Light Thickens

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Don’t let these nonsense things worry you. They’re silly.’

  ‘Yes. I know. You’re talking to me as if I’m William.’

  ‘Come along, then. Home.’

  So they went home.

  III

  The final days were, if anything, less hectic than usual. The production crew had the use of the theatre and the actors worked in the rehearsal room on a chalked-out floor. Gaston insisted on having the stage to rehearse the fight, pointing out the necessity for the different levels and insisting on the daily routine being maintained. ‘As it will be,’ he said, ‘throughout the season.’

  Macbeth and Macduff made routine noises of protest but by this time they had become proud of their expertise and had gradually speeded up to an unbelievable pace. The great cumbersome weapons swept about within inches of their persons, sparks literally flew, inarticulate cries escaped them. The crew, overawed, knocked off and watched them for half an hour.

  The end of the fight was a bit of a problem. Macbeth was beaten back to the OP exit which was open but masked from the audience by an individual Stonehenge-like piece, firmly screwed to the floor. Macbeth backed down to it and crouched behind his shield. Macduff raised his claymore and swept it down. Macbeth caught it on his shield. A pause. Then with an inarticulate, bestial sound he leapt aside and backwards. He was out of sight. Macduff raised his claymore high above his head and plunged offstage. There was a scream cut short by an unmistakable sound: an immense thud.

  For three seconds the stage was empty and silent.

  ‘Rata-tat-rata-tat-rata-tat-RATA-TAT and bugles. Crescendo! Crescendo! and enter Malcolm et al,’ roared Gaston.

  ‘How about it?’ asked Macbeth. ‘It’s a close call, Gaston. He missed the scenery but only by a hair’s-breadth, you know. These claymores are so bloody long.’

  ‘He missed. If you both repeat where you were and what you do to a fraction of an inch he’ll always miss. If not – not. We’ll take it again, if you please. The final six moves. Places. Er-one. Er-two. Er-three.’

  ‘We’re at hellish close quarters at the side there,’ said Simon when they had finished. ‘And it’s as dark as hell, too. Or will be.’

  ‘I’ll be there with the head on my claidheamh-mor. Don’t go hunting for me. Simply take up your place and I’ll fall in behind you. Macbeth will have gone straight out.’

  ‘I’ll scream and scramble off, don’t you worry,’ said Sir Dougal.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Until tomorrow. Same time. I thank you, gentlemen,’ said Gaston to the stagehands. He saluted and withdrew.

  ‘Proper caution, in’t ‘e?’ said a stagehand.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the foreman, doing a creditable bit of mimicry, ‘shall we resume?’

  They set about nailing the sanded and painted wallboard facing to the set. The stairs curved up to the landing and the door to Duncan’s room. The red arras was hung and dropped in above the stairway. Below the landing a tunnel pierced the wall, making a passage to the south entry.

  Peregrine on his way to the rehearsal room saw this and found it all good. The turntables, right and left, presented outside walls. The fireplace appeared. The gallows came into view and was anchored.

  It was all smooth, he thought, and moved on into the rehearsal room. He had called the scene – he thought of it as the Aleppo scene – when the witches greet Macbeth. He was a little early but most of them were there. Banquo was there.

  If they had been the crew of a ship, he thought, Banquo would have been the sea lawyer. He knew what Banquo had been like as a schoolboy. Always closeted with other smaller boys who listened furtively to him, always behind the dubious plan but never answerable. Always the troublemaker but never openly so. A boy to be dreaded.

  Peregrine said: ‘Good morning, everybody.’

  ‘Good morning, Perry.’

  Yes. There he was with two of the witches. Silly little things listening to his nonsense, whatever it was. The first witch, Rangi, hadn’t arrived yet. He would not listen to Banquo, Peregrine thought. He goes his own way. He too is an actor and a good one. For that I respect him.

  Banquo detached himself from the witches and made for him.

  ‘Happy, Perry?’ he asked, coming close to him. ‘Sorry! I shouldn’t ask, should I? It’s not done. Unlucky.’

  ‘Very happy, Bruce.’

  ‘We haven’t got the Boy Beautiful this morning?’

  ‘Do you mean William Smith? He’ll be here.’

  ‘He’s dropped the hyphen, of course. Poor little chap.’

  Peregrine, inside himself, did what actor’s call a double take. His heart skipped a beat. He looked at Barrabell, who smiled at him. Damn! Peregrine thought. He knows. Oh damn, damn, damn.

  Rangi came in and glanced at the clock. Just in time.

  ‘Second witches scene,’ Peregrine said. ‘Witches on from the three points of the compass. There will be a rumble of thunder. Just a hint. You arrive at exactly the same time and at dead centre. Rangi through the passage. Each with a dishevelled marketing bag. Blondie Prompt. Wendy OP. It wasn’t together last time. You’ll have to get a sign. Rangi’s got the farthest to walk. The other two are equal. Perhaps you should all have sticks? I don’t want any hesitation. Wait for the thunder and start when it stops. Try that. Ready. Rumble, rumble. Now.’

  The three figures appeared, hobbled on, met. ‘Much better,’ said Peregrine. ‘Once more. This time greet each other. Rangi centre. A smacking kiss on each of his cheeks simultaneously by each of you. Close up. In front. Together. Right. Dialogue.’

  They used their natural, well-contrasted voices. The rhymes were stressed. The long speech about the hapless sailor gone to Aleppo, was a curse.

  ‘“Though his bark cannot be lost.

  Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.

  Look what I have.”’

  And Rangi scuffled in his marketing bag.

  ‘“Show me. Show me,”’ slavered the greedy Wendy.

  But Rangi’s hand in his bag was stilled. He himself was still. Frozen. And then he suddenly opened the bag and peered inside. He withdrew his clenched hand.

  ‘“Here I have a pilot’s thumb

  Wrecked as homeward he did come.”’

  He opened his hand very slightly.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Peregrine asked. ‘Haven’t they given you something for the thumb?’

  Rangi opened his hand. It was empty.

  ‘I’ll speak to Props. On you go.’

  ‘“A drum, a drum,”’ said Wendy, ‘“Macbeth doth come.”’

  And now their dance, about, about, turn and twist, bow, raise their joined hands. All very quick.

  ‘“Peace! The charm’s wound up.”’

  ‘Yes,’ Peregrine said. ‘The Aleppo speech has improved enormously. It’s really alarming now. One feels the wretched sailor in his doomed ship, tossing and turning, not dying and not living. Good. We’ll go on. Banquo and Macbeth. One moment, though. Banquo, the whole scene has been very carefully ordered so that Macbeth, the convention of the soliloquy having changed over four centuries, will not seem to be within hearing distance of his brother-officers. You and Ross and Angus are talking together. Way upstage. But very quietly and with virtually no movement. Shakespeare himself seems to have felt the usual convention not really good enough. His “thank you, gentlemen” is a dismissal. We’ll make it so. They bow and move as far away as they can get. The soliloquy, I needn’t tell you, is of great importance. So no loud laughter, if you please. OK?’

  ‘I took the point the first time you made it,’ said Banquo.

  ‘Good. That will save me the fatigue of making it a third time. Are you ready? “The earth hath bubbles.”’

  The scene went forward. The messages of favours to come were delivered. The golden future opened out. Everything was lovely and yet…and yet…

  Presently they embarked on the cauldron scene. Peregrine developed the background of whispe
ring. ‘Double, double toil and trouble…’ Would it be heard? He tried a murmur: ‘Double, double toil and trouble…’ ‘We’ll try it whispered when the whole company is here,’ he said. ‘Six groups each beginning after “trouble”. I think that’ll work.’

  The witches were splendid. Clear and baleful. Their movements were explicit. They were real. But Peregrine was conscious that Rangi was troubled by something. He did not fumble a cue or muddle a movement or need a prompt but he was unhappy. Unwell? Sickening for something? Oh God, please not, thought Peregrine. Why is he looking at me? Am I missing something?

  ‘And points at them for his.’

  Thunder and fog. Blackout, and then the door will be shut and Lennox knocking on it as the scene ends.

  ‘All right,’ said Peregrine. ‘I’ve no notes specifically for you. It will need adjustments, no doubt, when we get the background noise settled. Thank you all very much.’

  They all left the rehearsal, except Rangi.

  ‘Is something amiss? What’s the matter?’

  He held out his marketing bag. ‘Will you look in it, sir?’ Peregrine took the bag and opened it.

  Out of it a malignant head stared up at him. Mouth open, eyes open, teeth bared. Pinkish paws stretched upwards.

  ‘Oh God!’ said Peregrine. ‘Here we go again. Where was this bag?’

  ‘With the other two on the props table. Since yesterday.’

  ‘Anyone look in it?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Only to put the rat in. There was no means of telling which bag belonged to whom. It might have been Blondie’s. She’d have fainted or gone into high-powered hysterics,’ said Rangi.

  ‘She wouldn’t have looked in. Nor would Wendy. Their bags are filled with newspaper and fastened with thongs, tightly knotted. Yours isn’t because you’re meant to open it and produce the pilot’s thumb.’

  ‘So I was meant to find it,’ said Rangi.

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked with the other two.’

  ‘There’s an obvious man to have played all these silly tricks.’

  ‘Props?’ said Peregrine.

  ‘Ask yourself.’

  ‘I do, and I don’t believe it. Did you hear his outcries and threats to appeal to his Union over the Banquo’s head business? Was that all my eye? We’d have to say we’ve got a bloody star actor on the books. No. We’ve had him as Props for years. I simply cannot wear him for the job.’

  ‘Can’t you narrow down the field? Where everyone was at the different times? Who could have gone up to Duncan’s room with the head, for instance?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Duncan’s room?’ said Peregrine at last. ‘With the head?’

  ‘That’s right. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘How do you know about the head in that room?’

  ‘Props told me. I ran into him with it. Coming down the ladder from Duncan’s chamber. Now I think of it,’ said Rangi, ‘his manner was odd. I said: “What are you doing with that thing?” and he said he was putting it where it ought to be. I’m sorry, Perry. I really think he’s your man, you know. He must have put it under the dish-cover, mustn’t he?’

  ‘He was taking it back to the other heads in the walking men’s room. I told him to.’

  ‘Did you see him do it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ask him if he did it.’

  ‘Of course I will. But I’m sure he didn’t put it in the dish. I admit he doesn’t look too good but I’m sure of it.’

  ‘That blasted rat. Where did it come from?’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘Have we been using traps?’

  ‘And who sets them? All right. Props. He put one up a narrow passage where Henry couldn’t squeeze in.’ (Henry was the theatre cat.) ‘Props told me so himself. He was proud of his cunning.’

  Rangi said: ‘We’ll have to look at it.’

  He opened the bag and turned it upside down. The rat’s forequarters fell with a soft plop on the floor.

  ‘There’s the mark of the bar across its neck. It’s deep. And wet. Its neck’s broken. It’s bled,’ said Rangi. ‘It doesn’t smell. It’s recently killed.’

  ‘We’ll have to keep it.’

  ‘Why?’

  Peregrine was taken aback. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Upon my word I don’t know. I’m treating it like evidence for a crime and there’s no crime of that sort. Nor any sort, really. All the same…Wait a bit.’

  Peregrine went to a rubbish bin backstage, found a discarded brown paper bag and turned it inside out. He brought it back and held it open. Rangi picked the rat up by the ear and dropped it in. Peregrine tied it up.

  ‘Horrible beast,’ he said.

  ‘We’d better – Ssh!’

  A padded footfall and the swish of a broom sounded in the passage.

  ‘Ernie!’ Peregrine called. ‘Props!’

  The door opened and he came in. How many years, Peregrine asked himself, had Ernie been Props at the Dolphin. Ten? Twenty? Dependable always. A cockney with an odd quirky sense of the ridiculous and an over-sensitive reaction to an imagined slight. Thin, sharp face. Quick. Sidelong grin.

  ‘Hello, guv,’ he said. ‘Fought you’d of gawn be now.’

  ‘Just going. Caught any rats?’

  ‘I never looked. ‘Old on.’

  He went to the back of the room behind a packing case. A pause and then Props’s voice. ‘’Ullo! What’s this, then?’ A scuffling and he appeared with a rat-trap on a long string.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘I don’t get it. The bait’s gawn. So’s the rat’s head. There’s been a rat. Fur and gore and hindquarters all over the trap. Killed. Somebody’s been and taken it. Must of.’

  ‘Henry?’ asked Peregrine.

  ‘Nah! Cats don’t eat rats. Just kill ‘em. And ‘Enery couldn’t get up that narrer passage. Nah! It’s been a man. ‘E’s pulled out the trap, lifted the bar and taken the rat’s forequarters!’

  ‘The caretaker?’

  ‘Not ‘im. They give ‘im the willies, rats do. It ought to be ‘im that sets the trap, not me, but ‘e won’t.’

  ‘When did you set it then, Ernie?’

  ‘Yesterday morning. They was all collected in ‘ere waiting for rehearsal, wasn’t they?’

  ‘Yes. We did the crowd scenes,’ said Peregrine. He looked at Rangi. ‘You weren’t here,’ he said.

  ‘No. First I’ve heard of it.’

  Peregrine saw an alert, doubtful look on Props’s face. ‘We’ve been wondering who knew all about the trap. Pretty well the whole company seems to be the answer,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Props said. He was staring at the brown paper parcel. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘That parcel. Look. It’s mucky.’

  He was right. A horrid wetness seeped through the paper. ‘It’s half your rat, Props,’ said Peregrine. ‘Your rat’s in the parcel.’

  ‘’Ere. What’s the game, eh? You’ve taken it off of the trap and made a bloody parcel of it. What for? Why didn’t you say so instead of letting me turn myself into a blooming exhibition? What’s all this about?’ Props demanded.

  ‘We didn’t remove it. It was in Mr Western’s bag.’

  Props turned and looked hard at Rangi. ‘Is that correct?’ he asked.

  ‘Perfectly correct. I put my hand in to get the pilot’s thumb and – ‘ he grimaced – ‘I touched it.’ He picked up his bag and held it out. ‘Look for yourself. It’ll be marked.’

  Props took the bag and opened it. He peered inside. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘There’s marks.’ He stared at Peregrine and Rangi. ‘It’s the same bloody bugger what did the other bloody tricks.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Peregrine agreed. And after a moment: ‘Personally I’m satisfied that it wasn’t you, Props. You’re not capable of such a convincing display of bewilderment. Or of thinking it funny.’

  ‘Ta very much.’ He jerked his head at Rangi. ‘What about him?�
�� he asked. ‘Don’t ‘e fink I done it?’

  ‘I’m satisfied. Not you,’ said Rangi.

  There was a considerable pause before Props said: ‘Fair enough.’

  Peregrine said: ‘I think we say nothing about this. Props, clear up the wet patch in the witch’s bag, would you, and return it to its place on the table with the other two. Drop the rat in the rubbish bin. We’ve overreacted, which is probably exactly what he wanted us to do. From now on, you keep a tight watch on all the props right up to the time they’re used. And not a word to anyone about this. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ they both said.

  ‘Right. Go ahead then. Rangi, can I give you a lift?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll take a bus.’

  They went out through the stage door.

  Peregrine unlocked his car and got in. Big Ben tolled four o’clock. He sat there, dog-tired suddenly. Drained. Zero hour. This time on Saturday: the opening night and the awful burden of the play: of lifting the cast. Of hoping for the final miracle. Of being, within himself, sure, and of conveying that security somehow to the cast.

  Why, why, why, thought Peregrine, do I direct plays? Why do I put myself into this hell? Above all, why Macbeth? And then: It’s too soon to be feeling like this; six days too soon. Oh God, deliver us all.

  He drove home to Emily.

  ‘Do you have to go out again tonight?’ Emily asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so.’

  ‘How about a bath and a zizz?’

  ‘I ought to be doing something. I can’t think.’

  ‘I’ll answer the telephone and if it’s important I swear I’ll wake you.’

  ‘Will you?’ he said helplessly.

  ‘Come on, silly. You haven’t slept for two nights.’

  She went upstairs. He heard the bath running and smelt the stuff she used in it. If I sit down, he thought, I won’t get up.

  He wandered to the window. There was the Dolphin across the river, shining in the late afternoon sun. Tomorrow they’ll put up the big poster. Macbeth. Opening April 23! I’ll see it from here.

  Emily came down.

  ‘Come on,’ she said.

  She helped him undress. The bath was heaven. Emily scrubbed his back. His head nodded and his mouth filled with foam.