Archer’s Goon

The blank look came back to Dillian’s face. Howard realised it meant she was angry. “Archer never tells me anything. We haven’t spoken for years,” she said. “What can Archer be doing with all those pages of writing? Do you know?”

“No,” said Howard. This irritated Dillian. She stared down into her teacup, tapping her little silver foot crossly on the shiny floor. Howard grabbed four of the tiny sandwiches to encourage himself. The tapping of Dillian’s foot and the tinkling of the fountain were the only sounds between the scented banks of flowers, and it seemed very rude to interrupt. “Why did you want the words?” he said.

“To see what was going on, of course,” Dillian said. “I knew one of us was up to something, so I asked dear Maisie to get me a sample.” Miss Potter gave a pleased and saintly smile. Dillian flung her golden hair back angrily. “But I’m still none the wiser,” she said, “except that I know it’s Archer now. Archer!” she said, flinging her hair again. “I’d thought it was Erskine or Shine – they’re both horrible – and Torquil thought it was Hathaway trying to get back into things, but we never dreamed it was Archer. How wrong we were! Archer was always far too ambitious!”

Howard swallowed the four sandwiches. Even together they were not a big mouthful. “What’s Archer trying to do?”

“Stop the rest of us,” Dillian said, with her face blank and angry, “so that he can have everything for himself. We’ve not been able to move outside this town for the last thirteen years. We’re all very angry about it. It’s taken us all this time to discover that your father’s words must be doing it. Now the question is: how? Your father must do something special when he writes them. Has he told you what?”

“I don’t think he knows,” said Howard. “He says he just writes drivel—”

“Well, it certainly isn’t in his best vein,” Dillian said wryly. “If the stuff I’ve got about old ladies rioting is a fair sample, then it’s idiotic. I can’t see how Archer can use it for anything.”

She tapped with her foot again. Scented silence fell, with the fountain drip-dripping like part of the silence. Miss Potter, who was obviously annoyed at being left out of the talk, held out a plate of sandwiches. Dillian waved them gracefully away. Miss Potter, determined to take part, held out a plate of cakes as small as the sandwiches. Dillian waved those away too. So did Fifi and Awful. Howard took two.

“I can’t imagine dear Mr Sykes writing any kind of drivel,” Miss Potter said. And when that only made more silence, she said, “How odd, Dillian, dear! I never knew you had any family.”

This made Dillian give a comic little shrug. “There are seven of us,” she said.

“I do envy you, dear!” said Miss Potter. “Large families are such fun!”

“It’s not fun,” Dillian said coldly. “We don’t get on at all. Torquil’s the only one I can bear to talk to. Archer speaks only to Erskine, and Hathaway and Venturus don’t speak to any of us, or to each other either. As for Shine – words fail, Maisie!”

All this while Awful had been staring fixedly at Dillian. Now she said, “Where do you come in the family? Eldest?”

“No, dear,” said Dillian. “I come between Shine and Hathaway, almost in the middle.”

Howard took three more cakes. They were delicious, but they seemed to melt down to nothing when he ate them. “But you all share running the town,” he said. “How do you arrange that if you don’t talk to one another?”

Dillian waved that away, rather as she had waved away the cakes. “The farming was arranged at the beginning, when we first came. We each took the things the others didn’t want.” Her lovely mouth pouted rather. “Of course, it went in order of age, and I got saddled with boring police business and so on. But—” The pout vanished in a smile and a chuckle. “But Erskine got drains and sewers, and serve him right! It wasn’t supposed to be for good, you see, dear. We were going to expand and move on. Then Archer did whatever he did, and we seem to be stuck here. Now suppose you tell me a little bit more about this arrangement your father has with Archer.” She leaned forward and smiled at Howard.

Howard smiled dreamily back. The food and the scent of the flowers and the dripping of the fountain were making him feel peaceful and sleepy, and it struck him that Dillian was rather nice. But before he could get around to answering, Awful interrupted. She had still not taken her eyes off Dillian. “How old are you?” she demanded.

Dillian gave an annoyed little laugh. “Now that would be telling, dear.”

Miss Potter was clearly glad to have another chance to express her dislike for Awful. “You should never, never ask a lady her age,” she said reprovingly. “Dear Dillian is ageless. She’s the eternal feminine.”

“Don’t be sickening,” Awful retorted. “I bet she’s seventy at least.”

Dillian’s face went blank and annoyed. Miss Potter was horrified. And Fifi at last recovered enough to mutter, “You shut up, Awful!”

Awful stood up. “I’m going to be bad,” she announced. “I may scream. I can feel it coming on.”

“Oh Lord!” said Fifi. “Howard, we’d better go.”

Howard stood up, too. He knew Fifi was right. He dragged his bag out from under his gilded chair, which promptly fell over into the nearest bank of flowers. Dillian turned her blank look at him, and he felt as badly behaved as Awful. “Sorry!” he muttered. He picked the chair up and tried to straighten the bent flowers.

“We can’t go yet!” Awful insisted loudly. “We haven’t got Dad’s words. She’s trying to make us forget so she can keep them!”

“Awful!” Fifi said sternly. Her face was as pink as the geraniums arranged behind her.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Dillian said kindly. “Children do get tired and cross. And you know, I nearly did forget it was those words you came about. I was enjoying our talk so much. I’ll send for them at once.”

She bent and rang the little golden bell again. After a moment the footman came through among the flowers again. This time he was carrying a folded sheaf of papers, in both hands, as if they were Magna Carta and might fall to pieces unless they were handled very gently indeed. Unlike the papers the Goon had produced, these were crisp and white and new. The footman handed them to Dillian, who passed them to Howard with a smile. “There, dear. Do just check to see they’re the right ones.”

Howard felt ashamed of being distrustful, but he did unfold the papers and glance over them. The typing seemed to be Quentin’s. He recognised the way half the capital letters soared into the air, so that their tops were cut off. He had no way of knowing quite what his father had written, but near the beginning, his eye caught: and if Corn Street were to fill with old ladies, clubbing policemen with handbags and umbrellas. He folded the paper up again. “This looks all right,” he said. “Thanks very much. And thanks for the tea.”

“You’re welcome, dear,” Dillian said, smiling radiantly.

Howard stowed the papers carefully in his blazer pocket and held out his hand for Awful in the way that meant she was to come along at once. Fifi stood up and held out her hand, too. Awful shuffled over to them. “I don’t want to stay in this old hole anyway,” she said rudely.

“I shall smack you!” Fifi whispered. She and Howard dragged Awful out from among the flowers. Awful let her feet trail and made them tow her across the shiny floor. Howard looked back in embarrassment and saw Miss Potter had taken another cake and settled back smugly in her chair, to show she was staying on. But Dillian gathered her ball dress up and came gracefully to the front door with them. It made Howard sweat with embarrassment at the way Awful was behaving. He dragged Awful through the mighty wooden door, and through the porch, and then down the driveway, knowing Dillian was waving and smiling behind them, and promised himself he would hit Awful as soon as they were in the road.

But Awful escaped just outside the gate because Howard’s hand was so slippery with sweat by then, and Fifi let go of her too, in order to sigh heavily. “Oh!” Fifi said. “I’d give my ears to look like Dillian! Wasn’t she glamorous!”

Howard laughed. As they turned and walked downhill, he was distracted from his annoyance with Awful, and even from sweet thoughts of getting rid of the Goon in half an hour, by the sheer contrast between Fifi and Dillian. He looked at Fifi’s peaky little face and frizzy light brown hair and laughed again. “You couldn’t look like her. She’s twice your size for a start.”

“I’ve always wanted to be that tall,” Fifi said yearningly.

“Stupids!” Awful called out. She was lurking a safe distance behind Howard. “She’s an evil enchantress. And she dyes her hair.”

“A lot of people dye their hair,” Fifi said over her shoulder. “Do come on. There’s no such thing as enchantresses.”

“Yes, there is!” Awful said indignantly, still hanging behind. “Why do you think I didn’t have any tea? Bubbling things are going on inside me, I’m so hungry. But I was right. You and Howard just sat there getting enchanted, and I didn’t.”

Fifi raised her eyebrows at Howard and sighed. “Come on!” she called back. “Before your mum gets home!”

“Not until Howard makes sure we’ve really got Dad’s words,” Awful called. And she dug her hands into her pockets and stood still.

Howard’s hand went irritably to check the pocket where he had put the papers. It felt limp and flat. He plunged his hand inside. Apart from half an old pencil and a rubber band, that pocket was empty. Unable to believe it, he felt in his other pockets. Then, frantically, he searched his trouser pockets too. There were no papers in any of them. “I don’t believe it!” he said.

“Maybe you put it in your schoolbag,” Fifi suggested.

Howard knelt and turned his bag out on the pavement on the spot, halfway down Pleasant Hill Road. He sorted through everything and shook out all the books. Awful came up and watched, keeping safely on the other side of Fifi. When Howard had found a note about history homework but absolutely nothing else that was typed, she said, “Now do you believe me?”

“They dropped out,” Fifi said firmly. “Let’s go back and look. Look carefully, both of you.”

They went back uphill. Fifi scanned the hedges; Howard looked in the gutter. Awful sauntered behind, still with her hands in her pockets, looking superior. And she seemed to be right. There was nothing that looked remotely like paper all the way to the top of the hill or anywhere on the downward slope beyond. Here Howard suddenly noticed that the house he was searching beside was numbered 104.

“We’ve come too far,” he said to Fifi. “Let’s go and look in her driveway. And if it’s not there, I’m going to knock on her door and ask her.”

They went back up the slope. And before long they found themselves going downhill again. They stopped beside a gate labelled 18.

“This is ridiculous!” said Fifi. “Go back and check the numbers.”

Back uphill they trudged again. Awful planted a hand on each gate and called out its number as they went. “Twenty-four. Twenty-six. Thirty. Thirty-two – Howard! It’s gone!”

Even Awful had not expected this. She looked thoroughly depressed.