I Could Go on Singing (8 page)

“Wretched.”

“Brownie, I’m right! Tell me I’m right!” She came and put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes, bending down toward him.

“Jenny, if you were sure you’re right, you wouldn’t be asking me.”

She backed away. “You are too plain damned smart about me. How did you get so smart about me?”

“By loving you.”

“My God, you’re slippery as an eel. When I try to get mad at you, you touch my heart. All right. I loved you too. We were good for each other, weren’t we? In all the hideous confusion of my life, Brownie, you were … you were a little island of content, and I cherish the memories. Be good for me now.
Help
me!”

“No matter what I say, you are going to go see the boy. And it is going to shred you, Jenny. It’s going to stomp your heart raw. And then you are going to have to turn your back on him and walk away. And that act is going to take all the guts and pride and spirit you have. It’s a test of strength.”

She walked slowly to the bed and sat and stared at him. “Am I strong enough?”

“You have to be. You have no other choice, Jenny.”

“It was a mistake to come to England?”

“Of course.”

She nodded. Her smile was wan. “But, you see, I had no other choice there, either. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“I guess you better go now. Thank you, Brownie. I guess I am going to cry for a little while now, and then get dressed.”

He stopped by the door and said, “Did you tell George where you’re going?”

“Not even Ida.”

“I better let them know, don’t you think?”

“Anything you say. Just be sure to tell George not to try to set up anything for me today.”

He opened the door, picked up the tray and carried it out. When he looked back, closing the door, he saw that she had turned to lie face down across the bed. He saw the yellow robe and her dark hair and thought she looked small. And lost, somehow.

Ida was sitting by the windows taking stitches in the bodice of a glittering gown. She looked up, eyebrows raised in query.

“The doctor is driving her out to see the boy at school today.”

“The good Lord preserve us all,” she said.

He put the tray on a table near the corridor door. “Ida, how was it for her, when they were making her give up the baby?”

She looked startled and then she looked through him into the past. “It was a savage thing,” she said softly. “The money machine was breaking down and they had to fix it or the money would stop. So … they fixed it. Sometimes I wonder …”

“Wonder what?”

She sighed. “If we’re any better. George and I. All of us. Saying we love her. All this loyalty. But maybe it’s the life we want. The glamor machine? And we get our part of it and get used to it, then tell ourselves we’re thinking of her good. I don’t know. Eighteen years now. It’s a poor time to have doubts.”

“It depends on what she really wants, Ida.”

“Maybe, just for the hell of it, she wants to be a woman. George was in. You better tell him what’s going on. He’s right across the hall, and I think he’s still in there.”

Jason Brown crossed the corridor and knocked on George’s door. In a moment it opened, Lois Marney looked out at him and opened the door the rest of the way. She smiled openly yet shyly, then greeted him and turned quickly away. She wore a gray-green shirtwaist blouse with long sleeves, a pleated skirt in a darker shade of green. George was on the phone saying, “… please don’t try to tell me that, Harkness. I am not interested in what a triumph of modern color press stuff you got over there. Believe me, I am interested in Jenny Bowman because I am paid to be interested in her, and the proof you sent me, I swear to you my first thought was you got mixed up and sent me a picture of Apple Annie. If it was my job to scare people away, I would say yes, we should use it. I wouldn’t dare show it to her. I’m telling you, you’ve got to make a new plate. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. And I will have a good attitude. If it looks even a little like Jenny Bowman, we’ll approve it, okay?” As he listened, he looked over at Jason and winked. Then he said, “By Thursday. Fine. What’s that? Four tickets? Harkness, I could not get my own
mother four for the Friday opening, but I can put a reserve on four for Saturday, if you don’t mind they aren’t real choice. They’ll be at the box office in your name. Right. Thanks a lot.”

He hung up and said, “Lois, put down …”

“I’ve got it.”

George ran fingers through thinning hair and stared at Jason. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. She and the doctor are flying to Cannes for a second honeymoon and we scratch the London engagement.”

“He’s picking her up early this afternoon and driving her out to the school where the boy is.”

George sat on the bed. “Now isn’t that just dandy! Picking her up here. And the press people hanging around the lobby, all ready to follow them out there. Maybe they can get some nice pictures of the three of them. Star reunited with giveaway baby. The indiscretion kid. Lois, you better go work up that stuff while I figure out how to smuggle her out of here.”

Lois Marney stood up and picked up her purse and black cardigan and left.

“I make it sound hard,” George said, “but it’s no problem. I’m just getting a little gun shy. And my gut is acting up. It’s like an old bullet wound. It anticipates trouble. Sorry I had to fold so quick last night.”

“You left me in good hands, George.”

“Lois is a good kid. Without her taking care, this whole thing would fall apart. Of course, maybe it will anyway.”

“And you say she’s been with you over two and a half years?”

George gave him a quick shrewd look. “Aha! The merchandise intrigues. You wouldn’t be trying to pump me, old buddy. My God, your face is turning red, Jase! I would have had to see it to believe it. I am sorry, pal, but you better just cross it off your list.”

“She has other plans?”

“Just say she has no plans at all, and nobody can sell her any plans. It all looks very delicious indeed. But all you get to do is look. I think she took too much of a bruise in that marriage. Maybe it knotted her all up too much. But you know this cruddy industry, Jase. Some experts have zeroed in on her and struck out swinging, much to their astonishment. We did a television special with Kirby King last year. He decided he wanted it, and he went after it, and I’d guess he
hasn’t missed once since he was sixteen years old. He tried every approach he’d ever used or ever heard of, and I think he made up some new ones nobody had ever heard of before. Nothing worked, and he was getting pretty sullen about it, and finally he decided he would just plan grab her, figuring maybe that after she finished jumping and yelping he could gentle her down. But she didn’t jump and she didn’t yelp. She just went limp, and as soon as she had the chance, she brought the knee up. Kirb lost all interest in her forever. He hobbled around like a little old man for days and days. So you’ll have to figure out something else if you want to sweeten this little junket. It shouldn’t be hard, pal. The town is loaded.”

“So is the Coast, George. And always has been. And I went that route for a while, and eventually it turns into the dreariest thing in the world.”

“Jason, we are getting old.”

He smiled at George. “And I find it restful. When you get to the point where you have to stop proving things. So old, in fact, that I would far prefer an unsuccessful pursuit of your Lois Marney to a custom bed teeming with nubile little English lassies.”

“You turn a nice phrase, Jason. A nice phrase. So be our guest. Lois is fun to talk to and fun to be with, and she won’t let you get in the way of the work she has to do. I shall even tell her you are a very nice guy. But it won’t do you a bit of good. Now get out of here because I have to get on the phone and do more battles.”

As Jason Brown reached the door, George said, “Is that Jamison script as good as it seemed to me when I read it?”

“George, it is so good that to force any other writer to read it is cruel and unusual punishment.”

“It would be the best thing she ever did in her life?”

“Beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

“Maybe she knows that, Jase. Maybe she wants it. Maybe that’s the best hope we have.”

For Jason Brown it was a strange, aimless, restless day, filled with the tension of waiting. He envied George Kogan and Lois Marney all the detail work that kept them busy. Jenny, after four complete and frantic changes, had set off in a dark suit, cloth coat trimmed and lined with fur, a little mink hat and a big mink muff. George, properly wary of the British press, had intercepted the doctor at the desk, and then smuggled Jenny out a service entrance. He reported that the doctor looked a little younger than he had expected, quite a handsome guy, maybe a little too handsome. And Jenny had been pale as chalk, her hands shaking. They had taken off in the doctor’s Humber, the doctor driving.

For George and Lois, the biggest problem was how to reschedule, without ruffling too many feelings, the press, magazine, radio and television interviews which had been set up for Jenny and approved by her—how to sense which ones could be safely canceled, and which ones had to be fitted into the scheduling of the following days prior to her opening. It required a combination of guile, judgment, flattery and good sense. And the throat problem, imaginary as it was, came in handy, and might eventually be of tactical use in explaining any association with Doctor Donne.

Jason heard George say, with the same impeccable sincerity, a dozen times, “She really gave last night, sweetheart. She belted more than she was supposed to. So, I swear, she’s taking it easy today. We can’t take any chances. You understand that. She wants to talk to you particularly. She’s very very upset about having to change things around a little, and she hopes you won’t be mad at her.”

In the late afternoon, after a walk in the clearing weather, and after writing a letter to Bonny and buying a present for her and having it sent airmail, Jason wandered back to the Park Lane. George was in Lois’s room, stretched out on the chaise, drink in hand. Lois was typing up the revised schedule for the balance of the week. She gave Jason a quick
smile and turned back to her typewriter. At George’s invitation, Jason fixed himself a drink.

“Now what we do,” George said, “we hope that she doesn’t have something all worked up for tomorrow too.”

“Hush,” Lois said without interrupting her typing speed.

“Most of the time,” George said thoughtfully, “Jenny is real good about these things. But when she goofs …”

“Hush,” Lois said again.

“That’s the weird thing about this business,” George said. “You’ve seen it enough times, Jase. No temperament at all usually means no talent either, right? And too much temperament usually means no talent, too. But when you get as big as Jenny is, suppose like three percent of the time you fling your weight around. What happens, the press people make it sound like ninety percent. How many times in her life has she walked out of a commitment? Seven? Eight? Maybe ten even? And how many times has she gone on, how many hundreds and hundreds of times, even when everything was failing down on her head?”

“Nothing like what could fall down this time,” Jason said.

“Stop reminding me.”

Jason moved over toward the typing table and looked over Lois Marney’s shoulder. It was his intention to look at the new schedule. But he found himself looking at the nape of Lois’s neck. She sat so erect the small of her back was concave. It was a strong-looking neck. The skin was very smooth. There were small curling tendrils of blonde hair. He pretended to be looking at the schedule and he looked at her neck. Somehow the neck of this mature woman made him think of pussy willows. He knew it was an awkward simile, but he happened to be stuck with it. He wanted to press his mouth to the nape of that neck, wanted so badly that it dizzied him for a moment. He took a deep breath of her fragrance and moved away, swallowing against the dryness in his mouth.

She pulled the sheets out of the machine, separated the carbons deftly. She got up and took the original over to George. Again Jason Brown was aware of the special way she moved. She was a tall woman with a strong rounded body, and though her hands were very quick and deft, she moved with constraint, like a fine taut mare too accustomed to the hobble.

George said, “If everything else goes fine, it is still going
to be a good trick getting her on the beam by ten in the morning.”

“Predawn, practically,” Lois said.

“Can your slave labor take a break?” Jason asked George. They both stared at him. “There’s a park and the weather has cleared, and some daylight left.”

“I’ve got some things I could …”

“Go take a walk, sweetie,” George said. “I’m spoiling you. I gave you a twelve-minute lunch break even.” He got up, winked at Lois and left the room.

She frowned at Jason. “Really, I ought to …”

“You ought to see a little bit of London.”

She smiled and shrugged. “See you in the lobby in five minutes, Jason.”

She appeared within the allotted time, in lower heels, with a gray tweed cape over her green suit, hair freshly brushed and gleaming, lipstick freshened.

He walked her to the nearest pedestrian entrance to Hyde Park. The air was clear and cool in the watery sunlight of late afternoon. Traffic roar faded behind them as he lengthened his stride, glad of the way she swung along with him.

“All this is technically royal property,” he told her. “Originally a private hunting preserve for old Henry the Eighth. They took out a lot of old trees along here recently. Lot of fuss about it. Angry letters to the
Times
. A lot of trees came out along that stretch there. Rotten Row it’s called.”

“What a horrible name for such a pretty place!”

“It’s a corruption of Route du Roi, meaning King’s Way.”

“You’re practically a professional guide, Jason,” she said with a sidelong look of amusement and respect.

“Hardly. I’ve got one of those minds that useless pieces of information stick to. And this is my fourth trip to London.”

“My first. The first time I’ve ever even been out of the United States.”