Light Thickens

VII

It was the Angus’s birthday. He, Ross, and the rest of the lairds and the three witches were not called for the evening’s rehearsal. They arranged with other free members of the cast to meet at the Swan in Southwark, and drink Angus’s health.

They arrived in twos and threes and it was quite late by the time the witches, who had been rehearsing in the afternoon, came in. Two girls and a man. The man (First Witch) was a part-Maori called Rangi Western, not very dark but with the distinctive short upper lip and flashing eyes. He had a beautiful voice and was a prize student from LAMDA. The second witch was a nondescript thin girl called Wendy possessed of a remarkable voice: harsh, with strange unexpected intervals. The third was a lovely child, a white-blonde, delicate, with enormous eyes and a babyish high-pitched voice. She was called Blondie.

Their rehearsal had excited them. They came in talking loudly. ‘Rangi, you were marvellous. You sent cold shivers down my spine. Truly. And that movement! I thought Perry would stop you but he didn’t. The stamp. It was super. We’ve got to do it, Wendy, along with Rangi. His tongue. And his eyes. Everything.’

‘I thought it was fabulous giving us the parts. I mean the difference! Usually they all look alike and are too boring for words – all masks and mumbles. But we’re really evil.’

‘Angus!’ they shouted. ‘Happy birthday, love. Bless you.’

Now they had all arrived. The witches were the centre of attention. Rangi was not very talkative but the two girls excitedly described his performance at rehearsal.

‘He was standing with us, listening to Perry’s description, weren’t you, Rangi? Perry was saying we have to be the incarnation of evil. Not a drop of goodness anywhere about us. How did he put it, Wendy?’

‘“Trembling with animosity”,’ said Wendy.

‘Yes. And I was standing by Rangi and I felt him tremble, I swear I did.’

‘You did, didn’t you, Rangi? Tremble?’

‘Sort of,’ Rangi mumbled. ‘Don’t make such a thing about it.’

‘No, but you were marvellous. You sort of grunted and bent your knees. And your face! Your tongue! And eyes!’

‘Anyway, Perry was completely taken with it and asked him to repeat it and asked us to do it – not too much. Just a kind of ripple of hatred. It’s going to work, you know.’

‘Putting a curse on him. That’s what it is, Rangi, isn’t it?’

‘Have a drink, Rangi, and show us.’

Rangi made a brusque dismissive gesture and turned away to greet the Angus.

The men closed round him. They were none of them quite drunk, but they were noisy. The members of the company now far outnumbered the other patrons, who had taken their drinks to a table in the corner of the room and looked on with ill-concealed interest.

‘It’s my round,’ Angus shouted. ‘I’m paying, all you guys. No arguments. Yes, I insist. “That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold,”’ he shouted.

His voice faded out and so, raggedly, did all the others. Blondie’s giggle persisted and died. A single voice – Angus’s – asked uncertainly: ‘What’s up? Oh. Oh hell! I’ve quoted from the play. Never mind. Sorry, everybody. Drink up.’

They drank in silence. Rangi drained his pint of mild and bitter. Angus nodded to the barman, who replaced it with another. Angus mimed pouring in something else and laid an uncertain finger on his lips. The barman winked and added a tot of gin. He pushed the drink over towards Rangi’s hand. Rangi’s back was turned but he felt the glass, looked round and saw it.

‘Is that mine?’ he asked, puzzled.

They all seized on this. They said confusedly that of course it was his drink. It was something to make a fuss about, something that would make them all forget about Angus’s blunder. They betted Rangi wouldn’t drink it down then and there. So Rangi did. There was a round of applause.

‘Show us, Rangi. Show us what you did. Don’t say anything, just show.’

‘E-e-e-uh!’ he shouted suddenly. He slapped his knees and stamped. He grimaced, his eyes glittered and his tongue whipped in and out. He held his umbrella before him like a spear and it was not funny.

It only lasted a few seconds.

They applauded and asked him what it meant and was he ‘weaving a spell’. He said no, nothing like that. His eyes were glazed. ‘I’ve had a little too much to drink,’ he said. ‘I’ll go, now. Good night, all of you.’

They objected. Some of them hung on to him but they did it half-heartedly. He brushed them off. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t have taken that drink. I’m no good with drinking.’ He pulled some notes out of his pocket and shoved them across the bar. ‘My round,’ he said. ‘Good night, all.’

He walked quickly to the swing doors, lost his balance and regained it.

‘You all right?’ Angus asked.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Far from it.’

He walked into the doors. They swung out and he went with them. They saw him pull up, look stiffly to right and left, raise his umbrella in a magnificent gesture, get into the taxi that responded and disappear.

‘He’s all right,’ said one of the lairds. ‘He’s got a room round here.’

‘Nice chap.’

‘Very nice.’

‘I’ve heard, I don’t know who told me, mark you,’ said Angus, ‘that drink has a funny effect on Maori people. Goes straight to their heads and they revert to their savage condition.’

‘Rangi hasn’t,’ said Ross. ‘He’s gone grand.’

‘He did when he performed that dance or whatever it was,’ said the actor who played Menteith.

‘You know what I think,’ said the Ross. ‘I think he was upset when you quoted.’

‘It’s all a load of old bullshit, anyway,’ said a profound voice in the background.

This provoked a confused expostulation that came to its climax when the Menteith roared out: ‘Thass all very fine but I bet you wouldn’t call the play by its right name. Would you do that?’

Silence.

‘There you are!’

‘Only because it’d upset the rest of you.’

‘Yah!’ they all said.

The Ross, an older man who was sober, said: ‘I think it’s silly to talk about it. We feel as we do in different ways. Why not just accept that and stop nattering?’

‘Somebody ought to write a book about it,’ said Wendy.

‘There is a book called The Curse of Macbeth by Richard Huggett.’

They finished their drinks. The party had gone flat.

‘Call it a day, chaps?’ suggested Ross.

‘That’s about the strength of it,’ Menteith agreed.

The nameless and lineless thanes noisily concurred and gradually they drifted out.

Ross said to the Angus: ‘Come on, old fellow, I’ll see you home.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve overstepped the mark. Sorry. “We were carousing till the second cock.” Oh dear, there I go again.’ He made a shaky attempt to cross himself. ‘I’m OK,’ he said.

‘Of course you are.’

‘Right you are, then. Good night, Porter,’ he said to the barman.

‘Good night, sir.’

They went out.

‘Actors,’ said one of the guests.

‘That’s right, sir,’ the barman agreed, collecting their glasses.

‘What was that they were saying about some superstition? I couldn’t make head or tail of it.’

‘They make out it’s unlucky to quote from this play. They don’t use the title either.’

‘Silly sods,’ remarked another.

‘They take it for gospel.’

‘Probably some publicity stunt by the author.’

The barman grunted.

‘What is the name of the play, then?’

‘Macbeth.’

VIII

Rehearsals for the duel had begun and were persisted in remorselessly. At 9.30 every morning Dougal Macdougal and Simon Morten, armed with weighted wooden claymores, sloshed and banged away at each other in a slow dance superintended by a merciless Gaston.

The whole affair, step by step, blow by blow, had been planned down to the last inch. Both men suffered agonies from the remorseless strain on muscles unaccustomed to such exercise. They sweated profusely. The Anvil Chorus, out of tune, played slowly on a gramophone, ground out a lugubrious, a laborious, a nightmare-like accompaniment, made more hateful by Gaston humming, also out of tune.

The relationship between the three men was, from the first, uneasy. Dougal tended to be facetious. ‘What ho, varlet. Have at thee, miscreant,’ he would cry.

The Macduff – Morten – did not respond to these sallies. He was ominously polite and glum to a degree. When Dougal swung at him, lost his balance and ran, as it were, after his own weapon, wild-eyed, an expression of great concern upon his face, Morten allowed himself a faint sneer. When Dougal finally tripped and fell in a sitting position with a sickening thud, the sneer deepened.

‘The balance!’ Gaston screamed. ‘How many times must I insist? If you lose the balance of your weapon you lose your own balance and end up looking foolish. As now.’

Dougal rose. With some difficulty and using his claymore as a prop.

‘No!’ chided Gaston. ‘It is to be handled with respect, not dug into the floor and climbed up.’

‘This is merely a dummy. Why should I respect it?’

‘It weighs exactly the same as the claidheamh-mor.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Again! We begin at the beginning. Again! Up! Weakling!’

‘I am not accustomed,’ said Dougal magnificently, ‘to being treated in this manner.’

‘No? Forgive me, Sir Dougal. And let me tell you that I, Gaston Sears, am not accustomed to conducting myself like a mincing dancing master, Sir Dougal. It is only because this fight is to be performed before audiences of discrimination, with weapons that are the precise replicas of the original claidheamh-mor, that I have consented to teach you.’

‘If you ask me we’d get on a lot better if we faked the whole bloody show. Oh, all right, all right,’ Dougal amended, answering the really alarming expression that contorted Gaston’s face. ‘I give in. Let’s get on with it. Come on.’

‘Come on,’ echoed Morten. ‘“Thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out.”’

Whack. Bang. Down came his claymore, caught on Macbeth’s shield. ‘Te-tum. Te-tum. Te – Disengage,’ shouted Gaston. ‘Macbeth sweeps across. Macduff leaps over the blade. Te-tum-tum. This is better. This is an improvement. You have achieved the rhythm. We take it now a little faster.’

‘Faster! My God, you’re killing us.’

‘You handle your weapon like a peasant. Look. I show you. Here, give it me.’

Dougal, using both hands, threw the claymore at him. With great dexterity, he caught it by the hilt, twirled it and held it before him, pointed at Dougal.

‘Hah!’ he shouted. ‘Hah and hah again.’ He lunged, changed his grip and swept his weapon up – and down.

Dougal leapt to one side. ‘Christ Almighty!’ he cried. ‘What are you doing?’

Grimacing abominably, Gaston brought the heavy claymore up in a conventional salute.

‘Handling my weapon, Sir Dougal. And you will do so before I have finished with you.’

Dougal whispered.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You’ve got the strength of the devil, Gaston.’

‘No. It is a matter of balance and rhythm more than strength. Come, we take the first exchange a tempo. Yes, a tempo. Come.’

He offered the claymore ceremoniously to Dougal, who took it and heaved it up into a salute.

‘Good! We progress. One moment.’

He went to the gramophone and altered the timing. ‘Listen,’ he said, and switched it on. Out came the Anvil Chorus, remorselessly truthful as if rejoicing in its own restoration. Gaston switched it off. ‘That is our timing.’ He turned to Simon Morten. ‘Ready, Mr Morten?’

‘Quite ready.’

‘The cue, if you please.’

‘“Thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out.”’

And the fight was a fight. There was rhythm and there was timing. For a minute and a quarter all went well and at the end the two men, pouring sweat, leaning on their weapons, breathless, waited for his comment.

‘Good. There were mistakes but they were comparatively small. Now, while we are warm and limbered up we do it once more but without the music. Yes. You are recovered? Good.’

‘We are not recovered,’ Dougal panted.

‘This is the last effort for today. Come. I count the beats. Without music. The cue.’

‘“Thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out.”’

Bang. Pause. Bang. Pause. And Bangle-bangle-bang. Pause. They got through it but only just and they were really cooked at the end.

‘Good,’ said Gaston. ‘Tomorrow. Same time. I thank you, gentlemen.’

He bowed and left.

Morten, his black curls damp and the tangled mat of hair on his chest gleaming, vigorously towelled himself. Sir Dougal, tawny, fair-skinned, drenched in sweat and breathing hard, reached for his own towel and feebly dabbed at his chest.

‘We did it,’ he said. ‘I’m flattened but we did it.’

Morten grunted and pulled on his shirt and sweater.

‘You’d better get something warm on,’ he said. ‘Way to catch cold.’

‘Night after night after night. Have you thought of that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do I do it! Why do I submit myself! I ask myself: Why?’

Morten grunted.

‘I’ll speak to Perry about it. I’ll demand insurance.’

‘For which bit of you?’

‘For all of me. The thing’s ridiculous. A good fake and we’d have them breathless.’

‘Instead of which we’re breathless ourselves,’ said Morten and took himself off. It was the nearest approach to a conversation that they had enjoyed.

So ended the first week of rehearsals.