Maxwell’s Ride (13 page)

Logan did, quickly taking in his jeans, his Top Man jumper, his trainers.

‘You’re like a bow string,’ Maxwell said. ‘Taut as a pupil. Why?’

‘Er … I don’t know,’ Logan said, but he secretly admitted it was true.

‘Because you
are
a pupil,’ Maxwell bellowed so that Metternich twitched an ear. What was the old fart going on about? Only he, the great Count, was allowed to leave blood on the mat. ‘Oh, I don’t mean it in an unkind way, Chris, but it’s difficult for you. I told you what defenestration meant, for God’s sake. Taught you the joined up writing. Now I’m treating you as an equal. You’re sitting in my lounge, drinking my Southern Comfort, calling me Max and you can’t quite handle it, can you? Oh, on the surface, you’re fine. The firm handshake, the easy smile, the badinage. But deep down, I’ll always be “Sir” won’t I? Your body’s screaming it at me.’

‘Oh,’ was all Logan could think to say.

‘Now Hamlyn is another matter. Every answer he gave, every word he said is just like all the others. His head doesn’t move. I’ve been fast forwarding this and rewinding it over and over since yesterday. Bartlett’s bobbing about like a bloody cork on a wine-dark sea. But Hamlyn’s like a rock. His shoulders are square, his back’s straight, his voice is … well, dead in a way.’

‘Yes,’ Logan nodded, remembering it. ‘Yes, you’re right, Max.’

‘Is he on something, do you think? Heroin? Mescalin? Christ, Chris, I’m out of my depth here. Ecstasy to me is half an hour with Jean Simmons or Doris Day. That’s the kind of sad old bastard I am.’

Metternich raised his head to yawn. No surprises there, then.

‘Maybe,’ Logan nodded. ‘Max, forgive me, but this takes a bit of digesting, a bit of thought. I couldn’t borrow the tape, I suppose?’

‘Sorry, Chris,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘It’s not me I’m protecting.’

‘Say no more,’ Logan was on his feet. ‘I’ve been there myself. Look, let me sleep on it, will you? Do a bit of digging – don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I’ll ring you when I’ve got something.’

And he made for the door, worrying every step of the way what hidden messages his body was giving.

10

Maxwell stared out of the window, rushing along as he was, like troops in a battle. ‘So why, Senior Mistress mine, did our great and worthy Headmaster ask me to accompany you on this jolly?’

‘It is not a jolly, Max,’ she assured him, stirring her Stagecoach coffee with one of those whippy, bendy plastic things which have replaced spoons on all public services. ‘We are going to discuss plans for the new theatre.’

‘Assuming the bid is successful?’

Yes,’ she tutted, ‘though I have it on excellent authority that it will be.’

‘And my role is?’ He bit deep into his Genoa cake. It tasted like a Star Wars figure, all plastic and crunchy.

‘Tangential is as kind as I can manage,’ she said icily. ‘Here.’ And she unfolded a sheet of paper on the table between them. ‘This,’ her gold-ringed fingers stabbed at a series of lines, ‘is the proposed theatre. Stage, auditorium, green room, usual offices, box office. This,’ she poked about next door, ‘is that sink of iniquity, your sixth form block.’

‘Good God!’

“Max, you must have seen this before.’ Deirdre Lessing was at a loss.

‘In point of fact, Senior Mistress, no. Still, it’ll be handy to have a public urinal so close to my office.’

‘Today is your last chance to object,’ she told him. ‘That’s why I’m taking you along.’

‘Oh,’ pouted Maxwell, sitting back sulkily and kicking the padded seat opposite, ‘and I thought it was just for the ride.’

They rattled north, through Guildford and Woking, past the desolation that was Clapham Junction where a whole new language was sprayed in bold overlapping letters on every flat surface, through the site of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, where the first Georgians had been forced to amuse themselves until they invented television and Playstations and theme parks. Then, it was Waterloo where the IRA had brought about the disappearance of rubbish bins and pigeons flitted about in the Victorian rafters, ready to drop on the buggers below.

On the tube escalators Maxwell was careful to keep to the right, although personally he always dressed to the left and had the unenviable experience of being at eye level with Deirdre Lessing’s bum. Ferrets fighting in a sack. She nearly died when a huge Rasta with dreadlocks swept by and winked at her.

‘We could have taken a cab,’ he said.

‘Certainly not.’ She stood on her dignity on the escalator. ‘Men masturbate in taxis.’

‘Really?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘But it’s not compulsory, surely?’

They’d built the Garrick Club in 1831 when London streets were thronged with riotous mobs demanding the immediate implementation of the Reform Bill – ‘The Bill,’ they had shouted, ‘the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill.’ And now
The Bill
was on telly every week. What had the world come to? The Club stood in King Street, Covent Garden, then, but they’d moved it to Garrick Street by coincidence in 1862 when Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister for the second time and beer was tuppence a pint.

A liveried flunky opened the heavy, black door.

‘Mrs Lessing to see Mr Wiseman,’ she said.

‘And her monkey,’ Maxwell peered cheekily around her shoulder.

‘Ah yes.’ The flunky let them in. ‘I’m afraid Mr Wiseman couldn’t make it this afternoon. Would you wait here please.’

Maxwell took in the oil portraits of the great and not-so-good in the worlds of the theatre and the law. Edmund Kean was giving them his best Richard III and Henry Irving, at least from his tartan, was rendering the Scottish play. The barrister Marshall Hall, a better actor than either of them, twinkled enigmatically from the spiral sweep of the staircase.

‘Mrs Lessing,’ a voice boomed from overhead, ‘Deirdre.’

A man built like a wardrobe was thundering down the stairs, his dinner jacket stretched to breaking point over his paunch.

‘Archie,’ Deirdre extended a limp hand, ‘how are you?’

‘Now that I’ve seen you again, dear lady, positively effervescent.’ And he kissed her hand. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Peter Maxwell, I’d like you to meet Archie Godden. Yes,’ her eyes shone and her voice trilled like an excited budgie, ‘
the
Archie Godden, music critic of the
Observer
.’’

‘Peter Maxwell,’ Maxwell shook the man’s chubby hand, ‘
the
Peter Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High.’

‘Ah.’ Godden didn’t really approve of the man’s choice of bow tie. After all, this was the Garrick. ‘Do you play an Instrument at all?’

‘I fiddle with my hair from time to time,’ he beamed. ‘Oh, strictly amateur, of course.’

Godden’s smile faded and Deirdre fumed. ‘Er … I’m afraid Harold’s been called away,’ the Critic said to the Senior Mistress, ‘but the rest of us are here. Shall we?’ And he led them up the glorious curve of the carpeted stairs into an ante-room. At the door, a white-jacketed waiter hovered like something out of Remains of the Day.

‘Tea, Jonathan, please,’ Godden said. ‘For seven.’

‘Yes sir,’ and the waiter vanished.

‘Everybody,’ the Critic clapped his hands as though he were initiating the applause at the Proms. ‘I think you all know Deirdre, Deirdre Lessing.’

The group draped around assorted leather furniture nodded and rhubarbed. The men stood up, the token woman stayed where she was.

‘This is … um …’

‘Peter Maxwell,’ said Maxwell, smiling broadly.

‘From the left, you’ll know Anthony LeStrange from his television appearances.’ Indeed, Maxwell did. He caught the man’s hand. LeStrange was a magician of some repute, a rather cadaverous figure with a high forehead and long wavy hair, most of it, apparently, his own.

‘Mr LeStrange,’ Maxwell nodded.

‘Robert Hart, this year’s Booker winner.’

Maxwell was less impressed this time. He’d never yet read a Booker book he’d understood, much less liked.

‘Mr Hart.’

The man was handsome in a nondescript sort of way, with short dark hair and scholarly glasses that seemed oddly flat, as though he wore them for the air of gravitas they gave him. Not a snappy dresser though.

‘Hilary St John, fashion photographer.’

The man made David Bailey look quite dapper. He’d obviously put on a tie to get through the Garrick’s front door and his moleskin trousers hung gracelessly from his female hips.

‘Mr St John,’ Maxwell smiled.

The grip was firmer than Maxwell had expected. Even so, he felt himself mentally undressed by the man. It was an unsettling experience.
Prêt a courir
.

‘And last, but by no means least, Amy Weston, probably Britain’s greatest poetess.’

The token woman drifted to her feet. Her age was tricky, perhaps forty, perhaps not. She had long sensuous fingers that curled around Maxwell’s and eyes a man could drown in ‘Mr Maxwell.’ She didn’t smile.

‘Ms Weston.’ Neither did he.

There was a warmth about her that held him briefly, but her eyes drifted across to Hart and she let her hand fall.

‘Right,’ Godden said, ‘that’s the formalities over. I’ve ordered some tea and I think I can speak for Harold in terms of theatrical input at this late stage. You understand, Deirdre, that we, at Charts, are not able to make a donation to Leighford High until next month. We’ve read your bid and I must say we are impressed by it. But of course, there are other worthy causes out there. Eton’s asking again and Winchester …’

‘Eton and Winchester?’ Maxwell interrupted. ‘Shouldn’t they be offering you money?’

There was an uneasy ripple of laughter in the room, all except for Deirdre Lessing whose silent scowl covered the incantations she was muttering against Maxwell.

‘Mr Maxwell,’ Amy Weston purred. ‘Sit here, won’t you?’ And she slid elegantly sideways to make room for him.

Deirdre unfolded the blueprints on the coffee table and then they all sat, six characters in search of an author, waiting for Godden.

It was in a lull in the briefing, when the little company had fragmented into splinter groups that she asked him.

‘Tell me, Mr Maxwell, is there a favourite poet, for you, I mean?’

‘Well, you of course, Ms Weston,’ he beamed broadly.

‘Flatterer!’ she laughed so that even more of her teeth came into view. ‘I suppose I meant dead ones.’

‘Saw the film,’ Maxwell murmured. ‘Not bad, not bad at all.’

‘But seriously …’

‘Seriously? Rudyard Kipling.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell nodded. He’d trodden this road before. ‘I know he’s terribly un-PC these days, but hey, he’ll become fashionable again when the Empire is reinstated.’

She looked at him oddly, as people often did at Mad Max. Then she laughed. ‘Well, we all look forward to those days,’ she said. ‘But I’m talking about Kipling’s poetry, not his politics.’

‘Ah. Your turn to tell me, Ms Weston, who makes the earth move for you?’

‘Among the world of dead poets? Oh, Rupert Brooke, every time. It’s raw of course, because he was so young, but it has a magic all its own.’

‘Bit of a miserable bugger, wasn’t he? Doomed youth, failed love affairs and so on. Still, each to his own, as the French say.’

‘What exactly is your role in this?’ It was Hilary St John, the photographer, who had asked the question. Maxwell recognized the man’s shaggy locks and sinewy forearms from the Sunday tabloids, where the man who made a living behind the camera was singularly often in front of it, usually on the arm of Koo Stark or looking snappier-than-thou outside the little Isle of Wight pad of Julia Margaret Cameron, doyen of early photographers.

‘I wish I knew,’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Devil’s Advocate, I suppose. The new theatre is earmarked next to my domain. If anybody’s going to cut up rough, it’ll be me.’

‘What is it that you do?’ Hilary St John could have patronized for England.

‘Head of Sixth Form,’ Maxwell explained. ‘I wipe the bums and noses of seventeen and eighteen-year-olds who should know better. Tell me, do you give all your begging letters so much time?’

‘We do what we can,’ St John said, lolling back in his leather. ‘It’s rather akin to kissing babies and opening fetes actually. We’ve all done our fair share of that. Wouldn’t you say so, Bob?’

Robert Hart was less worldly than the photographer. He wore a ghastly mustard-coloured jacket of corduroy and one of Frank Bough’s old jumpers. He looked tired and was clearly a stranger to razor blades. Perhaps that was what authors were supposed to look like.

‘I would,’ Hart agreed and sat down alongside Amy Weston, finishing his tea.

‘Working on the next blockbuster?’ Maxwell asked him.

Hart’s face said it all. ‘I don’t do blockbusters, Mr Maxwell. My art, no less than Amy’s and Hilary’s, is for its own sake. If I’d wanted to make money, I’d write some unbelievable tosh about serial killers who liked fava beans.’

‘Yes,’ Maxwell took up the theme. ‘What are they, exactly? Sawney Bean I’ve heard of. Even Sean. Then of course, there’s Mr …’

Nobody was laughing. Nobody was even smiling. It was like working the Northern clubs.

‘I write about things that matter,’ Hart told him. ‘As does Amy.’

‘Ah, the meaning of life, that sort of thing?’ Maxwell could play the perfect oaf when it suited him. Working for ever at the chalk face had given him the edge.

‘That sort of thing,’ Hart nodded, as though it were an over-simplification. ‘But then, life is never what it seems, is it?’

St John had wandered away, utterly bored by the whole thing.

‘Indeed not.’ Maxwell was reminded of Hancock’s
Reunion
, where the great East Cheam resident had nothing whatever to say to his old oppos of yesteryear, inseparable chums though they’d once been. Except that Peter Maxwell didn’t know these people and he didn’t really want to know them. ‘Been with Charts long?’

‘Four years,’ Hart told him.

‘Tragic about Larry Warner.’

‘Appalling,’ Hart nodded. ‘Still, if you lead that lifestyle …’

‘Lifestyle?’ Maxwell’s ears pricked up.

Hart leaned across Amy’s flat chest. ‘Well known, I understand, in the gay community.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ It was Maxwell’s turn to nod. ‘Shame that in these enlightened times, that should still be a motive for murder.’