Good Omens

agreement of her husband, she had named Warlock.
    The Cultural Attaché returned home a week later, and pronounced the baby the spit of his side of the family. He also had his secretary advertise in The Lady for a nanny.
    Crowley had seen Mary Poppins on television one Christmas (indeed, behind the scenes, Crowley had had a hand in most television; although it was on the invention of the game show that he truly prided himself). He toyed with the idea of a hurricane as an effective and incredibly stylish way of disposing of the queue of nannies that would certainly form, or possibly stack up in a holding pattern, outside the Cultural Attaché’s Regent’s Park residence.
    He contented himself with a wildcat tube strike, and when the day came, only one nanny turned up.
    She wore a knit tweed suit and discreet pearl earrings. Something about her might have said nanny, but it said it in an undertone of the sort employed by British butlers in a certain type of American film. It also coughed discreetly and muttered that she could well be the sort of nanny who advertises unspecified but strangely explicit services in certain magazines.
    Her flat shoes crunched up the gravel drive, and a gray dog padded silently by her side, white flecks of saliva dripping from its jaw. Its eyes glinted scarlet, and it glanced from side to side hungrily.
    She reached the heavy wooden door, smiled to herself, a brief satisfied flicker, and rang the bell. It donged gloomily.
    The door was opened by a butler, as they say, of the old school. 13
    â€œI am Nanny Ashtoreth,” she told him. “And this,” she continued, while the gray dog at her side eyed the butler carefully, working out, perhaps, where it would bury the bones, “is Rover.”
    She left the dog in the garden, and passed her interview with flying colors, and Mrs. Dowling led the nanny to see her new charge.
    She smiled unpleasantly. “What a delightful child,” she said. “He’ll be wanting a little tricycle soon.”
    By one of those coincidences, another new member of staff arrived the same afternoon. He was the gardener, and as it turned out he was amazingly good at his job. No one quite worked out why this should be the case, since he never seemed to pick up a shovel and made no effort to rid the garden of the sudden flocks of birds that filled it and settled all over him at every opportunity. He just sat in the shade while around him the residence gardens bloomed and bloomed.
    Warlock used to come down to see him, when he was old enough to toddle and Nanny was doing whatever it was she did on her afternoons off.
    â€œThis here’s Brother Slug,” the gardener would tell him, “and this tiny little critter is Sister Potato Weevil. Remember, Warlock, as you walk your way through the highways and byways of life’s rich and fulsome path, to have love and reverence for all living things.”
    â€œNanny says that wivving fings is fit onwy to be gwound under my heels, Mr. Fwancis,” said little Warlock, stroking Brother Slug, and then wiping his hand conscientiously on his Kermit the Frog overall.
    â€œYou don’t listen to that woman,” Francis would say. “You listen to me.”
    At night, Nanny Ashtoreth sang nursery rhymes to Warlock.
    Oh, the grand old Duke of York
    He had Ten Thousand Men
    He Marched them Up To The Top of The Hill
    And Crushed all the nations of the world and brought them
under the rule of Satan our master .
    and
    This little piggy went to Hades
    This little piggy stayed home
    This little piggy ate raw and steaming human flesh
    This little piggy violated virgins
    And this little piggy clambered over a heap of dead bodies to
get to the top .
    â€œBwuvver Fwancis the gardener says that I mus’ selfwesswy pwactice virtue an’ wuv to all wivving fings,” said Warlock.
    â€œYou don’t listen to that man , darling,” the nanny would whisper, as she tucked him into his little bed. “You listen to me.”
    And so it went.
    The Arrangement worked perfectly. A no-score win. Nanny Ashtoreth bought the child a little tricycle, but could never persuade him to ride it inside the house. And he was scared of Rover.
    In the background Crowley and Aziraphale met on the tops of buses, and in art galleries, and at concerts, compared notes, and smiled.
    When Warlock was six, his nanny left, taking Rover with her; the gardener handed in his resignation on the same