Free Maxwell's Return by M. J. Trow Page B

slightly on the stocky side, with hair that would lie down sometimes for as many as three minutes together, with the heart of a lion, with a mouth on him that would get him into serious trouble one day and the brain of a rather sophisticated thirty year old. She saw a delicate creature, put on earth to be wrapped in velvet with aprotective layer of bubble wrap for safety, with a fragile ego that could be crushed like an eggshell by the smallest slight, a creature of air and cobwebs who she, Mrs Troubridge, must guard to her last breath. Therefore, when he was on the Troubridge side of the door, he was not allowed to hurtle down the stairs to open it, for fear of broken bones on the way down and potential shock forward slash abduction when he got there. Maxwell heard the tell-tale signs of Mrs Troubridge’s careful steps underscored by Nolan’s cry of ‘We’re on our way, Dads!’
    ‘It might not be your father, dear,’ he heard his neighbour say, her voice now clearly just the other side of the door. ‘Let me look through the letterbox to see before we open the door.’
    Maxwell always felt faintly embarrassed as Mrs Troubridge’s critical gaze examined his general crotch area and he never knew what to do with his hands. But whatever it was she used as criteria clearly passed muster this time and she opened the door, sliding bolts and chains until it was free.
    ‘Mr Maxwell!’ she said, amazed that he should be there of all places, at the previously appointed time. She looked over her shoulder. ‘It’s your father, Nolan.’
    ‘Yes,’ Nolan said, wriggling to the front of the unlikely duo. ‘Dads, we’re in the middle of a film. Can I come round when it’s finished?’
    ‘Well…?’ Maxwell raised an interrogative eyebrow at Mrs Troubridge, aka Mary Poppins.
    ‘I’d be delighted,’ she said. ‘Besides, That Woman is next door cleaning, so it wouldn’t be suitable for Nolan.’ She clutched him to her side, to protect him from Mrs B, in absentia though she was.
    ‘Mrs B?’ Maxwell asked. ‘I wasn’t sure she would be coming any more. I understand that Hector…’
    ‘Mr Gold is
most
fastidious,’ Mrs Troubridge said smugly. ‘He couldn’t contemplate That Woman’s slapdash ways.’
    ‘But I thought you and Mrs B were friends these days,’ Maxwell remarked.
    ‘Not
friends
, Mr Maxwell,’ Mrs Troubridge hissed. ‘I don’t think you could call us
friends
.’
    Maxwell smiled and looked down at Nolan, who was starting to squirm a little in Mrs Troubridge’s iron grip. For a little old lady, she had a lot of core strength. ‘Well, in that case, Mrs Troubridge, if Nolan could stay a while, that would be wonderful. I do have an errand to run, possibly, so…’
    ‘Any time,’ Mrs Troubridge twittered. ‘His bed is made up, as always, so don’t worry. He can always go to bed here if you and Jacquie are going to be late.’
    ‘And Metternich?’ Maxwell loved to wind his neighbour up on the subject of the cat and just let her go till the clockwork wore down.
    ‘You know my views,’ Mrs Troubridge said, bridling. She looked like a very tiny, very wizened Les Dawson. ‘But I have some sachets tohand, of course. If he calls.’
    Metternich could smell a sachet of cat food, opened or unopened, at an as yet undetermined distance and so Maxwell knew he would be fine. All he need do now was to track down Bernard Ryan and the next stage could commence. He tipped his hat to Mrs Troubridge, kissed Nolan on the top of the head and went down one path, up another and opened his own front door, to the distant whine of the hoover.
    It was clear from the first second that Mrs B, ‘that woman’, who cleaned up at the school and chez Maxwell, had not changed in the seven months since Maxwell had seen her last. He did not mean that in the underwear sense, of course, if only because underwear and Mrs B were such non-sequiturs it didn’t bear thinking about. No, it was as if she had been poised there,