“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.
Chapter 6
FULL HOUSE
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?”
They said no, you didn’t, and the discussion ended.
The day turned out to be unseasonably muggy and exhausting. Not a breath of wind, the sky overcast, and a suggestion of thunder. “On the left,” said Gaston as he prepared to supervise the morning’s fight. “Thunder on the left meant trouble in Roman times. The gods rumbling, you know.”
“They ought to have heard you,” said Dougal rudely. “That would have pulled them up in their tracks.”
“Come on,” said Simon. “Let’s press on with it. We’ve got a matinee, remember.”
Wearily, they took their places and fought.
“You are dragging. Dragging!” Gaston shouted. “Stop. It is worse than not doing it at all. Again, from the beginning.”
“Have a heart, Gaston. It’s a deadly day for these capers,” said Simon.
“I am merciless. Come. Begin. A tempo. Er — one —”
“No!” Dougal said in an access of irritability. “It’s too hot and this is needless and I will — not — do — it.” He flung down his claymore and stomped off.
Gaston, for once silent, picked up the claymore.
“Now see what your damn gods have rumbled,” said Simon crossly and went off after Dougal.
Peregrine was taking Crispin and Robin, aged fifteen and nine, to the evening performance. Richard, being thought a little young, at seven, for Macbeth, was going to a farce with his mother.
“Is it bloody?” Richard asked ruefully.
“Very,” Peregrine replied firmly.
“Extra special bloody?”
“It is.”
“I’d like that. Is it going to run a long time?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps I’ll grow up into it.”
“Perhaps you will.”
Emily took a taxi and she and Richard sailed off together, looking excited. Peregrine and the two older boys took their car. Crispin’s form at school was working on Macbeth and he asked a great many questions that Peregrine supposed were necessary and that he answered to the best of his ability. Presently, Crispin said: “Old Perky says you ought to feel a great weight’s been shifted off your shoulders at the end. When Macduff sort of actually lifts Macbeth’s head off and young Malcolm comes in for king.”
“I hope you’ll feel like that.”
“Does the lights man have to allow an exact time lag be-tween cue and performance?” asked Robin, who at the moment wanted to become an electrical engineer.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I’ve forgotten. About one second, I think.”
“Cripes.”
“I’m not sure. We can go round after the play and you can ask our lighting man.”
“Right!” said Robin happily.