Ngaio Marsh - Light Thickens

“Nothing,” said Peregrine when he had gone, “succeeds like success.” He looked at Emily’s excited face. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “On a night like this one should not think forward or back. I found myself imagining what it would have been like if we’d flopped.”

“Don’t. I know what you mean but don’t put the stars out.”

“No husbandry in our Heaven, tonight?” He reached out a hand. “It’s a bargain,” he said.

“A bargain. It’s because you’re hungry.”

“You may be right.”

An hour later he said she was a clever old trout. They had a cognac each to prove it and began to talk about the play.

“Gaston,” Peregrine said, “may be dotty but he’s pretty good where he is tonight, wouldn’t you say?”

“Exactly right. He’s like death itself, presiding over its feast.”

“You don’t think we’ve gone too far with him?”

“Not an inch.”

“Good. Winty says it’ll run for as long as Dougal and Maggie can take it.”

“That’s a matter of temperament, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. For Maggie, certainly. She’s rock-calm and perfectly steady. It’s Dougal who surprises me. I’d expected a good, even a harrowing, performance but not so deeply frightening a one. He’s got that superb golden-reddish appearance and I thought, we must be very clever about makeup so that the audience will see it disintegrate. But, upon my soul, he does disintegrate, he is bewitched, he has become the devil’s puppet. I began, even, to wonder if it was all right or if it might be embarrassing, as if he’d discarded his persona and we’d come face to face with his naked personal collapse. Which would be dreadful and wrong. But no. It hasn’t happened. He’s come near the brink in the last scene, but he’s still Macbeth. Thanks to Gaston, he fights like a man possessed but always with absolute control. And so — evilly. For Macduff, it’s like stamping out some horror that’s lain under a stone waiting for him.”

“And his whole performance?”

“If I could scratch about for something wrong I would. But no, he’s going great guns. The straightforward avenger.”

“I think he plays the English scene beautifully. I’m sorry,” said Emily. “I wish I could find something wrong and out-of-key or wanting readjustment somewhere but I can’t. Your problem will be to keep them up to this level.”

They talked on. Presently the door into the servery opened and their waiter came in with an armful of Sunday papers.

Peregrine’s heart suddenly thumped against his ribs. He took up the top one and flipped over the pages.

At Last!

A Flawless Macbeth!

And two rave columns.

Emily saw his open paper trembling in his hands. She went through the remaining ones, folding them back at the dramatic criticisms.

“This is becoming ridiculous,” she said.

He made a strange little sound of agreement. She shoved the little pile of papers over to him. “They’re all the same, allowing for stylistic differences.”

“We’ll go home. We’re the only ones left. Poor Marcello!”

He lowered his paper and folded it. Emily saw that his eyes were red. “I can’t get over it,” he said. “It’s too much.”

He signed his bill and added an enormous tip. They were bowed out.

The Embankment was being washed down. Great fans of water swept to and fro. In the east, buildings were silhouetted against a kindling sky. London was waking up.

They drove home, let themselves in, and went to bed and a fathomless sleep.

The first member of the company to wake on Sunday was William Smith. He consulted his watch, dragged on his clothes, gave a lick to his face, and let himself out by the front door. Every Sunday at the end of their little lane, a newsman set up his wares on a flight of steps in a major traffic road. He trustfully left his customers to put the right amount in a tin, helping themselves to change when required. He kept an eye on them from the Kaff on the Korner.

William had provided himself with the exact sum. Mr. Barnes, he recollected, had said something about the “quality” papers being the ones that mattered. He purchased the most expensive and turned to the headlines.

At Last!

A Flawless Macbeth!

William read it all the way home. It was glorious. At the end it said: “The smallest parts have been given the same loving attention. A pat on the head is here awarded to Master William Smith for totally avoiding the Infant Phenomenon.”

William charged upstairs shouting: “Mum! Are you awake? Hi, Mum! What’s an Infant Phenomenon? Because I’ve avoided one.”

By midday they had all read the notices and by evening most of them had rung up somebody else in the company and they were all delighted but feeling a sort of anticlimactic emptiness. The only thing left to say was: “Now we must keep it up, mustn’t we?”

Barrabell went to a meeting of the Red Fellowship. He was asked to report on his tasks. He said the actors had been too much occupied to listen to new ideas but now that they were clearly set for a long run he would embark on stage two and hoped to have more to report at the next meeting. It was a case of making haste slowly. They were all, he said, soaked up to their eyebrows in a lot of silly superstitions that had grown up around the play. He had wondered if anything could be made of this circumstance but nothing had emerged other than a highly wrought state of emotional receptivity. The correct treatment would be to attack this unprofitable nonsense.

Shakespeare, he said, was a very confused writer. His bourgeois origins distorted his thought-processes.

Maggie stayed in bed all day and Nanny answered the telephone.

Sir Dougal lunched at the Garrick Club and soaked up congratulations without showing too blatantly his intense gratification.

Simon Morten rang up Maggie and got Nanny.

King Duncan spent the afternoon cutting out notices and pasting them in his fourth book.

Nina Gaythorne got out all her remedies and good-luck objects and kissed them. This took some time as she lost count and had to begin all over again.

Malcolm and Donalbain got blamelessly drunk.

The speaking thanes and the witches all dined with Ross and his wife, bringing their own bottles, and talked shop.

The Doctor and the Gentlewoman were rung up by their friends and were touchingly excited.

The nonspeaking thanes dispersed into various unknown quarters.

And Gaston? He retired to his baleful house in Dulwich and wrote a number of indignant letters to those papers whose critics had referred to the weapons used in the duel as swords or claymores instead of claidheamh-mors.

Emily answered their telephone and, by a system they had perfected, either called Peregrine or said he was out but would be delighted to know they had rung up.

So the day passed by and the evening and on Monday morning they pulled themselves together and got down to the theatre and to the business of facing the second night and a long run of Macbeth .

It had been running to full houses for two weeks. There had been no more silly tricks and the actors had settled down to the successful run of the play. Peregrine no longer came down to every performance but on this Saturday night he was bringing his two older boys, home for half-term. He had a meeting with the management about how long the season should run and whether, for the actors’ sakes, after six months they should make a change and, if so, what that change should be.

“We don’t need to worry about it if we decide to have a Shakespeare rep. season: say Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure . With Macbeth ,” said Peregrine, “We’ll just keep it in mind. You never know what may turn up, do you?”