as near as I could manage from memory.”
“Not a copy?” asked the Goon.
“Definitely no copy,” Quentin assured him.
The Goon nodded, folded the papers and stuffed them into the front of his leather jacket. “Get along to Archer then,” he said. “See you.” And he loomed his way to the back door, tore it open, ducked his little head under the lintel and went away.
As soon as the door slammed, Catriona and Awful shot into the kitchen. “Has he gone?” said Awful, and Catriona said, “Now tell us what all that was about.”
“Nothing – nothing at all really,” Quentin said, in a way which everyone knew was much too airy. “Mountjoy’s idea of a joke, that’s all.”
Catriona fixed him with her most powerful look. “Quentin,” she said, “that won’t do. He talked about Archer, not Mountjoy. Explain.”
“But I can’t explain about Archer,” said Quentin. He sat in the Goon’s chair and stretched. “I only know Mountjoy. Make me a cup of tea, Awful.” As Awful set off readily towards the kettle, he added swiftly, “With boiling water and two tea bags and only milk in the cup. Curry, mustard, pepper and vinegar are strictly forbidden.”
“Bother you!” said Awful. One of the things she enjoyed most was making people curried tea.
“What a life!” said Quentin. “I have to bargain even to get a cup of tea. What does it matter to Awful that I am a famous writer and my name is a household word?”
“So is ‘drains’ a household word,” said Awful as she filled the kettle. “Mum, he’s putting us off.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just arranging my thoughts,” Quentin said.
“Then stop blathering,” said Catriona. “Tell us why on earth he wanted you to write two thousand words.”
“He didn’t. It must be Mountjoy,” said Quentin. He clasped his hands behind his head and stared thoughtfully down at the soft curve of paunch that stuck his sweater out. “Though come to think of it,” he murmured, “Mountjoy did mention a superior once, about eight years ago. I’d forgotten that. Anyway, as far as I knew, it was Mountjoy’s idea – a sort of joke – to cure my writer’s block. Mountjoy’s quite respectable, you know. There’s nothing underhand about him. I met him playing golf a few months before we had Howard, when I was suffering terribly from writer’s block and telling everyone—”
“I remember,” said Catriona. “You told the milkman about it until he refused to come to the house.”
“Well, it’s a terrible condition,” Quentin said plaintively. “You three are lucky not to know what it’s like. You haven’t a thought in your head, or if you have, you can’t somehow get it down on paper, or if you do manage to put something down, it goes small and boring and doesn’t lead anywhere. And you panic because you can’t earn any money, and that makes it worse. It can go on for years, too—”
Howard was just thinking that he was glad he did not intend to be a writer – designing spaceships seemed much easier – when Awful interrupted. “I know,” she said. “It’s like when they tell me in school, ‘Make a drawing of ancient Britons,’ and I can’t because I’m not in a drawing mood.”
“Yes,” said Quentin. “Very like that. So you see how relieved I was when Mountjoy rang me up and said come to his office and discuss an idea he had had to break my block. He swore he could do it. And he was right. What I was to do, he said, was to promise to send him every three months two thousand words of any old thing that came into my head. It had to be new, and by me, and not a copy of anything else I’d done, and I was to deliver it to him at the Town Hall. I said, but suppose I couldn’t even do that? And Mountjoy laughed and said here was the clever bit. I was to imagine he had the ability to stop the Council from supplying me with water and gas and light and to order them not to empty my dustbins and so on. He said if I made myself scared enough of that, I’d have no difficulty in writing his two thousand words. And he was right. I’m still grateful to Mountjoy. I went home and did him the first two thousand words, and as soon as I had, I began to write books again like a demon. I wrote Prying Manticora that same month. And the first draft of Stark in—”
“But wait a minute,” Catriona said, frowning. “If you’ve been sending Mountjoy stuff for thirteen years, and he’s been passing it on to this Archer, then Archer must have masses of it by now. What does he do with it?”
“Do you think Archer publishes it?” Howard asked. “He could be making a lot of money out of you.”
His father shook his head, rather uncomfortably. “He couldn’t, Howard. I always write really idiotic things that nobody would want to publish. Most of them aren’t even finished. You can’t get much into four pages. I’ll tell you – last year I sent Mountjoy a solemn discussion about what to do if rabbits suddenly started eating meat. This time it was about old ladies rioting in Corn Street.”
“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