Light Thickens Read Free Page A

him and they both looked out, over the Thames, to where the Dolphin shone so brightly. She took his arm. “It’s easy to say, I know,” she said, “but if you
could
just
not
. Don’t brood. It’s not like you. Tell me how the great Scot is making out as Macbeth.”
    “Fine. Fine. He’s uncannily lamblike and everyone told me he was a Frankenstein’s Monster to work with.”
    “It’s his biggest role so far, isn’t it?” Emily asked.
    “Yes. He was a good Benedick, but that’s the only other Shakespeare part he’s played. Out of Scotland. He had a bash at Othello in his repertory days. He was a fantastic Anatomist in Bridie’s play when they engaged him for the revival at the Haymarket. That started him off in the West End. Now, of course, he’s way up there.”
    “How’s his love life going?”
    “I don’t really know. He’s making a great play for Lady Macbeth at the moment but Maggie Mannering takes it with a tidy load of salt, don’t worry.”
    “Dear Maggie!”
    “And dear you!” he said. “You’ve lightened the load no end. Shall I tackle Nina and tell her not to? Or go on pretending I haven’t noticed?”
    “What would you say? ‘Oh, by the way, Nina darling,
could
you leave off the bad-luck business, scaring the pants off the cast? Just a thought!’ ”
    Peregrine burst out laughing and gave her a pat. “I tell you what,” he said, “you’re so bloody sharp you can have a go yourself. I’ll ask her for a drink, here, and you can choose your moment and then lay into her.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “No. Yes, I believe I am. It might work.”
    “I don’t think it would. She’s never been here before. She’d rumble.”
    “Would that matter? Oh, I don’t know. Shall we leave it a bit longer? I think so.”
    “And so do I,” said Emily. “With any luck they’ll get sick of it and it’ll die a natural death.”
    “So it may,” he agreed and hoped he sounded convincing. “That’s a comforting thought. I must return to the blasted heath.”
     
    He wouldn’t have taken much comfort from the lady in question if he could have seen her at that moment. Nina Gaythorne came into her minute flat in Westminster and began a sort of delousing ritual. Without waiting to take off her hat or her gloves, she scuffled in her handbag and produced a crucifix, which she kissed and laid on the table near a clove of garlic and her prayerbook. She opened the letter, put on her spectacles, crossed herself, and read aloud the ninety-first Psalm.
    “ ‘Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the Most High,’ ” read Nina in the well-trained, beautifully modulated tones of a professional actress. When she reached the end, she kissed her prayerbook, crossed herself again, laid her marked-up part on the table, the prayerbook on top of it, the crucifix on the prayerbook, and, after a slight hesitation, the clove of garlic at the foot of the crucifix:
    “
That
ought to settle their hash,” she said and took off her gloves.
    Her belief in curses and things being lucky or unlucky was based not on any serious study but merely on the odds and ends of gossip and behavior accumulated by four generations of theatre people. In that most hazardous profession where so many mischances can occur, when so much hangs in the precarious balance on opening night, when five weeks’ preparation may turn to ashes or blaze for years, there is a fertile soil indeed for superstition to take root and flourish.
    Nina was forty years old, a good dependable actress, happy to strike a long run and play the same part eight times a week for year after year, being very careful not to let it become an entirely mechanical exercise. The last part of this kind had come to an end six months ago and nothing followed it, so that this little plum, Lady Macduff, uncut for once, had been a relief. And the child might be a nice boy. Not the precocious little horror that could emerge from an indifferent school. And the house! The