Maxwell's Crossing (3 page)

‘I did 'vite her,' he said, drawing himself up a little. ‘She said she would cry, so could she have a copy of the DVD?'

Maxwell rumpled his son's hair. He could see that this could turn nasty, given half a chance. He bent down to him and gave him an extra kiss on top of his head. ‘Sometimes, mate,' he said, ‘I wonder who has
been bringing you up. Whoever it is, they're doing a bang-up job. Well done. Very thoughtful all round.' He gave Jacquie a warning glance. When she was feeling a bit fragile, she often became what she thought was businesslike but could seem to a five-year-old a bit policeman-like.

‘Well, I thought so,' muttered the forty-year-old that seemed to live in Nolan's little body sometimes. ‘The DVDs are fifteen pounds,' he said, addressing himself to his mother. ‘Nana wants one as well.'

‘Does she?' was all Jacquie could say, weakly. ‘How does she know about them?'

‘I told her last week, on the phone.'

‘Ah.' Jacquie reached for her purse. ‘I wonder if it's buy one get one free.' A glance in the direction of Mrs Whatmough, beaming in the corner with her hand full of tenners, answered that question. ‘You guys get in the car, while I buy some lovely DVDs.'

The first day of the Christmas holidays had always followed a certain pattern in the Maxwell household and this year was no exception. Get up. Add some more tinsel to any lingering bald spots in the decor. Go out and buy more tinsel. Remember that no one had ordered a turkey. Go out and order a turkey. This year another dimension was added; go out and buy nibbly bits and some cheap but stylish presents for the visit that afternoon by the Gold family party. Nolan was excited; he always tended to be a bit of a method actor and his Huron Indian persona still lingered, so Americans were
very much the order of the day. Maxwell was getting by on deep breathing and concentrating on Jacquie's instructions to stop saying ‘Howdy' all the time. They had invited Mrs Troubridge. The DVD was a great success and somehow, in all the cooing, and the aahing, someone – and Maxwell feared it may have been him – had asked her round. Still, as he told Jacquie, in for a penny, in for a Troubridge.

‘She can hand things round,' he added as an extra encouragement. ‘Olives. Buffalo wings. Things of that nature.'

Huron Indians have razor-sharp hearing. ‘Have buffaloes got wings?' Nolan said, materialising at his father's elbow. ‘They seem a bit big to be able to fly.'

‘And think of the poo,' Maxwell added, leaping on to his son's train of thought as effortlessly as a hobo on to a boxcar.

Jacquie looked up from her list-compiling. ‘I was thinking of keeping the food a bit more traditional,' she said. ‘Mince pies. Sausage rolls. Umm …'

‘Mini pizzas,' Maxwell offered. ‘Filo-wrapped king prawns. Satay chicken onna-stick.'

Jacquie screwed up her face. ‘You're right. What is traditional these days? I think I'll just have a bit of a mooch round M&S – that's traditional, isn't it?'

‘Absolutely,' Maxwell said. ‘And don't overdo it. The Golds'll only just have got over Thanksgiving. While you're out, Nole and I will tweak the decorations.'

That seemed like a good deal to Jacquie – the thought of shopping with two overexcited Maxwell
men did not appeal at all. She grabbed her handbag and was down the stairs like a rat down a pipe, hauling on her coat as she ran. ‘It's a deal,' her voice floated up to them. ‘See you later.' And with a crash of the door, she was gone.

The sound of the Mosses' people carrier drawing up outside 38 Columbine was the innocent precursor to possibly the oddest Christmas drinks party the Maxwells had ever thrown. That it was the only Christmas drinks party the Maxwells had ever thrown was only part of it. Mrs Troubridge was waiting at the door to greet what she had decided to call ‘Our Transatlantic Cousins'. This had confused Nolan at first, whose life was pretty devoid of cousins, having only a couple of the species – girls who were too old to play with and too far away to know. Jacquie had explained the reference and it hadn't helped much, but at least now he wasn't expecting the cast of
Hannah Montana
to tumble out of the people carrier.

Maxwell and Jacquie took their places at Mrs Troubridge's side, with Nolan between them. Maxwell feared they may strike the Gold family as a bit of a
cliché, but it was too late now. First out of the car was a woman so manicured and coiffed it was a wonder she could move her head, let alone speak or blink. She was tiny but not, as Jacquie told her mother later, in a good way. Everything spoke of gym and surgeon, and as she got closer, it was clear that she was carrying a few more years than it at first appeared.

Mrs Troubridge rose to the occasion, stepping forward and speaking very clearly, as befitted someone who was divided from the guest by a common language and six thousand miles. ‘Hello,' she trilled. ‘I am Mrs Troubridge, Mr and Mrs Maxwell's neighbour. Welcome to Leighford.'

The woman looked down at her, but only slightly. It was unusual for anyone to be almost Mrs Troubridge's height and it gave them the appearance of an optical illusion. ‘Hi,' she drawled. ‘Camille.' With that, she walked forward, making the Maxwells break ranks, and she made her way to the stairs. ‘Up here?' she asked and Jacquie hurried to follow her in.

The next to appear was a man built so differently that he appeared to be another species. He was huge, with wide shoulders, powerful thighs and a bull neck on which his head, buzz-cut to the scalp, appeared to balance like an egg in its cup. The general effect of scarcely controlled power and aggression was slightly offset by a huge gut which preceded him by some way as he came up the path to the by now fragmented welcoming committee. Maxwell felt Mrs Troubridge shrink into his side and he shared her trepidation. If
this was Hector Gold, he would be going off sick for a year. At least.

The man thrust out a hand which seemed at least as big as the turkey now taking up half the fridge upstairs. ‘Jeff,' he boomed. ‘Jeff O'Malley. Glad to have you know me.'

Maxwell's knee pressed lightly into Nolan's back. Many viewings of
The Aristocats
had made J Thomas O'Malley almost seem like a member of the family, and although this huge man was not much like him to look at, Maxwell knew his son and a bit of a reminder at this early stage could prevent some serious embarrassment down the line. A faint humming of a familiar tune from just above knee height confirmed that this early intervention had not been wasted.

Trying to keep the relief from his voice, Maxwell took the proffered hand and shook it back. ‘Peter Maxwell. Delighted to meet you.' He stood aside and ushered the man through. ‘Do go up. I'll be with you in a minute.' The Head of Sixth Form glanced down, checking that Nolan and Mrs Troubridge had not been swept up in the giant's passage. They were both there and he could give his attention to the next arrival, a woman so colourless and insubstantial that she was hardly there at all. She was clearly the wife and mother of Jeff and Camille in that she was cowed enough and skinny enough, but there was little else to say about her. Maxwell sincerely hoped that, should the woman go missing during their stay, he wouldn't be called upon to describe her, because he would not have been able to do it.

Mrs Troubridge leapt into action, having finally recovered from the volcanic eruption that was Jeff O'Malley. She extended a tiny hand and said gently, ‘Hello, I am Jessica Troubridge, Mr and Mrs Maxwell's neighbour. And this,' she put a hand on Nolan's shoulder, ‘is Nolan, their son. Come with us, there are mince pies upstairs. And sherry.'

Maxwell was a little disconcerted to see a flare of interest light the woman's eyes. He hoped that it was because she loved mince pies.

‘Alana,' the woman breathed. ‘Alana O'Malley.'

‘How lovely,' chirruped Mrs Troubridge and she shepherded her little flock towards the stairs. Maxwell looked at her fondly; despite all her strange little ways and the years of bridling and unbridled nosiness, she was almost as much a part of his family now as Metternich, although she didn't tend to bring in quite so much dismembered livestock of an evening. He was brought out of his reverie by a soft touch on his arm.

‘Mr Maxwell?' The voice was apologetic and gentle. It was like being tumbled headlong into an episode of the
Prairie Home Companion
. Looking up, he expected to see a Garrison Keillor lookalike, tall and gangly, hunched over from the Minnesota winters of his Lake Wobegon childhood. Instead, a small neat man stood there, his thinning blond hair stretched smoothly across the top of an almost impossibly high forehead. His eyes, behind his gold-rimmed glasses, were pale and apologetic, but his smile was real and he was the only one of the four who seemed genuinely glad to
be here. It was probably the snow making him feel at home.

‘Hector?' Maxwell smiled back. He had to fight to keep the relief out of his voice. ‘My dear chap, how lovely to meet you. Come on in.'

‘You have a lovely home,' Hector told him, gently. ‘Please call me Hec, all my friends do.' And so they made their way up the stairs, with Hector finding time to exclaim about some small thing on almost every step. Metternich, scooting down at a rate of knots, was scooped up and admired from nose-tip to tail-tip. To Maxwell's amazement, he didn't take the man's face off with one swipe, but tolerated it as the lesser of two evils. Metternich didn't usually do strangers. He ate them occasionally, but only if they were of the rodentular persuasion.

Upstairs was becoming a little hard to take. Now Maxwell had time to listen, the noise levels had reached something approaching a large jet on its final descent, made up in equal amounts of Jeff O'Malley's strident roar and his daughter's descant whine. He looked round at Hector Gold, who was following him with a smile of pleasant vacuity on his face. He had clearly learnt over the years to filter the noise out and to rise above it. Maxwell was heartened; this should mean that Leighford High and the perils of Pansy Donaldson would hold no fears for a man who could live with the rest of this particular family. Squaring his shoulders, he led the way into the sitting room, temporarily become the Seventh Circle of hell.

At Christmas, the Maxwell sitting room always seemed smaller than usual, because with every year of Nolan's life, the tree had got bigger and bigger. When the extra tinsel and various manifestations of Santa were taken into account, it was only just adequate for a party of normal people, but when the party involved Jeff O'Malley, it seemed genuinely cramped. He was standing, legs apart in a positively Henrician posture, with a mince pie dwarfed in one massive hand, a glass of sherry looking like a toy in the other. He turned as Maxwell went in.

‘Hey, Peter,' he yelled, ‘I was just telling the little woman here how I like your little home. Cute as a bug, ain't it?'

‘We like it,' Maxwell smiled through gritted teeth. He was not used to being called Peter at the best of times, and when it appeared to be spelt with a ‘d' in the middle, it was even worse.

‘Ah, you English,' O'Malley shouted. ‘You're always so polite. Say, can I call you Pete?'

‘Er … no,' Maxwell said, still smiling, still with teeth gritted. ‘But you can call me Max, everyone does.'

‘Max it is, then,' the big man said and spread his arms still wider, to engulf everyone in the room it seemed. ‘Ain't this swell? Christmas in England. I never thought I'd do it. And snow as well. It's just perfect.' He smiled around the room. ‘And new friends too.' He threw the mince pie in whole and Nolan had to be shushed covertly; he knew these people were guests but he also knew bad table manners when he saw them. O'Malley
chewed twice and swallowed. ‘What the hell—oh …' he threw a glance at Nolan, ‘sorry, little feller, what in blazes is in these things? I've had I don't know how many since we got here and I don't think two have been the same.'

Maxwell, who avoided mince pies as if his life depended on it, started compiling a list of ingredients in his mind, but the look in Jacquie's eye stopped him from sharing. ‘Mincemeat,' he said. ‘Fruit. Suet.'

O'Malley swirled a sausage-sized finger round between his teeth and gums to remove the glutinous remains. ‘Is that so? Well, I think I've had enough of them now to know I don't really like them.' He glanced at Jacquie. ‘No offence, little lady,' he said dismissively. ‘Just don't like them.'

Maxwell was appalled to think that he and O'Malley had anything in common, and to cheer himself up, turned to Hector, but no sooner had he opened his mouth than O'Malley was off again.

‘I was saying, as you came up the stairs, Max, what was it your little gal here did for a living? Camille here was saying that surely she didn't stay at home all day, with you just being a teacher and all. Camille has her own business at home, because of Hector being a teacher and only bringing home enough to keep her in shoes, more or less.' Maxwell had never actually seen a man castrated in his own sitting room before, but he supposed there had to be a first time for everything. The man paused, and finally Jacquie spoke.

‘I am a detective inspector,' she said.

‘What's that?' drawled Camille. ‘You have people to inspect detectives over here? Isn't that a bit specialised?'

‘No, honey,' O'Malley said, fetching her a slap on the shoulder which should have felled someone her size, but she had obviously been brought up to it, because she barely flinched. ‘A detective inspector in England is the same as a lieutenant in LA. Sort of.'

The woman looked vaguely at Jacquie as though she were some exotic creature in a zoo. ‘Don't say,' she said. In the silence that followed, she added, ‘I run a nail bar.' She threw a glance at her father. ‘Daddy bought it for me, when he retired.'

‘Retired from what?' said Jacquie politely.

‘Why, from a lieutenant in the police,' he laughed. ‘Didn't old Hec tell you that on all those forms he filled in?'

‘I don't believe that there was a space for father-
in-law's
profession,' Maxwell said quietly and turned to where Hector had been last, just behind him. The man had wandered away and was nodding gentle approval at a
Spy
cartoon of Gladstone which was just peeping out from behind the Christmas tree. ‘How long have you been retired, Jeff?' he asked.

There was a tiny noise, as though a very quiet mouse had snorted, and only Mrs Troubridge heard it. It came from Alana, who was sitting on the arm of the chair Mrs Troubridge was occupying, with Nolan tucked down the side, like a cushion. The old woman looked up sharply and saw a smile just fading on Jeff O'Malley's wife's face. ‘Retired?' she heard her say. ‘Retired?' and
the tiny snorting mouse snorted again. Mrs Troubridge looked down at Nolan, who did a whole body shrug which could mean so much between them. On this occasion it meant that he, Nolan, knew that she, Mrs Troubridge, thought that something was odd and that he acknowledged her right to do so. But, that said, he had no idea what she was thinking and if she wanted to tell his mum, now was the time, because she was forgetful and he was only five.

‘Oooh, five or six years now, hon, isn't it?' O'Malley appealed not to his wife, but his daughter.

‘More like seven,' she said. ‘Because, if you remember—'

Nolan could see this going on for ages. ‘Mums,' he suddenly announced. ‘Mrs Troubridge would like to see you in the kitchen.'

‘Really, darling,' Jacquie said, brightly. ‘Well, all right, then. Help her up, poppet.' Nolan wriggled down behind his friend and hoisted her up by pushing with his knees.

Mrs Troubridge popped out of the chair like a cork out of a bottle, nearly dislodging Alana, whose balance didn't seem to be all it might. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘it's about the stuffing.'

Jacquie flicked a glance at Nolan, who looked innocent, and at Maxwell, who for once actually was innocent. O'Malley and his daughter were stalled in a conversation about realtors, Alana was looking glazed and Hector had wandered still further, in search of a little culture now he was nearer to it than he had been
in years. The party was pooped, well and truly.

In the kitchen, Mrs Troubridge sat down at the table. ‘I'm sorry, dear,' she said. ‘I don't think it's anything to make much of, but I don't
like
that man.'

‘Heavens above, Mrs Troubridge,' Jacquie said, pouring some gin into her sherry glass and knocking it back. ‘I didn't need to come out here to glean that piece of info. None of us like him.' She looked over her shoulder in sudden horror, to see Hector standing there. ‘Oh … I do apologise … well …' she stuttered to a stop. ‘Mr Gold, what can I say? I'm so sorry.'

‘Please,' he said and his smile slowly spread to light up his face. ‘We all hate Jeff. Go right ahead.' And he wandered up the corridor in search of more history. ‘And do call me Hec,' they heard him mutter, ‘everyone does.'

Jacquie and Mrs Troubridge were transfixed and it took the younger woman a moment to get the conversation back on track. ‘Where were we?'

‘I can't remember, dear.' Mrs Troubridge looked confused. ‘I'll retrace my steps. Hold on.' She closed her eyes and her lips moved and her arms waved as she bobbed and ducked her metaphorical way back into the sitting room. Her eyes opened. ‘I remember, dear. It was Alana, poor soul. She was
very
sarcastic when her husband and daughter said he had retired. I wondered if there might be a story there, something we should know if these people are going to be living nearby.'