When the song was done, it took a while for the whooping and clapping to die down, and then the guitarist noodled away on his guitar and the lights around the stage faded to a more intimate glow. She sat down on a stool near the piano, and announced matter-of-factly that her next song would be ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’.
Their song. The song she’d sung for him.
As she held the microphone and told her secrets, he felt a sick fury spread through his body. How could you? A million stupid songs to sing, and you chose this one.
She seemed to be breathing the song and yet he could hear every word.
When it was over, she looked up, her face like a holy painting in its sadness. A triumph of training and technique and controlled emotion, no running out of air, no false notes – nothing for him, everything for the cheering crowd.
He took a step back. This night would soon be over, he told himself; by this time next year, they would all have packed up their tents and gone home.
He sat under a tree with his head in his hands. Oh Christ! he thought, clenching his teeth tight. Don’t you dare.
The moon had risen to its furthest height now over the Palace Gardens. It cast its glow over the trees, and the turreted fairy-tale towers at the back of the stage. When the show was over, the principal characters bounded on to the stage again and took their bows like performers in a pantomime. First the Egyptian band, waving and cheering, the local acrobats doing five handstands and a twist apiece, followed by Boguslaw and Lev, Max Bagley clasping his hands in triumph above his head like a prize fighter, Arleta Samson walking her fabulous walk, touching her crimson nails to her mouth and sending out passionate kisses, three Arab horses in scarlet bridles trotting, the fire-eaters, Faiza Mushawar, regal and with a small but distinct distance separating her from the Europeans; Saba, changed into a silver dress, smiling and waving and having the time of her life, graciously accepting the elaborate salaams of the clowns.
And lastly Ozan, hands held out in modest protest at the roar of love and appreciation that greeted him. After what Dom presumed was the Egyptian national anthem and ‘God Save the Queen’, three dozen white doves of peace were released from the bamboo cages they’d been kept in backstage all day. The flustered birds rose in the darkening air, hovered in lights that tinted them red and green, circled and flew towards the sea.
Dom glanced towards the man who had released the birds and saw him smiling broadly; he didn’t give a damn whether they came back or not. Their point was theatrical effect, their usefulness over; that was the way it was in show business it seemed. One showy gesture and they were gone.
Chapter 49
The pavements of the Corniche were crowded after the performance, so she took a gharry, pleading with the driver to go as fast as he could. The horse kept shying, frightened by the commotion, and when they got close to the Cecil Hotel, where Cleeve had requested one last meeting, they were held up by drunken soldiers dancing a conga line.
Cleeve had told her to meet him in the cocktail bar, to the right of the hotel’s reception area and lifts. Since everyone would still be leaving the concert, it would be quiet and he had some news for her. No need for disguises now, he said, they would simply appear as a couple having a few drinks together.
It seemed to her, as she walked into the hotel with its subdued gleam of well-polished brass, its marble floors and copious flower arrangements, that Cleeve was back in his natural habitat again. In the candlelit bar, beyond the lobby, an elegant negro in a dinner jacket was noodling away at a piano underneath a potted palm tree. She could hear the clink of glasses, the murmur of well-bred voices, and there was Cleeve himself, partly concealed behind a leather banquette, elegant, long-legged, languid, the kind of well-dressed Englishman who contrived to look as if he didn’t give a hoot about his clothes, quietly taking it all in.
But that first impression of ease and sophistication didn’t last. When he saw her, he leapt to his feet and switched on a quick bright smile – like a gauche boy on his first date – and she saw, above the faultless linen of his shirt, a dried-up trickle of blood where he had shaved too closely. There’d been no time to change after the concert, so she arrived in the same beautiful silver dress she’d taken the curtain call in, her shoulders covered in a fine floating silk stole.
‘Saba,’ he said. ‘You look wonderful. Gosh, you’ve grown up.’
The fulsome compliment threw her; his smile, lopsided, sentimental, raised alarm bells. Was he drunk?
‘I’m sorry I’m late, and I can’t stay long.’ She slid into the banquette beside him. ‘Ozan’s giving a cast party – he’s asked all the local bigwigs and I can’t let him down.’
‘Of course, of course . . . it’s just that I was passing through Alexandria, and I couldn’t . . . I felt it was my last . . .’ He abandoned this and blathered helplessly, ‘Look, before I say a word, Saba . . . I mean I’ve got to . . . well I’ll just say it: what an absolutely fantastic night this must have been for you. I’ve heard you before but this . . . you were extraordinary – I shan’t forget it ever, that’s all. There, I’ve said it. Sort of.’
‘Thank you.’ It was hard to see him so lit up when she felt so empty.
‘Darling, are you all right . . . what’s wrong with me . . . a drink?’ His hand went up for the waiter. ‘It must be jolly tiring.’ He’d never called her darling before; the word hung awkwardly between them.
‘Waiter,’ he said. ‘Champagne, hors d’oeuvres, a menu for mademoiselle.’
‘I can’t stay to eat,’ she repeated. ‘Did you say you had some news for me?’
‘I did. But surely time for a small bite – there’s a terrific new chef here.’
‘Dermot, honestly, I can’t,’ she said more firmly. ‘It’s a working night for me.’
‘So, all right, sorry, crack on,’ a note of truculence in his voice. ‘Here’s my news.’
He looked around him, checking the other drinkers were well out of earshot, his face wavering through the candlelight.
‘Jenke is back in London and has been debriefed. I can’t be absolutely specific with you for security reasons, but his information, not just from Turkey but from North Africa too, has been absolutely vital . . . and you’ – he gave her his important finger-on-the-pulse look – ‘I’m here to tell you that your part in the operation has been noted at the very highest levels. How do you feel about that?’
A slight swelling of piano music from behind the palm tree; their waiter appeared flapping a napkin on her lap. She waited until he left.
‘How do I feel about what?’
‘About being . . . I don’t know . . . how should one put it . . . is heroine too much of an exaggeration?’
‘Nothing,’ she said finally, ‘I feel nothing.’
‘Really?’ He took a sip of his drink, gave her a quizzical look. ‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’ Because the price was too high, because I wasn’t particularly brave, more a child drawn into adult games I didn’t understand, because the whole thing finally felt sleazy; because it cost me Dom – all flashing through her head.
He shook his head slightly, with the air of a schoolmaster regretting the wasted talents of a bright pupil.
‘Well,’ he said huffily. ‘I obviously can’t tell you what to think, but I would have thought it was an honour.’
‘Tell me something.’ She spoke before the thought had formed in her brain. ‘Was it really worth it? Or is it something people who get caught up in this sort of thing need to feel – particularly when other people die?’
‘I don’t understand the question.’
‘You should do, or at least ask it.’
He drained his drink.
‘Steady, Saba,’ he warned her, and gave her the most peculiar look – canny and spiteful and affronted. ‘No, seriously, steady the buffs, because I have some other news to pass on to you – and you might say something you’ll regret.’
She took a deep breath and stared at her
glass. Calm down, Saba, it’s not his fault what happened.
‘Really?’
He lowered his voice – the pianist had stopped playing.
‘Really.’
‘What news?’
He took a deep breath and called the waiter over.
‘Another whisky for me, please, and for mademoiselle?’
She put her hand over her champagne flute.
‘No, Dermot, please – just order for yourself. I have to go soon.’
‘I think you’ll want to stay for this, Saba.’
He leaned towards her and licked his lips.
‘They’ve found him,’ he whispered. ‘Your man – he’s in Alex.’
‘What man?’ He looked so serious she thought for one mad moment he meant Severin Mueller. ‘Who?’
‘Your pilot.’
‘My pilot?’ Nothing in his expression suggested good news. ‘Jenke?’
‘No, not Jenke,’ he said at last. ‘Dominic Benson. He’s staying at the Waterloo. It’s a small private hotel near the railway station. He’s been there for nearly a fortnight.’
‘Is this a joke?’ She felt a tremendous numbness, as if all the feeling parts of her were closing down. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’ve been looking for him. Ozan asked me to.’
‘But you said you couldn’t or wouldn’t.’
He pushed the ice around in his whisky with his finger.
‘I was told to say that. We didn’t want you derailed before the concert, but for God’s sake, Saba, don’t tell anyone I told you that.’
‘Is this true?’
He nodded his head and sighed.
‘Saw him in the street yesterday. He saw me talking to you. And so, Saba,’ he drained his drink and stubbed his cigarette out, ‘as the good fairy says in the panto: my job here is ended. News of honours and boyfriend in one evening. Or perhaps I’m more the Widow Twankey in this enterprise. Anyway, if it goes wrong, you know where to find me. I’m going back to England shortly.’
He stood up, still smiling, and when he tried to put his overcoat on missed the arm. He looked in an owlish, deliberate way at his wristwatch.
‘Crikey! Tempus fugit. I expect you’ll want to dash off now. I can’t give you a lift, I’m afraid, I’m wanted in another part of town. Here’s the address. Tell him from me he’s a lucky man.’
As he scribbled down words on a piece of paper, the news began to percolate through her brain and into her blood and down her spine to her nerve endings.
‘Dermot,’ she smiled at him radiantly, ‘is it true?’
He held two fingers up. ‘Scout’s honour.’
‘Really true?’
‘Yep.’
She stared at him.
‘Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.’ She would forgive him, had already, for delaying the news until after the concert. It wasn’t as if Ozan hadn’t warned her what his priorities were.
‘And if it all goes wrong,’ he put some soiled notes on the table for the waiter, and tucked a piece of paper in her hand, ‘give your old Uncle Dermot a ring.’ He picked up his hat. ‘It’s my sister’s address in England – shouldn’t really give it to you, but what the hell. I doubt you’ll use it.’
Alive! As she stepped out into the street again and looked at the address, she didn’t know whether to laugh or scream or cry. Dom was alive! and in Alexandria. All around her the streets pulsated with crowds and street musicians, dancing, singing, shouting. A bonfire burned in one of the city gardens, its sparks flying into the night. No possible chance of a taxi now. She dashed up the street, propelled by a starry elation, and terror too. What if she’d missed her chance? Or he had another girl now and didn’t want to see her.
When she stopped near the statue of Muhammad Ali Pasha, her chest was heaving.
Hotel Waterloo, she read from the note Cleeve had thrust into her hand. Off Rue Nebi Daniel, near railway station.
After half an hour of frantic searching, she found the hotel in a dilapidated street, wedged between a barber’s shop and a Syrian bakery.
Inside the deserted lobby, the night porter was reading the evening paper.
‘Where is he?’ she said when she had caught her breath. ‘Dominic Benson. He’s staying here.’
The man looked at her in amazement. A goddess in a silver dress, her sandals filled with dirt and litter, and then he recognised her.
‘Madame, madame?’ His eyes lit up. ‘Your singing was very good. Write your name, merci.’ He thrust a piece of paper at her. ‘Special for me.’
She wrote her name wildly.
‘Help me,’ she said. ‘Please help me. I’m looking for someone.’
‘Who?’ He was confused.
‘Dominic Benson. He’s a guest here.’
He opened a drawer under the desk, and pulling out a dusty ledger, took an agonising time locating the page, the day.
‘No, madame,’ he shook his head regretfully, ‘no here. Not now. Tonight . . .’ he mimed the carrying of suitcases, ‘he’s gone to Cairo.’
‘When, when?’ She grabbed his wrist, pointed at his watch. ‘When train?’
He shrugged. ‘One hour.’ He shrugged again. ‘Two hours, maybe. Train special for concert. Sorry.’
The city’s main railway station, the Misr, was roughly a mile away from her. She took a taxi, abandoned it when it got stuck in traffic, ran flat out towards the station, her feet sinking into rubbish and horse manure, broken pavements, stones.
When she got to the station, a line of carriage horses stood in a row outside it munching grain from hoods that made them look like prisoners about to be executed. Gasping for air, she ran in and out of them, into a station heaving with people. Searching the crowd for European faces she saw a group of Scottish soldiers standing near the ticket desk.
‘Cairo train,’ she blurted out.
‘Don’t break a leg, love,’ a kilted soldier warned her. ‘The train’s gone, it’s just left . . . Hang on . . . hang on.’ He swayed around, looking at her. ‘Were ye not at the—’
‘Where? Where?’ she shouted.
‘Platform two,’ they replied in unison.
She ran towards it, past bundles of sleeping beggars, and drunken partygoers, young lovers, soldiers, a peasant farmer carrying his bed on his back, and saw the backside of the train steaming down a long track into a tangle of wires and shattered suburbs, and then on to nowhere.
She stood on the platform in her beautiful wrecked silver dress, her white stole floating wildly in the updraught.
‘Stop the bloody train!’ she shouted in a Welsh roar designed to carry from valley to valley. ‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Right now!’ She tripped and almost fell as she pounded down the platform after it. The train kept going, out of the gloom of the station and into the night, until at the very last minute a porter standing outside the final carriage saw her: a screaming houri in a white robe leaping through smoke.
He shrieked over and over again, dashed inside, pulled the red emergency cord. The train came to a creaking halt.
Under normal circumstances, it might have been a punishable offence, but the mood in the city that night was defiantly playful. People hung from the windows laughing, cheering as she jumped on to a train still wheezing and protesting at its reversal. She ran down cramped corridors calling his name, and through the glass carriage doors peered at strangers: men in tarbooshes and bowler hats and turbans; families tucking down for the night; a group of soldiers who waved and cheered at her.
When she found him, he was sitting by the window in the last carriage but one. She wasn’t even sure it was him at first. He looked older, thinner. Before he turned and saw her there, she saw him sigh.
‘Dom.’ She walked up to him and touched his face. She could hear the grumble of the engine about to start again. The guards shouting. ‘Get off the train.’
‘Saba.’ When he looked at her, there was nothing but pain and confusion in his eyes. ‘What’s this? What’s going on
?’
‘For God’s sake, Dom, get off the train – it’s moving.’ She felt it throbbing underneath her feet.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not like this.’
She stood on the seat, stretched above him, tore down his case and threw it through the window on to the platform.
‘I can explain, Dom,’ she shouted, as the platform moved away. ‘Get off the train!’
Three soldiers leaned from their carriages as they stepped from the train, and stared goggle-eyed at the girl on the platform in the sensational dress having a humdinger of a row with her boyfriend.
‘There’s no point,’ Dom yelled over the noise of the engine. ‘Because it’s not a stupid game for me.’
‘Dom, please,’ she said. ‘Shut up and walk with me.’
It was too noisy to talk in the station. They stomped off down the street and towards his hotel, she still holding his suitcase.
On the corner of the street, he stopped.
‘Saba, listen,’ he said, his eyes very black under the street lamp. ‘I’ve made up my mind, I don’t want it like this . . . it’s not possible. I waited for you, it nearly killed me. Where for Christ’s sake did you go? Honest answer for once.’
‘Fine.’ She slammed his suitcase down. ‘Honest answer. I went to a party.’
‘A party?’
They looked at each other in hysterical disbelief.
‘Oh for pity’s sake,’ he said. ‘Well everything’s perfectly clear now. Thank you for at least being straight with me.’
‘Dom.’ The strap of her sandal had loosened and she had to hobble to keep up with him. ‘The party was in Turkey.’
‘Oh fine.’ He set his jaw and stepped up the pace. ‘Fantastic. Terrific. The party was in Turkey. I feel much better already.’
‘Listen, you blasted nitwit,’ she yelled. They were passing a backstreet bar where some young naval officers were drinking. ‘Take me back to your room,’ she shouted, ‘and I’ll tell you what happened.’
‘Woo-hoo,’ came from the direction of the naval boys, who were spilling on to the pavement, and from one: ‘I wouldn’t turn that one down, mate!’
Jasmine Nights Page 43
