Written and directed by two women, the Pageant paraded an array of women warriors, artists, scholars, monarchs and saints who show the physical, intellectual, creative and ethical strength of womankind. It was powerful stuff, giving fifty-two actresses the opportunity to stand up for what they believed in.
The play proved so popular that suffrage societies all over the country clamoured to perform it, and the League involved themselves in these local productions, providing the costumes and leading performers where they could. Sophy offered herself as one of the actresses who could direct such undertakings, having no children of her own or family commitments as some actresses did.
Although her prime motive was wanting to encourage women to express themselves through theatre and to stand up for what they believed, there was another reason for her decision to take to the road again and leave the comforts of home and the delights of little Josephine, who was the sweetest baby imaginable. She needed to put some distance between herself and Kane. She knew she had been avoiding him since their shared confidences, making excuses when he invited her to lunch or dinner and refusing any invitations to social occasions he might also attend, but she couldn’t help it. She was in turmoil, the more so since she had become unsure of exactly how he viewed her. She hadn’t liked it when she’d thought his feelings were fatherly; now she suspected they might be of a different nature, it had thrown her into a state of panic. All the misery she had endured with Toby had come to the fore again, haunting her dreams and colouring her days.
She was a mess, she acknowledged ruefully, which was why, for the first six months of 1910, she travelled the country, encouraging local suffrage societies to go beyond performing the Pageant and put on their own plays. The tradition of drawing-room amateur theatre dating from the Victorian era made it comparatively easy to break down the delineation between amateur and professional theatre, and with the policy of the League to provide scripts and expert assistance in the form of experienced actresses and directors, Sophy felt she was really making a difference, albeit a small one, in the fight to open up men’s – and women’s – minds to the wind of change sweeping the country.
In the middle of June she returned home to join a demonstration in support of the latest Women’s Suffrage Bill. The King’s unexpected death from pneumonia in the first week of May had plunged the country into mourning, thus delaying the first reading of the important Bill, but after a month’s delay it was introduced to the House of Commons on 14 June.
Sophy arrived home three days later, the night before the huge march which had drawn together all the suffrage societies. She had been away since before Christmas. On entering the house, she felt a strange little pang at how life had gone happily on without her. Sadie and Harriet were a team now. Harriet had taken over the more demanding physical jobs which Sadie, who was getting on for seventy-two, had begun to find difficult. Sadie had settled comfortably into the role of cook and supervisor to Harriet, who saw to the cleaning, washing, lighting the fires and other household chores. Little Josephine had flourished in the convivial atmosphere, and Sophy fell in love all over again with the dimpled tot who gurgled and held out her fat little hands to her as though she knew Sophy had helped deliver her into the world.
When Harriet had gone to bed, Sophy sat with Sadie before the fire in the kitchen as she had often used to do, and the two talked – of the things Sophy had been doing – at how well Harriet had been absorbed in the household – of little Josephine, who was, according to Sadie, the most remarkable baby who had ever drawn breath. The one thing they didn’t mention was Kane. Not, that is, until Sophy rose to go to bed herself. It was then Sadie, with the privilege of an old friend, said quietly, ‘He’s called by every week without fail since you’ve been gone, ma’am.’
Sophy could feel herself flushing. ‘You mean Kane?’
Sadie nodded, her eyes tight on Sophy’s face. She had known for a long time how Mr Gregory felt about Sophy – you only had to catch him unawares when he was looking at her – but until recently she hadn’t been sure if Sophy returned his affection or not. Of course, while she had been married it wouldn’t have been right to mention such a thing, and afterwards, with the nature of Toby’s passing and the ramifications which had gone on and on, well, the last thing Sophy had been thinking of was another husband. But all that was two years ago. And heaven knew, the poor man had been patient.
‘He got the man in when the drains got blocked and the smell was enough to knock you backwards, and when Josephine fell out of her pram and bruised her head, he sent for his own doctor and wouldn’t let us settle the bill,’ she told Sophy. ‘He’s ever so good with her – Josephine, I mean. It’s a crying shame he hasn’t got children of his own, don’t you think, ma’am?’
If there had been any doubt in Sadie’s mind as to whether she was on the right track, it was dispelled when Sophy didn’t answer but, walking to the door, said coldly, in a tone she had never used before, ‘I shall need an early breakfast in the morning. A cab is calling at nine o’clock,’ and left the kitchen without another word.
Well, well, well. Sadie smiled to herself but then almost in the same breath, her face straightened. What was to be done? She knew Sophy, and for all her good traits she could be stubbornness itself. She sighed, lifting herself out of her comfy chair by the range. Her dear old father used to say that even the most stubborn donkey could be moved by a red-hot poker up its backside, but what was the particular poker that would move Sophy? She’d have to put her thinking cap on. And in the meantime, when the opportunity arose, she’d give Mr Gregory the nod, but discreetly like, that she was on his side.
Ten thousand women, dressed in white, had gathered at the Embankment to walk in a two-mile-long procession to the Albert Hall when Sophy joined them the next morning. The sky was cloudless and the sun already beating down; it was going to be a baking hot day.
The AFL were playing a prominent part in the demonstration in support of the Bill. Sophy took her place with the other actresses, all dressed in fashionable white gowns and elegant, wide-brimmed white hats, behind the huge banner embroidered with the linked comedy and tragedy masks. Although everyone was in mourning for the King, for this event white dresses and hats had been called for, and as they walked in the dust and heat of the roadway, Sophy had to admit it was a stroke of genuis. Most onlookers were dressed in black or the darkest clothes they possessed, and the contrast was striking.
Like an orderly and well-drilled army and carrying banners and flags of the different societies represented, the women walked to the Albert Hall.
‘Look at them two.’ Gertie Price, an actress Sophy had worked with on a number of occasions, nudged her as they passed a group of well-dressed men standing outside a gentleman’s club. Two of the men, ridicule in their eyes and smiles of superiority on their sneering lips, had got hold of a parasol from somewhere and were imitiating the women’s walk in an exaggerated manner, calling forth guffaws from the crowd. Gertie, a rough and ready Manchester lass, left the procession and spoke briefly to the two men, and when she joined Sophy again the men were no longer laughing.
‘What did you say to them?’ Sophy asked curiously.
Gertie grinned. ‘I told them they looked a mite too natural with that walk, and if they weren’t careful they might get offers from the Oscar Wilde set to shove that parasol where the sun don’t shine.’
‘Gertie, you didn’t!’ Sophy had to laugh, although she didn’t doubt Emmeline Pankhurst would have been horrified at such behaviour.
Sophy was feeling exhausted by the time the procession began to disperse later in the day. The last six months had been gruelling, the journey home the day before tiring, and she hadn’t slept well. Kane had written to her several times while she had been away, as had Patience. She had replied to Patience’s letters by return. Kane’s she had left for some days and then written brief businesslike notes as befitted a client to her agent. His letters had remained warm and friendly, and at least twice he
had said he missed her.
She sat down on a bench in the sunshine a short distance from the Albert Hall, watching women walk past her in their twos and threes and small groups, mostly talking about the success of the procession. She knew she had reached a crossroads in her life which would determine her future, and now she was home again she couldn’t put it off much longer. She was fond of Kane. She bit her lip, refusing to acknowledge more than fondness. And if his feelings for her were more than that of a friend – and she didn’t know that for sure, nothing had been said – then sooner or later he would ask her to make a decision. That was only fair.
Could she join her life to that of a man’s again? Make that huge step of trust, of faith? Did she want to? However well she thought she knew him, it was a step into the unknown. If he loved her – she closed her eyes for a second as her heart thudded at the thought – it might be all right, but how did she know what he was really like? People only showed you what they wanted you to see, and she was as guilty of that as the next person.
No, she couldn’t do it. She sat quietly, letting the decision settle on her. One part of her wanted to get married and have children of her own, but the other part – the stronger part – felt sick at being caught in a trap. And that was what marriage was, if it went wrong. For a moment she wished she was like several of her actress friends who defied convention and took lovers when they felt like it, but she knew she wasn’t like that either. In that respect she was not her mother’s daughter.
So . . . She lifted her eyes to the sun which was more gentle now it was late afternoon. She would follow that other path which seemed to have become clearer over the last months. In the course of her recent travels she had met one or two women who were managing their own companies and making a success of it. Although it had been exhausting, she had enjoyed helping to produce and direct plays since Christmas, and she knew she was good at it too. She had even helped write some material a few times. Women were beginning to make their mark in the theatre and she wanted to be part of that. She was successful and wealthy. Her chin lifted. If she was going to buy and run her own theatre somewhere, now was the time to do it. And women like Harriet weren’t isolated cases. Actresses had been suffering from great wrongs and would continue to do so until the balance of power become more equal. And how would that happen if women like her, who had the fame and fortune, didn’t stand up and make it possible for their less fortunate sisters?
That night two years ago, she could have been used and cast aside as though a night of rape and violence didn’t matter because she was a woman, and an actress at that. And Cat, dear Cat. It was all so unfair, so wrong.
She had learned a great deal by producing and directing and performing to suffrage audiences in the last six months, but off stage the theatres were controlled almost exclusively by men. She stood up, deciding to walk a while rather than take a cab. She wanted to think.
Why not a theatre where the business management and overall control would be in the hands of herself and other women? Women who could and would enjoy stepping up to the roles of stage-managers, producers and production assistants, directors, scenic artists and the rest of the jobs that had to be done, and done well, for a theatre to be a financial success. Actors and authors could be drawn from both sexes, of course, but in the main it would be women who were the driving force.
Could she do it? Did she have the experience needed to undertake such a venture, or would she find herself overwhelmed by the business side? She shrugged the doubt off. She knew Kane had employed accountants and so on when he had owned his theatres; it wasn’t necessary to do everything yourself. And of course she could do it! If she set her mind to it, she could run a theatre and more. She had to believe in herself. That had been one of the things Patience had said to her over and over again when she was recovering from her collapse after Toby had died.
‘Believe in yourself, Sophy. You must believe in yourself. None of this, Toby and what’s happened, was your fault. It was his. You don’t know your own worth, you never have. You’re an amazing woman.’
She didn’t feel like an amazing woman. Someone like Emmeline Pankhurst or Florence Nightingale was an amazing woman. They had no doubts, no uncertainty about what they were doing, whereas she was racked with them. They had probably never woken in the middle of the night feeling they weren’t worth loving.
The sound of her name being called lifted her out of the maelstrom of her thoughts. There, on the other side of the road, waving with all his might, was Kane. It had been over six months since she had seen him and she didn’t think beyond that in the surprise of the moment. Her lips forming his name, she stepped out towards him, oblivious of the carriage and pair bearing down on her. She saw him shout, turned to see the horses almost upon her, and then she was flying backwards out of the path of the hooves to land at the side of the kerb. The lunge Kane had made to push her out of harm’s way was not enough to carry him clear. As she raised her head she saw him bowled underneath the horses and then the carriage went over him, to the accompaniment of screams and shrieks from onlookers. As the carriage came to a halt a little way down the road, Sophy struggled on to her hands and knees. She was looking straight at the crumpled body lying ominously still, a rivulet of red running into the dust of the road. It had all happened in a moment of time.
Chapter 25
‘I blame myself.’ Sadie repeated the words she had said umpteen times. ‘I should never have told him where to find you. He could have sat and waited for you to come back and this would never have happened.’
Sophy shut her eyes for an infinitesimal moment. The small hospital waiting room was painted a sickly green and smelled strongly of antiseptic, its immaculate walls and floor as clinically clean as only plenty of disinfectant and elbow grease – and a healthy fear of Matron – could achieve. She wanted to scream at Sadie that if she said the same thing one more time, she would go mad. Yet when she looked at Sadie’s quivering lips her innate kindness overcame her own guilt and fear, and, putting out her hand, she patted Sadie’s. ‘It’s not your fault. I was the one who stepped out into the road without thinking.’
They had been sitting huddled together for what seemed like an eternity but in reality was only a matter of hours. A young nurse had brought them cups of tea at regular intervals, which they had drunk without tasting, and twice a middle-aged Sister had put her head round the door and tried to persuade them to go home and rest. Kane had not regained consciousness before they had taken him down to theatre to attempt to save his crushed legs, and there was talk of other serious injuries too. The surgeon had held out little hope when he had spoken to them earlier.
Sophy was always to look back on those hours and the ones that followed as the worst of her life. They eclipsed anything that had happened in her childhood, the revelations about her mother which had driven her from the north-east, the misery she’d endured in her marriage with its terrible conclusion when Toby had sold her to be violated, even the horror of Cat’s death at the hands of a madman. Those things she had been unable to prevent, they had been out of her control. But Kane . . .
When she had crawled over to him in the road and seen what the carriage had done to him she had begun to whimper his name over and over but he hadn’t heard her. He’d lain deathly still, bloodied and broken in the dirt. One of the women who had been on the march had come running over and, after explaining that she was a nurse, had torn pieces of cloth from her dress and applied tourniquets on Kane’s legs where the blood was pumping freely. The doctor had told her Kane wouldn’t have reached the hospital alive but for this lady’s action, but the woman had disappeared when the ambulance had arrived and Sophy had never thanked her.
Dazed, and her white dress stained red with Kane’s blood, she had travelled with him to the hospital, willing him to open his eyes so she could tell him she loved him. Why hadn’t she realised it before? she’d asked herself, only to have the answer in all its starkness: she had realised it, deep down in th
e depths of her. For months now she had known she loved him in a way she had never loved Toby, and because of that, Kane could hurt her more. If she had admitted to herself that she loved him, it would have given him a power over her that she found terrifying, and so she had substituted affection and fondness in all her deliberations, weak versions of the real thing.
Ralph had joined them at one point for an hour or so and, in an effort to comfort her, had added to her silent screams of protest and self-denigration when he’d told her he knew Kane had loved her for years. ‘He’s never said, mind,’ Ralph elaborated quickly as though his knowing might cause offence, ‘but it tore him in two the day you got wed. He went out and got blind drunk – paralytic, he was, and that’s not like him. He’s a man of few words, is Mr Gregory, but he feels things more deeply than most and that’s a fact. He’s a fine gentleman—’ Ralph, great hulking Ralph, had broken down at this point and it had been she who had comforted him, all the time wishing she could cry too. But the agony inside was too acute for the relief of tears.
Giving Sadie’s hand a last pat, Sophy straightened in the uncomfortable hardbacked chair. ‘I think you should go home and get some sleep for a few hours,’ she said quietly. She had sent a messenger boy to the house to inform Sadie and Harriet what had happened, saying she didn’t know when she would be home; she hadn’t expected Sadie to drop everything and rush to her side, but maybe she should have.
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