Home. Sophy smiled although as yet she couldn’t quite think of their modern little flat as home. It was very nice, possessing a small kitchen, a large sitting room and a lovely light bedroom amply big enough for a double bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers, and it also boasted that most newfangled of features, a bathroom complete with its own water closet. Each of the three flats in the terraced house had one, which was why the rent was so expensive, Sophy supposed. At seven shillings a week she could have rented a positive mansion up north, but when she had said this to Toby he had told her she couldn’t compare the two. This was London, he’d declared, not some provincial little backwater, and if he had his way they would soon be moving to something much grander than Margaret Street. And the flats were smart and newly renovated; he didn’t intend to start their married life in a couple of shabby rooms somewhere.
She hadn’t argued, although she still felt slightly overwhelmed at the amount they would be paying out each month. But they could afford it, as Toby said. He was earning five guineas a week and she would be bringing home three guineas when she began her new part, although if the play failed that might be short-lived. Toby’s play was due to end in the next little while but he was quite confident he would be offered something else before that happened.
Once outside the hotel, they went their separate ways. The Lincoln was only a stone’s throw away so Sophy and Cat and a small group of other actors, including Augustus, went in one direction on foot, and Toby and his crowd hailed a couple of cabs. Dolly and Jim had already left a little earlier.
Cat slipped her arm through Sophy’s as they walked, the two of them a little tiddly after the champagne. ‘I shall miss you when you go, and I won’t even have our evenings in Dolly’s kitchen any more,’ Cat said with a little sniff. ‘Dolly will be sad too, you know that, don’t you?’
Sophy nodded. It had been their habit, two or three times a week when she wasn’t seeing Toby, for the two girls to take a box of chocolates or a cake and spend an hour or two with Dolly and Jim. The old couple were hilarious, especially Dolly, and had kept the girls entertained with stories from the past and present about their family and some of their odd doings. One of their sons was an undertaker and the tales connected with him verged on the macabre, and another two were ‘into this and that’ according to Dolly, although the girls suspected most of their dealings were rooted in the London underworld. They had drunk copious pots of tea and laughed a lot and Cat, whose upper-class parents had had very little to do with their children, had revelled in the family atmosphere.
‘We’ll still pop round and see Dolly and Jim,’ Sophy said now. ‘We’re not going to lose touch, Cat. I’ve only got married, not disappeared to the other side of the world.’
Cat nodded and squeezed Sophy’s arm but said nothing. She hoped she was wrong but she would be surprised if Sophy’s friends saw much of her from this point on. Toby was determined to rise and he aimed to cultivate people who could make that happen, like Rosalind Robins. The woman was a major leading lady with many connections, and Toby knew as well as anyone else in the field that actors were paid according to their popularity, and that to get the right part was essential. Often the main criterion by which a play was chosen for production was the size and dramatic or comedic possibilities of the central male character, closely followed by the lead female role. Sophy was destined to be a star, Cat thought, but Toby? He was handsome enough and he could be charm itself when he chose, but there was a weakness to the man. He was flawed. She wished Sophy hadn’t married him. More than that, she wished she had said so before the event, even if it might have resulted in Sophy drawing away from her. She wouldn’t be feeling so wretchedly guilty now if she had.
‘Cheer up.’ Sophy unwittingly heaped coals of fire on Cat’s head as she gave her a hug. ‘We’re friends for life, through thick and thin. I promise. What were those lines in the first play we did together at the Lincoln? Oh yes. “Nothing can separate us, dear friend. Neither the trials of life nor the blessings. Not husband or lover or foe, not surfeit or famine. Friendship is the golden cord of life.”’
‘“Oh sweet Patricia, that you would always cleave to such noble thoughts.”’ Cat struck a dramatic pose. ‘“And I pray that golden cord will bind us more surely in the years to come.”’
They both laughed, walking on, but Cat wished more than ever she had spoken before it was too late.
Chapter 14
Sophy’s first night of marriage was a mixture of pain and pleasure, but overall a feeling of surprise that men regarded this thing so highly. She knew Toby had sown his wild oats in the past, but she hadn’t questioned him about it because she didn’t want to know. It was enough that he had wanted to marry her, that she was the one he had asked to be his wife.
He had been gentle with her and understanding of her initial embarrassment, and she had been grateful for his consideration. It had engendered in her a deeper love for him, as had the act itself.