Good Omens

you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.
    But there was no getting out of it. You couldn't be a demon and have free will.
    I will not let you go (let him go) ...
    Well, at least it wouldn't be this year. He'd have time to do things. Unload long.. term stocks, for a start.
    He wondered what would happen if he just stopped the car here, on this dark and damp and empty road, and took the basket and swung it round and round and let go and ...
    Something dreadful, that's what.
    He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.
    The Bentley plunged on through the darkness, its fuel gauge pointing to zero. It had pointed to zero for more than sixty years now. It wasn't all bad, being a demon. You didn't have to buy petrol, for one thing. The only time Crowley had bought petrol was once in 1967, to get the free James Bond bullet.. hole.. in.. the.. windscreen transfers, which he rather fancied at the time.
    On the back seat the thing in the basket began to cry; the air.. raid siren wail of the newly born. High. Wordless. And old.
    * * *

        It was quite a nice hospital, thought Mr. Young. It would have been quiet, too, if it wasn't for the nuns.
    He quite liked nuns. Not that he was a, you know, left.. footer or anything like that. No, when it came to avoiding going to church, the church he stolidly avoided going to was St. Cecil and All Angels, nononsense C. of E., and he wouldn't have dreamed of avoiding going to any other. All the others had the wrong smell.. floor polish for the Low, somewhat suspicious incense for the High. Deep in the leather armchair of his soul, Mr. Young knew that God got embarrassed at that sort of thing.
    But he liked seeing nuns around, in the same way that he liked seeing the Salvation Army. It made you feel that it was all all right, that people somewhere were keeping the world on its axis.
    This was his first experience of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl, however. [Saint Beryl Articulatus of Cracow, 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.]
    Deirdre had run across them while being involved in one of her causes, possibly the one involving lots of unpleasant South Americans fighting other unpleasant South Americans and the priests egging them on instead of getting on with proper priestly concerns, like organizing the church cleaning rota.
    The point was, nuns should be quiet. They were the right shape for it, like those pointy things you got in those chambers Mr. Young was vaguely aware your hi.. fi got tested in. They shouldn't be, well, chattering all the time.
    He filled his pipe with tobacco.. well, they called it tobacco, it wasn't what he thought of as tobacco, it wasn't the tobacco you used to get .. and wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something. He shifted his position awkwardly, and glanced at his watch.
    One thing, though: At least the nuns had put their foot down about him being present at the birth. Deirdre had been all for it. She'd been reading things again. One kid already and suddenly she's declaring that this confinement was going to be the most joyous and sharing experience two human beings could have. That's what came of letting her order