I Could Go on Singing

by John D. MacDonald

  The boy looked horrified. “But she can’t do that!”

  “What if you wanted to be with her and your father refused?”

  “But it isn’t that way at all!”

  “Jenny believes it’s that way.”

  “There’d be no way of avoiding the scandal then, would there, sir?”

  “None.”

  “Then she must not do it.”

  “There’s only one person in the world who can stop her.”

  Suddenly the boy’s eyes, so like Jenny’s, filled with tears. “She is a dear woman, and I do wish things might have been different. For everyone. But I shall stop her. Sir, I am very grateful to you for talking to me.”

  “I’m glad you gave me the chance.”

  “I expect she’s up by now. I should phone her or go there.”

  “It might be better if you arranged to meet somewhere.”

  “Sir?”

  “Some people have become curious about why she’s seeing so much of you.”

  The boy’s smile was crooked. “It was making me curious too. I understand. May I be excused now, sir?”

  “Of course.”

  The boy started to leave, then turned back with a rather wistful expression. “In spite of all, it’s going to be fearfully hard not to tell people who I am. You see, it is nothing I could be ashamed of.”

  “Tell her that, too.”

  “Yes, I guess she might like that.”

  Jason had no opportunity to report to Lois until early afternoon. And then he took her into the park. They sat on a low stone wall in the sunshine. It was the warmest day they’d had. The air was soft and ripe with the scents of springtime. She listened intently as he told her about the boy. She shook her head slowly, smiling, her eyes shiny with emotion. “Is it good or bad to be that mature that young, Jason?”

  “Good, in this case. If he wasn’t, he’d be a pawn. They’d pull him and haul him this way and that. He’s dealt himself into the game.”

  “At thirteen I wasn’t anything at all. A dumb dreamy kid. It’s all misty back there. I can’t remember anything with any clarity.”

  “I can remember I’d learned to throw a curve.”

  “That’s really a marvelous boy. Jenny’s warmth and his father’s stability and wisdom. I wonder what he’ll become. Something special, I bet.”

  “He’s something pretty special right now and they both know it.”

  She looked at him with a strange smile. “But the people who loved me probably looked at me when I was thirteen and thought I was special.”

  “You are.”

  “Please, Jason. I wasn’t fishing.”

  “I know. You talk about valuing yourself, but you don’t.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  “Shouldn’t there be a little more than that, Lois?”

  He felt the sun on his face as he looked at her. The gray eyes met his and slid away. Her mouth looked soft and pensive. “I did expect more. That’s the standard illusion, isn’t it? But you settle for what you get.”

  “You mean you pick up your toys and go home?”

  “No. Not like that. I’m not like that. I just became a realist.”

  He stared at her. “I hope it’s a great comfort to you.”

  She stood up. “Let’s not start spoiling things again. Let’s walk. And then I have to get back.”

  He walked beside her in a long silence, all too aware of her strength and beauty, her shining hair, the litheness of her stride. She was behind glass. The stopper was firmly hammered into place. She was beyond reach.

  When they returned to the hotel, Ida said, “She went dusting out of here like a queen bee. A tea date with her son, yet. You could hook her smile over her ears. George is wandering around looking at the windows, picking the best one to jump through.”

  At six o’clock while Jason was in Lois’s room helping her clip the local reviews and interviews, George came walking in with a drink in his hand. “Same old routine,” he said helplessly. “Off with the kid someplace.”

  Jason stared at him, and he felt a little twinge of alarm. “I don’t think so, George.”

  “You don’t think what?”

  “I don’t think she’s with Matthew.”

  George stared at him. “Why should there be any change? It’s the same old suspense story. Will she make the theater or won’t she? Why should anything be any different?”

  “The boy was going to tell her he doesn’t want to go to Paris.”

  “Doesn’t want to go?”

  “The boy wants things the way they were before she showed up,” Jason said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Matt told him,” Lois said.

  George looked at both of them, scowling. “And you two clowns didn’t think I should know about that?”

  “George,” Lois said, “we were only …”

  George Kogan smacked himself in the forehead. “So she went off and the kid hit her with that. You hit Jenny with something like that, you think she’d come crawling on back here for a good cry? You think that’s the way she reacts?”

  “It’s something she has to work out for …”

  “Jase, you are a meat-head.”

  Jason went to the phone. “Let me see what I can find out.”

  He called David Donne’s number. A woman answered. He asked to speak to Matthew Donne. The boy came on the line and when Jason identified himself, the boy said, “What is your number there, sir. I would like to call you back from another phone.”

  It was five minutes before he called back. Jason asked the boy how it had gone.

  “Not very well, sir. Not well at all. As a matter of fact, I botched it.”

  “How?”

  “We met at the tea house at the Serpentine. It was most awkward at first. It was the first time I’d been with her since … I found out. It was difficult to talk about anything except … the things people generally say to one another. At last she asked me about Paris. I tried to tell her. Honestly I did. But I got as far as telling her that father was leaving it up to me … and she suddenly assumed that I could not possibly say anything but yes. She was so very happy, sir. She said the tickets had been bought and the hotel reservation made for me. She said she had a lot of surprises all planned. She was so very happy about it, sir.”

  “I understand.”

  “She thought it all settled. Then we went for a walk along the Serpentine, along the tow path. She said … we might go to see Venice too. I did not want to talk about that sort of thing. I tried to talk about ordinary things. I guess I was very upset. Finally she began to see that I was troubled. We sat on a bench to talk.”

  “Did you tell her then?”

  “I tried to. I honestly tried to, sir, but she seemed to sense what I was going to say, and she begged me to say I would go to Paris with her. She begged me to say it. She asked me please not to leave her now. She said she needed me. Sir?”

  “Yes, Matt.”

  “I said I would go with her. She did not leave me anything else to say. But I was terribly upset, really. I guess she could see how upset I was. I imagine … she realized I did not want to go with her. There’s no other answer for what happened.”

  “What did happen?”

  “Three of my friends from school appeared. Collings, Gregson and Smith Minor. They’d hired two boats from Lansbury Lido and wanted a rowing contest. They’d thought me stuck down in Canterbury. Jenny urged me to go along with them. She said she’d watch. You see, sir, she’d already told me we could have all of the afternoon together, that she was quite free. But she looked at me strangely when I set off in the boat. Most strangely. I thought she would wait. But when we were out into the lake, I looked back and she was walking slowly up the hill. When the race was ended I waited there for her for quite a long time, but she did not come back. I did it very badly. How is she, sir?”

  “She’s all right, Matt. Don’t worry about her.”

  “She looked at me with such a
n odd expression. So … empty.”

  “I think she understands what you wanted to tell her, and why you couldn’t.”

  “I’m going back to Canterbury this evening, sir. I would like to write her a nice letter of thanks. Do you think that would be all right?”

  “I think she would treasure it, Matt.”

  After he hung up, he told George and Lois the substance of the conversation. George shoved his fists into his hip pockets and went and stared out the window at the dark city. “It’s a big town,” he said heavily. “Where do we look first? Maybe we look in that big gray river.”

  “She wouldn’t do that to the boy,” Lois said sharply.

  “There are other ways to drown something,” Jason said.

  “What about the performance?” George asked. “Should I start canceling?”

  “Do you think you should?” Lois asked.

  George turned from the window. His face looked old. “I think I better wait. I better wait and hope and pray. Because you know what? It’s the best chance she has. It’s like the only chance she has.”

  twelve

  Jason Brown knew, before he reached his destination, that he would never forget the taxi ride to Middlesex Hospital. The message had been cryptic, and there had been no one else to take it. Lois, George and Ida had left for the theater a few moments before the call came in, and George had posted Jason in the lobby with stern orders to grab Jenny the moment she appeared, hustle her into a cab and bring her to the theater.

  One of the hotel porters had led him to the proper phone. There was so much background noise he had not understood the man very well. “She has been asking for me?” he repeated blankly.

  “I think you should get over here as soon as you can, sir.”

  The others would not be at the theater yet. And the man had hung up. He decided he could call from the hospital, and from there he could give them some more definite information.

  After the pleasant day it had begun to rain again, and the night streets were all sheen and glitter and confusion of lights in the heavy traffic. He sat forward on the seat trying to will the taxi into better speed. He had a sick sense of tragic inevitability, of grisly disaster. He had told the driver it was an emergency, and the man knew the way through the complex of hospital buildings to the entrance with a sign reading MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL; CASUALTY DEPARTMENT. The word had a wartime cadence to him, a sound of aid stations and morphine ampules. It made him think of the grittily apt title on one of Irwin Shaw’s short stories, “Walking Wounded.” And before whatever happened to her had happened, Jenny Bowman could have been so classified. And Lois. And himself.

  The taxi pulled up behind a chauffeur-driven car, and Jason thrust money at the driver and hurried up the steps, catching up to the man who had arrived in the other car just as they both reached the doorway. They went in together.

  A tall young man in a white hospital coat came toward them, saying, “Oh, Mr. Donne. So glad you could come so quickly. Hope you don’t mind us getting on to you, but she was asking for you, wouldn’t see any other …”

  “Are you talking about Miss Bowman?” Jason asked.

  They both turned and gave him a cool and speculative look, the look that implies some social indiscretion.

  “Mr. Brown?” the white-coated fellow said dubiously.

  “Yes,” Jason said and held his hand out to Donne. “Jason Brown,” he said. “Jenny is my friend.” In spite of Donne’s hesitation before he took the offered hand, Jason liked the look of him. He had a look of quiet purpose, watchfulness, reliability. “Is she badly hurt?” Jason asked.

  The man in the white coat looked amused. “That would not be my diagnosis,” he said.

  “Where do you have her?” Donne asked.

  “We’d have her in an open ward if I hadn’t recognized her, Mr. Donne. She insisted her name was Mudd. Miss Dreary Mudd I believe she said. I am a great admirer of hers, sir. We’re trying to keep the matter entirely confidential.”

  “I appreciate that,” Donne said.

  “A female person named Landor was trying to see her a bit ago, but I didn’t like the look of her and made excuses. Come along, please. We have her in a treatment room at the moment, off one of the main wards.”

  They followed the hospital official along a corridor with benches on either side, lined with people awaiting treatment. They had to make way for a stretcher case being wheeled rapidly down the corridor. When they reached the treatment room, the official held the curtains aside. Jenny sat on a straight chair beside a stretcher. She was looking directly at the doorway. She wore a simple dark dress, and a froth of black fur stole. Her right ankle was taped and resting on a small metal stand. Her elbow was on the stretcher, her hand supporting her tousled head. She looked mild, thoughtful, bemused and quite tight.

  “My dear friends,” she said. “My dear oldest best friends. I have a message and a warning for you. Never go to an exhibition of abstract art for the millions.”

  The hospital official had gone. Jason stayed by the door. David Donne advanced toward her. “I won’t,” he said.

  “And if you do, don’t drink the martinis.”

  “Definitely not.” He touched her ankle with clever fingers.

  “Ouch. They’re half gasoline, you know.”

  “Did you get enough of them?”

  “Enough to float Fire Island, darling. Does it show?”

  “I was informed.”

  “By some sneak. I met a sneak too. A young Lord something. Can I take you home? Oh yes, kind sir. But it was his home he had in mind, not mine. Nobody asked me. In the general uproar I got this.” She pointed at her foot.

  “How did you get here?”

  “A lovely lovely taxi man name of Gerald. He saw I was in need. They gave me coffee and fixed the ankle and, so help me, they want an autographed photograph for Cousin Marilyn. Which they will get. Isn’t it the end. You take a drink and end up with Dr. Kildare.” She made a face. “Chums, I feel wretched awful.”

  David saw the coffee and poured some. “Bit more coffee, Jen?”

  “I couldn’t get any more down if you pumped it into a vein. I’m full to the brim. Fed up to here. Fed with the whole goddamned world.”

  “Just see if you can wedge a bit more coffee down, dear.”

  She looked up at him. “Have you come to take me home?”

  David looked inquiringly at Jason. Jason said, “We’ve come to take you to the theater.”

  With no trace of alcohol or confusion she said flatly, “Oh no you haven’t. Nobody gets me near that place ever ever again.”

  “I imagine they’re waiting for you,” Donne said.

  “Tell good old George to give the money back. Tell them Jenny closed to mixed reviews.”

  “It’s a sellout,” Jason said.

  “Bully for me!”

  “They’ll be sitting and waiting for you, Jenny. All of them.”

  She leaned forward to scowl at him, her eyes slightly unfocused. “Don’t wheedle me, for God’s sake! Let them wait. They want too much and I can’t give it. Not any more. Everybody’s always wanted too much of me. You and you and George and Ida and Lois and Herm and Sid Wegler and Aunty Beth and five thousand other people until there’s nothing left to give. Nothing. I can’t be spread so thin. I don’t want to be rolled out like a pastry so everybody can have a nice big bite. I’m me. My own me. I belong to me, and from now on I do whatever I damn well please with myself and no questions, buddy.” She got up and took a hesitant limping step, and another, and then seemed to find she could walk reasonably well. “It isn’t worth it,” she said in a different voice. “It isn’t worth all the deaths I have to die.”

  “You have a show to do this evening,” Donne said firmly, “and Mr. Brown and I are going to see that you make it.”

  She spun around to face them. “Ha! Do you think you can make me sing? Does George? You can get me there, but do you think you can make me sing, David?”

  “No. I can’t
do that.”

  “I sing because I want to, not because anyone wants or makes me.”

  “So hang onto that,” Donne said.

  “I hang on good. I’ve hung onto every bit of rubbish in my life. And I’ve thrown all the good parts away. You know me, David. I’m the girl that saves the wrappings off the candy bars and starves to death. Why do I have to be the one to do that? Who elected me?”

  She stood close to him. “All I know is that you’re going to be very late,” he said.

  “I don’t care,” she said and sat again in the chair.

  David Donne knelt beside her and put his arm around her. “Darling,” he said, “I don’t give a damn who you let down, but you’re not going to let yourself down.”

  Jason suddenly realized that in their intensified awareness of each other they had forgotten his presence.

  Jenny put her hand over her eyes and said, “It’s so very long since I heard you call me that.”

  David Donne gently pulled her hand away. “Look at me. Listen to me.”

  They looked at each other in silence, and Jason could feel the awareness and the significance of it. He sidled toward the doorway curtains.

  “Don’t say anything you don’t mean,” Jenny said in a low voice. “If you say something and don’t mean it, I’ll die right here, this minute.”

  “I want to help you, Jenny.”

  “Who can help me? He didn’t want to stay with me. He didn’t want to come away with me. He was trying not to hurt me. But I could tell. Oh David, it was such a terrible time of revelation of … of how much I’ve lost.…”

  “Help me now, Jenny. Help us both.”

  In a small wry sour voice she said, “Of course you did love me and still do and always have.”

  “And you’ve always known that.”

  “Then why? Why!” she said wildly.

  “Right people at the wrong time. And too strong, each of us. Then making the only bargain we could …”

  Jason slipped through the curtains. He looked into the busy ward, saw the hurry of nurses and orderlies. He waited there. The hospital sounds obscured the sounds of the voices behind the curtain. Suddenly David Donne appeared beside him. “Mr. Brown, you might tell the theater she’ll be along.”