Archer’s Goon

The sacrifice began the next morning. Howard was awakened by the Goon standing dismally beside his bed.

As Howard got up and went to his parents’ bedroom to start the tricky and dangerous task of waking Quentin at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, he was nearly knocked flying by Fifi racing downstairs to look at Archer. Fifi had got it bad, Howard thought, if she could hear Archer all the way from the ground floor when she was in the attic. He went in and shook Quentin’s shoulder and was rewarded with an unshaven growl.

But Catriona leaped up and became Howard’s ally. “Howard, get his dressing gown. Quentin, I insist you speak to Archer.”

Quentin growled more fiercely than ever, but they got him up and marched him to the stairs. “Tea!” wailed Quentin, turning pathetic. “You can’t expect me to talk to Archer without a cup of tea first!”

The Goon had thought of that. He met them on the landing with a fistful of steaming mugs, one for each of them and one for Awful, who was up, too, by this time.

“You know,” said Quentin as he shambled downstairs, sipping from his mug, “this Goon of ours is getting quite housetrained. If he goes on this way, I might consider hiring him myself as a bodyguard.”

They reached the hall. As they passed the set of drums, Torquil’s voice came booming out from them. “Mrs. Sykes! Mrs. Sykes, don’t forget my two thousand words!”

Quentin whirled around. The Goon hastily picked up the drums and bundled them, bumping and booming, into the cupboard under the stairs. But he was too late. While he was doing it, Quentin shouted, “I am not writing any words! Not for you or anyone else!” And it was clear Torquil had heard. His voice was yelling threats from the cupboard as they all trooped into the front room.

There Fifi was sitting, in the striped clown suit she wore for pajamas, gazing yearningly at the television. In the screen Archer looked up as they came in. He was eating a toasted sandwich, and to judge from glimpses of creamy leather all around him, he was sitting in his scoop.

Quentin opened his mouth to speak. Archer held up the toasted sandwich to stop him. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t say anything you might regret. I heard all you said last night. Very eloquent you were, too. But you’ve slept on it now. You must see you were making a great fuss about a very small thing. Just a few pages of writing and an hour or so of your time. That’s all I need.”

Archer smiled, in his wry, winning way. “Oh, come on. Sykes. Where’s the harm in it?”

Fifi said, “Mr. Sykes, surely you can see he’d rule the world really well.”

“She’s right, you know,” said Archer. “I’m very fair, and I’m not cruel. I’d do it well. And that’s not a thing you can say for any of the rest of my family. One of them will rule the world if I don’t. Why don’t you help me do it?”

“No,” said Quentin. “Not for you, not for anyone. I object to being bullied, I object to being spied on, and I object even more to being ruled. No!”

Archer looked at him with the sandwich halfway to his mouth. “You’ll regret that. I warned you. Do you want to reconsider?”

“All right then,” said Archer. “Prepare to regret it.” The television screen went blank.

They went back through the hall. Torquil’s voice yelled some kind of threat as they passed the cupboard. In the kitchen they discovered that the electricity and gas had been cut off. The Goon had obviously been expecting this. While they had been watching Archer, he had made the biggest teapot full of tea and a large jug of coffee for Catriona. He had done it for Fifi really. Howard saw the Goon’s eyes slide wistfully to Fifi, hoping she was noticing his thoughtfulness. But it was Catriona who thanked the Goon. Fifi was busy trying to persuade Quentin not to make Archer too angry. And Quentin’s mind seemed to be taken up entirely by the fact that the Goon had forgotten to make any toast.

“Look at this!” he said, flopping a piece of sliced bread back and forth. “Limp white stuff. It doesn’t taste of anything even if I put marmalade on both sides of it.” At least that is probably what he said, but no one heard the last part of it. Everything was drowned in a sudden bedlam of music. The radio on the windowsill burst into violent organ music, pealing and thundering a toccata and fugue sufficient to make the windows rattle.

Catriona gave a shriek and covered her sensitive ears. Howard picked up the radio and tried to stop the noise. But it was not switched on, and there was no way of even turning the noise down. Howard carried the pealing, thundering radio out into the hall. There the drums were thumping away in the cupboard, and he could hear the strings of his violin twanging faintly in there, too. From Quentin’s study, Quentin’s tape deck was roaring out the “Ride of the Valkyries,” and there was an even worse noise from the front room. The television was playing music full blast, treacly, sentimental music, with lots of swooping and occasional massed choirs. The piano was also playing, probably something very impassioned. Howard could see the notes going up and down by themselves, but most of it was drowned by the television and by awful pipings from the several pieces of a clarinet that Catriona had left on top of the piano.

Fifi and Awful came to help him, and they managed to reduce the din a little. They threw the radio, the tape deck, and the pieces of clarinet into the cupboard with the drums and threw the sofa cushions on top to deaden the sound. Then they draped the Goon’s blankets over the television. At this point the piano really made itself heard. It was playing “Chopsticks.” Howard shut the lid down. It did not stop the “Chopsticks,” but it stopped them seeing the creepy way the notes went up and down by themselves. At least they could hear one another now, if they shouted.

For five minutes it was almost peaceful. Then a brass band arrived and began marching up and down the street outside.

“And look,” said Awful, pointing across the street over the heads of the marching band. Awful was the only one whose voice was sure to be heard.

Howard looked. He had been too optimistic about Hind’s gang. They were standing on the other side of the road, all twenty of them. Most of them were lounging with their hands in their pockets, listening to the band, but the ginger boy was industriously writing “ARCHER” with spray paint on every empty piece of wall. Fifi stared indignantly. Then she seized a note pad and wrote, “Those boys are victimizing Archer!!!” She took the pad into the kitchen, where Quentin, Catriona, and the Goon were sitting with tissues stuffed into their ears, and showed it to Quentin.

Quentin hurled the pad across the room. “Women!” he bawled. It was almost quiet in there by contrast. “Oh, my heart bleeds for Archer! What about us?”

A heavy knocking on the front door interrupted the things Fifi was trying to shout in reply.

“Go see what that is, Howard,” Catriona said, looking strained and desperate.

Howard went and opened the front door. He stared. The very polite-looking man outside was dressed in a quilted robe with hanging sleeves. As Howard opened the door, the man took the flat, squashy hat off his head and bowed, so that the feather in this hat swept the toes of his wide-fronted slippers. He said something, but it was drowned in the music inside the house and by “Land of Hope and Glory” marching past outside.

A new idea of Torquil’s, I suppose, Howard thought. “You’d better come in!” he shouted.

The man nodded and stepped into the hall. Howard shut the front door, which shut out “Land of Hope and Glory” at least, and realized that the music indoors had stopped. Torquil wanted them to hear this.

In the ringing silence the polite man said, “Young master, I bear a letter to your father and am enjoined to wait for an answer.”

Quentin came out of the kitchen with his dressing gown looped around his paunch and tissue sticking out of both ears. When he saw the polite man—who was obviously trying hard not to stare—Quentin looked resigned. He cautiously took the tissue out of one ear. “Now what do you want?” he said.

The man bowed and swept his toes with his hat again. “Master Quentin Sykes?” he asked. Quentin nodded suspiciously. “Master Sykes,” said the man, “I am to give you a letter from Hathaway, my patron, and wait with you for your answer.”

Awful’s face and Fifi’s and Catriona’s at once appeared around the kitchen door, and the Goon’s face wedged itself in above them, all goggling. The hall remained silent. Torquil must have been listening, too.

The messenger carefully felt in a pouch hung from his belt and brought out a long, folded yellowish letter, with a large red wax seal to hold it together. He handed it to Quentin with another bow.

Quentin turned it over to the place where there was square black writing. “‘Maftr. Quentin Fykes,’” he read. “Parchment, too. Very amusing.” With another suspicious look at the polite man, he turned the letter over again and cracked the red wax that held it together. He spread it out with a leathery rattle. The square black writing inside was obviously hard to read. Quentin held the letter up and frowned at it. “‘Inafmuchas,’” he murmured. “Oh, this is the best yet! Listen to this, all of you!” And he read:

Inafmuchas we have heard that others do much beleaguer you by threats and promifes, we do this fubmit you fo that you may here learn and be apprifed wherein lies your true duty and allegiance. It is to Hathaway and always has been and formerly was. To Hathaway, once quarterly, have you long fent two thoufand words in writing, and this you muft continue in, as by cuftom you ever did. This we fend you by our own meffenger, enjoining and adjuring you to place in his hand and none other the faid writings and by that one Act confirm the Bond between yourfelf and your

Betrayed but lenient

HATHAWAY

“Translation,” said Quentin, “for those not burdened with brains. Hathaway says it’s him I always send the words to and to go on doing it. But isn’t there an ‘or else’?” he asked the polite messenger.

The man bowed again. “My patron does not make threats, sir. But I am enjoined to press the matter on you by observing that the forbearance you have hitherto known will not extend beyond today.”

“That is, give it to him today, or watch out,” Quentin translated to the Goon.

Outside, the brass band finished with “Land of Hope and Glory” and switched to “Amazing Grace.” This, for some reason, was the last straw for Quentin. He tore the tissue out of his other ear and jumped on it.

“This is too much!” he roared. “I have now had enough! I have passed the bounds of sanity. This!” He held the letter up and rattled it in the messenger’s face. “Know what I’m going to do with this lunatic object?” The messenger backed nervously against the front door and shook his head. “You’ll see!” shouted Quentin. “So will the others. Torquil!” he roared. “Are you listening? Archer! Can you see?”

He ran to the hall stand and wrenched open the drawer in it. This drawer was known as the Everything-But drawer because there was always everything in it but the thing you were looking for. Things—string, the insides of watches, hair grips, paper clips, and a button badge saying “I Love Milton Keynes”—flew across the hall as Quentin rummaged feverishly in it, but finally he came up, red-faced and panting, with three bent drawing pins, a carpet tack, and a hammer.

Everyone, including the messenger, followed Quentin, mystified, as he marched into the front room, flapping the letter. There Quentin hurled the blankets off the now-silent television and proceeded to nail the letter to the front of it, across the screen. There was silence while he did it, broken only by banging, a yelp from Quentin when he hammered his thumb, and “Amazing Grace” from outside the window. “Now we don’t have to look at Archer,” he said. “There. This is now on public exhibition. Everyone who enters this house is to be shown this. Its precise meaning is to be explained in detail whether people want to know or not. Do you know what it means?” he demanded, rounding on the messenger.

The messenger clutched his hat and backed away. “Sir, it is a letter from Hathaway—”

“No, it is not!” Quentin howled. “It is the public death certificate of Quentin Sykes, the writer! Know what I’m going to do now?”

“Come with me,” said Quentin. Everyone obediently followed him to the hall and watched him rummage in the Everything-But drawer again. This time he found the padlock and chain that had gone with Awful’s bike before it was stolen. He set off with them to his study. Once more everyone followed.

“Watch, Archer!” he shouted. “Listen, Torquil! See, all the rest of you! I am about to padlock my typewriter.” He wove the chain in and out of the typewriter keys and snapped the padlock shut around the space bar. “There,” he said to the messenger. “Is Hathaway expecting a written reply?”

“Then you’ll have to give him this instead,” said Quentin. “I shall never, ever put another word on paper.” He picked up the chained typewriter and dumped it in the messenger’s arms. “There you are,” he said. “Take this to Hathaway. Tell him to write two thousand words on it himself. If there’s any magic in it, he can find it that way. Now get out of my house!”

As Howard let the shaken-looking messenger out through the front door, the brass band finished “Amazing Grace” and started on “Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends.”

“No, it was not,” said Quentin. “Now perhaps they’ll all see that I’m in earnest.” He folded his arms on his paunch and looked nastily at the Goon. “There’s no need for you to stay here any longer.”

The Goon shook his head. He gave the usual grin. “Stay and face the music,” he said. Howard and Awful stared. It really did seem as if the Goon had made a joke.

The music came back in bursts for the rest of the day. They never knew when it was going to come or for how long. Torquil varied the kind of music artfully, too. Sometimes it was pop music, which neither Howard nor Awful minded much; sometimes it was opera, which they did. Sometimes it was Gilbert and Sullivan, which only the Goon seemed to appreciate. Sometimes it was religious chanting mixed with Viennese waltzes. Quite often it was every kind mixed. You never knew what you were going to have to hear next.

Archer similarly kept everyone guessing about whether the gas or the electricity was going to be on or off. Howard, Awful, and the Goon got very good at rushing to the stove as soon as the kitchen light came on. If Archer had turned the gas on, too, and if they were very quick and had everything ready, there was sometimes just time to fry an egg before the gas went off again.

In the middle of the day the brass band marched away to have lunch, but it was replaced almost at once by the Salvation Army. By this time the house was very cold as well as noisy. The heating boiler had been on and off so often that it began making strange sounds and smelling of burning. Quentin and Howard turned it out to be on the safe side. They all put on extra sweaters, except the Goon, who had no other clothes. The Goon helped himself to Quentin’s Tramp’s Coat and went about with a foot or so of arm sticking out beyond its little red and black checked sleeves.

Hind’s gang still lurked on the other side of the Upper Park Street. Some of them probably went away for lunch, too, but there were always at least ten of them standing there. This meant that neither Howard nor Awful could get out of the house. Howard began to wonder if they were another idea of Torquil’s. But they did not seem Torquil’s kind of thing.

In the afternoon the neighbors on both sides telephoned to complain of the music in number 10. As the neighbor in number 8 said, quite politely, they could stand the Salvation Army or the “Ride of the Valkyries,” but not both at once.

Howard had the idea of digging a hole in the back garden and burying all the musical implements. Fine, said Quentin. But they were not to touch the television. That was to remain as a memorial to his lost art. So Howard and Awful carried the drums, the radio, the tape deck, the violin, and the pieces of clarinet out into the garden and piled them in a thumping, yodeling, twanging, roaring heap on the lawn while they tried to persuade the Goon to dig them a hole deep enough for the drums. But the Goon refused to move from where Fifi was. He had taken to following Fifi about, sighing dismally. And Fifi refused to have anything to do with Howard’s idea.

“What have I done to Archer?” Quentin asked. “Told him no for the first time in his misbegotten life.”

This argument was interrupted by the neighbors in the houses behind phoning to complain about the noise in the Sykeses’ garden. Howard and Awful went and fetched all the things in. And the phone rang again. Howard answered it wearily.

It was Dillian. Howard winced at her sweet, chuckling voice. He wanted to tell her angrily that she had made a fool of him and to give the words back, but it was difficult to do in the face of Dillian’s sweetness and politeness. “Howard, dear,” she said, “will you give your father a message from me? Tell him I hear that Archer, Torquil, and Hathaway are all wanting him to write words for them. Poor man! He must feel so pestered! But tell him I shall be very cross if he’s naughty enough to do what they want. Have you got that, dear?”

“Yes,” Howard said gruffly. “And he’s not. He’s just given his typewriter away.”

Howard was determined that he would not please Dillian by telling his father this. Unfortunately Torquil must have wanted to listen in. The music stopped in time for Quentin to overhear the word “typewriter.” He shouted to know who it was. So Howard had to tell him.

Quentin took it more calmly than Howard expected. “The glamorous Dillian?” he said. “Naturally she’s pleased. She’s the one who’s got the missing words. So she’s put her oar in now. That makes four of them. I wonder when I’m going to hear from the others—which are they?”

“Yes, them,” said Quentin, and he turned his face to the ceiling. “Calling all eavesdroppers!” he shouted. “This is a message to all bug-eared monsters! Where are you, Shine? Venturus, don’t you want your chance to rule the world, too? Don’t miss this unique offer!” He got up and ran to the sink. “Erskine!” he shouted down the plughole. “Erskine, are you sleeping there below? Why are you three all holding back?”

The only answer was the “Dam Busters’ March” from the hall cupboard and the front room. Catriona remarked that she thought Torquil and Archer were doing quite well on their own. And this was true. By evening everyone was hungry, shivering, and half-deaf.

“Bless you, Goon!” said Catriona. “Why didn’t I think of that before? I think this noise must have destroyed my brain!”

They lit a campfire on the lawn and sat around it, wrapped in coats and blankets, toasting sausages on forks. From there the music almost sounded romantic. “Today’s been fun,” Awful announced. “I like it when things go wrong.”

“Lucky you!” said Fifi. “I shall move out if Mr. Sykes doesn’t change his mind soon.”

The Goon sighed and stared at Fifi’s firelit face. “Going to get worse,” he confided to Howard.

He was right. They had a wretched night. All of them were too cold, and Torquil gave them a squirt of various music every quarter of an hour or so. Eventually the Goon uttered a great howl and marched upstairs to Howard’s room, where he lay on the floor, filling it to overflowing and shivering pathetically.

The next day Archer allowed them almost no electricity or gas at all. Torquil went on squirting them with music indoors. Out of doors he sent them a steel band on a truck, which drove up and down Upper Park Street the whole morning, making sounds Howard thought he might have liked had they not been mingled with Verdi’s Requiem indoors. They gave up trying to eat in the kitchen and lit campfires in the garden instead. The Goon was good at lighting fires, but that was the only thing he would do, apart from sitting staring gloomily at Fifi.

Howard and Awful coaxed the Goon through the house into the front room. There was no chance of being overheard here because of the tireless tinkling of the piano and the music blaring from behind Hathaway’s letter on the television. Through the window they had an excellent view of Hind’s gang, standing listening to the steel band. The ginger boy had given up writing “ARCHER” by then, probably because there were no more spaces left to write it on. Still, Howard thought, you can get used to everything. He could even hear through the noise today.

“See here,” he said to the Goon, “you’re going the wrong way about it with Fifi. If you really want her to like you, pretend you’re not interested. Play hard to get.”

“We’re not talking about you!” Howard said. “Honestly, sometimes I think you’re as selfish as—as Torquil!” Awful became very quiet at this and spent a long time moodily poking her toe into a frayed place in the carpet. “Fifi’s frightened of the way you stare at her,” Howard told the Goon. “Try not to keep looking at her at least.”

Howard had a burst of inspiration. “Yes, but,” he said, “Archer never looked at her once.”

The results of this conversation were not quite what Howard intended. It took the Goon most of the rest of the day to work out how not to look at Fifi. When she came near, he simply turned his back on her. “What have I done to him?” Fifi kept whispering. And Awful, instead of taking revenge on Howard for what he had said to her, seemed to be trying to prove that she was not as selfish as Torquil. She was unnervingly kind to everyone, even the Goon. By lunchtime Catriona was anxiously feeling Awful’s forehead. “Are you sure you’re all right, darling? You’ve been so quiet this weekend.” Howard tried to persuade Catriona that Awful was quiet because she was enjoying the crisis. Ordinary life was not exciting enough for Awful. But Catriona still thought Awful might be ill.

Quentin said he had had enough. The only thing to do was to go out for a drive in the car. “Not you,” he said to the Goon. “Even if I wanted to waste gasoline on you, there isn’t room for all that leg.” They left the Goon standing in the side passage like a dog that has been told to stay at home and piled into the car. Naturally it would not start. “Is this Archer, too?” Quentin wondered.

“Then we’ll go for a walk instead,” said Quentin. He climbed out of the car and hailed the Goon. “We’re walking. Give me back my coat.”

Quentin took Howard’s anorak instead, and Howard had to make do with a third sweater. Their motley party set off down the road. The truck with the steel band did a three-point turn and followed after. Hind’s gang followed after that, kicking a tin can to avert the boredom of it.

“I feel like the lord mayor’s procession,” said Quentin. “But for once in my life I’m getting the attention which is my due. Tell me about Hathaway,” he said to the Goon.

The Goon thought. “Don’t know much. Runs transport. Recluse. Lives in the past.”

They walked down nearly as far as the Town Hall, with the steel band and Hind’s gang following faithfully. Quentin turned into Corn Street, and the rest of the procession came, too. There Quentin winked at Howard and dived into the tangle of little, gray, narrow lanes around the cathedral. At the bottom he led them into Chorister Lane, where there were posts to keep traffic out. The truck tried to turn after them and stalled when the driver saw it could not be done. And Hind’s gang was stuck behind the truck.

They ran and then walked fast, up Chorister Lane, past the rather prim modern shops there called Kiddicloes and Boddikare, and around under the cathedral. There Quentin led them at a trot through the museum yard, past the park, to the deserted Polytechnic. The diggers excavating for the new building had all been parked over on the far side. They threaded between them and came to Zed Alley.

“That was a lot of work just to shake off one steel band,” Catriona said. “But I expect the walk did us good.”

“Oh, if you would!” said Catriona. “I’d been wondering what I’d do tomorrow.”

For the rest of the afternoon Howard helped the Goon tinker with the car. Hind’s gang filtered back after a while and stood watching sarcastically. But it seemed as if even ten to one, they did not want to tangle with the Goon. They just stood. The steel band seemed to have given up. The Goon proved to be good with cars. He seemed to think that it was quite easy to undo whatever jinx had been put on it.

They got the car to work. Then they went indoors to find that Catriona had taken the hammers out of the piano. Fifi and Awful had packed the drums, the radio, the tape deck, and any other instrument they could find into sleeping bags and put them back under the sofa cushions in the cupboard. The only thing making a noise now was the television. Outside in the garden Quentin was frying chops for supper. It looked as if they were holding their own against Torquil, Archer, and Hathaway.

But that was before they knew what Torquil, Archer, and Hathaway could really do. The following week was dreadful.

Chapter Seven