Light Thickens ra-32

by Ngaio Marsh

  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.”