The Macbeth Prophecy

by Anthea Fraser

  One November Sunday, when the hills above the lake were blanketed with mist, Madeleine accompanied Philip and me on our walk to the Circle. It was dank and cold, the ferns withered, the grass wet with heavy dew. Philip took his leave of us and strode away as usual towards the camp. Madeleine stood looking after him.

  “Why does he want to see those children?”

  “He feels responsible for them, having delivered them.”

  “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t reply and she shivered suddenly.

  “Cold?” I drew her towards me, and suddenly knew I could hold back no longer. She stood quite still while I kissed her, her lips cool and soft under mine. It wasn’t the ecstatic surrender I was used to, but I had not expected that from Madeleine. Above the pounding of my heart, I said as lightly as I could, “Well, at least you didn’t slap my face!”

  “Did you expect me to?”

  “It was on the cards. You haven’t exactly been encouraging. Madeleine, that day at the flat I asked you why you kept me at arm’s length. You didn’t have a chance to reply.”

  She stirred and moved out of my arms. “At first I thought you were just fooling about and I was determined not to be added to your scalp belt.”

  She hesitated and I prompted gently, “And later?”

  “Later, it occurred to me that although we were together quite a lot, you seemed to be holding back too, and I wondered why. It didn’t seem in character.”

  So that was all it had been! I drew a sigh of relief. “It was because of Philip,” I said.

  She looked at me blankly. “Philip?”

  “I couldn’t think how to tell him I’m in love with you.”

  Her eyes flew to my face. “Oh Matthew, don’t say that – please!”

  “Whether I say it or not doesn’t alter the fact. I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you. I’m sorry if I confused you, darling, it was only because I was so terrified of putting a foot wrong. I’ve never felt like this in my life, and I didn’t know what –” I broke off because unbelievably her eyes had filled with tears.

  “Oh Matthew,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Alarm sharpened my voice. “What is there to be sorry about?”

  “Well, I – you see, I don’t love you.”

  I stood staring at her, panic rising inside me and she went on rapidly, “I was sure I’d fall for you, that’s why I held back really. I couldn’t believe you were serious, and I was afraid of being hurt. It was the strangest feeling, waiting to fall in love. But to my surprise it didn’t happen and didn’t happen, and I couldn’t understand why not. I told myself it would all come right when you kissed me. But it didn’t.” She looked up at me helplessly. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  Part of me – a very small part – wanted to laugh aloud. There was an ironic justice here, that at last I should be paid back for the havoc Philip and I, knowingly and uncaringly, had been causing for the last twelve years. And though I’d had a dozen reasons to account for Madeleine’s reserve – some of which she had herself given me – that she didn’t love me had never once entered my head.

  “Matthew?” She raised a hand and tentatively touched my face. “Don’t look like that. Please.”

  “Perhaps you just need more time.” It was the only hope I had.

  “Perhaps.”

  “There isn’t anyone else?” At least that might have salved my pride.

  “No-one. And I am very fond of you.”

  I pulled her against me, more roughly this time, and started to kiss her, forcing her lips apart and trying with increasing desperation to instil some of my own passion into her. She made no attempt to push me away, but nor did she respond. Despairingly I let her go. My eyes went hungrily over her face with its wide, caramel-coloured eyes and polished skin.

  “I’m not going to give up, you know,” I said abruptly. “God help me, I’ll make you love me.”

  Her eyes held mine. “I hope you can. I think I must be out of my mind not to.”

  “I’m certainly out of mine.”

  She reached up and kissed me gently, and on a wave of despair I turned away and rested my forehead against the nearest stone. Immediately, a sense of calm flowed comfortingly into me. Since meeting Madeleine, I hadn’t been giving the stones enough of my time. Unresentful, they had waited until in my hurt I turned to them, and then had consoled me. Perhaps in time they’d give me Madeleine.

  Seven

  During the Christmas holidays Madeleine returned to her home in Lancaster and grimly I tried to hide the sense of loss that afflicted me. Once or twice I felt Philip’s eyes consideringly on my face, but he made no comment. Then, with the blustery new year, she was back and life became bearable again. From time to time she came up and had supper with us and those evenings were especially happy ones for me. With both Philip and Madeleine beside me, I was complete.

  It was on one of these occasions that Philip, looking in the paper to see what was on television, remarked, “I see Jason Quinn’s a guest on this new current affairs programme. They’ll be discussing his latest play.”

  “Surely you don’t want to watch that!” Madeleine exclaimed. “Personally, I can’t stand the man – far too opinionated and full of himself.”

  “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d rather like to see him. With luck, the interviewer might give him a taste of his own medicine!”

  “Not a chance!” she retorted. “They’ll kow-tow to him as they always do, and make him more conceited than ever!”

  But I had not forgotten the curious reaction Jason Quinn had aroused in me, and despite Madeleine’s protest, I switched the programme on, interested to find out if he still affected me so strongly.

  A brief synopsis of his play, Clouded Crystal, revealed that the plot centred on the exposure of a charlatan fortune-teller.

  “Typical!” said Philip under his breath.

  “I should have thought, Mr Quinn,” continued the interviewer smoothly, “that with your well-known views on the supernatural you would regard all fortune-tellers as charlatans?”

  “In a sense yes, I suppose that’s true. However, quite a large number sincerely believe they have this power. I consider them deluded rather than actual fakes.”

  “But you don’t yourself believe the future can be foreseen?”

  “Of course not. Does anyone, seriously?”

  “Perhaps you’d like to answer that, Professor.”

  The camera switched to the guest at the other end of the table.

  “I should explain to our audience that Professor Hudson from the University of Denver, Colorado, is a leading psychologist. His latest book deals with an exhaustive study of brain-waves in connection with telepathy, clairvoyance and so on. Now, Professor, since clairvoyance is presumably synonymous with future gazing, what is your reply to Mr Quinn?”

  The Professor cleared his throat. “Firstly, if you’ll pardon me, that last assumption is not necessarily correct. Clairvoyance can be linked with precognition but it can also be contemporary – a momentary flash of something which is happening at the same time some distance away. I must assure Mr Quinn however, that there is sufficient evidence on all these subjects for them to be taken very seriously indeed. With regard to so-called fortune-telling, for instance, I wonder if you’ve ever come across the phenomena known as ‘Macbeth prophecies’? In such cases, a forecast is made which actually causes what it predicts to take place.”

  Across the room Philip moved suddenly. I didn’t look at him but I knew of course precisely what he was thinking. All at once this mildly entertaining programme had assumed enormous significance.

  “In effect,” the professor was continuing, “they’re not so much prophecies as conscious or even unconscious suggestions – a primitive but very effective method of brainwashing. The person allegedly foreseeing the future plays on the known weaknesses of his subject – egotism, for example, or greed – to instil an idea in th
e form of a prophecy. I guess that’s where the Macbeth reference comes in: if Macbeth hadn’t been told he’d become Glamis, Cawdor and King, his ambitions might never have crystallized in that direction. But once the idea was implanted, everything he did was directed towards fulfilling the prophecies. You could say the witches’ prediction was responsible for the whole tragedy.”

  Jason Quinn moved impatiently. “But you’re not suggesting this is a common occurrence, surely?”

  “It might well be, Mr Quinn, and it’s certainly not confined to a fortune-teller’s booth. Going back in history we have many examples of its effectiveness when used by false prophets, dictators, witch-hunters –”

  The camera flicked back to the interviewer in time to catch him glancing at his watch. “Gentlemen, this is fascinating but I’m afraid we’re running out of time. One last comment from you, Mr Quinn?”

  “Merely that I’m interested in the professor’s thesis but regrettably unconvinced. I’m unable to accept predestination in any form. If –”

  “Sorry, Mr Quinn, I’ll have to cut you off there. Thank you very much, gentlemen.”

  The camera switched to another part of the studio and I turned off the set.

  Into the silence Madeleine said, “You might know the professor was wasting his breath. Jason Quinn would never accept anything that didn’t comply with his own rigid formula.”

  “And do you?” Philip asked quietly. “Do you accept what the professor was saying?”

  “If he’s done so much work on it he must know what he’s talking about, as anyone but Jason Quinn would admit. I can’t say I like the idea, but I suppose we’re all guilty to some degree of manipulation by flattery. This is just going one step further. I’d be interested to read his book. Anything to do with the mind is fascinating, isn’t it, telepathy and so on? I read that identical twins have it to a greater degree than other people, because their brain-waves are similar. When there’s a change of brain rhythm in one twin, a matching change occurs in the other. Weird really, as though genetically they were the same person.” She looked up with a smile. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this – you must know it already.”

  “We have our moments,” Philip said dryly. Moments of susceptibility too, I reflected with misgiving, for we should not have made our home in Crowthorpe had Janetta Lee not promised us such power here, nor striven so actively to achieve it. We were ourselves snared by a Macbeth prophecy.

  During that cold wet spring Madeleine, Philip and I drew a little closer but she still gave no sign that she might love me. I had to be content with held hands and brief, snatched kisses, and it was not enough. Sometimes I thought she seemed equally fond of Philip, and for the first time in my life found myself resenting him.

  “Did you know Philip’s twins have started school?” she said one day after the start of the new term. “Their elder sister’s in my class – Cora Smith. She’s a nice little thing but she insists on following me round all the time and she never stops talking! I suppose she doesn’t get much attention at home.”

  “It’s something that they come to school at all. Isn’t there an elder boy as well?”

  “Bobbie, yes. He’s with me too; there’s barely a year between them. They’re strange children. They seem younger than the rest in some ways but incredibly mature in others, probably because they’ve had to fend for themselves.”

  On the Sunday of half-term I found myself alone. Madeleine was spending the week in Lancaster and Philip had been called out to a difficult confinement. More from force of habit than any other reason I walked up to the Gemelly Circle in reflective mood. How quickly the years had passed since we’d first met Eve here and she’d told us about the Crowthorpe twins. She had known even then that we would stay. Once twins came to Crowthorpe they were unlikely ever to leave.

  At the back of my mind a long-forgotten memory stirred. Hadn’t she said, though, that first day, that one pair of twins had moved away? I felt suddenly that it was imperative I should learn about them. Leaning back against a stone, I closed my eyes and willed Eve to come to me, and twenty minutes later she appeared over the brow of the hill.

  “I hope this is important,” she greeted me. “Douglas was expecting me to mow the grass and he wasn’t best pleased when I announced I had to come out.”

  “I think it’s important, yes. Didn’t you tell us once that a pair of twins had moved away from here?”

  “That’s right, the Carters – Miss Sarah and Miss Jane. They’re in a mental home near Carnforth, poor loves; the same one as Mark Saunders.”

  I felt a sense of shock. “How long have they been unbalanced?”

  “All their lives, but they were pretty harmless. They lived here with their mother for many years. She didn’t die till she was over ninety, and she wouldn’t allow them to be sent away. Once she’d gone there was no-one to care for them, so they had to go.”

  “They must be quite elderly, then?”

  “In their sixties, certainly. Anita and I used to visit them fairly regularly at first. They were twins after all, and there weren’t any others then except the Marshalls, who were only toddlers. But since you and Philip came I’m afraid we’ve not bothered. I haven’t even thought about them for years. You make me feel guilty.”

  “How ill are they? What form does it take?”

  “Basically they’re just simple. They can’t talk properly – only a succession of grunts – and occasionally, through frustration I suppose, they have odd spells of violence. That was really why none of us could cope when their mother died. She was always able to calm them down.” She paused, looking round her. “They were very fond of the stones. They used to move round patting them and making those odd sounds. It gave you quite a funny feeling, as though they were actually – communicating with them.” She looked at me closely. “Why this sudden interest in the Carters?”

  “I think Philip and I should meet them.”

  “If you want to, of course. We can salve our own consciences at the same time. But why?”

  I said, “You didn’t by any chance try to reach them telepathically?”

  She stared at me, her eyes widening. “My God! Do you think – ?”

  “Did you?”

  “No, of course not. We never bothered much with that in those days. There were just odd flashes between Anita and me. Certainly it never occurred to us that –”

  “It might be worth a try.”

  “Matthew –” She hesitated. “I don’t want to risk hurting them in any way. I mean, if they got overexcited or anything –”

  “But couldn’t it be the most tremendous relief to them, if after all these years behind a barrier, they could suddenly communicate?”

  “I suppose it could, but that’s not the main reason you’re interested, is it? Nothing so altruistic!”

  I smiled a little. “How well you know me, Eve. It just occurred to me that here might lie another as yet untapped source of power.”

  Her answering smile faded. “Don’t you think we’ve enough already? So much, in fact, that we regularly have to – to empty it into the stones.”

  “The point is that we’ve no way of knowing how much we’ll need. We mustn’t overlook any opportunity of increasing it.”

  “But what will we need it for?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m up here I get an inkling, but it always fades before I can grasp it properly. I just know we must go on amassing it so that we’re not caught unprepared when the time comes.” She shivered. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. It frightens me.”

  “It frightens me too, but it has to be faced. How soon can you arrange a visit?”

  “Relatives go more or less any time, but I think other visitors are restricted to weekends. The patients get disturbed if there’s too much coming and going.”

  “Then shall we make it next Saturday? We can all drive down together.”

  The week that followed seemed to crawl past. It was incredible that my subconsciou
s should have allowed me to overlook the Carter twins for so long, and I was impatient now to rectify the omission. Consequently I was absent-minded even with Madeleine, and finally, sitting on the grass of the playing field one lunch hour, she tugged at my sleeve.

  “Matthew, will you please listen to me!”

  “Sorry, darling. What did you say?”

  “I was telling you about Cora. I mentioned before how she keeps chattering all the time.”

  “So?”

  “I never really bothered to listen but when I did I had a shock. It was about the twins, Davy and Kim.”

  She had my attention at last. “Yes?”

  “They seem to get up to some very nasty tricks, particularly for such young children. They ought to be stopped, though I’m not sure how.”

  “What do they do, Maddy?”

  “For one thing they catch small animals – with their bare hands, I gather – and cut their throats in some grotesque kind of ceremony and smear the blood over the stones in the Circle.”

  I stared at her, my own blood suddenly thundering in my ears. “Cora told you that?”

  “In passing, yes. She didn’t seem to attach much importance to it. And apparently there’s a most peculiar atmosphere between the twins and the old woman up there. Is she their grandmother? The twins told Cora that she’d tried to kill them once, but you know how children exaggerate. They were probably only trying to make an impression.”

  In the recesses of my mind I saw again the small damp bundles wrapped in my jacket and Philip’s. “Probably,” I agreed out of a dry mouth.

  “It doesn’t seem a very healthy environment for children to grow up in,” Madeleine went on. “I hate to think of those poor little animals, quite apart from the effect it must be having on the twins themselves. Since Philip seems to have so much influence with them, I was wondering if you’d ask him to speak to them.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

  As I’d anticipated, Philip was greatly excited to learn of the doings of his protégés. “So that’s what they get up to, the little devils!” he exclaimed, with an unmistakable note of pride in his voice. “I wonder what the significance is. Blood for the stones to replace the old-time sacrifices? I’ll ask them about it but they won’t tell me anything they don’t want to and they’re very adept at raising the mental block in a flash to prevent any probing.”