Jasmine Nights (13 page)

During their ticking-off, Janine flushed with rage. She travelled with two alarm clocks in case one malfunctioned and had wanted them to leave earlier, but Arleta had insisted there was masses of time, which there was until a car in front of them had broken down and the road ahead was blocked by shrieking men striking their foreheads.

When Arleta blustered, ‘Darling, we’re absolutely mortificato, we—’ Bagley snapped, ‘My name is Mr Bagley; I’ll let you know when I want you to call me darling.’

‘Oops,’ said Arleta softly to Saba as they walked into their dressing room, ‘crosspatch.’ But Saba admired the way she didn’t make a big fuss about it, or look too mortified herself. Arleta, she was beginning to understand, had a core of pure steel.

It was bone-meltingly hot. Saba’s fingers slipped as she fumbled with the hooks and eyes on her black skirt and wrestled on her leotard and tap shoes. She pulled her hair tightly behind her head, and put on a slick of lipstick. Janine, panicked by being late, did something out of character and stood by the window bare-bottomed, saying ‘Don’t look’ as she wrestled her pink tights on.

‘Absolutely nobody is looking at your bottom,’ Arleta said, running her tongue around scarlet lips.

‘So, ready, girls?’ she said when they were all dressed and standing by the door. ‘Into the mouth of the dragon.’

They walked on to the stage where Bagley was talking to Willie and the Polish acrobats, also late, and a scruffy-looking six-piece band, The Joy Boys, who had been in Cairo for three months now. Willie was giving Arleta an elaborate eyes, mouth and chest salaam when Bagley said, ‘That’s enough of that, let’s get cracking.’

He stood in front of them, sweating and fierce, and told them to regard themselves, at least for the next few weeks, as artistic sticking plaster and not really a fully fledged touring company. There were too few of them for that, and as they probably already knew, there was a distinct possibility all of them would soon have to be evacuated from Cairo. He warned them that this work was cumulatively exhausting, and if they went over the top too soon they’d be in trouble. A previous performer, he said, had got her knickers in such a twist about all the travelling and performing that she’d burst into an unscripted tirade at the end of a concert in Aswan which had crescendoed in ‘This is all bollocks’, before exiting stage left into the desert in full costume and make-up.

‘Honestly,’ murmured Janine, who hated swearing.

‘That was Elsa Valentine,’ Arleta whispered to Saba. ‘Your predecessor.’

The show he’d been writing, Bagley continued, resting his leg athletically on a chair as he spoke, was provisionally called
On the Razzle
. The plan was that they would open it for one night at the Gezira Sporting Club in Cairo, and then take it out on the road to all the random desert spots and aircraft bases and hospitals that were on the itinerary, most of which they would never know the name of.

‘How does that sound?’ He suddenly smiled at all of them, an infectious boyish grin.

‘Lovely,
Mr
Bagley sir,’ Arleta said.

Saba felt Janine shudder beside her, and although she couldn’t stand the woman, she felt some sympathy for her. Sometimes Arleta could seem a little overconfident, and the truth was that she was scared too.

From ten to one, they worked solidly on new routines, new songs, entrances and exits. First on came the acrobats, flinging themselves across the stage in soft thumps and complaining about the splinters.

Lev, the oldest, had the wiry body of a young boy, and Saba thought the saddest eyes she’d ever seen. He stopped suddenly at the end of a dazzling row of cartwheels and addressed Bagley over the footlights as if he’d only just thought of something.

‘Are there any more solo acts coming? They said in London we are joining another company.’

‘Well they may come and they may not,’ was all Max would say about this. ‘We may all be gone soon.’

The faint whiff of that rumour again, that Rommel’s troops were advancing, that soon Cairo would have the same blackout restrictions and air-raid drills as London.

‘But no war talk during rehearsals,’ Bagley shouted to them. ‘If I’ve only got you lot to work with, I’ve a mountain to climb.’ He raised his arms, the sharp smell of his sweat filling Saba’s nostrils.

Now Arleta was under one weak spotlight, her khakis tightly belted, a jaunty naval cap on her head.

‘Right, ducky, off you go,’ Max shouted.

She sang a mildly suggestive number called ‘Naval Boys’, much saucy grinning, flapping hands, and then, ‘Let Yourself Go’.

‘That’s all fine,’ Bagley jumped athletically on to the stage, ‘but I’m thinking a kind of hornpipe flavour, a hip, hop, change, when you sing “the sea”. He held Arleta’s arm and pushed her towards the flats. ‘Then a step ball change before you go
la la la
.’ He sang the notes confidently. ‘Otherwise, all moving in the right direction.’

Willie – paunch already soaked with sweat, a handkerchief knotted over his bald pate – sang ‘
As soon as I touched me seaweed, I knew it was going to be wet
’, and rattled off a few gags in his deadpan style. He put on a fez and did a belly dance, his hand pointing like a unicorn’s horn from his head.

‘I’m off now,’ he said at the end with a ghastly leer, ‘to pop me weasel.’

Max said it would do for now, but when they got back from the tour they’d work up some new stuff together.

‘Happy to oblige.’ Willie sat down on a chair on the stage and stared gloomily at his feet.

‘And let’s not make the jokes any bluer,’ Max added. ‘The snake-charmer one might have had its day.’

‘Blimey.’ Willie’s voice was weak and fluttery. ‘I go much bluer than that.’

‘Well don’t,’ warned Max. ‘There are spies in ENSA who swoon like a bunch of virgins at anything even vaguely smutty,’ he said. ‘We can’t afford to offend them.’

Willie had stopped listening.

‘Are you all right, old man?’

‘Never better,’ Willie wheezed. ‘How about you?’ His breathing sounded laboured, there was a heat rash all over his face.

Saba’s turn now. As she jumped on to the stage, the door at the back of the theatre opened in a flash of sunshine. The blond man who had talked to her at breakfast walked in and took a seat by himself at the back. He gave her a pleasant smile when she glanced at him and put his palms up as if to say
ignore me
, which she did. She was concentrating now, one hundred per cent, on trying to sing well and impress Max Bagley who stood next to her.

‘So,’ Bagley said narrowing his eyes, ‘let me tell you what I want from you. Are you frightened of heights?’

‘No.’ She stared back at him.

For the important opening number, he said, he wanted her and Arleta to appear down a golden rope in the middle of the stage. He sketched this out with his plump hands. Saba would sing a song he’d written called ‘The Sphinx is a Minx’, Arleta and Janine would cavort around her. The lyrics to this song would be presented by Arleta, dressed as Cleopatra, as hieroglyphics drawn on ancient tablets; that way the soldiers could sing along.

‘But I’m searching for a big song to end the show with,’ he was staring at Saba and talking to himself, ‘What I really need to do today is test you.’

‘Test me?’ She gave him a quizzical look.

‘To know your vocal limits. Once you’re out there singing two concerts, sometimes more, a day, it’s going to really count.’

She could hear Janine making agreeing noises in the wings. She took a deep breath and looked back.

‘Don’t you think you should listen to me before you test me?’

He pinched his nose between his fingers. ‘Fair comment. I don’t
know
what I want from you yet. Look, you lot clear off now,’ he said to Arleta and Janine who were waiting.

‘Can’t we stay?’ said Janine. ‘We all came in a taxi together.’

‘Don’t care. Do what you like.’ His eyes were trained on Saba again. ‘It’s just that this may take a while. There’s something I need to know I can get from this young lady.’

Saba felt her heart thump. The blond man at the back was sitting with his legs stretched out as if this was some kind of spectator sport.

The band was dismissed, apart from the pianist, Stanley Mare, an aggrieved-looking man with smoke-stained fingers, who lit another cigarette and left it smouldering in an ashtray on top of the piano.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘Not sure.’ Bagley retreated inside his own circle of smoke; he was thinking hard.

Saba was conscious of the rest of the cast staring at her from the wings, an unpleasant current of excitement in the room. She was under pressure and they were enjoying it.

‘Let’s start with “Strange Fruit”, Max said at last. ‘Do you know it?’

‘Yes, I know it, and the other side, “Fine and Mellow”.’ She’d played the record obsessively when it first came out, made Tan laugh by using the bottom of a milk bottle as her microphone pretending to be Billie Holiday.

‘OK. Then go,’ Max said softly. ‘Start her off in D, Stan.’

Stanley rippled his hands softly over the opening bars. If he was confused at Bagley’s choice of this dark song about lynchings and death, he didn’t show it, and nor did Saba, who closed her eyes, relieved he’d chosen something she knew and determined to give it her all.

She sang her heart out, and when she’d finished she heard a smattering of applause from the rest of the company.

‘Well that’ll wipe the smile off their faces,’ Willie said loudly. ‘I thought we was supposed to be jolly.’

Max said nothing. He’d put a pair of dark glasses on and it was hard to see what he was thinking.

‘It’s not going to be in the show.’ He’d heard what Willie said. ‘I’m listening for . . .’ He sighed heavily. ‘Doesn’t matter. Next song. How about “Over the Rainbow”, but not like Judy does it.’

‘I don’t do it like Judy does it, I do it like I do it!’ He was beginning to get her goat.

She was halfway through it, enjoying her own voice soaring, sad and flung like bright streamers against the sky, when he held his hand up.

‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’

He took his dark glasses off and looked at her very coldly.

‘It’s early days, but let me try and explain what it is that I think I’m not getting from you.’ He thought for a while.

‘Are you familiar with that line of poetry – Coleridge, I think – that talks about how
I see, not feel
how beautiful the stars are. I want you to feel it more and sing it less. No need to be operatic.’

‘I
am
feeling it.’ She was stung to the quick by his words. She’d wanted to show everyone how good she was, not get a public dressing-down.

‘So, let me put it another way,’ he said in his soft, well-educated voice. ‘You’re just a shade too chirpy for my taste.’ When Saba saw Janine close her eyes in agreement, she wanted to knock her sanctimonious block off. ‘Feel it to the maximum, and then pull it back a little.’

She opened her mouth to start again, but he was looking at his watch.

‘Damn, time’s up – we’ll have another run at it tomorrow.’

As the band was packing up their instruments to go, he turned to her and said unsmiling, ‘Don’t be discouraged – we’ll find something for you to sing.’ Which made her feel even worse. ‘There are some songs,’ he said, ‘that have a natural flow more suitable for young girls. You’ll see where the sentences are going,’ as if she was some kind of halfwit.

She gazed at him numb and miserable, wishing that he would stop now. The blond man from the BBC had beaten a hasty retreat too. He probably thought she was rotten as well. Awful, awful day.

As she left the theatre, blinking in the sudden glare of the street outside, a truck full of GIs slowed down. The wolf-whistling sounded like an aviary of mad birds.

‘Well they certainly appreciate you, and so did I,’ said a soft voice behind her. Dermot Cleeve skipped a couple of paces to keep up with her. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he added, ‘I thought you were rather good.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, not believing him. If she’d known him better, she might have explained that she hadn’t minded Bagley’s criticisms – or not that much. She liked clever people. She enjoyed hard things. The most painful part had been their airing in front of the smug and unbearably delighted Janine.

‘So, can I tempt you with an ice cream in Groppi’s?’ Cleeve asked. ‘It’s not far from here.’

She said no, she was too het up, and besides, she’d heard vague rumours of a dress-fitting appointment later that day.

‘Well, at least take my card.’ He shook one out of an elegant little silver holder and put it in the palm of her hand. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he sang softly, and then he tipped his hat, and to her relief disappeared into the crowd.

Chapter 9

That night, unable to sleep, and raw still from her strange and disappointing day, she wrote a letter to the one person who had once had the power to make everything feel better.

Dear Baba
,

You may have heard this already from Mum, but I wanted to let you know that I have arrived in Cairo, and I am safe. Work is going not too badly. The other artistes in the company are very kind and we take good care of each other. We will be gone soon on tour, and I hope one day you might be proud of me. You can get a letter to me c/o the NAAFI. I hope you will write, but maybe you still find it hard to forgive me
.

Love Saba

Next, after some debate with her internal censor she wrote to Dom, a protectively jaunty letter saying sorry she’d run away so quickly that night, but she had work to do and could see he’d met up with a friend, as she had herself later that night. She, by the way, was in Cairo now and hoped he was safe and had got the posting he wanted.

Childish of her to add the imaginary friend, but she had been surprised and deflated by what happened. He’d seemed so intense before, so lively, so happy to be with her. It had felt like a night of celebration whose jarring ending had . . . well, it didn’t matter now.