Archer's Goon Read online

  “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 nine hundred 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 gray 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 realized. “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, signaling 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 were 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.”

  “Then he can make himself useful,” Catriona said. She gave the Goon the kind, firm, unavoidable look that seemed to work so well on him. “Take this music up to the landing for me, and then come down and help me get supper. Oh, and do you play the piano?”

  The Goon shook his head earnestly. He looked really alarmed.

  “What a pity,” said Catriona. “Everyone should learn the piano. I wanted you to help Awful practice. Howard, why aren’t you doing your violin practice? Hurry up, both of you.”

  As Howard and the Goon both leaped to their feet, Quentin said, “You’ve forgotten me. You haven’t asked why I’m not doing anything.”

  “I know about you,” Catriona said. “I can see that you’re refusing to write another two thousand words. You should have done that thirteen years ago. Hurry up, Howard!”

  Howard went gloomily to look for his violin. That was the bother with Mum’s not being tired. He and Awful both had to practice. Dad always politely allowed them to forget. He opened the cupboard under the stairs where his violin probably was and found the Goon tiptoeing gigantically after him, looking woebegone.

  “Don’t know how to cook,” the Goon said.

  “She’ll tell you how,” Howard said heartlessly. “She’s in her good mood.”

  The Goon’s round eyes popped. “Good mood?”

  Howard nodded. “Good mood.” The Goon’s way of talking was catching. He dragged his violin out from under a heap of Wellington boots and took it away upstairs, feeling really hopeful. An hour or so of Mum in her good mood might persuade even the Goon to leave.

  Howard was not much good at playing the violin, but he was good at getting practice done. He set his alarm clock for twenty minutes later and spent four of the minutes sort of tuning strings. Then he put the violin under his chin and disconnected his mind. He let the bow rasp and wail, while he designed a totally new spaceship for carrying heavy goods, articul
ated so that it could thread its way among asteroids and powered by a revolutionary FTL drive. That did not take long, so he spent another few minutes looking at himself in the mirror as he played, trying to see himself as the pilot of that spaceship. Although he was so tall, his face was annoyingly round and boyish. But the violin at least gave him several manly chins—though not as many as Dad had—and he thought that now that he had grown his straight tawnyish hair into a long fringe, his eyes stared out keenly beneath it. He could almost imagine those eyes playing over banks of instruments and dials or gazing out on hitherto unknown suns.

  After ten minutes he was able to stop playing. Mum had told Awful to do her piano practice. Howard knew from experience that the resulting screams drowned everything else. He listened and from time to time drew the bow across the strings—so that he could truthfully say he had been playing the whole time—and felt more hopeful than ever. The Goon had proved sensitive to noise from Awful. Surely he would not be able to stand much more?

  Finally, Awful’s screams died away to a sultry sobbing. Howard scribbled the bow about for another half minute. Then his alarm went off, and he was able to go downstairs. He passed Fifi dialing Miss Potter again in the hall. In the kitchen Quentin was still sitting, still looking obstinate. Awful was lying on the floor, gulping. “Shan’t practice. Won’t practice. Want television. I shall die, and then you’ll be sorry!” And the Goon, far from being driven away, was at the sink, laboriously carving potatoes down to the size of marbles and sweating with the effort.

  “Very good!” Catriona told the Goon kindly.

  “Now just peel the peel, and we might have enough to eat,” Howard said. The Goon gave him a wondering stare.

  “Don’t tax his mind, Howard. He’s on overload already,” Quentin said.

  “Want television!” bawled Awful.

  Howard went away into the hall. It was funny, he thought, that Mum could control the Goon perfectly, yet she could never make Awful do anything at all. “Any luck?” he asked Fifi as she put down the phone.

  “No,” Fifi said despairingly. “I’ll have to wait and try to catch her after the lecture tomorrow. Oh, Howard! I do feel so guilty!”

  “She’s probably just forgotten you asked her to do it,” Howard said.

  “She never forgets anything—not Maisie Potter!” said Fifi. “That’s why I asked her to do it. Howard, I’m afraid the Goon might stick his knife into your dad!”

  “Not while Mum’s here,” said Howard. “Anyway, I don’t think Dad’s frightened of the Goon. He’s just annoyed.”

  By the time supper was ready Awful had sobbed herself into the state where you feel ill. When she got like that, she could often make herself sick. She crawled under the table and made hopeful vomiting noises. She knew that would put everyone off supper anyway.

  “Stop it, Awful!” everyone shouted. “Stop her, Howard!”

  Howard got down onto his knees and looked into Awful’s angry, swollen face. “Do stop it,” he said. “You can have my colored pencils if you stop.”

  “Don’t want them,” said Awful. “I want to be disgustingly sick.”

  The table above them lifted and sloped sharply. Howard found the Goon had got down on his knees too, half under the table. Fifi was catching knives and glasses as they slid off. “Bet you can’t be sick,” the Goon said to Awful. “Go on. Interested.”

  Awful glowered at him.

  “Let me try?” suggested the Goon. “Both do it. Bet I win.”

  Awful’s swollen face began to look interested. She shrugged crossly. The Goon stuck his head out from under the table and looked at Quentin.

  “Mind if we use the bathroom? Competition.”

  The little head staring across the table looked rather as if it were on a plate. Quentin shut his eyes. “Do what you like. I don’t deserve any of this!”

  “Come on,” the Goon said to Awful.

  Awful scrambled out willingly. “I’m going to win,” she announced as they left.

  Five minutes later they came back. Awful looked smug, and the Goon looked green. “Who won?” asked Howard.

  “She did,” said the Goon. He seemed subdued and not very hungry. Awful, on the other hand, was thoroughly pleased and amiable and ate a great deal. Howard was exasperated. If even Awful at her very worst could not send the Goon away, what would? The Goon ate the small amount he seemed able to manage with painstaking good manners and kept his feet wrapped dutifully around the back of his chair, so as not to lift the table.

  And as if this were not enough, Catriona was grateful to the Goon for putting Awful in a good mood again. She began thinking of him as a proper visitor and wondering where he should sleep. “I wish we had a spare room,” she said. “But we haven’t, with Fifi here.”

  Fifi and Howard were not the only ones who found this a bit much. “Get this quite clear,” Quentin said. “If he decides to stay, it’s his bad luck. He can sleep on the kitchen floor for all I care!”

  “Quentin! That’s unfeeling!” said Catriona.

  Howard made haste to get away again upstairs, where he barricaded himself into his room. He knew what would happen if he did not. His mother would give the Goon Howard’s room and make Howard share with Awful. And Howard was not making that sacrifice—not for the Goon! All the same, he was surprised to find, while he was wedging a chair under his doorknob, that he felt a little guilty. The Goon had helped him find Mountjoy and had made Mountjoy answer his questions. He seemed to want Howard to like him. “But I don’t like him this much!” Howard said, and made sure the chair was quite firm. Then he designed several more spaceships to take his mind off the Goon.

  When he came down in the morning, he found the problem solved. The Goon was doubled into the sofa in the front room, wrapped in the blankets that had been over the drums. The Goon had really settled in. He had moved the sofa around so that he could watch breakfast television and was basking there with a big grin on his face and a mug of tea in his hand as he watched. As Howard came in, however, the picture fizzed and vanished. Howard just caught the words “ARCHER IS WATCHING YOU” before the Goon’s long arm shot out and turned the television off.

  “Keeps doing that,” the Goon said in an injured way.

  “Perhaps Archer doesn’t trust you,” Howard said.

  “Doing my best,” the Goon protested. “Staying here till your dad does the words.”

  “You’re going the wrong way about it,” Howard explained. “I know Dad. You’ve got his back up by hanging around trying to bully him like this. The way to do it is to pretend to be very nice and say it doesn’t matter. Then Dad would get a bad conscience and do the words like a shot.”

  “Got to do it my way,” the Goon said.

  “Then don’t blame me if you’re still here next Christmas,” said Howard. The Goon grinned at that, as if he thought it was a good idea, annoying Howard considerably.

  On the way to school Howard noticed that someone had chalked the name ARCHER beside Awful’s hopscotch. It was chalked on the wall of the corner shop, too, and when Howard got to school, the name ARCHER stared at him again, done in white spray paint on the wall of the labs. There was a long, boring talk about vandals in Assembly because of it. Howard was annoyed for a while because it was Dad’s business, not his. But he forgot about it in English because he was busy making a careful, soothing drawing of his articulated spaceship.

  Fifi was waiting for him when he came out of school, waving and looking anxious. In a way, it was as bad as the Goon. Howard’s friends all made chortling noises, pretending they thought Fifi was his girlfriend. He went over to her as slowly as he could. But that only made Fifi run to meet him. “What’s up?” he said.

  “Don’t look so glad to see me, will you?” Fifi said. “Someone might notice. Miss Maisie Potter’s up, that’s what. She didn’t come near the Poly today, and that’s not like her. I want you to come around to her house with me.”

  “Do you think she’s ill?” said Howard.

&nb
sp; “I think she’s avoiding me,” said Fifi. “She saw the Goon that night, remember. I think it’s fishy.” She clung to Howard’s arm, causing a further set of chortles from Howard’s friends. “Be ever so nice and come with me, Howard. I don’t like to face her with stealing on my own.”

  “Oh, all right,” Howard said hastily. They walked down the street together, pursued by chortles.

  As soon as they were out of hearing, Fifi said, “The Goon’s still there, you know. Sitting. Grinning. You dad’s just sitting, too—sitting it out. He hasn’t even tried to write his new book. I keep thinking of that knife.”

  Howard sighed. He had hoped the Goon would have got tired of waiting by now.

  Fifi wrapped her scarf around her neck and flung the end bravely over her shoulder. “Frankly, Howard, I’m wondering if I should go to the police. Your dad won’t. But someone should.”

  “It may not do any good,” said Howard. “Dillian runs law and order.”

  “Dillian?” said Fifi. “Who’s Dillian?”

  “Archer’s brother,” said Howard. “Mr. Mountjoy said there were seven of them, and they run—”

  He was interrupted by well-known piercing shouts and pounding feet. Awful was racing after them, having seen them crossing the end of the street where her school was. “Where are you two going and not taking me?” she demanded when she caught up. “You’re supposed to look after me.”

  Fifi sighed rather. “We’re going to Miss Potter’s to get the words back. It’s a long way.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Awful announced, as they had known she would.

  “Then be good,” said Howard.

  “I’ll be how I want,” Awful retorted. But she was afraid of making them angry enough to send her home, so she skipped along beside them almost quietly and did nothing worse than make a rude sign at two little girls across the street. “Our school was written over last night,” she said. “It says ‘ARCHER’ on all the walls.”

  “So does mine,” said Howard.