I Could Go on Singing

by John D. MacDonald

  She took a step and then stopped and looked at their tense faces.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “What is what, honey?” George asked, just a little too blankly.

  “Something is going on and I want to know what it is!” she said, staring intently at each of them in turn.

  “Jenny,” George said, “you know me. Whatever I know you know. Just don’t get upset.”

  “I’m not upset, but I may get upset, very upset, unless you tell me what’s going on!” Her jaw was set, her eyes hard and blazing.

  George hesitated, started to speak, and then shrugged and sighed and took the telegram out of his pocket and handed it to her. She read it swiftly and then turned away from them.

  George said, “Jenny, I know this is a big disappointment …”

  “But he said he was coming …” she said in a stifled voice.

  “Darling, you were hoping to have twenty-five hundred out there tonight. But all you get is twenty-four hundred and ninety-eight. That’s still a lot of people. What do you say? Shall we start the overture?”

  “But he promised,” she said with tears in her voice.

  The commissionaire appeared in the doorway. He looked upset. “There is a Mr. Donne here, Miss Bowman, who insists that you …”

  She whirled, her face alight, tears standing in her eyes. “Oh, show him in, please!”

  A boy appeared in the doorway, a slender boy, not tall but with the look of tallness to come. He was hesitant, but poised, neat in his dark suit, tie perfectly knotted, dark hair brushed. Jason saw the trace of Jenny in his face, in the shape of brow, directness of eye, stubborn delicacy of chin.

  “Hello, Matthew,” Jenny said with a warm and wonderful smile, going to him.

  He put his hand out and said, “Hello, Miss Bowman.”

  “How nice you look! Come in, come in.” She kissed him and led him into the room. “Matthew, these are my good friends. Miss Ida Mulligan. Mr. Gabe. Mr. George Kogan. Mr. Jason Brown. This is Mr. Matthew Donne, of Canterbury School.”

  The boy acknowledged the introductions very correctly, looking directly at each of them, repeating the names. He looked at the masses of flowers and looked with a slightly owlish humor at Jenny. “Not a bit like Canterbury opening night, is it?”

  Jenny seemed distracted. She kept glancing at the empty doorway. “How did you get here, Matthew? Is your father here?”

  “I expect you got the telegram? It was a call from Italy, Miss Bowman.”

  “You promised to call me Jenny.”

  The boy smiled. It was a good smile, direct and aware. “I expect I should, if I promised. But it does seem a bit pushy. Jenny, then. It was an emergency case, someone quite important I imagine. Do you know, they’ve sold off all the standing room too?”

  Jenny straightened her shoulders. “George?”

  “Yes, Jenny.”

  “Start the overture.”

  George grinned and hurried out. Ida and Gabe advanced on Jenny and began small, final, unnecessary adjustments. The boy gave Jason a rather uncertain smile and backed out of the way.

  “Was it all right, my coming alone?” he asked.

  Jenny gave him warm and immediate reassurance. “It was more than all right. I’m very much complimented. I’m delighted. I would have been terribly disappointed if you hadn’t. Now come along with me, dear.”

  Ida and Gabe remained behind. Jason followed Jenny and her son to the backstage area. He heard the overture begin.

  Jenny turned to Jason and said, “Brownie, would you please see that …”

  “Miss Bowman. Jenny,” the boy said. “I guess I should tell you. Actually, I came up to town on my own. They don’t know I’m here.”

  Jenny looked at the boy with an odd expression. “Your father doesn’t know?”

  “I imagine he thinks I’m in Canterbury with Aunty Beth.”

  Jason said, “Might be a good idea to let her know.”

  “Yes, of course,” Jenny said with a distracted frown. Lois came up to them at that moment and was introduced. When she heard the boy’s name, she gave Jason a quick, questioning look.

  With a sudden intensity, Jenny put her hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “I know what we’ll do. Your father stood us both up tonight, dear, but we’re not going to let that get us down. After the show, you’re going to have supper with me, and then we’re going to bed you down at the hotel, and we’ll spend tomorrow together.”

  The boy looked pleased but worried. “That would be very nice, but I’m afraid Aunty Beth would positively …”

  “Lois will explain it very nicely to Aunty Beth, won’t you, Lois?”

  “I’ll try. How do I get in touch with her, Matthew?” Lois said.

  “It’s Miss Nevison,” the boy said and gave Lois the Canterbury phone number. “Thank you so much! I do hope they won’t be too cross about it.”

  “They may be jealous,” Jenny said, “but I don’t think they’ll be angry. Lois, dear, would you turn this young man over to one of the ushers, please? You do have your ticket, Matthew?”

  “I picked it up at the box office. I explained to them they might sell the other one, and they did so, very quickly.”

  Jenny laughed. “You can be my assistant business manger, dear.”

  The boy held his hand out. “I hope it goes very well, Jenny.”

  She kissed him again, and the boy looked slightly uncomfortable. “Having you here is going to make it go well. And your father is going to be awfully sorry he missed it.”

  Jason saw Jenny look at the boy as he went off with Lois. He saw the softness and the pride and the yearning in her eyes. Then she moved slowly to the corner of the stage. Jason waited, several feet behind her. George suddenly appeared beside him. Jason sensed another presence and turned and saw Ida.

  Jenny stood, and Jason could sense the way she was letting the music take her. She was opening herself, letting the music move into her, letting it push everything else back into a far corner of her mind, letting it take her and build her into the public Jenny Bowman, the performer, totally keyed to the music, to the audience. At the right cue, as the big band shifted smoothly into a faster and more insistent rhythm, Jenny seemed to grow, to take on more stature, to become more vivid and electric, her eyes shining, foot tapping, body moving in tempo. The audience anticipation was a tangible thing. The back of Jason’s neck and the backs of his hands tingled. George wore a broad maniacal grin and his face was flushed. The band went into her introductions. She reached a hand back without looking. George slapped the walk-around mike into it, and she walked swiftly out into the great crash of applause, smiling, vibrant, meeting the applause and then taking charge with the opening bars of her opening song, “I Could Go on Singing.”

  She took it from the back of the big stage first, all that music and that big voice filling the great theater like a huge earthen bowl filled to the brim with quicksilver. And as she built to the climax she went out onto the runway that took her out over the audience. She built it hard and true, pulling the band with her into a drive never achieved in rehearsals, and ended it with a punch that seemed to lift the whole audience out of their seats.

  Amidst the shocking roar of applause, George hammered Jason on the back and jumped up and down and yelled, “She’s got it tonight! Oh, man, she’s got it all tonight!”

  eight

  At ten thirty on Saturday morning, Jason tapped on the door of Lois Marney’s room. She opened the door, said a toneless, expressionless good morning and went back to her typing. He dropped his topcoat and hat on the chaise and went and stood looking out the window, hands in his hip pockets, unlit pipe clenched between his teeth.

  The sound of typing stopped. “George is with the recording people,” she said.

  “So Ida told me. Have any trouble with the aunt?”

  “She’s an old lady. The boy told me she has a very strong will. She wasn’t exactly pleased. She wasn’t at all certain she’d ever heard of
Jenny Bowman. And she doesn’t seem to think entertainers are reliable people. It took a long time to reassure her.”

  “When does the boy go back?”

  “On a train early this afternoon, I think”

  “She got a room for him all right?”

  “It connects with the suite. They moved somebody.” She frowned. The morning light slanted across her. She wore a dark blue wool dress with a plain neckline. She looked very lovely and withdrawn and unapproachable. “The aunt asked a very shrewd question, Jason. Why? It is a good question, isn’t it?”

  “Embarrassingly good.”

  She leaned back in her chair and looked at him. “And the boy is asking it too, I think. I like that boy. He has those wonderful manners and all that poise, but he isn’t a little prig. He’s very bright and aware. He knows Jenny is a friend and a patient of his father. But she’s also a celebrity. Why should she give so much time and attention to an English schoolboy?”

  “Because she likes him.”

  “That might be enough for the boy. The aunt isn’t quite satisfied. And I guess we can be glad Sam Dean left when he did.”

  “There are other reporters.”

  “She wore my raincoat and a scarf over her hair. I guess she senses it’s smart to be inconspicuous. And it gives her and the boy more privacy.”

  “Did they leave early?”

  “By nine, I think. Ida said the boy was talking about some sort of excursion boat that goes up and down the river, so she could see London. Can you imagine Jenny as a tourist?”

  “If she’s with the boy, everything will please her.”

  “She’s trying to charm him,” Lois said.

  “Of course.”

  “Is that entirely honest, Jason?”

  “It’s entirely Jenny.”

  He moved closer to the table, leaned against it and looked down at her. She looked away, blushing slightly.

  “Lois. We have to talk.”

  “Do we?”

  “You can’t just wall it off, like everything else.”

  The flush faded to pallor. She looked at him and her mouth was compressed. “There’s some mythology about these things, isn’t there? You caught me off guard, and you made me react. You certainly made me react, didn’t you? All the way. And according to male mythology, that’s supposed to turn me to putty in your hands, isn’t it? Some sort of a damned swooning conditioned reflex. But I’m not following the rules. Is that why you keep looking so baffled? I resent what happened, Jason. I resent the invasion of privacy. No pun intended. I resent what it does to my pride and my self-respect. You had no right. I’m not a thing. I’m a woman. I’m not something you can just walk up and use like that. You did, and I let you, and I shouldn’t have. And I won’t again. I’ve slammed all the doors, Jason.”

  He looked at her in anger. “You have a very basic part of it wrong. It makes me out some kind of a damned goat. I don’t have hooves and smell of brimstone, for God’s sake! What seems to escape you, Lois, is any slight idea that it might have been something I thought very meaningful to both of …”

  “Like you said in your little message? You do love me? Oh come now, Jason. Really! Isn’t that the next gambit? This is bigger than both of us? Isn’t that the way you rationalize it and hope I will, so you can convince me we should keep on with it? Aren’t we a little too grown up for that? It was a dreary little episode between a couple of relative strangers, Jason. And nothing we can say can turn it into some sort of glowing emotional experience.”

  He looked at her wonderingly. “You’re really as cold as a fish, aren’t you?”

  “Challenging me? I already proved I’m not physically cold. I don’t have to prove it again, thank you.”

  “Emotionally cold, Lois.”

  “Emotionally realistic. Come now, Jason. What’s the next act? Now do you tell me that it’s healthy, that it’s really good for me?”

  “Why the compulsion to cheapen things, Lois?”

  “How do you cheapen something already cheap?”

  “I am not cheap!”

  “Neither am I, dear. But we were capable of a cheap relationship.”

  He studied her. “What if I asked you to marry me?”

  She looked startled for a moment, and then smiled. “You can’t make it into something special that way. That’s just an extension of the love rationalization. And, you know, you might even do it if I said yes, just to prove to yourself that you are right and I am wrong. What kind of a marriage would that be?”

  He shook his head. “I give up.”

  “Please do.”

  “Lois, what kind of a relationship will you accept?”

  She picked up a pencil and tapped her lips with it, holding her head on the side, looking at him with a rather cold amusement. “It would be sort of childish to say none at all, I guess. We started to be friends, but now we’re not. But I did like being your friend. Maybe, if we were very very careful not to remind each other in any way of what happened Thursday night, we could get away from this sexual rivalry thing and get to be friends again.”

  “Do you think that if we do get to be friends, some time we can talk about it with … more understanding?”

  “There’s nothing more to say about it, Jason.”

  Her gray eyes looked into his, steadily, defiantly. The dark dress fit her figure beautifully, showing to advantage the slenderness of her waist, the firm round pressure of hips and thighs, the strong breasts. She looked brisk, tidy, immaculate and invulnerable. Already she was making it fade for him, making it difficult for him to believe that all of this warm fortress had crumpled and surrendered, gasping with urgencies, making little broken cries as she sought total closeness, groaning his name.

  In every truth, no matter how great or small, he thought, there is a crumb of paradox, a small and dubious erosion. And her life has somehow given her that kind of micro-vision which focuses entirely on the doubt, denying the existence of truth beyond her point of vision. So she can not ready herself for love until she can see that all things are a mixture, all things ambivalent, and life is a process of grasping the entirety, satisfying yourself with a net balance for good. Hers is the pitiful fate of untempered idealism which accepts nothing unless it is totally good—and because life does not strike such bargains—ends by accepting nothing. Yet thinks herself a cynic rather than an idealist. Senses her own waste of herself. Acted with sensual honesty, then feels shamed and tries to shame me. Cheapness is in the people, not the deed. Which, of course, is another kind of idealism, perhaps in its own way as spurious as hers.

  “Are you free for lunch?” he asked.

  “Things have eased off a little now. Unless George comes back and loads me up, yes.”

  For a moment she looked very vulnerable. “And don’t try to be clever with me, Jason. I’m not very clever. You know that now. Just … be my friend.”

  Lunch was difficult. There was so much awareness, and she wanted to bury it carefully under neat layers of polite talk, patting each one down, smoothing the edges, restoring all the strata to the way it was originally, so that eventually it could be covered with sod so scrupulously fitted that one could walk right on by it without knowing it was there. He tried to help her, because the concealment seemed such a necessity to her. But from time to time the talk would veer toward an inadvertent innuendo, and then she would go on too hastily, her voice a little thin.

  It reminded him of something which had happened when he had been five or six years old, and he wished he could tell her about it, but he sensed she was in no mood to be amused by it. A woman had come to visit his mother, and he had never seen her before, but his mother had given him strenuous warnings beforehand not, under any circumstances, to stare at the woman or say anything or in any way show any awareness of the fact that she had a truly monstrous nose, a great fleshy appendage that dwarfed all the rest of her face. After the first shocked glance, he had been very good about it. But that nose seemed to fill his consciousness. He trie
d to think of other things. But he marveled at the nose. His mother asked him to pass the little cakes, and he took the plate to the lady and avoided looking directly at her, and said, very politely, “Would you like another nose?”

  There were the inadvertent innuendoes, and there was also the temptation to guide the conversation into areas where such allusions would be more frequent, keeping awareness alive without seeming to be trying to do so. But she was a subtle and clever woman, and he feared that if she guessed his intent, there would be no further chances to be near her. So he tried earnestly to do it her way. It was not easy. He had become so sensitized to her that he could be following what she was saying, and then notice a turn of her wrist or the shape of her mouth or the velvety look of the skin of her throat, and what she was saying would merge and blur into gibberish, and he would sit in a steamy and foolish agony, nodding, keeping the polite attentive look fixed on his face. It was easier for him when he kept talking, and he heard himself giving a learned lecture on why the eastern sections of most of the great cities of the world are the slum sections and why London was no exception and how the fifteen thousand bombs that fell onto the east end had given the planners and urban architects a rare chance to try to reverse the trend of hundreds of years.

  George sat down with them and said, “If you’re with this character, Lois, and a mosquito bites you, he’ll tell you how they built the Panama Canal and whipped the yellow fever. Keep lecturing, pal.”

  “I’d finished that one, George.”

  “I got a little chore for you, Lois. Ida took the call. They missed the train. Now it’s the six fifty-six.”

  “Call Aunty Beth?”

  “Call that dear old lady,” George said.

  “It isn’t going to be easy.”

  “I’ve got a few little problems too. And so has Ida. We had her set up for fittings, for rehearsal on a couple new things came in. We got New York phone calls piled up for her. What she needs now is run around in the cold with that kid and get a nice cold in the throat. That would fix the whole wagon. Suppose you go call that sweet old lady.”