Light Thickens ra-32

by Ngaio Marsh

  “Do you like the idea? Or have you grown out of your play?”

  “We’re in such a state I don’t know what I think. I’ve been reading it, and I fancy I still quite like it.”

  “It wouldn’t matter that it was running years ago at the Dolphin, at the same time as that other messy business?”

  “Only you and I and Jeremy and Winty would know. It was a long run, which is all the management considers.”

  “Yes.”

  Peregrine looked at her notes. “Maggie: The Dark Lady. Yes. Shakespeare — Simon Morten? Do you think?”

  “Yes, I do. He’s got a highly strung manner, a very quick temper, and a sense of humor. And with a Shakespeare wig he’d look marvelous.”

  “Better than Barrabell?”

  “I think so, but then I don’t like Barrabell. What little I’ve seen of him.”

  “He’d succumb to the Voice Beautiful, I fear. He doesn’t as Banquo but the Bard himself would be too much for him. He’d begin to sing.”

  “He’s a meany.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got a riddle,” Robin shouted.

  “I’m no good at riddles,” William said doubtfully.

  “Look —” Crispin began.

  “Shut up, Cip. Your mother and I are talking. Pipe down. Who wants more beef? Anybody? All right, clear away the plates and tell Annie we’re ready for her delicious pudding.”

  “Annie! Pud!” Robin yelled.

  “That’s really rude,” said Emily. “Crispin, go into the kitchen and ask her properly. And if she doesn’t throw a pot at you it’s because she’s got much nicer manners than any of us. Honestly, Perry, I sometimes wonder where these boys were lugged up.”

  “William, will you have a look at this part and I’ll get you to read it for me before I go down to the theatre?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can read it in my study. The boys are not allowed in there.”

  And so, for about an hour after lunch William read the first act. There were passages he did not understand and other passages which, though clear enough as far as the words went, seemed to convey another meaning from the one that was usually attached to them. But the boy, Hamnet, was plain sailing. He was ill, he was lonely; his mother was too much occupied with a personal resentment to do more than attend impersonally to him, and his father was a star-like, marvelous creature who came and went and was adored and vilified.

  He began to read the boy’s lines, trying them one way and another until the sound of them seemed right or nearly so.

  Peregrine came in, so quietly that William did not hear him. He sat down and listened to the treble voice. Presently he opened his copy of the play and began to feed out the lines. William looked up at him and then returned to his task and they finished the act together.

  “Well,” said Peregrine, “that was a good beginning. It’s three o’clock. Let’s go up to the nursery and see what the others are doing.”

  So they went to the ex-nursery and found Emily and Robin playing with Robin’s train and Crispin, oblivious to the noise, deep in his book. It was all about the play of Macbeth and the various productions through the past four centuries. There was a chapter on the superstitions.

  “You’re not going on with this play, are you?” asked Crispin.

  “No,” said his father. “It’s tempting, but I don’t think we are.”

  “Why tempting?”

  “I think Gaston would be exciting as Macbeth.”

  “Yes?”

  “But terribly risky.”

  “Ah.”

  The telephone rang.

  “I’ll answer it, Mummy. May I?” asked Robin.

  “If you’re polite.”

  “Of course.” He ran out of the room, leaving the door open. They all waited to hear what he would say.

  “Hello?” said the treble voice. “This is Mr. Peregrine Jay’s house… Yes… If you don’t mind waiting for a moment, I’ll find out if he can speak to you. Hold on, please. Thank you.”

  He reappeared. “It’s Mr. Gaston Sears, Pop,” he said. “And he sounds very sonky-polly-lobby.”

  “I’ll speak to him,” said Peregrine and went out to the telephone, shutting the door behind him.

  Crispin said: “I daresay, William, you are wondering what ‘sonky-polly-lobby’ means. It’s a family thing and it means ‘happy with yourself.’ And a bit self-conscious, too.”

  “Oh.”

  The little boys returned to their train. Emily and Crispin waited. When he came back Peregrine looked disturbed.

  “Gaston,” he said, “has had the same idea as we have. He thinks that if we did decide to go on with Macbeth, he would be good in the name part, but would have to decline, out of feelings of delicacy. He said it would be an error in taste if he accepted. He said he knew we all thought him a heartless kind of fellow, but he was not. He felt we should be told at once of this decision.”

  “He — oh, dear! He took it as a matter of course he would be cast?”

  “Yes. And he was perfectly right. He would have been.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That we have for many reasons almost decided against it but that, had the many reasons not existed, I agreed. I thought he would have been good. So did the management. With reservations that I didn’t mention.”

  “And he took it?”

  “He said, ‘So be it,’ in a grand voice and hung up. Poor old boy. He would be good, I do believe, but an awful nuisance nevertheless.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Perry.”

  “Hoo, hoo,” shouted William. “Clear the line. The midnight express is coming straight through.”

  Emily looked at him and then at Peregrine, who gave her a thumbs-up signal. “Very much so,” he said.

  “Really? That’s quite something.”

  “All aboard. All aboard,” said Robin. “All seats, please.”

  He blew a piercing blast on a tin whistle. William rang the minute station bell and pressed a button. The toy train lit up and moved out of the station.

  “Now, I take over till we reach Crewe,” said Robin. He and William changed places. The train increased its speed. William answered a toy telephone.

  “Midnight express. Urgent call. Yes?” He panted and blew. “Gaston Sears speaks,” he gasped. “Stop the train at Crewe. He’s hurt and he’s due at the theatre at seven.”

  “Hooooo. Clackity-bang. Coming into Crewe. Clear the line.”

  William produced a white van with a red cross and placed it on a sideline. “Ready for Mr. Sears,” he said.

  “Where’s Sears?”

  William emptied out a box of toy soldiers: army, navy, Highlanders, crusaders. He cried out triumphantly and displayed a battered crusader with an enormous sword and full mask and black cloak. “Look! Perfect,” he cried. “In every detail.”

  “Hooray. Put him in the van.”

  The game proceeded with the preposterous ill-logic of a child’s dream and several changes of plot. The train arrived conveniently at Waterloo Station. “Gaston Sears” was pushed onto a battered car and, remarking that he’d got his “second wind,” was sent to the Dolphin Theatre. End of game.

  “That was fun,” said Robin, “wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” his father agreed. “Why did you have Gaston Sears in it?”

  “Why not?” Robin replied with a shrug. He walked away, no longer interested.

  “Because he was breathless?” William suggested vaguely. “He said it was asthma but he pretends it isn’t now he’s an actor again.”

  “I see,” Peregrine lied. “Show it to me. The toy Sears.”

  William took the battered little figure out of the car. A shrewd whack in some past contest had disposed of the cross on its cloak. The sword bent but intact, was raised above its shrouded head in gloved hands. It was completely black and in its disreputable way, quite baleful.

  “Thank you,” said Peregrine. He put it in his pocket.

  �
�Have you finished with the train?” asked Emily.

  “We might want it later,” said Robin quickly.

  “I don’t think you will. It’s ‘The Duke’ on telly in a quarter of an hour and then tea-time.”

  “Oh, Mummy!”

  The train was carefully put away and the toy soldiers swept into their box pell-mell, all except the “Mr. Sears,” which was still in Peregrine’s pocket when he looked at his watch and prepared to leave.

  “I must be off,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll get home, my love. Cip says he’ll come down with me and walk back so I’ll leave you to take William home. Okay? Good evening, William. Come again soon, won’t you? We’ve enjoyed having you here.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said William, shaking hands. “It’s been a lovely day. The nicest day I’ve ever had.”

  “Good. Cip! Ready?”

  “Coming.”

  They banged the front door and ran down the steps to the car.

  “Pop,” said Crispin when they got going, “that book you paid for last night. About Macbeth.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s jolly good. It’s got quite a lot about the superstitions. If you don’t mind I would like just to ask if you totally dismiss that aspect of the play.”

  “I think,” said Peregrine very carefully, “that the people that do so put the cart before the horse. Call a play ‘unlucky’ and take any mishap that befalls the rehearsals or performances, onstage or in the dressing-rooms or offices, and immediately everyone says: ‘There you are. Unlucky play.’ If the same sort of troubles occur with other plays nobody counts them up or says anything about them. Until, perhaps, there are rather more misfortunes than with other contemporary shows and someone like poor maddening Nina says: ‘It’s an unlucky piece, you know,’ and it’s got the label tied round its neck for keeps.”

  “Yes, I see that. But in this instance — I mean that business with the heads. It’s a bit thick, isn’t it?”

  “There you go! Cart before the horse. They may have been planted to make us believe in the unlucky play story.”

  “I see what you mean, of course. But you can’t say it applies to this final tragedy. Nobody in his right senses is going to cut off a harmless actor’s head — that’s what happened, Pop, isn’t it? — just to support the unlucky play theory?”

  “Of course not. No. And the only person who might be described as being a bit dotty, apart from Nina, is old Gaston, who was chatting away to the King and William and Nina and several others at the time the murder was committed.”

  There was a longish silence. “I see,” said Crispin at last.

  “I don’t want you to — to —”

  “Get involved?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Well, I won’t. But I can’t help wondering,” said Crispin. “Seeing you’re my father and seeing the book I’m reading. Can I?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Are you going on with Macbeth?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’ll probably be a revival of my own play.”

  “The Glove?”

  “Yes.”

  “That will be fun. With William, of course?”

  “He gave a very promising reading.”

  “A talented child,” said Crispin.

  They crossed Blackfriars Bridge and turned left and left again into Wharfingers Lane. There were three cars ahead of them.

  “Winty’s car and two of the board. As usual I don’t know when I’ll be home. Good-bye, old boy.”

  “ ’Bye, Pop.”

  Peregrine watched him walk away up Wharfingers Lane. He went in by the stage door.

  Most of the cast were there in groups of three or four. The stage had been scrubbed down and looked the same as usual. He wondered what would be its future. The skeleton hung from the gallows and swung in the draft. Bob Masters and Charlie greeted him and so did a number of the actors. They gathered around him.

  He said at once: “No absolute news but it will, I imagine, be out before long. The pundits are gathering in front-of-house. I think, my dears, it’s going to be the end of Macbeth. I hope the new play will be announced tonight. I’d like to say now that it will almost certainly be a much, much smaller cast, which means that for a number of you the prospect of a long season comes to an abrupt end. I’d like to thank you from a very full heart for your work and say that, no matter what may befall in the years to come, you will be known — every bit-part of you — for having played in, to quote several of the reviews, the ‘Flawless Macbeth.’ ”

  “Under flawless direction, Perry,” said Maggie and the others, after a murmured agreement, clapped him: a desultory sound in the empty Dolphin. It died away. A throat was cleared. Gaston stepped forward.

  Somebody said: “Oh, no.”

  “I may not,” Gaston proclaimed with an air of infinite conceit, “be considered the appropriate figure to voice our corporate approval of the style in which the play has been presented. However, as no one else has come forward, I shall attempt to do so.” He spread his feet and grasped his lapels. “I have been glad to offer my assistance in matters of production and to have been able to provide the replicas for the weapons used by Macbeth and Macduff. I made them,” he said, with a modest cough. “I do, however, now frankly deplore the use of the actual, historical claidheamh-mor. At the time I felt that since no hands but my own would touch it, there would be no desecration. I was utterly mistaken and take this opportunity of admitting as much. The claidheamh-mor is possessed of a power —”

  “For God’s sake, somebody, stop him,” muttered Simon.

  “— it moves in its own appointed way —”

  The doors at the back of the stalls opened and Alleyn came into the house and walked down the center aisle.

  Gaston paused, his mouth open. Peregrine said: “Excuse me, Gaston. I think Mr. Alleyn wants to speak to me.” The actors, intensely relieved, set up a buzz of affirmation.

  “It’s to say that we’ve just about finished our work in the theatre,” Alleyn said, “and the dressing-rooms are now open for use. I must ask you all to remain at your present addresses or, if any of you change your address, to let us know. If this is inconvenient for any of you I am very sorry. It will not, I hope, be for very long.”

  He turned to Peregrine. “I think the management would like a word with you,” he said.

  Bruce Barrabell said importantly, “I am the union’s representative in this production. I will have to ask for a ruling on the situation.”

  “No doubt,” said Alleyn politely, “they will be glad to advise you. There is a telephone in the Prompt corner.” And to the company: “Mr. Fox has the keys. He’s in the greenroom.”

  “I suppose,” said Barrabell, “you’ve been through our private possessions like the proverbial fine-tooth comb.”

  “I’m not sure how proverbial fine-tooth combs work but I expect you’re right.”

  “And retired to your virtuous bed to sleep the sleep of the just, no doubt?”

  “I didn’t go to bed last night,” said Alleyn mildly. He surveyed the company. “The typescripts of your statements are ready,” he said. “We’d be grateful if you’d be kind enough to read them and if they’re correct, sign them before you go. Thank you all, very much.”

  In the boardroom, Peregrine faced his fellow guardians and Winter Meyer. Mrs. Abrams was secretary.

  “In the appalling situation in which we find ourselves,” he said, “the immediate problem is how we conduct our policy. We’ve been given twenty-four hours in which to decide. One: we can go dark and advertise that money for advance bookings will be refunded at the box office. Two: we can continue with the presentation. Simon Morten would take the lead and his understudy play Macduff. The fight at the end will be replaced by a much simpler routine. Or, and this is an unorthodox suggestion, Gaston Sears would play the lead. He tells me he is in a fair way to being word-perfect and of course he knows the fight, but he adds that he feels he would hav
e to decline.

  “Three: we can take a fortnight off and reopen with the revival of one of our past successes. The Glove has been mentioned. As the author I feel I can’t speak for or against the play. I can, however, say that I have heard William Smith read the very important part of the young Hamnet Shakespeare and he promised extremely well. We can cast it from the present company. Maggie would be splendid as the Dark Lady and I fancy Simon as the Bard and Nina as Ann.”

  He was silent for a second or two and then said: “This is a terrible thing that has happened. One would have said that our dear Sir Dougal had no enemies — I still can’t get myself around to — to — to facing it and I daresay you can’t either. Of one thing we may all be sure, he would have wanted us to do what is best for the Dolphin.”

  He sat down.

  For a time nobody spoke. Then one bald and stout guardian whispered to another and a little pantomime of nodding and portentous frowns passed around the table. The senior guardian, who was thin and had a gentle air, stood up.

  “I move,” he said, “that we leave the decision in Mr. Peregrine Jay’s hands and do so with our complete trust in his decision.”

  “Second that,” said another guardian.

  “Those in favor? Unanimous,” said the chairman.

  Chapter 8

  DEVELOPMENT

  “I suppose I ought to be feeling all glowing and grateful,” said Peregrine, “but I’m afraid I don’t. They are nice old boys, all of them, but they’re dab hands at passing the buck and making it look like a compliment.”

  “You’ve been given a completely free hand and if it turns out a dead failure you’ll find yourself out on a limb and all of them saying, ever so delicately, that they felt at the time the decision was a mistaken one,” Alleyn observed.

  “That’s right.”

  “If it’s any comfort, which it isn’t, I’m familiar with these tactics.”

  “Why don’t we leave them to make the decision? Why don’t I say I feel it would be better, under the circumstances, for somebody less intimately concerned with the Dolphin to produce the next show? God knows it’d be true.”

  “Yes?”

  “But I’d feel I was ratting.” He dug his hands into his pockets. “I’m fond of them. We’ve taken a journey together and come out on the golden sands. We’ve found Macbeth. It’s a marvelous feeling. Or was. Are you any further on?”