Archer’s Goon

“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.”