Maxwell’s Movie by M. J. Trow Read Free Book Online Page B

she joined us from college in September …’
    ‘Which one?’
    ‘The London Institute.’
    ‘The London Institute?’ Maxwell frowned.
    ‘Yes, you know, it’s a big place, where they keep the government and that sort of thing.’ Sarcasm didn’t sit well on Deirdre Lessing; she hadn’t the wit for it.
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘She majored in English.’
    Maxwell shuddered at the Americanism, promising himself that if Deirdre said ‘Have a nice day, y’all’ he’d leave. ‘And her subsid?’
    ‘French. But of course we’re fully staffed there.’
    Maxwell nodded. Deirdre was technically correct, but the vacuous thing who ran the Modern Languages Department could scarcely be called a full-timer and at least one of the
assistantes
was mad as a snake.
    ‘You met her … what … twice a week as her mentor?’
    ‘More often than that at first. Until she found her feet, you know. After Christmas she relaxed a little.’
    ‘A little too much?’
    Deirdre frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
    ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I’m just fishing, I suppose.’
    ‘Well,’ Deirdre looked at the man, her
bête noire
for eight long years, the thorn in her side, the itch she couldn’t scratch, ‘there were, of course, rumours.’
    Of course there were. Leighford High was a melting pot of passions, a bubbling cauldron of pubescence. And as for the kids, well …
    ‘What sort of rumours?’
    ‘Max,’ Deirdre was punctuating her sentences now with the firm putting down of her coffee cup, ‘you know I won’t deal in innuendo.’
    Deirdre Lessing might have dealt in marijuana for all Maxwell knew. Two perfectly ordinary, perfectly everyday people had gone missing. There was a great deal that Peter Maxwell didn’t know. ‘Have the police talked to you?’ he asked her.
    ‘They have,’ she nodded. ‘A DC Carpenter saw me yesterday morning – shortly after she saw you, I understand.’
    ‘And is that what you told her, Deirdre?’ he asked. ‘That you don’t deal in innuendo.’
    ‘Certainly not!’ It wasn’t difficult for Peter Maxwell to insult the Senior Mistress. He did it almost every day of his working life. ‘I merely told her what I knew’
    ‘Which was?’
    ‘Not a great deal. There were rumours – are rumours – that Alice was hanging around with a rather undesirable crowd. Down at the Seahorse.’
    ‘The Seahorse?’
    ‘Do you know it?’ Nothing about Peter Maxwell would have surprised Deirdre Lessing. He probably had a collection of little girls’ bicycle saddles at home.
    ‘Of it, yes,’ Maxwell told her, ‘it ranks with Big Ben’s as the place-teachers-wouldn’t-be-seen-dead-in,’ and instantly regretted his choice of words. ‘Where does she live?’
    ‘She shares a flat, with a primary school teacher in Graylands Lane. Number Thirty-one.’
    Maxwell was on his feet, bicycle clips straining for the off.
    ‘Max,’ Deirdre stood up with him, ‘it’s none of my business, of course, but I wouldn’t get involved, if I were you.’
    ‘No, Deirdre.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I know you wouldn’t. Thanks for the coffee.’

4
    ‘In the store today, shoppers, we have British beef down by fourteen pence a pound and there is a special offer on artichokes.’
    Dorothy Parsons wouldn’t have been surprised. Who knew what an artichoke was, never mind ate them? But Dorothy Parsons wasn’t listening. She’d manned the till at Tesco’s now since her Ronnie was in junior school. She was just part of the furniture. But that wasn’t why she wasn’t listening to the announcements over the tannoy. It was because she was listening out for her Ronnie’s voice. Every time she looked up at her next customer, dumping down the six packs or wrestling with the carrier bags, she thought it might be him – ‘Hello, Mum.’
    But it never was ‘Hello, Mum.’ It was always, ‘Got any carriers? Where’s your boxes? You put them Smarties back, Shane, or I’ll bleeding kill ya!’
    Dorothy