Light Thickens

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Then don’t. Except to me, if you want to. If they know I’m hurt because of the claymore they’ll go weaving all sorts of superstitious rot-gut about the play and it’ll get about and be bad for business. Mum’s the word. OK? But I may say something. I’m not sure.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And you’ll get your claymore but no funny business with it.’

  William looked blankly at him.

  ‘No swiping it round. Ceremonial use only. Understood?’

  ‘I’ve understood all right.’

  ‘Agreed?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ William muttered.

  Peregrine reminded himself that William was certainly unable to raise the weapon more than waist high, if that, and decided not to insist. They shook hands and paid a visit to the Junior Dolphin at a quarter to six, where William consumed an unbelievable quantity of crumpets and fizzy drink. He seemed to have recovered his sang—froid.

  Peregrine drove him home to a minute house in a tidy little street in Lambeth. The curtains were not yet drawn but the room was lit and he could see a pleasant picture, a fully stocked bookcase and a good armchair. Mrs Smith came to the window and looked out before shutting the room away.

  William invited him in.

  ‘I’ll deliver you but I won’t come in, thank you. I’m due at home. Overdue, in fact.’

  A brisk knock brought William’s mother to the door, a woman who was worn down to the lowest common denominator. She was dressed in a good but not new coat and skirt and spoke incisively.

  ‘I’ve got a call to make in this part of the world so I’ve brought William home,’ said Peregrine. ‘He’s aged nine, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Only just.’

  ‘In that case I’m afraid we’ll have to find a second boy for alternate nights. It’s not going to be easy but that’s the rule. I’ll try and bend it. You don’t know of one, I suppose, do you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I expect his school would provide.’

  ‘I expect so. I’ve got their address. We’ll just have to go to the usual sources,’ Peregrine said. He took off his hat. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Smith. The boy’s doing very well.’

  ‘I’m glad. Goodbye.’

  ‘’Bye, William.’

  ‘Goodbye, sir.’

  Peregrine drove home in a state of some confusion. He was glad the hidden sword mystery was solved, of course, but uncertain how much, if anything, of the explanation should be passed on to the company. In the end he decided to say something publicly to Gaston about his promising to give the wooden sword to William and William hiding it. But, according to William, Nina Gaythorne knew about the sword. How the hell had the silly old trout found out? Charlie? Perhaps he’d let it out. Or more likely Banquo. He was there. He could have seen. And pretty well satisfied that this was the truth, he arrived home.

  Emily heard the story of William.

  ‘Do you think he’ll keep his word?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I do. I’m quite persuaded he will.’

  ‘What was it like? The house. And his mother?’

  ‘All right. I didn’t go in. Tiny house. Their own furniture. She’s as thin as a lath and definitely upper-class. I don’t remember if her circumstances came out at the trial but my guess would be that after the legal expenses were settled there was enough to buy the house or pay the rent and furnish it from what they had after the sale. He had been a well-heeled stockbroker. Mad as a hatter.’

  ‘And William’s at a drama school.’

  ‘The Royal Southwark Theatre School. It’s good. They get the whole works, all school subjects. Registered as a private school. There must have been enough for William’s fees. And she’s got some secretarial job, I fancy.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to remember what it was like when I was six. What was he told and how much does he retain?’

  ‘At a guess, I’d say he was told his father was mentally very ill and committed to an asylum. Probably he was sent abroad until it was all over.’

  ‘Poor little man,’ said Emily.

  ‘He’ll be a good actor. You’ll see.’

  ‘Yes. How’s your bruised tum?’

  ‘Better every day.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘In fact everything in the garden is – ‘ He pulled up. Emily saw that he had crossed his first and second fingers. ‘That really would be asking for it,’ he said.

  The next day shone brightly. Peregrine and Emily drove happily along the Embankment, over Blackfriars Bridge and turned right for Wharfingers Lane and the theatre. The entire company had been called and had nearly all arrived and were assembled in the auditorium.

  It was to be a complete run-through of the play with props. This week would be the last one entirely for the actors. After that would come the mechanical effects and lights rehearsals with endless stops, adjustments and repositionings. And then, finally, two dress rehearsals.

  Emily knew a lot of the company. Sir Dougal was delighted that she had come down to rehearsal. Why did they not see more of her in these days? Sons? How many? Three? All at school? Wonderful!

  It struck her that he was excited. Keyed up. Not attending to the answers she gave him. She was relieved when he strolled away.

  Maggie came up to her and gave her a squeeze. ‘I’ll want to know what you think,’ she said. ‘Really. What you think and feel.’

  ‘Perry says you’re wonderful.’

  ‘Does he? Does he really?’

  ‘Really and truly. Without qualifications.’

  ‘Too good. Too soon. I don’t know,’ she muttered.

  ‘All’s well.’

  ‘I hope so. Oh, this play. This play, Emmy, my dear.’

  ‘I know.’

  She wandered distractedly away and sat down, her eyes closed, her lips moving. Nina Gaythorne came in, draped, as always, in a multiplicity of hand-woven scarves. She saw Emily and waved the end of one of them, at the same time making a strange grimace and raising her faded eyes to contemplate the dome. It was impossible to interpret; some kind of despair, Emily wondered? She waved back conservatively.

  The man with Miss Gaythorne was unknown to Emily. Straw-coloured. Tight mouth, light eyes. She guessed he was the Banquo. Bruce Barrabell. They sat together, apart from the others. Emily had the uncomfortable feeling that Nina was telling him who she was. She found herself momentarily looking into his eyes, which startled her by their sharpness and the quick furtive withdrawal of his gaze.

  Macduff, Simon Morten, she recognized from Peregrine’s description. He was physically exactly right; dark, handsome and reckless; at the moment, nervous and withdrawn but a swashbuckler nevertheless.

  Here came the three witches, two girls gabbling nervously, and Rangi, aloof, indrawn and anxious. Then the Royals: King Duncan, magnificent, portentous, and his two sons to whom he seemed to lend a condescending ear. Two Murderers. The Gentlewoman and the Doctor. Lennox and Ross. Menteith. Angus. Caithness. And, with Nina Gaythorne, a small boy. So that’s William, she thought. Last, solemn, brooding, his claymore held upright in its harness, Gaston, the sword-bearer.

  I’m thinking about them as they are in the play, Emily told herself. And they are behaving as they do in the play. No. Not behaving. How absurd of me. But they are keeping together in their groups.

  The front curtains parted and Peregrine came through.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is an uninterrupted run-through, with props and effects. It will be timed. I’ll take notes at the end of the first half. There has been a slight tendency to drag. We’ll watch that, if you please. Right. Act I, Scene 1. The witches.’

  They went up through the box.

  Peregrine came down the temporary steps into the house and to his improvised desk across the stalls. His secretary was beside him and the mechanical people behind.

  He had given Emily a typed scene sequence each with a hint of what went on in it.

  ‘You don’t need it,’ he said. ‘I just thought you might like to be reminded of the sequence of e
vents.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Right,’ Peregrine called.

  Emily’s heart thumped. Thud, thud, thud. A faint, wailing cry, a gust of crying wind and the curtain rose.

  There are times – rare but unmistakable – in the theatre when, at rehearsal, the play flashes up into a life of its own and attains a reality so vivid that everything else fades into threadbare inconsequence. These startling transformations happen when the play is over halfway to achievement: the actors are not in costume, the staging is still bare bones. Nothing intervenes between the characters and their projection into the void. This was such a day.

  Emily felt she was seeing Macbeth for the first time. She was constantly taken by surprise. Perfect. Wonderful. Terrible, she thought.

  Duncan arrived at the castle. The sound of wings fluttering in the evening air. Peaceful. Then the squeal of pipes, the rumble of the great doors, the opening and the assembly of servants. Seyton. Lady Macbeth a scarlet figure at the top of the stairs. Don’t go in, don’t go in.

  But she welcomed him. They all went in and the doors rumbled and closed on them.

  Afterwards Emily could not remember if the sounds Shakespeare introduces were actually heard; the cricket, the owl, the usual domestic sounds that continue in an old house when the guests are all asleep in bed. The other ambiguous sounds the Macbeths think they hear…

  It was accomplished. The ‘terrible imaginings’ were real, now, and they went to wash the blood from their hands.

  Now came the knocking at the south entry. Enter from below the drunken porter with his load of obscenely shaped driftwood. He committed it to the fire, piece after piece, staggered to the south entry and admitted Macduff and Lennox.

  Simon Morten looked as fit as a fiddle. He and Lennox brought the fresh morning air in with them as he ran upstairs to Duncan’s bedroom. The door shut behind him.

  Macbeth stood very still, every nerve in his body listening, Lennox went to the fire, warmed his hands and gossiped about the wildness of the night.

  The door upstairs opened and Macduff came out.

  Extraordinary! He was as white as a sheet. He whispered: ‘“Horror. Horror. Horror.”’

  Now disaster broke: the alarm bell, the disordered guests, Lady Macbeth’s ‘fainting’ when her husband’s speech threatened to get out of hand, the appearance of the two frightened sons, their decision to flee. And the little front scene when Macduff, an Old Man and Ross speak an ominous afterword and the first part closes.

  V

  Peregrine finished his notes. Macbeth and Macduff waited behind. They were on stage.

  ‘Come on,’ said Peregrine. ‘What was the matter? You’re both good actors but you don’t turn sheet-white out of sheer artistry. What went wrong?’

  Sir Dougal looked at Simon. ‘You went up before I did,’ he said. ‘You saw it first.’

  ‘Some idiot’s rigged a bloody mask in the King’s Chamber. One of those Banquo things of Gaston’s. Open mouth, blood running out of it. Bulging eyes. I don’t mind telling you it shocked the pants off me.’

  ‘You might have warned me,’ said Sir Dougal.

  ‘I tried, didn’t I? Outside the door. You and Lennox. After I said “Destroy your sight with a new Gorgon.”’

  ‘You muttered something. I didn’t know what you were on about.’

  ‘I could hardly yell: “There’s a bloody head on the wall,” could I?’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  ‘When you went up the first time, Sir Dougal, was it there?’

  ‘Certainly not. Unless…’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘What’s the colour of the cloak attached to it?’

  ‘Dark grey,’ said Peregrine.

  ‘If it was covered by the cloak I might have missed it. It was dark up there.’

  ‘Who could have uncovered it?’

  ‘The grooms?’

  ‘What grooms? There are no grooms,’ said Simon. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘I was making a joke,’ said Sir Dougal with dignity.

  ‘Funny sort of joke, I must say.’

  ‘There’s some perfectly reasonable explanation,’ Peregrine said. ‘I’ll talk to the Property Master. Don’t let a damn silly thing like this upset you. You’re going very well indeed. Keep it up.’

  He slapped them both on the shoulders, waited till they had gone and climbed the stairs to the room.

  It was extremely dark: an opening off the head of the stairs with a door facing them. The audience saw only a small inside section of one wall when this door was open. The wall which would have a stone finish faced the audience and ran down to stage-level and the third wall, unseen by the audience, was simply used as a brace for the other two. It was a skeleton. A ladder was propped against the floor leading down to the stage. A ceiling, painted with joists, was nailed to the structure.

  And looming in the darkest corner, facing the doorway, the murdered head of Banquo.

  Peregrine knew what to expect but even so he got a jolt. The bulging eyes stared into his. The mouth gaped blood. His own mouth was dry and his hands wet. He walked towards it, touched it and it moved. It was fixed to a coat-hanger. The ends of the hanger rested on the corner pieces of the walls. The grey shroud had a hole, like a poncho, for the head. He touched it again and it rocked towards him and, with a whisper, fell.

  Peregrine started back with an oath, shut the door and called out ‘Props!’

  ‘Here, guv.’

  ‘Come up, will you. Put the working light on.’

  He picked the head up and returned it to its place. The working light took some of the horror out of it. Props’s head came up from below. When he arrived he turned and saw it.

  ‘Christ!’ he said.

  ‘Did you put that thing there?’

  ‘What’d I do that for, Mr Jay? Gawd, no.’

  ‘Did you miss it?’

  ‘I didn’t know how many there was, did I? Its mates are all laid out in the walking gents’ room. Gawd, it’d give you the willies, woon’ it? Seeing it unexpected, like.’

  ‘Take it down and put it with the others. And Ernie?’

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘Don’t mention this. Don’t say you’ve seen it. Not to anyone.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I mean it. Hope to die.’

  ‘Hope to die.’

  ‘Cross your heart, Ernie. Go on. Do it. And say it.’

  ‘Aw, hell, guv.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Cross me ‘art. ‘Ope to die.’

  ‘That’s the style. Now. Take this thing and put it with the others. Half a jiffy.’

  Peregrine was wrapping the head in the shroud. He turned back the hem and found a stick of green wood about two feet long slotted at either end into the hem of the shroud. The string was knotted halfway across into another and very much longer piece. He took it to the edge of the floor and let the loose end fall. It reached to within three feet of the stage.

  Peregrine coiled it up, detached it and put it in his pocket. He gave Ernie the head, neatly parcelled. He looked at the place where the head had rested and, above it, saw a strut of rough wood.

  ‘Preposterous!’ he muttered.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We push on.’ He went downstairs.

  ‘Second part,’ he called. ‘Settle down, please.’

  VI

  The second part opened with Banquo alone, suspecting the truth yet not daring to cut and run. Next, Macbeth’s scene with the murderers and Seyton nearer, ever present, and then the two Macbeths together. This is perhaps the most moving scene in the play and reveals the most about them. It opens up, in extraordinary language, the nightmare of guilt, their sleeplessness, and when at last they sleep the terrifying dreams that beset them. She fights on but knows now, without any shadow of doubt, that her power over him is less than she had bargained for, while he is acting on his own, hinting at what he plans but not telling. There follows the coming of darkness and night and the rel
ease of night’s creatures. It ends with self-dedication to the dark. Now comes the murder of Banquo and the escape of Fleance. And now the great banquet.

  It opens as a front scene before curtains. Macbeth, crowned and robed, seems for the moment in command as if he actually thrives on the shedding of blood. He is a little too loud, too boisterous in his welcome. He is sending his guests through the curtains and is about to follow when he sees Seyton in the downstage entrance. He waits for the last guest to pass through and then goes to him.

  ‘There’s blood upon thy face.’

  ‘’Tis Banquo’s then.’

  Nothing is perfect: Fleance has escaped. Macbeth gives Seyton money and signals for the curtains to be opened. And they open upon the opulence of the banquet. The servants are filling glasses. Lady Macbeth is on her throne. And the Ghost of Banquo, hidden, waits.

  It was going well. The masking of the stool as rehearsed. The timing. The nightmarish efforts of Macbeth to recover something of his royalty. Every cue observed. Thank God! Peregrine thought. It’s working. Yes. Yes.

  ‘Our duties and the pledge.’

  The servants swept the covers off the main dishes.

  The head of Banquo was in pride of place: outrageous and glaring on the main dish.

  ‘What the bloody hell is this!’ Sir Dougal demanded.

  CHAPTER 4

  Fourth Week

  The time for concealment was past. Strangely enough, Peregrine felt a sort of relief. He would no longer be obliged to offer unlikely explanations, beg people not to talk, feel certain that they would talk. Shuffle. Pretend.

  He said ‘Stop,’ and stood up. ‘Cover that thing.’

  The servant who still had the oval dish-cover in his hand clapped it back over the head. Peregrine walked down the aisle. ‘You may sit if you want to but remain in your positions. Any staff who are here, on stage, please.’

  The Assistant Stage Manager, Charlie, two stagehands and Props came on and stood in a group on the Prompt side.

  ‘Somewhere among you,’ said Peregrine, ‘there is a funny man. He has been operating intermittently throughout rehearsals, his object, if he can be said to have one, being to support the superstitious theories that have grown up round this play. This play. Macbeth. You hear me? Macbeth. He put the Banquo mask on the wall of Duncan’s room. He’s put another one in this serving dish. In any other context these silly tricks would be dismissed but here they are reprehensible. They’ve upset the extremely high standard of performance. And that is lamentable. I ask the perpetrator of these tricks to let me know by whatever means he chooses that he is the – comedian.