Archer’s Goon

“I mean,” said Catriona, “what is your name?”

Howard’s mother had a very strong personality. But so had the Goon in his way. The room seemed thick with them. Howard and Fifi both held their breath. “Goon will do,” said the Goon, and went on grinning.

Catriona gave him a long, level look. Then, to Howard’s surprise, she smiled quite pleasantly. “You look strong,” she said. “There’s a set of drums in my car. Help Howard get them in before they get damp or stolen.”

And to Howard’s further surprise, the Goon got to his feet and loomed through the room. “Where to?” he asked Howard.

The Goon was so strong that all Howard needed to do was show him the car and unlock the back. The Goon carried the drum set, bumping and booming, and set it down with a further boom in the hall. Then he went back to his chair in the kitchen. There Howard could see his mother had been asking Fifi what was going on. Fifi was looking upset. Catriona was taking it all much more calmly than Howard would have expected. She was just looking gloomily mystified.

“I don’t mind as long as he’s quiet,” she said to Howard. “I’ve been listening to school orchestras all day – have you done your violin practice? – and my head’s splitting.” And before Howard needed to lie about the violin, she looked at the Goon and said, “Who is Archer?”

The Goon looked back. He had a short think. “Farms power,” he said. “Gas and electricity. Money, too. Won’t worry you. You come under Torquil.”

“You mean he’s a town councillor?” Catriona asked.

That amused the Goon highly. He threw back his little head and laughed and clapped his long thigh with his vast hand. “That’s good!” he said. “Look like the Council, do I?”

“No, I can’t say that you do,” said Catriona. She seemed utterly unable to find the Goon alarming. “He seems harmless enough,” she said to Howard as she got up to help Fifi cook. “Move your feet,” she said to the Goon. And the Goon did. He bent his legs up until his knees were near his ears and sat looking like a huge, ungainly grasshopper while Catriona got supper ready. Howard began to see that his mother had found the right way to manage the Goon. He tried it himself when he was setting the table. He told the Goon to get out of the way of the spoon drawer, and the Goon did and grinned at him. “Set for six, Howard,” Catriona said. “I expect the Goon would like some liver and bacon, too.”

“Would!” the Goon said. He inhaled fried onions and grinned deeply.

Howard began to feel that Mum was not taking a serious enough view of the Goon. When supper was ready, and Quentin’s typewriter was still doing bursts of clattering, Catriona said, “Howard, call your father and Awful.”

“Not Sykes. Let him keep at it,” the Goon said.

Catriona accepted this without even asking why and sent Howard into the study with a tray. Quentin looked up absently from his typewriter and said, “Put it down on those papers.” He did not seem alarmed or anxious either.

“Dad,” said Howard, “I think Mum’s got the wrong idea. She’s giving the Goon supper. You don’t give hired assassins supper, do you?”

Quentin smiled. “No, but when a wolf follows your sleigh, you give it meat,” he said. Howard could tell he was only half-serious. “Leave me in peace, or we’ll never get rid of him.”

Howard went back to the kitchen, rather exasperated. He found the Goon sheepishly trying to wedge his knees under the table and Awful protesting. “I’m not going to have supper with him!” she was saying. “He threw his knife at me.”

“Shouldn’t have screamed,” said the Goon. The table lifted on top of his knees and things began to slide off one end. Fifi caught them. She looked as exasperated as Howard felt. The Goon slid Catriona an embarrassed look and doubled his legs around the back of his chair. He was really almost kneeling like that, and he looked very uncomfortable.

“He did, Mum!” Awful shrilled. “And he smells.” When Catriona took no notice, Awful announced, “I hate everyone except Fifi.”

“What have I done to get hated?” Howard demanded.

“You were scared of the Goon,” Awful said.

Howard found himself exchanging a shamed look with the Goon. “Scare myself sometimes,” the Goon remarked, cautiously picking up a knife and fork. He was trying to behave properly. He kept glancing nervously at Catriona and Fifi to see how he was doing, and he made strong efforts to keep his mouth shut while he chewed. Howard thought he nearly choked once or twice. Even so, the Goon managed to eat huge amounts. Howard had never seen such a stack of potatoes on anyone’s plate before. When he had finished, the Goon retreated quickly to the chair he had sat in before and sat in everyone’s way again, picking his teeth with his knife and looking relieved.

“Wouldn’t you like to watch the telly in the other room?” Fifi asked him after she had fallen over his legs six times.

But the Goon shook his little head and sat on. He sat while Fifi cleared away and then went up to her room in the attic. He sat while Catriona washed up. When Catriona went away too, and the Goon was still sitting, Howard thought he had better stay in the kitchen as well. He felt someone ought to watch him. So Howard fetched out his bag of books, with the rip in it that the Goon had made, and tried to do homework on the kitchen table. He found it hard to concentrate. With the Goon sitting there, he did not feel he could spend half the time designing spaceships, as he usually did. He could feel the Goon’s round eyes staring at him and see the knife that had ripped his bag flashing at the corner of his eye. When at last Quentin came into the kitchen carrying four typewritten pages, Howard was heartily relieved.

The Goon sprang up, looking as relieved as Howard. He took the pages and examined them. Howard was quite surprised that the Goon seemed able to read.

“That will have to do,” Quentin said as the Goon looked questioningly at him. “It’s not quite the same as I sent Mountjoy, but it’s as near as I could manage from memory.”

“Not a copy?” asked the Goon.

“Definitely no copy,” Quentin assured him.

The Goon nodded, folded the papers and stuffed them into the front of his leather jacket. “Get along to Archer then,” he said. “See you.” And he loomed his way to the back door, tore it open, ducked his little head under the lintel and went away.

As soon as the door slammed, Catriona and Awful shot into the kitchen. “Has he gone?” said Awful, and Catriona said, “Now tell us what all that was about.”

“Nothing – nothing at all really,” Quentin said, in a way which everyone knew was much too airy. “Mountjoy’s idea of a joke, that’s all.”

Catriona fixed him with her most powerful look. “Quentin,” she said, “that won’t do. He talked about Archer, not Mountjoy. Explain.”

“But I can’t explain about Archer,” said Quentin. He sat in the Goon’s chair and stretched. “I only know Mountjoy. Make me a cup of tea, Awful.” As Awful set off readily towards the kettle, he added swiftly, “With boiling water and two tea bags and only milk in the cup. Curry, mustard, pepper and vinegar are strictly forbidden.”

“Bother you!” said Awful. One of the things she enjoyed most was making people curried tea.

“What a life!” said Quentin. “I have to bargain even to get a cup of tea. What does it matter to Awful that I am a famous writer and my name is a household word?”

“So is ‘drains’ a household word,” said Awful as she filled the kettle. “Mum, he’s putting us off.”

“No, I’m not. I’m just arranging my thoughts,” Quentin said.

“Then stop blathering,” said Catriona. “Tell us why on earth he wanted you to write two thousand words.”

“He didn’t. It must be Mountjoy,” said Quentin. He clasped his hands behind his head and stared thoughtfully down at the soft curve of paunch that stuck his sweater out. “Though come to think of it,” he murmured, “Mountjoy did mention a superior once, about eight years ago. I’d forgotten that. Anyway, as far as I knew, it was Mountjoy’s idea – a sort of joke – to cure my writer’s block. Mountjoy’s quite respectable, you know. There’s nothing underhand about him. I met him playing golf a few months before we had Howard, when I was suffering terribly from writer’s block and telling everyone—”

“I remember,” said Catriona. “You told the milkman about it until he refused to come to the house.”

“Well, it’s a terrible condition,” Quentin said plaintively. “You three are lucky not to know what it’s like. You haven’t a thought in your head, or if you have, you can’t somehow get it down on paper, or if you do manage to put something down, it goes small and boring and doesn’t lead anywhere. And you panic because you can’t earn any money, and that makes it worse. It can go on for years, too—”

Howard was just thinking that he was glad he did not intend to be a writer – designing spaceships seemed much easier – when Awful interrupted. “I know,” she said. “It’s like when they tell me in school, ‘Make a drawing of ancient Britons,’ and I can’t because I’m not in a drawing mood.”

“Yes,” said Quentin. “Very like that. So you see how relieved I was when Mountjoy rang me up and said come to his office and discuss an idea he had had to break my block. He swore he could do it. And he was right. What I was to do, he said, was to promise to send him every three months two thousand words of any old thing that came into my head. It had to be new, and by me, and not a copy of anything else I’d done, and I was to deliver it to him at the Town Hall. I said, but suppose I couldn’t even do that? And Mountjoy laughed and said here was the clever bit. I was to imagine he had the ability to stop the Council from supplying me with water and gas and light and to order them not to empty my dustbins and so on. He said if I made myself scared enough of that, I’d have no difficulty in writing his two thousand words. And he was right. I’m still grateful to Mountjoy. I went home and did him the first two thousand words, and as soon as I had, I began to write books again like a demon. I wrote Prying Manticora that same month. And the first draft of Stark in—”

“But wait a minute,” Catriona said, frowning. “If you’ve been sending Mountjoy stuff for thirteen years, and he’s been passing it on to this Archer, then Archer must have masses of it by now. What does he do with it?”

“Do you think Archer publishes it?” Howard asked. “He could be making a lot of money out of you.”

His father shook his head, rather uncomfortably. “He couldn’t, Howard. I always write really idiotic things that nobody would want to publish. Most of them aren’t even finished. You can’t get much into four pages. I’ll tell you – last year I sent Mountjoy a solemn discussion about what to do if rabbits suddenly started eating meat. This time it was about old ladies rioting in Corn Street.”

“What do you do about that?” Awful asked, bringing Quentin a slopping mug of weak grey tea.

“Dodge their handbags,” said Quentin. “Thanks.”

“No, stupid, I mean the rabbits,” said Awful.

“Set them catching mice, of course,” said Quentin. “No, Howard, I’d have noticed if anyone printed any of those things. I assure you, nobody ever has.”

“And is this the first time Mountjoy didn’t get the words?” Howard asked.

Quentin shook his head again. “It’s the first time they’ve gone astray, but there have been several times when I didn’t get around to doing them. Mountjoy never minds – except there was that one time…” Quentin stared at his tea, looking puzzled. “It was just after Awful was born,” he said. “You must remember, Catriona. She kept us awake every night for a month, and I was too busy trying to catch up on sleep to write anything. And quite suddenly, everything in the house was cut off. We’d no light and no heat, no electricity, no water, and the car wouldn’t go either—”

“Yes, I do remember,” said Catriona. “Howard screaming as well as Awful, because he was cold, and all the washing. Didn’t they say it was some sort of freak? I remember we kept having people to mend things and they said there was nothing wrong. What happened?”

“I went round to see Mountjoy,” said Quentin. “It was superstition really. And I remember he looked rather taken aback and muttered something about his superior’s not being as patient as he was. Then he laughed and told me to write the words and probably everything would come right. So I did. And all the power came back on while I was doing them. I really can’t explain that.”

He raised the tea to his mouth at last. Awful watched expectantly. “But I really can’t explain Archer’s Goon eith—” He took the mug away from his mouth again, with a sigh. “Don’t tell me, Awful. I forgot to say don’t put salt in it. What have you done to this mug?”

Quentin held the mug up to the light. There seemed to be big wobbly shapes carved into both sides of it.

“The Goon did that,” said Awful. “With his knife and there’s no salt in it, only sugar. He threw the knife at me, but it stayed in his hand.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Awful,” said Catriona. Very sane and severe, she took the mug and looked at it and felt the dents with her finger. “This can’t have been done with a knife. These marks are glazed over. It must have come like that from the shop.”

“The Goon did do it,” said Howard. “I saw him, too.”

Quentin took the mug back and held it up to the light again. “Then perhaps he tried to carve G for Goon,” he suggested jokingly. “It’s either a V or a Y on the other side. Do you think it’s A for Archer upside down?”

Howard knew from this that his father was not going to treat the matter of the Goon seriously. And he knew his mother was not either when she laughed and said, “Well, Quentin, make sure you do Mountjoy’s words in future. We don’t want Archer sending any more Goons round.”

In a way, it was a weight off Howard’s mind. The Goon had scared him. But if neither of his parents was worried, then that made it all right. He went upstairs to his room and sat comfortably among his posters of astronauts and aeroplanes, designing another spaceship until it was bedtime, and tried not to think of the Goon. But his mind would keep straying to all those words his father kept sending to Archer. What could Archer possibly do with them? Why did he want them badly enough to send the Goon for them?

During the night the set of drums the Goon had carried into the hall started to boom softly. Most of the family would not have noticed had not Catriona been so sensitive to noise. She woke everyone up three times, getting up and going downstairs to slacken them. She thought they must be vibrating to the traffic outside. But they continued to give out a gentle humming throb.

Catriona got up again and padded them with handkerchiefs. She got up again and filled them with socks. Finally, she woke everyone up for a fifth time by going and hurling all the spare blankets over them, with a mighty BOOM. Even then, she claimed, she could still hear them throbbing.

“Your mother spent the whole night listening to her own ears,” Quentin said irritably, shuffling into the kitchen with his hair on end and his eyes half-shut. “Where are my emergency supplies of tea?”

“Your paunch is sticking out of your pyjamas,” Awful said. “The Goon did them.”

“It was that Goon that last touched them,” Fifi yawned.

“What have I done to deserve Awful?” Quentin demanded. “Fifi, forget the Goon and save my life by giving me some tea. Everyone forget the Goon.”

Howard willingly forgot the Goon. He went to school and spent the day happily designing spaceships. He forgot the Goon so completely that it was a real shock to him when he came out of school with his friends at the end of the afternoon and found the Goon towering like a lighthouse on the pavement outside. The Goon saw Howard. Recognition came over his little face in slow motion. He turned and came wading towards him above the crowd.

Howard went suddenly from being the one who stuck out above the crowd to feeling frail and weak and kneehigh. He looked around for help. But all his friends, finding themselves in the path of the Goon, had quickly thought of things they needed to do elsewhere. Somehow they were gone, leaving the Goon towering above Howard.

“Came back,” the Goon pointed out, grinning as he loomed.

“So you did,” said Howard. “I almost didn’t notice. What do you want now?”

“Those words,” the Goon said. “They’re no good.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?” said Howard.

“Your dad home today?” asked the Goon.

“Yes,” said Howard. “I think so.”

“Go there with you and tell him,” said the Goon.

Since the Goon was not a person you contradicted, they set out side by side. Howard said resentfully, “Why do you have to go with me? Can’t you go by yourself?”

The Goon’s little face grinned down at him from beyond the Goon’s huge shoulder. “Not scared of me,” he said.

“Oh yes I am,” said Howard. “Just seeing you makes me feel ill.”

The Goon grinned again. “Tell you things,” he said enticingly. “About Archer and the rest.”

“I don’t want to know,” said Howard. But he found himself asking anxiously almost at once, “Is Archer annoyed the words are no good?”

The Goon nodded and looked triumphant. “Like me really,” he said smugly.

“I don’t like you. Nobody could,” said Howard. “What will Archer do?”

“Send me,” said the Goon.

“Are you going to make trouble for Dad today?” Howard asked.

“Maybe,” said the Goon.

“In that case,” said Howard as a sort of experiment, “we’ll go somewhere else.” He turned round and walked the other way. The Goon turned round and walked beside him. “Where shall we go?” said Howard.

“Want to see Archer? Or one of the others?” the Goon offered.

“Let’s see Mr Mountjoy,” said Howard, not really meaning it.

“All right,” the Goon said equably.

Considerably to his astonishment, Howard found himself walking briskly to the centre of town, up Corn Street and along High Street, with the Goon towering beside him. They came to the Town Hall and climbed the steps briskly, just as if they had real business there. Someone will stop us soon, Howard thought.

They pushed open the big door and entered a wide marble hall. Howard thought he saw out of the corner of his eye some men in uniform who could have been policemen, but when he looked, they seemed to have melted away, just as his friends had. His footsteps and the Goon’s rang briskly through the hall as they went to a window marked ‘Enquiries’. There was a rather fierce-looking lady sitting at a desk behind the window. Before Howard could speak to her, the Goon found a door beside the window. He calmly tore it open and loomed over the fierce lady’s desk.

“What do you want?” asked the lady, tipping her head back ungraciously in order to see the Goon’s face.

The Goon smiled affably. “Mountjoy?”

The lady was one of those who take pleasure in denying people things. She took pleasure in saying, “Mr Mountjoy doesn’t see casual callers. You have to have an appointment.”

The Goon said, “Extension six-oh-nine. Where’s that?”

“Over in the housing department,” said the lady. “But—”

“Where’s that?” said the Goon.

“But I’m not telling you,” finished the lady.

The Goon jerked his head at Howard. “Go and look for it,” he said.

“You can’t do that!” the lady said, scandalised.

The Goon took no notice. He just marched out of the room and across the marble hall to the marble stairs, and Howard hurried behind. The lady shouted after them. When that did no good, she came to the door of her office and shrieked, “Come back!”

Howard very much wanted to come back by then. When the Goon stopped a few stairs up, he hoped they could go away now, before they got arrested. But the Goon simply called across the empty space to her, “Mountjoy?”

“I’m not telling you!” shrieked the lady. “Come back!”

The Goon jerked his head to Howard again, and they went on up the stairs. The next twenty minutes were the most harrowing ones Howard had ever spent. The Goon, smiling his daft smile, simply walked calmly into every room they came to. They went into offices, filing rooms, planning rooms, committee rooms, reference rooms, private rooms and public rooms.

Howard kept thinking: We’ll be arrested soon! We can’t do this! And certainly from time to time, agitated people no bigger than Howard did seem to try to bar the Goon’s way; but either the Goon smiled his daft smile at them and put them aside, or he said, “Mountjoy?” and when they shook their heads, he went on. Most people melted away before the Goon got that near.

Like a Centurion tank through butter! Howard thought, hazy with embarrassment. The Goon went, and Howard followed. One room with a large table and a carpet actually had a committee meeting in it, twelve or so people sitting at the table. As the Goon marched in, a man in a dark suit said angrily, “This is the highway board, not a public thoroughfare!” The Goon smiled his daft grin at the man, spotted a door across the room, and homed in on it in great strides over the carpet. The angry man picked up a telephone and started to talk indignantly into it. This time, Howard thought as he pattered after the Goon, we shall be arrested! He was so embarrassed by then that he hoped it would be soon.

But the Goon seemed unstoppable. He took Howard up some more stairs and then strode down a long corridor with frosted windows, which evidently led to another wing of the Town Hall. He tore open the door at the end. Inside there was a chain of offices, where people were typing at desks or walking about, consulting plans of buildings. The Goon turned his grin on Howard. “Getting warm.” He marched down the chain of rooms, and Howard followed, past the usual small people trying to stop them and the usual indignant faces, and made for a door at the end. A notice on it read M. J. MOUNTJOY. The Goon’s huge hand tore this door open, too. The man inside looked up with a jump.

“Here you are,” the Goon said to Howard. “Mountjoy.” He beamed proudly at Mountjoy, as if Mountjoy were treasure and the Goon had dug him up.

“That is my name,” Mr Mountjoy said. He looked uncertainly from the Goon to Howard in his school blazer, with his bag of books hung from his shoulder. His eyes went to the tape with which Howard had mended the rip the Goon had made in the bag and then back to the Goon. It was clear he thought they made an odd pair. Mr Mountjoy himself wore a neat dark suit. He was largish and plumpish, with smooth hair and large, shrewd eyes. He was exactly the kind of man Howard had imagined to go with the smooth, rumbling voice on the telephone.

“Talk to him,” the Goon said to Howard.

“Er—” said Howard. “My father’s Quentin Sykes—”

Before he got any further, the open door behind them was crammed with anxious people who all wanted to know if Mr Mountjoy was all right. They liked Mr Mountjoy, and they wanted him safe. Howard felt more embarrassed than ever. Several of the men wanted to know if they should turn the Goon out. The Goon turned and looked at them as if this were a very surprising notion. Not so much surprising as impossible, Howard thought.

Mr Mountjoy straightened his sober tie uneasily. “I’m quite all right, thank you,” he said in a soothing rumble. “Please shut the door. Everything is under control.” But as the people crowded out of the room, Howard distinctly heard Mr Mountjoy add, “I hope!” When the door shut, he eased his tie looser and his eyes went to the Goon, fascinated. “You were saying, young man?” he said to Howard.

“Why do you really make my father send you two thousand words every three months?” said Howard.

Mr Mountjoy smiled. “I don’t make him do it, young man. It’s just a friendly device I thought of to keep him from drying up again.”