Good Omens

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.