‘I suppose so. For Maggie, certainly. She’s rock calm and perfectly steady. It’s Dougal who surprises me. I’d expected a good, even a harrowing, performance but not so deeply frightening a one. He’s got that superb golden-reddish appearance and I thought: We must be very clever about make-up so that the audience will see it disintegrate. But, upon my soul, he does disintegrate, he is bewitched, he has become the Devil’s puppet. I even began to wonder if it was all right or if it might be embarrassing, as if he’d discarded his persona and we’d come face to face with his naked, personal collapse. Which would be dreadful and wrong. But no. It hasn’t happened. He’s come near the brink in the last scene but he’s still Macbeth. Thanks to Gaston, he fights like a man possessed but always with absolute control. And so – evilly. For Macduff, it’s like stamping out some horror that’s lain under a stone waiting for him.’

‘And his whole performance?’

‘If I could scratch about for something wrong I would. But no, he’s going great guns. The straightforward avenger. And I think he plays his English scene beautifully. I’m sorry,’ said Emily. ‘I wish I could find something wrong and out-of-key or wanting re-adjustment somewhere, but I can’t. Your problem will be to keep them up to this level.’

They talked on. Presently the door into the servery opened and their waiter came in with an armful of Sunday papers.

Peregrine’s heart suddenly thumped against his ribs. He took up the top one and flipped over the pages.

‘AT LAST! A FLAWLESS MACBETH’

And two rave columns.

Emily saw his open paper trembling in his hands. She went through the remaining ones, folding them back at the dramatic criticisms.

‘This is becoming ridiculous,’ she said.

He made a strange little sound of agreement. She shoved the little pile of papers over to him. ‘They’re all the same, allowing for stylistic differences.’

‘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.