Break of Dawn

They were still giggling on and off when they made their way to the theatre later that day. It was a very old-fashioned building but that wasn’t unusual in the provinces. Only the number one tours played the major cities in the country; the number two and number three tours had to content themselves with visiting the smaller towns, some of which were merely large villages. Many of the provincial theatres were extremely ill-equipped, and the scenery, which the company always took with them on tour, often only just fitted on to the small stages.

Fortunately this tour was being conducted at the end of April – a perfect time, according to the old hands. Winter in the pro vinces was horrendous, with freezing cold theatres with inadequate heating and draughts of a magnitude second to none. Summer could be just as bad when the heat became unbearable and the clothes stuck to your back, and autumn could be a time of endless rain and mud. Spring was the best bet, they declared. Although you never could tell.

They were almost at the theatre when Cat said, casually as though it was of no importance, ‘Heard from Toby lately?’

Sophy took a moment to reply. The subject was still a painful one. For the first little while at the Lincoln, Toby had made no secret of his interest in her and she had been both flattered and humbled that such a man, an accomplished actor who was greatly in demand, had even noticed her. He had taken her out to supper after the shows and been very attentive, even though those attentions had been a little too intimate on occasion, causing her to gently reproach him more than once. But it had been a magical interlude at the beginning of her career. And then had come the time when Toby had been offered the male lead in a new play on in the West End just after she had begun her first walking-on role at the Lincoln. He had told her he had secured a part for her too, a minor role admittedly, but still it was the West End. He had waited for her to throw her arms round him.

The play had been a conventional one, unlike the new drama the Lincoln favoured, such as Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance where the poorly used mother of an illegitimate son is the heroine. When the son is offered a government post by his unknown father, the heroine reveals the son to the father and the father to the son. At the end of the play the son renounces the hypocritical society that makes an outcast of his beloved mother while condoning the actions of his father. This criticism of morality caused a storm of protest, and more than one personage left the theatre shocked to the core. But Sophy liked the Ibsen and Shaw heroines who were Joan of Arcs rather than pretty dolls. She had told Toby this before but he clearly hadn’t been listening, or if he had, hadn’t taken her seriously.

So she had told him again, that day, more forcefully. At first he had treated her with the indulgent, faintly mocking air he favoured. ‘Sweetheart, you don’t know what you’re saying, believe me. This is a wonderful opportunity.’

‘For you or for me?’

‘Well, of course for me, that goes without saying, but for you too. You want to get on, don’t you? You don’t want to spend the rest of your career working for Jefferson and Gregory in their little tinpot theatre.’

That had hit her on the raw. ‘The Lincoln isn’t a tinpot theatre, you know it isn’t, and Mr Gregory has been very kind to me. I don’t know why you don’t like him.’

That wasn’t quite true. On the occasions when Mr Gregory came backstage at the Lincoln, he had made it clear that in his opinion, Toby still had plenty to learn about his craft. Toby had been angling for the male lead for a long time, thinking he could do better than Augustus Jefferson, and just before he was offered the part in the West End, he and Mr Gregory had had a heated exchange which had left Toby smarting and furious. Although Sophy adored Toby, she secretly thought Mr Gregory had a point. Toby did rely on his outstanding good looks when his acting ability wasn’t up to scratch; he did forget his lines and expect the other actors to put up with it, and he did miss rehearsals when he felt like it. The charm and charisma which Toby used to good effect with everyone else just didn’t seem to work with Mr Gregory, and the two tolerated each other at best and ignored each other when possible.

The upshot of their conversation that day was Toby leaving to work in the West End, and her remaining at the Lincoln. It meant they saw each other a lot less, and in the last two or three months Toby’s name had been linked to that of his leading lady, an accomplished actress who, as Cat put it, had the morals of an alley cat in spite of being a married woman. He had denied anything other than a working relationship, of course, but all in all Sophy had been pleased when the opportunity to tour had arisen and she could leave London for some months. She hoped the time apart would convince Toby he couldn’t do without her. If not . . . Well, she would deal with that when she had to.

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