Jasmine Nights

by Julia Gregson

  With her tea he brought out a plate of delicious cakes – ‘You must try these,’ he said, ‘they’re from Groppi’s. The family is Swiss, and they make the most perfect macaroons and strudel I’ve ever tasted – absolutely divine.’

  She was crunching away at a chocolate-flavoured macaroon when he said he thought Max Bagley had been far too harsh with her the other day. ‘I thought you were marvellous, and your “Strange Fruit” raised the hairs on the back of my neck – as a matter of fact,’ he jumped up to look in the mirror, ‘one or two of them may still be up,’ which made her laugh, not that it took much today; she felt keyed up and strangely excitable.

  ‘It’s such a powerful thing to be able to sing well.’ He gazed at her with frank admiration. ‘And a wonderful thing to see how the faces of serving men change when they listen to a decent song. It seems to soothe them, it makes them human again.

  ‘You know one of the things the top brass don’t get,’ he stirred some sugar into his tea and took a delicate sip, ‘is that men by and large fight for their sweethearts and for their mums, their children; none of that – excuse French – balls about freedom and democracy. And men need reminding of that, and that’s what you do, and it’s much, much more important than most people will ever understand.’

  He was saying the perfect thing at the right time. The heat, the homesickness meant she’d had trouble sleeping for the last few nights, and in the darkest hours everything that had seemed so exciting about coming to North Africa had turned into everything that was shallow and dreadful about her. You’re a wicked girl, the night-time goblins had told her: black with sin and ambition and a terrible daughter to boot. Your poor mother is crying at home, your father hates you. No wonder you get no letters.

  More tea was poured. She tried not to scoff the macaroons; she was starving suddenly. He’d gone on to talk in the same admiring way about the absolutely splendid extra work that some female singers had undertaken.

  ‘I can’t name names of course, but they have been an absolutely vital part of the war work. They have tremendous power, more than they realise, because they’re obviously able to travel around freely without it seeming suspicious, and also, of course, to make people forget themselves. Do you understand what I’m getting at?’ He watched her carefully and then, in a curiously personal gesture, brushed crumbs off her cuff.

  She wasn’t sure, and if she did, it seemed presumptuous, even fanciful, to say so.

  ‘If anything did come up like this,’ his long fingers played with his pen, ‘would you be game?’

  ‘Game?’ In Wales it meant something not quite nice, as in on the game.

  He corrected himself quickly. ‘Interested?’

  ‘I might be, but I don’t really know what you’re asking me to do.’

  ‘Let me give you a small example,’ he said. ‘Tonight, at this party at the Mena House, you’ll be part of the main group, but you could, if you agreed to it, do a little job for us.’

  ‘What sort of job?’

  ‘An easy-peasy job,’ he said, ‘and you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. You told me earlier that you speak some Turkish, and that was of interest because there is a man who will come to the party. His name is Zafer Ozan, and he is a Turk who also happens to be an influential figure in North Africa. Would you be prepared to sing him a song or two in Turkish?’

  ‘Only that?’

  ‘Only that.’ He grinned at her. ‘He loves European singers but he’s a fierce patriot too so I think he’ll love you, and of course if he does, it could lead to lots of work for you after the war.’

  ‘Gosh,’ she said, ‘that sounds quite exciting.’

  He uncapped his golden fountain pen, and made a few marks in a small notebook.

  ‘But I don’t understand, I thought I’d come here to do a wireless broadcast . . .’ She glanced at a large tape machine on his sideboard.

  ‘Oh definitely, I’m very keen for you to do that too. I’ve just started a Forces Favourites hour, it’s gone down a treat with the men – we play some songs, let them record their own messages home, it’s very, very moving. It’s just that this new thing has come up, and honestly, I cannot stress enough that if you don’t want to do it, that’s fine too. I imagine though that you’re someone who likes being busy,’ he added pleasantly.

  ‘We’re all keen to start work,’ she said, scooting up a bit on the sofa. ‘We should get our itinerary this week.’

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ he said evenly. ‘You’re going to be flat out soon.’ And then, more quietly, ‘That’s partly why I needed to see you now. Go on, have another.’ He pushed the last two cakes towards her.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said. There was still a chance he might ask her to sing, and she couldn’t do that stuffed with macaroons. ‘So you’ve seen our itinerary? I thought it was all very hush-hush.’

  ‘It is, although you’ve probably twigged already that nothing is very hush-hush out here – they say that gossip seems the only reliable source of news.

  ‘Saba.’ When he looked at her, his pale blue eyes were tired; they had thin veins of blood running through them and close up he was older than she’d first thought. ‘I don’t have much time,’ he glanced around the room, ‘and neither do you, so I’d better get on with it. As well as my broadcasting here, I do have a working relationship with another key part of the government that, from time to time, does more secret things. Do you know what I’m getting at?’

  ‘I think so.’ She felt a slither of alarm inside her, and a vagrant excitement, as if she’d suddenly been inducted into a grown-up, serious world.

  He rubbed his nose. The skin on it was very pale and she could see a tracery of burst capillaries.

  ‘So tonight.’ He got up and adjusted the curtains, sat down again. ‘This is a very small do, so don’t look worried.’ He patted her knee in a friendly-uncle sort of way. ‘It should be fun, and we have no interest in throwing you in at the deep end; if you like, it’s a little test, to see how much you want to do with us – you’ll be perfectly safe. In fact, I’ll be there, but you won’t talk to me.

  ‘There will be the usual mix of people – the few Brits who are left, some businessmen, some army officers, and some important locals who we want to do business with. They often ask the girls to these shindigs to pretty things up – no one will think it the slightest bit odd that you’re there and they’ll want you to sing.’

  Cleeve was whispering now, the twinkly look in his eyes had disappeared and he was entirely focused and serious.

  ‘This man, Ozan, is one of the richest men in the Middle East and, by the way, a very nice man, good fun. I don’t know how much you understand about Turkish politics at the moment, but Istanbul is now strategically and politically one of the most important neutral cities in the world – both the Allies and the Axis forces are simply itching to get their hands on it, so any little crumb . . .’

  ‘But—’

  Cleeve clutched her hand quickly and let it go. ‘Let me finish, I know what you’re going to say. “Of what possible use can I be?” Here’s the point. Ozan’s passion and weakness is music. Before the war, he got all the great musicians to come here – Bessie Smith and Ella and Edith Piaf, and some wonderful singers from Greece you may not have heard of, and now the man’s frustrated: there’s an embargo on bringing foreign artistes here unless of course they’re with ENSA, or the Yanks. When he hears you, I guarantee he’ll be interested, he’s a great talent-spotter.’

  Saba licked her lips nervously. Oh how exciting it all sounded. And one in the eye to bloody old Bagley.

  ‘After the war is over, he’ll go back to doing what he enjoys most – organising tours all over the Mediterranean. It’s a very lucrative market, and he’d be a helpful person to be friends with.’

  ‘So?’ she whispered.

  ‘Well, they have a very good band at the Mena: an Egyptian band that knows how to play all the old standards. At some point in the evening, I’d like you to surprise
him by singing one song in English, and another in Arabic or in Turkish, it doesn’t matter which. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, my gran and I were always singing them at home. But what then?’

  ‘Nothing really, except if Mr Ozan asks you to sing at his club, which is what we’re hoping for, simply send me a postcard here that says The show went well. I’ll know what you mean. Don’t sign your name. Here’s my address.’ He scribbled it on a piece of paper. ‘Look at it now and memorise it. Is that clear?’ He smiled at her encouragingly. ‘Not too difficult, is it?’

  ‘I thought you said you’d be there.’

  ‘I will, but I don’t want you to talk to me.’ He threw back his floppy hair and twinkled at her again – the bad boy of the quad organising a midnight feast.

  She looked at the address, scrumpled up the piece of paper and handed it back to him again.

  ‘Am I supposed to eat this or something?’ she whispered.

  He grinned at her. ‘Any more questions?’

  ‘Does Arleta or Mr Bagley, or Captain Furness, or anyone else in the company know anything about this?’

  ‘Max Bagley knows as much as he needs to know,’ Cleeve said confusingly. ‘But nobody else, so never discuss it with anyone. Regarding the girls, casually drop it into a conversation that you might be doing a couple of songs for me on the Middle East Forces Programme. It’s transmitted over the Egyptian State Broadcasting. That leaves it open. Anything else?’

  ‘Just one thing.’ She gave him a frank look. ‘When you say I’m to make friends with Mr Ozan, you do mean just a friend?’ Because if he honestly thought she’d go any further, he had another think coming.

  ‘Oh, you should see your eyes flashing,’ he teased. ‘Your mother would be proud of you. I’m not that sort of girl,’ he mocked in a high falsetto.

  ‘I repeat,’ he said, ‘all you have to do is sing a few songs and keep your ears open, and you may get the chance to do something that will make you feel proud of yourself for the rest of your life . . . but if you want to go away and think about it . . .’ He opened his arms to release her.

  ‘No, no, no, I want to do it,’ she said. She had a fizzy, excited feeling in her veins. She’d already imagined telling her father about it one day, the softening of his craggy features, the look of pride in his eyes as she said: ‘You see, Baba, I wasn’t just singing, I was helping the British government.’

  ‘Good.’ Cleeve’s long fingers squeezed her hand. ‘You’re on.’

  Chapter 11

  No one seemed to notice she’d been out when she got home, mostly because Arleta and Janine had had an enormous row, and Arleta was full of it.

  ‘In the taxi going home,’ she explained, ‘I said it was complete balls what Madame Eloise said about women here needing hatpins in their handbags to preserve their modesty – half the WAACS and WAAFS I’ve met here and in London simply hurl themselves at anything in trousers.’ And good for them too, Arleta continued, in full cry: war meant freedom for women and men – freedom from lies and hypocrisy. Cairo for young women was like being a child in a sweet shop – so much choice, so many lonely men around the girls called them meal tickets.

  ‘Then she said, “Have you quite finished yet?” ’ Arleta, who did a brilliant Janine, closed her eyes and wobbled her head. ‘ “Because personally speaking, I don’t want freedom from convention at all, and I feel sorry for girls who do – men know when they’re handling soiled goods.”

  ‘Soiled goods,’ Arleta snorted. ‘What a twit. She’s upstairs now with the burned feathers and the smelling salts. Much too good for this world.’ She closed her mouth prissily.

  Arleta asked Saba to take Janine’s evening dress to her room – Arleta was going to have a bath and some shut-eye – she couldn’t bear to look at the silly cow.

  All these overwrought emotions gave Saba a sense of the fragility of this world they lived in. Bickering about frocks and men when outside the dusty window she could hear planes grumbling and tanks mingling with the sounds of a typical Cairo rush hour – the blasting of horns, the increasingly desperate shrieks from the man who sold fly whisks on the corner; the bubbling sound of passers-by beneath their window speaking in a dozen or so different languages.

  Janine was asleep when she walked in, as still as a wax doll. She’d put a green satin eye mask over her eyes and stuffed her ears with cotton wool. On her chest of drawers there was a photograph of her parents in Guildford – a tensely smiling couple – next to her Pond’s cream and her bottle of gut reviver. Her leather-covered alarm clock said it was five fifteen, three hours to go before the party.

  Saba looked down at her. Poor Janine. Nobody had taken to her. Willie had told her earlier that Janine was older than she looked, thirty he reckoned, and had never married. The narrowness of her training, her strange obsessive personality seemed to have made her better at dancing than life, but she wasn’t such a bad stick really – just hard to warm to. Gossiping about her yesterday, Willie had hinted she might still be a virgin, an ENSA first, he’d added.

  Arleta was asleep, too, when Saba went back to their room: strangely innocent-looking with her blonde hair mussed and wafted by the fan, her soft lips parted, arms spread out as if she was saying yes to pretty much everything. It wasn’t fair, thought Saba, looking down at her: Arleta was everything your mother had warned you never to be, the perfect mixture of damage and glamour, and men adored her for it. Women liked her too. Arleta, for all her outrageousness, was kind – it was only narrow-minded people like Janine who got her goat. And yet, people were complicated, never exactly one thing or the other, because earlier, and for the first time, Saba had seen that look of hurt and slight competitiveness in Arleta’s eyes when Saba had mentioned she might be doing a wireless broadcast for Cleeve. Most performers couldn’t help themselves like this. It was the chimp-house thing – when one chimp was handed an extra bunch of bananas, everyone was thrown.

  When Arleta woke she switched off the fan and got out of bed wearing nothing but silk pyjama bottoms and a frothy bra – she’d thrown all her khaki underwear in the dustbin on their first night in Cairo, crooning, ‘Nice knowing you.’

  ‘Can I bags first bath?’ Arleta said yawning. ‘I must wash my hair.’

  ‘Only a ten-turner,’ warned Saba.

  The turns referred to the egg timer that Janine had brought on tour with her to stop people hogging the bath. They were absolutely essential, she’d said.

  Inside the bathroom, there was a cracked bowl underneath the sink with Janine’s leotards soaking in it and the bottle of shampoo that she marked with a pencil like an old brigadier hoarding sherry. Saba heard Arleta turn on the taps from which the rust-coloured water trickled out at an agonisingly slow pace, and while she splashed and groaned, Saba moved restlessly around the room thinking about her strange conversation with Mr Cleeve, a conversation which had thrilled and frightened her.

  Her borrowed dress was hanging in front of the wardrobe like a new life waiting to begin; the shadows were lengthening in the street outside, and her stomach was in knots. For that moment everything in her existence felt unstable.

  To calm herself she ran through possible songs she might sing for Mr Ozan, moving her hips and humming the first bars of ‘Mazi’, one of her father’s favourites. It was ages since she’d sung a song in Turkish and every time she sang it she felt a wave of sorrow and rage sweep over her. Not a word yet from her father, how mean of him, and what a loss for both of them who had once been so close. Singing the next verse for him straight from the heart, it seemed to her that the song had taken her over and was singing her – a strange effect she’d noticed before, particularly when she sang in Turkish. When it was over, she dashed her tears away. Damn you, Baba. You were the one who told me I could sing. Why should I stop?

  When it was her turn to get in the bath, her mood flipped again and Dom stole into her mind. Seeing him with that other girl in Cavours had hurt her pride but she still thought about him. She wanted him
to be here tonight, to see her in this wonderful dress, to take account of how much she had already changed and what a prize he had missed out on. Soaping her armpits, she ran a film of it in her mind. Dom on a terrace in a dinner jacket, rumpled hair, palm trees behind him, she walking towards him in the sunset, a woman now in her Schiaparelli dress, cigarettes and pearl holder, her smile slightly mysterious now because of the important war work.

  ‘Saba!’ Janine’s tight voice through the keyhole. ‘Could you please stop making that horrible noise, and also, you’ve had at least twenty turns in the bath,’ followed by Arleta’s bellow: ‘Come in, boat number four – taxi in half an hour.’

  Later, stepping into the street, even Janine was forced to admit it was the most perfect night for a party. The evening air was soft and warm, and as they drove past the bronze lions on the Khedive Ibrahim Bridge, the lights of the river barges made red and gold reflections on the surface of the Nile. In the distance against a lurid horizon, the sails of the feluccas fluttered like large moths.

  A jeep crammed with hooting and whistling GIs drove by as they got into the taxi. They made obscene gestures at the girls. One man clawed at his mouth like a starving man.

  ‘I absolutely hate that,’ said Janine, regal in pale green and clasping her evening bag tight. ‘It’s so unnecessary.’

  Now they passed through Cairo streets loud with rackety music, past a stretch of water with what appeared to be a dead donkey floating on top of it. A crowd of men in white djellabas were holding lanterns over it, the ropes to get it out.

  ‘Oh golly!’ Janine held her nose and winced. ‘What a dreadful pong.’

  ‘Nah, lovely,’ Arleta joked. ‘It’s Eau de Nile.’

  Saba laughed out loud. This morning she’d felt so distraught, so wrong about everything; tonight the randomness of driving through Cairo’s corkscrewed streets in a borrowed evening dress felt marvellous.