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.