The Macbeth Prophecy

by Anthea Fraser

  “No doubt she’ll survive. I have next Thursday off, by the way. All right if I come over?”

  “Of course. I’ll wangle a free day, too. It’s ages since we saw each other.”

  He laughed. “Don’t start playing hooky just because you’re leaving – bad for discipline! I’d better go, someone’s waiting to use the phone. See you Thursday.”

  “Thanks for phoning.”

  “I needed to talk to you.”

  The phone clicked in my ear. I drew a deep breath, rubbed my hands on my handkerchief and went back to face the crowd.

  When we sat down to dinner an hour or so later, it was only the Barlows, Braithwaites and myself. George Barlow was a tall, worried-looking man with horn-rimmed spectacles and a shy smile. He treated his wife with the gentle, rather touching affection I’d noticed before between childless couples.

  Not unnaturally, the conversation turned again to the subject of twins.

  “You certainly gave Felicity pause for thought!” Eve teased me. “I don’t think she found your views very comfortable.”

  “I only said it was pointless to deny the fact that twins are twins.”

  “In a way, though, I see what she means. Mothers of twins, especially identical ones, tend to dress them exactly alike, talk about them in one breath and so on. I suppose it could cause a child some crisis of identity.”

  “On the other hand, our mother tried from the start to make us different, if only for ease of identification, and failed hopelessly.”

  “So there will shortly be four pairs in Crowthorpe,” remarked Douglas. “It’s remarkable how self-perpetuating the thing is. Twins hear of the story and willingly come along to bolster it.”

  “What brought you here?” I asked Anita.

  “It was ‘who’ rather than ‘what’, since we were only babies, but it was certainly because of the legend. Our father was a professor who married late in life. He was steeped in Celtic mythology and had known about Crowthorpe for years. When his wife presented him with twin daughters he was just about to retire, and made a point of settling here. So although we weren’t actually born in Crowthorpe, we’ve been here virtually all our lives.”

  “I hadn’t realized,” George put in, “how comparatively rare identical twins are. There was a talk about them on the radio the other day. Apparently twins occur once in every eighty or so births but identical ones only every four thousand. Scientists are appealing for volunteers to take part in a series of tests on immunity to disease, hereditary weaknesses and so on.”

  “Perhaps they should come to Crowthorpe!” Anita said laughingly.

  “It would be fertile ground. At this rate, you’ll soon outnumber the rest of us!”

  “So they’re doing tests, are they?” Eve mused.

  “Yes, on quite a wide field: diabetes, psychology, and the old bone of contention, heredity versus environment.”

  “I wonder what form the psychological tests would take,” I said, and felt both women glance at me – anxiously, I thought. Perhaps their husbands didn’t approve of the parlour games we’d indulged in at the vicarage.

  George for his part had looked across at Douglas. “Oh, the usual, I imagine. Behaviour under stress, personality characteristics and so on.”

  “Telepathy?” I prompted.

  “Quite possibly.”

  Anita said, “Eve and I once had the same dream. I started to tell her about it the next morning, and she finished it off for me.”

  “I’ve read,” I said, “of twins dying at the same time as each other. One of them has an accident and the other, miles away, dies at the same instant of no apparent cause. I’ve always taken it for granted the same thing would happen to Philip and me. We couldn’t survive without each other.”

  There was a brief, uncomfortable pause. Douglas Braithwaite cleared his throat. “Without wanting to sound pompous, I’m not too sure I approve of that philosophy. Each life is sacred; a completely separate being, however close one might feel to another. The fact that two people are born at the same time most certainly does not infer they must also die together.”

  “Nevertheless, it does happen.”

  “Very seldom, I think you’d find, and for quite valid reasons. Good gracious, man, even at the rate of one in four thousand, there are vast numbers of identical twins throughout the world. Imagine their reaction, if someone suggested they should die simultaneously! It’s reminiscent of throwing a wife on her husband’s funeral pyre!”

  I put my hands up in mock self-defence. “Far be it from me to frighten anyone! I only said it has been known, and whatever you say I’m quite sure it will happen to us. I hope it does.”

  “You won’t insist on it, will you Anita?” Eve queried humorously, and in the general laughter the conversation edged on to more comfortable topics.

  I recounted it to Philip the following week when he came over to see me, but the discussion took a turn I hadn’t expected.

  “You know, I’d like to have another go at that mind-reading stunt,” he said slowly. “I know you weren’t too keen, but just consider the possibilities!”

  I frowned into my glass. “I’ve a feeling we could easily get out of our depth.”

  “If we don’t experiment, we’ll never know what our depth is. Suppose it really is possible to read a patient’s symptoms telepathically. It would be an enormous advantage; people are so bad at expressing themselves.” He looked at me shrewdly. “Eve was right, wasn’t she, about your being slightly jealous over that demonstration we did? Surely you know there’s no reason to be?”

  We changed the subject then, but that he hadn’t forgotten it was made only too apparent a few days later. When Philip and I phoned each other, it was always in the evenings at each other’s lodgings. Yet suddenly, in the middle of one afternoon, I felt an urgent need to contact him. I tried to play it down – for one thing it was in the middle of a class – but the necessity became too strong for me. I set the children some work and hurried to the nearest phone. There was no reason whatever to expect Philip to be at home at that hour of the day, but he answered the phone on the first ring.

  “Bless you, Matthew!” he said exultantly, before I’d even spoken. “Look at your watch, will you? I can’t stop now but there’s a letter in the post which will explain.” I was left standing with the dead phone in my hand, feeling flat and oddly frustrated. As instructed I looked at my watch. It was four minutes past three.

  The promised letter arrived the next morning. It had been scrawled hurriedly, but as Philip had said, provided an explanation, albeit a disturbing one:

  I’ve been thinking how often we use telepathy unconsciously, as when I phoned you in Crowthorpe, and I’ve thought up a little test to see if we can do it to order. This afternoon, at precisely three o’clock, I shall be signalling you to phone. If you don’t – well, we’ll have to work at it a bit harder. But if you do – and somehow I think you will – then Crowthorpe had better watch out!

  I was in a thoughtful mood for the rest of that day.

  A week or so later I received notification that my application to Crowthorpe Primary School had been successful, and when in jubilation I phoned Philip to report the good news, he had just received similar information from Dr Sampson. At last the stars were in their courses and our return to Crowthorpe doubly assured.

  The last few weeks of term passed as always in a welter of exams and sports days. I did not keep my promise of contacting Sue again. Inevitably we came across each other during the course of the school day, but her unhappy face reminded me of the embarrassment she’d caused me in the staff-room and I told myself it was better to leave well alone rather than open old wounds. A pity: she’d been an agreeable and acquiescent companion before her unexpected outburst.

  All in all, I was relieved when the final day of term arrived. The school duly presented me with a leather brief-case and, amid expressions of goodwill from my colleagues, I was at last free to put Swindon behind me and begin my new life wit
h Philip at Crowthorpe.

  Five

  That summer was one of the happiest times I can remember. Philip had arranged to leave High Wycombe on the same day that school finished and, side-stepping our parents’ invitation, we set off immediately for Cumbria. His appointment was due to take effect from the end of August, which gave us a month in which to relax and settle into our new surroundings.

  I remember, those first weeks, spending a lot of time standing at the picture window in the sitting-room staring out from our vantage point at the magnificent panorama before me. Immediately below was the garden, with gnarled old trees, outcrops of rockery and masses of every coloured rose imaginable. Over at the far end of it stood a little bungalow that I hadn’t noticed on our first brief visit. It was built of stone like most of the houses in the village and a low picket fence surrounded it to ensure its privacy; a garden within a garden. I wondered idly who lived there.

  Beyond the high wall stretched the gardens of other houses further down Fell Lane, and beyond them again the main road. On the far side of it I could just see the roof of the Lakeside Hotel and to the left the jetty from where boats plied continually across the lake. It was an outlook which never failed to fascinate me.

  “Back at the lookout post?” Philip enquired laughingly, coming in one day to find me in my usual position.

  “I still can’t believe our good luck.”

  He joined me at the window. “Will we ever get blasé about being able to see mountains, lakes and woods without moving from our own sitting-room?”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  There was a table under one of the windows and we formed the habit of eating our evening meal there, watching the ever-changing parade of holiday-makers strolling down Lake Road or making their way to the Pavilion for the nightly dancing. And over coffee we’d watch the lights come on all down the hill and feel the still, dark closeness of the surrounding hills.

  Once or twice we hired a boat and drifted lazily in the water for hours at a time, putting in at various little bays and rocky beaches on the eastern shore, where the mountain came down to meet the lake. I showed Philip the path I’d discovered alongside Minnowbeck, the stream that flowed along the valley, and by chance we discovered the site of the village’s third hotel, whose owners I’d met at the Greystones. And finally, the week before Philip was due to join Dr Sampson, he said one morning, “I want to go up to the camp and check on the twins.”

  I had been awaiting this decision ever since we arrived but felt it to be his rather than mine. He had twice saved the twins’ short lives and regarded them, I knew, as his protégés.

  Nell Smith was draping tattered nappies on the nearby bushes when we arrived. She was a small, pale woman with straggling nondescript hair and she wore down-trodden bedroom slippers and a greasy apron. Over by the caravan stood a battered old pram without wheels and from its depths I could see a small fist waving. Nell saw us, hesitated, then, wiping her hands on her apron, came towards us warily.

  “Good morning, Nell. We’ve come to enquire after the twins.”

  “They’re well enough.” Her eyes were not inviting and there was an unpleasant odour about her, a general unwashed smell which pricked at the nostrils.

  “May we have a look at them?”

  She jerked her head in the direction of the pram and we walked over. The babies had filled out amazingly in the intervening four months. Black eyes regarded us with interest from either end of the pram. Nell had followed us across, like a bitch, I thought uncharitably, which waits for praise when someone admires its pups.

  “They’re fine babies,” Philip said warmly. “What are their names?”

  “Davy and Kim.”

  “Can you tell them apart?”

  “Never tried. There’s two mouths to feed, that’s all there is to it.”

  Philip gave a short laugh. “And Granny? She hasn’t interfered with them at all?”

  Nell shook her head, glancing nervously over her shoulder.

  A young boy came wandering towards us, sucking his thumb. His shambling gait and vacant eyes proclaimed him to be Benjie, who had once spent a night within the Gemelly Circle. Before he could reach us, his mother Nan swooped on him and bore him away.

  “We’ve come to live in Crowthorpe,” Philip told Nell. “I’d like to come up from time to time to see the twins.”

  “There’s no need,” she said resentfully. “They’ll not come to no harm.”

  “I’d just like to keep in touch,” Philip returned smoothly.

  A young man came down the steps of the adjacent caravan. He was small and slight, his whole appearance marred by a truly horrific squint. He hesitated when he saw us, gave us a surly nod, and set off in the direction of the village. We took our leave of Nell and followed him at our leisure, assuming that since he was not old enough to be Nan’s husband, he must be Janetta’s – and Granny Lee’s son.

  This was confirmed by Eve when she called round that evening to bring us some shortbread she’d made. “Yes, that would be Jem all right. Poor lad, he has his work cut out with Janetta! People say she only married him because he couldn’t properly see what she was up to!”

  “Has Granny still got her crow?” Philip asked casually.

  “As far as I know, but I haven’t seen her for a while. She’s the most restless of the bunch, probably because she was on the road for the best part of her life. Every now and then she takes her caravan, leaving Jem and Janetta to shack up as best they can, and sets off by herself for weeks at a time.”

  I for one did not regret Granny Lee’s departure. It would have suited me very well if she never returned.

  So the summer slid slowly away, the bright red berries appeared on the rowan trees, and Philip and I took up our respective employment. I found my new colleagues pleasant and friendly, and although I was pleasant and friendly in return, I didn’t encourage any close friendships. I had no need of them, now Philip was with me, and having learned my lesson from Sue Anderson, I resolved not to form any ties with either of the female staff. In a village this size, as I knew from Eve, gossip was rife and would not be as easy to ignore as it had been in Swindon.

  However, friendships in which Philip shared were welcome, and we continued to see Eve and Anita fairly regularly. There was a closeness between the four of us which had some deep mainspring we hadn’t yet plumbed, and we felt the need of each other’s company. How their husbands felt on the subject, Philip and I never bothered to discover. Occasionally they would join us for coffee or drinks when we met at their homes, but although both men were included in return invitations, they never accompanied their wives to our flat. Nor was either of them present at the Greystones one October evening when Philip again broached the subject of telepathy.

  “I’ve been thinking over what you said in the spring, Eve, about the need to extend rather than just use it between ourselves.”

  Eve’s eyes dropped. “Did I say that?”

  “I think you’re right. If one has a gift, one should develop it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’m not so sure. Douglas didn’t even approve when Anita and I used to do it. He regards it as an intrusion on another’s privacy. If he knew we’d tried it with you –”

  “Then don’t tell him!”

  She stared at him wide-eyed and Anita gave an excited laugh. There was a look in her eyes which reminded me of the first time we’d seen her.

  “In any case,” Philip was continuing, “I wasn’t just referring to the four of us. We know we can all read each other’s minds. I want to reach out farther still and see what happens.”

  “Oh God!” Eve said softly.

  “It was you who started it,” I reminded her.

  “I can’t imagine why. I suppose it was the shock of suddenly seeing you both – and at the Circle, too. I should have left well alone.” She gave a little shudder.

  Anita said ringingly, “Well, I think you’re right, Philip! It is time we extended our field. How do you prop
ose to go about it?”

  “If we start right away, we’ll have to choose whoever’s available. Is George around?”

  “You’re not going to try him, surely? He’s much too down to earth to respond to such things!”

  “But is he in the hotel?”

  “Yes, he’ll probably look in later. He’s finishing off some figures for the accountant.”

  “Let’s see if I can bring him earlier than he intends.”

  We sat in silence for some minutes. I had gauged Philip’s intentions and didn’t see how they could possibly be fulfilled. But shortly afterwards George Barlow came into the room. As Philip signalled everyone to silence, he sat down on the floor in the centre of the carpet and to his wife’s amazement proceeded to remove his shoes and socks. He then stood up, circled an armchair three times in complete silence, solemnly replaced his footwear and left the room.

  As the door closed behind him, Anita said stiffly, “You didn’t have to make him look ridiculous.”

  “No harm was done. He won’t remember anything.”

  “Then it’s more like hypnotism,” Eve pointed out. “From a distance, too. Rather frightening.”

  “Whatever you like to call it, it’s simply mind control.” Philip sounded slightly aggrieved that his feat hadn’t been more wholeheartedly applauded. “The human brain is vastly underrated, as you know. If we can see some way of developing further, it could be of enormous benefit.”

  “Or harm.” Eve put in unexpectedly.

  The subject dropped by mutual consent, but it was at our next meeting that the Marshall twins arrived.

  We were at the vicarage and when the doorbell rang, Eve went to answer it. We could hear her quite clearly. “Hello girls. What can I do for you?”

  A child’s voice said hesitantly, “We’ve come to see Mr Selby.”

  Anita and Philip turned to me and I shook my head in mystification.