I glanced at the clock and back to the stage.
‘You’re on in a minute,’ Nelly said. She adjusted my armour again for me, then gave me a wave and disappeared to go prepare for her next appearance.
‘Decrepit miser! Base ignoble wretch!’ I muttered. That was my next line, not a Nelly insult.
Deep breath.I’ve got this.
I moved closer to the stage curtain. I heard the audience titter again and glanced out to see what the excitement was about this time. Our production has too many hotties in it, seriously, it’s Shakespeare … focus people, focus. Heath stepped off the stage and collided with me; he grabbed me before I fell backwards.
‘Jesus, Joan, watch where you’re saving the world,’ he said, and grinned before giving me a quick kiss. He’s always on a natural high when we were working.
He brushed his dark hair back and pulled away to let me breathe.
‘Sorry,’ I moved a little out of the stage exit area. ‘Getting anywhere with Margaret?’ I whispered, with a glance to the woman his character was wooing but supposedly to give to the king.
‘Of course, … me or the king? C’mon, I’mtheman.’
‘That you are,’ I teased, ‘but go be manly elsewhere, I’m on in a second.’ I gave him a smirk as I moved past him to wait for my cue.
He tapped my butt which I heard rather than felt through the metal plate of my armour. I gave him a look that said Joan was outraged by that and wagged my finger; I threw one of my lines at him: ‘Thou art no father nor no friend of mine.’
‘C’mon, who’s your daddy?’ he said and made me laugh again.
‘Shut up, I’ll forget my lines.’ I ignored him, or attempted to, despite the fact he leant back against the set, crossed his arms over his chest and smiled at me with one of his winning looks. I’m such a sucker. I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply and listened to the dialogue on the stage to my left and then I heard my cue. I strode on and I’m straight into the character and in the moment. The Duke of Gloucester was about to give me a hard time before I’m burned to death, yep, nothing cheery about being Joan of Arc.
The rest of the play went so fast and before we knew it, it was over again for yet another performance. Three ‘curtain calls’ – that’s huge! We were all beaming. We held hands as we bowed; Heath had wrangled his way next to me and took my hand on stage as we bowed and that increased the intensity of the clapping. When it was his turn to step forward by himself the applause was thundering. I almost expected to see lingerie flying toward him. It’s good for me to see how other women desired Heath, it made him sexier. We’d been part of each other’s lives for so long that I saw him as just my Heath.
That was it. The curtain closed, the lights went up, the crowds departed and we all chilled. It was a wrap, opening night done! Time to celebrate with the cast and crew.
*****
The morning after opening night was the worst. No, not because of the hangover, but because of the reviews. I died a thousand deaths. If mine weren’t good, well I can live with that, even understand given my current acting instability … I’d search around until I found kinder reviews and I would read those over and over. But I couldn’t stand it if Heath got bad reviews when he was so much more passionate about it. My great miseries in this world have been Heath's miseries, and I felt it as keenly as he did.
But I needn’t have worried about that. The next morning while I showered, Heath went and got the papers. He’s forbidden from rifling through the papers and looking for the reviews until he comes home. I got out of the shower and dressed quickly. Moments later I saw his car, black and fast, turn into our driveway and the garage. From where I looked out, you couldn’t see the changes to the building, just the original wall – that’s what I liked about our place. This was once a mansion, dark and sprawling, a huge estate. Now it had been converted into six townhomes. Heath and I lived on the second floor with our windows facing the moors – we couldn’t see the subdivided section. Most of the other tenants preferred the view of the manicured gardens but not us. We spent most of our childhood on the moors, I knew it like the back of my hand and I needed to see it.
I heard his steps as he hurried in and the door closed behind him. There’s a routine here … if the reviews were good, we’d go back to bed. He’d be passionate, rough, demanding, and then after we came down off our high, we’d walk down to the village for breakfast and I’d scroll through and read him the online reviews and the reviews that audience members had left on the company’s social media pages. Heath didn’t care too much for those, but I thrived on them.
But if the critic reviews were shit, then I’d take the newspapers from him and I would lead him to the bedroom. I’d make love to him slowly, remind him there’s more to life than the thoughts of one person sitting in the audience penning his vitriol. And then we’d both be morose all day and have to go back and perform again tonight.
God, please let them be good. Please.
‘Got them,’ he said and dropped down on a stool at the kitchen bench. He handed me two tabloid newspapers and he took the broadsheet. We discarded all the catalogues, weekend magazines and inserts, and cut to the chase.
We both read in silence and then I looked up and Heath’s eyes met mine and he smiled; I grinned in response.Phew, praise the Lord, it was going to be a good weekend. This was what it must be like for actors, authors, artists, and even professional athletes and their poor long-suffering partners after a win or loss, a launch, or opening.
My small mention in the reviews was really good and I knew Heath was superb; the critics agreed. I read aloud the reviews from one of the tabloids:
‘Earnshaw owned the role.You bet he did,’ I teased. ‘And more…Earnshaw is a force of nature.Or how about –All hail Earnshaw, the Earl of Suffolk’.
That got a laugh from Heath.
‘Read me yours,’ he said. I cleared my throat dramatically.
‘It’s frame-worthy,’ I tell him. ‘Catherine Earnshaw once again passionately delivered a defiant Joan de Pucelle.Defiant, huh!’
I leant over and kissed him. ‘You were brilliant.’
He exhaled as if he had forgotten to breathe.