Chapter Text
Sleep, while not always knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care, still had a lot to recommend it as a leisure activity.
Aziraphale had been a late adopter, having taken about six thousand years to come around to the idea of an afternoon nap, never mind a solid eight hours. Crowley, of course, was a professional. She could sleep until she gathered dust, and had been known to shamble out of a fortnight’s snooze sporting collections of self-indulgent cobwebs that would have made even Miss Havisham break out a white cotton glove and a judgemental expression.
So it was odd to catch her up early. Aziraphale rolled over in bed to find a cold trench in the mattress where her wife should be, and was surprised to find it was only eight. Crowley was not a morning person. At least, not normally. Lately she had not been – by any definition of normal where demons were concerned – her normal self. She’d been fussy, stressed. Obsessed, actually, hissing around the conservatory with a plant mister in one hand and a tape measure in the other. No glasses, either, the better to instil terror into her victims.
“Bloody marrows,” Aziraphale muttered, rolling out of bed and into her negligée. The lacy little nothing was not as transparent as some of her other bits and pieces, but the glass conservatory was largely shielded from the nearby lane by a handful of trees. Most of the neighbours were literally sheep anyway, and Crowley didn’t care, frequently wandering around in nothing but her big black straw sunhat, and a pair of tiny black pants that went all the way up her bottom. Uncomfortable, in Aziraphale’s opinion. Like sitting on a piece of string all day.
She wandered down the creaky, book-lined stairs of the cottage, through the kitchen and into the conservatory, a space that had expanded according to Crowley’s needs, sometimes bending the laws of time and space in order to do so. The air was pleasantly cool and smelled of the night-time exhalations of various plants, the tang of tomatoes and the sweet aroma of basil. Crowley was growing aubergines, and their big trumpet-shaped flowers were surprisingly pretty, lending splashes of bright pink to the tangle of growing green.
Through the exuberant foliage Aziraphale caught sight of a bare shoulder, a lock of red hair. No hat, but presumably the string-up-the-bottom knickers were once again in use. She pushed aside a tomato plant and stopped in her tracks.
There was no string up Crowley’s bottom. No underwear, no nothing. She was working stark naked at the potting bench, her back to Aziraphale.
Under normal circumstances Aziraphale might have enjoyed the view, but Crowley looked different somehow. Thicker. Hairier. Less curvy. It was only when Crowley turned to reach for something on the bench that Aziraphale realised the full extent of the difference. About six inches, it looked like, although it was hard to tell when they were just hanging there like that.
“Oh, for goodness sake…” she said.
Crowley turned. She – or rather he – was wearing nothing but gardening gloves and a few smudges of soil. “What?”
Aziraphale looked him up and down, annoyed. He’d definitely been a woman when she married him. Not that she minded. She would just have appreciated some notice. “You’re just going to wander around like that now?” she said, aware of the view from the street.
“No,” said Crowley. “It’s not permanent. I’m just…trying something, okay?”
“Trying what? Waving it at the plants?”
“No,” said Crowley, looking as furtive as anyone could look while cock-out in gardening gloves. Which was quite furtive, as it turned out. “I told you, it’s a thing. I’m just trying something.”
“Trying what?”
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Don’t laugh, okay? It’s a bit…silly.”
“Well, yes, but that’s the nature of the beast, darling. I’ve never seen a penis that didn’t look a bit silly.”
“The penis is irrelevant,” said Crowley. “Sort of. Look, I know this is going to sound stupid, and you know me – I’m not superstitious, but I’ll try anything at this point.” He waved a gloved hand and squirmed slightly. “I read somewhere that if you get a naked man to plant your cucumbers then they come out better.”
“Better?”
“Yes. More…cucumbery.”
Aziraphale looked him up and down again. “I suppose they might take inspiration from the shape,” she said. “Doesn’t seem very scientific, though.”
“It’s not,” said Crowley. “But I heard that Roger Dunmore was trying to break into the cucumber category at the vegetable competition, and I’m not having it.”
When Crowley had first sold Aziraphale on the idea of the cottage, one of the few fears in Aziraphale’s mind was that Crowley would never survive in the country, let alone adapt to village life in this sleepy corner of West Sussex. Crowley was used to London. She was used to the lively churn of human wickedness, and never being far enough from a Pret a Manger to ever risk running out of espresso. As it turned out, Crowley had adapted rather too well, becoming feverishly overinvested in the vegetable competition at the local village fete.
“Oh no,” said Aziraphale, bracing herself for another onslaught of carrot jokes. “Not Roger.” She glanced through the conservatory window, conscious that someone might be peeping through the trees. “You know he does wander down this lane sometimes, don’t you?”
“I do,” said Crowley. “The dirty old git.” He peeled off his gardening gloves and gave Aziraphale a long and thoroughly filthy look. “Speaking of, I can almost see your nipples through that dressing gown thingy.”
“Almost?”
Aziraphale didn’t know exactly what did it – whether it was the prospect of being seen, Crowley’s nudity, or just the general Lady Chatterley fantasy of wearing a negligée in the presence of a man with earth on his hands. ‘Almost’ seemed like an inadequate amount of nipple all of a sudden. She shrugged the wisp of lace off her shoulders and stood naked in front of a man, a thing she’d never done as a woman before. At least, not with this in mind.
“Well…” said Crowley, as she moved towards him, the moist greenhouse air delicious on her bare skin. “Would you Adam and Eve it?”
It was always a delight to surprise Crowley. Aziraphale reached down. The penis didn’t look so silly now, and it felt velvety, filling her grasping hand with a new, eager thickness. It was definitely more than six inches. “You know me,” she said. “Always curious. And I know how you love indulging curiosity in others.”
“Right. And how long have you been curious about heterosexuality?”
“Oh, about three seconds after the impulse took me, I think.”
Crowley grinned and grabbed Aziraphale’s bottom. “That’s my girl.”
“Fuck me.”
Crowley did, on a romantic, brass-framed bed that Aziraphale miracled into the middle of the tomato plants. Yes, it was reckless, but they were both far too old to be acting out bits of DH Lawrence on hard flagstone floors. There was only so much a six-thousand-year-old knee could stand, regardless of how many times it had been replaced.
And it was nice. It really was.
“Well?” said Crowley, afterwards. He looked quite the thing, naked and sweaty on white linen sheets. In a different corporation Aziraphale would have been all over him, but this body didn’t seem to respond in quite the same way.
“Different,” said Aziraphale.
“Oh shit.”
“What?”
“Different? That’s what you say when something is awful.”
“It wasn’t awful. I enjoyed it. It’s just…oh, I don’t know. I like…” Aziraphale sighed. “Would it be very rude of me to ask you to change back?”
Crowley shrugged and stretched back into her now more familiar shape. She had always moved so fluidly through corporations and states – male, female, both, snake – she was so many different things at once that as her skin resumed its feminine smoothness Aziraphale was sure that for just a moment she saw the pattern of scales beneath its surface. Although she would never have admitted it, Aziraphale had always envied that fluidity. For millennia she’d avoided changing corporation any more than necessary for fear that she might get stuck in something uncomfortable or unacceptable, a bit like the time she’d thought she could squeeze into a large size fourteen in a Marks & Spencer’s changing room, discovered she couldn’t, and had something she thought that humans referred to as a panic attack. Worse, she’d discovered that the feeling of panic that she was now stuck in an unpurchased dress was a much smaller version of her old terror of getting stuck in the wrong form. When your true form made humans’ brains boil and their eyes burn out of their sockets it tended to put a bit of a crimp in one’s social life.
“Well?” said Crowley, stretching her arms up and out. She hadn’t shaved beneath them and the two tufts of gingery hair looked like a pair of exotic moths had alighted in her armpits. Her small breasts looked like nothing much at all when she was lying down, but her nipples – rude, red, tip-tilted – were as delectable as summer raspberries. Aziraphale’s gaze slid lower, to between her half-open legs, to the soft seam below the stripe of trimmed gingery fur.
“Lovely,” said Aziraphale, kissing Crowley on the belly button. “Yes, I’m definitely still a lesbian.”
“Just as well. Be a bit awkward if you weren’t, seeing as you have a wife and everything.”
Aziraphale caught herself grinning like a fool, because the wife part was still a thrilling novelty. They’d done it in Brighton, in the Red Drawing Room at the Royal Pavilion, with Crowley slinky in red satin, and Aziraphale demure in white lace. Well, trying to be demure, anyway. When the wedding photos came back it was clear that Aziraphale’s boobs had had other ideas about it. They tended to be front and centre in photographs.
She glanced towards the windows again, conscious that she was currently anything but demure. “Oh dear,” she said. “What will the neighbours say?”
“Like you care,” said Crowley.
“I do care. Although not as much as you do, obviously.”
“Excuse me?” Crowley rolled over onto her stomach. “Me? When did I ever give a toss what the neighbours thought? I’m a hell-spawned trollop. They know it, I know it, and I’m good at it.”
“You say that, darling, but you’re extremely preoccupied with your marrows.”
“Right,” said Crowley. “But that’s me thinking about what one neighbour thinks. Not the neighbours. Neighbour, singular, specifically Roger Dunmore. Who, by the way, is not winning best marrow. Not now, not ever. I’ve been terrifying vegetables since every last one of his ancestors was still paddling around in Adam’s nutsack, and I am not having that jumped-up little hose pipe Hitler get the better of me.”
Aziraphale shook her head. “I never thought I’d ever see you get so invested in a village fete, of all things. You used to call it a fete worse than death.”
“It will be,” said Crowley, her pupils like gimlets. “Specifically to Roger.”
“Is this because he reported your hose pipe tap to the council?”
“Yes.”
“Really? I never thought you were particularly vindictive, Crowley.”
“I’m not vindictive,” she said. “It’s the principle of the thing. He thinks he can make me suffer with petty bureaucracy. Me. I invented making people suffer with petty bureaucracy, and if he thinks he can take me on at my own bloody game he’s got another thing coming. I don’t have to take that from a man who looks like he tucks his vest into his underpants.”
Aziraphale pictured the colourless, lumpy Roger Dunmore, and reluctantly grappled with the unwelcome image of him wandering around the house in vest and pants. “Oh no,” she said, smothering the mental image by burying her face in Crowley’s thick, herb-scented hair. “He does, now that you mention it. His poor wife.”
“She married him. And she’s still there.”
Helen Dunmore was not as lumpy as her husband, although quite as colourless. She seemed to be the quiet one in the relationship, perhaps by default. After all, the only way to make more noise than the garrulous Roger was to be an actual foghorn. “She seems nice,” said Aziraphale, thinking of Harriet Dowling and wondering if women with the initials HD were somehow doomed to bad marriages. “Why do so many nice women end up with horrible men, do you think?”
“Because they’re probably not that nice themselves,” said Crowley. “Trust me, there are plenty of horrible women in the world. They just hide it better, because they’re not allowed to be as horrible as men. That’s the trouble with being a woman – everyone expects you to be so fucking nice all the time. They actually go around telling women to smile. ‘Oh, you’d be ever so pretty if you just smiled.’ People have said that to me, you know. Actually said that.”
“Good lord,” said Aziraphale. “And what did you do?”
“I smiled.”
“Oh dear.”
Crowley was smiling now, but it was a normal smile. Not that smile. The one with too many teeth and too-focused eyes. “Yeah, be careful what you wish for,” she said. “You might just get it.”
Her slitted pupils had fattened with friendliness, but her eyes were still the colour of melted butter. With her tumbling, pre-Raphaelite hair she looked like someone had taken one of Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s models, whisked her off to the Island of Doctor Moreau, and switched out her existing eyeballs for those of Blake’s tiger. And yes, she burned.
She leaned over, her long red tongue tracing the veins under the thin skin at the crook of Aziraphale’s arm. She didn’t eat with the same greedy enthusiasm as Aziraphale, but she fucked the way Aziraphale ate. Sometimes she tasted, other times she devoured, but even when recently sated she remained hungry. Aziraphale had always understood that sex, especially married sex, was supposed to get boring eventually but eventually seemed a long way off, especially for two beings who could count their lifespans in millennia. Maybe after a century or so they might get tired and spice things up with whips, chains, and rubber lingerie, but Aziraphale doubted it. As Crowley’s teeth teased the tip of her left nipple, she found herself wondering how it was for humans, and how she might begin to compare.
“I wonder what she sees in him?” she said.
Crowley looked up, her lips wet and glistening. “Who?”
“Helen Dunmore.”
Crowley sighed. “Right. And why are you thinking about Roger’s wife when I’m sucking on your tits?”
“Just curious.”
“I don’t know. Ask her. You could do with being a bit more sociable with the neighbours, anyway.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know what you’re like,” said Crowley, ignoring Aziraphale’s sudden defensiveness. “Whenever you’re around people you can get a bit…grumpy bookseller.”
“Grumpy bookseller?” Aziraphale reached for the covers, passion well and truly killed.
Crowley laughed at her. “Um, yes. I’ve seen you. The huffs, the puffs, the sideeyes. Or when someone asks you a particularly stupid question, and you look at them like they’d just waltzed into your bookshop and asked if you had original hardback editions of Fifty Shades of Grey.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said Aziraphale. “The first editions were all paperbacks, as I recall correctly.”
“You see? You’re doing it now. You get all gooey about humanity in theory, but when you have to deal with them you sometimes behave like you’re surrounded by idiots. Which you are, obviously, but sometimes I don’t think you even like people.”
“I love people, Crowley,” said Aziraphale. “It is my job to love people.”
“Yes, but do you love your job?”
“I’m literally a guardian angel. I don’t really have any choice. And anyway, I’m very nice to the neighbours. I’m not the one who spends all her time hissing at Roger Dunmore over cucumbers.”
“Marrows,” said Crowley. “I hiss at him over marrows. Not cucumbers. At least, not yet. Depends on how my seedlings go, but they’d better not try any funny business.” She glanced over at the potting bench and raised her voice. “Do you hear me? I had a penis for you. I made an effort, so I expect a commensurate response from you fucking scrubs. If you’re not sure what happens when you don’t pull your weight, ask the marrows. They’ll tell you.”
“Socialise, she says,” said Aziraphale, reaching for her negligée. “As if it had anything to do with being affable in your case.”
“I’m not affable,” said Crowley. “But you are.”
“Why are you so concerned with my social life all of a sudden?”
“Because you should be happy. I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.”
“Are you sure?” said Crowley. “You don’t miss glowering at people in bookshops? Because you used to love that.”
“I did. I do. And now I love this. Us. It’s all good in the hood, as they say.”
“Good in the…no, never mind. Where do you find these expressions?”
“Not sure,” said Aziraphale, and hesitated for a moment, taking in the warm conservatory, the smell of anxious vegetables. Despite their Crowley-inflicted neuroses one couldn’t argue that the plants weren’t well tended. There was love there, a dysfunctional love well-masked with threats and snarls, but love nonetheless. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe I do need to mingle more. Get a hobby.”
“Not jam,” said Crowley.
“No. Not jam.”
“Thank you. I’m so bloody sick of replacing fire extinguishers.”
“That sugar thermometer was faulty, obviously,” said Aziraphale.
“Obviously.”
*
Helen Dunmore was not the kind of Helen whose face would have launched a thousand ships. Perhaps a small dinghy. Perhaps, but it would have deflated before it even got past paddling depths. Her general air was that same hiss of air that escaped from something punctured. Her ash blonde hair hung limp from a central parting, and the corners of her lips had the downward slopes of a woman far, far beyond the delusion of ever having married well. Aziraphale had once read somewhere that the lines around the corners of the mouth were ‘the signatures of personality’, because they held the key to one’s perpetual expression.
Helen’s mouth said ‘I married Roger Dunmore, and I’m too tired to confront the very real possibility that I regret it’.
She sang soprano in the church choir, and that was one of the few times Aziraphale had seen her not looking totally grey and exhausted. The dragging corners of Helen’s mouth disappeared when she was belting out Handel. When she sung the Hallelujah she even looked like she meant it, so it meant something when she came up after church to tell Aziraphale that her voice wasn’t so bad either.
“Oh, I’m not very good in a choir setting, I’m afraid,” said Aziraphale, whose full belt had seen her relegated to the most distant stalls. “Will you be performing at the fete?”
“No,” said Helen. “Well, I would have been, but I’m not with the WI anymore. Usually used to do Jerusalem, because they expected it of us. You should join, though.”
“Join what?”
“The Women’s Institute. They’re very wo…well…” She pressed her lips together, as if she’d caught herself about to say something ugly. “Inclusive,” she said, after a moment’s thought. “They’re inclusive.”
“Thank you,” said Aziraphale. “I’ll bear that in mind.” She seemed to remember that the WI was all about making jam, and she hadn’t done so well in that department. Oh, that and the other thing, of course. “Aren’t they the ones with the nudey calendars?”
“Yup,” said Helen, and glanced at Aziraphale’s cleavage. “You’d be a shoo-in.”
Aziraphale felt her face turn hot. “Oh, I don’t think so. I’m not really calendar girl material.”
“You could be,” said Helen. “Not like me. Two peas on an ironing board, my husband says. By the way, is your wife still doing the vegetables?”
“Yes,” said Aziraphale, relieved that Crowley wasn’t here. Had Crowley been here there would undoubtedly have been jokes about doing vegetables. Carrots, specifically. “She’s fixated on marrows lately.”
“And you? Do you garden?”
“No. Goodness, no. I kill plants just by looking at them. She’s the one with the green fingers.”
“What about baking?” asked Helen. “The baking competition is always fun, although you have to watch out for Louise. She’s very talented, and she always wins, but it is mostly for fun.”
“Thank you. I’ll think about it.”
“Think fast. There’s not much time left to enter. Roger’s chairing a meeting at the old church hall tomorrow night – last chance to put your name down.”
Aziraphale thought about it, thought better of it, wandered home, made a cup of tea, and thought about it again. Differently, this time. Crowley was right. She did need some sense of community, the way she had back in Soho. And why not? What could go wrong, other than another kitchen fire or twelve? She tied on an apron, and went to the kitchen.
As it happened, cake turned out to be a lot easier than jam. For a start you didn’t have to whip out the sugar thermometer and worry about it burning, because the sugar didn’t even have to get that hot. You simply beat up the sugar with butter, whisked in a few eggs, and then added flour and baking powder and such. Aziraphale opted for a simple Victoria sandwich cake, religiously following the steps with a devotion worthy of an entity who had worshipped low key at the Church of Cake since cakes became a thing. And to her own astonishment, it worked. The two pans of cake rose beautifully in the oven, and then she waited anxiously while they cooled, so anxiously that she found herself craving a cigarette for the first time since the twentieth century.
But it was a revelation. Somehow, somewhere along the line, she had forgotten the agreeable brain-tingles that went along with discovering new things in a book. Only in this case it was a cookbook, and it was even better because you got to try out the things you learned, almost immediately. If it told you that you needed icing sugar to stabilise your whipped cream then it was off to the cupboard, get the sugar, measure it out, whisk it all up, and there it was, like a miracle – a gorgeous cloud of sweet, airy goo. And yes, she was aware that it didn’t go this well for everyone who ever used a recipe book, but it was going well for her. Despite her confidence in front of Crowley, she’d never expected it to, and that it was felt like the Gods of Cake were smiling on her.
As she dusted the top of her handiwork with more icing sugar, Aziraphale felt frankly blessed. And more than a little surprised.
Crowley was surprised, too. She sashayed into the kitchen to get a glass of water, saw the cake, and removed her glasses, the better to stare at it. “Nice,” she said. “Did you miracle that?”
“No,” said Aziraphale. “I baked it. All by myself. I’m quite the little red hen these days.”
Crowley prowled around the cake like it was going to attack her. “I don’t know what chickens have to do with anything,” she said. “But you’ve got to be joking. You really did this?”
“Apparently. I’m almost as surprised as you are.”
“Aziraphale, it’s amazing.” She glanced down at the recipe book. “It looks just like the picture. Better than the picture, because I can smell it.” Her thin red tongue darted over her lips as she inhaled. “How the fuck did you manage that?”
“I just followed the recipe.”
“I thought you were going to burn through the bottom of another saucepan.” Crowley took in another happy lungful of warm cake smell, and shook her head in flattering disbelief. “Have you always been good at baking?”
“No idea. I’ve never done it before. Silly, really, given my long and intimate relationship with cake.” She picked up a knife. “I suppose we should go ahead and taste it, shouldn’t we?”
“Isn’t that my line?”
“Not this time,” said Aziraphale, and carefully sliced out a plump wedge of sponge cake. “Let me tempt you, for a change.”
To Aziraphale’s further delight, Crowley made several exclamations over the lightness of the cake before taking a bite. Her eyes widened, glistening as she chewed. “Oh,” she said, licking sugar from her lips. “Oh.”
“That bad?” said Aziraphale. Crowley was crying.
Crowley shook her head. “It’s…it’s the best fucking cake I’ve ever tasted,” she said. “Holy shit. What did you do?”
“Told you – I just followed the recipe.”
“No, no,” said Crowley, dabbing up crumbs and licking her fingers. “This isn’t just any old cake. This is…this is an angel cake. As in, it tastes like an angel baked it. It tastes like…like love.”
“Oh, you big softy. I’m sure you’re just saying that.”
“I’m not. Try it.”
Aziraphale took a bite, and smiled. Slowly. “Well,” she said, marvelling at the texture, the taste, the subtle hint of vanilla that floated in the background like a leitmotif in a symphony. “Looks like I might be a contender in that baking contest after all.”
“You have to enter now. Come on. You’ll blow them all out of the water.”
“I might just do that, yes.” She took another bite, trying not to look as thrilled as she felt. “Helen thinks I should join the Women’s Institute, too. You know – the ones who do the naughty calendars.”
“Maybe,” said Crowley. “But I’m not sure the world is quite ready for your celestial funbags. They’re magnificent, but let’s be honest – if you released your angel tits into the wild then there wouldn’t be much point in anyone having breasts anymore.”
Aziraphale laughed and put her hand on Crowley’s chest, feeling the slight squish of those dear little ski-slope boobs beneath her t-shirt. “It’s not size that counts, darling,” she said. “That’s the wonderful thing about breasts – they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. And they’re all, as you say, bags of fun.”
Crowley’s arms slithered around her. “You really are a tremendous lesbian. You know that, don’t you.”
“Of course. I was under the impression that it was why you married me, actually.”
*
The meeting at the church hall was well-attended. Roger was chairing. Being a local magistrate, he had brought along a gavel for the purpose. Every time he smacked it down Helen Dunmore’s eyes narrowed in ill-concealed irritation, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but wonder if he also employed the gavel in domestic disputes.
Helen was there with two other women, and a little girl named Mackenzie Jacinda Biles. The child had been named thus by people who allegedly loved her. Her mother, Alison, was fond of applying all three names at once, usually as a caution. When Aziraphale first met them Alison was applying baby pink gloss to her daughter’s lips. “Sorry,” she said, looking stagily sheepish at being caught doing this. “I don’t usually slap on the lippy in public, I swear, but Mackenzie always likes us to match, don’t you, darling?” She pressed her own lipgloss smooth. Her lips were small, with a deep cupid’s bow. “She’s such a Mummy’s girl.”
Aziraphale smiled at the child, who grinned back. Her front teeth were missing, jagged new adult teeth peeking unevenly through the gum. “Smile pretty, Mackenzie,” said the mother, and the little girl closed her mouth over her teeth. Alison ran her fingers through her daughter’s long dark hair, and turned back to Helen. “Have you seen Louise? Oh…there she is.” She raised a hand. “Over here, Lou!”
It was Louise Hunt-Catesby. Aziraphale had met her before, when Crowley made the mistake of admiring Louise’s Chanel sunglasses and was snappily told that they were very expensive, actually. Louise lived just outside the village, in a Jacobethan mansion where once upon a time James I had spent the night, and rubbed himself off on the Duke of Buckingham’s leg. Aziraphale hadn’t mentioned this aspect of the house’s history to Louise Hunt-Catesby. She wasn’t interested in history. She was only interested in how much her husband had paid for it, and why she couldn’t get planning permission for an outdoor hot tub and sauna.
“Lou,” said Alison. “You remember Frances*, don’t you?”
“No,” said Louise. “Hi,” she said, in Aziraphale’s general direction, and turned quickly back to Alison. “And where the hell were you earlier?”
“Um…at home?” said Alison. Helen looked relieved, like someone else was getting in the neck instead of her. Aziraphale already disliked Louise Hunt-Catesby, then quickly dismissed the thought as uncharitable. There was good in everyone, and she was supposed to be making friends here.
“On Twitter,” said Louise. “Did you see what that freak said about me?”
“Which freak?”
“Point,” said Louise. “There are so fucking many of them.”
“Lou!” said Alison, clapping her hands over her daughter’s ears. “She’s right here, you know.”
Mackenzie Jacinta Biles looked as though she doubted it. Louise just snorted. “I’m protecting her female future, actually,” she said. “If these nutters get their way then she’ll have a lot more to worry about when she grows up than just a few naughty words.”
“I know, but—”
“—women are allowed to swear, Alison,” said Louise, her voice rising so that people turned to look. “We are allowed to get angry. We have the right to get angry.”
“Quite right,” said Aziraphale, and found herself the recipient of a ferocious stare. Louise’s eyes were as dark as her hair was blonde, and Aziraphale had only seen that look in a woman’s eyes once before. That particular woman had razed Colchester and St. Albans, before turning her torches on London itself. Probably not the kind of lady you wanted to mess with. “Don’t you find that women are obliged to be unnaturally agreeable?” Aziraphale added.
“Exactly,” said Louise.
“On the other hand, she is…what, seven?”
“Eight,” said Mackenzie, having wrestled her mother’s hands from her ears. “I’m eight.”
“And what a wonderful age that is,” said Aziraphale. “Please don’t say that f word you heard, all right?”
“What?” said Mackenzie. “Freaks?”
“Also that, yes. It’s not very kind, is it?”
“Kindness, my arse,” said Louise, and Alison reached to cover her child’s ears again. “Lou…” she said, with a tired plaintiveness that suggested she said this a lot.
“You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had,” said Louise. “Could really have used your support, to be honest…” She trailed off mid-complaint, because the meeting had resumed, with a solid smack of Roger Dunmore’s gavel. “Oh-ho,” she said, with a wry look at Helen. “Her master’s voice.”
“Are we all here?” said Roger.
They weren’t. Crowley wasn’t here. And she was supposed to be. All this socialising had been her idea, after all.
Aziraphale said nothing, although as the minutes and bullet points of the meeting ticked by she grew annoyed. By the time Crowley did show up she was feeling bitchy enough to suspect Crowley of turning up late just to make an entrance. Especially dressed like that.
Crowley had always had an unholy gift of making every outfit look like an invitation to a sexual free-for-all so eyewateringly filthy that it would have made even the muckiest Renaissance popes pull out the fainting couch and come down with the vapours. She’d tried her best in her Nanny days, but never pulled it off, largely because she rarely bothered with underwear, and her nipples would always be playing peek-a-boo with the sheer stripes in her high necked pussy-bow blouses. She’d put on pencil skirts that were supposed to make her look as uninspiringly up-and-down as possible, but instead they would convey the impression that she was wearing them because she needed some external force to keep her legs together, a restrictive touch echoed in her penchant for black leather gloves, and the spikiest of pin heels. She had regularly sent men into all kinds of Soho phone-box imaginings, featuring riding crops, high button boots, and all manner of delicious punishments.
So it was probably no surprise that she would manage to make even dungarees look slutty.
One strap was undone altogether, although at least this time she was wearing a bra. The trouble was, Aziraphale recognised that bra. It was one of the ones she’d bought Crowley for their anniversary, and it wasn’t exactly practical. Not for gardening, anyway. It was burgundy and black, a push-up affair with sheer lace cups that left little to the imagination. As usual, Crowley entered the room crotch first, all hips and swagger. Her thick red curls were half-falling down from a sloppy bun, and there was an aubergine flower behind her ear. Her wellington boots were snakeskin.
“Did you sign up?” she hissed, wriggling her way to Aziraphale’s elbow.
“No, not yet.”
Crowley raised her hand, revealing an unshaven armpit. She smelled faintly of Talisker, which maybe went some way to explaining the whimsy of the flower behind her ear. “Excuse me,” she said, startling Roger Dunmore. “Have you done the baking competition? My wife would like to enter the baking competition.”
“I’m sorry,” said Aziraphale. “I tried to explain to her that we haven’t got to that part yet.”
Roger Dunmore peered over his glasses at Crowley. “We haven’t,” he said. “But we were about to get to the children’s community garden project. And we desperately need someone to supervise the kids. Didn’t you used to be a nanny, Ms. Ash?”
“She did!” said Aziraphale.
“Shut up,” said Crowley, discreetly stepping on her foot.
“No. You’re good with children. You are.”
“I want a divorce,” said Crowley. “I’m not with her.”
Almost everyone laughed, except Louise. She gave Crowley a speculative up and down glance, lingering first on her crotch, and then on the nipple showing through the black lace cup of her bra. “Actually, while we’re on the subject of children,” she said, folding her arms over her bosom. “What’s going on with the toilet situation?”
Roger pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right. The toilet situation.”
“Women and children require protection from predators, Roger.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise we had hyenas in Sussex,” said Aziraphale.
That got her another laugh from the crowd, but the warmth of acceptance faded immediately when she saw the look on Louise’s face. Apparently it didn’t do to make fun of Louise Hunt-Catesby. She either had no sense of humour, or she was trying to incinerate Aziraphale with her eyes. Perhaps both. “Sexual predators,” she said.
“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “Oh, I am sorry. Does that happen a lot?”
“Yes. You know the ladies’ toilet in the car park? People just walk right in there.”
“I see. Is it not a public convenience then?”
“When she says ‘people’ she means men,” said Alison Biles. Standing either side of Louise, her and Helen Dunmore looked like a pair of unsmiling sphinxes. She covered her child’s ears with her hands again and mouthed the word – perverts.
“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “Oh, I see.”
“My husband is very happy to pay for private security, as you know, Roger,” said Louise. She had a loud voice, both metallic and girlish at once. And it carried.
Roger visibly winced at the sound. “Right, well. I’ll have a word with him.”
“Or you could just have a word with me. I’m right here. Or do you not want to talk to me because I’m a woman?”
“Pretty sure he didn’t want to talk to her because she’s an arsehole,” Crowley said, later, when they were safely back in the cottage. “And you’d have to be a pretty big gaping bumhole to out-arsehole Roger Ringpiece.” She swung her bare foot over the edge of her chair and snickered to herself. “I’m glad they found one another. Maybe we should play matchmaker, so they can have an affair and destroy each other.”
“That’s awful. Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because it’s funny. And because they’re horrible.”
Aziraphale sighed and looked up from the laptop computer, where she was trying to officially sign up to the baking contest. “Crowley, what is the matter with you? You ask me to make friends, and then as soon as I do you…you widdle on my chips by announcing that they’re horrible.”
“Just calling it as I see it, angel,” said Crowley. “The horrible have been my bread and butter for over six thousand years, and trust me – I know horrible.”
“She’s not horrible. I think she’s just passionate. People generally are when they’re threatened, and if there are perverts sniffing around that public toilet then I can quite understand her being defensive.”
Crowley burped gently and buried her nose in her drink, the whiskey the same gold as her enormous eyes. “Maybe,” she said. “Is that why she kept staring at my crotch?”
She sat with legs spread wide, revealing an unfeminine fullness between them. “She was staring at your crotch because you’re bulging, Crowley,” said Aziraphale.
“Oh. Oh, shit. Sorry. I didn’t realise. I was messing around with my cucumbers before, and forgot to make the carpet match the curtains, so to speak.”
“Well, yes. Most people wouldn’t notice, but since it’s you. Do you have to walk into every room pelvis first?”
Crowley raised her eyebrows. “Uh, have you met my pelvis?”
“Reader, I married it,” said Aziraphale, successfully navigating her way onto Louise Hunt-Catesby’s online photo album thing.
“What?”
“Jane Eyre,” she muttered, distracted. The very first photo in Louise’s album was a croquembouche, a luscious tower of profiteroles and chocolate dipped strawberries, gauzy with bronze threads of spun sugar. “Oh no. Oh dear.”
“What’s up?” said Crowley, seeing her expression. “Did you break it?”
“No,” said Aziraphale. “It’s Louise. She’s on the online thingy.”
Crowley got up and joined her on the couch. “Instagram. It’s called Instagram.”
“Whatever it’s called, those are pictures of her cakes.”
To her credit, Crowley just shrugged. “Doesn’t look like much to me. It’s just a big pile, isn’t it?”
Aziraphale sighed and switched to the next one, her heart sinking. This time it was a cake as shiny as a mirror, the colour of a sky under the Northern Lights, spangled with stars made from silver sugar. There was no way a lifelong stargazer like Crowley couldn’t be impressed by that, and it made her own humble little Victoria sandwich cake look pathetic.
“Wait…she makes those?”
“Yes,” said Aziraphale, deflating even further and stealing some of Crowley’s drink. The next was a three-tier blue cake that looked like it had been made from Wedgwood jasperware. Except it wasn’t. It was royal icing, apparently. “Oh, she’s very good, Crowley. Am I out of my depth already?”
“No. It’s not about the competition, remember? It’s about the taking part.”
“Says the woman who recently changed gender just to intimidate squash vegetables.”
Crowley snatched her Scotch back and gave Aziraphale a baleful look. “Right. And I have a bone to pick with you about that, angel.”
“Why? What did I do?”
“You know what you did,” said Crowley. “You signed me up to look after a bunch of snotty nosed kids, and played right into Roger’s sticky little hands. I know what he’s up to. He’s trying to sabotage me by taking me away from my marrows.”
“Don’t be so paranoid, dear. Anyway, you’ll enjoy yourself. I know you will. You love children.”
“I do not.”
“You do. I saw you with Warlock. And Ursula.”
Crowley softened, scrunching her nose in fond remembrance. “Yeah, but Ursula was very cute.”
“She was a peach,” said Aziraphale. “Just the sweetest, easiest, prettiest baby ever. Even her farts were adorable.”
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one cleaning up whenever she followed through on a wet one. Anyway, these aren’t babies, Aziraphale. They’re children. Possibly youths.” Crowley shuddered.
“And what’s the matter with youths?”
“Do you remember the YTS? Youth Training Schemes?”
Aziraphale shook her head.
“It was a thing,” said Crowley. “I think it was one of Margaret Thatcher’s bright ideas. They’d take kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and basically force them to do shit busy work for peanuts, or have all their benefits stopped.”
“That sounds…awful.”
“It was. That was why I borrowed the idea.”
“Borrowed?”
“Acquired,” said Crowley. “Appropriated. Nicked, if you really must. Look, there was a promotion and an air-conditioned office up for grabs, and it was down to me and Dagon. No, it wasn’t good air-conditioning, because there is no decent air-conditioning in Hell, but I’d had enough of pit stains and frizz—”
“—so you plagiarised evil?”
“Well, I don’t think there was a copyright issue, angel. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear it came back to bite me.”
“Doesn’t it always, dear?”
Crowley drained her glass. “I got picked up to ‘head up the youth task force’,” she said. “Spent the best part of a half-century wrangling wet-behind-the-horns demons around an infernal canal bank down in the Malebolge. That’s why I don’t like these…youth projects. Still can’t look at a shopping trolley without getting post-traumatic.”
“Shopping trolleys?”
“Yeah. You know what canals are like. They always have Tesco trolleys in them. Even the canals in Hell. That was the job – pulling out the shopping trolleys. Fishing out used condoms.”
“Sounds grim,” said Aziraphale, appalled to find herself forced to contemplate used condoms in Hell. “Did you at least get your office?”
“Yes,” said Crowley. “And then I got Legionnaire’s disease from the air-conditioning unit.”
“My poor darling.” Aziraphale – still rummaging through Louise’s photo album with a kind of quiet despair – stopped short. Her despair grew significantly louder. “Oh, look at that.”
That didn’t even look like a cake. It was vaguely cake-shaped, but there the similarity ended. Three tiers of what looked like porcelain figures, depicting scenes from The Wind in the Willows. There was Ratty and Mole, messing around in their boat, Badger hmmphing and skulking in a tangle of wildwood, and on top – oh, come on, how was this even fair? – was a perfectly realised figurine of Mr. Toad roadhogging it up in his vintage car, driving goggles, tyre skid marks and all.
Even Crowley was impressed. “Is that…?”
“…edible? Yes. Apparently. It’s all marzipan. How?”
“Angel, relax. Nobody’s expecting you to do that with marzipan.”
“I don’t think I can,” said Aziraphale, marvelling at the little details on the cake. There was a weasel, popping its tiny head out from behind a sugar flytrap, and even a lilliputian whitewash brush that had been abandoned in some bullrushes when Mole dashed out to picnic with his friend. “I’ve been having palpitations at the thought of attempting a Battenberg cake.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Crowley, squeezing the back of her waist. “You know what they say. If at first you don’t succeed…”
“…try, try again. Yes.”
Crowley frowned. “No, you idiot,” she said. “Cheat.”