Maxwell’s Flame Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘I’ve done my best.’ He looked as though he was going to burst into tears. ‘There’s no answer from her room and she’s got all our photocopying.’
    ‘Well,’ Gary said, ‘I’m sure she’ll turn up. She’s probably gone swimming or for a walk along the estuary. Is she a keen ornithologist?’
    Everybody looked at each other. Nobody seemed to know.
    ‘Well, never mind. Now, it’s nearly time for tea, which will be served in the Whittingham Suite downstairs. After that, Dr Brownwood from the University of Kent at Canterbury will open the formal proceedings in the Huntingdon Suite with a lecture entitled “The Entitlement Curriculum”. Thanks everybody. Great stuff.’
    ‘Great stuff?’ Maxwell growled. ‘This great differencing machine I call a brain computes that this will be the eighty-sixth time I’ve heard a lecture on the Entitlement Curriculum. Tell me, Rachel, do you still drink Southern Comfort?’
    ‘Good Lord,’ she laughed, ‘I haven’t touched the stuff in years.’
    ‘Well,’ Maxwell held out his elbow to her to link her arm with his, ‘I believe I saw a bar on the ground floor, somewhere near the Inebriate Suite. Shall I reacquaint you?’
    And they sauntered off.
    Sally Greenhow stood by herself. ‘I drink Southern Comfort,’ she said softly, but the only person who heard her was Valerie Marks.
    ‘Of course you do, dear,’ she said, ‘but let’s you and me have a nice cup of tea, now, shall we? Do you crochet at all?’ And she led the tall, frizzy-haired kid away.

3
    They wandered along the shingle, Maxwell and his lady, in the cool of a May evening. The sun was an orange fire behind the purple bars of cloud, reflected in the chiselled surface of the sea.
    The tall grasses brushed her bare legs under her dress and she felt his hand in hers. It felt good after all these years. And safe. She liked to feel safe. Needed to feel safe.
    ‘It’s not much like Midsummer Common,’ he said, watching the dying sun gilding the granite blocks of Dungeness A and Dungeness B.
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s better.’
    ‘Better?’ He stopped her. ‘I seem to remember you spoke out against all that. All that nuclear stuff. Don’t I remember you in a duffel coat at Aldermaston?’
    ‘That was Michael Foot,’ she laughed. ‘Or was it Bertie Russell?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ He walked on with her, trampling the stems of the sea pinks as he went. ‘It might have been Jane Russell for all I know.’
    ‘Whatever happened to Clive?’ she asked him suddenly.
    ‘Clive? If you mean of India, it’s likely he committed suicide.’
    He felt her empty cardigan sleeve slap round his shoulder. ‘Clive Spooner. Your old oppo at Jesus.’
    ‘God, yes.’ Maxwell threw his head back and saw the high clouds and the last vapour trail spreading out towards the gathering night. ‘The class of ’63.’
    ‘I’ve got this abiding memory of him in the Arts Cinema.
Psycho
, wasn’t it?’
    ‘It was. He was all right in the shower scene, a little quaky when the detective got his – you remember, that overhead shot – and by the time we saw mother in the fruit cellar, he was hiding behind my seat. Or was it yours?’ And he sat down with her in the grass.
    ‘I don’t think Clive had a lot to do with women’s seats, if my memory serves.’
    ‘Ah, now that’s a gross calumny. Clive was nearly as other undergraduates.’
    ‘And who put the gross calumny about, Maxie?’
    ‘Er … me,’ Maxwell confessed, ‘purveyor of gross calumnies. As to what he’s doing now, God only knows. You lose touch.’
    ‘You do,’ she said, gazing out to the chiselled sea. ‘Tell me …’ He sensed it was the question he hadn’t dared ask her. ‘Is there a Mrs Maxwell?’
    He looked at her, the breeze blowing her hair and her eyes shining. ‘There was,’ he said, ‘once upon a time.’
    He could detect no change in her mood, no different light in her eyes. ‘It didn’t work out?’
    ‘No,’ he