Good Omens

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.
    â€œWhat are these?” said Shadwell, suspiciously.
    â€œPhenomena,” said Newt. “You said to look for phenomena. There’s more phenomena than witches these days, I’m afraid.”
    â€œAnyone bin shootin’ hares wi’ a silver bullet and next day an old crone in the village is walkin’ wi’ a limp?” Shadwell said hopefully.
    â€œI’m afraid not.”
    â€œAny cows droppin’ dead after some woman has looked at ’em?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhat is it, then?” said Shadwell. He shuffled across to the sticky brown cupboard and pulled out a tin of condensed milk.
    â€œOdd 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.
    â€œSeems 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.
    â€œIf 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?”
    â€œBut American troops have landed on it to protect it from things,” moaned Newt. “A nonexistent continent … ”
    â€œAny witches on it?” said Shadwell, showing a spark of interest for the first time.
    â€œIt doesn’t say,” said Newt.
    â€œAch, 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.”
    â€œAwa’ wi’ ye, harlot,” said Shadwell, automatically.
    â€œHe sounds ever so refined,” said Madame Tracy, taking no notice. “And I’ll be getting us a nice bit of liver for Sunday.”
    â€œI’d sooner sup wi’ the De’el, wumman.”
    â€œSo 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.
    â€œWho? Ah. Aye. Aye. Ye say? Wha’ class o’ thing wud that be? Aye. Just as you say, sor. And