I Could Go on Singing (7 page)

“A little,” he said, and made a notation on the card. “You sang this evening. Charity concert, wasn’t it? How did it go?”

“Ghastly.”

“Of course. That means you were good.”

“No. It’s true. My throat was raw. I couldn’t produce anything. I couldn’t swallow.” She glanced at Miss Plimpton. “Am I keeping your nurse?”

“No. She works here.”

“But this is really awfully late for her, isn’t it?”

“Please tell me the rest of your symptoms. It’s rather late for all of us, I suspect.”

“I … I suddenly felt scared I was losing my voice, David.”

“When did that fear start?”

“When? Oh … since I got to England. And don’t tell me it’s the climate. I thrive on this kind of climate.”

“This is something which has happened previously?”

“Years ago.”

“In Europe?”

“In New York. And my voice did go. And a young English doctor who just happened to be studying there at the time cured me.”

David stopped writing and studied her for a long expressionless moment. “I believe we should have a look. Would you come this way, please?”

She sat in the examination chair. He put on the reflector mirror and picked up the speculum. “How are your sinuses?”

“I guess you’ll have to tell me.”

He tilted her head back gently, dilated her nostrils in turn with the instrument, examined her. “Any colds recently? Hoarseness?”

“No.”

“You used to have colds frequently as I recall.”

“I take vitamins.”

He handed the speculum to Miss Plimpton and she gave him a tongue depressor.

“Open your mouth widely, please.”

“You’ve gotten gray, David.”

“I’m an old man. Open your mouth.” He inspected her throat, made her say ah. “Now,” he said, “we shall have a look at the larynx.” Miss Plimpton had warmed the laryngeal mirror over a spirit lamp and tested it on her wrist before handing it to David. “You remember the proced …”

“I can remember it without liking it. Stick out my tongue, concentrate on breathing quietly in and out through my mouth, and you hold my tongue with that nasty piece of gauze. Yes indeed, I remember I shall relax, David dear, and think of something pleasant.”

When he had finished and put the mirror aside, she said, “Would you like to know what I was thinking about?”

He walked around behind her and began gently fingering the glands and muscles of her neck and throat. “Tell me if you feel any pain.”

“I was thinking of Atlantic City. Do you ever think of Atlantic City? Would you call it a pleasant thought, David?”

“Perhaps. Does this give you any pain?”

“N-No.”

“Swallow, please. Thank you.” He walked around in front of her.

“Am I going to lose my voice?”

“What do you think, Jenny?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me?”

He took off the reflector and handed it to Miss Plimpton. He went to the desk. Jenny followed him. He took out a prescription form.

“Your throat is a bit red, the membranes slightly roughened. After all, you have been singing. And you smoke too much. When do you open your regular stint here?”

“In five days.”

“I shall give you something to ease that minor irritation, Jenny. And if you have five days, I strongly urge you to take off three of them. Rest, sleep, relaxation.”

“Where can I buy that?”

“And I would like to have you gargle with this morning and evening.”

She sauntered over to the sliding doors which she suspected must open into the fireplace room she had seen before. “Couldn’t you prescribe an immediate drink?”

He looked up quickly and smiled, stood up and put the prescription slip in his jacket pocket. “You were determined
to go in there, weren’t you? Very well.” He slid the door open. “Come along, if you must.”

They went into the small living room. David went to the bar cabinet. Jenny went to look into the mirror over the fireplace mantel to touch her hair, freshen her lipstick.

“Still Scotch, I suppose?”

“With a little water, please.” Glancing at him in the mirror she saw him move to screen with his body the quick motion with which he turned a picture face down. He brought her drink to her and she turned and accepted it, smiling.

“No ice, I’m afraid. Please be comfortable, Jenny.” He indicated a chair. He went to the sliding doors and closed them as Jenny sat.

“You have changed, David.”

“Wouldn’t it be rather alarming if I hadn’t?” he said and came smiling toward her and took the chair opposite hers. He lifted his drink. “Salud!”

“David, you’ve become so … so guarded. No. That’s not quite the right word. Careful?”

She thought he looked slightly dismayed. “Have I? Perhaps. Care comes, I imagine. It comes. Possibly the more we acquire in this world the more careful we become … trying to hold to it.”

“I heard about Janet’s death. I do have her name right?”

“Janet, yes. I read about your marriage.”

“Which one? Not that it makes any difference. Neither of them were worth … the time it took to read about them. I should have married you. It would have worked, you know. It really would have worked.”

He looked at her somberly and shook his head. “You’re wrong, Jenny.”

“You seem so sure of that, don’t you?”

“It is better as it is.”

She stood up quickly and began to wander restlessly around the room, agitated but trying to control herself. “Very cozy here, David. Nice and sort of worn and calm and safe. Who keeps it up for you?” He did not answer. She picked up a small recorder from a table, replaced it, turned and smiled at him, “Don’t tell me you’ve given up your study of the harmonica!”

“Completely. Too many complaints. Do you still knit?”

“Rarely.” They looked at each other, both smiling, caught in old memories. She said with a trace of wistfulness, “We
must have had fun. I remember it that way, at least. Did we have fun, really? Please tell me.”

“Yes.”

“See? I can twist your arm. Obviously, I’ve come here just to rake up old ashes. Looking for an ember, maybe.”

“Why did you come, Jenny?”

“The truth? Maybe I just didn’t want to be alone my first night in a strange city.”

“You must have scores of friends in London, just as you have everywhere else. You wouldn’t have been alone.”

She looked in the mirror, then turned toward him with that special urgency of despair. “I’ve made such a mess of things, David. Maybe it’s not my throat, but there’s something. They say I have an audience in every city in the world. But I haven’t a home anywhere. All my life I’ve … I’ve been throwing away everything that really matters.” She shivered. “I’m so awfully tired, David.…” She tried to fight her way back toward casualness. “Who does your flowers? Miss Plimpton?”

David was watching her closely. “Why don’t you sit down, Jenny.”

She wandered over to the drink cabinet and looked at a picture of David in evening dress being presented to the Queen Mother.

“Some sort of a ceremony?”

“I was being given the OBE. One gets it for taking out precisely the right set of tonsils.” She ran her finger along the rim of the picture that was face down, knowing he was watching her carefully. “May I fix a drink?” he asked.

“Thank you, no.” She picked up the picture and turned it over and looked at it. A young boy smiled out at her. The face looked vital and sensitive, much as David might have looked as a boy, she thought. “Why did you hide this from me, David?”

“Hide it? My word, why should I hide it?”

“Oh, David. Really. I saw you turn it face down.”

“Then I must have hidden it.”

There was a gentle knock at the door and Miss Plimpton entered at once, bringing Jenny’s coat. “Excuse me, Mr. Donne, but would you need me for anything further?”

“Nothing more, thank you. I’m sorry, Miss Plimpton. It’s very late and I should have told you you could go. I’ll see Miss Bowman out. How does tomorrow look?”

“The Clinic at 8:30 … the Williams girl … Mrs. Hurley
at 11:45, with X-rays and Major Somerset at 12:15. And of course Miss Spicer in the afternoon.”

“Thank you. Good night, Miss Plimpton.”

“Good night, sir. Good night, Miss Bowman. May I say how much I enjoy your singing?”

“Thank you.”

When the door clicked shut, Jenny put the boy’s picture on the cabinet and looked at him, trying to find some trace of herself in him, possibly around his eyes. “Is he here, David?”

“No. He’s at school. He boards.”

“David. I want to see him.”

“So now, at last, at long last, we come to the point, do we?”

“Please, David, I swear to you I didn’t come here to ask that. I came to see you. I admit that. But now … I have to ask you … please let me see him.”

“I’m sorry. You can’t see him. It’s that simple. You can’t.”

Her own flash of anger startled her. “Why the hell not? Is he invisible? Is he an idiot? Does he have the plague? Is the school on the back of the moon?”

“I’m sorry. It’s impossible.”

She controlled herself. “Impossible is a word I seldom hear, David,” she said quietly.

“I’m sorry it has to come as such a surprise to you.”

“I want to see him!”

“Can’t you comprehend what I’m saying to you? It is
impossible
. That was the agreement. That was the way it was arranged. Surely you remember.”

“Yes. I remember. But do you want to know something? I didn’t know what that word ‘never’ meant. I didn’t know how that word could ache. I guess I thought … hoped …” She walked to the chair that held her coat. “The only real and true thing I ever created in my life … and then I had to let all of them convince me I had to …” She trembled, suddenly close to tears, turned her face away from him and fought them down. “Does he like school?”

“He loves it, actually.”

“Is he clever?”

“Average, I’d judge. Better at Mozart than math.”

“Musical, you mean?”

“Rather odd if he weren’t, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps, but I loathed Mozart.”

“Jenny, you can be proud of him. Be satisfied with that.”

“Let me see him.”

“No.”

“Just once. Please.”

“And then what?”

“Then nothing. I go.”

After a thoughtful moment, David said, “Do believe me, Jenny, when I say I know what this must be costing you. And has cost you. I hoped, for your sake, there would be other children. If I thought it would make anything better for you, I would let you see him. But were you to see him now, it would merely make things that much more difficult … for you.”

She started to put on her coat, listlessly. “I’ve barged in on you, kept you up, stayed too long. I’m sorry. I’d better go.”

He helped her with her coat. “Have you a car waiting?”

“No. I was going to get a taxi. But I think I’d rather walk. And I’ll let myself out. Don’t bother. You’ve been very kind, David. Thank you.”

She heard him close behind her as she went down the narrow curving staircase. As they reached the reception hall he said, “Jenny?” She turned quickly and expectantly. He held out the prescription slip. “Don’t forget this.”

She tucked it into her purse. “What will it cure?”

“Perhaps it will help a little.”

She wanted to smile at him, and tried valiantly, but the tears clotted her lashes, spilled.

“It really would mean a great deal to you to see him, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

“And if I should permit this, against my own better judgment, and mark that phrase, Jenny … 
permit
this … do you promise on your word of honor that you will be content with that one meeting, and never try to see him again?”

“I promise,” she said.

There were tears in her eyes again as she looked at Jason Brown. “You see, I really didn’t know I was going to ask that of him, Brownie. Maybe I did know, but I hadn’t admitted it to myself. I told myself I was going just to see him. He’s a part of my life, maybe the biggest part. I bore his child. Maybe I love him.”

“When does this happen?”

“He’s stopping by for me early this afternoon. He rearranged his schedule. The school isn’t too far, really. Oh,
Brownie, I’m so scared and excited! Lift this tray away, will you please?”

He took it away and put it on the floor near the closed door. She swung her legs out of bed, scuffed her feet into her slippers, paced and smoked, pausing at the mirrors for the quick touch at her hair, the absent-minded examination of her face. She whirled and stared at him, her eyes very wide, “Tell me I’m insane.”

“What was he like, really?”

“There was a lot of tension. Undercurrents. Little memories of things past running through his mind as well as mine. And the fraudulent professional visit, with the Plimpton person standing there. But you see, don’t you, that he could have absolutely refused to see me at all? Even if he believed it was an emergency, he could have had another doctor there to see me. That’s what I kept remembering, that with all his reserve, and patronizing me as if I was some sort of idiot child, he still had curiosity about me. And it must have unsettled him, knowing I was coming. Otherwise, he would have hidden Matthew’s picture away before I got there. Brownie, darling, I deal with people under stress all the time, and they can’t hide all the signs. He couldn’t. Matthew. Isn’t that a nifty name? Matthew Donne. But they call him Matt. I wouldn’t permit that. What do you wear to go visit your boy at school? Look at me! Slow death. I couldn’t sleep, not for a minute. I don’t know why we couldn’t send out for good coffee in the morning, or see if Lois could make it here, maybe. Ida makes horrible coffee. And you remember mine.”

“Essence of battery acid.”

“Brownie, you sit there and you smile, and you are a dear gangling rumply old pet, but you’re not
saying
anything. How is your little girl?”

“Frightening. She’s a blonde, like Joyce. All female wiles and devices.”

“Brownie, bless you, do you remember an utterly impossible day in Mexico City? What a slob I was? The tears and the drinks, and running away from you and nearly getting run down by a taxi?”

“I remember.”

“That was Matthew’s sixth birthday. And those days haven’t gotten any better for me. Worse, if anything. Every year I tell myself it’s just another day, after all. Brownie, what if the world took your little girl away and you could never
see her again or write to her or know anything about her. How would her birthdays be for you?”