Obviously the credit for much of the words in this chapter goes to Mr Shakespeare! But I hope that after so many chapters, you all enjoy opening night of the play. Love IJKS xxx
Chapter Eighty-One
The phone rang at ten o'clock in the morning. Morag answered quickly and was surprised and delighted to hear Ruby's voice on the line.
"I was ringing to say that Geoff and I are planning to come home today," the teenager said.
"Good!" Morag enthused.
"Is everything okay?" Ruby asked, noting the tremor in the older woman's voice.
Morag sighed and sank down onto the sofa, wondering how she could possibly explain.
"Morag?"
"Your... Ross got lost last night. We had to get the police out in order to find him again. He's very shaken."
"Is he okay?" Ruby asked worriedly, more determined to get back to Summer Bay than ever.
"He's shaken but he's alright. He's still sleeping," Morag told her. "He's desperate to see you again. So is Charlie."
Ruby sighed and chewed her lip.
"I was thinking of coming to the play tonight," she said. "Show some support for their debut. I don't forgive Charlie, not by a long shot, but I thought that might be a start."
"It's a lovely idea," Morag said. "Charlie's dropping tickets over for us this afternoon. If you come here, we could go together."
"That sounds good," Ruby agreed.
"Where... where will you be staying when you get back?"
"Geoff offered to ask Irene if I could stay with them. In Belle's old room."
"Right."
"I can't live with Charlie again," Ruby said. "I want to try and work things out but we have one hell of a long way to go."
***
It had been a long day and Joey was hurriedly gobbling a snack down before she was due to be picked up to get to the theatre. She was terribly nervous about being Juliet and especially opposite Amber, who she had barely rehearsed with. She felt sad that Charlie wouldn't be her Romeo. It had all seemed so perfect back in the beginning but she supposed there were more important things going on.
"Good luck," Charlie said at the door.
She pulled her in for a kiss.
"I'll be right there with Dad, Morag and Aden in the front row, okay?"
Joey nodded and smiled, still sad that Charlie was going to be in the audience and not on the stage. It didn't feel right. But she was desperate to be a supportive girlfriend.
"See you later," she said, kissing her one more time before hurrying out of the door.
Charlie moved into the lounge and sank onto the sofa.
"Are you okay?" Leah asked from the armchair.
Charlie nodded unconvincingly.
"If you're so full of regret, Charlie, why don't you change your mind?"
"I don't want to," Charlie told. "And even if I did, it's too late now."
***
Ruby sat at the table with Geoff, Annie and Irene.
"Thanks so much for letting me move in," Ruby said gratefully.
"Well, I hope it's not permanent," Irene told her. "Not because I don't want you around. I am absolutely more than happy for you to be here but I hope you and Charlie might make up."
Ruby nodded and sipped her drink. She too hoped things would work out with Charlie but she had no idea how they possibly could.
"She's been a mess since you've been gone, if you don't mind me telling you," Irene added.
"Has she?" Ruby asked, despite herself.
"She broke down in the Diner when she realised you'd gone," Annie put in. "Literally. She collapsed on the floor in tears. Everyone was staring. Leah had to call Joey to get her to take her home."
Ruby swallowed and Geoff put a comforting hand on hers.
"It seems like she's thrown herself into work," Irene said.
Ruby nodded. That's what Charlie always did when she was stressed and unhappy.
"And she's been really down whenever any of us have seen her," Annie added.
"Well, I guess going to see her perform tonight is the first step," Geoff said more cheerfully.
Ruby glanced at her watch.
"I'd better get to Ross and Morag's," she said. "I don't want to be late."
***
At home in front of the television as usual, Xavier wasn't really paying attention. Every day that Ruby wasn't in touch with him, he felt more and more like he was losing her. He hated to think of her off travelling with Geoff, a good looking, single guy who could easily steal her away. It happened in the movies all the time, people getting together over shared pain. He wondered for what felt like the millionth time when his girl would come home to him.
***
It was fifteen minutes until curtain up and Joey was so nervous that she was considering pulling out all together. She had a good understudy who could take over at short notice. Perhaps she and Charlie could both sit in the audience. She jumped when someone hugged her from behind and grinned when she realised that it was Charlie. Turning around in her lover's embrace, she gazed into her eyes.
"What are you doing back here?" she asked.
Charlie just smiled at her. Joey looked down and realised she was in costume.
"I'm here to be your Romeo," Charlie told her.
"But..."
"I sacrificed all my pride, begged and pleaded with Harboard to take me back and here I am. I'm all yours."
They kissed again in elation.
"But I thought you..."
"Love you more than life itself," Charlie interrupted. "Joey, you mean everything to me and I never want to let you down. You're the most beautiful, sweetest soul in the world and when we started these drama classes, it was because you wanted to gain strength and confidence. I promised I'd do it with you and I'm not going to pull out now."
They kissed again and Joey wrapped her arms tightly around Charlie, holding her as close as possible.
"Did my heart love till now?" Charlie asked, quoting their beloved story. "Foreswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."
Joey stroked Charlie's skin, pulling her even closer and brushing her lips against hers, wishing for all the world that they had more time.
"Amber's going to be pissed!" she chuckled when they finally parted.
"She is. Seriously, if looks could kill..."
They kissed again.
"I couldn't let you down," Charlie said. "Plus, there was no way I could sit and watch another woman take my place and kiss you. I never want either of us to kiss another person but each other ever again, even if it is on stage."
***
Ross, Morag, Ruby and Aden, who had regained his ticket when Charlie had hurried over to tell them that she was going to star as Romeo after all, were seated in the front row. Ruby had been in the bathroom at the time and Charlie had left too quickly to realise that her beloved daughter had come home. Still, Ruby was glad not to have been noticed. She felt strange around Charlie. She didn't know how she felt about her now. She loved her. She needed her. As always, she looked up to her. But she was afraid of their changed relationship and she was hurt by her lies. She hoped they could fit themselves back together somehow.
***
It was act one, scene one when Charlie, dressed as Romeo was waiting in the wings for her cue to go on. An older member of the group, Raymond was playing Montague, Romeo's father.
"Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow, we would as willingly give cure as we know," he said.
Charlie took a breath and entered the stage, as if in a world of her own, not noticing the other cast members whose conversation continued behind her. She scanned the crowd for her family and almost tripped over herself when she saw Ruby nestled safely in between Morag and Ross. Ruby offered the smallest of smiles. Charlie swallowed, sad that she couldn't smile back.
"Good morrow, cousin," said Stephanie, the girl playing Romeo's cousin when Montague and his wife had left the stage.
Charlie gathered herself back together and turned to deliver her line.
"Is the day so young?" she asked.
"But new struck nine."
Charlie tried not to look at her daughter who was watching her every move.
"Aye me!" she said. "Sad hours seem long."
***
"She's good, isn't she?" Ross commented to Ruby, half because it was true and half because he was desperate for Ruby to sad something kind about Charlie.
Ruby nodded and watched Charlie leave the stage as the scene continued.
***
Off stage, Charlie looked frantically round for Joey to tell her the news but they were due to be entering on different sides and Charlie didn't have time to find her. Sighing but then allowing herself the smallest of smiles, she waited for her next cue.
***
It was act one, scene five and finally, the other characters had left and Romeo was given the opportunity to approach the most beautiful Juliet Charlie had ever seen.
"If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin in this," Romeo began. "My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."
Juliet smiled coyly in the same way that Joey often used with Charlie to send her wild.
"Good pilgrim," she said. "You do wrong your hand too much, for saints have hands that pilgrim's hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss."
"Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?"
"Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer."
"O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!" Romeo exclaimed, taking Juliet's hand.
Charlie and Joey felt both their pulses racing through nerves and still, the mere touch of each other.
"They pray," she said. "Grant thou, lest faith turn to despair."
"Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake."
"Then move not while my prayer's effect I take," Charlie replied, stepping closer.
She moved in for the couple's first kiss and slowly drew apart.
"Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purged."
"Then have my lips the sin that they have took," Juliet replied.
"Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again."
They kissed again, this time more urgently before Juliet's nurse hurried in to take her away.
"You kiss by th'book," Juliet said before Romeo demanded from the nurse the truth about Juliet's kin.
***
By act two, scene two, both Charlie and Joey felt they were in their stride. Joey had been thrilled when she'd spotted Ruby in the audience, deciding that after the grief of yesterday, today was turning out better than she ever expected. She hoped it was the beginning of a happier future as she waited for Charlie, on the stage floor, to deliver her line so that she could step out on the carefully designed balcony set. She did and Joey stepped forward, talking to herself, not realising that her Romeo was there.
"O Romeo, Romeo!" she said dreamily. "Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet."
"Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?" Romeo wondered.
"Tis but thy name this is my enemy," Julie continued. "Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is not hand nor foot nor arm nor face nor any other part belonging to a man."
She gave the audience a wicked look and a titter rippled through the room.
"O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name; and for thy name, which is no part of thee, take all myself."
Charlie moved to get Joey's attention.
"I take thee at thy word," she said, surprising her co-star and soul mate. "Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized. Henceforth I never will be Romeo."
The scene continued with Charlie's Romeo deploring his name and Joey's Juliet wondering how the love of her life came to be outside her chamber.
"With love's light wings I did o'erperch these walls," Charlie explained with passion and longing. "For stony limits cannot hold love out, and what love can do, that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are not stop to me."
Joey smiled the sweetest smile and they held hands over the balcony.
"If they do see thee, they will murder thee," Juliet said worriedly, gazing into Romeo's eyes.
She caught her breath for a moment, thinking once again about just how beautiful Charlie truly was. Their lines continued.
"My life were better ended by their hate than death prorogued, wanting of thy love," Charlie said.
They kissed gently, holding onto each other in much the same way they had as real life lovers before the show had begun. They continued to gaze at one another as they continued their lines.
Finally, Juliet asked, "Dost thou love me? I know thy wilt say 'Ay'. And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swearest, thou mayst prove false."
They continued to deliver lines fuelled with genuine romance before they bid each other goodnight, arranging to meet and marry at nine the next morning and defy their families, stealing yet more originally unscripted kisses.
***
In was the final scene before everyone was due to take a fifteen minute break. Charlie was looking forward to getting her breath back and holding Joey in her arms, not as a fictional character but as her real life love. She knew the second part was harder than the first and she wanted to give it her best. Now, she and Joey were standing with Jake, the man in the role of the friar and they were exchanging wedding vows, both secretly wondering if they might do that for real one day.
"Ah, Juliet," said Romeo. "If the measure of thy joy be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more to blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath this neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue unfold the imagined happiness of both receive in either by this encounter."
The scene continued, sealed with a matrimonial kiss at the close.
***
During the break, Charlie and Joey escaped with the rest of the cast to their communal dressing room. Amber attempted to look cheerful in the corner but she felt like she had been cheated of her part at the last minute and cheated out of kissing Joey, even if it wasn't for real. She watched the couple sadly as they hugged and kissed, telling each other that they were proud of each other, repeating 'I love you' over and over again. Amber decided once and for all, that she would get out more and find that kind of joy for herself.
***
Ruby remained in her seat with Ross while Morag and Aden skipped off to the drinks stand to get sundries for all four of them and give teenager and grandfather some time to talk.
"Are you enjoying the play?" Ross asked.
Ruby nodded. Whatever she felt about Charlie, she had done well. She was proud of her. And she was proud of Joey too, who had largely been blameless in all the mess they were in.
"I never knew Charlie had such a talent," she said. "They're beautiful together up on stage."
"They really are," Ross agreed softly.
***
Act three, scene five began and so much had already happened. Romeo was wanted for the murder of a dear member of Juliet's family and the couple were sharing one last moment of love and joy before he had to flee to save his life. On the balcony together, they held each other close.
"I must be gone and live, or stay and die," Romeo said sadly.
Charlie wasn't sure if it was good acting or just the trauma they had been going through recently but her heart felt heavy at even the pretend prospect of losing her Juliet.
"Yond light is not daylight;" Joey replied, her character firmly in denial over the departure of her partner. "I know it, I. It is some meteor that the sun exhales to be thee this night a torchbearer and light thee on thy way to Mantua. Therefore stay yet. Thou needest not to be gone."
They kissed gently.
"Let me be ta'en," Charlie declared loudly, making Joey laugh. "Let me be put to death. I am content, so though wilt have it so."
Their conversation continued amid kisses that weren't even in Harboard's script before Lucy, who played Juliet's nurse interrupted them to warn them of Juliet's mother's impending arrival. Romeo began to scamper away.
"Farewell, farewell!" Romeo said, climbing down the balcony and then back up again quickly. "One kiss, and I'll descend."
They kissed with searing passion that took their breath away before they bid each other farewell for a time that they hoped would only be temporary.
***
Juliet was dead as far as Romeo knew and Charlie's acting was based on her desperate fear of one day losing Joey. She hoped it wouldn't be for a long time to come, preferably when they were old and grey, tucked up in their beds, ready to depart the world on the same day as each other so none would have to live without the other. Charging into act five, scene three, Charlie interrupted Paris visiting Juliet's tomb as she awaited burial.
"Give me that mattock and wencing iron," Romeo demanded.
As the dialogue ensued, Balthazar left but Paris was ready to challenge Romeo's entry.
"This is the banished haughty Montague," Roz, who had been chosen to play Romeo's love rival said. "That murdered my love's cousin – with which grief it is supposed that fair creature died – and he is come to do some villainous shame to the dead bodies. I will apprehend him."
Words turned to a fight scene that Charlie threw herself into far more than she had during rehearsals and was enjoying far too much. Energy and excitement was part of the reason she had become a cop and the same thrill went through her as she drew her sword, even if it was all only pretend. After one final jab from Charlie, Roz fell to her knees, clutching her heart.
"O, I am slain!" she declared. "If though be merciful, open the tomb, lay me with Juliet."
Roz promptly collapsed and Romeo reluctantly agreed. Paris hadn't truly done wrong aside from to be chosen to marry the wrong woman. Standing in the middle of the stage, Charlie began her long, departure speech before sinking onto her knees on the step leading up to where her precious Juliet was lying still.
"For here lies Juliet," Romeo said tenderly, stroking Joey's cheek. "And her beauty makes this vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred."
With some difficulty, Charlie moved to lift the fallen Paris onto an adorned table parallel to Juliet's resting place, speaking as she did so and grateful for Roz's co-operation. Then she turned back to Joey.
"O my love, my wife! Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered. Beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips," she said, stroking Joey's lips.
Lying still, Joey tried not to smile and put Charlie off her game.
"And in thy cheeks," Charlie continued, touching her partner's skin. "And death's pale flag is not advanced there. Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do thee than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain to sunder his that was thine enemy! Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, and that the lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that I still will stay with thee and never from this palace of dim night depart again. Here, here I will remain with worms that are thy chambermaids. O here will I set up my everlasting rest and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh."
She turned out to the audience, looking up at the lights on the ceiling.
"Eyes, look your last!" she said before turning back to Juliet.
She lifted Joey gently into her arms. Joey played dead as Charlie began to sob.
"Arms, take your last embrace! And lips, O you the doors of breath, deal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death."
Charlie pressed her lips against Joey who carefully kissed her back without the audience seeing.
"Come bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!" Romeo continued. "Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark! Here's to my love!"
Romeo placed Juliet carefully back down and dug the poison from his pocket, gulping it down and remarked that the drugs worked quickly as they began to take hold over his body.
"Thus with a kiss I die," he said, collapsing beside Juliet.
Charlie and Joey entwined as Friar Lawrence entered the stage and Balthazar stepped out from hiding, discussing what had taken place.
"Romeo!" the Friar said desperately. "O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too? And steeped in blood? Ah, what unkind hour is guilty of this lamentable chance!"
Then he noticed Juliet stir and drag herself into a sitting position. She immediately asked about Romeo before understanding the continued tragedy that had befallen her. Sending the Friar away, she turned to Charlie, slumped beside her.
"What's here?" she wondered. "A cup, closed in my true love's hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end. O churl! Drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after? I will kiss thy lips Haply some poison yet doth hang on them to make me die with a restorative."
She kissed Charlie gently, noting that her girlfriend gave the same response she had earlier when she was supposed to be dead.
"Thy lips are warm!" Joey remarked.
The person playing the watchmen could be heard off stage.
"Yea, noise?" said Juliet. "Then I'll be brief. Oh happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die."
She made to stab herself and collapsed in Romeo's waiting arms. They lay there, gently holding onto one another as the rest of the scene continued and the play came to an end. The curtains closed and Charlie and Joey rose. Standing, Charlie helped Joey to her feet and the whole cast waited in a line for the curtains to open so that they could take a bow to the applause that was ringing through the hall.
