Good Omens (15 page)

The new inhabitant of Jasmine Cottage would have to wait, they'd decided. What they needed to do was start small and work their way up.

“ART THOU A WITCH,
oh lay
?” said the Chief Inquisitor.

“Yes,” said Pepper's little sister, who was six and built like a small golden-haired football.

“You mustn't say yes, you've got to say no,” hissed the Head Torturer, nudging the suspect.

“And then what?” demanded the suspect.

“And then we torture you to make you say yes,” said the Head Torturer. “I
told
you. It's good fun, the torturin'. It doesn't hurt.
Hastar lar visa
,” she added quickly.

The little suspect gave the decor of the Inquisitorial headquarters a disparaging look. There was a decided odor of onions.

“Huh,” she said. “I
want
to be a witch, wiv a warty nose an' a green skin an' a lovely cat an' I'd call it Blackie, an' lots of potions an'—”

The Head Torturer nodded to the Chief Inquisitor.

“Look,” said Pepper, desperately, “no one's saying you
can't
be a witch, you jus' have to
say
you're
not
a witch. No point in us taking all this trouble,” she added severely, “if you're going to go round saying
yes
the minute we ask you.”

The suspect considered this.

“But I
wants
to be a witch,” she wailed. The male Them exchanged exhausted glances. This was out of their league.

“If you just say
no
,” said Pepper, “you can
have
my Sindy stable set. I've never ever used it,” she added, glaring at the other Them and daring them to make a comment.

“You have used it,” snapped her sister, “I've
seen
it and it's all worn out and the bit where you put the hay is broke and—”

Adam gave a magisterial cough.

“Art thou a witch,
viva espana
?” he repeated.

The sister took a look at Pepper's face, and decided not to chance it.

“No,” she decided.

IT WAS A VERY GOOD TORTURE, everyone agreed. The trouble was getting the putative witch off it.

It was a hot afternoon and the Inquisitorial guards felt that they were being put upon.

“Don't see why me and Brother Brian should have to do all the work,” said Brother Wensleydale, wiping the sweat off his brow. “I reckon it's about time she got off and we had a go.
Benedictine ina decanter
.”

“Why have we stopped?” demanded the suspect, water pouring out of her shoes.

It had occurred to the Chief Inquisitor during his researches that the British Inquisition was probably not yet ready for the reintroduction of the Iron Maiden and the choke-pear. But an illustration of a medieval ducking stool suggested that it was tailor-made for the purpose. All you needed was a pond and some planks and a rope. It was the sort of combination that always attracted the Them, who never had much difficulty in finding all three.

The suspect was now green to the waist.

“It's just like a seesaw,” she said. “Whee!”

“I'm going to go home unless I can have a go,” muttered Brother Brian. “Don't see why evil witches should have all the fun.”

“It's not allowed for inquisitors to be tortured too,” said the Chief Inquisitor sternly, but without much real feeling. It was a hot afternoon, the Inquisitorial robes of old sacking were scratchy and smelled of stale barley, and the pond looked astonishingly inviting.

“All right, all right,” he said, and turned to the suspect. “You're a witch, all right, don't do it again, and now you get off and let someone else have a turn.
Oh lay
,” he added.

“What happens now?” said Pepper's sister.

Adam hesitated. Setting fire to her would probably cause no end of trouble, he reasoned. Besides, she was too soggy to burn.

He was also distantly aware that at some future point there would be questions asked about muddy shoes and duckweed-encrusted pink dresses. But that was the future, and it lay at the other end of a long warm afternoon that contained planks and ropes and ponds. The future could wait.

THE FUTURE CAME AND WENT in the mildly discouraging way that futures do, although Mr. Young had other things on his mind apart from muddy dresses and merely banned Adam from watching television, which meant he had to watch it on the old black and white set in his bedroom.

“I don't see why we should have a hosepipe ban,” Adam heard Mr. Young telling Mrs. Young. “I pay my rates like everyone else. The garden looks like the Sahara desert. I'm surprised there was any water
left
in the pond. I blame it on the lack of nuclear testing, myself. You used to get proper summers when I was a boy. It used to rain all the time.”

Now Adam slouched alone along the dusty lane. It was a good slouch. Adam had a way of slouching along that offended all right-thinking people. It wasn't that he just allowed his body to droop. He could slouch with
inflections
, and now the set of his shoulders reflected the hurt and bewilderment of those unjustly thwarted in their selfless desire to help their fellow men.

Dust hung heavy on the bushes.

“Serve everyone right if the witches took over the whole country and made everyone eat health food and not go to church and dance around with no clothes on,” he said, kicking a stone. He had to admit that, except perhaps for the health food, the prospect wasn't too worrying.

“I bet if they'd jus' let us get started properly we could of found
hundreds
of witches,” he told himself, kicking a stone. “I bet ole Torturemada dint have to give up jus' when he was getting started just because some stupid witch got her dress dirty.”

Dog slouched along dutifully behind his Master. This wasn't, insofar as the hell-hound had any expectations, what he had imagined life would be like in the last days before Armageddon, but despite himself he was beginning to enjoy it.

He heard his Master say: “Bet even the
Victorians
didn't force people to have to watch black and white television.”

Form shapes nature. There are certain ways of behavior appropriate to small scruffy dogs which are in fact welded into the genes. You can't just become small-dog-shaped and hope to stay the same person; a certain intrinsic small-dogness begins to permeate your very Being.

He'd already chased a rat. It had been the most enjoyable experience of his life.

“Serve 'em right if we're all overcome by Evil Forces,” his Master grumbled.

And then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep-throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past. This time they earned him a whack on the nose that had made his eyes water. Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls. He was looking forward to a further cat experiment, which he'd planned would consist of jumping around and yapping excitedly at it. It was a long shot, but it might just work.

“They just better not come running to me when ole Picky is turned into a frog, that's all,” muttered Adam.

It was at this point that two facts dawned on him. One was that his disconsolate footsteps had led him past Jasmine Cottage. The other was that someone was crying.

Adam was a soft touch for tears. He hesitated a moment, and then cautiously peered over the hedge.

To Anathema, sitting in a deck chair and halfway through a packet of Kleenex, it looked like the rise of a small, disheveled sun.

Adam doubted that she was a witch. Adam had a very clear mental picture of a witch. The Youngs restricted themselves to the only possible choice amongst the better class of Sunday newspaper, and so a hundred years of enlightened occultism had passed Adam by. She didn't have a hooked nose or warts, and she was young … well,
quite
young. That was good enough for him.

“Hallo,” he said, unslouching.

She blew her nose and stared at him.

What was looking over the hedge should be described at this point. What Anathema saw was, she said later, something like a prepubescent Greek god. Or maybe a Biblical illustration, one which showed muscular angels doing some righteous smiting. It was a face that didn't belong in the twentieth century. It was thatched with golden curls which glowed. Michelangelo should have sculpted it.

He probably would not have included the battered sneakers, frayed jeans, or grubby T-shirt, though.

“Who're you?” she said.

“I'm Adam Young,” said Adam. “I live just down the lane.”

“Oh. Yes. I've heard of you,” said Anathema, dabbing at her eyes. Adam preened.

“Mrs. Henderson said I was to be sure to keep an eye out for you,” she went on.

“I'm well known around here,” said Adam.

“She said you were born to hang,” said Anathema.

Adam grinned. Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity.

“She said you were the worst of the lot of Them,” said Anathema, looking a little more cheerful. Adam nodded.

“She said, ‘You watch out for Them, Miss, they're nothing but a pack of ringleaders. That young Adam's full of the Old Adam,' ” she said.

“What've you been cryin' for?” said Adam bluntly.

“Oh? Oh, I've just lost something,” said Anathema. “A book.”

“I'll help you look for it, if you like,” said Adam gallantly. “I know quite a lot about books, actually. I wrote a book once. It was a triffic book. It was nearly eight pages long. It was about this pirate who was a famous detective.
And
I drew the pictures.” And then, in a flash of largess, he added, “If you like I'll let you read it. I bet it was a lot more excitin' than any book you've lost. 'Specially the bit in the spaceship where the dinosaur comes out and fights with the cowboys. I bet it'd cheer you up, my book. It cheered up Brian no end. He said he'd never been so cheered up.”

“Thank you, I'm sure your book is a very good book,” she said, endearing herself to Adam forever. “But I don't need you to help look for my book—I think it's too late now.”

She looked thoughtfully at Adam. “I expect you know this area very well?” she said.

“For
miles
an' miles,” said Adam.

“You haven't seen two men in a big black car?” said Anathema.

“Did they steal it?” said Adam, suddenly full of interest. Foiling a gang of international book thieves would make a rewarding end to the day.

“Not really. Sort of. I mean, they didn't mean to. They were looking for the Manor, but I went up there today and no one knows anything about them. There was some sort of accident or something, I believe.”

She stared at Adam. There was something odd about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She just had an urgent feeling that he was important and shouldn't be allowed to drift away. Something about him …

“What's the book called?” said Adam.

“The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch,”
said Anathema.

“Which what?”

“No. Witch. Like in
Macbeth
,” said Anathema.

“I saw that,” said Adam. “
It
was really interesting, the way them kings carried on. Gosh. What's nice about 'em?”

“Nice used to
me
an, well, precise. Or exact.” Definitely something strange. A sort of laid-back intensity. You started to feel that if he was around, then everyone else, even the landscape, was just background.

She'd been here a month. Except for Mrs. Henderson, who in theory looked after the cottage and probably went through her things given half a chance, she hadn't exchanged more than a dozen real words with anyone. She let them think she was an artist. This was the kind of countryside that artists liked.

Actually, it was bloody beautiful. Just around this village it was superb. If Turner and Landseer had met Samuel Palmer in a pub and worked it all out, and then got Stubbs to do the horses, it couldn't have been better.

And that was depressing, because this was where it was going to happen. According to Agnes, anyway. In a book which she, Anathema, had allowed to be lost. She had the file cards, of course, but they just weren't the same.

If Anathema had been in full control of her own mind at that moment—and no one around Adam was ever in full control of his or her own mind—she'd have noticed that whenever she tried to think about him beyond a superficial level her thoughts slipped away like a duck off water.

“Wicked!” said Adam, who had been turning over in his mind the implications of a book of nice and accurate prophecies. “It tells you who's going to win the Grand National, does it?”

“No,” said Anathema.

“Any spaceships in it?”

“Not many,” said Anathema.

“Robots?” said Adam hopefully.

“Sorry.”

“Doesn't sound very nice to me, then,” said Adam. “Don't see what the future's got in it if there's no robots and spaceships.”

About three days
, thought Anathema glumly.
That's what it's got in it
.

“Would you like a lemonade?” she said.

Adam hesitated. Then he decided to take the bull by the horns.

“Look, 'scuse me for askin', if it's not a personal question, but are you a witch?” he said.

Anathema narrowed her eyes. So much for Mrs. Henderson poking around.

“Some people might say so,” she said. “Actually, I'm an occultist.”

“Oh. Well. That's all right, then,” said Adam, cheering up.

She looked him up and down.

“You know what an occultist is, do you?” she said.

“Oh, yes,” said Adam confidently.

“Well, so long as you're happier now,” said Anathema. “Come on in. I could do with a drink myself. And … Adam Young?”