Jasmine Nights

by Julia Gregson

  ‘I’ll need to rehearse,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to make a fool of myself.’

  ‘I have arranged for Faiza to teach you at the club. She’s old now, but she is still considered one of the best singers in Egypt. It will be interesting for you.’

  ‘Count me in.’ She put her hand out, he shook it.

  ‘So, we have a deal,’ he said. When his eyes lit up like that, she saw what a sweet child he must have been.

  A bottle of Bollinger appeared in an ice bucket with two exquisite champagne flutes. She’d never drunk during the day before, but the occasion felt so odd and special she let him pour her a glass.

  Ozan waved; a servant appeared at almost a jog trot, setting down on the table a mass of small alabaster dishes. When the lids were whisked away, she saw a dish of tiny birds no bigger than budgies covered in herbs and oranges; some rice covered in almonds. The servant danced around them placing pickles and small salads and olives and bread in a semicircle around them.

  ‘It’s a picnic today.’ Mr Ozan tucked his napkin in. ‘When you come to my party, I make a proper feast for you.’

  He helped Saba to a portion of the baby quail, watching her fondly while she ate a dish so delicious it was all she could do to stop herself groaning with pleasure. It was overwhelming after the ghastly food in the desert.

  Mr Ozan seemed a hearty eater, sucking his fingers and chewing noisily and picking up the small bones of the bird to crunch them. While he was thus engaged, his eyes went distant and blank, and he occasionally gave a small grunt of pleasure.

  He was wiping his chin with a napkin when a servant brought a telephone to him. There was the rat-tat-tat of conversation and then Mr Ozan ripped his napkin out of his shirt and started to breathe heavily and sigh. Heavy footsteps in the hall, a dark-suited man stood at the door. When Ozan saw him he stopped talking and stood up.

  ‘Forgive me.’ He took her hand. ‘This is unfortunate but the plane is already waiting, there is some mistake. I’ll be in touch when I get back from Beirut. Sorry for the rush. Please be my guest and stay for as long as you like.’ He bowed slightly and disappeared into the house.

  A lovely woman appeared in the doorway almost as soon as he was gone. She smiled shyly at Saba. ‘I am Mr Ozan’s wife,’ she said. ‘My name is Leyla.’

  Leyla was a classic Turkish beauty with high cheekbones, thick black eyebrows and shining hair which she wore loose. The sight of her, cool as a mountain stream in her green silk dress, made it almost impossible to believe in the harshness of the desert that surrounded them, or that Rommel’s army might be as close as forty miles away.

  ‘Zafer is very sorry he had to leave so quickly,’ she said. Her English, like his, was excellent. ‘If you will please wait here, the car comes in ten minutes,’ she added. She bowed and left the garden, still smiling.

  The champagne and the hypnotic sounds of the fountain made Saba feel drowsy, and she closed her eyes after Leyla had gone, happy to have a few moments’ peace. Half in a dream, she heard more heavy boots walking across the marble floor. The soft voice of a woman, a door closing.

  ‘Madame,’ a servant stood at the door, waiting for her, ‘the car is here.’

  Reluctant to leave the enchanting garden, she followed him through the heavy doors and across the marble hall. She was almost out the front door when, damn! She remembered she’d left Ellie’s blue-feathered bag on the sofa in the reception room.

  ‘One moment, please,’ she told the servant. ‘I have left my . . .’ She pointed towards the room which lay sombre and stately behind the carved door, its precious objects flashing and winking.

  When the door opened a fraction wider she saw two men in grey uniforms sitting near the window. They were clean-shaven with very short hair. Their legs were sprawled in front of them as though they were at ease here. When the man closest to her stood up, she felt a jolting fear – she was looking into the eyes of a German officer. He was less than a foot away. He clicked his heels and bowed.

  ‘Das Mädchen ist schön,’ he said to his friend, who looked her up and down appreciatively.

  Saba froze for a moment, and then smiled at them while her brain slowly began to function. She mimed a handbag, and shrugged helplessly.

  The younger man stood up. He had fine intelligent eyes. He dug under a cushion and held up the handbag by its delicately feathered strap. He handed it to her with a pleasant smile.

  ‘Shukran,’ she murmured.

  ‘Ellaleqa.’

  She returned his slight bow, turned and walked with her heart pounding towards the waiting car.

  Chapter 24

  ‘Mr Cleeve’s here,’ Ellie was standing at the door when Saba got home. She looked pale. She pointed upstairs towards the bedroom. ‘He came suddenly on the Cairo train. He’s having a little rest upstairs.’ There was a warning note in her voice. ‘Don’t forget to keep schtum about our other arrangements,’ she whispered, steering her into the sitting room. ‘It could spoil everything and I have some rather good news for you.

  ‘A big gin or a tiddler?’ Ellie pushed her gently into a chair. She drew the blackout curtains and lit a small lamp. ‘I’m going to have a big one – it’s been quite a busy day, and I’m dying to hear,’ she added in her more social voice, ‘about yours – do tell all.’

  Saba looked at her and made a rapid calculation. If Cleeve were here, it would be safer to tell him and no one else about the Germans. Ellie was still such a new friend.

  Ellie took a sip of her gin. ‘Saba, I’ll say this quickly before he comes.’ She lowered her voice and glanced towards the ceiling. ‘Damn!’ The sound of a chair moving across the floorboards. ‘I’ll have to tell you later – Dermot wants to talk over songs and recordings and things with you, so I’m going to make myself scarce.’ She stood up. ‘Can’t wait to hear what the house was like,’ she resumed in a brighter tone as Cleeve loped into the room carrying a briefcase in his hand.

  ‘My goodness.’ Cleeve put his head on one side in mock admiration and smiled at Saba. ‘What a stunning frock. I can see Madame E has performed her usual magic.’

  ‘Drink, Dermot?’ Ellie said quickly. ‘Then I’ll go up and change for supper and leave you both to it.’

  ‘Gin and it, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Oh what heaven to be back in civilisation.’ He sank into a chair. ‘I sat on that bloody Cairo train for four hours,’ he complained. ‘They were loading all these cars for the big brass. One of the porters eventually switched on the wireless in one of them, so we could listen to some music, otherwise I would have been a mad person by now. Which reminds me.’ He gulped some gin and opened his briefcase. ‘Pressie for Saba,’ he said. ‘A Hoagy Carmichael recording. It was smuggled over from New York. Quite superb.’

  The package sat in Saba’s lap.

  ‘Well open it,’ he said, crinkling his eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said woodenly – Ellie was hovering at the door. ‘Perhaps later.’

  ‘Darlings, I’m off,’ said Ellie quickly. ‘See you at dinner. I’m glad you like the dress, Dermot.’ They could hear her scampering footsteps going upstairs.

  ‘She doesn’t know anything,’ Dermot said when the door had closed. ‘She’s only your dresser, and I would have arranged to meet you somewhere else tonight, but it was impossible to arrange transport. Are you hungry?’ he added in his conversational voice. ‘I’m starving. I could call for something.’

  ‘No,’ she said. She pulled her chair so that it faced him and looked him squarely in the eye. ‘I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to talk about dresses, and I don’t want to talk about Hoagy Carmichael. What I want to know is why you let me go to Zafer Ozan’s house on my own when you knew what was going on there.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You must know,’ Saba exploded. ‘There were two German officers there.’ She wanted to spit with fury. ‘One of them was trying to speak to me. I could have been captured, I could have been raped. Why didn�
��t anyone warn me?’

  ‘Darling.’ Cleeve was almost pleading with her. ‘What a nasty fright, I’m so sorry about it. Hang on . . .’ He stood up, placed his finger on his lips and put Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ on the Pattersons’ gramophone. ‘I do so love this man,’ he said mildly, lowering the needle. ‘He knows the notes, he knows the melody, but best of all he knows how to make a tune swing. She thinks we’re rehearsing,’ he whispered.

  ‘Now listen.’ He leaned towards Saba. ‘It’s important you understand this: someone like Ozan doesn’t see the Germans as the great bogymen that we do. Half the shopkeepers in Alexandria now have signs in German underneath their counters saying “wilkommen” in case it goes the other way. It’s human nature, darling. Point the second,’ there was a signet ring on his little finger, ‘Ozan is Turkish, or most of him is. Turkey is neutral. He is an international businessman, he can ask who the hell he likes to his house. If you’re a guest of his, you are perfectly safe.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I just do.’ Cleeve took a long sip of gin and rattled the ice.

  ‘Now listen, settle down and talk to me, because I’m leaving shortly – what did these Germans say to you?’

  ‘I don’t know – I don’t speak the language.’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  ‘To whom?’ She glared at him still.

  ‘To the man who talked to you. The German.’

  ‘Nothing, I answered him in Arabic.’

  He blew out air.

  ‘Good girl. Quick thinking. How well do you actually speak Arabic?’

  ‘Hardly at all,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘that’s the point – only the few words a friend taught me at school. If that man had spoken the language he would have been on to me in a flash. I could have been killed or captured.’

  ‘Darling, darling.’ He held up his hand to stop her. ‘I think we’ve gone right off into the realms of melodrama here. There are several things I need to explain to you.’

  He steepled his hands under his chin. Pashas like Ozan, he said, were largely oblivious to the war; they ducked and dived, their lifeblood was business and they would sell to the highest bidder. ‘And a lovely man, of course,’ he added quickly. ‘Passionate about music. But having said all that,’ he opened his cigarette case and seemed to select his words as carefully as he did his cigarette, ‘I’m somewhat surprised to hear that our German friends are so blatantly there at the moment. I’m going to have to discuss this with my superior. We need to work out a careful strategy.’

  ‘Who is your superior?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that just yet.’ A fly caught in the lampshade momentarily distracted him. He picked up a Parade magazine, rolled it, and whacked the insect dead. ‘I’m not trying to be deliberately evasive, it’s just that I need time to brief him on the situation. What did Ozan ask you to do?’

  ‘If you tell me more about why I was there, I’ll tell you about today.’ This seemed her only bargaining chip.

  He sighed and placed the dead fly in the ashtray.

  ‘We have a strong suspicion that Ozan has changed the location of his party from Alexandria to either Beirut or Istanbul; it’s important for us to know, as soon as possible, which place he decides on. If it’s Istanbul we may have a little job for you to do there that could turn into rather an important job. I won’t waste time by discussing it now.’

  ‘And the parties are important because . . .?’ She was not going to let him off the hook now.

  ‘Some of the key people in the Middle East go to them, and you might just pick up something of vital importance. The point is,’ he leaned forward, his face sweating, ‘his lot hold the keys to victory.’

  ‘What lot?’

  ‘The suppliers. Ozan – thanks to the parties and the nightclubs – has a large network of friends and business acquaintances, some of whom control the supplies of oil and now water, and without oil and water, we may as well all go home now.’

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘My, what a terrier.’ He looked at her in mock alarm. ‘I wouldn’t like to be interrogated by you.’

  Patronising twit. She felt like thwacking him over the head.

  ‘Radar,’ he said simply.

  ‘The British want to make use of Turkish airbases. Strategically, they are absolutely vital, and it so happens that Ozan’s family own the land around one of them, about fourteen miles from Ankara. It would be helpful to know which way he’s going to jump.’

  She heard the drone of distant aircraft, and from upstairs the faint splashes of Ellie performing her evening toilette.

  ‘Listen, Saba,’ he said. He opened his arms as if he were freeing a bird. ‘If you don’t feel like doing any of this, you can go home now. Right back to England if you like.’

  She sat in silence, a million conflicting thoughts going through her head. There was a kindly, understanding look in Cleeve’s eyes when she looked up – the usual look of amused curiosity.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said.

  Chapter 25

  As soon as the front door clicked behind him, Saba raced upstairs.

  ‘Ellie,’ she whispered urgently through the keyhole of her bedroom. ‘He’s gone. What did you want to tell me?’

  ‘Come in and close the door behind you.

  ‘Well now,’ Ellie’s kidney-shaped dressing table gave back three smug reflections of herself, ‘I think you’re going to be rather pleased with me. You see, I’ve found him.’ She powdered her nose in a spirited way. ‘Your Pilot Officer Benson.’

  Saba sank to the floor beside her.

  ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘No.’ Ellie swivelled around and looked at her seriously. ‘But it’s a secret, and you’ve got to swear to keep it.’

  Saba saw her own flushed face in the mirror.

  ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘I’d like to claim some great victory,’ Ellie said. ‘But I can’t. I was having a drink this afternoon in Pastroudis, a group of pilots were there on leave, I asked if they knew him and of course they did. Easy-peasy.’

  ‘And?’ Saba’s body was literally vibrating with excitement.

  ‘They said they’d get a message to him, that, as far as they knew, he was in town. If all goes to plan, he’ll be down at the Cheval D’Or tonight. Tariq’s sending a taxi for us at around nine thirty, which just about gives you time to have a bath and get dressed.’

  ‘Did you tell Mr Cleeve? He mustn’t know.’

  ‘Of course not, you twit.’ Ellie stood up and smoothed her dress down. ‘Listen, Saba,’ she said, ‘I am supposed to be your chaperone – but don’t you ever get sick of the boys making all the rules?’ She gave a little wink. ‘But we don’t have much time, so let’s discuss this later,’ she’d gone back to her chaperone voice, ‘over a drink at the club. I’d have a bath now if I was you; it’s been an awfully long day, and who knows what the night may bring?’

  She stood up and opened her wardrobe door. While she rummaged, she told Saba that she’d meet Faiza Mushawar that night too – the singing teacher. Faiza, although as old as God, would be dressed up to the nines, probably even to the tens, that was the Egyptian way.

  ‘What about this little number?’ She put a black sequinned cocktail dress on the bed. ‘Or this?’ A green satin skirt was flung beside it.

  ‘No,’ said Saba. She was quite clear about this – if Dom was coming, she wanted to feel like herself.

  She stood in her half-slip and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was below her shoulders now, and she was thinner than she had been; her arms had grown brown in the sun. When she tried to put on her favourite silver bracelet, her hands were trembling too much to do up its fiddly catch.

  After some deliberation, she chose the red silk dress that she had worn that night in Ismailia. It was a bit creased but she loved it; it meant something to her now.

  A taxi
drew up outside the house; Ellie’s boyfriend, Tariq, had arrived, a short, powerfully built man whose wire-rimmed glasses and impeccable clothes gave him a serious, even scholastic air. He’d brought a string of jasmine for Ellie, whom he was clearly mad about. ‘Jasmine,’ he explained, ‘was the flower of love in Egypt.’

  Earlier, Ellie had seemed anxious to explain to Saba that her boyfriend was not, as she put it, ‘a typical native’, but half French and half Egyptian; a civilised man of the world whose four passions in life were wine (he’d spent his childhood on a small vineyard near Bordeaux), music, women and Egyptology. He’d first come to this city in search of buried bones, but when archaeology had proved an expensive occupation, he’d financed it by importing fine wines, which he’d done with some success.

  He seemed to bring out a more kittenish, excitable side of Ellie’s nature. They bounded together towards the waiting car and jumped inside it as if they couldn’t wait for the evening to begin, and soon the air was full of everybody’s combined scents: sandalwood from Tariq’s side, Joy on all Ellie’s pulse points; even their driver with his brass box of ambergris and frankincense on his dashboard added to the rich and frankly overpowering air.

  Tariq, sitting close to Ellie on the back seat, apologised for the scruffiness of the car and also for the brevity of the trip he was about to take them on. ‘It would have been fun to show you Alexandria by night,’ he said, ‘but there’s bad shortage of petrol here, so we must do it some other time.’

  Saba, drawing aside a blackout curtain, saw a city half in hiding. Empty roads bathed in shrouded street lights; an empty tram sliding down potholed streets towards the sea, and, in dark cafés between burned-out buildings, the silhouettes of male figures drinking coffee or arak by candlelight. Tariq said, with a smile to hide the bitterness of his words, that the people of Alexandria had got nothing out of the war except inflation and darkness. ‘You are seeing Alex in her widow’s weeds,’ he said protectively. ‘The bombings have been horrible, but it will pass. She will recover.’