LITMIR.BIZ

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– where is Dougal?’

      ‘Fetching his car. I said I’d come up to the corner and wait for him. It’s a chance to talk about our first encounter. In the play, I mean.’

      ‘Oh. I see. All right, then.’

      ‘Sorry, darling.’

      ‘Not a bit. I quite understand.’

      ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope you do.’

      ‘I’ve said I do, haven’t I? Here comes your Thane in his scarlet chariot.’

      He made as if to go and then stopped. Dougal Macdougal – it was his own given name – pulled in to the kerb. ‘Here I am, sweetie,’ he declared. ‘Hullo, Simon. Just the man to open the door for the lovely lady and save me a bash on the bottom from oncoming traffic.’

      Morten removed his beret, pulled on his forelock and opened the door with exaggerated humility. Margaret got into the car without looking at him and said, ‘Thank you, darling.’

      He banged the door.

      ‘Can we drop you somewhere?’ Dougal asked, as an afterthought.

      ‘No, thank you. I don’t know where you’re going but it’s not in my direction.’ Dougal pulled a long face, nodded and moved out into the traffic. Simon Morten stood looking after them, six foot two of handsome disgruntlement, his black curls still uncovered. He said: ‘Well, shit off and be damned to you,’ crammed on his beret, turned into the lane and entered the little restaurant known as the Junior Dolphin.

      ‘What’s upset the Thane of Fife?’ asked Dougal casually.

      ‘Nothing. He’s being silly.’

      ‘Not by any chance a teeny-weeny bit jealous?’

      ‘Maybe. He’ll recover.’

      ‘Hope so. Before we get round to bashing away at each other with Gaston’s claymores.’

      ‘Indeed, yes. Gaston really is more than a bit dotty, don’t you think? All that talk about armoury. And he wouldn’t stop.’

      ‘I’m told he did spend a short holiday in a sort of halfway house. A long time ago, though, and he was quite harmless. Just wore a sword and spoke Middle English. He’s a sweet man, really. He’s been asked by Perry to teach us the fight. He wants us to practise duels in slow motion every day for five weeks, building up muscle and getting a bit faster very slowly. To the Anvil Chorus from Trovatore.’

      ‘Not really?’

      ‘Of course not, when it comes to performance. Just as rehearsals to get the rhythm. They are frightfully heavy, claymores are.’

      ‘Rather you than me,’ said Maggie, and burst out laughing.

      Dougal began to sing very slowly. ‘Bang. Wait for it. Bang. Wait again. And Bangle-bangle-bang. Wait. Bang.’

      ‘With two hands, of course.’

      ‘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

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