Jasmine Nights

by Julia Gregson

  In a telephone box on the corner of the street, she dropped coins into the slot, put the cloth bag which held her dress over one arm, and phoned Dominic Benson’s number.

  ‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice – charming, amused.

  ‘Look, this is Saba Tarcan speaking. I have a message for Pilot Officer Benson. Can you give it to him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, we had a sort of arrangement to meet today, but I can’t make it – I don’t know where I’ll be.’

  ‘Ah.’ The woman sounded disappointed.

  ‘Can I ask who you are?’

  ‘Yes, of course, it’s Freya, his sister. I’ll make sure he gets the message.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She was about to say she would phone later, but it was too late. The receiver clicked, the line went dead.

  She stepped out into the street again, breathing rapidly. She was in such a state about the audition now, and the fact that she was in London by herself, it was all she could think about.

  The first confusion was that the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, was in fact in Catherine Street, so she got lost trying to find it. When she did see it, she was disappointed, what with the theatre looking so drab and workmanlike in its wartime uniform. There were no thrilling posters advertising musical stars or famous actors hanging about, no twinkling lights or liveried doormen, no scented and glamorous ladies in furs outside – only a large painted officey-looking sign saying that this was the headquarters of the Entertainments National Service Association, and inside, what looked like a rabbit warren of hastily erected offices, out of which the Corinthian columns soared like the bones of a once beautiful woman.

  She walked upstairs and into the foyer, where a harassed-looking NCO sat at a desk with a clipboard and a list, and a pile of official-looking forms.

  ‘I’ve come for the ENSA audition,’ she told him. She hadn’t expected to feel so nervous on her own, but then Mum was usually with her.

  ‘Overseas or domestic?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Name?’ He consulted his list.

  ‘Saba Tarcan.’ She felt almost sick with nerves and regretted the powdered egg earlier.

  ‘You’re an hour early,’ he said, adding more kindly, ‘Sit over there, love, if you want to.’

  She sat on a spindly gilt chair, and gazed up at the gold ceiling, the one beautiful thing not covered by partitions and desks.

  ‘Smashing, isn’t it?’ An old man in a green cardy and with a mop and bucket had been watching her. His peaked cap looked like the remains of a doorman’s uniform. ‘But nothing like it used to look.’

  His name was Bob, he said. He’d been a doorman at this theatre for over ten years and loved the place. When a 500lb bomb had fallen through the roof during the Blitz the year before, he’d taken it hard.

  ‘Wallop,’ he said. ‘Straight through the galleries and into the pit. The safety curtain looked like a crumpled hanky, the seats was sodden from the fire brigade. We’ve cleared it up a bit since then.’

  He asked her the name of the show she was auditioning for; she said she didn’t have a clue – she’d just been told to come at 11.30.

  If he had to take a guess, he told her out of the corner of his mouth, she’d be replacing a singer called Elsa Valentine, but it was a shambles here at the moment, particularly since the new call-up. In one company alone over in France, seventy-five per cent of the performers, including the hind legs of a pantomime horse, were on the sick.

  ‘So don’t worry, love,’ he added. ‘They’re really scraping the barrel now, they’re that desperate.’

  ‘Well there’s tactful,’ she said, and he winked at her.

  ‘I’m joking, my darling,’ he said. ‘You’re a little corker.’

  She hated it when she blushed, but right there and then she got what her little sister called one of her red-hot pokers – she felt it creeping up her chest and neck until her whole face was on fire.

  Next, forms to fill in, stating her name and business, which she did with a shaking hand. An hour later, as she followed Bob up some marbled steps and down a dark corridor, he flung out snippets of history. This, love, was the boardroom, where Sheridan had written The School for Scandal. And there, he opened heavy oak doors and pointed towards the darkened stage, was where Nell Gwyn, ‘you know, the orange lady’, had performed.

  ‘Wardrobe’ – he shouted towards a room full of whirling sewing machines, backcloths, wigs. ‘And here,’ he stopped and put his finger to his lips, ‘is where a body was found.’ He pointed into a dark room. ‘The most famous one,’ he added, his eyes very round. ‘A real body,’ he whispered, ‘under the stage here, and his ghost haunts us to—’

  His hat hit the floor before he could finish the sentence.

  ‘Bad boy!’ A gorgeous blonde appeared in a jangle of charm bracelets. She gave him a mock blow around the head, and kissed him on the cheek, and the air filled with the rich scent of roses and jasmine.

  ‘Arleta Samson as I live and breathe.’ The doorman lit up. ‘No one told me you were coming.’

  ‘Audition. They should know how fabulous I am by now, but apparently not.’ She threw up her hands in surprise.

  ‘Give me that, girl.’ Bob couldn’t stop smiling as he took a pink leather vanity case from her hands. ‘So, where’ve you been, darling?’

  ‘Palladium for two months, before that Brighton. And who is this poor girl you’re trying to frighten to death?’

  ‘Saba Tarcan.’ A further jingling of charms as she shook her hand. ‘I’m here for the audition, too.’

  ‘Well, I’m happy to meet you.’ Arleta’s handshake was firm. ‘I’ll take you to the dressing room.’

  And swept along in the wake of her rich perfume, the terrors of the night began to recede, because this was it! The famous theatre, the ghost, the glamorous blonde woman with her vamp walk and her swishing stockings, talking so casually about the Palladium as if everyone performed there, and soon, one way or the other, her future to be decided.

  ‘Actually, Bob’s right about the ghost,’ Arleta said as they walked down a long corridor. ‘Some young chap was murdered in, I dunno, when was it, love? Sixteen hundred and something. He was making whoopee with the director’s wife. They found his body under the stage when they were doing the renovations, but his ghost only comes during the day, and only if the show is going to be a success, so we all like him.’ Her cynical rich laugh thrilled Saba. She estimated Arleta to be at least thirty.

  ‘Have you seen him today?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet, love,’ said Bob. ‘But we will.’

  The dressing room was part of a tangle of dim and dusty rooms behind the stage. When they got there, Arleta placed her vanity case in front of the mirror, switched on a circle of lights and stared intently at her reflection, running a finger along her eyebrow.

  ‘How many are they seeing today?’

  ‘Seven or eight,’ said Bob.

  ‘Are you quite sure, love?’ Arleta sounded surprised. ‘The last time there were about a hundred. We waited all day.’

  Bob consulted a crumpled list. ‘Yep. Two gels, three acrobats, the dancer, and it just says comedian here, don’t know his name. Cup of tea, my darlings? They’ve got a kettle up in Wardrobe.’

  ‘Little pet!’ said Arleta. ‘You read my mind.

  ‘I don’t get it.’ She was still looking puzzled as the door shut behind Bob. ‘They usually send out a minimum of fifteen to a show. But never mind, hey.’ She sat down at a dressing table littered with dirty ashtrays and dried and decapitated roses from some ancient bouquet. ‘They do love their little secrets, and it means I can hog the mirror before the others come. D’you mind?’

  ‘Help yourself.’ Saba hung her dress on a hook, wishing her mother were here to help with her make-up. In the old days Joyce would have been cracking jokes, smoking her Capstans; she’d loved all this before she’d seen how it would end.

  ‘Right then.’ Arleta took a d
eep breath and gazed intently at herself. ‘Maximum dog today, I think,’ she said in a faraway voice. ‘I really, really want this.’

  She opened up the pink vanity case – its many terraced shelves bulged with lipsticks, pansticks, glass bottles full of face cream, cotton wool, a variety of brushes, a little twig for fluffing up her hair, rollers for heightening it. At the bottom of the case, a blonde hairpiece lounged like a sleeping puppy.

  She took out a stick of foundation and went into a light trance as she smoothed it over her high cheekbones with a little sponge. Apricot Surprise, she informed Saba, quite the best under lights. Next, a breath of Leichner’s powdered rouge applied with a brush, a dab of highlighter under the eyebrows and on top of the cheekbones. Loose powder from a pink swansdown puff, and then ‘Phzz’ as she spat into caked mascara and widened her eyes against the mirror, stroking the blackness on to each lash. She parted her lips into a mirthless smile and drew around them in pencil, and then a smear of lipstick, Max Factor’s Tru Colour. ‘Expensive,’ she told Saba in the same faraway voice, ‘but worth it.’ The generous hoop of red she left on a tissue looked like blood.

  She pulled off her headband with a dramatic flourish, her hair falling in a mass of golden waves around her face. She began to hum as her fingers gently probed for tangles; a final haughty glance at herself in the mirror, and she caught the right side of her hair in her hands and fastened it with a gold barrette.

  ‘Your hair is lovely.’ Saba was finding it hard not to stare. Arleta was easily the most glamorous women she’d ever met, and there was nothing furtive about this performance.

  ‘Oh you wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me last year!’ Arleta bared her teeth to check for lipstick on them. ‘I was in a hairdressing salon in Valetta – that’s in Malta – and this woman gave me a perm, and when I woke the next morning, half my hair’s on the pillow beside me having a lovely little sleep. I nearly had a fit.’

  They were laughing when the door burst open. A fat old man in dinner suit, white gloves and large patent pumps jumped into the room.

  ‘Do I recognise that bell-like sound?’ He raised his painted eyebrows.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Arleta stood up and gave the old man a huge hug. ‘Little thing! No one told me you’d be here.

  ‘Now this,’ she told Saba, ‘is the famous Willie Wise. He was one of the Ugly Sisters in Brighton, and we’ve also been on the road together in Malta and North Africa, haven’t we, my darling?

  ‘And this gorgeous creature,’ Arleta added, ‘is Saba Tarcan. What are you, love? A soubrette?’

  When Saba said she might be replacing a singer called Elsa Valentine, they both stared at her.

  ‘Whoooooh!’ said Arleta. ‘Well, you must be good. Did I hear a rumour that she had a breakdown in Tunis?’

  Saba felt a wiggle of fear in her stomach. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t actually remember,’ said Arleta. ‘A lot do fall by the wayside. It’s—’

  ‘Now.’ Willie put his hand up to stop the flow. ‘Don’t you dare put her off. I’ve been sent down here to tell you two to get your skates on and get down to the auditorium. You’re on next.’

  As they walked down a dark corridor that tilted towards the stage, a beautifully dressed blond man with a significant walk pushed in front of them.

  ‘Yes, sweetie-puss, I’m back,’ he said to the uniformed figure beside him. ‘I honestly feel like a mole here after all that light, but needs must.’ When his friend mumbled something sympathetic, the blond man pushed back his hair with a languid gesture. ‘Oh she was an absolute horror,’ he said. ‘Complained about everything. Nothing like as talented as she thought she was.’

  Arleta dug Saba in the ribs and mimicked the man’s swishy walk for a few strides. When he opened the door into the auditorium, her heart started thumping. Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this was it! The famous Theatre Royal stage; in a matter of minutes, triumph or humiliation to be decided. When her eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, she saw that the stage, crudely boarded off for auditions, looked disappointingly small, far smaller than she’d imagined, and in a ghostly gloom without the front lights switched on. But never mind, she was here! Whatever comes, she told herself, I will remember this for the rest of my life. I’ll have danced and sung on this stage, and that will mean something.

  Her heart was thumping uncomfortably as she watched the blond man fold his coat fastidiously and put it on the seat behind him. He lit a cigarette and talked intensely to three uniformed men who sat in the stalls surrounded by rows and rows of empty seats, some of them still covered by dust sheets and bits of rubble from the bomb damage.

  A pale girl in ballet shoes sat four rows behind them clutching a black bag on her lap. Beside her, silent and pensive-looking, the old comedian.

  ‘Right now. Shall we crack on then?’ A disembodied voice from the stalls. ‘We’ve got a lot to cover today. The old man, Willie, you first. Come on!’

  A stenographer with a clipboard sat down quietly beside the three men. The music struck up, whistles and trumpets and silly trombones. A few seconds later, old Willie ran out, fleet-footed in his patent-leather pumps, shouting, ‘Well here we are then!’

  Arleta clutched Saba’s hand, digging her nails into the palm. ‘He needs this so badly,’ she whispered in the dark. ‘His wife died a few months ago. Married thirty-four years. Heartbroken.’

  Willie went down arthritically on one knee and sang ‘Old Man River’ with silly wobbling lips. The silence from the auditorium was deafening – no laughter from the watching men, no applause. For his next trick he deadpanned what Arleta whispered was his speciality: a hopelessly garbled version of a nursery rhyme called ‘Little Red Hoodingride and the Forty Thieves’.

  Saba joined in with Arleta’s rich laughter; Willie was really funny.

  After his next joke, about utility knickers – ‘One Yank and they’re off’ – a shadowy figure stood up behind the orchestra pit and said:

  ‘Mr Wise, I take it you understand our blue-joke policy?’

  ‘Sorry?’ The old man walked towards the spotlight and stood there blinking nervously.

  ‘If you get chosen, all scripts must be submitted to us for a signature. We’re clear about the standards we want to live up to; we hope you are too.’

  ‘All present and correct, sir.’ Willie stood in a blue haze, smiling glassily. ‘Appreciate the warning.’ He clicked his heels and saluted, and it was hard to tell in that unstable light whether he was mocking or simply scared.

  The pale girl rose. She had long limbs, very thin eyebrows and beautiful hands. She wafted towards the main spotlight and stood there smiling tensely.

  ‘Janine De Vere. I’m from Sadler’s Wells, you might remember.’ The posh voice bore faint traces of Manchester.

  ‘What have you got for us, Miss De Vere?’ from the dark.

  ‘My wide-ranging repertoire includes tap and Greek dancing. Ah’m very versatile.’

  ‘Oh get you,’ murmured Arleta.

  ‘Well perhaps a small sample. We don’t have long.’

  Miss De Vere cleared her throat and faced the wings. She held a beseeching hand towards a woman in an army uniform and sensible shoes who put the needle down on the gramophone. Syrupy music rose and sobbed. Miss De Vere took a tweed coat off and in a sea-green tutu sprang into action with a series of leaps across the stage. With her long pale arms moving like seaweed as she twirled and jumped and with light patting sounds, she ran hither and yon with her hands shading her eyes as if she was desperately searching for someone. Her finale, a series of flawless cartwheels across the stage, covered her hands in dust. She sank into the splits and flung a triumphant look across the spotlights.

  ‘Lovely. Thank you. Next.’ The same neutral voice from the stalls.

  ‘Saba Tarcan. On stage, please. Hurry! Quick.’

  Dom, hidden in the upper circle of the theatre, sat up straight when he heard this. He trained his eyes on her like a pistol. He’d got her message, and
ignored it because he wanted to hear her sing again. It was a kind of dare – for himself, if nothing else – to prove he could have her if he wanted to.

  He’d sneaked in after slipping half a crown to the friendly doorman, who’d shaken his hand and said, ‘We owe a lot to you boys in blue.’ He’d kept her original letter to him in his wallet: I expect to be in London, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 17 March for an audition at ENSA.

  She walked down the aisle and on to the stage, childlike from the back in her red frock, he admired once again her fantastic posture, her refusal to scuttle. That kind of poise was a statement in itself. Watch me, it seemed to say, I matter.

  He’d heard her laughing earlier – a full-throated laugh at the comedian. If she was feeling overawed by this, she certainly wasn’t showing it.

  She didn’t see him at all. She stood in the weak spotlight, smiling at the dim figures in the stalls, thinking, this is it, kid. The accompanist took her music without smiling. She cleared her throat, and thought briefly about Caradoc Jones, her old music teacher from home. He’d given her lots of advice about opening her throat, and relaxing, and squeezing her bum on the high notes – ‘I’ll train you so well,’ he’d told her, ‘you won’t have to worry about your diaphragm or your breath or whether you’ll be able to hold a high note, it will all be there.’ But what he’d talked about most, apart from developing technique, was being brave.

  She’d gone to him first aged thirteen, pretty and shy, but keen on herself too, having easily won two of the talent competitions organised by the Riverside Youth Club. She’d warbled her way through ‘O For the Wings of a Dove’, thinking he’d be charmed as most people were.

  And Caradoc, a famous opera singer before the booze got him, had not been in the slightest charmed. This fat, untidy man, with ash on his waistcoat, had listened for a bit and then asked:

  ‘Do you know what all bad singers have in common?’

  When she said no, he’d slammed down the piano lid and stood up.

  ‘They do this . . .’ He’d made a strangled sound like a drowning kitten. ‘I want you to do this . . .’ He’d bared his ancient yellow teeth, his tongue had reared in his huge mouth, and he’d let out a roar so magnificent it had sprayed her and his checked waistcoat with spittle.