Light Thickens

‘Of course. I can’t lift the thing off the floor without puffing and blowing. Gaston brought one down for us to try.’

‘He’s actually making the ones you’re going to use, isn’t he? Couldn’t he cheat and use lighter material or papier-mâché for the hilt or something?’

‘My dear, no good at all. It would upset the balance.’

‘Well, do be careful,’ said Maggie vaguely.

‘Of course. The thing is that the blades won’t be sharp at all. Blunt as blunt. But if one of us was actually hit, it would break his bones.’

‘Really?’

‘To smithereens,’ said Dougal. ‘I promise you.’

‘I think you’re going to look very silly, the two of you, floundering about. You’ll get laughs. I can think of all sorts of things that might go wrong.’

‘Such as?’

‘One of you making a swipe and missing and the claymore getting stuck in the scenery.’

‘It’s going to be very short. In time. Only a half-minute or so. He backs away into the OP corner and I roar after him. Simon’s a very powerful man, by the by. He picked the claymore up in a dégagée manner and then he spun round and couldn’t stop and got a way on, hanging on to it, looking absolutely terrified. That was funny,’ said Dougal. ‘I laughed like anything at old Si.’

‘Well, don’t, Dougal. He’s very sensitive.’

‘Oh, pooh. Listen, sweetie. We’re called for eight-thirty, aren’t we? I suggest we go to my restaurant on the Embankment for a light meal and we’ll be ready for the blood and thunder. How does that strike you? With a dull thud or pleasurably?’

‘Not a large, sinking dinner before work? And nothing to drink?’

‘A dozen oysters and some thin brown bread and butter?’

‘Delicious.’

‘Good,’ said Dougal.

‘By “settle our relationship” you refer exclusively to the Macbeths, of course.’

‘Do I? Well, so be it. For the time being,’ he said coolly, and drove on without further comment until they crossed the river, turned into a tangle of little streets emerging finally in Savoy Minor, and stopped.

‘I’ve taken the flat for the duration. It belongs to Teddy Somerset who’s in the States for a year,’ said Dougal.

‘It’s a smashing façade.’

‘Very Regency, isn’t it? Let’s go inside. Come on.’

So they went in.

It was a sumptuous interior presided over by a larger-than-life nude efficiently painted in an extreme of realism. Maggie gave it a quick look, sat underneath it and said: ‘There are just one or two things I’d like to get sorted out. They’ve discussed the murder of Duncan before the play opens. That’s clear enough. But always it’s been “if” and “suppose”, never until now, “He’s coming here. It’s now or never.” Agreed?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s only been something to talk about. Never calling for a decision. Or for anything real.’

‘No. And now it does, and he’s face to face with it, he’s appalled.’

‘As she knows he will be. She knows that without her egging him on he’d never do it. So what has she got that will send him into it? Plans. Marvellous plans, yes. But he won’t go beyond talking about plans. Sex. Perry said so the first day. Shakespeare had to be careful about sex because of the boy actor. But we don’t.’

‘We certainly do not,’ he said. He moved behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Do you realize,’ Maggie said, ‘how short their appearances together are? And how beaten she is after the banquet scene? I think, once she’s rid of those damned thanes and is left with her mumbling, shattered lion of a husband and they go dragging upstairs to the bed they cannot sleep in, she knows that all that’s left for her to do is shut up. The next and last time we see her she’s talking disastrously in her sleep. Really it’s quite a short part, you know.’

‘How far am I affected by her collapse, do you think?’ he asked. ‘Do I notice it? Or by that time am I determined to give myself over to idiotic killing?’

‘I think you are.’ She turned to look at him and something in her manner of doing this made him withdraw his already possessive hand. She stood up and moved away.

‘I think I’ll just ring up the Wig and Piglet for a table,’ he said abruptly.

‘Yes, do.’

When he had done this she said: ‘I’ve been looking at the imagery. There’s an awful lot about clothes being too big and heavy. I see Jeremy’s emphasizing that and I’m glad. Great walloping cloaks that can’t be contained by a belt. Heavy crowns. We have to consciously fill them. You much more than I, of course. I fade out. But the whole picture is nightmarish.’

‘How do you see me, Maggie?’

‘My dear! As a falling star. A magnificent, violently ambitious being, destroyed by his own imagination. It’s a cosmic collapse. Monstrous events attend it. The Heavens themselves are in revolt. Horses eat each other.’

Dougal breathed in deeply. Up went his chin. His eyes, startlingly blue, flashed under his tawny brows. He was six feet one inch in height and looked more.

‘That’s the stuff,’ said Maggie. ‘I think you’ll want to make it very, very Scots, Highland Scots. They’ll call you The Red Macbeth,’ she added, a little hurriedly. ‘It is your very own name, sweetie, isn’t it – Dougal Macdougal?’

‘Oh, aye. It’s ma’ given name.’

‘That’s the ticket, then.’

They fell into a discussion of whether he should, in fact, use the dialect, and decided against it as it would entail all the other lairds doing so too.

‘Just porters and murderers, then,’ said Maggie. ‘If Perry says so, of course. You won’t catch me doing it.’ She tried it out. ‘“Come tae ma wummen’s breasts and tak’ ma milk for gall.” Really, it doesn’t sound too bad.’

‘Let’s have one tiny little drink to it. Do say yes, Maggie.’

‘All right. Yes. The merest suggestion, though.’

‘OK. Whisky? Wait a moment.’

He went to the end of the room and pressed a button. Two doors rolled apart, revealing a little bar.

‘Good Heavens!’ Maggie exclaimed.

‘I know. Rather much, isn’t it? But that’s Teddy’s taste.’

She went over to the bar and perched on a high stool. He found the whisky and soda and talked about his part. ‘I hadn’t thought big enough,’ he said. ‘A great, faulty giant. Yes. Yes, you’re right about it, of course. Of course.’