table, switched on the lamp and sat down.
He took a minute or two, reading his notes and seeing they were in order.
‘It’s awfully stuffy in here,’ said Maggie suddenly. ‘Breathless, sort of. Does anybody else think so?’
‘The weather’s changed,’ said Dougal. ‘It’s got much warmer.’
Blondie said: ‘I hope it’s not a beastly thunderstorm.’
‘Why?’
‘They give me the willies.’
‘That comes well from a witch!’
‘It’s electrical. I get pins and needles. I can’t help it.’
Ascendant thunder, startling, close, everywhere, rolled up to a sharp definitive crack. Blondie screamed.
‘Sorry!’ she said. She put her fingers in her ears. ‘I can’t help it. Truly. Sorry.’
‘Never mind, child. Come over here,’ said Maggie. She held out her hand. Blondie, answering the gesture rather than the words, ran across and crouched beside her chair.
Rangi said: ‘It’s true, she can’t help it. It affects some people like that.’
Peregrine looked up from his notes. ‘What’s up?’ he asked and then, seeing Blondie: ‘Oh. Oh, I see. Never mind, Blondie. We can’t see the lightning, can we, and the whole thing’ll be over soon. Brace up, there’s a good girl.’
‘Yes. OK.’
She straightened up. Maggie patted her shoulder. Her hand checked and then closed. She looked at the other players, made a long face, and briefly quivered her free hand at them.
‘Are you cold, Blondie?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think so. No. I’m all right. Thank you. Ah!’ she gave a little cry.
There was another roll of thunder; not so close, less precipitant.
‘It’s moving away,’ said Maggie.
It died out in an indeterminate series of three or four thuds and bumps. Then, without warning, the sky opened and the rain crashed down.
‘Overture and Beginners, please,’ Dougal quoted and got his laugh.
By the time, about an hour later, Peregrine had finished his notes and recapped the faulty passages, the rain had stopped almost as abruptly as it began and the actors left the theatre on a calm night with stars shining: brilliant, above the rain-washed air. London glittered. A sense of urgency and excitement was abroad and when Peregrine whistled the opening phrase of a Brandenburg Concerto it might have been a whole orchestra giving it out.
‘Come back to my flat for an hour, Maggie,’ said Dougal. ‘It’s too lovely a night to go home on.’
‘No, thank you, Dougal. I’m tired and hungry and I’ve ordered a car and here it is. Good night.’
Peregrine saw them all go their ways. Still whistling, he walked downhill and only then noticed that a little derelict shed on the waterfront lay in a heap of rubble.
I hadn’t realized it had been demolished, he thought.
Next morning, a workman operating a scoop-lift pointed to a black scar on one of the stones.
‘See that,’ he said cheerfully to Peregrine. ‘That’s the mark of the Devil’s thumb, that is. You don’t often see it. Not nowadays you don’t.’
‘The Devil’s thumb?’
‘That’s right, Squire. Lightning.’
II
Simon Morten had taken the part of Macduff by storm. His dark good looks and dashing, easy mockery of the porter on his first entrance with Lennox, his assertion of his hereditary right to wake his king, his cheerful run up the stairs whistling as he went into the bloodied chamber while Lennox warmed himself at the fire and talked cosily about the wild intemperance of the night, all gave him an easy ascendancy.
Macbeth listened, but not to him.
The door opened. Macduff stumbled on stage, incoherent, ashen-faced, the former man wiped out as if by the sweep of the murderer’s hand. The stirred-up havoc, the alarum bell, the place alive suddenly with the horror of assassination. The courtyard filled with men roused from their sleep, nightgowns hastily pulled on, wild and dishevelled. The bell jangling madly.
The scene ends with the flight of the King’s sons. Thereafter, in a short final scene, Macduff, already suspicious, decides not to attend Macbeth’s coronation but to retire to his own headquarters at Fife. It is here that he will make his fatal decision to turn south to England, where he will learn of the murder of his wife and children. From then on he will be a man with a single object: to return to Scotland, find Macbeth and kill him.
Once Banquo has been murdered, Macduff moves forward and the end is now inevitable.
Morten had now become enamoured of the fight, which he continued to rehearse with Dougal. At Gaston’s suggestion they both began to exercise vigorously, apart from the actual combat, and became expert in the handling of their weapons, twirling and slashing with alarming dexterity. The steel replicas were ready and they used them.
Peregrine came down to the theatre early one morning for a discussion on costumes and found them hard at it. Blue sparks flew, the claymores whistled. The actors leapt nimbly from spot to spot. Occasionally they grunted. Their shields were tightly strapped to their left forearms, leaving the hand free for the double-handed weapon. Peregrine gazed upon them with considerable alarm.
‘Nimble, aren’t they?’ asked Gaston, looming up behind him.
‘Very,’ Peregrine agreed nervously. ‘I haven’t seen them for a fortnight or more. I – I suppose they are safe. By and large. Safe,’ he repeated on a shriller note, as Macduff executed a downward sweep which Macbeth deflected and dodged by the narrowest of margins.
‘Absolutely,’ Gaston promised. ‘I stake my reputation upon it. Ah. Excuse me. Very well, gentlemen, call it a morning. Thank you. Don’t go, Mr Jay. Your remark about safety has reminded me. There will, of course, be no change in the size and position of the rostra? They are precisely where they will be for the performance?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. To the fraction of an inch, I hope? Their footwork has been rehearsed with the greatest care, you know. Like a dance. Let me show you.’
He produced a plan of the stage. It was extremely elaborate and was broken up into innumerable squares.
‘The stage is marked – I dare say you have noticed – in exactly the same way. Let me say I am asking the Macduff to deliver a downward sweep from right to left and the Macbeth is to parry it and leap to the lower level. I shall say – ‘ and here he raised his voice and shrieked: ‘Mac-d. Right foot at 13b. Raise claidheamh-mor – move to 90 degrees. Sweep
