Good Omens (19 page)

He sat down and poured himself a cup of sweet tea from a filthy thermos.

“Did I ever tell you how I was recruited to the army?” he asked.

Newt took this as his cue to sit down. He shook his head. Shadwell lit his roll-up with a battered Ronson lighter, and coughed appreciatively.

“My cellmate, he was. Witchfinder Captain Ffolkes. Ten years for arson. Burning a coven in Wimbledon. Would have got them all too, if it wasn't the wrong day. Good fellow. Told me about the battle—the great war between Heaven and Hell … It was him that told me the Inner Secrets of the Witchfinder Army. Familiar spirits. Nipples. All that …

“Knew he was dying, you see. Got to have someone to carry on the tradition. Like you is, now … ” He shook his head.

“That's what we'm reduced to, lad,” he said. “A few hundred years ago, see, we was powerful. We stood between the world and the darkness. We was the thin red line. Thin red line o' fire, ye see.”

“I thought the churches … ” Newt began.

“Pah!” said Shadwell. Newt had seen the word in print, but this was the first time he'd ever heard anyone say it. “Churches? What good did they ever do? They'm just as bad. Same line o' business, nearly. You can't trust them to stamp out the Evil One, 'cos if they did, they'd be out o' that line o' business. If yer goin' up against a tiger, ye don't want fellow travelers whose idea of huntin' is tae throw meat at it. Nay, lad. It's up to us. Against the darkness.”

Everything went quiet for a moment.

Newt always tried to see the best in everyone, but it had occurred to him shortly after joining the WA that his superior and only fellow soldier was as well balanced as an upturned pyramid. “Shortly,” in this case, meant under five seconds. The WA's headquarters was a fetid room with walls the color of nicotine, which was almost certainly what they were coated with, and a floor the color of cigarette ash, which was almost certainly what it was. There was a small square of carpet. Newt avoided walking on it if possible, because it sucked at his shoes.

One of the walls had a yellowing map of the British Isles tacked to it, with homemade flags sticking in it here and there; most of them were within a Cheap Day Return fare of London.

But Newt had stuck with it the past few weeks because, well, horrified fascination had turned into horrified pity and then a sort of horrified affection. Shadwell had turned out to be about five feet high and wore clothes which, no matter what they actually
were
, always turned up even in your short-term memory as an old mackintosh. The old man may have had all his own teeth, but only because no one else could possibly have wanted them; just one of them, placed under the pillow, would have made the Tooth Fairy hand in its wand.

He appeared to live entirely on sweet tea, condensed milk, hand-rolled cigarettes, and a sort of sullen internal energy. Shadwell had a Cause, which he followed with the full resources of his soul and his Pensioner's Concessionary Travel Pass. He believed in it. It powered him like a turbine.

Newton Pulsifer had never had a cause in his life. Nor had he, as far as he knew, ever believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite
wanted
to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He'd have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he'd have preferred a half-hour's chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He'd sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn't come. And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party had seemed to him equally dishonest. And he'd given up on ecology when the ecology magazine he'd been subscribing to had shown its readers a plan of a self-sufficient garden, and had drawn the ecological goat tethered within three feet of the ecological beehive. Newt had spent a lot of time at his grandmother's house in the country and thought he knew something about the habits of both goats and bees, and concluded therefore that the magazine was run by a bunch of bib-overalled maniacs. Besides, it used the word “community” too often; Newt had always suspected that people who regularly used the word “community” were using it in a very specific sense that excluded him and everyone he knew.

Then he'd tried believing in the Universe, which seemed sound enough until he'd innocently started reading new books with words like Chaos and Time and Quantum in the titles. He'd found that even the people whose job of work was, so to speak, the Universe, didn't really believe in it and were actually quite proud of not knowing what it really was or even if it could theoretically exist.

To Newt's straightforward mind this was intolerable.

Newt had not believed in the Cub Scouts and then, when he was old enough, not in the Scouts either.

He was prepared to believe, though, that the job of wages clerk at United Holdings [Holdings] PLC, was possibly the most boring in the world.

This is how Newton Pulsifer looked as a man: if he went into a phone booth and changed, he might manage to come out looking like Clark Kent.

But he found he rather liked Shadwell. People often did, much to Shadwell's annoyance. The Rajits liked him because he always eventually paid his rent and didn't cause any trouble, and was racist in such a glowering, undirected way that it was quite inoffensive; it was simply that Shadwell hated everyone in the world, regardless of caste, color, or creed, and wasn't going to make any exceptions for anyone.

Madame Tracy liked him. Newt had been amazed to find that the tenant of the other flat was a middle-aged, motherly soul, whose gentlemen callers called as much for a cup of tea and a nice chat as for what little discipline she was still able to exact. Sometimes, when he'd nursed a half pint of Guinness on a Saturday night, Shadwell would stand in the corridor between their rooms and shout things like “Hoor of Babylon!” but she told Newt privately that she'd always felt rather gratified about this even though the closest she'd been to Babylon was Torremolinos. It was like free advertising, she said.

She said she didn't mind him banging on the wall and swearing during her seance afternoons, either. Her knees had been giving her gyp and she wasn't always up to operating the table rapper, she said, so a bit of muffled thumping came in useful.

On Sundays she'd leave him a bit of dinner on his doorstep, with another plate over the top of it to keep it warm.

You couldn't help liking Shadwell, she said. For all the good it did, though, she might as well be flicking bread pellets into a black hole.

Newt remembered the other cuttings. He pushed them across the stained desk.

“What are these?” said Shadwell, suspiciously.

“Phenomena,” said Newt. “You said to look for phenomena. There's more phenomena than witches these days, I'm afraid.”

“Anyone bin shootin' hares wi' a silver bullet and next day an old crone in the village is walkin' wi' a limp?” Shadwell said hopefully.

“I'm afraid not.”

“Any cows droppin' dead after some woman has looked at 'em?”

“No.”

“What is it, then?” said Shadwell. He shuffled across to the sticky brown cupboard and pulled out a tin of condensed milk.

“Odd things happening,” said Newt.

He'd spent weeks on this. Shadwell had really let the papers pile up. Some of them went back for years. Newt had quite a good memory, perhaps because in his twenty-three years very little had happened to fill it up, and he had become quite expert on some very esoteric subjects.

“Seems to be something new every day,” said Newt, flicking through the rectangles of newsprint. “Something weird has been happening to nuclear power stations, and no one seems to know what it is. And some people are claiming that the Lost Continent of Atlantis has risen.” He looked proud of his efforts.

Shadwell's penknife punctured the condensed milk tin. There was the distant sound of a telephone ringing. Both men instinctively ignored it. All the calls were for Madame Tracy anyway and some of them were not intended for the ear of man; Newt had conscientiously answered the phone on his first day, listened carefully to the question, said “Marks and Spencer's 100% Cotton Y-fronts, actually,” and had been left with a dead receiver.

Shadwell sucked deeply. “Ach, that's no' proper phenomena,” he said. “Can't see any witches doing that. They're more for the sinking o' things, ye ken.”

Newt's mouth opened and shut a few times.

“If we're strong in the fight against witchery we can't afford to be sidetracked by this style o' thing,” Shadwell went on. “Haven't ye got anything more witchcrafty?”

“But American troops have landed on it to protect it from things,” moaned Newt. “A nonexistent continent … ”

“Any witches on it?” said Shadwell, showing a spark of interest for the first time.

“It doesn't say,” said Newt.

“Ach, then it's just politics and geography,” said Shadwell dismissively.

Madame Tracy poked her head around the door. “Coo-ee, Mr. Shadwell,” she said, giving Newt a friendly little wave. “A gentleman on the telephone for you. Hallo, Mr. Newton.”

“Awa' wi' ye, harlot,” said Shadwell, automatically.

“He sounds ever so refined,” said Madame Tracy, taking no notice. “And I'll be getting us a nice bit of liver for Sunday.”

“I'd sooner sup wi' the De'el, wumman.”

“So if you'd let me have the plates back from last week it'd be a help, there's a love,” said Madame Tracy, and tottered unsteadily back on three-inch heels to her flat and whatever it was that had been interrupted.

Newt looked despondently at his cuttings as Shadwell went out, grumbling, to the phone. There was one about the stones of Stonehenge moving out of position, as though they were iron filings in a magnetic field.

He was vaguely aware of one side of a telephone conversation.

“Who? Ah. Aye. Aye. Ye say? Wha' class o' thing wud that be? Aye. Just as you say, sor. And where is this place, then—?”

But mysteriously moving stones wasn't Shadwell's cup of tea or, rather, tin of milk.

“Fine, fine,” Shadwell reassured the caller. “We'll get onto it right awa'. I'll put my best squad on it and report success to ye any minute, I ha' no doubt. Goodbye to you, sor. And bless you too, sor.” There was the ting of a receiver going back on the hook, and then Shadwell's voice, no longer metaphorically crouched in deference, said, “‘Dear boy'! Ye great Southern pansy.”
²⁷

He shuffled back into the room, and then stared at Newt as if he had forgotten why he was there.

“What was it ye was goin' on about?” he said.

“All these things that are happening—” Newt began.

“Aye.” Shadwell continued to look through him while thoughtfully tapping the empty tin against his teeth.

“Well, there's this little town which has been having some amazing weather for the last few years,” Newt went on helplessly.

“What? Rainin' frogs and similar?” said Shadwell, brightening up a bit.

“No. It just has normal weather for the time of year.”

“Call that a phenomena?” said Shadwell. “I've seen phenomenas that'd make your hair curl, laddie.” He started tapping again.

“When do you remember normal weather for the time of year?” said Newt, slightly annoyed. “Normal weather for the time of year isn't normal, Sergeant. It has snow at Christmas. When did you last see snow at Christmas? And long hot Augusts? Every year? And crisp autumns? The kind of weather you used to dream of as a kid? It never rained on November the Fifth and always snowed on Christmas Eve?”

Shadwell's eyes looked unfocused. He paused with the condensed milk tin halfway to his lips.

“I never used to dream when I was a kid,” he said quietly.

Newt was aware of skidding around the lip of some deep, unpleasant pit. He mentally backed away.

“It's just very odd,” he said. “There's a weatherman here talking about averages and norms and microclimates and things like that.”

“What's that mean?” said Shadwell.

“Means he doesn't know why,” said Newt, who hadn't spent years on the littoral of business without picking up a thing or two. He looked sidelong at the Witchfinder Sergeant.

“Witches are well known for affecting the weather,” he prompted. “I looked it up in the
Discouverie
.”

Oh God, he thought, or other suitable entity, don't let me spend another evening cutting newspapers to bits in this ashtray of a room. Let me get out in the fresh air. Let me do whatever is the WA's equivalent of going waterskiing in Germany.

“It's only forty miles away,” he said tentatively. “I thought I could just sort of nip over there tomorrow. And have a look around, you know. I'll pay my own petrol,” he added.

Shadwell wiped his upper lip thoughtfully.

“This place,” he said, “it wouldna be called Tadfield, would it?”

“That's right, Mr. Shadwell,” said Newt. “How did you know that?”

“Wonder what the Southerners is playing at noo?” said Shadwell under his breath.

“Weeell,” he said, out loud. “And why not?”

“Who'll be playing, Sergeant?” said Newt.

Shadwell ignored him. “Aye. I suppose it can't do any harm. Ye'll pay yer ane petrol, ye say?”

Newt nodded.

“Then ye'll come here at nine o' the clock in the morning,” he said, “afore ye go.”

“What for?” said Newt.

“Yer armor o' righteousness.”

JUST AFTER NEWT HAD LEFT the phone rang again. This time it was Crowley, who gave approximately the same instructions as Aziraphale. Shadwell took them down again for form's sake, while Madame Tracy hovered delightedly behind him.