Jasmine Nights (12 page)

‘I don’t even understand what we’re doing in Africa,’ she said mournfully. ‘It seems such a long way away.’

‘It is,’ he said gently. He briefly thought of explaining its strategic importance, but this was not the time for a history lesson, and half his mind anyway was thinking about 89 Squadron’s wing in North Africa. He’d been there once on a training run, two weeks waiting in the desert, mostly drinking bad gin by a wadi waiting for a fight.

‘It’s not impossible,’ he said out loud. Flying through the vast emptiness of it, the huge blue skies, the closest he’d ever come to being a bird.

‘Do you know anyone there?’ she said.

‘Not many – a few.’ It felt wrong to raise her hopes. ‘But to go back to what you were saying. Why does your husband think they want her there?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, her expression closed. ‘You’d have to ask him. He could be exaggerating it all. He has terrible memories of Turkey and that part of the world. Lots of people disappeared from his village during the First World War. He was away at sea. He thinks his brothers were executed. Poor bugger.’ She sighed heavily. ‘No wonder he’s frightened.’

‘Does Saba know this?’

‘No. She’s his little ray of sunshine – or was. He wanted to keep her like that.’

‘What was she like?’ The question popped out. ‘As a child, I mean.’

‘Naughty, wonderful! My auntie once said, “I’ve never known a child light up a room like she does.” Headstrong. We used to go up to the valleys to see my parents; they had this horse and cart, and she always wanted to take over the reins, even when she was four years old. “Give them to me, Mam! I can do it! You’re not the boss of this horse and cart.” When the horse ran away with us one day she loved it, said it was the best day of her life!’

She was a pretty woman when she laughed like that.

‘She was mad keen on all kinds of singers: Billie Holiday, Dinah Shore, Helen Forrest. When we got her the record of “Deep Purple”, she must have played the thing five million times, it drove us mad, and she’d be up there in her bedroom hour after hour, learning the phrasing.

‘But careless.’ She glared at the coat again. ‘Half the time she’s thinking of songs, so . . .’ She looked up suddenly. ‘Look, will you help if you can?’

‘I don’t know. She’s probably fine. The posts are famously slow there – you’ll probably get a letter as soon as I leave.’

‘I’m torn,’ Joyce said. ‘She did sound happy, she’s always happy when she’s working, but she’s much too gullible.’

‘If I should find myself there,’ he was thinking hard, ‘what should I say to her? I can’t just turn up a perfect stranger, or almost, and order her home.’ The absurdity of this had suddenly struck him.

‘No! No! No! Don’t do that.’ Joyce’s face had suddenly lit up, and she’d shed ten years. ‘It’s a wonderful experience for her. Just go and see her. I don’t know, tell her I do understand but . . . I just want to know she’s safe.’

She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was four twenty.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.

‘Me too.’

‘If you like, we can walk down together.’

‘Last question.’ He felt he had to know. ‘Do you open all her letters? I mean, the ones other people send to her.’

‘Most of them.’ She looked at him defiantly. ‘I don’t want her father to be any angrier than he is already, and nor would you if you knew him.’

‘And has anyone else written to her?’

‘Only young men like yourself.’

The stab of envy he felt was sharp and took him by surprise. He had no right to feel like that about her, but he did.

‘You mean, men who’ve heard her sing?’

‘Yes, and Paul, of course.’

‘Paul?’

‘Her fiancé, for a second,’ Joyce said bitterly. ‘Fine young man, training to be a schoolteacher, lovely family. He would have married her like a shot. She left him shortly before she went to London, got out of the car one night and ran off in a paddy. I still don’t really know what happened, but he’s broken-hearted. People like her are a bit like electricity, on a different wattage – they don’t realise how badly they can hurt people.’

A warning, this, or a threat? He couldn’t be sure.

But later, as they walked together down Pomeroy Street, he found himself filled with a tremendous, impatient unexpected excitement.

He needed a new challenge – he wanted to fly and fight again for complicated reasons, not all of them to do with Jacko. Saba’s presence would add to the adventure; provided he could approach it all in a light-hearted, cautious way, he was pretty sure he would not get his fingers burned.

Chapter 8

CAIRO

The girls had started to breakfast in the courtyard restaurant of the Minerva, a small hotel around the corner from their flat. It was a pretty spot, with jasmine and bougainvillea scrambling up its walls, and a small fountain in the middle splashing water with a gentle, silky sighing sound that was hypnotic. A couple of weeks after they’d arrived, Saba was sitting there on her own when a lanky Englishman sauntered over.

He introduced himself with a charming smile. ‘My name’s Dermot Cleeve. I do some of the Forces recordings for the BBC. I’m hoping to meet you all soon.’ As if to reassure her this wasn’t a pick-up.

He was young, good-looking, with his long aquiline nose and very intelligent blue eyes. She took off her sunglasses. They were the first pair she’d ever owned, and she was ridiculously pleased with them. She slid them into their pigskin sheath.

‘The other girls have been held up,’ she said, in fact by a fierce squabble over the bathroom. She toyed with the idea of lighting up a cigarette, another new habit, but was worried it would make her cough.

‘Would it be a frightful bore if I joined you for coffee?’ Cleeve asked. ‘I’ll shove off when the others come.’

‘Of course not,’ she answered. There was a small pause while he sat down and placed his panama hat carefully on the chair beside him.

Samir, her favourite waiter, bounced through the beaded curtain brandishing a silver platter above his head piled with fresh peaches, melons and bananas. He’d been delighted to find that Saba was half-Turkish, and already made a fuss of her.

‘Your usual breakfast, madame?’ he said. Every morning so far they’d indulged in real coffee and real eggs and real butter and eaten the small M
oza cavendishii
bananas, which they declared the best and tastiest in the world.

‘I’ll wait for the others,’ she said, putting on her sunglasses and putting a cigarette in her holder. ‘I can’t believe the food here,’ she told Cleeve. ‘It makes me feel such a heel after rationing.’

‘Oh, you mustn’t feel like that.’ He clicked his lighter and held the flame towards her. ‘Enjoy it while you can; it’ll be hard tack and bully beef once you get on the road. Do you know when you’re leaving, by the way?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘It won’t be long,’ he said. When he stretched out his legs, the two small birds that had been tussling over a bread roll under the table flew away.

Samir fussed around them for a while, adjusting napkins and pouring coffee. When she asked him how he was that morning, he turned his radiant smile on her and said, ‘
Il-hamdu li-llah
,’ and Cleeve smiled at her lazily, approving.

‘What did he say?’

‘
Il-hamdu li-llah
means God be thanked – it covers everything from “fine” to “I’m at death’s door but mustn’t grumble”.’

‘And do you always speak to waiters in their own language?’

‘No,’ she laughed. ‘Only a few words. My father taught me – he’s actually Turkish.’ She stubbed out her cigarette: ugh! It would take a while to learn to like it.

Cleeve took two sugars and stirred them into his coffee.

‘So you speak Turkish?’ He pushed his floppy boy’s hair out of the way and squinted at her through the sun, amused and curious.

‘I can get by in it. We spoke it at home.’

The two sparrows were back again, pecking furiously at the bread.

‘Cheeky blighters,’ he grinned. ‘They must be the fattest birds in Cairo – they probably have to rent that pitch.’

There was a small commotion at the door to the restaurant. Arleta had arrived, her uniform tightly belted, hair gleaming in the sunlight.

‘Listen,’ he rose quickly, ‘I’m going to shove off and leave you to your friends. Bon appétit.

‘Oh, I meant to ask you.’ He picked up his hat, and turned. ‘Where are you rehearsing?’

‘At the old cinema in Mansour Street,’ she told him. ‘Today’s our first proper rehearsal with Max Bagley.’

‘Nervous?’ His smile was quizzical.

‘A little.’

‘I might pop by later,’ he said. ‘I’ve known Bagley since Oxford. We’ve done a few programmes together.’

She hoped he’d add, ‘You must come and sing on one,’ but he didn’t.

‘Don’t be frightened of Bagley, by the way,’ were his last words. ‘He has a terrifying reputation but he’s actually a sheep in wolf’s clothing, and very, very talented. You’ll learn from him.’

‘Nice,’ Arleta said approvingly, watching Cleeve’s elegant back disappear. ‘What did he want?’

‘He said he runs the Forces broadcasts here,’ Saba said. ‘D’you know him?’

‘No, they change their producers all the time, but a bit dishy, I thought.’

‘He was charming too,’ said Saba. ‘Very friendly. I’ll be twenty stone if I go on like this,’ she added, putting butter on her second hot roll. ‘These are the best breakfasts I’ve ever had.’

‘All right today?’ Arleta took her hand and gazed at her kindly. When she’d caught Saba having a gasping, choking cry in the bathroom the night before, she’d put down her sponge bag and given her a huge hug.

‘I’m fine,’ Saba said. ‘You know, it’s just . . .’ The homesickness had pounced on her like a wild animal; she hadn’t expected it, still couldn’t talk about it with complete confidence. That look on her mother’s face as the train pulled out. Her last wave. She wished she hadn’t made that mean remark before she left about Mam never standing up for herself . . . Who would in her shoes? And now, what if a bomb dropped on her? On Tan, on all of them?

Arleta patted her hand. ‘It’s like a kick in the guts sometimes – but you’re doing fine, kiddo, and we’ll be working soon.’

‘I’ll be better then.’ Correct. Work was a powerful anaesthetic as well as everything else, but she was starting to well up again, and was hoping Arleta would stop talking now and eat breakfast. Samir had just swooped with more coffee and a fresh basket of buttery croissants.

‘Ladies, please – more, more, more,’ he said, anticipating their pleasure. ‘You are too . . .’ He brought his hands in to show disapproval at their tiny waists, and turned his mouth down.

‘They do so love a pinger here,’ Arleta said when he’d gone.

‘And a pinger is?’ Saba put on her sunglasses.

‘The kind of fat lady who goes
ping!
when you do this.’ Arleta poked her finger in Saba’s side.

They were laughing when Janine arrived looking pale and almost transparently thin in this bright sunshine. As she sat down, a plane thundering overhead made their table shudder. She’d slept badly, thank you very much: too many flies, too much noise from the street. When Samir arrived with his fruit platter, she waved him away saying it would give her a gippy tummy – she’d have black tea and a piece of toast instead.

A mangy cat regarded her. It moved from its spot in the shade and rubbed its back against her legs.

‘Don’t touch it, don’t talk to it.’ Janine’s eyes were trained on her tea. ‘A friend of mine with Sadler’s Wells had to have twenty-eight injections in her tummy after being bitten by a cat in West Africa. She’s still not right. Shoo! Shoo! Away, you foul creature.’ She aimed an elegant kick at the cat. Another friend, poor woman, she continued, wiping her mouth carefully with her napkin, had got lost in a jeep in the Western Desert. A sand storm. She and the rest of the company had run out of water and had to drink their, you know, natural fluids, until they were rescued on the point of death.

‘Were you always such a cock-eyed optimist?’ Arleta asked her when this was over, and Janine had called for more hot water and perhaps a slice of lemon.

‘It won’t be hot – the water,’ she said when Samir had gone. ‘They never get it right. I’m being a realist,’ she continued. ‘You heard what Captain Furness said, we shouldn’t even be here, most of the companies have been evacuated. There’s no point in being an ostrich.’

And Saba felt momentarily out of focus. There was another world out there, as close as the dark kitchen behind the beaded curtain, a world that might hurt them.

A dog appeared from the shade of a jasmine bush. It flopped down under their table and looked at her with its pale amber eyes. When she absent-mindedly patted its head, Janine almost shouted, ‘
Don’t!
I said don’t,’ and then apologised. ‘I’ll be better when we start working,’ she said. ‘I’m more highly strung than I look, you know.’

Arleta sagged and rolled her eyes behind Janine’s back, but Saba, for the first time, felt sorry for her. Sometimes it seemed realistic to be scared.

Their rehearsal studio at Mansour Street smelt strongly of Turkish cigarettes and faintly of urine. Once a cinema, none of the overhead fans worked and the poorly converted stage was rickety and inclined to give them splinters in their feet, but they were, as Furness impatiently explained to them, lucky to have it – there was a desperate shortage of accommodation in Cairo that month, with more and more troops flooding in.

Max Bagley, their musical director, a small, plump, carelessly dressed man in a cravat, was standing at the door looking livid when they arrived. Behind him, the straggling notes of a trumpet warming up, a burst of violin music.

‘You’re late.’ He tapped the watch on his hairy wrist. ‘I said ten thirty, not ten forty-five. Do that again and I’ll dock your wages. I’ve got a band here ready to go.’

They’d been told via Arleta, who knew a friend who knew a friend, that before the war Bagley, a one-time organ scholar at Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, had been a rising star in London in the world of sophisticated revues and musical comedies. According to Arleta’s friend, although he was a plain little man, half the women who worked with him ended up in love or in bed with him. Honest to the point of cruelty, his secret was to make you feel he had understood yours, and that he would do his level best to bring out the best in you, which, let’s face it, not many men did, Arleta had concluded.