I Could Go on Singing by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

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. Somenerve 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,