“We’ve got the name of a doctor,” Ida said. “Doctor Rudolph Lessing.”
“Call him,” George said.
“But I want Doctor Donne, dammit!”
Jason saw George glance at Ida in the silence. Jason could feel the tension and he suspected the three of them had forgotten his presence.
Ida said, “But maybe he doesn’t want to see you.”
Jenny glowered at her. “He’s a doctor, isn’t he? He’s got to see me. It’s medical ethics, isn’t it?” She was standing still, and the hairdresser moved to stand behind her and work on her hair, fluffing it with great deftness, and she seemed totally unaware of him.
George moved close to her and took her hand. “Jenny, can I advise you as a friend? Why don’t you get dressed and we get the hell out of here, go get something to eat someplace. Jenny darling, you’ve been losing your voice for twenty years and you still haven’t lost it. But this time it’s different? So okay, it’s different. Then you need a doctor. By all means, let’s get a doctor. The best in London. And if he’s not enough, we’ll fly Bidderman from the coast. But please, I beg you, leave David Donne alone.”
She pulled her hand away and asked quietly, “Is that the advice?”
“That’s the advice.”
The phone rang. Ida answered it. Jenny turned and watched her, very tense. When Ida held the phone out toward George, Jenny’s shoulders sagged. George took it and said, “Speaking. Yeh, sure.” He turned to Jenny. “First cut on the new album is finished. You want to hear it tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow,” Jenny said in a dull voice.
“They’ll arrange it at our convenience.”
“Not tomorrow.”
George spoke into the phone. “We’ll have to work it in. I’ll call you. Okay? Good. Fine.” As he hung up the phone rang immediately. He picked it up. “Hello? Yes. Hold on.” With a tired and rueful smile he held the phone out, handed it to Jenny. “Your doctor.”
Jason could sense Jenny’s nervousness as she took the phone, and the effort she was making to hide it. “David, how are you? Yes, a long time. Too long.… Well, I’ve been combing the hills for you.… As a matter of fact, not too well … I can’t explain over the phone … No, not tomorrow, tonight … No, I really can’t tomorrow. The first cut on a new album is ready and I have a listening session and a run-through.…” George gave Jason a sardonic glance. “I know, I know, I’m sure you have, but honestly, David … let’s not be reasonable, let’s be unreasonable.…” She began to smile. “Fine—where are you?… No, I’d rather come to you. Wimpole Street? Fifteen or twenty minutes? I’ll see you then. Good-by, David.”
She hung up, still smiling and turned to George and said, “I’ll need Tom and the car.”
“It’s done.”
She turned to Jason, her face young and lovely again, her big brown eyes shining, her smile a little more soft than theatrical. “Brownie, dear, I want to talk to you about a thousand things. We’ll have a chance. You’ll be around?”
“Sure.”
She turned back toward George and Ida, her tone explanatory, “You know, when you’re really worried, a doctor you have real confidence in is …”
“Sure, Jenny,” Ida said. “We know.”
“Well … let’s roll the wagons!” she said with a burst of electric energy and good cheer. “Let’s move!” The hairdresser fixed a final curl. Ida reached and took a slip and a dress from their hangers. George nodded at Jason, and Jason followed him out of the dressing room.
“I guess it has begun,” George said.
“Seems as if.”
“I hope the good doctor has a lot more sense than he had thirteen years ago,” George said dispiritedly. “Let me tell Tom to stand by, then suppose you come on back to the hotel with me and we’ll hold hands and cry.”
three
The Bowman team was staying at the Park Lane, not far from Jason’s hotel. A small paneled grillroom was still open. Jason and George sat in a low corner booth padded in black leather, and when their drinks were served, Kogan rubbed tired eyes and said, “It could be such a smooth operation, Jase. Aside from Jenny, there’s the traveling package, and we all know our jobs. Herm Rice on music, musicians, arrangements. Jorgensen on sets and lighting. Herm and Jorgy are over in Paris getting it set up for us over there. Hope we make it. Gabe, the hairdresser. Lois Marney on secretarial, tickets, bookkeeping, reservations, odds and ends. She’ll be down in a couple of minutes. It’s a good team, Jase, believe me. Trial by fire, and you get a good team. And loyal. Everybody is loyal. Like Ida, my God, eighteen years. So it isn’t so good to watch her chew herself up, but what can you do?”
“Wait and see, I guess. And try to help.”
“And pray a little. Here comes Lois.”
They both slid out of the booth and stood up. George introduced them. Lois Marney seemed to be about thirty, a tall blonde woman in a gray wool suit of rather severe tailoring, a white blouse with a nest of ruffles at her throat. Her hand was cool and dry in his. She wore her blonde hair short, combed to glossiness, a diagonal slant of bangs across her forehead. Her hair was curled around behind her ears, brought forward, giving her a look of sophistication and, somehow, an innocence and credulity. It was an oval face, fine-textured, the brows straight and rather heavy over light gray eyes, the mouth level and self-contained. She carried a flat purse and a red manila envelope. She slid into the semicircular booth and they sat on either side of her, Jason at her left.
“Rouse you out of the sack?” George asked.
“Oh sure! I finished a long letter to those nuts in Brussels, wherein you reassure them about everything.” She started to untie the folder. “If you could read it over and sign it …”
George put his hand on hers and stopped her. “I phoned you to come down social, Lois dear. Business as usual tomorrow. Okay?”
“If I can catch you in orbit tomorrow. How did it go?”
“She was a hundred and ten percent fabulous, believe me. She cut them off at eight encores, and she could have gone a dozen easy. And when she left, in the rain, it took cops to get her through the crush and into the limousine. But … she got in touch with him, and that’s where she is right now.”
Lois Marney stiffened and gave a quick glance at Jason Brown.
George saw it and said, “Down, girl. Jase is an old friend, and a trusted friend. Consider him part of the group.”
Lois turned and stared at Jason. She bit her underlip, her head slightly tilted. “Would Jenny call you Brownie?”
“She’s the only one who does.”
Lois smiled at him and it was a warmer smile than he had anticipated. “Now I know who you are. We get so darned accustomed to keeping up our guard.”
“Except for Gabe, who doesn’t really count,” George said, “Lois is the junior member of the team. Two and a half years.”
Lois turned to George. “She went to see him?”
“She put it on a medical basis. She went off to have him stare down her throat. Naturally, she’s losing her voice. I don’t know what she wants. I don’t know how he’ll react. Hell, she doesn’t know how she will react. But she had to see him. And she wasn’t about to take me along.”
“Did she seem happy when she left?” Lois asked.
“Nervous,” George said. “Excited. Tensed up. And so am I. Lois dear, you can usually eat anything at any time. How about the roast beef sandwich that’s coming for me? My stomach is in knots. Stay and keep Jase company. Sorry, Jase. See you tomorrow. Look, you can tell Lois the Wegler thing, and why. Honey, I’ll take this folder along and read your letter and sign it and leave it in your box in the morning.”
“I’ll eat your sandwich, George. Good night.”
He waved a weary arm and trudged away.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Lois said. “She’s a grown woman. But we get this … savage protective feeling about her. I guess we just don’t want her to be hurt. She’s such a wonderful person.”
�
�I think it’s because we sense how especially vulnerable she is, Lois. Maybe it goes with the talent. I don’t know. But her pendulum swings a little further than yours and mine. A greater capacity for joy, perhaps. Certainly a greater capacity to feel pain and hurt and despair.”
She looked intently at him and nodded. “More range, sort of. Yes. You know how she is. She gets very rough with us, with all of us. And we’re not door mat types, any of us. But then she is so horrified at herself, we sort of comfort her. There isn’t a warmer person anywhere. You can’t say she has a child’s emotions. They’re too deep and strong for that. And there are the professional disciplines, of course. She has, I think, a child’s lack of control over a stronge woman’s emotions. But I’m not in any sense trying to cut her up, Mr. Brown.”
“Jase, please.”
“Jase. Jason. I’d rather call you Jason, if that’s all right.”
“I’d like it better, I guess.”
The sandwiches and coffee came. She began to eat with obvious relish. “She was in love with you once upon a time, Jason.”
“We were in love. We thought we were in love.”
“You believed it, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What can there be, beyond believing it?”
“It was exactly the right time for us, when she was not herself and I was not myself, and the two people we happened to be—they fell in love. But then those two people ceased to exist.”
“That must happen oftener than people know,” she said with a pretty thoughtfulness. “I guess that happened to me. But maybe he wasn’t really not himself. I just looked at him and saw somebody else. But I married the guy. And it was a disaster. Five years of disaster. We got a divorce three years ago.”
“If I’d married Jenny, it would have turned into a disaster, sooner or later.”
“Like the other two marriages? No, not like that. I think … no matter what … you two would have been kinder to each other.”
“I came along between those two marriages.”
“She’s still fond of you, Jason.”
“I’m glad.”
“I have the feeling she’s going to need her friends.”
“I’ll be able to stay around for a while.”
She finished the last of the sandwich, touched the napkin to her lips and gave him an uneasy, sidelong glance. “I’m wondering right now how much I can trust you.”
“It won’t do any good for me to tell you that you can. Let me tell you the background on why I’m here.”
She listened intently to his story of how Wegler had trapped him and was using him. “It’s sort of a … feline trick, isn’t it?” she said. “But the main idea is to keep Jenny from … being foolish. Of course, he’s thinking of the damned picture and we’re thinking of Jenny as a person, so it adds up to the same thing.”
“You have a very practical mind, Lois.”
She studied him for a few moments and nodded. “I guess I’ll trust you. I’ll tell you what’s bothering me, has been bothering me. After this London thing first came up, everybody started getting tense. And I didn’t know why. I went to George and demanded to know what was going on. He wouldn’t tell me, and I said I didn’t care to work in that kind of an atmosphere, and finally he pledged me to secrecy and told me. But he didn’t embellish it any. Just the cold facts. Now I think I know Jenny Bowman. I think I know her pretty well, as a matter of fact. And I cannot imagine her giving up her own child. That’s what floors me every time I think of this mess. Jason, could you please help me understand how such a thing could be?”
“I think I can. I hope I can. But it will take a little time and these people seem to want to close this place up.”
“Oh, of course. Don’t pay, Jason. They have my signature on record here.”
“Let’s let Mr. Wegler take care of it.”
“Oh, of course he should. It’s more fitting, isn’t it?”
As she slid along the booth and stood up, he became more aware of her figure and the way she handled herself. She had a strong body under the fitted gray suit, a round firm breadth of hip, long round legs, straight back, a heaviness of breast above a slim flat waist. She handled herself with a slowness and a care that made her seem slightly, enchantingly awkward.
They went into the empty and rather cheerless lobby. They looked outside and it had begun to rain again. She smiled at him and he thought he detected a slight flush as she said, “I guess I better compromise you, Jason. Somebody gave us all some sort of extra-fabulous Scotch, and they might even send us up some ice, complete with slightly pained expression.”
Her room was on the third floor. As they walked down the corridor, she said, “Jenny is in a suite back there with Ida, and George is across the corridor from them.” She handed him her key and he unlocked her door. It was a larger room than his. She’d had a table brought in and was using it as a desk. There was a portable electric typewriter, two portable files, a stack of correspondence.
“Welcome to the office,” she said. “Office, travel bureau, advertising agency, ticket office and wailing wall.” She got the Scotch out of the closet, ordered up ice, and made casual talk about her work until the ice had come and he had fixed their drinks. He stretched out on a chaise and she sat a few feet away in an armchair.
“Better than the lobby,” he said.
“You overwhelm me with extravagant compliments. Cheers.”
“This is really very good stuff,” he said.
“Tell me about Jenny.”
“All right. I have to take a writer’s privileges here. Some she told me. Some I guessed. Some of it I inferred from other things she said. Now imagine Jenny in her twenties. Vulnerable then too, but in a different way. She had been working very hard for a very long time, and she had become, through work and drive and talent, a success. She was known. She was valuable. But there was still a long way to go, and she probably had that feeling of certainty of being right on the edge of all the marvelous things to come. She was working in New York. Suddenly, quite suddenly, her voice began to fail. The people with a big interest in her future got her the best medical attention. But none of them could find anything organic. They talked about anxiety, psychological factors. But Jenny knew it had to be something else. She could see all the future going out the window. She was in despair. Then somebody suggested a bright young specialist who was studying and working temporarily at Presbyterian Hospital. David Donne. A most attractive young Englishman. He went into the problem with great care and found something the others had missed. I don’t know exactly what he found. It doesn’t really matter. Some nerve involvement in the larynx which responded to minor surgery and a period of complete rest, of not using her voice even for speech. She remained in New York during that period, so he could keep her under observation. When she was alone she would get so terrified her voice would never come back, that she would be tempted to try to use it, and then she would hurry to him, because only with him could she hold on to her confidence. She became dependent upon him, emotionally dependent. They fell in love. They had an affair. She became pregnant. I think you can see how it happened to her. Proximity, vulnerability, fear, dependence. His conduct was, of course, unethical. She was a patient. But he was young and lonely and far from home, and this was a lovely, emotional woman. And New York is a city to make both of them more vulnerable. As you can guess from being with her, Jenny hasn’t got the typical show biz attitude toward the quick cheap affair. She has to be totally, intensely, emotionally involved.”
“Yes. I know.”
“So, she learned she was pregnant, and then the waiting time was up, and she had all of her voice back, clear and strong and true. They had engagements lined up for her, and she told the powers that be that she was very sorry, but she was going to have a baby. David Donne’s baby. The pressure came down on her from every side. Big pressure. Big money pressure. David Donne was already married, his wife here in England. She resisted the pressure to force her to have
an abortion until three months had passed, and then it was too dangerous. She was aghast at the idea of killing it. She would have it and she would keep it and she would raise it. And she refused to make any cover-story marriage.
“They had long months to work on her and on the young doctor. And they had good legal talent to work out the details. Donne went back to England and made full confession to his wife. They had no children, and her health was such it did not appear that they ever would. She forgave him and agreed to the tentative arrangement. The one the lawyers had suggested. Then Donne came back and presented the whole thing to Jenny. An illegitimate child would very probably smash her career. She could not hope to keep it quiet, if she kept the child with her. And would it be good for the child, to be branded in that way? He could legally adopt the child. His wife had agreed. They would love the child and care for it and raise it properly, and it need never know the circumstances of its birth. If she claimed to love the unborn child, how could she deny it such a chance, and force upon it the stigma of illegitimacy? I guess they worked on her in shifts. They finally wore her down. She signed the papers. They hid her away. She gave birth to a boy, and they were smart enough never to let her see it, never to let her hold it in her arms even once, because if they had, she would have tipped over all their applecarts. Part of the agreement was that she would never try to find the boy, never see him again. Can you understand a little better, Lois?”
“Of course,” she said softly. “I should have been able to figure it out myself, how it would be.”
“She really hurled herself into the career once she came out of hiding. The disappearance was all attributed to the throat operation, and if there were any rumors, I don’t remember hearing them. Maybe, in one sense, a lot of her drive during these intervening years has been partially due to compensation. This is what she gave her baby away for. So she had to make it big and good and valid.”
“She would have been as good in either case, Jason.”
“Would she have worked as hard?”
“Perhaps not. Anyway, what now?”
I Could Go on Singing Page 4
