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

to be branded in that way? He could legally adopt the child. His wife had agreed. They would love the childand care for it and raise it properly, and it need never know the circumstances of its birth. If she claimed to love the unborn child, how could she deny it such a chance, and force upon it the stigma of illegitimacy? I guess they worked on her in shifts. They finally wore her down. She signed the papers. They hid her away. She gave birth to a boy, and they were smart enough never to let her see it, never to let her hold it in her arms even once, because if they had, she would have tipped over all their applecarts. Part of the agreement was that she would never try to find the boy, never see him again. Can you understand a little better, Lois?”
    “Of course,” she said softly. “I should have been able to figure it out myself, how it would be.”
    “She really hurled herself into the career once she came out of hiding. The disappearance was all attributed to the throat operation, and if there were any rumors, I don’t remember hearing them. Maybe, in one sense, a lot of her drive during these intervening years has been partially due to compensation. This is what she gave her baby away for. So she had to make it big and good and valid.”
    “She would have been as good in either case, Jason.”
    “Would she have worked as hard?”
    “Perhaps not. Anyway, what now?”
    “I suppose she wants to see the boy.”
    “Would Doctor Donne permit that?”
    “I don’t know, Lois. I have no idea what kind of a man he is.”
    “We did a little checking. We know he’s a very successful man. Very. Put it this way. If there was some sort of nose and throat trouble in the royal family and they called in some people for consultation, he would be one of them.”
    “Fashionable, eh?”
    “As well as very good. And being very good is the best fashion of all, I guess.”
    “How will his wife react, I wonder.”
    “She died several years ago.”
    Jason Brown was startled. “Really! Maybe Jenny wants them both.”
    “Or thinks she does.”
    A twist of the wind slapped rain against the windows, startling them. She got up and took his glass and fixed him a fresh drink and brought it to him. She went back to the chair with her drink, sat and crossed her long legs, smiled at him with a slight stain of wistfulness. “Even thoughGeorge works me like a dog, I was really happy about this tour. I don’t know. I guess I’ve been going a little stale or something. But it isn’t the way I thought it would be.”
    “Things will work out.”
    “That’s so easy to say.”
    “Dialogue,” he said.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    He smiled. “Excuse me. It slipped out. The artificiality of the breed. The writer has to watch it. He’s one step removed from life. So, instead of speaking he finds himself opening his mouth and making bad dialogue, without communication. I even find myself doing it with my daughter. Daddy-Bonny talk, for bad television. So I guess everybody goes stale in his own fashion.”
    “You’re married now?”
    “No. I was. My wife died when Bonny was almost a year old. We live with my married sister in Santa Barbara.”
    She scowled at her drink. “I guess I’m using Jenny as an excuse, really. The thing about staleness, you take it with you. You suddenly find out you’ve brought it to London. I don’t know what it is, really. I run around madly doing a thousand things, and then I have the feeling I’ve done nothing at all.” She looked at him and her gray eyes were very frowning and intent.
    “Life is the process of being used, of being satisfyingly used,” he said.
    Her eyes changed. She looked pale and uncertain. “Are you … used that way?” she said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.
    “Once in a rare while in my work. Too seldom. Often with Bonny. Otherwise, no.”
    She looked away and there was a flavor of strain and awkwardness in the room. “Well,” he said too heartily. “Thank