‘Oh, Toby darling, I’m so sorry. Whatever are they thinking of? But it’s like Cat always says, half the time in our profession it’s not how good you are but whether the owners or the actor-managers have their own agenda and their favourites. I’ve heard of this Bruce Thorpe, I’m sure he’s a relation of Christopher Robins. A distant cousin’s child or something. But they’ll live to regret it. He won’t be a patch on you.’
Toby and Sophy were sitting eating breakfast the next morning, the windows wide open to catch any breeze the muggy August morning might afford them. He hadn’t got in until the early hours, having gone for a drink with some fellow actors after his performance at the theatre. They had ended up in one of the more disreputable establishments in Soho much the worse for wear, and he had no recollection of how he’d got home. He did remember following one of the actors to the back of the club where they’d gained admittance into a room guarded by a pair of big burly ne’er-do-wells, however. He had never tried an opium pipe before and it had knocked him for six.
He smiled blearily at Sophy. She had been distinctly frosty this morning until he’d told her about losing the part in the next play, whereupon she’d leaped to his defence.
‘I must admit I was a little put out at first,’ he said, ‘but there’s other parts in other theatres.’
‘Of course there are.’ She reached across and took one of his hands between her own. ‘And you’ll be snapped up. You’re such a wonderful actor.’
Toby looked down at his plate and tried not to shudder. He had forced down a breakfast roll and a cup of coffee, but he had a stinking headache and felt as sick as a dog. Putting his hand to his head, he muttered, ‘I think I’ll go and lie down for a while. I might have overdone things a bit last night.’
‘Do that.’ Sophy was all concern. ‘I’ll wake you in plenty of time to get ready for the theatre. When – when do you finish?’
‘End of the week.’ He stood up, touching her shining hair which she always wore flowing and loosely tied with a ribbon for breakfast. ‘Thanks for being understanding.’
Once she was alone, Sophy let herself slump in her chair.
Thanks for being understanding
. She hadn’t felt very understanding last night when the hours had ticked by. She must have fallen asleep after three o’clock and he hadn’t been home then. She knew he liked to let his hair down after a show and relax with his pals, but he was usually home by midnight, one o’clock at the latest. She had been furious last night and her rage had brought to the surface all the doubts and fears she had about their marriage, and about Toby. She’d thought he might be with Rosalind, she had imagined them together and told herself she didn’t believe there was nothing but friendship between them. And then this morning . . . She buried her face in her hands for a moment. Oh, she felt awful. Thank goodness he didn’t know what she had been thinking. Poor Toby. He must be feeling wretched.
She sat quietly drinking a cup of coffee, letting the fresh air touch her face as she gazed out of the window and up at the patch of blue sky to be seen above the building opposite. It hadn’t been the moment to tell him her news: last night, they had been informed that the play was doing so well they were going to run for another six months at least, and she had taken the opportunity to see the manager and negotiate a rise in salary. From next week she would be earning double her present rate. Six guineas a week. She hadn’t quite been able to believe it when she had left the office, but of course she hadn’t let the manager see that. But she had followed the advice Mr Gregory had given her when she had said goodbye to him on leaving the Lincoln.
‘Value yourself, Sophy.’ He had smiled at her and not for the first time she’d realised he was really a very attractive man and that his disfigurement added to his brooding appeal, rather than otherwise. ‘If you don’t, no one else will. Be courageous, especially when asking for financial satisfaction. Put a top price on your acting ability in any part you’re asked to play, you can always agree to drop a little if necessary but it will be too late to negotiate up if
you agree to a lower salary. All managers, mine included, will try to do their best for the owners rather than the actors. Remember that.’
She had remembered it last night, and instead of asking for five guineas – and she had thought that was on the top side – she had asked for six, never dreaming it would be agreed. But eventually it had. And they were going to need it now, with Toby out of work.
Not that it would be for long, she amended hastily, as though the thought had been a criticism. And they would manage quite well. Here a little frown came between her eyes. It had been a worry over the last months since they had become man and wife how Toby’s salary seemed to drain away each week. They had agreed Toby would pay the rent, and that she would provide for their food and any household expenses out of her wage. Of course on top of this they both had to find travelling expenses, along with clothes and shoes and other living costs, but even so, it was rare that Toby had any money in his pocket at the end of each week. She knew he spent a considerable amount on drink with his friends when they frequented the gambling clubs now and again, and sometimes dined there, but when she had spoken to him about it, it had caused such ill-feeling between them she hadn’t mentioned it again, not wishing to appear the nagging wife. But depending on how things panned out over the next weeks, she might have to raise the subject again.
Marriage wasn’t what she had expected it to be.
The thought came before she could dismiss it and she realised it had been hovering at the back of her mind for some time. She had assumed they would do things together, spend most of their free time in each other’s company, but it hadn’t worked out that way. Half the time she didn’t know where Toby was or what he was doing when he left the flat, and if she questioned him he always made her feel at fault. He was always telling her not to be so ‘provincial’ as though it was the greatest crime, and only last week, when she had asked him to accompany her to Cat’s birthday party and he’d said he had a prior engagement and she’d got upset,
he’d accused her of being a burden. She had been both upset and angry, and the anger had enabled her to go unescorted with her head held high and pretend to enjoy herself, ignoring the curious glances of those present who clearly wondered where Toby was.
Sophy bit her lip, telling herself post-mortems never did any good. They had got over that episode and it did no good to drag it up now. Dolly said men took a while to settle into marriage and she was probably right.
She finished her breakfast, forcing herself to eat and drink and then cleared the table. When she came to the muslin cloth which she always removed after breakfast, putting a vase of flowers in the middle of the table, she paused, staring at it for a long time. And then she folded it carefully as she did every day and put it away, setting the vase in place, which she could hardly see for the tears streaming down her face.
When does the end of a marriage begin? Is it when one half of what should be a whole witnesses their spouse rising to heights of renown they can only dream about? Or perhaps it’s more insidious, a slow and largely inconspicuous drift into the fantasy world opium and its sister substances induce? Or yet again, it could be the disintegration of the part of man that makes him higher than the beasts when the darker side of the personality is given free rein, and a mind – naturally selfish and weak in Toby’s case – cannot accept what it perceives as failure. But the rot in Sophy’s marriage had set in even before the walk down the aisle. How can anything lasting be built on shifting sand?
The last ten years had been ones of enormous highs and lows for Sophy. By the time the new century had been ushered in on a wave of euphoria, extolling Britain’s imperial powers and sovereignty, she had been acknowledged as one of the new glittering stars of the West End, the darling of the public and press alike. Queen Victoria’s death a year later had seen King Edward VII take the throne and a more relaxed monarch in Buckingham Palace. When Sarah Bernhardt returned in triumph to London in the summer of 1902 in her best-known role as Marguerite Gautier, the consumptive courtesan, in
The Lady of the Camellias
, the critics
raved over her performance and it added to the growing respectability of the theatre which the King regularly visited and enjoyed. But Sarah Bernhardt was also an advocate of the Vote for Women and was not afraid to say so. Sophy had attended a lunch given in the great actress’s honour, and after Sarah had thanked everyone for attending and prettily entertained them with an amusing after-lunch talk, she had gone in for the kill.
Much of what the actress had said that day had resonated with Sophy. It
was
true that women possessing the vote was the merest kind of basic justice, and that all the weighty political philosophies which men had invented had no sensible argument against a woman’s right to make her opinion and convictions known. The fashionable belief prevalent among the opponents of Women’s Suffrage, that all intelligence in women was but a reflection of male intellect, that a woman had neither the discernment nor brain power to think for herself,
was
wrong, along with the tyranny of the law which favoured men in every regard. How could it be considered right in any humane society that a husband could divorce his wife for adultery as easy as blinking, whereas a wife had to prove adultery as well as cruelty or desertion of two years? A woman knew she would lose her home, her reputation and inevitably her children if she went to the divorce courts, and in consequence there were those who endured a living hell at home.
In truth, Sarah’s words had been but a reflection of what Cat had been saying for years, Sophy thought to herself one fine day in the middle of March. The morning was bright and fresh, there was a nip in the air and the smell of spring was around the corner. It was the kind of day that made one feel good to be alive.
Dear Cat. Sophy smiled to herself as she thought of her friend. What would she have done without Cat’s unswerving support through the last few years, as well as Dolly and Jim’s, of course. Although their advice couldn’t be more different. Cat’s counsel was undeviating: ‘Divorce the wretch.’ If her friend had said it once, she had said it a hundred times. ‘He’s no good, Sophy. He never has been. He hasn’t had a job in years and he never will again, not after the spectacle he made of himself rolling about the stage dead
drunk when Mr Gregory gave him that last chance. Toby knew no one else would touch him and yet he couldn’t stay sober each night until the performance was over.’
Sophy often thought that if Cat knew the half of it she would come to the flat and physically throw Toby out herself. If it had only been the drunkenness she had to contend with, it wouldn’t be so bad. But she knew it was the opium which had really changed the man she had married. He was a different person. No, that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t that he was a different person, more that the drug had destroyed his mind and intellect to the point that he was hardly there any more. He had gone through bouts of being violent in the past, but the one time he had hit her she had flown back at him with the first thing that came to hand – a small bronze statuette she had won for a performance – and belaboured him so wildly he had never touched her in anger again. Not that he touched her at all, these days. The effects of the alcohol and drugs had rendered him impotent years ago.
Dolly and Jim were of the old school in their advice. Once you’d made your bed you had to lie on it and divorce was wrong, full stop. However, Dolly had been quick to point out, that didn’t mean you had to put up with any kind of nonsense. In their community, a father or brother wasn’t above going round to sort out an errant husband for the wife, and if Sophy was willing, their Arnold and one of the other sons could do the job. They wouldn’t hurt him, not the first time anyway, just frighten the living daylights out of him and wait to see if that worked.
Sophy had thanked Dolly but declined the offer. No one knew about the opium habit, and it would take more than Arnold and one of his brothers to stop Toby returning to the illegal dens like a dog to its vomit.
Sophy paused, lifting her face to the gentle rays of a spring sun. She was on her way to hear Emmeline Pankhurst’s account of her recent imprisonment in Holloway Jail after she was convicted for obstructing the police within the Strangers’ Lobby in Parliament. She had never attended a meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union before, although Cat had joined the new militant
movement shortly after it had been formed five years ago. Their motto, ‘Deeds not Words’, had appealed to the recklessness in Cat, along with Mrs Pankhurst’s determination for a radical change in future tactics. Previous Suffragists had met regularly with sympathetic Members of Parliament to plead their cause, but the frustration caused by Parliament’s refusal to debate the subject or even consider the idea of female emancipation had led to the birth of the new society. Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline’s daughter, had been one of the first suffragettes to go to prison three years ago, and since meeting her, Cat had been even more fired up, spending most of her free time working for the Society. She even took minor roles in the theatre in order to devote more time to the cause. But, as she had said on more than one occasion to Sophy, ‘I was never going to make it big like you, darling. I was never going to be a star.’
Sophy didn’t know about that. What she did know was that her work demanded much of her time and what remained was devoted to holding what was left of Toby together. She was often exhausted, constantly worried and mostly heartsore. When he was in the real world Toby was either bitter and spiteful, or pathetically needy of her. Not as a wife, that had finished years ago, but as a nurse, a mother, someone he could cling to when the night terrors caused by the poison in his system turned him into a gibbering idiot, terrified of things only he could see.