Archer’s Goon

“Pleasure,” said the Goon. He put both hands on the desk and leaned towards Mr Mountjoy. “Tell us the back way out.”

“I bear you no malice,” Mr Mountjoy said hastily. “The door at the end. Marked ‘Emergency Stairs’.” He picked up a folder labelled ‘Centre development: Polytechnic’ and pretended to be very busy reading it.

The Goon jerked his head at Howard in the way Howard was now used to and progressed out into the offices again. Heads lifted from typewriters and frozen faces watched them as they progressed right down to the end of the rooms. Here, sure enough, was a door with wire mesh set into the glass of it. ‘Fire Door,’ it said in red letters, ‘Emergency Stairs.’ The Goon slung it open, and they went out on to a long flight of concrete stairs.

The Goon raced down these stairs surprisingly quickly and quietly. Howard’s knees trembled rather as he followed. He was scared now. They kept galloping down past other wire-and-glass doors, and some of these were bumping open and shut. Howard could see the dark shapes of people milling about behind them, and at least twice he heard some of the things they said. “Walked straight through the highway board!” a woman said behind the first. Lower down, someone was calling out, “They went up that way, Officer!” Howard put his head down and bounded two stairs at a time to keep up with the Goon. Scared as he was, he was rather impressed. The Goon certainly got results.

At the bottom of the stairs a heavy swing door let them out into a back yard crowded with gigantic rubbish bins on wheels. Here Howard, as he threaded his way after the Goon, remembered to his annoyance that he had forgotten to ask Mr Mountjoy how Archer – or whichever brother it was – had first got hold of Mr Mountjoy and made him work for him. But it was clearly too late to go back and ask that now.

The yard led to a car park and the car park led to a side street. At the main road the Goon stuck his head round the corner and looked towards the front of the Town Hall, about fifty yards away. Three police cars were parked beside the steps with their lights flashing and their doors open. The Goon grinned and turned the other way. “Dillian nearly got us,” he remarked.

“Dillian?” asked Howard, trotting to keep up.

“Dillian farms law and order,” said the Goon.

“Oh,” said Howard. “Let’s go and see Archer now.”

But the Goon said, “Got to see your dad about the words,” and Howard found himself hurrying towards home instead. When the Goon decided to go anywhere, he set that way like a strong current, and there seemed nothing Howard could do about it.

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Five minutes later Howard and the Goon turned right past the corner shop into Upper Park Street. Howard was rather glad to see it. He liked the rows of tall, comfortable houses and the big tree outside Number 8. He was even glad to see the hopscotch that Awful and her friends kept chalking on the pavement – when Awful was not quarrelling with those friends, that was. But the thing which made him gladdest of all was to see his own house – Number 10 – without a police car standing outside it. He had been dreading that. Mr Mountjoy had only to say who Howard’s father was.

Dad was in the kitchen with Fifi and Awful, eating peanut butter sandwiches. All their faces fixed in dismay as the Goon ducked his little head and came through the back door after Howard.

Quentin said, “Not again!” and Fifi said, “The Goon returns. Mr Sykes, he haunts us!”

Awful glowered. “It’s all Howard’s fault,” she said.

“What’s that noise?” said the Goon.

It was the drums, throbbing gently from under the mound of blankets in the hall. Quentin sighed. “They’ve been doing that all day.”

“Fix them,” said the Goon, and progressed through the kitchen into the hall. Howard paused to take a peanut butter sandwich, so he was too late to see what the Goon did to the drums. By the time he got there the blankets had been tossed aside and the Goon was standing with his fists on his hips, staring at the slack and silent drums oozing socks and handkerchiefs. He grinned at Howard. “Torquil,” he said.

“Torquil what?” asked Howard.

“Did that,” said the Goon, and marched back to the kitchen. There he stood and stared at Quentin the same way he had stared at the drums.

“Don’t tell me,” said Quentin. “Let me guess. Archer is not satisfied. He has counted the words and found there were only one thousand and ninety-nine.”

The Goon shook his head, grinning as usual. “Two thousand and four,” he said.

“Well, I thought I’d better end the last sentence,” Quentin said. “Mountjoy never insisted on an exact number.”

The Goon said, “Mountjoy must have told you something else then.” He dived a hand into the front of his leather jacket and brought out the four typed pages, now grey and used-looking and bent. He thrust them at Quentin at the end of a yard or so of arm. “Take a look. What’s wrong?”

Quentin took the pages and unfolded them. He separated them one from another, enough to glance at each. “This seems all right. My usual drivel. Old ladies riot in Corn Street. I couldn’t remember quite what I put in the lot Archer never got, but this is the gist—” He stopped as he realised. “Oh,” he said glumly. “It’s supposed not to be anything I’ve done before. But how the devil did Archer know?”

He looked up at the Goon. The Goon’s head nodded, so fast that it almost jittered. The daft grin spread on his face. He looked so irritating that Howard was not surprised when Quentin exploded. “Damn it!” Quentin shouted. He hurled the papers into the bread and peanut butter. “I’ve already done the words for this quarter! How can I help it if some fool in the Town Hall loses it? Why should I bother my brains for more nonsense just because you and Archer say so? Why should I put up with being bullied in my own house?”

He raged for some time. His face grew red and his hair flew. Fifi was frightened. She sat staring at Quentin with both hands to her mouth, pressed back in her chair as far away from him as possible. The Goon grinned and so did Awful, who loved Quentin raging. Howard lifted up the typewritten papers and helped himself to more bread and peanut butter while he waited for his father to finish.

“And I don’t care if I never write Archer another word!” Quentin finished. “That’s final.”

“Go on,” said Awful. “Your paunch bounces when you shout!”

“My lips are now sealed,” said Quentin. “Probably forever. My paunch may never bounce again.”

Fifi gave a feeble giggle at this, and the Goon said, “Archer wants a new two thousand.”

“Well, he won’t get it,” Quentin said. He folded his arms over his paunch and stared at the Goon.

The Goon returned the stare. “Stay here till you do it,” he observed.

“Then you’d better get yourself a camp bed and a change of clothes,” said Quentin. “You’ll be here for good. I’m not doing it.”

“Why not?” said the Goon.

Quentin ground his teeth. Everyone heard them grate. But he said quite calmly, “Perhaps you didn’t grasp what I’ve just been saying. I object to being pushed around. And I’ve got a new book coming on.” Howard and Awful both groaned at this.

Quentin looked at them coldly. “How else,” he said, “shall I earn your bread and peanut butter?”

“You look through me and fuss about noise when you’re writing a book,” Howard explained.

“And you go all grumpy and dreamy and forget to go shopping,” said Awful.

“You must learn to live with it,” said their father. “And with the Goon, too, by the looks of things, since I am going to write that book whatever he does.” And he looked at the Goon challengingly.

The Goon’s answer was to go over to the chair where they had first seen him and sit in it. He extended his great legs with the huge boots on the end of them, and the kitchen was immediately full of him. He fetched out his knife and began cleaning his nails. It was hard to believe he had ever moved.

“Make yourself quite at home,” Quentin said to him. “As the years pass, we shall all get used to you.” An idea struck him and he turned to Fifi. “Do you think people can claim tax relief for a resident Goon?”

Fifi was backing into the hall, signalling to Howard to come, too. “I don’t know,” she said helplessly. Howard and Awful followed her, wondering what was the matter. They found her backing into the front room.

“This is terrible,” Fifi whispered. She looked really upset. “It’s all my fault. I was busy when your dad gave me those words to take to the Town Hall, so I gave them to Maisie Potter to take because she was going that way.”

“Then you’d better get hold of Miss Potter,” said Howard, “or we’ll have the Goon for good.”

“Perhaps Miss Potter stole them,” said Awful. It was automatic with Awful to turn the television on whenever she came into the front room. She did it now. When the picture came on, she sprang back with one of her most piercing yells. “Look, look, look!”

Howard and Fifi looked. Instead of a picture on the screen, there were four white words on a black background. They said: ARCHER IS WATCHING YOU. It seemed as if Archer was backing the Goon up.

Fifi uttered a wail of guilt and fled to the hall, where she stood astride the drums and phoned the Poly in a whisper, so that Quentin should not hear. But the Poly had closed for the night by then. Fifi tried telephoning Miss Potter at home then, but Miss Potter was out. Miss Potter went on being out. Fifi spent the rest of the evening sneaking into the hall to stand astride the drums and dial Miss Potter’s number, but Miss Potter kept on being out. Awful meanwhile turned the television on and off and switched from channel to channel. No matter what she did, the only thing the screen showed were those four words: ARCHER IS WATCHING YOU. In the kitchen Quentin sat with his arms folded, staring obstinately at the Goon. And the Goon sat attending to his nails and filling the floor with leg.

Catriona came in quite soon after that. She was not tired that day. She stood in the doorway with an armful of sheet music and said, “Where’s Awful? I can’t hear the television. And who’s breathing so heavily?… Oh, it’s you, Quentin!” The scratching of knife on nail caused her head to turn and her eyes to travel up yards of leg to the Goon’s little face. “Why have you come back?”

The Goon grinned. Quentin snapped, “He grows here. I think he’s a form of dry rot.”