Maxwell's Inspection by M.J. Trow Read Free Book Online Page B

Tutors?’ Maxwell called and one by one, they waved to him.
    â€˜Kelly’s gone,’ Helen ‘The Fridge’ at his elbow told him.
    â€˜No,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘Tell me it isn’t so.’ He was always staggered when Kelly showed at all. Mistress of the catwalk and the parachute pants, Kelly’s ambition was to get up early enough in the morning to hold down a part-time job in HMV. ‘Mr Smith.’
    The finger of God beckoned Ben Smith across. ‘And the purpose of those shorts would be?’ Maxwell looked down at the lad’s nether wear. ‘Shorts’ was perhaps a brave choice of word. They actually reached to mid-calf and could have housed most of the kindergarten class at Leighford JMI across the road.
    â€˜Summer, sir.’ Ben Smith was always deferential, especially when he was about to get a bollocking.
    â€˜And your body is a temple, etcetera, etcetera.’
    â€˜Sunshine’s good for you, sir.’
    â€˜So it is,’ beamed Maxwell, more than a little ray of the stuff himself. ‘To that end, when this little bit of nonsense is over, you will sign yourself out at Reception and enjoy the sunshine on your way home to change. Clear?’
    â€˜Yes sir.’
    â€˜What’ll you miss?’
    A cleverer or a braver man would have quipped back, ‘You, sir, always.’ But Ben Smith was neither clever nor brave and he came clean. ‘Physics.’
    â€˜Then you will apologize to Mr Saunders and offer to make up the time at his convenience. You’ll do that for me, won’t you, Ben?’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ and the lad moved the regulation three paces backwards.
    â€˜That’s about it, then, Max,’ Helen handed in the registers .
    He winked at her. ‘Thou, good and faithful servant,’ he said and ambled with his armful across to the centre of the courts where the knot of Senior Managers darted hither and yon, doing their best to disappear up their own arseholes .
    â€˜All clear, Max?’ Bernard Ryan asked.
    Maxwell could barely disguise his contempt for this man. Not fit to run a jumble sale, Ryan had inexplicably risen to become Deputy Head of a large comprehensive school somewhere on the south coast. That was because he’d learned the jargon, carried Legs Diamond’s books and got his knees and his nose equally brown. It brought him forty-four grand a year and an ulcer the size of the Millennium Dome. He hadn’t slept since 1998. And it was beginning to show; wrinkles like the Grand Canyon, more bags under his eyes than were carried by the aptly named Ryanair.
    â€˜As clear as it’ll ever be,’ the Head of Sixth Form told him. ‘This little walk in the sun your idea, Bernard?’
    â€˜Certainly not,’ Dierdre Lessing, Leighford’s redoubtable Senior Mistress chipped in.
    How could one describe Dierdre? A cross between Beowulf’s Grendel and a pit-bull with attitude wouldn’t really come close.
    â€˜Didn’t see your lips move, Bernard.’ Maxwell wasn’tlooking at her at all.
    â€˜Somewhere in C Block, apparently,’ Ryan told him.
    â€˜The Torch?’
    â€˜We don’t know yet, Max,’ Ryan said, clearly sighting the end of his tether.
    â€˜Miracles take a little longer,’ Dierdre told him.
    He faced her for the first time, smiling broadly. ‘Indeed they do, Senior Mistress Mine,’ he said. ‘When you and Mother Theresa here get to the bottom of it all, I trust there’ll be a public flogging? School paraded in hollow square, groundsmen laying on with the cat, that sort of thing?’
    Bernard Ryan was called away with a query from someone in Year Eight, never normally the most inquisitive Year Group in any school.
    â€˜It’s difficult to see how you can be so insufferable,’ Dierdre snapped at Maxwell.
    â€˜It’s not easy, Dierdre,’ he admitted, stone-faced. ‘None of this comes