If you did not know that Wally had had an injury to her voice in junior high school, you would think she was a girl with a slightly softer than normal voice. You might think her voice had a beauty, that it crumbled in a way that sounded inviting to the ear. In a world of harsh voices Wally’s injured voice was quiet, but this was no blessing to Wally herself, and her aunt knew it.
The Harley Street Voice Clinic, Wally said, was not on Harley Street at all, but on a street called Wimpole Street. It had a team of doctors who did nothing else on this earth except repair vocal cords that had nodules on them or that had been strained or torn or otherwise injured. They did it for people who had devoted their lives to singing but who could not sing because something had injured their instrument. Their voices were their instrument. Wally told her aunt this, and her aunt — who had wanted to play piano but who had not been taught it when she was young enough — this aunt understood what Wally was telling her. Her aunt knew all about Wally’s injury, about what had happened to her at Donna Palliser’s party years ago. Everyone in the family did.
“I suppose,” Wally said, “it’s expensive to go have that done. And it’s so far away. Maybe there’s a place in Boston.”
“If there were a place in Boston, the Berklee College of Music would not have information about the place in London on the bulletin board in the bookstore. They have it there because they know that is the place to go.”
“I wish it wasn’t all the way to London. If there was something like that here, I could get on a bus and go visit it and see for myself.”
“If we knew anyone in London we could ask them to go and have a look. Then you would know. You would know what kind of feel the Harley Street Voice Clinic has. If they have a serious atmosphere, if they are able to do what they say they can do.”
“Thomasina Baikie said she was going to London in her last postcard, remember? She was tired of Bucharest and looking forward to going to her favourite part of London and eating fish and chips and staying in that hostel and that other place.”
“Get her postcard off the table.”
They read the postcard again.
“She’s there now,” Aunt Doreen said. “If she did what she said she was going to do, she’s still there. She’s at that hostel or one of the hotels. We can phone them and leave a message for her to call us.”
“Call us from England?” Wally could not imagine imposing on Thomasina by asking her to make a telephone call over thousands of miles of ocean. But her aunt was excited. She was a woman who became enthusiastic about things, and now she took three of the puppies in her arms and fed them pieces of cake.
“Collect, silly,” she said. “We’ll leave a message asking her to call us collect, and we can ask her to go visit Harley Street.”
“Wimpole Street. The Harley Street Voice Clinic is at number thirty-five Wimpole Street.”
“Wimpole Street then. And she’ll go. This woman will do that for you. She’ll go and check it out. We’ll talk to her and give her the exact information that is on the records your doctor sent when you came here from home, and she can show it to those doctors on Wimpole Street and they can tell her what they think. And then you’ll know.”
23
Franchise King
FOREST ROAD STARTED OUT ELEGANTLY, though it bordered the penitentiary and the defunct stadium. It was lined with three-storey houses that had dormers, stained-glass porches, and dragon door knockers; fall crocuses, winterberries, and Bell Island slate. It had railings, old yews, and silence. But it opened out; it spread downhill towards Quidi Vidi Lake, and on this disappointing bare stretch Chesley Outerbridge had built his apartments of featureless brick, where call-centre employees lived and many apartments were vacant or used for spaces that were anything but homes. In the parking lot Wayne noticed a for-sale sign on a white van whose door read STOCKLEY’S: EXCELLENCE IN PEST CONTROL SINCE 1971. Behind the building ran the lake trail, supporting earnest joggers, disheartening algae, and geese maimed by fish hooks and road salt. On Wayne’s third night in the building, a pizza he had not ordered came to his door.
“Echoes?” The man from Venice looked at his notebook and squinted at Wayne.
“No.”
“What’s the name?”
“Wayne Blake.”
“Could I take a look at that?” Wayne’s telephone book lay on the floor. “Yellow Pages,” said the man. “Under Escorts.”
Though he shared Echoes’ landing, Wayne never saw anyone emerge. He heard men come up the stairs, and wondered about them. He spent days sitting on his carpet beside his open suitcase. In the suitcase was everything he had brought from Labrador: his jeans, a couple of favourite shirts, a binder into which he had put his bridge sketches and Thomasina’s postcards, and some work socks from the Hudson’s Bay store.
“Make all your socks the same colour,” Treadway had said. “Then you won’t have to fool around with pairs in your laundry.” This was the sole piece of advice his father had given him on leaving home.
In the binder with his postcards and sketches he had put a black-and-white photo of Wally Michelin from his high school yearbook. The caption, chosen by Donna Palliser and her yearbook committee, read, “They say love hides behind every corner. Well, then, I must be walking in circles!” He sat near the suitcase and looked out the window at blueberry bushes on the hills.
The hills were an example of how brutal something can be when you do nothing to make it softer or more beautiful. This apartment, Wayne’s mother would have told a daughter, was just about the worst apartment a girl could have if she were living in St. John’s for the first time. To a daughter Jacinta would have said, “You might as well check yourself into the Waterford.” But she would not have said this to a son. A son might stare at the hills but he would buy boots with felt linings and see what he could do about buying that van in the parking lot. He knew he had been right to leave Gracie Watts behind, but he wondered if it would be all right to call her now, just to see what she thought about the idea of him buying that van, and to cut through the loneliness. If he had brought Gracie with him she would have helped him find something to hang at his windows. She would do something about getting a few dishes. Cheerful ones with wheat on the rims. Red cups. A salt shaker instead of pouring salt into his hand out of a box the old tenant had left behind and throwing half the handful down the sink. He knew he could not have brought Gracie, but he wished he could talk to her now.
Every morning a bird’s voice came through the Forest Road window like a needle. At night the carpet chafed Wayne’s face and moonlight blared through his eyelids. Why hadn’t he just walked the streets when he reached St. John’s and found an apartment on Gower Street, or above the Tan Tan takeout on Colonial Street? Somewhere with cats on doorsteps, and window boxes. Even if the boxes contained straggly lobelia and daisies strayed from vacant lots. At least daisies were something. Each day he rose from his floor, poured himself a glass of milk, and ate a few of the chocolate graham squares he had bought at Caines. Mr. Caines might know the corner grocery business but he did not know how to direct someone to an apartment that felt anything like a home.
He did not want to phone his mother and make her worry, but he had to talk to someone, and finally he called Gracie. He called her at night, when he knew she would be studying her paramedic books and her mother and father would be out of the kitchen.
“Gracie?”
“Wayne? How are you doing?”
“I’m thinking of buying a van.”
“Have you got a job yet?”
“You can work for yourself if you’ve got a van.”