Good Omens

She chattered on, encouraged by the Order's instruction that members should always say what was on their minds. Mr. Young was out of his depth, and too tired now to worry about it very much. The religious life probably made people a little odd. He wished Mrs. Young would wake up. Then one of the words in Sister Mary's wittering struck a hopeful chord in his mind.

"Would there be any possibility of me possibly being able to have a cup of tea, perhaps?" he ventured.

"Oh my," said Sister Mary, her hand flying to her mouth, "whatever am I thinking of?"

Mr. Young made no comment.

"I'll see to it right away," she said. "Are you sure you don't want coffee, though? There's one of those vendible machines on the next floor."

"Tea, please," said Mr. Young.

"My word, you really have gone native, haven't you," said Sister Mary gaily, as she bustled out.

Mr. Young, left alone with one sleeping wife and two sleeping babies, sagged onto a chair. Yes, it must be all that getting up early and kneeling and so on. Good people, of course, but not entirely compost mentis. He'd seen a Ken Russell film once. There had been nuns in it. There didn't seem to be any of that sort of thing going on, but no smoke without fire and so on…

He sighed.

It was then that Baby A awoke, and settled down to a really good wail.

Mr. Young hadn't had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He'd never been much good at it to start with. He'd always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious.

"Welcome to the world," he said wearily. "You get used to it after a while."

The baby shut its mouth and glared at him as if he were a recalcitrant general.

Sister Mary chose that moment to come in with the tea. Satanist or not, she'd also found a plate and arranged some iced biscuits on it. They were the sort you only ever get at the bottom of certain teatime assortments. Mr. Young's was the same pink as a surgical appliance, and had a snowman picked out on it in white icing.

"I don't expect you normally have these," she said. "They're what you call cookies. We call them biscults."

Mr. Young had just opened his mouth to explain that, yes, so did he, and so did people even in Luton, when another nun rushed in, breathless.

She looked at Sister Mary, realized that Mr. Young had never seen the inside of a pentagram, and confined herself to pointing at Baby A and winking.

Sister Mary nodded and winked back.

The nun wheeled the baby out.

As methods of human communication go, a wink is quite versatile. You can say a lot with a wink. For example, the new nun's wink said:

Where the Hell have you been? Baby B has been born, we're ready to make the switch, and here's you in the wrong room with the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit. Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness, drinking tea. Do you realize I've nearly been shot?

And, as far as she was concerned, Sister Mary's answering wink meant:

Here's the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness, and I can't talk now because there's this outsider here.

Whereas Sister Mary, on the other hand, had thought that the orderly's wink was more on the lines of:

Well done, Sister Mary switched over the babies all by herself. Now indicate to me the superfluous child and I shall remove it and let you get on with your tea with his Royal Excellency the American Culture.

And therefore her own wink had meant:

There you go, dearie; that's Baby B, now take him away and leave me to chat to his Excellency. I've always wanted to ask him why they have those tall buildings with all the mirrors on them.

The subtleties of all this were quite lost on Mr. Young, who was extremely embarrassed at all this clandestine affection and was thinking: That Mr. Russell, he knew what he was talking about, and no mistake.