Annabel - Kathleen Winter [101]
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