To Marry in Haste (a fragment)

Even in sleep she resisted him, groaning and cursing and pushing him
away as he attempted to undress his drunken, semi-comatosed wife and
tuck her under the sheets.

The Weary Husband. Years later, he'd tell a close friend that being
married to her was 'an endless and thankless task.' And yet he couldn't
leave her. Not then. She was the Beautiful Actress and his ambition
wouldn't allow him to leave her (this fact, in turn, made him all the
more resentful because he couldn't bare for her success to outstrip
his).

Sometimes he felt they'd made a pact with the devil; they'd become the
king and queen of the stage at the cost of being trapped in a hellish
marriage, shackled by public opinion. It was a terrifying thought that
had first flitted across his mind whilst watching her performing from
the shadowy wings of the Old Vic ("Oh, but didn't she get such glowing
reviews for her Lady Macbeth!"). He attempted to banish the thought
from his concsiousness, to smother the little voice of panic with his
ambition, but it had returned and haunted him like Banquo ever
since.

He'd begun to doubt her sanity. She had phantom pregnancies and lay in
bed for days at a time, gripping and writhing at the sheets until her
knuckles turned white. In the early days he'd sit down next to her and
take her clenched sweaty hand in his own. 'Puss, don't do this. I'll
look after you, Puss.'

She blamed him. She howled. She clawed at him when he came near and
then made him feel guilty when he left. And when his nerves were
tattered and torn and he could take no more, she'd often surprise him
by descending serenely down the staircase to greet guests, immaculate
and charming and witty. He clenched his jaw when their guests gushed
and congratulated him, "Oh, she has every thing a good wife should:
breeding, beauty and brains." They never seemed to notice that her
flashing eyes were wildly at odds with her decorous manner.

He'd known she was volatile, mercurial, a 'born actress'. He'd seen the
madness in her eyes long before he'd asked her to be his wife. He found
alluring. Madness is alluring, so long as it's the madness of a
beautiful woman.

But all too soon, the neediness he had foolishly interpreted as
vulnerability turned into a suffocating clinginess. The slight
possessiveness he'd found so endearing soured into an insane and
irrational and jealousy. The wit he'd found so enchanting had now
turned on him like razor sharp claws to cut him down to submission when
they argued. The insatiable sexual appetite that had at first flattered
him, excited him and almost distracted him from work now found relief
in outbursts of temper and physical violence. Every day he swallowed
his disgust.

Publicly he began trying to disassociate himself from her, assuming an
air of detachment whenever they were out together. Observers thought
him cold and awkward. The more he ignored her, the cooler he became,
the better she played her role of the wayward wife.

Years later a mutual friend of theirs from the theatre would write his
memoirs and describe staying at the home for the weekend was "like
stepping into one of their motion pictures. They became caricatures of
their most famous roles: he, the formal, stuffy Englishman and she, the
beautiful and dangerous seductress, slipping her hand up my leg under
the dinner table."