Light Thickens

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘The ladies will vanish as they did before. They get up to position on their “Banquo and Macbeth, all hail.”’

  ‘May I interrupt?’ fluted Banquo.

  ‘No,’ said Peregrine over a vicious stab of pain. ‘You may not. Later, dear boy. On, please.’

  The scene continued with Banquo, disconcerted, silver-voiced and ominously well-behaved.

  Macbeth was halfway through his soliloquy. ‘Present fears,’ he said, ‘are less than horrible imaginings and if the gentleman with the fetching laugh would be good enough to shut his silly trap my thought whose murder yet is but fantastical will probably remain so.’

  He was removed by the total width and much of the depth of the stage from Banquo, who had been placed in tactful conversation with the other lairds as far away as possible from the soliloquist and had burst into a peal of jolly laughter and slapped the disconcerted Ross on his shoulders.

  ‘Cut the laugh, Bruce,’ said Peregrine. ‘It distracts. Pipe down. On.’

  The scene ended as written by the author and with the barely concealed merriment of Ross and Angus.

  Dougal went into the auditorium to apologize to Peregrine. Banquo affected innocence. ‘Cauldron Scene,’ Peregrine called.

  Afterwards he wondered how he got through the rest of the rehearsal. Luckily the actors and apparitions were pretty solid and it was a matter of making the electrician and effects man acquainted with what would be expected of them.

  The cauldron would be in the passage under the steps up to what had been Duncan’s room. A door, indistinguishable when shut, would shut at the disappearance of the cauldron and witches amidst noise, blackout and a great display of dry-ice-fog and galloping hooves. Full lighting and Lennox tapping with his sword hilt at the door.

  ‘You’ve seen our side of it,’ Peregrine said to the effects man. ‘It’s up to you to interpret. Go home, have a think. Come and tell me. Right?’

  ‘Right. I say,’ said the electrician, ‘that kid’s good, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, isn’t he?’ said Peregrine. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I want a word with Charlie. Thank you so much. Goodbye till we three meet again. Sooner the better.’

  ‘Yes indeed.’ A chorus of goodbyes.

  The men left. Peregrine mopped his face. I’d better get out of this, he thought, and wondered if he could drive.

  It was not yet four-thirty. Banquo was not in sight and the traffic had not thickened. His car was in the yard. To hell with everything, thought Peregrine. He said to the ASM: ‘I want to get off, Charlie. Have you fixed it up? The sword?’

  ‘It’s OK. Are you all right?’

  ‘It’s just a bruise. No breakages. You’ll lock up?’

  ‘Sure!’

  He went out with Peregrine, opened the car door and watched him in.

  ‘Are you all right? Can you drive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Saturday tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s the story, Charlie. Thank you. Don’t talk about this, will you? It’s their silly superstition.’

  ‘I don’t talk,’ said Charlie. ‘Are you all right?’

  He was, or nearly so, when he settled. Charlie watched him out of the yard. Along the Embankment, over the bridge and then turn right and right again. When he got there he was going to sound his horn.

  To his surprise, Emily came out of their house and ran down the steps to the car. ‘I thought you’d never get here,’ she cried. And then: ‘Darling, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Give me a bit of a prop. I’ve bruised myself. Nothing serious.’

  ‘Right you are. Here we go, then. Which is the side?’

  ‘The other. Here we go.’

  He clung to her, slid out and stood holding on to the car. She shut and locked the door.

  ‘Shall I get a stick or will you use me?’

  ‘I’ll use you, love, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Away we go, then.’

  They staggered up the steps. Emmy got the giggles. ‘If Mrs Sleigh next door sees us she’ll think we’re tight.’

  ‘You needn’t help me, after all. Once I’ve straightened up I’m all right. My legs are absolutely OK. Let go.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. He straightened up and gave a short howl. ‘Absolutely all right,’ he said, walked rather quickly up the steps into the house and fell into an armchair. Emily went to the telephone.

  ‘What are you doing, Em?’

  ‘Ringing up the doctor.’

  ‘I don’t think – ‘

  ‘I do,’ said Emily. She had an incisive conversation. ‘How did it happen?’ she broke off.

  ‘I fell on a sword. On the wooden hilt.’

  She repeated this into the telephone and hung up. ‘He’s looking in on his way home,’ she said.

  ‘I’d like a drink.’

  ‘I suppose it won’t do you any harm?’

  ‘It certainly will not.’

  She fetched him a drink. ‘I’m not sure about this,’ she said.

  ‘I am,’ said Peregrine. He swallowed it. ‘That’s better. Why did you come running out of the house?’

  ‘I’ve got something to show you but I don’t know that you’re in a fit state to see it.’

  ‘Bad news?’

  ‘Not directly.’

  ‘Then show me.’

  ‘Here, then. Look at this.’

  She fetched an envelope from the table and pulled out a cutting from one of the more lurid Sunday tabloids. It was a photograph of a woman and a small boy. They were in a street and had obviously been caught unawares. She was white-faced and stricken; the little boy looked frightened. ‘Mrs Geoffrey Harcourt-Smith and William,’ the caption read. ‘After the Verdict.’

  ‘It’s three years old,’ said Emily. ‘It came in the post this morning. It was a murder. Decapitation. Last of six, I think. The husband was found guilty but insane and he got a life sentence.’

  Peregrine looked at it for a minute and then held it out. ‘Burn it?’ he said.

  ‘Gladly.’ She lit a match and he held the cutting over an ashtray. It turned black and disintegrated.

  ‘This too?’ Emily asked, holding up the envelope. It was addressed in capital letters.

  ‘Yes. No. No, not that. Not yet,’ said Peregrine. ‘Put it in my desk.’

  Emily did so. ‘You’re quite sure? It was William?’

  ‘Three years younger. Absolutely sure. And his mother. Damn.’

  ‘Perry, you’ve never seen the thing. Put it out of your mind.’

  ‘I can’t do that. But it makes no difference. The father was a schizophrenic monster. Life sentence in Broadmoor. They called him the Hampstead Chopper.’

  ‘You don’t think – it’s – anybody in the theatre who sent this?’

  ‘No!’

  Emily was silent.

  ‘They’ve no cause. None.’

  After a pause he said: ‘I suppose it might be a sort of warning.’

  ‘You haven’t told me how you came to fall on the claymore.’

  ‘I was showing the girls and Rangi how to fall soft. They don’t know what happened. They’ve each got a special place. The sword was halfway between two places.’

  ‘It was there – under the cover when they fell?’

  ‘Must have been.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they have seen it? Seen the shape under the cover?’

  ‘No. I didn’t. It’s very dark down there.’

  They were silent, for a moment. The sound of London swelled into the gap. On the river a solitary craft gave out its lonely call.

  ‘Nobody knew,’ Emily ventured, ‘that you were going to make that jump?’

  ‘Of course not. I didn’t know myself, did I?’

  ‘So it being you that got the jab in the wind was just bad luck.’

  ‘Must have been.’

  ‘Well, thank God for that, at least.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where was it? Before he hid it.’

 
‘I don’t know. Wait a sec. Yes, I do. The two wooden claymores were hung up on nails. On the back wall. They were very much the worse for wear, in spite of having cloth shields on the blades. One was split. Being Gaston’s work, they were carefully made: the right weight and balance and grip but they were really only makeshift. They were no good for anything except playing soldiers.’ He stopped and then said hurriedly: ‘I won’t elaborate on the sword to the doctor. I’ll just say it’d been left lying there and nobody cleared it up.’

  ‘Yes. All right. True enough as far as it goes.’

  ‘And as for William, beyond taking care what we talk about, we ignore the whole thing.’

  ‘The play being what it is – ‘ Emily began. And stopped.

  ‘It’s all right. He was shouting out “He got his comeuppance, didn’t he?” just like any other small boy. At rehearsal, I mean.’

  ‘How old was he when it happened?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘He’s nine now?’

  ‘Yes. He looks much younger. He’s a nice boy.’

  ‘Yes. Does it hurt much? Your side?’

  ‘If I move it’s unpleasant. I wonder if for the cast there’s some chronic affliction I could have had at odd times? The result of something that happened long before Macbeth.’

  ‘Diverticulitis?’

  ‘Why diverticulitis?’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ said Emily, ‘but it seems to me it’s something American husbands have. Their wives say mysteriously to one: “My dear! He has diverticulitis.” And one nods and looks solemn.’

  ‘I think I’d be safer with a growling gall bladder. Whereabouts is one’s gall bladder?’

  ‘We can ask the doctor.’

  ‘So we can.’

  ‘Shall I have a look at you?’

  ‘No, we’d better leave well alone.’

  ‘What a dotty remark that is. After all,’ said Emily, ‘the bit in question is the bit of you that is not well so how can we leave it alone? I’ll get our dinner instead. It’ll be a proper onion soup and then an omelette. OK?’

  Emily made up their fire, gave Peregrine a book to read and went to the kitchen. The onion soup was prepared and only needed heating. She cut up bread into snippets and heated butter in a frying pan. She opened a bottle of burgundy and left it to breathe.

  ‘Emily!’ called Peregrine.

  She hurried back to the study.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’m all right. I’ve been thinking. Nina. She won’t be satisfied with the chronic gallstones or whatever. She’ll just think my chronic thing’s coming back now is another stroke of bad luck.’

  They had their dinner on trays. Emily tidied them away and they sat with modest glasses of burgundy over their fire.

  Peregrine said: ‘The sword and the photograph? Are they connected?’

  ‘Why should they be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The doctor came. He made a careful examination and said there were no bones broken but there was severe bruising. He made Peregrine do painful things.

  ‘You’ll survive,’ he said facetiously. ‘I’m leaving something to help you sleep.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Don’t go prancing about showing actors what to do.’

  ‘I’m incapable of even a teeny-weeny prance.’

  ‘Jolly good. I’ll look in again tomorrow evening.’

  Emily went to the front door with the doctor. ‘He’ll be down at the theatre on Monday come hell or high water,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t want the cast to know he fell on a sword. What could he have? Something chronic.’

  ‘I really don’t know. Stomach cramp? Hardly.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Diverticulitis?’ he suggested. And then: ‘Why on earth are you laughing?’

  ‘Because it’s a joke word.’ Emily put on a grave face, raised her eyebrows and nodded meaningfully. ‘Diverticulitis,’ she said in a sepulchral voice.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ said the doctor. ‘Is it something to do with superstitions?’

  ‘That’s very clever of you. Yes. It is. In a way.’

  ‘Good night, my dear,’ said the doctor, and left.

  IV

  Rehearsals went well during the first four days of the next week. The play had now been completely covered and Peregrine began to polish, dig deeper and make discoveries. His bruises grew less painful. He had taken a high hand and talked about his ‘tiresome tum’ in a vague, brief and lofty manner and, as far as he could make out, the cast did not pay an enormous amount of attention to it. Perhaps they were too busy.

  Macbeth, in particular, made a splendid advance. He gained in stature. His nightmarish descent into horror and blind, idiotic killing was exactly what Peregrine asked of him. Maggie, after they had worked at their scenes, said to him: ‘Dougal, you are playing like the devil possessed. I didn’t know you had it in you.’ He thought for a moment and then said: ‘To tell you the truth, nor did I.’ And burst out laughing. ‘Unlucky in love, lucky in war,’ he said. ‘Something like that, eh, Maggie?’

  ‘Something like that,’ she agreed lightly.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, turning to Peregrine, ‘it is absolutely necessary to have Marley’s Ghost haunting me? What’s he meant to signify?’

  ‘Marley’s Ghost?’

  ‘Well – whoever he is. Seyton. Gaston Sears. What’s he meant to be, silly old fool?’

  ‘Fate.’

  ‘Come off it. You’re being indulgent.’

  ‘I honestly don’t think so. I think he’s valid. He’s not intrusive, Dougal. He’s just – there.’

  Sir Dougal said: ‘That’s what I mean,’ and drew himself up, holding his claymore in front of him. ‘His tummy rumbles are positively deafening,’ he said. ‘Gurgle, gurgle. Rumble. Crash. A one-man band. One can hardly hear oneself speak.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Peregrine said, and laughed. Maggie laughed with him. ‘You’re very naughty,’ she said to Dougal.

  ‘You’ve heard him, Maggie. In the banquet scene. Standing up by your throne rumbling away. You do know he’s a bit off-pitch in the upper register, Perry, don’t you?’ He touched his own head.

  ‘You’re simply repeating a piece of stage gossip. Stop it.’

  ‘Barrabell told me.’

  ‘And who told him? And what about your fight?’ Peregrine made a wide gesture and swept his notes to the floor. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Nothing dotty about that, is there?’

  ‘We’d have been just as good if we’d faked it,’ Dougal muttered.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t and you know it.’

  ‘Oh well. But he does rumble. Admit.’

  ‘I haven’t heard him.’

  ‘Come on, Maggie. I’m wasting my time with this chap,’ Dougal said cheerfully. Peregrine heard the stage door shut behind them.

  He had begun painfully to pick up pages of the notes he had dropped when he heard someone come on stage and cross it. He tried to get up but the movement caught him. By the time he had hauled himself up the door had opened and closed and he never saw who had crossed the stage and gone out of the theatre.

  Charlie had replaced the wooden claymore with its fellow on the back wall. Peregrine, having put his papers in order, laboured up on to the stage and made his way through pieces of scenery and book wings that had been set up as temporary backing. Only the working light had been left on and it was dark enough in this no-man’s-land for him to go carefully. He was quite startled to see the figure of a small boy with its back towards him. Looking up at the claymore.

  ‘William!’ he said. William turned. His face was white but he said, ‘Hullo, sir,’ loudly.

  ‘What are you doing here? You weren’t called.’

  ‘I wanted to see you, sir.’

  ‘You did? Well, here I am.’

  ‘You hurt yourself on the wooden claymore,’ the treble voice stated.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I was there. Backstage. When you jumped, I saw yo
u.’

  ‘You had no business to be there, William. You come only when you are called and stay in front when you are not working. What were you doing backstage?’

  ‘Looking at my claymore. Mr Sears said I could have one of them after we opened. I wanted to choose the one that was least knocked about.’

  ‘I see. Come here. Where I can see you properly.’

  William came at once. He stood to attention and clenched his hands.

  ‘Go on,’ said Peregrine.

  ‘I took it down: it was very dark. I brought it into the better light. It was still pretty dark but I examined it. Before I could get back there and hang it up, the witches came and started rehearsing. Down on the main stage. I hid it under the canvas. I was very careful to hide it where I thought nobody would fall. And I hid, too. I saw you fall. I heard you say you were all right.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  After a considerable pause, William went on. ‘I knew you weren’t really all right because I heard you swear. But you got up. So I sneaked off and waited till there was only Charlie left and he was whistling. So I bolted.’

  ‘And why did you want to see me today?’

  ‘To tell you.’

  ‘Has something else happened?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Let’s have it, then.’

  ‘It’s Miss Gaythorne. She keeps on about the curse.’

  ‘The curse?’

  ‘On the play. Now she’s on about things happening. She makes out the sword under the cover is mixed up with all the things that go wrong with Macbeth, with – ‘ William corrected himself – ‘the Scots play. She reckons she wants to sprinkle holy water or something and say things. I dunno. It sounds like a lot of hogwash to me but she goes on and on and of course the claymore’s all my doing, isn’t it? Nothing to do with this other stuff.’

  ‘Nothing in the wide world.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m sorry you’ve copped one, sir. I am really.’

  ‘So you ought to be. It’s much better. Look here, William: have you spoken to anyone else about this?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Word of a gentleman?’ said Peregrine, and wondered if it was comically snobbish.

  ‘No. I haven’t – not a word.’