Good Omens

Mister S? Shadwell followed, warily.

He’d had another dream, last night. He didn’t remember it properly, just one phrase, that still echoed in his head and disturbed him. The dream had vanished into a haze, like the events of the previous night.

It was this. “Nothin’ wrong with witchfinding. I’d like to be a witchfinder. It’s just, weld you’ve got to take it in turns. Today we’ll go out witchfinding, an’ tomorrow we could hide, an it’d be the witches’ turn to find US…”

For the second time in twenty.. four hours.. for the second time in his life.. he entered Madame Tracy’s rooms.

“Sit down there,” she told him, pointing to an armchair. It had an antimacassar on the headrest, a plumped.. up pillow on the seat, and a small footstool.

He sat down.

She placed a tray on his lap, and watched him eat, and removed his plate when he had finished. Then she opened a bottle of Guinness, poured it into a glass and gave it to him, then sipped her tea while he slurped his stout. When she put her cup down, it tinkled nervously in the saucer.

“I’ve got a tidy bit put away,” she said, apropos of nothing. “And you know, I sometimes think it would be a nice thing to get a little bungalow, in the country somewhere. Move out of London. I’d call it The Laurels, or Dunroamin, or, or …”

“Shangri.. La,” suggested Shadwell, and for the life of him could not think why.

“Exactly, Mister S. Exactly. Shangri.. La.” She smiled at him. “Are you comfy, love?”

Shadwell realized with dawning horror that he was comfortable. Horribly, terrifyingly comfortable. “Aye,” he said, warily. He had never been so comfortable.

Madame Tracy opened another bottle of Guinness and placed it in front of him.

“Only trouble with having a little bungalow, called.. what was your clever idea, Mister S?”

“Uh. Shangri.. La.”

“Shangri.. La, exactly, is that it’s not right for one, is it? I mean, two people, they say two can live as cheaply as one.”

(Or five hundred and eighteen, thought Shadwell, remembering the massed ranks of the Witchfinder Army.)

She giggled. “I just wonder whereI could find someone to settle down with …”

Shadwell realized that she was talking about him.

He wasn’t sure about this. He had a distinct feeling that leaving Witchfinder Private Pulsifer with the young lady in Tadfield had been a bad move, as far as the Witchfinder Army Booke of Rules and Reggulations was concerned. And this seemed even more dangerous.

Still, at his age, when you’re getting too old to go crawling about in the long grass, when the chill morning dew gets into your bones …

(An’ tomorrow we could hide, an it’d be the witches’ turn to find us.)

Madame Tracy opened another bottle of Guinness, and giggled. “Oh Mister S,” she said, “you’ll be thinking I’m trying to get you tiddly.”

He grunted. There was a formality that had to be observed in all this.

Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell took a long, deep drink of Guinness, and he popped the question.

Madame Tracy giggled. “Honestly, you old silly,” she said, and she blushed a deep red. “How many do you think?”

He popped it again.

“Two,” said Madame Tracy.

“Ah, weel. That’s all reet then,” said Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell (retired).

* * *

It was Sunday afternoon.

High over England a 747 droned westwards. In the first.. class cabin a boy called Warlock put down his comic and stared out of the window.

It had been a very strange couple of days. He still wasn’t certain why his father had been called to the Middle East. He was pretty sure that his father didn’t know, either. It was probably something cultural. All that had happened was a lot of funny.. looking guys with towels on their heads and very bad teeth had shown them around some old ruins. As ruins went, Warlock had seen better. And then one of the old guys had said to him, wasn’t there anything he wanted to do? And Warlock had said he’d like to leave.

They’d looked very unhappy about that.

And now he was going back to the States. There had been some sort of problem with tickets or flights or airport destination.. boards or something. It was weird; he was pretty sure his father had meant to go back to England. Warlock liked England. It was a nice country to be an American in.

The plane was at that point passing right above the Lower Tadfield bedroom of Greasy Johnson, who was aimlessly leafing through a photography magazine that he’d bought merely because it had a rather good picture of a tropical fish on the cover.

A few pages below Greasy’s listless finger was a spread on American football, and how it was really catching on in Europe. Which was odd .. .. because when the magazine had been printed, those pages had been about photography in desert conditions.

It was about to change his life.

And Warlock flew on to America. He deserved something (after all, you never forget the first friends you ever had, even if you were all a few hours old at the time) and the power that was controlling the fate of all mankind at that precise time was thinking: Well, he’s going to America, isn’t he? Don’t see how you could have anythin’ better than going to America

They’ve got thirty.. nine flavors of ice cream there. Maybe even more.

* * *

There were a million exciting things a boy and his dog could be doing on a Sunday afternoon. Adam could think of four or five hundred of them without even trying. Thrilling things, stirring things, planets to be conquered, lions to be tamed, lost South American worlds teeming with dinosaurs to be discovered and befriended.

He sat in the garden, and scratched in the dirt with a pebble, looking despondent.

His father had found Adam asleep on his return from the air base—sleeping, to all intents and purposes, as if he had been in bed all evening. Even snoring once in a while, for verisimilitude.

At breakfast the next morning, however, it was made clear that this had not been enough. Mr. Young disliked gallivanting about of a Saturday evening on a wild.. goose chase. And if, by some unimaginable fluke, Adam was not responsible for the night’s disturbances.. whatever they had been, since nobody had seemed very clear on the details, only that there had been disturbances of some sort.. then he was undoubtedly guilty of something. This was Mr. Young’s attitude, and it had served him well for the last eleven years.

Adam sat dispiritedly in the garden. The August sun hung high in an August blue and cloudless sky, and behind the hedge a thrush sang, but it seemed to Adam that this was simply making it all much worse.

Dog sat at Adam’s feet. He had tried to help, chiefly by exhuming a bone he had buried four days earlier and dragging it to Adam’s feet, but all Adam had done was stare at it gloomily, and eventually Dog had taken it away and inhumed it once more. He had done all he could.