Maxwell's Revenge

The field was so silent that the sound of the grass growing was almost deafening. A late and lazy bumblebee mooched over the dusty clover, left long at the edges of the shaved green. A butterfly fanned its slightly ragged wings on a fading dog rose in the hedge. A fat, ripe blackberry finally lost its grip on the bramble and fell wetly to the ground. After a small pause, for health-and-safety reasons, a field mouse approached the dark pile of protein and delicately began to eat.

The sun was not exactly beating down, at this fag end of the summer heat. Its warmth was a friendly hug, not the passionate embrace of July and August. The light had an almost glutinous quality, as if it was too tired to do more than fall to the ground. There was no longer that feeling of a subliminal buzz as the ground took up the energy and gave it back in spades to the sky. The peace was perfect; summer was not so much
dying as settling back in bed for a bit of a lie-in. Rumours of its demise were much exaggerated, mostly by the appallingly inept Meteorological Office.

Suddenly, the field mouse pricked up its ears, the butterfly poised its wings for flight and the bee concentrated for once. A distant muttering shook the ground on their microscopic level and fear was in the air. Even the grass stopped growing, its summer idyll abruptly at an end. Unwilling to leave its blackberry feast, the mouse turned its head, triangulating to detect the source of the noise. It was no good, it seemed to come from everywhere at once. With the noise came a smell which the mouse, though quite elderly at a whole twelve weeks old, had never experienced before. It made the little creature’s nostrils wrinkle; it smelt of mushrooms, musty and dry, it smelt of flowers, every kind in the world all mixed up together, it smelt of creosote-oozing pine, of metal, of paper. It smelt of things which the mouse had no synapses to identify.

The muttering grew to a mighty rumbling. The sound of tapping heels and grumbling wheels. Of voices, raised in wordless greeting. The smell reached a crescendo of diesel, of leather, of pencils, of Lynx aftershave splashed on beardless faces. The mouse fled. The butterfly rose in the almost palpable current of warmer air
given off by a thousand bodies. The bumblebee had buzzed off seconds before the tide burst on the close-mown grass.

Leighford High School was back in business for the Autumn Term. Let battle commence.

Peter Maxwell opened the door of the fridge in the Sixth Form Common Room and recoiled in horror. He slammed it shut and leant against it, holding his hand out to prevent anyone else going near it.

‘Who switched the fridge off last term?’ he asked. ‘And, perhaps more importantly, who left the piece of cheese in there? I only ask, because I think that person should now consider themselves the parent of the mutant creature that has grown up over the summer, parentless and friendless in the dark while we have been enjoying the sunshine. I think I saw something similar in Fellini’s
The Cheese That Time Forgot
. Sir Anthony Hopkins was a
little
miscast in that one.’

‘For goodness sake, Max.’ Helen Maitland, his Number Two, brushed him aside with a sweep of an arm. ‘Don’t be so histrionic. I’m sure it’s perfectly OK.’ She was, after all, a Biology
teacher. Her nickname among the students – The Fridge – gave her an extra empathy with all white goods. She swung open the door and slammed it shut with, if anything, even more alacrity than Maxwell had. ‘Dear God,’ she breathed. ‘I’ve never seen cheese grow anything that colour before.’

Maxwell leant in close. ‘I think it’s got eyes,’ he whispered. ‘Three of them. One of them winked at me.’ He looked furtively over his shoulder. ‘What are we going to do?’

Helen took a deep breath and made an executive decision. ‘Leave it,’ she said briskly. ‘One of the little darlings left it there. One of them can clear it out. Switch the fridge on at the wall,’ and she did so with a flourish and the years of experience that being a Science teacher had given her, ‘go into your office for our meeting and listen for the screams.’

He smiled at her and stood back to let her pass. ‘Helen,’ he said, falling into step behind her and, glancing at the sheer bulk that launched a thousand ships, told her, ‘you are a jewel among women.’

‘Yes,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘I know.’

She had suffered the mad old fart for years, his Number Two, Straight and True. He was crusty, irascible, a Head of Sixth Form for all seasons. But he was Mad Max and she loved him just the same.

In his office, Maxwell filled the kettle from the bottle of water he kept for the purpose and brought out his stash of coffee makings from a bag. He always took the coffee rota on for the first month. That way, the shock of another year turning was slightly assuaged by decent coffee, real milk and a box of biscuits covered in proper chocolate, courtesy of Messrs Cadbury, not the chocolate-coloured substitute favoured by some of the less discerning and more cash-strapped younger staff. He blew in a couple of mugs to minimise the dust and then, seeing Helen’s shudder of distaste, wiped hers out with a tea towel, newly bought from home and therefore spotless, as it would not be again until next September.

He unscrewed the top of the coffee jar and found that, as usual, Jacquie had been there before him and had stuck her finger through the foil seal. It was a little foible that had worried him at first, the psychologist that lurks in every teacher warning him that it was a bit of displacement activity that might have a dark meaning. But when she told him she just liked the sound of the little ‘plunk’ as the seal broke and the smell of coffee, never so perfect again and nothing like its taste, he just learnt to live with it. He spooned coffee into their mugs and poured on the boiling water. Helen held out her hand for her drink as if she had been crossing the Gobi desert all summer.

‘Caffeine,’ she murmured, taking a sip.

Maxwell looked at his watch. It was not yet nine o’clock. ‘You’re not that desperate yet, Helen, surely?’

She sighed and leant back. ‘To tell you the truth, Max, I have been dreading today since … well, since we broke up.’

‘All summer? Helen, that’s terrible. Did you go away at all?’

‘Oh, yes. I had three weeks on a yacht touring the Greek Islands. Very nice. Lots of olives. Ouzo. Hot. Sunny.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Lots of time to think. About here.’

They took turns, these two, on Results Day. This year had been Maxwell’s. He was there, milling among his ex-Year Thirteen, giving
high-fives
to successes and tea and sympathy to the bereft. One day, he’d ring those bastards in the Exam Boards and tell them what he thought of their shitty little mark schemes that left such desolation in their wake.

Maxwell looked at her closely for the first time and saw that she was looking rather haggard. She was usually so bouncing, so healthy and fit that the look sat uncomfortably on her. ‘What is it, apart from beginning-of-termitis?’

She looked down into her mug as if the answer lay in the dark coffee. ‘Ummm, I applied for Dierdre’s job.’

If Maxwell was surprised, he didn’t let it show. ‘Good for you. You’ll be good at it.’

‘But I’m not sure now.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just feel, oh, I don’t know.’ She blew outwards, a blast of coffee breath washing over Maxwell. ‘Dead man’s shoes. Dead woman’s, perhaps I should say.’

‘That’s what all promotion is, Helen, in a way. As the cavalry officer’s mess toast had it in the nineteenth century – “Here’s to a bloody war and a sickly season”.’ He raised his mug in her direction. Dierdre Lessing’s death earlier in the year had shocked the whole school, as death always does when it is violent. Teachers don’t die, they just crawl into cupboards. Somehow, it was demeaning for the buttoned-up Dierdre, her life suddenly on show for the whole world courtesy of the red-top papers, exposed in all its seamy detail. Because of this, she had become someone of whom no one spoke, for fear that they would seem uncaring, desensitised to her lonely end. Maxwell understood Helen’s sensitivity and applauded it.

‘Of course, but not so literally. Anyway,’ she sipped her coffee again and gave herself a shake, ‘I’ve decided to see Legs today and cancel it.’

‘That would be a shame,’ Maxwell said, but only paying lip service. He had spent years grooming Helen and she knew all his little ways.
She kept out of his hair, he kept out of hers. When he was absent she seamlessly filled in the space. When she was absent he barely noticed. Perfect. On the other hand he was reminded again how ludicrous it was that the hapless, hopeless Headteacher who was James ‘Legs’ Diamond, had to be consulted on career moves at all. He’d left it too long. Dierdre’s place should have been filled already. They should all have moved on.

She gave a little laugh and chugged back her coffee. ‘No, Max, you can’t kid me. I’m happy up here with you, where the wild things are. I’m not SLT corridor material. I’ll go and tell him now,’ and she left the room, resting her hand very briefly on his tweed-clad shoulder in mute thanks.

Maxwell glanced up at the clock. The term was considerably less than an hour old and already it had begun. He dunked his chocolate finger with care. Nothing worse than a mug half full of sludge to start the day. Whoever thought of a staggered start to this day, with Post-16 coming in at lunchtime, was nothing short of a genius. And Peter Maxwell was nothing short of a genius. He checked last term’s film posters, reminding himself it was time he replaced them courtesy of a little man he knew in Wardour Street. Above his head, he was reassured to know that Buck Jones always gets his man in
McKenna of the Mounted
. Ginger Rogers was
the
Lady in the Dark
, more or less where Helen Maitland was now, Maxwell supposed. And
The Long Riders
trotted beigely out of the Old West towards him, walking adverts for Driza-Bone. So he had to go by guesswork when he heard his office door open and close behind him.

‘Sylv,’ he cried, ‘how the devil are you?’

‘Max,’ she said, coming round to sit in the chair recently vacated by Helen. ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘First day of term.’ He lapsed into full Sherlock Holmes mode, with just a nod in the direction of Basil Rathbone. ‘You’ve had just enough time to see the malingerers back to their classes and count the new pregnancies. Ah, “suddenly one summer”. Then, you fancied some decent coffee. Decent coffee is reliably to be found in this office, first month of the year guaranteed, courtesy of Yours Truly. Ergo elk, you have come to see me, aintcha?’ He had been honing his Catherine Tate take-off all summer, though it didn’t sit well with residual Monty Python. It would take work and he still couldn’t decide which was the funnier. ‘Anyway, dearest, how can I help you?’

The School Nurse beamed at him. ‘I came to give you this.’ She handed him an envelope.

‘What a coincidence,’ he smiled back. ‘I was waiting for an opportunity to give you this.’ His envelope was almost identical, slightly smaller
than usual and made of thick beige paper. ‘Shall we synchronise openings?’

‘Why not?’ the nurse said. ‘One, two, three … open!’

They ripped back the flaps in perfect harmony, extracted the piece of card and read silently for a few seconds, Maxwell taking slightly fewer seconds than Sylvia Matthews what with his Cambridge degrees, Speed Reading City and Guilds etc, but, ever the gentleman, appearing to finish last.

She looked up, eyes sparkling. ‘Oh, Max,’ she said. ‘It’s perfect. You’re a lucky man.’

‘And so is Guy,’ Maxwell said. ‘Oh, God, they’re not on the same day, are they?’

Sylvia’s eyes widened and she looked in horror at the card. ‘Oh, phew!’ she said, clutching a hand to her chest. ‘Yours is December 26
^th
. Ours is the 29
^th
. Oh, but does that mean you’ll be away? On honeymoon?’

‘No, we’re not going away. Remember what happened to Good King Wenceslas when
he
went out on the Feast of Stephen? If it was up to Jacquie we would have just gone off and got married somewhere and not mentioned it, jumping over a stick, or something. But her mother got wind of it and went demented. Ummm, more demented, as I suppose I should get used to saying.’

‘Pardon?’ Sylvia was confused.

‘Mother-in-law jokes. I had better start using them. Never had the need, before. Where’s my Les Dawson Joke Book?’ He looked up, to see Sylvia looking at him fondly, protectively. ‘Don’t worry, Sylv. I’m not being a brave little soldier. I’ll never forget her, you know. It’s just that I didn’t have a mother-in-law in my previous incarnation; she had died years before.’ No, Maxwell’s first family, torn from him on a wet day, on a wet road, were not forgotten. Every day, when he looked at Jacquie and Nolan, or when he trod on some abandoned bit of banana, found leg hair in his razor, found the biscuit barrel empty and put carefully back in the cupboard with only the trail of crumbs to point to the culprit, every day he gave thanks for now and for then and the happiness both had brought him.

Sylvia smiled. That man always could read her mind. To hide her confusion she said, ‘I always thought you’d get married on … oh, I don’t know, Balaclava Day, Trafalgar Day, something historical.’

‘Bastille Day, that would have been a good one, but apparently there wasn’t enough time to arrange the ten million bridesmaids and three miles of tulle by July, so we had to let that one go. In the end, we thought the Feast of Stephen might be nice. It was Jacquie’s idea. She can’t remember historical dates, but she said cold turkey would always remind us.
Anyway, are you coming? We don’t want to be on our own.’

‘Max, the church will be packed. Of course we’ll come. Are
you
coming to
ours
?’

‘May I be a bridesmaid?’

‘No.’

‘Never mind, we’ll still come.’

‘But we’d like Nolan as a pageboy. Are you having him …?’

‘God, no. The dragon – there I go again – wants him as a ring bearer, which all sounds a bit Tolkien to me. Anyway, Jacquie refused unless we can have Metternich as well and her mother wasn’t sure whether she was serious or not, so she backed off.’

Sylvia laughed and got up to go. ‘She’s perfect for you, Max.’

‘Yes,’ he said, quietly. ‘She is.’

The years of unrequited love for this curmudgeon were behind Sylvia Matthews now. Time was … but time always was and there was nothing to be done about it. She gave him a hug and they went their separate ways down the corridor to the background music of the bell for the first lesson of the year. Sylvia wistfully wondered whether it wasn’t time for a new ringtone – perhaps something from the
Carnival of the Animals
. Maxwell didn’t know what a ringtone was.

‘Melanie,’ she called to a disappearing rump.
‘Why aren’t you in your orthopaedic shoes? See me at break!’

‘Milly! Molly! Mandy!’ Maxwell yelled to the other end of the corridor. Ever since his primary school days he had always wanted to do that and today seemed as apt as any. It was not their fault that the boys in question were called James, Stanislas and Bradley, so they turned anyway as one man and waited to hear their fate. This was Mad Max, the great, the terrible. You didn’t argue, you didn’t mess. All you could do was look on his works and despair.

The long day passed, as even school days do. As Maxwell had predicted on the last day of the previous term, Chantelle Wiggins set a new record as the shortest-lived sixth-former on record, leaving as she did at 12.07 precisely, having arrived at 11.45 and learnt that Dance was not an A-level subject at Leighford High and, even if it had been, would not alone be sufficient to get her into Oxford.

The staff meeting had begun at three o’clock sharp. The newly qualified teachers, looking younger and more newly qualified this year than ever before, had stood and introduced themselves and the business of the term was begun. Lois was a Business Studies teacher; Malcolm taught Maths; Ronaldo was a Spanish assistant, but everyone knew he’d just been taken on for his
footballing skills. Maxwell was sitting as usual, an offshoot of the back-row element at the very front of the assembled staff, ready to fight the good fight whenever necessary, but particularly when Legs Diamond was the adversary. Mostly, the droning updates passed him by, the need for IEPs, the Assessment for Learning programme, the rather debatable notion that Every Child Matters; but Dierdre Lessing’s name brought him to full consciousness with a start.

‘As we all know, since Dierdre’s unfortunate … er …’