Jasmine Nights

by Julia Gregson

  ‘Where did you find me?’ she said. ‘In Turkey, I mean.’

  ‘Under a tree, in a ditch. The car was burning beside you, you were jolly lucky.’

  He held his top teeth over his lower lip, which had begun to tremble. She looked away.

  ‘It was horrid, Saba. I feel guilty about what happened. Ten minutes later and I don’t like to think.’

  ‘Well don’t.’ She couldn’t stand the thought of him being emotional, or talking about Felipe – not yet.

  ‘What happened to Jenke?’ she asked him. ‘I’d at least like to know that. He had the documents. Did he get away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She waited for more.

  ‘Is that it? Just yes, nothing else?’ She could hear her voice rising.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was it useful – his information?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Cleeve lit a cigarette and gave a little gasp.

  ‘I think it was all right,’ he said faintly. He leaned over and took her hand and looked her in the eye in a way she found unnerving.

  ‘Saba,’ he said, ‘are you really all right? I’ve been so very worried about you.’

  She felt his fingers close around her hand and hoped he would take them away soon.

  ‘I’m not sure we should have sent you there.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘It was mine. I wanted to travel, I loved the singing – everybody has their Achilles heel, I found mine.’

  ‘You still have bruises.’ When he pointed in a hangdog way towards her forehead, she clenched her fists under the table – his sympathy was almost unbearable.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I want to go home, you can help me with that. When I asked Captain Furness last week, he would hardly talk to me. He also didn’t ask a thing about the accident, he couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’ Her voice throbbed with rage. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd that I—’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, Saba,’ he interrupted her, ‘because this could ruin his career: the ENSA set-up is incredibly fragile: the brass hats resent the fact that they take up time and trucks and things, they think of performers as badly behaved children, so when things go belly-up, both sides rush to bury it.’

  ‘Dermot,’ she’d been steeling herself for this ever since they’d sat down, ‘there’s one thing I really do need to ask you. My friend . . . the pilot . . . he’s missing presumed dead. Is there any chance . . .’

  ‘No.’ Cleeve pulled away from her. ‘None whatsoever . . . sorry, but absolutely none.’ His eyes were focused on a tatty poster hanging on the wall above her head, it showed a woman floating down the Nile and drinking Ovaltine. ‘Don’t you think it’s always better to tell the truth?’

  ‘Surely someone can help me look – Jenke or someone?’

  ‘No. Sorry, Saba . . . let’s be clear right away. This work doesn’t come with a quid pro quo. I shouldn’t be here now.’ He fiddled with his raincoat belt.

  ‘Well, give Jenke my regards when you see him,’ she said, standing up.

  ‘I don’t think I will see him again,’ he said softly. ‘That’s how it is here – ships passing in the night, although sometimes the consonant could easily be changed.’

  The following day, Max Bagley dropped by, so happy to be back in Cairo, he said, he could have cried. He’d been in the punishment zone, Ismailia, this summer directing a company that made their lot look like models of sanity. Half the dancers had gone down with foot rot because it was so hot; one of the comedians had turned out to have epilepsy.

  He took her to Groppi’s, ordered macaroons and ice cream, and after some small talk, and a sprinkling of compliments, he looked at her with his bright, calculating eyes.

  ‘The shows I mentioned. We’ve got some absolute corkers coming up. No chance of you coming back, I suppose?’

  His smile was as sweet and innocent as the ice cream that ringed his mouth, but she’d acquired, almost overnight it seemed, the habit of suspicion.

  ‘No chance, Max, I’m afraid. I’m waiting to go home.’

  ‘So I hear.’ He pushed a macaroon towards her. ‘Try one of these, they’re divine.’

  ‘No thanks, I’ve just had breakfast.’ A lie but she couldn’t stand another lecture about eating up.

  ‘Well let me tickle your fancy with this, Super Sabs,’ he said, through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘Thing is, I’ve written a musical.’ Pause for a look of thrilling intensity. ‘It’s easily the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ll be casting after Christmas, should you change your mind.’

  ‘Thanks, Max,’ she said quietly, ‘but I won’t change my mind. It’s nice of you to think of me.’

  ‘Saba, may I say one thing?’ He propped his chin in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes. ‘I know I was a bit sharp with you during rehearsals. I’ve got a nasty tongue sometimes because I want everything to be perfect, but I only do it with people I respect, and what I should have made perfectly clear to you is that you were . . . are,’ he corrected himself, ‘good, very good. I think you have a great future ahead of you. End of apology. More grovel to follow if necessary.’ He touched his forehead, mouth and chest in a mock-salaam.

  There was no glow of pleasure when he said this. It all sounded like flannel to her.

  ‘Sorry, Max,’ she said. ‘I’m not trying to be a prima donna.’

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin and stared at her.

  ‘It’s like being an athlete, Sabs, you can’t let the muscles go slack.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘It’s not just the talent fairy waving her little wand.’

  ‘Gosh. Really?’ She pushed the crumbs into a little pile with her finger, and looked at him.

  ‘Did that sound patronising?’

  ‘Only a bit, Max, but thanks for trying.’

  As he drained his cup in one draught, she felt the click of his charm being switched off. She knew by now how Max’s mind worked: the wheels would already be churning inside his brain about who to cast as her replacement; and later there would probably be a satisfying bitch to whoever was at hand about how that Saba Tarcan wasn’t as good as she thought she was – how he’d put his finger on her unique flaws the moment he’d seen her – for there was a fire of ego inside Max Bagley that needed to be stoked more or less constantly.

  ‘What happened to Janine?’ she asked him while he was searching for his hat.

  ‘She went to India and then, or so I gather, was sent home.’ He gave her a beady look. ‘Couldn’t cope at all.’ There was a pause. ‘She was an awful drip, wasn’t she?’ he added. ‘Lovely line, but no sense of humour whatsoever.’

  ‘When I thought about her later,’ she said, ‘I mean after I left the company, I felt sorry for her. She told me once she’d been having ballet lessons since she was three years old, that every scrap of the family money went on her. She didn’t have a childhood, and now she won’t have a proper career because just when everything was starting to open up for her, the war came – she’s sure she’ll be past her prime when it’s over; dancers are unlucky like that.’

  ‘Well the war’s ballsed up a lot of lives.’ Max wasn’t the slightest bit interested. ‘So I can’t feel very boo-hoo about that.’

  He did at least insist on walking her home; it had started to drizzle and the sky was thunderously grey.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it, being in a company?’ he said as they picked their way over broken pavements. ‘One moment you’re all madly cosy – you know all about each other’s love affairs, the state of their bowels, what they like to eat for breakfast, their weaknesses, their breaking points – and the next, pouff! Gone. When you’re in a show, it seems like the most important thing in the world.’ His voice trailed off wearily.

  ‘What will you do when the war’s over, Max?’

  ‘Dunno. Another job maybe,’ he said grimly. ‘Go on tour again.’ She was shocked by how worn-out he sounded.

  ‘Why not go home for a while and have a proper hol
iday?’ He’d talked about a place in London.

  ‘To my bedsit in Muswell Hill,’ he said in the same flat voice. ‘If it’s still standing. Whizzoo! What fun.’

  Boggers next, en route to a job in India. The usual leotard replaced by a shiny ill-fitting suit made, he told her proudly, by a tailor in the souk. He stood in the middle of the room discreetly tensing and flexing various muscles and made a stumbling speech he’d obviously prepared beforehand. He told Saba that she was a very nice and beautiful lady, and that when the war was over they should move to Brazil and form a double act there. If she wanted it very much they could get married.

  She stumbled through a speech of her own: so kind of him, wonderful opportunity, but going home, etc., and she was tremendously grateful when Arleta suddenly arrived with enough energy left over from a two-hour rehearsal to admire the suit, which had obviously been bought for the occasion, and pinch his cheeks, and ask him to share mess number one with them. Saba watched her in awe.

  When he left, Arleta collapsed on to the sofa like a rag doll and said:

  ‘God, I feel dire. I’m practically certain I’m getting a cold or flu or something, which is why I have a huge, huge boon to beg of you.’

  She rolled on to the floor, clasped her hands together in prayer, and begged Saba to help her out the following night at a small concert to be held at a supply depot near Suez.

  ‘Get up, you silly woman!’ Saba didn’t feel like joking, much less performing. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  She knew she wasn’t ready for work. But Arleta was persuasive. Only a couple of duets, she said. It would be fun. Good old Dr Footlights would get her through.

  But he hadn’t. She’d done it for Arleta, who, red-nosed and even croakier than the day before, was thrilled to have her back. At the depot, Arleta did a very grown-up version of ‘Christopher Robin is Saying His Prayers’ (Wasn’t it fun in the bath tonight? The cold’s so cold, and the hot’s so hot), and they’d sung a couple of duets together, light-hearted things: ‘Makin’ Whoopee’, done with two prams, then a spoof on ‘Cheek to Cheek’, when they pretended to be GI Janes whose cheeks got stuck together by chewing gum. Arleta, radiantly restored to health, had chewed up the scenery a bit with some extravagant shimmying at the end of the choruses, but the men seemed to love it and they left the stage to a shrill blast of wolf whistles.

  And Saba, looking down from the stage at the sea of khaki men with their lonely, eager faces, made an unhappy discovery: you didn’t need heart or soul to make an audience cheer and clap – at a pinch, another part of you would take over like a well-schooled circus pony.

  After the interval, Arleta, who was about to do her solo, ran from the stage into the wings clutching her throat dramatically and pretending to strangle herself.

  ‘I can’t. Can’t.’ Her voice cracked into a faint whisper. ‘Voice completely gone.’

  Well, maybe it was a trick, and maybe it wasn’t, but there was nothing for it but for Saba, unrehearsed and unprepared, to take over. She was doing fine, until a boy in the front row asked for ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’. The last time she’d sung it, they’d been in bed together, in the Rue Lepsius room, her face against his chest, his hand combing her hair.

  Halfway through the song, she felt a wave of blackest misery sweep over her; her throat seemed to close down. The boy who’d requested the song – a skinny kid, with a new short back and sides – looked baffled as she left the stage early, the band still playing an echo of the chorus.

  She ran down the steps that led from the stage towards the scruffy tented village, the Nissen huts, the row of rubbish bins. There were no stars that night, just black cloud, and miles of mud and barbed wire. Arleta found her in a gangway between two rows of tents, sitting in the mud sobbing her guts out.

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ Arleta said, sitting down beside her. ‘I got it wrong. I think it’s time you went home.’

  Chapter 43

  For several days Dom slipped in and out of consciousness. His wet hair was plastered over his forehead, his lips had turned blue, parts of his parachute were still wrapped around him like a grotesque half-hatched pupa with a human head.

  A desert lark was singing its strange choo eee cha cha wooeee song on a leafless tree nearby. The pile of ashes that had been the plane was now a soggy mess with a few bits of wire poking out, and smashed pieces of glass.

  From time to time a boy, like a figure in a dream, appeared, shimmering and unreliable, sometimes with goats around him. A skinny boy with a look of horrified disgust on his face who muttered at him and occasionally screamed, who feinted and retreated and seemed to want to kill him. This time, breathing heavily, the boy tied his donkey to the tree. He stared at Dom. He inched towards him, his heart pumping wildly, snatched the scattered objects around him, the compass, the razor, the bottled tablets from his escape kit, stuffed them in his pocket, and was about to ride off again when he heard Dom sigh.

  When Dom woke, hot and shivering, several hours later, he lay squinting at a sky whose dull grey made it impossible to work out the time. ‘Nothing has changed,’ he said out loud, shocked at how feeble his voice sounded. A few moments later, he froze hearing the distant drone of planes in the sky somewhere far above the blank wall of cloud. They would see him soon; they would get him. As a boy, he’d listened one night breathless with horror as his grandfather, fuelled by several whiskies too many, recalled his time as a prisoner of war – captured in a ditch before Ypres – the chicken-cage beds, the claustrophobia, the beatings, the sense of utter degraded helplessness. Being captured was one of his worst nightmares.

  His muscles were taut as violin strings as he listened. The white sky had changed, and he saw, sliding out from behind what were black blobs of reflected cloud, four planes flying in formation above him – 5,000, 7,000 feet? It was hard to tell from here. Four 109s, swastikas painted like large insects underneath them. The sound faded, grew louder. Then, above the German planes, he heard the unmistakable roar of Spitfires and stopped breathing as he pictured himself stretched out like a human target on the sand. Jesus Christ Almighty. Now what?

  Face down he lay, listening with his whole body for his own death, and then he heard the sounds of the planes flying away, followed by his own lungs creaking and retching as he coughed.

  After they’d gone a wave of pure exhilaration swept through him. He was alive! He was alive. He rolled over on his side, gritted his teeth, took several deep breaths, and yelling, stood up. He was standing, squinting and swaying, watching the dissolving and loosening of solid reality, when he saw the boy again, this time on a donkey coming towards him from some way off. There was a man with him.

  The man looked at him for a long time, scratching his armpit. He lifted the aircraft wing and he and the boy stared at him together – a pale, half-dead agnabi who had dropped from the sky. Dom started to cry, feeling the stag beetles crawling over him. Two vultures flew above him in a speculative way, and around him the desert stretched out, implacable, vast. It didn’t care. When the sun came out it would roast the flesh off his bones, or if it rained, there were no trees for shelter. He would die within days, if these two people didn’t kill him.

  He was still raving as they bundled up the parachute and tied it to the donkey. Telling them to leave him, telling them he wanted to die. They threw him sideways across the beast’s bony back, his flying boots dragging in the mud. They took him back to their temporary home – four ramshackle tents whose guy ropes were covered in tattered bits of cloth. In front of the tents there was a hobbled camel, and a small donkey, now honking furiously at its mother’s return. A skinny dog, its tail at a crazy pipe-cleaner angle, barked at them.

  Dom had stopped his noise. He ached all over now, he longed for nothing more than to lie down. They took him to the largest of the tents and unrolled a thin mattress for him behind a curtain. He lay all night in this windowless corner, breathing in the fumes of a tallow candle, and camel dung, and the goat’s hair the te
nt was made of. His lungs squeaked, his face burned. While he slept, three toddlers came to the mouth of the tent, barefoot and in grimy pyjamas, picking their noses, laughing nervously. From time to time a man’s curious face appeared around the door and stared at him without expression. He called his wife in to look at Dom. They did not know if he was German or English, and it did not particularly matter because an agnabi was an agnabi and their war had ruined the land, the cotton crops, the price of fuel, and made their lives even harder than they already were. As soon as he was well, he would go.

  The boy’s mother, Abida, who was only twenty-eight and softhearted, felt differently. Her last job of the day was to check on the goats, to put fava beans on to cook for tomorrow’s breakfast, and lastly to pull down the various bits of sacking that made their dwelling relatively watertight. Before she went to bed, she went out into the vast star-studded night, crept round to the side of the tent where he lay and, raising a candle over his face, sneaked another look at him. He was soaked with sweat, coughing and muttering. He was a handsome boy, and he was dying. It was the will of Allah, but it was sad.

  Chapter 44

  One Wednesday morning she was in the sitting room at Antikhana Street when Mr Ozan walked in. He was plumply poured into a beautiful dark suit and held an enormous bunch of lilies in his hand. She jumped.

  ‘Saba, my dear.’ His voice was stern, his eyes full of concern. ‘You are a woman alone, please lock your door in future.’

  He sat down and looked around him. Arleta, who had the occasional attack of neatness – Tiggywinkles, she called them – had draped the sofa with some silk throws and put a bowl of Turkish delight on the table to try and tempt Saba, who was still too thin.

  ‘Nice, very nice,’ he said approvingly. ‘I’ve only just heard about your accident.’ Her hand went instinctively to her head. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘You’ve only just heard?’ Hard not to sound sceptical.