Light Thickens

‘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.’

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

‘Yes. He was a good Benedict, 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 and one of our theatrical knights.’

‘How’s his love life going?’

‘I don’t really know. He’s making a great play with 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 slap. ‘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.’

III

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 de-lousing ritual. Without even waiting to take off her gloves she scuffled in her hand—bag, produced a crucifix which she kissed, and laid on the table a clove of garlic and her prayer book. She opened the latter, put on her spectacles, crossed herself and read aloud the 91st 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 prayer book, crossed herself again, laid her cyclostyled part on the table, the prayer book on top of it, the crucifix on the prayer book, 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 not based on any serious study but merely on the odds and ends of gossip and behaviour 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 for months on end, 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, once 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 honour and upon this prayer book not to talk about you-know-what. Amen.’

IV

‘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 out 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 – it was his own given name – pulled in to the kerb. ‘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 foot two of handsome disgruntlement, his black curls still uncovered. He said: ‘Well, shit off and be damned to you,’ crammed on his beret, 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 armoury. 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 practise 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 as 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 actually hit, it would 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?’

‘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 half-minute or so. He backs away into the OP corner and I roar after him. Simon’s a very powerful man, by the by. He picked the claymore up in a dégagée manner and then he spun round and couldn’t stop and got a way on, hanging 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 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 façade.’

‘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 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. Marvellous 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? 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 that 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 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 of 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 wummen’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.’

‘OK. Whisky? 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 whisky 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, pot plants and a framed rhyme of considerable indecency.

‘Right?’ she asked briskly on re-entering 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 smelt of peat fires.

As she got into the car, Maggie caught sight of a tall man wearing a short camel 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 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 mâitre d’hôtel made a discreet fuss over them. She was in rehearsal for a superb play and opposite to 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 whisky 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 rehearsals, as something apart. Something between her and London, with Dougal Macdougal as a sort of necessary ingredient. But no more.

V

Gaston Sears inhabited a large old two-storey house in a tiny culde-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 armour, and made swords and practised black magic. Like most legends, this was founded on highly distorted fact. He did live among his armour and he did very occasionally make swords. His collection of armour was the most prestigious in Europe, outside the walls of a museum. 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 free of charge 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 afterwards correct any errors that may creep in. I do not altogether trust the Macbeth. Dougal Macdougal indeed!’

He was engaged upon making moulds for his weapons. From one of these moulds would be cast, in molten steel, Macbeth’s claidheamh-mor. Gaston himself, as Seyton, would carry the genuine claidheamh-mor throughout the performance. Macbeth’s claymore he would wear. A second claymore, less elaborate, would serve to make the mould for Macduff’s weapon.

His workshop was a formidable background. Suits of armour stood ominously about the room, swords of various ages and countries hung on the walls with drawings of details in ornamentation. A lifesize effigy of a Japanese warrior in an ecstasy of the utmost ferocity, clad in full armour, 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.

‘“Double, double toil and trouble,”’ he hummed in time with his hammering. And then:

‘“Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’th’ Tiger,

But in a sieve I’ll thither sail

And like a rat without a tail

I’ll do, I’ll do and I’ll do.”’

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

VI

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 Granada TV. 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 slip-up. So he did and he’d got it. Small part, actually. Lot of standing around 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:

‘There’s husbandry in Heaven. Their candles are all out.’

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 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.’