That was what always happened.
Except on that Sunday, it didn't.
For a start, he wasn't reading. He was just sitting.
And when the knock came on the door he got up immediately, and opened it. He needn't have hurried.
There was no plate. There was just Madame Tracy, wearing a cameo brooch, and an unfamiliar shade of lipstick. She was also standing in the center of a perfume zone.
"Aye, Jezebel?"
Madame Tracy's voice was bright and fast and brittle with uncertainty. "Hullo, Mister S, I was just thinking, after all we've been through in the last two days, seems silly for me to leave a plate out for you, so I've set a place for you. Come on . . ."
Mister S? Shadwell followed, warily.
He'd had another dream, last night. He didn't remember it properly, just one phrase, that still echoed in his head and disturbed him. The dream had vanished into a haze, like the events of the previous night.
It was this. "Nothin' wrong with witchfinding. I'd like to be a witchfinder. It's just, weld you've got to take it in turns. Today we'll go out witchfinding, an' tomorrow we could hide, an it'd be the witches' turn to find US..."
For the second time in twenty‑four hours‑for the second time in his life‑he entered Madame Tracy's rooms.
"Sit down there," she told him, pointing to an armchair. It had an antimacassar on the headrest, a plumped‑up pillow on the seat, and a small footstool.
He sat down.
She placed a tray on his lap, and watched him eat, and removed his plate when he had finished. Then she opened a bottle of Guinness, poured it into a glass and gave it to him, then sipped her tea while he slurped his stout. When she put her cup down, it tinkled nervously in the saucer.
"I've got a tidy bit put away," she said, apropos of nothing. "And you know, I sometimes think it would be a nice thing to get a little bungalow, in the country somewhere. Move out of London. I'd call it The Laurels, or Dunroamin, or, or . . ."
"Shangri‑La," suggested Shadwell, and for the life of him could not think why.
"Exactly, Mister S. Exactly. Shangri‑La." She smiled at him. "Are you comfy, love?"
Shadwell realized with dawning horror that he was comfortable. Horribly, terrifyingly comfortable. "Aye," he said, warily. He had never been so comfortable.
Madame Tracy opened another bottle of Guinness and placed it in front of him.
"Only trouble with having a little bungalow, called‑what was your clever idea, Mister S?"
"Uh. Shangri‑La."
"Shangri‑La, exactly, is that it's not right for one, is it? I mean, two people, they say two can live as cheaply as one."
(Or five hundred and eighteen, thought Shadwell, remembering the massed ranks of the Witchfinder Army.)
She giggled. "I just wonder where I could find someone to settle down with . . ."
Shadwell realized that she was talking about him.
He wasn't sure about this. He had a distinct feeling that leaving Witchfinder Private Pulsifer with the young lady in Tadfield had been a bad move, as far as the Witchfinder Army Booke of Rules and Reggulations was concerned. And this seemed even more dangerous.
Still, at his age, when you're getting too old to go crawling about in the long grass, when the chill morning dew gets into your bones . . .
(An' tomorrow we could hide, an it'd be the witches' turn to find us.)
Madame Tracy opened another bottle of Guinness, and giggled. "Oh Mister S," she said, "you'll be thinking I'm trying to get you tiddly."
He grunted. There was a formality that had to be observed in all this.
Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell took a long, deep drink of Guinness, and he popped the question.
Madame Tracy giggled. "Honestly, you old silly," she said, and she blushed a deep red. "How many do you think?"
He popped it again.
"Two," said Madame Tracy.
"Ah, weel. That's all reet then," said Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell (retired).
– – -
It was Sunday afternoon.
High over England a 747 droned westwards. In the first‑class cabin a boy called Warlock put down his comic and stared out of the window.
It had been a very strange couple of days. He still wasn't certain why his father had been called to the Middle East. He was pretty sure that his father didn't know, either. It was probably something cultural. All that had happened was a lot of funny‑looking guys with towels on their heads and very bad teeth had shown them around some old ruins. As ruins went, Warlock had seen better. And then one of the old guys had said to him, wasn't there anything he wanted to do? And Warlock had said he'd like to leave.
They'd looked very unhappy about that.
And now he was going back to the States. There had been some sort of problem with tickets or flights or airport destination‑boards or something. It was weird; he was pretty sure his father had meant to go back to England. Warlock liked England. It was a nice country to be an American in.
The plane was at that point passing right above the Lower Tadfield bedroom of Greasy Johnson, who was aimlessly leafing through a photography magazine that he'd bought merely because it had a rather good picture of a tropical fish on the cover.
A few pages below Greasy's listless finger was a spread on American football, and how it was really catching on in Europe. Which was odd ‑‑because when the magazine had been printed, those pages had been about photography in desert conditions.
It was about to change his life.
And Warlock flew on to America. He deserved something (after all, you never forget the first friends you ever had, even if you were all a few hours old at the time) and the power that was controlling the fate of all mankind at that precise time was thinking: Well, he's going to America, isn't he? Don't see how you could have anythin' better than going to America
They've got thirty‑nine flavors of ice cream there. Maybe even more.
– – -
There were a million exciting things a boy and his dog could be doing on a Sunday afternoon. Adam could think of four or five hundred of them without even trying. Thrilling things, stirring things, planets to be conquered, lions to be tamed, lost South American worlds teeming with dinosaurs to be discovered and befriended.
He sat in the garden, and scratched in the dirt with a pebble, looking despondent.
His father had found Adam asleep on his return from the air base-sleeping, to all intents and purposes, as if he had been in bed all evening. Even snoring once in a while, for verisimilitude.
At breakfast the next morning, however, it was made clear that this had not been enough. Mr. Young disliked gallivanting about of a Saturday evening on a wild‑goose chase. And if, by some unimaginable fluke, Adam was not responsible for the night's disturbances‑whatever they had been, since nobody had seemed very clear on the details, only that there had been disturbances of some sort‑then he was undoubtedly guilty of something. This was Mr. Young's attitude, and it had served him well for the last eleven years.
Adam sat dispiritedly in the garden. The August sun hung high in an August blue and cloudless sky, and behind the hedge a thrush sang, but it seemed to Adam that this was simply making it all much worse.
Dog sat at Adam's feet. He had tried to help, chiefly by exhuming a bone he had buried four days earlier and dragging it to Adam's feet, but all Adam had done was stare at it gloomily, and eventually Dog had taken it away and inhumed it once more. He had done all he could.
"Adam?"
Adam turned. Three faces stared over the garden fence.
"Hi," said Adam, disconsolately.
"There's a circus come to Norton," said Pepper. "Wensley was down there, and he saw them. They're just setting up."
"They've got tents, and elephants and jugglers and pratic'ly wild animals and stuff and‑and everything!" said Wensleydale.
"We thought maybe we'd all go down there an' watch them setting up," said Brian.
For an instant Adam's mind swam with visions of circuses. Circuses were boring, once they were set up. You could see better stuff on television any day. But the setting up . . . Of course they'd all go down there, and they'd help them put up the tents, and wash the elephants, and the circus people would be so impressed with Adam's natural rapport with animals such that, that night, Adam (and Dog, the World's Most Famous Performing Mongrel) would lead the elephants into the circus ring and . . .
It was no good.
He shook his head sadly. "Can't go anywhere," he said. "They said so."
There was a pause.
"Adam," said Pepper, a trifle uneasily, "what did happen last night?"
Adam shrugged. "Just stuff. Doesn't matter," he said. " 'Salways the same. All you do is try to help, and people would think you'd murdered someone or something."
There was another pause, while the Them stared at their fallen leader.
"When d'you think they'll let you out, then?" asked Pepper.
"Not for years an' years. Years an' years an' years. I'll be an old man by the time they let me out," said Adam.
"How about tomorrow?" asked Wensleydale.
Adam brightened. "Oh, tomorrow'll be all right," he pronounced. "They'll have forgotten about it by then. You'll see. They always do." He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose‑trellissed Elba. "You all go," he told them, with a brief, hollow laugh. "Don't you worry about me. I'll be all right. I'll see you all tomorrow."
The Them hesitated. Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants. They left.
The sun continued to shine. The thrush continued to sing. Dog gave up on his master, and began to stalk a butterfly in the grass by the garden hedge. This was a serious, solid, impassable hedge, of thick and well‑trimmed privet, and Adam knew it of old. Beyond it stretched open fields, and wonderful muddy ditches, and unripe fruit, and irate but slow-of‑foot owners of fruit trees, and circuses, and streams to dam, and walls and trees just made for climbing . . .
But there was no way through the hedge.
Adam looked thoughtful.
"Dog," said Adam, sternly, "get away from that hedge, because if you went through it, then I'd have to chase you to catch you, and I'd have to go out of the garden, and I'm not allowed to do that. But I'd have to . . . if you went an' ran away."
Dog jumped up and down excitedly, and stayed where he was.
Adam looked around, carefully. Then, even more carefully, he looked Up, and Down. And then Inside.
Then . . .
And now there was a large hole in the hedge‑large enough for a dog to run through, and for a boy to squeeze through after him. And it was a hole that had always been there.
Adam winked at Dog.
Dog ran through the hole in the hedge. And, shouting clearly, loudly and distinctly, "Dog, you bad dog! Stop! Come back here!" Adam squeezed through after him.
Something told him that something was coming to an end. Not the world, exactly. Just the summer. There would be other summers, but there would never be one like this. Ever again.
Better make the most of it, then.
He stopped halfway across the field. Someone was burning something. He looked at the plume of white smoke above the chimney of Jasmine Cottage, and he paused. And he listened.
Adam could hear things that other people might miss.
He could hear laughter.
It wasn't a witch's cackle; it was the low and earthy guffaw of someone who knew a great deal more than could possibly be good for them.
The white smoke writhed and curled above the cottage chimney.
For a fraction of an instant Adam saw, outlined in the smoke, a handsome, female face. A face that hadn't been seen on Earth for over three hundred years.
Agnes Nutter winked at him.
The light summer breeze dispersed the smoke; and the face and the laughter were gone.
Adam grinned, and began to run once more.
In a meadow a short distance away, across a stream, the boy caught up with the wet and muddy dog. "Bad Dog," said Adam, scratching Dog behind the ears. Dog yapped ecstatically.
Adam looked up. Above him hung an old apple tree, gnarled and heavy. It might have been there since the dawn of time. Its boughs were bent with the weight of apples, small and green and unripe.
With the speed of a striking cobra the boy was up the tree. He returned to the ground seconds later with his pockets bulging, munching noisily on a tart and perfect apple.
"Hey! You! Boy!" came a gruff voice from behind him. "You're that Adam Young! I can see you! I'll tell your father about you, you see if I don't!"
Parental retribution was now a certainty, thought Adam, as he bolted, his dog by his side, his pockets stuffed with stolen fruit.
It always was. But it wouldn't be till this evening.
And this evening was a long way off.
He threw the apple core back in the general direction of his pursuer, and he reached into a pocket for another.
He couldn't see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didn't. And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.
* * * * *
If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.
And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot . . . no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human . . .
Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield . . .
. . . forever.
Notes
1
ie., everybody
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2
It was custom made for Crowley. Getting just one chip custom made is incredibly expensive but he could afford it. This watch gave the time in twenty world capitals and in a capital city in Another Place, where it was always one time, and that was Too Late
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3
Saint Beryl Articulatus of Krakow, reputed to have been martyred in the middle of the fifth century. According to legend, Beryl was a young woman who was betrothed against her will to a pagan, Prince Casimir. On their wedding night she prayed to the Lord to intercede, vaguely expecting a miraculous beard to appear, and she had in fact already laid in a small ivory handled razor, suitable for ladies, against this very eventuality; instead the Lord granted Beryl the miraculous ability to chatter continually about whatever was on her mind, however inconsequential, without pause for breath or food.
According to one version of the legend, Beryl was strangled by Prince Casimir three weeks after the wedding, with their marriage still unconsummated. She died a virgin and a martyr, chattering to the end.
According to another version of the legend, Casimir bought himself a set of earplugs, and she died in bed, with him, at the age of sixty‑two.
The Chattering Order of Saint Beryl is under a vow to emulate Saint Beryl at all times, except on Tuesday afternoons, for half an hour, when the nuns are permitted to shut up, and, if they wish, to play table tennis.
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4
With a little old lady as the sleuth, and no car chases unless they're done very slowly.
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5
It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.
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6
Although he did have to get up in 1832 to go to the lavatory.
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7
Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingh
am. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.
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8
The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty‑seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty four. They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads:
"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life," and read:
25. And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?
26. And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.
27. And the Lord did not ask him again.
It appears that these verses were inserted during the proof stage. In those days it was common practice for printers to hang proof sheets to the wooden beams outside their shops, for the edification of the populace and some free proofreading, and since the whole print run was subsequently burned anyway, no one bothered to take up this matter with the nice Mr. A. Ziraphale, who ran the bookshop two doors along and was always so helpful with the translations, and whose handwriting was instantly recognizable.
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