Light Thickens (3 page)

“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.