly, as though it might suddenly spontaneously combust. A tear crept down her cheek. The Headmistress was looking down, making terse marks on the piece of paper. After a moment, she looked up.

‘Why are you not in class, Sarah?' she asked, as though nothing of the last few minutes had happened.

‘Sorry, Mrs Whatmough,' she said and turned for the door. ‘Thank you.'

The Headmistress flapped her away with one hand, not looking up. When the woman had gone, Mrs Whatmough leant over and opened a drawer. She pulled out a small notebook and opened it. Checking her watch, she made a note and replaced the book in the drawer, then resumed the checking of the piece of paper. Her face showed nothing, but her hand was trembling, very, very slightly.

Maxwell's xenophobia was taking quite a hit the more time he spent with Hector Gold. Physically the two could hardly be more different. Hector's accent sounded like someone doing a bad take-off of someone doing a bad take-off of an American, so clichéd was it. Maxwell, of course, spoke nothing but received pronunciation, even though the words he chose were sometimes not always what might be expected on the Nine O'Clock News, so the pair were very nearly two buttocks of one bum. They sat that lunchtime in Maxwell's office, their postures perfect mirrors, their coffees both white, no sugar, their unwrapped Kit Kats balanced on one knee, and chatted about this and that. In the Sixth Form common room across the landing, the dulcet tones of The Coast were belting out the retro numbers that Maxwell rather liked. The Sixth Form had voted unanimously for Radio Appalling but Maxwell had vetoed it – after
all, they were not called Maxwell's Own for nothing. And he deliberately misquoted Winston Churchill – ‘Democracy is the worst system in the world.' What he ‘forgot' to add was ‘except all the others'.

They had forgiven him, of course. They knew that Mad Max would go through the shredder for each and every one of them.

‘Max,' Hector said, ‘I can't tell you how much I envy you Jacquie and Nolan. Even your cat … Talleyrand, is it?'

‘Metternich,' Maxwell said with a smile. ‘Close, but not quite a cigar.' The man was a good historian, then, and knew his nineteenth-century European survivors, even if he didn't have much of a memory for names.

‘Metternich, of course. Even your cat is an amazing animal. He looks as though he understands every word you say.'

‘He'll be disappointed to hear that,' Maxwell said. ‘He likes to think he is rather inscrutable. But I will pass on your kind words; he'll like that. Do you have pets?' Maxwell knew the answer, but thought it would be polite to at least ask.

‘No, no pets. The condo board don't really allow pets, although people do have them, of course. Fish. Turtles. One guy had a parrot, but it got to be a bit of a nuisance and since we have parrots flying wild in LA, or just outside it, perhaps I should say, he had to let it go.' He smiled. ‘I don't mean he stopped employing it, I mean …'

Maxwell was smiling already. He had a picture in his
head of a parrot being given the sack before Hector Gold had finished the sentence. ‘We have parakeets in Sussex, too. In lots of British counties, as a matter of fact.'

‘Doesn't the cold kill them?' the American asked. ‘I wouldn't have thought this snow would suit them too well, poor little fellas.'

‘It probably thins them out a bit,' Maxwell said, ‘but there have been feral parrots in Britain since Victorian times, so they must manage somehow.'

‘That sounds swell. I'll maybe take …' Hector Gold paused. He knew it would not sound at all realistic to suggest that he and Camille would be going out birdwatching, so he changed tack. ‘Do you come from a big family, Max?'

‘Not really. I have a sister, Sandie, and she has two children, but we don't see each other much. Her husband works abroad a lot – something hush-hush in the Diplomatic Corps – and they only come home once in a while. My parents are both dead; they rode into the sunset years ago. Jacquie has a mother, Betty.' He crossed his fingers in the air against the Evil One, then laughed. ‘Actually, we get on well enough, but because we are the same age, it would be a surprise if we didn't.'

‘Yeah,' Hector said, a blush shading his pale sharp face just slightly. ‘We wondered about that. Second marriage, huh?'

‘Well, yes, but not how you think, probably. My first wife and our little girl, Jenny, died in a car crash a long time ago.' Maxwell was not often so open with a relative stranger. Dark wet evenings still made his heart
ache for his lost family, even now he had Jacquie and Nolan. When the rain lashed at the windows and the Count crossed his legs and thought of England before he would go outdoors, Maxwell found himself checking that Nolan was still asleep in his bed. Some nights he almost wore a groove in the carpet, checking back and forth, but Jacquie said nothing, simply holding him a little tighter when he slid back into bed. He realised he had sat for a few moments without speaking. He cleared his throat and went on. ‘So, yes, a second marriage. A different marriage, but happy. And Nolan is our pride and joy, as you may have spotted.'

‘Gee, yeah. I'd be proud to have a child at all, but one like Nolan would be a special pleasure. A great little man, and like his mother.' He re-ran the sentence. ‘And you, of course. I didn't …'

Maxwell laughed. ‘We're all glad he looks like his mother,' he agreed. ‘But surely, you haven't decided not to have children already? Not at your age?'

Hector Gold glanced behind him to check the door was closed, put down his mug and leant forward. ‘Max,' he said. ‘You're an intelligent man and I doubt much gets by you. You must see what my life is like.'

Maxwell was disconcerted. That Hector Gold's family made his life a misery was clear. That he had noticed, he had hoped was a little more opaque. ‘My wife is what they call a “cougar” in the States. She likes younger men and … well, that's how that happened. She was out to get me and I guess I wasn't really concentrating.' He smiled his flash of a smile. ‘That'll teach me not to pay
attention. I met Jeff and Alana after the wedding – we went to Vegas, by the way. Not quite all it's cracked up to be.'

Maxwell marshalled his received information on Vegas weddings, mostly gleaned from American sitcoms, his secret vice. ‘I'd always assumed that Vegas weddings were really rather tawdry and tasteless,' he remarked, ‘officiated over by people who got ordained over the net for ten of your Earth dollars.'

‘Yes. As I say, not quite all they're cracked up to be. So, anyway, we got back home and we moved into her condo. It's in a nice enough area, but we are pretty much surrounded by singles and so the pool parties and so on tend to go on pretty much 24/7. That's why Jeff and Alana came with us, so Paul and his family can have their house.' He managed to say the whole thing with no inflection in his voice at all, but Maxwell detected hidden depths; Hector had these in shoals, unlike his wife, who only had hidden shallows.

‘So, you get on well with Jeff and Alana?' Maxwell thought he probably knew the answer, but asked out of innate politeness.

Gold snorted and shook his head. ‘Max,' he said, ‘you are so British, really! No, of course I don't get on with Jeff and Alana. Well, Alana I might, I suppose, if I had a chance, but when she isn't drunk she's so cowed by Jeff and Camille she hardly speaks and when she's drunk she's … well, she's drunk. I guess I'm lucky, really.'

All Maxwell could do was raise an interrogatory eyebrow.

‘She's a falling-down drunk, not a mean drunk.
Jeff's
the mean drunk.'

Maxwell reached forward and touched the man lightly on the knee. It was all part of the Special Relationship. ‘Hec,' he said. ‘May I phone a friend?'

Gold bridled slightly and said, with frost in his voice, ‘I didn't know I was keeping you from something else, Max.'

‘No, no, for heaven's sake, that's not what I mean at all. It's just that Sylv is a whizz at all things like this and she could probably help with the address of a meeting, or something, if Alana and Jeff are missing their group.'

‘Elegantly put, Max,' Hector said. ‘I apologise for snapping. I would like to speak to Sylvia, yes, but Alana doesn't have any backup. Jeff and Camille refuse to accept she has a problem and what they say goes. Jeff doesn't have a drink problem as such; he just takes a drink once in a while and it's no improvement, sadly. No, Jeff's little problem is gambling.'

Maxwell's earlier conversation with Jeff O'Malley sprang into sharp focus. ‘Horses, dogs, that sort of thing?'

‘Oh, no,' Hector smiled. ‘Jeff thinks that betting on sports is a mug's game. Jeff plays cards.'

‘Serious cards?' Maxwell asked.

‘Oh, yes,' Hector said, grimly. ‘To the death, Max. To the death.'

‘Not literally?' Maxwell's antennae were waggling madly.

Hector shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not so far as I know.
But with Jeff, that means nothing.' Then he smiled again. ‘Hey, let's not talk about Jeff. He's not a good subject for my karma. Say, the sun is shining, the snow is snowing. It's like old times for me, except that back in Minnesota I used to walk to school in proper footwear! Is there something I can borrow in the lost property cupboard, do you think? I've a mind to go for a walk.'

Maxwell was aghast. ‘There's nothing you'd want in the lost property cupboard, Hector. Trust me.'

The room was very dark, except for a single dim bulb over the table. It was so low that the people hunched around the baize could feel the heat. A pile of money was in the centre and it had been growing steadily over the past fifteen minutes. One by one, the players dropped out until just two were facing each other, cards gripped in hands slippery with tension. Even the non-players, the ones who had folded through lack of funds or from a sudden rush of common sense to the head, were tense, with fingernails pressed into palms slick with the sweat of excitement turned to disappointment. Some looked longingly at the housekeeping money which made up part of the pile and would never now go through the tills of Messrs Tesco. One was looking at a sunshine break in the Balearics; he could almost smell the suntan oil wafting from the heap.

Balearic man bulged through his clothes. Hours of pumping iron left him edgy and with too much time to think. Here in the pool of light on the baize he could realise some, at least, of those dreams he dreamt as he strained
on the weights and sweated in the sauna. Here was sweat of a different kind, the adrenalin surging through him as though he was in front of an Olympic crowd roaring him on to win. But he had the sense to know when he was beaten. He glanced at the girl to his left.

She was leaning forward now, focused, heart thumping like a hammer in her scrawny chest. Balearic man was twice her width but he didn't have the sharp intensity of concentration that she had. Perhaps she was rooting for the woman still playing, in some bond of sisterhood; perhaps she wanted, as he did, to see the arrogant bitch taken down a peg or two. She licked her lips and looked across to the third folded player.

He sat motionless, his chin resting on his hand. All night long he had been watching the latest addition to their game, the big American whose advent had already seen off three other players; his style was too rich for their blood. Newcomers unnerved him. You couldn't read them; maybe you could beat them, but not tonight. But he was good at waiting and surely, one day, his turn would come.

Despite the excitement of the game, the pile of money in the middle, they all regretted the old days, somehow. They called them ‘the old days', but they were only weeks ago. Bowls of crisps on the table. Folded players chatting quietly in a corner while the high rollers played for a pound a point. But the big American had changed all that in what was only slightly more than a syncopated heartbeat, rough with the fear of losing the mortgage money again.

The two players played on, raising each time until the last twenty was in the pile. The man, hulking in the dim light, spread his cards triumphantly out, to low hisses from the others.

‘Straight flush,' he grated out, already reaching for the pot. ‘King high.' The diamonds almost seemed to glow and pulse as he fanned the cards back and forth.

‘Coincidence,' said the woman. She spread her cards, but deliberately, one at a time, putting each one in place with a small click as the pasteboard hit the baize. The other players craned round to see what she had in her hand. They held their breath as her opponent leant up on his hands to see. There was a ten of hearts, followed by a Jack, Queen, King and Ace. ‘Not a perfect coincidence,' she said quietly. ‘Mine's a
royal
flush, of course. But well done, Jeff. Very well done.'

The words were scarcely out of her mouth when the American stood up and grabbed the edge of the table, flinging it over, money flying everywhere. He stormed out of the room, setting the light swinging, and slammed the door. They could hear him thundering down the stairs and then another door slammed. Then silence.

The remaining players stood or sat as he had left them for some minutes. Then, suddenly, they all came to life, crowding round the woman, who had caught most of the money in her lap as the table went over. She looked like a leftover from a Greek wedding. They all picked up the notes and squared them in their hands. Balearic man picked up the table and stood it in front of her.

‘Here, Sarah,' he said. ‘Use this. To count your winnings.'

‘I know what my winnings are, Tim,' she said. ‘This is my last game. I've had a bad fright, the last few days. I've been spending … well, more than I could afford. More than I
have
, really. I've got someone who I owe a big favour to, and I don't want to let them down. If you lot have any sense, you'll pack it in as well. Jeff O'Malley has changed us, even in the last week. We used to have fun. We used to talk to each other, put the world to rights. Remember the muffins we used to bring for birthdays? Popcorn? Twenty-pound table limit?'