Maxwell's Retirement Read Online Free Page A

and another, Mrs Troubridge?’
    ‘Yes, well, the accident. Presumably that’s why you are home so early.’
    ‘I’m not early, Mrs Troubridge. I’m a teacher. We always get home early. And have long holidays. Our salaries are stupendous and we have total job satisfaction. We don’t really know we’re born.
What accident?
’ The last two words were issued in a distant scream, as though from someone underwater down a well many miles away. Faint, but piercing.
    The little woman visibly left the ground and clutched at where anyone else’s heart would be with a claw-like hand. In the empty recesses of her head she remembered that Maxwell’s first wife and child had died, long years ago for her, yesterday still to him and, in her selfish, addled way she was sorry for what she had said. ‘Mr Maxwell, I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m sorry for what I said.’
    This was almost as big a shock as he had already had and he wasn’t sure how many more he could take. He drew a deep breath and tried to calm down. ‘What accident, Mrs Troubridge?’ Hehadn’t slipped off his cycle-clips yet in case he had to be away again and mentally noted the distance to Surrey, still saddled at the kerb.
    ‘Nolan. Playground. Casualty. Not serious.’ She had resorted to telegraphic speech, a decision arrived at as less likely to spread alarm and despondency. Her aunt had been incarcerated in the war for just that reason and she had never quite forgotten it.
    But she was speaking to air. Maxwell had thrust his key into the lock after only the tenth attempt and was bounding up the stairs three at a time. He burst into the sitting room, to find Jacquie sitting in his favourite chair with Nolan asleep on her lap and Metternich the cat on the chair’s arm, glaring balefully at her. Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears and she was still wearing her coat. The smile she gave him was watery and the finger she raised to her lips was shaking.
    He was on his knees at her side in a heartbeat, hat and scarf flying in all directions. Metternich gave him a cuff round the head for the look of the thing, but he wasn’t giving it his full attention and it was a shadow of his usual offering. His slit eyes were fixed on the Boy. He was considering changing the help; he and the Boy just weren’t getting the service they deserved. He had sent the little chap out in the morning, all neat and tidy, with a quick lick to finish him off, and they brought him back filthy, with a big white bandageand smelling of clean, which made the cat’s nose ache.
    ‘What happened?’ Maxwell whispered, stroking her hair and reaching out a tentative hand to touch his little boy’s cheek.
    ‘Well, you know Nole,’ she said quietly. ‘Never does anything by halves. He was on the climbing frame at the afternoon break and he climbed up the ladder. Unfortunately, when he got to the end, he just kept climbing. Pitched right over and landed on his chin.’ She pointed to the dressing. ‘Five stitches and a bruise the shape of Australia. And the size.’ She tried to smile, but failed and the quivering lip spilt over into crying. She stifled the sobs when the boy stirred and muttered in his sleep. A cloud went across his face as the pain stabbed briefly and then he was off again, twitching as he slept, like Metternich did. Maxwell hoped that this didn’t mean that Nolan was disembowelling rats in his dreams.
    ‘So,’ she continued, ‘Mrs Thomas scooped him up and took him to the nurse. It was bleeding everywhere.’ She moved her protecting arm and Maxwell saw the front of his son’s T-shirt, soaked in blood and his mother’s tears. ‘They waited until it stopped and then realised it would need stitches. They called me and I met them in A&E. He was so brave, Max. He didn’t cry at all. His chin was so small they couldn’t give him a local, so they just stitched it up. And he didn’t cry. Not once.’
    ‘You made up for it, I suppose,’ he said, looking as though he