Light Thickens

Chapter 1 FIRST WEEK

Peregrine Jay heard the stage door at the Dolphin open and shut and the sound of voices. The scene and costume designer and the lighting manager came through to the open stage. They wheeled out three specially built racks, unrolled their drawings, and pinned them up.

They were stunning. A permanent central rough stone stairway curved up to Duncan’s chamber. Two turntables articulated with this to represent, on the right, the outer facade of Inverness Castle or the inner courtyard, and on the left, a high stone platform with a gallows and a dangling rag-covered skeleton, or, turned, another wall of the courtyard. The central wall was a dull red arras above the stairway, open to the sky.

The lighting manager showed a dozen big drawings of the various sets with the startling changes brought about by his craft. One of these was quite lovely: an opulent evening in front of the castle with the setting sun bathing everything in splendor. One felt the air to be calm, gentle, and full of the sound of wings. A heavenly evening. And then, next to it, the same scene with the enormous doors opened, a dark interior, torches, a piper, and the Lady in scarlet coming to welcome the fated visitor.

“Jeremy,” Peregrine said, “you’ve done us proud.”

“Okay?”

“It’s so right! It’s so bloody right. Here! Let’s up with the curtain. Jeremy?”

The designer went offstage and pressed a button. With a long-drawn-out sigh the curtain rose. The shrouded house waited.

“Light them, Jeremy! Blackout and lights on them. Can you?”

“It won’t be perfect but I’ll try.”

“Just for the hell of it, Jeremy.”

Jeremy laughed, moved the racks, and went to the lights console.

Peregrine walked through a pass-door to the front-of-house. Presently there was a total blackout, and then, after a pause, the drawings were suddenly there, alive in the midst of nothing and looking splendid.

“Only approximate, of course,” Jeremy said in the dark.

“Let’s keep this for the cast to see. They’re due now.”

“You don’t want to start them off with broken legs, do you?” asked the lighting manager.

There was an awkward pause.

“Well — no. Put on the light in the passage,” said Peregrine in a voice that was a shade too offhand. “No,” he shouted. “Bring down the curtain again, Jeremy. We’ll do it properly.”

The stage door was opened and more voices were heard, two women’s and a man’s. They came in exclaiming at the dark.

“All right, all right,” Peregrine called out cheerfully. “Stay where you are. Lights, Jeremy, would you? Just while people are coming in. Thank you. Come down in front, everybody. Watch how you go. Splendid.”

They came down. Margaret Mannering first, complaining about the stairs, in her wonderful warm voice with little breaks of laughter, saying she knew she was unfashionably punctual. Peregrine hurried to meet her.

“Maggie, darling! It’s all meant to start us off with a bang, but I do apologize. No more steps. Here we are. Sit down in the front row. Nina! Are you all right? Come and sit down, love. Bruce! Welcome, indeed. I’m so glad you managed to fit us in with television.”

I’m putting it on a bit thick, he thought. Nerves! Here they all come. Steady now.

They arrived singly and in pairs, having met at the door. They greeted Peregrine and each other extravagantly or facetiously, and all of them asked why they were sitting in front and not onstage or in the rehearsal room. Peregrine kept count of heads. When they got to seventeen and then to nineteen he knew they were waiting for only one: the Thane.

He began again, counting them off. Simon Morten, Macduff. A magnificent figure, six feet two. Dark. Black eyes with a glitter, thick black hair that sprang in short-clipped curls from his skull. A smooth physique not yet running to fat and a wonderful voice. Almost too good to be true. Bruce Barrabell, the Banquo. Slight. Five feet ten inches tall. Fair to sandy hair. Beautiful voice. And the King? Almost automatic casting — he’d played every Shakespearian king in the canon except Lear and Claudius, and played them all well if a little less than perfectly. The great thing about him was his royalty. He was more royal than any of the remaining crowned heads of Europe and his name actually was King: Norman King. The Malcolm was, in real life, his son — a young man of nineteen — and the relationship was striking.

There was the Lennox, sardonic man. Nina Gaythorne, the Lady Macduff, who was talking very earnestly with the Doctor. And I don’t mind betting it’s about superstition, thought Peregrine uneasily. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes late, he thought. I’ve half a mind to start without him, so I have.

A loud and lovely voice and the bang of the stage door.

Peregrine hurried through the pass-door and up onto the stage.

“Dougal, my dear fellow, welcome,” he shouted.

“But I’m so sorry, dear boy. I’m afraid I’m a fraction late. Where is everybody?”

“In front. I’m not having a reading.”

“Not?”

“No. A few words about the play. The working drawings, and then away we go.”

“Really?”

“Come through. This way. Here we go.”

Peregrine led the way. “The Thane, everybody,” he announced.

It gave Sir Dougal Macdougal an entrance. He stood for a moment on the steps into the front-of-house, an apologetic grin transforming his face. Such a nice chap, he seemed to be saying, no upstage nonsense about him. Everybody loves everybody. Yes. He saw Margaret Mannering. Delight! Acknowledgment! Outstretched arms and a quick advance. “Maggie! My dear! How too lovely!” Kissing of hands and both cheeks. Everybody felt as if the central heating had been turned up another five points. Suddenly they all began talking.

Peregrine stood with his back to the curtain, facing the company with whom he was about to take a journey. Always it felt like this. They had come aboard: they were about to take on other identities. In doing this something would happen to them all: new ingredients would be tried, accepted, or denied. Alongside them were the characters they must assume. They would come closer and if the casting was accurate, slide together. For the time they were onstage they would be one. So he held. And when the voyage was over they would all be again, as Peregrine thought, a little bit different.

He began talking to them.

“I’m not starting with a reading,” he said. “Readings are okay as far as they go for the major roles, but bit-parts are bit-parts and as far as the Gentlewoman and the Doctor are concerned, once they arrive they are bloody important, but their zeal won’t be set on fire by sitting around waiting for a couple of hours for their entrance.

“Instead, I’m going to invite you to take a hard look at this play and then get on with it. It’s short and it’s faulty. That is to say, it’s full of errors that crept into whatever script was handed to the printers. Shakespeare didn’t write the silly Hecate bits so out she comes. It’s compact and drives quickly to its end. It’s remorseless. I’ve directed it, in other theatres, twice — each time, I may say, successfully and without any signs of bad luck — so I don’t believe in the bad-luck stories associated with it and I hope none of you do either. Or if you do, you’ll keep your ideas to yourselves. ”

He paused long enough to sense a change of awareness in his audience and a quick, instantly repressed, movement of Nina Gaythorne’s hands.

“It’s straightforward,” he said. “I don’t find any major difficulties or contradictions in Macbeth. He is a hypersensitive, morbidly imaginative man beset by an overwhelming ambition. From the moment he commits the murder he starts to disintegrate. Every poetic thought, magnificently expressed, turns sour. His wife knows him better than he knows himself and from the beginning realizes that she must bear the burden, reassure her husband, screw his courage to the sticking-place, jolly him along. In my opinion,” Peregrine said, looking directly at Margaret Mannering, “she’s not an iron monster who can stand up to any amount of hard usage. On the contrary, she’s a sensitive creature who has an iron will and has made a deliberate, evil choice. In the end she never breaks, but she talks and walks in her sleep. Disastrously.”

Maggie leaned forward, her hands clasped, her eyes brilliantly fixed on his face. She gave him a little series of nods. At the moment, at least, she believed him.

“And she’s as sexy as hell,” he added. “She uses it. Up to the hilt.”

He went on. The witches, he said, must be completely accepted. The play was written in James the First’s time at his request. James the First believed in witches. In their power and their malignancy. “Let us show you,” said Peregrine, “what I mean. Jeremy, can you?”

Blackout, and there were the drawings, needle-sharp in the focused lights.

“You see the first one,” Peregrine said. “That’s what we’ll go up on, my dears. A gallows with its victim, picked clean by the witches. They’ll drop down from it and dance clumsy widdershins around it. Thunder and lightning. Caterwauls. The lot. Only a few seconds and then they’ll leap up and we’ll see them in midair. Blackout. They’ll fall behind the high rostrum onto a pile of mattresses. Gallows away. Pipers. Lighted torches and we’re off.”

Well, he thought, I’ve got them. For the moment. They’re caught. And that’s all one can hope for. He went through the rest of the cast, noting how economically the play was written and how completely the inherent difficulty of holding the interest in a character as seemingly weak as Macbeth was overcome.

“Weak?” asked Dougal Macdougal. “You think him weak, do you?”

“Weak, in respect of this one monstrous thing he feels himself drawn toward doing. He’s a most successful soldier. You may say ‘larger than life.’ He takes the stage, cuts a superb figure. The King has promised he will continue to shower favors upon him. Everything is as rosy as can be. And yet — and yet —”

“His wife?” Dougal suggested. “And the witches!”

“Yes. That’s why I say the witches are enormously important. One has the feeling that they are conjured up by Macbeth’s secret thoughts. There’s not a character in the play that questions their authority. There have been productions, you know, that bring them on at different points, silent but menacing, watching their work.

“They pull Macbeth along the path to that one definitive action. And then, having killed the King, he’s left — a Murderer. Forever. Unable to change. His morbid imagination takes charge. The only thing he can think of is to kill again. And again. Notice the imagery. The play closes in on him. And on us. Everything thickens. His clothes are too big, too heavy. He’s a man in a nightmare.

“There’s the break, the breather for the leading actor, that comes in all the tragedies. We see Macbeth once again with the witches and then comes the English scene with the boy Malcolm taking his oddly contorted way of finding out if Macduff is to be trusted, his subsequent advance into Scotland, the scene of Lady Macbeth speaking of horrors with the strange, dead voice of the sleepwalker.

“And then we see him again; greatly changed; aged, desperate, unkempt; his cumbersome royal robes in disarray, always attended by Seyton, who had grown in size. And so to the end.”

He waited for a moment. Nobody spoke.

“I would like,” said Peregrine, “before we block the opening scenes, to say a brief word about the secondary parts. It’s the fashion to say they’re uninteresting. I don’t agree. About Lennox, in particular. He’s likable, down to earth, quick-witted but slow to make the final break. There’s evidence in the imperfect script of some doubt about who says what. We will make Lennox the messenger to Lady Macduff. When next we see him he’s marching with Malcolm. His scene with an unnamed thane (we’ll give the lines to Ross), when their suspicion of Macbeth, their nosing out of each other’s attitudes, develops into a tacit understanding, is ‘modern’ in treatment, almost black comedy in tone.”

“And the Seyton?” asked a voice from the rear. A very deep voice.

“Ah, Seyton. Obviously, he’s ‘Sirrah,’ the unnamed servant who accompanies Macbeth like a shadow, who carries his great claymore, who joins the two murderers and later in the play emerges with a name — Seyton. He has hardly any lines but he’s ominous. A big, silent, ever-present amoral fellow who only leaves his master at the end. The very end. We’re casting Gaston Sears for the part. Mr. Sears, as you all know, in addition to being an actor is an authority on medieval arms and is already working for us in that capacity.” There was an awkward silence followed by an acquiescent murmur.

The saturnine person, sitting alone, cleared his throat, folded his arms, and spoke. “I shall carry,” he announced, basso-profundo, “a claidheamh-mor.”

“Quite so,” said Peregrine. “You are the sword-bearer. As for the —”

“— which has been vulgarized into ‘claymore.’ I prefer ‘claidheamh-mor,’ meaning ‘great sword’; it being—”

“Quite so, Gaston. And now —”

For a time the voices mingled, the bass one coming through with disjointed phrases: “… Magnus’s leg-biter… quillons formed by turbulent protuberances…”

“To continue!” Peregrine shouted. The sword-bearer fell silent.

“And the witches?” asked a helpful witch.

“Entirely evil,” answered the relieved Peregrine. “Dressed like fantastic parodies of Meg Merrilies but with terrible faces. We don’t see their faces until look not like th’ inhabitants o’ the earth, and yet are on’t, when they are suddenly revealed.”

“And speak?”

“Braid Scots.”

“What about me, Perry? Braid Scots, too?” suggested the Porter.

“Yes. You enter through the central trap, having been collecting fuel in the basement. And,” Peregrine said with ill-concealed pride, “the fuel is bleached driftwood and most improperly shaped. You address each piece in turn as a farmer, as an equivocator, and as an English tailor, and you consign them all to the fire.”

“I’m a funny man?”

“We hope so.”

“Aye. Aweel, it’s a fine idea, I’ll gie it that. Och, aye. A bonny notion,” said the Porter.

He chuckled and mouthed and Peregrine wished he wouldn’t but he was a good Scots actor.

He waited for a moment, wondering how much he had gained of their confidence. Then he turned to the designs and explained how they would work and then to the costumes.

“I’d like to say here and now that these drawings and those for the sets — Jeremy has done both — are, to my mind, exactly right. Notice the suggestion of the clan tartans: a sort of primitive pre-tartan. The cloak has a distinctive check affair. All Macbeth’s servitors and the murderers wear it. We’re in the days when the servitors of royal personages wear their badges and the livery of their masters. Lennox, Angus, Ross, Seyton, wear the distinctive cloaks with the family plaid. Banquo and Fleance have particularly brilliant ones, blood-red with black and silver borders. For the rest, trousers, fur jerkins, and thonged sheepskin chaps. Massive jewelry. Great jeweled bosses, heavy necklets, and heavy bracelets, in Macbeth’s case reaching up to the elbow and above it. The general effect is heavy, primitive, but incidentally extremely sexy. Gauntlets, fringed and ornamented. And the crowns! Macbeth’s in particular. Huge and heavy, it must look.”

“ ‘Look,’ ” said Macdougal, “being the operative word, I hope.”

“Yes, of course. We’ll have it made of plastic. And Maggie… do you like what you see, darling?”

What she saw was a skin-tight gown of dull metallic material, slit up one side to allow her to walk. A crimson, heavily furred garment was worn over it, open down the front. She had only one jewel, a great clasp.

“I hope I’ll fit it,” said Maggie.

“You’ll do that,” he said. “And now” — he was conscious of a tightness in his chest — “we’ll clear stage and get down to business. Oh! There’s one point I’ve missed. You will see that for our first week some of the rehearsals are at night. This is to accommodate Sir Dougal, who is shooting the finals of his new film. The theatre is dark, the current production being on tour. It’s a bit out of the ordinary, I know, and I hope nobody finds it too awkward?”

There was a silence during which Sir Dougal with spread arms mimed a helpless apology.

“I can’t forbear saying it’s very inconvenient,” said Banquo.

“Are you filming?”

“Not precisely. But it might arise.”

“We’ll hope it doesn’t,” Peregrine said. “Right? Good. Clear stage, please, everyone. Scene One. The Witches.”

It’s going very smoothly,” said Peregrine, three days later. “Almost too smoothly.”

“Keep your fingers crossed,” said his wife, Emily. “It’s early days yet.”

“True.” He looked curiously at her. “I’ve never asked you,” he said. “Do you believe in it? The superstitious legend?”

“No,” she said quickly.

“Not the least tiny bit? Really?”

Emily looked steadily at him. “Truly?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“My mother was a one-hundred-percent Highlander.”

“So?”

“So it’s not easy to give you a direct answer. Some superstitions — most, I think — are silly little matters of habit. A pinch of spilt salt over the left shoulder. One may do it without thinking but if one doesn’t it’s no great matter. That sort of thing. But… there are other ones. Not silly. I don’t believe in them. No. But I think I avoid them.”

“Like the Macbeth ones?”

“Like them. Yes. But I didn’t mind you doing it. Or not enough to try to stop you. Because I don’t really believe,” said Emily very firmly.

“I don’t believe at all. Not at any level. I’ve done two productions of the play and they both were accident-free and very successful. As for the instances they drag up — Macbeth’s sword breaking and a bit of it hitting someone in the audience or a dropped weight narrowly missing an actor’s head — if they’d happened in any other play nobody would have said it was an unlucky one. How about Rex Harrison’s hairpiece being caught in a chandelier and whisked up into the flies? Nobody said My Fair Lady was unlucky.”

“Nobody dared to mention it, I should think.”

“There is that, of course,” Peregrine agreed.

“All the same, it’s not a fair example.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s not serious. I mean… well…”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been there, I daresay,” said Peregrine.

He walked over to the window and looked at the Thames: at the punctual late-afternoon traffic. It congealed on the south bank, piled up, broke out into a viscous stream, and crossed by bridge to the north bank. Above it, caught by the sun, shone the theatre: not very big but conspicuous in its whiteness and, because of the squat mass of little riverside buildings that surrounded it, appearing tall, even majestic.

“You can tell which of them’s bothered about the bad-luck stories,” he said. “They won’t say his name. They talk about the ‘Thane’ and the ‘Scots play’ and ‘The Lady.’ It’s catching. Lady Macduff — Nina Gaythorne — silly little ass, is steeped up to the eyebrows in it. And talks about it. Stops if she sees I’m about but she does, all right, and they listen to her.”

“Don’t let it worry you, darling. It’s not affecting their work, is it?” Emily asked.

“No.”

“Well, then.”

“I know, I know.”

Emily joined him and they both looked out, over the Thames, to where the Dolphin shone so brightly. She took his arm. “It’s easy to say, I know,” she said, “but if you could just not. Don’t brood. It’s not like you. Tell me how the great Scot is making out as Macbeth.”

“Fine. Fine. He’s uncannily lamblike and everyone told me he was a Frankenstein’s Monster to work with.”

“It’s his biggest role so far, isn’t it?” Emily asked.

“Yes. He was a good Benedick, but that’s the only other Shakespeare part he’s played. Out of Scotland. He had a bash at Othello in his repertory days. He was a fantastic Anatomist in Bridie’s play when they engaged him for the revival at the Haymarket. That started him off in the West End. Now, of course, he’s way up there.”

“How’s his love life going?”

“I don’t really know. He’s making a great play for Lady Macbeth at the moment but Maggie Mannering takes it with a tidy load of salt, don’t worry.”

“Dear Maggie!”

“And dear you!” he said. “You’ve lightened the load no end. Shall I tackle Nina and tell her not to? Or go on pretending I haven’t noticed?”

“What would you say? ‘Oh, by the way, Nina darling, could you leave off the bad-luck business, scaring the pants off the cast? Just a thought!’ ”

Peregrine burst out laughing and gave her a pat. “I tell you what,” he said, “you’re so bloody sharp you can have a go yourself. I’ll ask her for a drink, here, and you can choose your moment and then lay into her.”

“Are you serious?”

“No. Yes, I believe I am. It might work.”

“I don’t think it would. She’s never been here before. She’d rumble.”

“Would that matter? Oh, I don’t know. Shall we leave it a bit longer? I think so.”

“And so do I,” said Emily. “With any luck they’ll get sick of it and it’ll die a natural death.”

“So it may,” he agreed and hoped he sounded convincing. “That’s a comforting thought. I must return to the blasted heath.”

He wouldn’t have taken much comfort from the lady in question if he could have seen her at that moment. Nina Gaythorne came into her minute flat in Westminster and began a sort of delousing ritual. Without waiting to take off her hat or her gloves, she scuffled in her handbag and produced a crucifix, which she kissed and laid on the table near a clove of garlic and her prayerbook. She opened the letter, put on her spectacles, crossed herself, and read aloud the ninety-first Psalm.

“ ‘Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the Most High,’ ” read Nina in the well-trained, beautifully modulated tones of a professional actress. When she reached the end, she kissed her prayerbook, crossed herself again, laid her marked-up part on the table, the prayerbook on top of it, the crucifix on the prayerbook, and, after a slight hesitation, the clove of garlic at the foot of the crucifix:

“That ought to settle their hash,” she said and took off her gloves.

Her belief in curses and things being lucky or unlucky was based not on any serious study but merely on the odds and ends of gossip and behavior accumulated by four generations of theatre people. In that most hazardous profession where so many mischances can occur, when so much hangs in the precarious balance on opening night, when five weeks’ preparation may turn to ashes or blaze for years, there is a fertile soil indeed for superstition to take root and flourish.

Nina was forty years old, a good dependable actress, happy to strike a long run and play the same part eight times a week for year after year, being very careful not to let it become an entirely mechanical exercise. The last part of this kind had come to an end six months ago and nothing followed it, so that this little plum, Lady Macduff, uncut for once, had been a relief. And the child might be a nice boy. Not the precocious little horror that could emerge from an indifferent school. And the house! The Dolphin! The enormous prestige attached to an engagement there. Its phenomenal run of good luck and, above all, its practice of using the same people when they had gained an entry, whenever a suitable role occurred: a happy engagement. Touch wood!

So, really, she must not, really not, talk about the Scots play to other people in the cast. It just kept slipping out. Peregrine Jay had noticed and didn’t like it. I’ll make a resolution, Nina thought. She shut her large, faded eyes tight and said aloud:

“I promise on my word of honor and upon this prayerbook not to talk about you-know-what. Amen.”

“Maggie,” shouted Simon Morten. “Hold on, wait a moment.”

Margaret Mannering stopped at the top of Wharfingers Lane where it joined the main highway. A procession of four enormous lorries thundered past. Morten hurried up the last steep bit. “I got trapped by Gaston Sears,” he panted. “Couldn’t get rid of him. How about coming to the George for a meal? It won’t take long in a taxi.”

“Simon! My dear, I’m sorry. I’ve said I’ll dine with Dougal.”

“But — where is Dougal?”

“Fetching his car. I said I’d come up to the corner and wait for him. It’s a chance to talk about our first encounter. In the play, I mean.”

“Oh. I see. All right, then.”

“Sorry, darling.”

“Not a bit. I quite understand.”

“Well,” she said. “I hope you do.”

“I’ve said I do, haven’t I? Here comes your Thane in his scarlet chariot.”

He made as if to go and then stopped. Dougal Macdougal pulled up to the curb. “Here I am, sweetie,” he declared. “Hullo, Simon. Just the man to open the door for the lovely lady and save me a bash on the bottom from oncoming traffic.”

Morten removed his beret, pulled on his forelock, and opened the door with exaggerated humility. Margaret got into the car without looking at him and said, “Thank you, darling.”

He banged the door.

“Can we drop you somewhere?” Dougal asked, as an afterthought.

“No, thank you. I don’t know where you’re going but it’s not in my direction.” Dougal pulled a long face, nodded, and moved out into the traffic. Simon Morten stood looking after them, six feet two of handsome disgruntlement, his black curls still uncovered. He said: “Well, shit off and be damned to you,” crammed his beret on, turned into the lane, and entered the little restaurant known as the Junior Dolphin.

“What’s upset the Thane of Fife?” asked Dougal casually.

“Nothing. He’s being silly.”

“Not, by any chance, a teeny-weeny bit jealous?”

“Maybe. He’ll recover.”

“Hope so. Before we get round to bashing away at each other with Gaston’s claymores.”

“Indeed, yes. Gaston really is more than a bit dotty, don’t you think? All that talk about armory. And he wouldn’t stop.”

“I’m told he did spend a short holiday in a sort of halfway house. A long time ago, though, and he was quite harmless. Just wore a sword and spoke middle English. He’s a sweet man, really. He’s been asked by Perry to teach us the fight. He wants us to practice duels in slow motion every day for five weeks building up muscle and getting a bit faster very slowly. To the Anvil Chorus from Trovatore.”

“Not really?”

“Of course not, when it comes to performance. Just at rehearsals to get the rhythm. They are frightfully heavy, claymores are.”

“Rather you than me,” said Maggie and burst out laughing.

Dougal began to sing very slowly. “Bang. Wait for it. Bang. Wait again. And bangle-bangle bang. Wait. Bang.”

“With two hands, of course.”

“Of course, I can’t lift the thing off the floor without puffing and blowing. Gaston brought one down for us to try.”

“He’s actually making the ones you’re going to use, isn’t he? Couldn’t he cheat and use lighter material or papier-mâché for the hilt or something?”

“My dear, no good at all. It would upset the balance.”

“Well, do be careful,” said Maggie vaguely.

“Of course. The thing is that the blades won’t be sharp at all. Blunt as blunt. But if one of us was simply hit, it would merely break his bones.”

“Really?”

“To smithereens,” said Dougal. “I promise you.”

“I think you’re going to look very silly, the two of you, floundering about. You’ll get laughs. I can think of all sorts of things that might go wrong.”

“Such as?”

“Well! One of you making a swipe and missing and the claymore getting stuck in the scenery.”

“It’s going to be very short. In time. Only a minute or so. He backs away into the O.P. corner and I roar after him. Simon’s a very powerful man, by the by. He picked the claymore up in a dégagé manner and then he spun round and couldn’t stop and hung on to it, looking absolutely terrified. That was funny,” said Dougal. “I laughed like anything at old Si.”

“Well, don’t, Dougal. He’s very sensitive.”

“Oh, pooh. Listen, sweetie. We’re called for eight-thirty, aren’t we? I suggest we go to my restaurant on the Embankment for a light meal and settle our relationship and then we’ll be ready for the blood and thunder. How does that strike you? With a dull thud or pleasurably?”

“Not a large, sinking dinner before work? And nothing to drink?”

“A dozen oysters and some thin brown bread and butter?”

“Delicious.”

“Good,” said Dougal.

“By ‘settle our relationship’ you refer exclusively to the Macbeths, of course.”

“Do I? Well, so be it. For the time being,” he said coolly, and drove on without further comment until they crossed the river, turned into a tangle of little streets emerging finally in Savoy Minor, and stopped.

“I’ve taken the flat for the duration. It belongs to Teddy Somerset, who’s in the States for a year,” said Dougal.

“It’s a smashing facade.”

“Very Regency, isn’t it? Let’s go inside. Come on.”

So they went in.

It was a sumptuous interior presided over by a larger-than-life nude efficiently painted in an extreme of realism. Maggie gave it a quick look, sat down underneath it, and said: “There are just one or two things I’d like to get sorted out. They’ve discussed the murder of Duncan before the play opens. That’s clear enough. But always it’s been ‘if and ‘suppose,’ never until now, ‘He’s coming here. It’s now or never.’ Agreed?”

“Yes.”

“It’s only been something to talk about. Never calling for a decision. Or for anything real.”

“No. And now it does, and he’s face to face with it, he’s appalled.”

“As she knows he will be. She knows that without her egging him on he’d never do it. So what has she got that will send him into it? Plans. Marvelous plans. Yes. But he won’t go beyond talking about plans. Sex. Perry said so, the first day. Shakespeare had to be careful about sex because of the boy actor. But we don’t.”

“We certainly do not,” he said. He moved behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Do you realize,” Maggie said, “how short their appearances together are? And how beaten she is after the banquet scene and they are alone. She makes a superb effort during the scene, but I think, once she’s rid of those damned thanes and is left with her mumbling, shattered lion of a husband and they go dragging upstairs to the bed they cannot sleep in, she knows all that’s left for her to do is shut up. The next and last time we see her she’s talking disastrously in her sleep. Really, it’s quite a short part, you know.”

“How far am I affected by her collapse, do you think?” he asked. “Do I notice it? Or by that time am I so determined to give myself over to idiotic killing?”

“I think you are.” She turned to look at him, and something in her manner of doing this made him withdraw his already possessive hand. She stood up and moved away.

“I think I’ll just ring up the Wig and Piglet for a table,” he said abruptly.

“Yes, do.”

When he had done this she said: “I’ve been looking at the imagery. There’s an awful lot about clothes being too big and heavy. I see Jeremy’s emphasizing that and I’m glad. Great walloping cloaks that can’t be contained by a belt. Heavy crowns. We have to consciously fill them. You much more than I, of course. I fade out. But the whole picture is nightmarish.”

“How do you see me, Maggie?”

“My dear! As a falling star. A magnificent, violently ambitious being, destroyed by his own imagination. It’s a cosmic collapse. Monstrous events attend it. The heavens themselves are in revolt. Horses eat each other.”

Dougal breathed in deeply. Up went his chin. His eyes, startlingly blue, flashed under his tawny brows. He was six feet one inch in height and looked more.

“That’s the stuff,” said Maggie. “I think you’ll want to make it very, very Scots, Highland Scots. They’ll call you The Red Macbeth,” she added, a little hurriedly. “It is your very own name, sweetie, isn’t it — Dougal Macdougal?”

“Oh, aye, it’s ma given name.”

“That’s the ticket, then.”

They fell into a discussion on whether he should, in fact, use the dialect, and decided against it as it would entail all the other lairds doing so too.

“Just porters and murderers, then,” said Maggie. “If Perry says so, of course. You won’t catch me doing it.” She tried it out. “Come tae ma wumman’s breasts and tak’ ma milk for gall. Really, it doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Let’s have one tiny little drink to it. Do say yes, Maggie.”

“All right. Yes. The merest suggestion, though.”

“Okay. Whiskey? Wait a moment.”

He went to the end of the room and pressed a button. Two doors rolled apart, revealing a little bar.

“Good heavens!” Maggie exclaimed.

“I know. Rather much, isn’t it? But that’s Teddy’s taste.”

She went over to the bar and perched on a high stool. He found the whiskey and soda and talked about his part. “I hadn’t thought ‘big’ enough,” he said. “A great, faulty giant. Yes. Yes, you’re right about it, of course. Of course.”

“Steady. If that’s mine.”

“Oh! All right. Here you are, lovey. What shall we drink to?”

“Obviously. Macbeth.”

He raised his glass. Maggie thought: He’s a splendid figure. He’ll make a good job of the part, I’m sure. But he said in a deflated voice: “No. No, don’t say it. It might be bad luck. No toast,” and drank quickly as if she might cut in.

“Are you superstitious?” she asked.

“Not really. It was just a feeling. Well, I suppose I am, a bit. You?”

“Like you. Not really. A bit.”

“I don’t suppose there’s one of us who isn’t. Just a bit.”

“Peregrine,” Maggie said at once.

“He doesn’t seem like it, certainly. All that stuff about keeping it under our hats even if we do fancy it.”

“Still. Two successful productions and not a thing happening at either of them,” said Maggie.

“There is that, of course.” He waited for a moment and then in a much too casual manner said: “They were going to do it in the Dolphin, you know. Twenty years or so ago. When it opened.”

“Why didn’t they?”

“The leading man died or something. Before they’d come together. Not a single rehearsal, I’m told. So it was dropped.”

“Really?” said Maggie. “What are the other rooms like? More nudes?”

“Shall I show you?”

“I don’t think so, thank you.”

She looked at her watch. “Shouldn’t we be going to your Wig and Piglet?”

“Perry’s taking the witches first. We’ve lots of time.”

“Still, I’m obsessively punctual and shan’t enjoy my oysters if we’re cutting it short.”

“If you insist.”

“Well, I do. Sorry. I’ll just tidy up. Where’s your bathroom?”

He opened a door. “At the end of the passage,” he said.

She walked past him, hunting in her bag as she went, and thought, If he pounces I’ll be in for a scene and a bore.

He didn’t pounce but nor did he move. Unavoidably she brushed against him and thought: He’s got more of what it takes, Highland or Lowland, than is decent.

She did her hair, powdered her face, used her lipstick, and put on her gloves in a bathroom full of mechanical weight-reducers, potted plants, and a framed rhyme of considerable indecency.

“Right?” she asked briskly on reentering the sitting room.

“Right.” He put on his overcoat and they left the flat. It was dark outside now. He took her arm. “The steps are slippery,” he said. “You don’t want to start off with a sprained ankle, do you?”

“No. That I don’t.”

He was right. The steps glimmered with untimely frost and she was glad of his support. His overcoat was Harris tweed and smelled of peat fires.

As she got into the car, Maggie caught sight of a tall man wearing a short overcoat and a red scarf. He was standing about sixty feet away.

“Hullo,” she exclaimed. “That’s Simon. Hi!” She raised her hand but he had turned away and was walking quickly into a side street.

“I thought that was Simon Morten,” she said.

“Where?”

“I made a mistake. He’s gone.”

They drove back over the river and along the Embankment to the Wig and Piglet. The street lights were brilliant: snapping and sparkling in the cold air and broken into sequins on the outflowing Thames. Maggie felt excited and uplifted. When they entered the little restaurant with its huge fire, white tablecloths, and shining glasses, her cheeks flamed and her eyes were brilliant. Suddenly she loved everybody.

“You’re fabulous,” Dougal said. Some of the people had recognized them and were smiling. The maître d’hôtel made a discreet fuss over them. She was in rehearsal for a superb play and opposite her was her leading man.

She began to talk, easily and well. When champagne was brought she thought; I ought to stop him opening it. I never drink before rehearsals. But how dreary and out of tune with the lovely evening that would be.

“Temperamental inexactitude,” she said quite loudly. “British Constitution.”

“I beg your pardon, Maggie?”

“I was just testing myself to make sure I’m not tiddly.”

“You are not tiddly.”

“I’m not used to whiskey and you gave me a big one.”

“No, I didn’t. You are not tiddly. You’re just suddenly elevated. Here come our oysters.”

“Well, if you say so, I suppose I’m all right.”

“Of course you are. Wade in.”

So she did wade in and she was not tiddly. In the days to come she was to remember this evening, from the time when she left the flat until the end of their rehearsal, as something apart. Something between her and London, with Dougal Macdougal as a sort of necessary ingredient. But no more.

Gaston Sears inhabited a large old two-story house in a tiny cul-de-sac opening off Alleyn Road in Dulwich. It was called Alleyn’s Surprise and the house and grounds occupied the whole of one side. The opposite side was filled with neglected trees and an unused pumping house.

The rental of such a large building must have been high, and among the Dulwich College boys there was a legend that Mr. Sears was an eccentric foreign millionaire who lived there, surrounded by fabulous pieces of armor, and made swords and practiced black magic. Like most legends this was founded on highly distorted fact. He did live amongst his armor and he did very occasionally make swords. And his collection of armor was the most prestigious, outside the walls of a museum, in Europe. And certainly he was eccentric.

Moreover, he was comfortably off. He had started as an actor, a good one in far-out, eccentric parts, but so inclined to extremes of argumentative temperament that nobody cared to employ him. A legacy enabled him to develop his flair for historic arms and accoutrements. His expertise was recognized by all the European collectors and he was the possessor of honorary degrees from various universities. He made lecture tours in America for which he charged astronomical fees, and extorted frightening amounts from greedy, ignorant, and unscrupulous buyers which more than compensated for the opinions he gave freely to those he decided to respect. Of these Peregrine Jay was one.

The unexpected invitation to appear as sword-bearer to Macbeth had been accepted with complacency. “I shall be able to watch the contest,” he had observed. “And afterward correct any errors that may creep in. I do not altogether trust the Macbeth. Dougal Macdougal! Indeed!” he sneered. “No, He is not to be trusted.”

He was engaged upon making molds for the weapons. From a mold of the genuine, historical claidheamh-mor a replica would be cast in molten steel, which Macbeth would wear. Gaston himself would carry the real claidheamh-mor throughout the performance. A second claymore, less elaborate, would make the mold for the weapon Macduff would wear.

His workshop was a formidable background. Suits of armor stood ominously about the room, swords of various ages and countries hung on the walls with drawings of details in ornamentation. A life-size effigy of a Japanese warrior in an ecstasy of the utmost ferocity, clad in full armor, crouched in warlike attitude, his face contorted with rage and his sword poised to strike.

Gaston hummed and occasionally muttered as he made the long wooden trough that was to contain clay from which the matrix would be formed. He made a good figure for a Vulcan, being hugely tall with a shock of black hair and heavily muscled arms.

he hummed in time with his hammering. And then:

And on the final I’ll do he tapped home his nail.

Bruce Barrabell, who played Banquo, was not on call for the current rehearsal. He stayed at home and learned his part and dwelt upon his grievances. His newest agent was getting him quite a bit of work but nothing that was likely to do him any lasting good. A rather dim supporting role in another police series for Grenada. And now, Banquo. He’d asked to be tried for Macbeth and been told the part was already cast. Macduff: same thing. He was leaving the theatre when some whippersnapper came after him and said would he come to read Banquo. There’d been some kind of a slipup. So he did and he’d got it. Small part, actually. Lot of standing round with one foot up and the other down on those bloody steps. But there was one little bit. He flipped his part over and began to read it.

He read it aloud. Quietly. The slightest touch of whimsicality. Feel the time of night and the great empty courtyard. He had to admit it was good. “There’s housekeeping in Heaven.” The homely touch that somehow made you want to cry. Would a modern audience understand that housekeeping was what was meant by husbandry? Nobody else could write about the small empty hours as this man did. The young actor they’d produced for Fleance, his son, was nice: unbroken, clear voice. And then Macbeth’s entrance and Banquo’s reaction. Good stuff. His scene, but of course the Macbeth would overact and Perry would let him get away with it. Look at the earlier scene. Although Perry, fair’s fair, put a stop to that little caper. But the intention was there for all to see.

He set himself to memorize, but it wasn’t easy. Incidents out of the past kept coming in. Conversations…

“Actually, we are not quite strangers. There was a Macbeth up in Dundee, sir. I won’t say how many years ago.”

“Oh?”

“We were witches.” Whispering it. Looking coy.

“Really? Sorry. Excuse me. I want to — Perry, Perry, dear boy, just a word —”

Swine! Of course he remembered.

It was the Angus’s birthday. He, the Ross, and the rest of the lairds and the three witches were not called for the evening’s rehearsal. They arranged with other free members of the cast to meet at the Swan in Southwark and drink Angus’s health.

They arrived in twos and threes and it was quite late by the time the witches, who had been rehearsing in the afternoon, came in. Two girls and a man. The man (First Witch) was a part Maori called Rangi Western, not very dark but with the distinctive short upper lip and flashing eyes. He had a beautiful voice and was a prize student from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. The second witch was a nondescript thin girl called Wendy, possessed of a remarkable voice: harsh, with strange, unexpected intervals. The third was a lovely child, a white-blonde, delicate, with enormous eyes and a babyish high-pitched voice. She was called Blondie.

Their rehearsal had excited them. They came in talking loudly. “Rangi, you were marvelous. You sent cold shivers down my spine. Truly. And that movement! I thought Perry would stop you but he didn’t. The stamp. It was super. We’ve got to do it, Wendy, along with Rangi. His tongue. And his eyes. Everything.”

“I thought it was fabulous giving us the parts. I mean the difference! Usually they all look alike and are too boring for words — all masks and mumbles. But we’re really evil. I mean really!”

“Angus!” they shouted. “Happy birthday, love. Bless you.”

Now they had all arrived. The witches were the center of attention. Rangi was not very talkative, but the two girls excitedly described his performance at rehearsal.

“He was standing with us, listening to Perry’s description, weren’t you, Rangi? Perry was saying we have to be the incarnation of evil. Not a drop of goodness anywhere about us.

“It’s got to be there. You know? In every move we make. How did he put it, Wendy?”

“ ‘Trembling with animosity,’ ” said Wendy.

“Yes. And I was standing by Rangi and I felt him tremble, I swear I did.”

“You did, didn’t you, Rangi? Tremble?”

“Sort of,” Rangi mumbled. “Don’t make such a thing about it.”

“No, but you were marvelous. You sort of grunted and bent your knees. And your face! Your tongue! And eyes!”

“Anyway, Perry was completely taken with it and asked him to repeat it and asked us to do it — not too much. Just a kind of ripple of hatred. It’s going to work, you know.”

“Putting a curse on him. That’s what it is, Rangi, isn’t it?”

“Have a drink, Rangi, and show us.”

Rangi made a brusque, dismissive gesture and turned away to greet the Angus.

The men closed around him. They were none of them quite drunk, but they were noisy. The members of the company now far outnumbered the other patrons, who had taken their drinks to a table in the corner of the room and looked on with ill-concealed interest.

“It’s my round,” Angus shouted. “I’m paying, all of you. No arguments. Yes, I insist. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold,” he shouted.

His voice faded out and so, raggedly, did all the others. Blondie’s giggle persisted and died. A single voice — Angus’s — asked uncertainly: “What’s up? Oh. Oh, I see. Oh, hell! Never mind. Sorry everybody. Drink up.”

They drank in silence. Rangi drained his pint of light and bitter. Angus nodded to the barman, who replaced it with another. Angus mimed pouring in something else and laid an uncertain finger on his lips. The barman winked and added a tot of gin. He pushed the drink over toward Rangi’s hand. Rangi’s back was turned but he felt the glass, looked around, and saw it.

“Is that mine?” he asked, puzzled.

They all seized on this. They said confusedly that of course it was his drink. “Go on, have it. Drink it up. No heeltaps.”

It was something to make a fuss about, something that would make them all forget about Angus’s blunder. They bet Rangi wouldn’t drink it down then and there. So Rangi did. There was a round of applause.

“Show us, Rangi. Show us what you did. Don’t say anything, just show.”

“E-e-e-ah!” he shouted suddenly. He slapped his knees and stamped. He grimaced, his eyes glittered, and his tongue whipped in and out. He held his umbrella before him like a spear and it was not funny.

It lasted only a few seconds.

They applauded and asked him what it meant and was he “weaving a spell.” He said no, nothing like that. His eyes were glazed. “I’ve had a little too much to drink,” he said. “I’ll go now. Good-night, all of you.”

They objected. Some of them hung on to him but they did it halfheartedly. He brushed them off. “Sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have taken that drink. I’m no good with drinking.” He pulled some notes out of his pocket and shoved them across the bar. “My round,” he said. “Good-night, all.”

He walked quickly to the swing doors, lost his balance, and regained it.

“You all right?” Angus asked.

“No,” he answered. “Far from it.”

He walked into the doors. They swung out and he went with them. They saw him pull up, look stiffly to right and left, raise his umbrella in a magnificent gesture, get into the taxi that responded, and disappear.

“He’s all right,” said one of the lairds. “He’s got a room round here.”

“Nice chap.”

“Very nice.”

“I’ve heard, I don’t know who told me, mark you,” said Angus, “that drink has a funny effect on Maori people. Goes straight to their heads and they revert to their savage condition.”

“Rangi hasn’t,” said Ross. “He’s gone grand.”

“He did when he performed that dance or whatever it was,” said the actor who played Menteith.

“You know what I think?” said Ross. “I think he was upset when you quoted.”

“It’s all a load of old bullshit, anyway,” said a profound voice in the background.

This provoked a confused expostulation that came to its climax when the Menteith roared out: “Thass all very fine but I bet you wouldn’t call the play by its right name. Would you do that?”

Silence.

“There you are!”

“Only because it’d upset the rest of you.”

“Yah!” they all said.

The Ross, an older man who was sober, said: “I think it’s silly to talk about it. We feel as we do in different ways. Why not just accept that and stop nattering?”

“Somebody ought to write a book about it,” said Wendy.

“There is a chapter about it in a book called Supernatural on Stage, by Richard Huggett.”

They finished their drinks. The party had gone flat.

“Call it a day, chaps?” asked Ross.

“That’s about the strength of it,” Menteith agreed.

The nameless and lineless thanes noisily concurred and gradually they drifted out.

Ross said to the Angus, “Come on, old boy, I’ll see you home.”

“I’m afraid I’ve overstepped the mark. Sorry. We were carousing till the second cock. Oh, dear, there I go again.”

“Come on, old boy.”

“All right.” He made a shaky attempt to cross himself. “I’m okay,” he said.

“Of course you are.”

“Right you are, then. Good-night, Porter,” he said to the barman.

“Good-night, sir.”

They went out.

“Actors,” said one of the guests.

“That’s right, sir,” the barman agreed, collecting their glasses.

“What was that they were saying about some superstition? I couldn’t make head or tail of it.”

“They make out it’s unlucky to quote from this play. They don’t use the title either.”

“Silly sods,” remarked another.

“They take it for gospel.”

“Probably some publicity stunt by the author.”

The barman grunted.

“What is the name of the play, then?”

“Macbeth.”

Rehearsals for the duel had begun and were persisted in remorselessly. At 9:30 every morning Dougal Macdougal and Simon Morten, armed with weighted wooden claymores, slashed and banged away at each other in a slow dance superintended by a merciless Gaston.

The whole affair, step by step, blow by blow, had been planned down to the last inch. Both men suffered agonies from the strain on muscles unaccustomed to such exercise. They sweated profusely. Gaston had found an ancient 45-rpm record of the Anvil Chorus, which when played at a lower speed ground out a lugubrious, laborious, nightmarelike accompaniment, made more hateful by Gaston humming, also out of tune.

The relationship among the three men was, from the first, uneasy. Dougal tended to be facetious. “What ho, varlet. Have at thee, miscreant,” he would cry.

Morten — Macduff — did not respond to these sallies. He was ominously polite and glum to a degree. When Dougal swung at him, lost his balance, and ran, as it were, after his own weapon, wild-eyed, an expression of great concern upon his face, Morten allowed himself a faint sneer. When Dougal finally tripped and fell in a sitting position with a sickening thud, the sneer deepened.

“The balance!” Gaston screamed. “How many times must I insist? If you lose the balance of your weapon you lose your own balance and end up looking foolish. As now.”

Dougal rose. With some difficulty and using his claymore as a prop.

“No!” chided Gaston. “It is to be handled with respect, not dug into the floor and climbed up.”

“This is merely a dummy. Why should I respect it?”

“It weighs exactly the same as the claidheamh-mor.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Again! We begin at the beginning. Again! Up! Weakling!”

“I’m not accustomed,” said Dougal magnificently, “to being treated in this manner.”

“No? Forgive me, Sir Dougal. And, let me tell you, Sir Dougal, that I, Gaston Sears, am not accustomed to conducting myself like a mincing dancing master, Sir Dougal. It is only because this fight is to be performed before audiences of discrimination, with weapons that are the precise replicas of the original claidheamh-mor, that I have consented to teach you.”

“If you ask me, we’d get on a lot better if we faked the whole show. The whole bloody show. Oh, all right, all right,” Dougal amended, answering the really alarming expression that contorted Gaston’s face. “I give in. Let’s get on with it. Come on.”

“Come on,” echoed Morten. “Thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out!”

Whack. Bang. Down came his claymore, caught on Macbeth’s shield. “Te-tum. Te-tum-te — disengage,” shouted Gaston. “Macbeth sweeps across. Macduff leaps over the blade. Te-tum-tum. That is better. That is an improvement. You have achieved the rhythm. Now we shall take it a little faster.”

“Faster! My God, you’re killing us.”

“You handle your weapon like a peasant. Look. I shall show you. Here, give it to me.”

Dougal, using both hands, threw the claymore at him. With great dexterity, Gaston caught it by the hilt, twirled it, and held it before him, pointed at Dougal.

“Hah!” he shouted. “Hah and hah again.” He lunged, changed his grip, and swept the weapon up — and down.

Dougal leaped to one side. “Christ Almighty!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

Grimacing abominably, Gaston brought the heavy claymore up in a conventional salute.

“Handling my weapon, Sir Dougal. And you will do so before I have finished with you.”

Dougal whispered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ve got the strength of the devil, Gaston.”

“No. It is a matter of balance and rhythm more than strength. Come, take the first exchange a tempo. Yes, a tempo. Come.”

He offered the claymore ceremoniously to Dougal, who took it and heaved it up into the salute.

“Good! We progress. One moment.”

He went to the phonograph and altered the timing. “Listen,” he said and switched it on. Out came the Anvil Chorus, remorselessly truthful as if rejoicing in its own restoration. Gaston switched it off. “That is our timing.” He turned to Simon Morten. “Ready, Mr. Morten?”

“Quite ready.”

“The cue, if you please.”

“Thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out.”

And the fight was a fight. There was rhythm and there was timing. For a minute and a quarter all went well and at the end the two men, pouring sweat, leaning on their weapons, breathless, waited for his comment.

“Good. There were mistakes but they were comparatively small. Now, while we are warm and limbered up we shall do it once more, but without the music. Yes. Are you recovered? Good.”

“We are not recovered,” Dougal panted.

“This is the last effort for today. Come. I shall count the beats. Without music. From the cue.”

“Thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out.”

“Bang. Pause. Bang. Pause. And bangle — bangle — bang. Pause.”

They got through it but only just, and they were really cooked at the end.

“Good,” said Gaston. “Tomorrow. Same time. Thank you, gentlemen.”

He bowed and left.

Morten, his black curls damp and the tangled mat of hair on his chest gleaming, vigorously toweled himself. Sir Dougal, tawny, fair-skinned, drenched in sweat and breathing hard, reached for his own towel and feebly dabbed at his chest.

“We did it,” he said. “I’m flattened but we did it.”

Morten grunted and pulled on his shirt and sweater.

“You’d better get something warm on,” he said. “Way to catch cold.”

“Night after night after night. Have you thought of that?”

“Yes.”

“Why do I do it! Why do I submit myself! I ask myself, why?”

Morten grunted.

“I’ll speak to Perry about it. I’ll demand insurance.”

“For which bit of you?”

“For all of me. The thing’s ridiculous. A good fake and we’d have them breathless.”

“Instead of which we’re breathless ourselves,” said Morten and took himself off. It was the nearest approach to a conversation that they had enjoyed.

So ended the first week of rehearsals.