“Flash of lightning,” said Peregrine. “And two caterwauls. Fog, lots of it.”
“… hover through the fog and filthy air.”
“Blackout! Catch them in midair still going up. Split-second cue. Hold blackout for scene change. Witches!Ask them to come on, will you, someone?”
“We heard you,” said a voice, Rangi’s. “We’re coming.” He and the two girls came on from behind the rostrum.
“There’ll have to be means for a quick exit from behind in the blackout. Okay? Charlie there?”
“Okay,” said the assistant stage manager, coming onstage.
“Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Any questions? Rangi, are the mattresses all right?”
“I was all right. What about you two?”
“All right that time,” said Wendy. “We might sprain an ankle.”
“Fall soft, lie flat, and crawl off,” said Peregrine. “Wait a bit.” He used his makeshift steps to the stage and ran up onto the rostrum. “Like this,” he said, and jumped high. He fell out of sight with a soft thud.
“We’ll have to deal with that,” said the effects man. “How about the muffled drum again?”
There followed a complete silence. Wendy on the edge of the rostrum looked over. Perry looked up at her.
“All right?” she asked.
“Perfectly,” he said in a strange voice. “I won’t be a moment. Next scene. Clear stage.”
They moved away. Peregrine gingerly explored his left side, swearing under his breath. Below the ribs. Around the hip. Nothing broken but a hellishly sore bruise. He crept up into a kneeling position on the tarpaulin-covered mattress and from there saw what had happened. Under the tarpaulin was an unmistakable shape, cruciform, bumpy, with the hilt tailing out into the long blade. He felt it: undoubtedly a claymore. A wooden claymore, discarded since they had begun using the steel replicas of the original.
He got painfully to his feet and, holding his bruise, stumbled onto the clear area behind the scenery. “Charlie?”
“Here, sir.”
“Charlie, come here. There’s a dummy claymore under the cover. Don’t say anything about it. I don’t want anyone to know it’s there. Mark the position with chalk and then move it out and tuck the cover back in position. Understand?”
“I got you.”
“If they know it’s there, they’ll start talking a lot of nonsense.”
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Perfectly,” said Peregrine. “Just a jolt.”
He straightened up and drew in his breath. “Right,” he said and walked onstage and down to his improvised desk in the auditorium.
“Call Scene Three,” he said and sank into his seat.
“Scene Three,” called the assistant stage manager. “Witches. Macbeth. Banquo.”
Scene Three was pretty thoroughly rehearsed. The witches came in from separate spots and met onstage. Rangi contrived an excretion of venom in voice and face, egged on by moans of pleasure from his sisters. Enter Macbeth and Banquo. Trouble. Banquo’s position. He felt he should be on a higher level. He could not see Macbeth’s face. On and on in his beautiful voice. Peregrine, exquisitely uncomfortable and feeling rather sick, dealt with him, only just keeping his temper.
“The ladies will vanish as they did before. They get up to position on their Banquo and Macbeth, all hail.”
“May I interrupt?” fluted Banquo.
“No,” said Peregrine over a vicious stab of pain. “You may not. Later, dear boy. On, please.”
The scene continued with Banquo disconcerted, silver-voiced, and ominously well behaved.
Macbeth was halfway through his soliloquy. “Present fears,” he said, “are less than horrible imaginings and if the gentleman with the fetching laugh would be good enough to shut his silly trap my thought whose murder yet is but fantastical will probably remain so.”
He was removed by the total width and much of the depth of the stage from Banquo, who had been placed in a tactful conversation with the other lairds as far away as possible from the soliloquist and had burst into a peal of jolly laughter and slapped the disconcerted Ross on his shoulders.
“Cut the laugh, Bruce,” said Peregrine. “It distracts. Pipe down. On.”
The scene ended as written by the author and with the barely concealed merriment of Ross and Angus.
Dougal went into the auditorium to apologize to Peregrine. Banquo affected innocence. “Cauldron Scene,” Peregrine called.
Afterward he wondered how he got through the rest of the rehearsal. Luckily the actors and apparitions were pretty solid and it was a matter of making the lighting manager and the effects man acquainted with what would be expected of them.
The cauldron would be in the passage under the steps up to what had been Duncan’s room. A door, indistinguishable when shut, would shut at the disappearance of the cauldron and witches amidst noise, blackout, and a great display of dry-ice fog and galloping hooves. Full lighting and Lennox tapping with his sword hilt at the door.
“You’ve seen our side of it,” Peregrine said to the effects man. “It’s up to you to interpret. Go home, have a think. Then come and tell me. Right?”
“Right. I say,” said the effects man, “that kid’s good, isn’t he?”
“Yes, isn’t he?” said Peregrine. “If you’ll excuse me, I want a word with Charlie. Thank you so much. Good-bye till we three meet again. Sooner the better.”
“Yes, indeed.”
The men left. Peregrine mopped his face. I’d better get out of this, he thought, and wondered if he could drive.
It was not yet four-thirty. Banquo was not in sight and the traffic had not thickened. His car was in the yard. To hell with everything, thought Peregrine. He said to the assistant stage manager: “I want to get off, Charlie. Have you fixed it up? The sword?”
“It’s okay. Are you all right?”
“It’s just a bruise. No breakages. You’ll lock up?”
“Sure!”
He went out with Peregrine, opened the car door, and watched him in.
“Are you all right? Can you drive?”
“Yes.”
“Saturday tomorrow.”
“That’s the story, Charlie. Thank you. Don’t talk about this, will you? It’s their silly superstition.”
“I don’t talk,” said Charlie. “Are you all right?”
He was, or nearly so, when he settled. He could manage. Charlie watched him out of the yard. Along the Embankment, over the bridge, and then turn right and right again.
When he got there he was going to sound his horn. To his surprise, Emily came out of their house and ran down the steps to the car. “I thought you’d never get here,” she cried. And then: “Darling, what’s wrong?”
“Give me a bit of a prop. I’ve bruised myself. Nothing serious.”
“Right you are. Here we go, then. Which is the side?”
“The other. Here we go.”
He clung to her, slid out, and stood holding onto the car. She shut and locked the door.
“Shall I get a stick or will you use me?”
“I’ll use you, love, if you don’t mind.”
“Away we go, then.”
They staggered up the steps. Emily got the giggles. “If Mrs. Sleigh next door sees us she’ll think we’re tight,” she said.
“You needn’t help me, after all. Once I’ve straightened up I’m okay. My legs are absolutely right. Let go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course,” he said. He straightened up and gave a short howl. “Absolutely all right,” he said and walked rather quickly up the steps into the house and fell into an armchair. Emily went to the telephone.