Jasmine Nights

by Julia Gregson

  He told Saba that this city that he loved had been planned by Alexander the Great and laid out like a gigantic chessboard. It was called the pearl of the Mediterranean. Before the war, he said, there were taverns everywhere, and some of the smartest clothes shops in the Middle East.

  ‘Here is for your antiques, some wonderful shops, very expensive some of them, and just as good as Paris; here,’ he pointed towards the sea, ‘for your fish markets. There for your banking. Up there in the alleyways,’ he made a vague gesture out of the taxi window, ‘is where all the bad girls live.’

  ‘Of which there are plenty,’ Ellie added.

  Tariq wondered if it was possible to have a city that was really a city that didn’t have the promise of something sinful there. Otherwise why would young men bother to leave home?

  ‘Don’t listen to him.’ When Ellie covered Saba’s ears, she heard the boom of laughter. ‘He’s wicked and depraved. She’s a nice young girl,’ she told him.

  ‘My favourite streets,’ Tariq explained, ‘are down by the sea. Normally it has shops and cafés and peanut sellers and all kinds of fun, but the people are very nervous to be out too late after dark now.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Ellie’s scented presence stirred beside her. Saba saw her squeeze Tariq’s hand. She heard her breath quicken.

  ‘I’m not either,’ he said. ‘Everywhere in the Middle East is dangerous now, so let me be in Alexandria with two beautiful women.’

  ‘Flatterer!’ Saba heard the huskiness in Ellie’s voice, then the light sipping of kisses, like cats drinking milk, a rustling, a deep sigh. Tariq stopped talking for a while, and Saba, so close to them, felt both embarrassed and aroused and slightly shocked. Wasn’t Ellie too old for this?

  Ten minutes later, their taxi slowed down. Tariq came up for air and said they’d reached the Corniche; it was a shame that she couldn’t see it in all its glory, on summer evenings glittering like an enormous necklace, and full of people, not just soldiers. Winding down her window, Saba caught the fresh smell of the sea and heard its slap.

  A black horse clip-clopped beside her, making her start. The only light came from a small charcoal brazier underneath the carriage that moved like a ruby through the darkness. Behind its half-drawn curtains two figures embraced.

  A small boy ran beside them, a tray around his neck.

  ‘Big welcome for you, Mrs Queen.’ He thrust a tray of cheap pens and bracelets through their moving window. ‘English good.’ Skinny little fingers covered in cheap rings made the ‘V’ sign. ‘German no good. Churcheeel good. Hitler very bad boy. Please have a look.’ He gazed at them winsomely, head on one side.

  Tariq laughed, gave him a coin. ‘The perfect diplomat meets the real world economy.’

  ‘Very sensible too,’ Ellie said. ‘When you have absolutely no idea what side your bread is buttered on.

  ‘Now, darling, can you see it?’ Ellie gave Saba a sly pinch. ‘It’s over there. The club,’ she whispered. She pointed towards a faint strip of light in the middle of a row of dark houses.

  ‘I try never to look at the ships,’ she said as they walked towards it. ‘Too depressing. Men and their fucking wars.’ Her curse word leapt out of the darkness, startling Saba. It seemed so out of character with Ellie’s meticulous make-up, her reverence for Patou.

  ‘ ’Scuse the French.’ Ellie gave her elbow a little wiggle. ‘It slipped out. What I really meant was let’s have as much fun as we can while we can. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

  A shiver of anticipation ran through Saba like electricity. Ellie was right: nothing wrong with that at all. The fear would come back soon enough.

  A Nubian doorman smiled at her as she walked through the door of the club, his teeth lit blue by the painted-over lamps. She could hear the wail of a jazz trumpet, the clink of glasses, the solid blare of conversation just out of reach. She checked her watch. Nine thirty-five.

  ‘He’s coming at ten,’ Ellie whispered. ‘At least, he said he would.’

  ‘Who?’ It was childish to pretend she didn’t know, but the thought of being stood up now was unbearable.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ Ellie play-pinched her. ‘Him.’

  ‘Oh him. Well that would be nice.’ As if he was just an ordinary man, and this an ordinary day, but some things felt too overwhelming to be shared. Particularly now, and maybe never with Ellie. She didn’t know enough about her yet, or for that matter about him.

  Tariq walked ahead of them, parting cigarette smoke with his hands like waves. Inside, there were many tables lit by tiny candles in glass jars. The tables were crammed with soldiers, some with girls on their laps. A babble of voices: French, Greek, Australian, American.

  There was a bar in the corner. Beside it, a small stage where an overwrought Egyptian singer lassoing his microphone cord about him sobbed his way through ‘Fools Rush In’ in an accent so heavy it might have been another language. An old lady sat behind the stage, her face half lit by the spotlight. She watched the singer closely, with an expression of deep disdain.

  ‘Faiza,’ whispered Tariq.

  Faiza wore a brilliant purple evening dress. Her hair was brightly hennaed, her lips a red slash. On her lap there was a splendid grey Persian cat, as impeccably groomed as its owner and wearing a jewelled lead. It watched the couples dancing cheek to cheek with a look of faintly nauseous contempt.

  In the car coming over, Tariq had been keen to impress on Saba that Faiza was almost as famous as Umm Kulthum, a singer he worshipped. Like Umm, she was the daughter of a poor family, and when young, she’d disguised herself as a boy to sing. Faiza was, he said, a proper artist, not a common crooner: she sang verses from the Koran, her training had been long and arduous; she was also a great friend of Mr Ozan.

  When the song had reached its last wail of agony, Faiza looked around her. When she saw them she beckoned them towards her with a regal wave.

  ‘I know who you are,’ she said to Saba. She stared at her intently – her huge black eyes were ringed with kohl, a little smudged in the heat – and then she shook her hand with a great rattle of bracelets. ‘You, come upstairs. You go and dance,’ she told Tariq and Ellie.

  She took a kerosene lamp from the corner of the stage and made her imperious way through the packed club.

  ‘I have apartments upstairs,’ she said. ‘We can talk there.’

  The cat dashed in front of Saba as she followed the old woman up the steps. She felt the shiver of its fur on her calf. At the top of the stairs, Faiza put a key in the lock and opened the door, on to a candlelit room where there was a piano, and a number of comfortable-looking sofas, covered in silk cushions.

  ‘This is where we have our proper parties now,’ she said. ‘Please, sit down. Something to drink?’

  ‘No. No thank you.’ There was a clock on the wall behind the old lady’s head. It was already nine forty-five.

  The cat purred like a little motor as Faiza moved her fingers up and down its spine.

  ‘We don’t have much time before I sing again,’ she said, ‘so I will start right away. Mr Ozan cannot be here tonight, but he tells me that you are a very good singer. The authorities have forbidden any of us to employ foreign singers for the past two years, and honestly, it’s very, very boring for all of us.’ She smiled warmly. ‘We are artistes, we want to hear everything, see everything,’ her bracelets jangled as she sketched out the world, ‘so the curfew is one great big bloody bore. Sorry for the word.’ They beamed at each other like people who shared a secret.

  ‘And you want me to sing here?’

  Faiza shrugged. A shrewd expression came into her face.

  ‘Not impossible. We cannot make a living without new people,’ she pronounced it bipple too, ‘but now we must be more discreet.

  ‘Before the war, my husband worked with Mr Ozan, we go everywhere to find the best people. We have here Argentinian dancers, French singers, Germans, Italians, such a wonderful place. Now . . .’ The old girl’s shrug was dismissive.
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  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘Dead. A heart attack last year.’ She scooped the cat up and held it against her breast.

  Downstairs, Saba could hear the sound of the band playing Arab music: drums, violin, oud, tabla, their wild, bounding rhythms ripping through the night. Also, the sound of a plane, close enough for the rotations of its propellers to be heard quite distinctly.

  Faiza stopped talking to listen too. As the plane passed, she shrugged eloquently, as if to say who cares.

  ‘So,’ she resumed, ‘Mr Ozan wants me to teach you.’ Her expression brightened.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Saba said. ‘I know your own training took you ages.’

  ‘No.’ Faiza looked surprised. ‘Of course not. I am very happy to try. Mr Ozan is a wonderful man. We make lovely parties for him whenever he wants them.’

  ‘You see, I don’t have very long here,’ Saba explained. ‘I’m with an ENSA company.’ Faiza looked confused. ‘We sing songs for soldiers in the desert. I’m in the army.’

  ‘Our songs are not easy to learn.’ The old lady had not understood her. ‘They are very beautiful, but you will have to learn a new technique.’ She pointed to her nose, her chest. ‘We sing from here too.’

  ‘I know one or two songs,’ Saba said. ‘My grandmother, she’s Turkish, loves the old songs.’

  She sang a snatch of ‘Yah Mustapha’; the old lady laughed and sang along.

  ‘Ya Allah!’ she called out softly. ‘I will teach you. Come tomorrow, here? Tea first, and then our first lesson.’

  ‘I’d love that,’ Saba said, and she meant it. ‘Tariq says you’re famous.’ The old lady inclined her head modestly to one side, but did not deny it. ‘I love learning new songs.’

  ‘I’m old now, and my voice . . .’ Faiza mimed herself being strangled. ‘But we will have some fun. Come tomorrow at ten thirty here. Don’t be late, I have a hair appointment at lunchtime.’

  She glanced at the clock; Saba half rose. The time was ten to ten.

  ‘Wait! Wait, wait.’ Faiza took both of Saba’s hands in hers. ‘Come with me. I have something to show you.’

  As they walked across the room, Saba felt tango rhythms vibrate through the soles of her feet. The hoarse cries, the clapping, the stamp of shoes. She followed the old woman into a small room lit by a kerosene light in its corner. There was a sequinned costume hung on a hook; a dressing table littered with make-up. And sitting on a chair near the window, there was Dom.

  ‘Saba.’ He stepped out of the darkness and put his arms around her.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Both of them were close to tears.

  Faiza stood at the door. She was smiling.

  ‘I will leave you now,’ she said. ‘If you want me, I am singing downstairs.’

  When the door closed, they kissed each other savagely, and then she cried with joy. She’d had no idea until then how frightened she’d been.

  She stepped back and looked at him. It seemed that they had already gone beyond a place of self-control and she didn’t care.

  He was wearing a scruffy khaki shirt and trousers. His hair needed cutting. His skin had turned a deep nut brown since she saw him last. He was beautiful. After a long, slow kiss, a kind of claiming, he pushed her away.

  ‘Let me look at you.’ He pulled her down on the sofa beside him. ‘What in hell are you doing here?’ He couldn’t stop smiling. ‘Do you understand this?’

  ‘You first,’ she said, playing for time. How much was it safe to tell him?

  He ran his hands through her hair as he spoke.

  ‘Did you get my message, my letter I mean, I wrote it over a week ago?’

  ‘No. Did you get mine?’

  ‘No. I got a message from your friend Madame whatever-her-name-is; she said you’d be here tonight. That was all.’

  They kissed again. These details were trivial. There was a war on, messages got lost all the time.

  When they stopped, he put both arms around her and hugged her tight, and she felt his heart beating against her and happiness ran through her like a river, as if every cell in her body was saying thank you for the miracle of him – here, and alive.

  He told her that for the past ten days they’d been out in the desert south of Alex training. He didn’t tell her what the training involved, or what it was for, only that it was over now, at least for the time being, and that the whole squadron had been given a week off because it had been pretty flat out and they wanted them rested. For the next month, all leave was cancelled.

  He gathered her hair in his hands, smoothed it back from her face and looked her straight in the eyes.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ he said.

  She stroked his face. ‘Guess what?’ she said. The tip of his finger was exploring her dimple. ‘No, really, guess what? As far as I know, I’m here for at least a week, and pretty much on my own. I have to do some work, but we can see each other.’

  ‘What work?’ She saw a look of confusion in his eyes. ‘I don’t understand. Where are the others? Your friend Arleta? The acrobats?’

  ‘They’re not here.’ She hated having to start like this. ‘They’ll probably come soon.’ Her right hand was covering her eye. ‘I’m going to do a couple of broadcasts. I didn’t write to you because I didn’t know I’d do them here, it was a very sudden thing.’ Too much, she was talking too much.

  He took her hand down from her face, turned it palm upwards and kissed it.

  ‘Whom does it depend on?’ he said. ‘Your staying, I mean.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know!’ Oh, not a good thing to say, more confusion. ‘But it’s bloody dangerous here, most people have been evacuated. I don’t want you to get hurt.’

  He was about to say something else when the music from downstairs reached a straggling halt, and then the woop-woop-woop of an air-raid siren broke through.

  A muddle of voices out on the street below them now, the patter of feet on their way to the air-raid shelter. They decided to stay.

  ‘At home, my gran wouldn’t go to the shelters,’ she told him, ‘so I used to lie under the dining-room table with her. She’s thirteen stone. I’ve still got the dents.’ When he laughed, she felt his breath on her cheek. ‘And afterwards, we’d lie in bed together listening to the wireless.’

  ‘Well now I’m insane with jealousy.’ He tightened his arms around her. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no gran and no wireless in our bed.’

  Our bed: he’d said it.

  A wonderful laughter bubbled through them: the laughter of being young, of knowing something you’d longed for was happening.

  Our bed. It would happen tonight, she knew it. She stood beside him at the window, shimmering with happiness. She loved how he just assumed it would. No holding back, no false coquetry; the wave had caught them and they would ride it.

  When he pulled back half an inch of blackout curtain she saw his profile etched on the wall, clear and distinct like a silhouette – the straight nose, the tousled hair, the shadow of his arm around her. A wash of light moved over the bay and the dark blue sea, and then the rat-tat-tat of anti-aircraft guns. In the heartbeat of silence he pulled her closer, and then from downstairs she heard the music again, jolly and impertinent, two fingers to the war.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

  Chapter 26

  There are rooms you know you won’t forget; they are like songs that are part of you.

  Number 12, Rue Lepsius was such a place: an old apartment building with an elaborate balcony, which overlooked the street. Walking towards it, she saw, by the light of the moon, animal heads – lions, dolphins, griffins – carved into its walls.

  As they drove there, Dom explained that the Desert Air Force rented three rooms here for overnight stays in Alexandria. ‘It’s nothing special,’ he told her, helping her out, ‘but it’s quiet, and as safe as anywhere. Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Not frightened?’

  ‘No.’
r />   ‘I’ll look after you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The ground floor was deserted and dark.

  ‘Here.’ He clicked open a lighter and led her upstairs. On the first-floor landing he kissed her softly, and unlocked a door and led her by the hand into a whitewashed room with high ceilings. When he lit two candles; she saw a white bed in the middle of the room, a mosquito net draped around it. There was a washstand, a chest of drawers, a half-drawn curtain with a bath behind it. The sight of his clothes – desert boots, shirt, trousers – flung carelessly on a wicker chair alarmed and delighted her.

  He put the candles into two red glass bowls attached to the wall by an iron sconce and closed the wooden shutters. The window glass behind the shutters was criss-crossed with strips of tape in case of bomb blasts. The breeze from an overhead fan ruffled her hair as she stepped out of her clothes. There were no words, no preliminaries. She got into bed and waited for him in the dark like a hungry young animal. The brown gleam of his chest was lit by the candlelight as he lay down beside her.

  ‘Here.’ He pulled her to him, and the kissing began again, and when he entered her swiftly all she could think was thank God, thank God at last. It was like riding the curve of a wave; nothing in her life had felt so absolutely right and unstoppable.

  They laughed when it was over. A laugh of triumph and possession.

  He lay gasping, one hand on her breast, one tanned leg over the sheets.

  ‘At long bloody last,’ he said, and they laughed again.

  When she was a girl, she’d read other people’s descriptions of falling in love: the tears, the madness, the irrational laughter, the melting, the raging, the burning, and she’d worried because she’d never felt even remotely like that. But when she woke the following morning, her first thought was: It’s happened. My first miracle.

  He was still asleep, lying on his back, one arm flung in an arc above his head. She looked at him, her body still singing from the night before: at the tuft of dark hair under his arm; at his lips which were soft and clearly carved; there was a small scar underneath them. She must ask him where he got it. He breathed out, his lips slightly parted, teeth white against tanned skin. There was a faint depression under his eyes where the skin was paler than the rest of his face, maybe where his flying goggles had been. His left ear was slightly bigger than his right ear, and below it, when she examined the miraculous skin graft, she saw that it was now almost imperceptible: that the scar which ran from the bottom of his left ear down to the hollow of his neck had faded but you could see, if you looked closely, the raised skin of the surgeon’s neat stitches. Gazing at those stitches, thinking about the hospital, she heard her breath come jaggedly. How could she bear it if it happened again? She ran her hand down the side of his ribs. She stroked the curve of his hip bone, saw the point beneath the rumpled sheet where his suntan ended and his whiter skin began.