Jasmine Nights (22 page)

‘Not now,’ he said. ‘I was.’ She heard him inhale sharply. ‘They’re dead,’ he said at last. He moved his leg away from her. ‘Wife, daughter, mother, family . . . My family.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We all lived in Warsaw before the war. Mother, father, wife, children, us boys, circus.’ He did the shadow of a cartwheel in his seat. ‘Always working. Not good, not good. One day, we are away doing a show, and when we come home, the Germans have been.’ He threw up his hands, a look of deep disgust on his face. ‘My family is all gone.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Now, I can’t go home.

‘I hate the fucking bastard Germans,’ he said at last, ‘and the fucking bastard Russians too. I can’t forgive them.’

Saba clasped his hand, horrified at having asked her question so carelessly; Arleta had warned her the boys had a sad background.

‘I’m sorry, Boguslaw,’ she said. ‘I should . . . I would never . . .’

‘No, no, no, no. It’s OK.’ He stood above her, eyes shut. ‘I wanted to tell you, it’s not your fault.’ He was sweating. ‘I go and sit with my brothers now.’

They arrived at their destination late in the afternoon, so covered in dust they looked like porcelain figures. A harried subaltern marched them down a dusty track and showed them the female quarters – a four-man tent. Janine moaned softly when she saw it. The tent stank of DiMP and the camp beds were so close they touched. There were three rusty nails on a post to hang their costumes on; a cracked mirror on the wall would serve as their dressing room. Arleta took the mirror down immediately saying it was bad luck, and hung the framed four-leafed clover she carried with her on the nail.

In a small hut outside there was an Elsan and a roll of lavatory paper that had crisped up in the heat, and a jerrycan containing their water, which was severely rationed – one pint a day for drinking, one to wash in. When Arleta joked there’d be no face-splashing that night, Janine’s lips thinned.

‘Come on, love.’ Arleta patted Janine softly on the arm. ‘Let’s get on. I’m no good at sulking.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ Janine said in a tight voice. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Sorry I came.’ Her chin wobbled violently for a moment. She told them both in a violent rush that her fiancé had given her the push before she came on tour, and she was so upset she couldn’t talk about it yet. She was sorry to have been such a pain. She’d hoped the tour would take her mind off it but she really wasn’t strong enough for it yet.

‘Oh love! Say no more!’

‘No, no, no, don’t.’ She wasn’t ready yet for Arleta’s lavish sympathies, and physically backed away, one delicate hand in the air. She was incapable of a clumsy gesture, even two foot from an Elsan. ‘But I did mean to say earlier,’ she ventured timidly, ‘your hair looks nice.’

Which it did – a dazzling white-blonde now, quite spectacular. The boys had all done double-takes and whistled when they’d seen it, which had cheered Arleta up no end.

‘I expect we’re all on edge a bit,’ Janine said. ‘It feels so terribly disorganised, I’m not used to that.’ She looked down at the narrow camp beds, with their stained mosquito nets. ‘We’re supposed to check under them for snakes and scorpions,’ she said, getting down on her hands and knees. ‘It’s all so sudden.’ Her voice was shuddery as she straightened up. ‘I’m never going to do this again,’ she said.

An hour later, Max Bagley’s voice, strained and disembodied, came through the canvas flap.

‘One hour till showtime,’ he said. ‘If the piano goes flat, ignore it – it was damaged on the way here. Keep your shoes on,’ he warned, his voice scarily monotone, ‘the stage is very uneven and the floodlights near the front are still not working. No plummets into the audience,
s’il vous plaît
.’

‘This will be a disaster,’ Janine predicted when he had gone. She was lying under a sheet with an eye mask on. ‘No proper piano, no costumes, no flaps.’ The props truck had broken down earlier – it was touch and go whether they’d get the stage up in time. To block her out, Saba spat on her sponge – they were already low on water after a quick cup of tea – and began her make-up. Her scared-looking eyes swam into view in Arleta’s mirror, and then her reflection wavered, turned yellow and went out.

‘Blast it.’ Arleta lit their acetylene lamp again – the generators were temporarily on the blink.

‘Thirty minutes, ladies.’ Bagley’s voice again. ‘The spots are working now.’

‘Good.’ Saba only half heard him. She was humming her songs in her head.

‘Darling,’ said Arleta, bobbed down beside her, back pearly with sweat. ‘Be an angel and do up my top popper.’ She looked very pale.

Saba clicked it into place.

‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ Arleta kissed her, a faint whiff of gin on her breath.

‘All right?’ Saba said.

‘Terrified – thanks for asking,’ said Arleta. Her first number was a Josephine Baker send-up and she was putting a plastic pineapple on her head. ‘A real old attack of the collywobbles; I get it sometimes, especially at the beginning of a tour.’

‘
Crepi il lupo!
’ Saba said, squeezing her hand.

‘Come again?’

‘My old singing teacher used to say it before the curtain went up,’ Saba explained. ‘It’s better than break a leg. First he’d say to me “
In bocca al lupo
”, that’s Italian for “in the wolf’s mouth”, then I’d say “
Crepi il lupo
”, which means “the wolf dies”.’

‘Well my lupo is alive and bloody kicking, but I’ll give it a whirl.’ Arleta put her arms around Saba and said in a muffled voice. ‘Thank you.’

‘What for?’

‘For being a wonderful friend.’

Half an hour later the call came.

‘Ready, girls?’

‘Ready.’

‘Ready, Janine?’

‘Hope so.’ Janine was chalking her shoes.

Arleta stood up, pineapple securely fastened to her head with a double row of kirby grips. ‘
Crepi il lupo!
’ She strode towards the desert stage and their first proper concert together.

The portable stage looked not bad considering. Its red lights pulsed like a swollen heart in the middle of the drab huts, the barbed wire and the rows of tents. Saba walked up the steps to the back of the stage. She peeped around the dusty curtain and saw rows and rows of soldiers waiting like patient children underneath a starlit sky. There were uniformed nurses from the base hospital in the aisles, their patients dark mounds on stretchers beside them.

The running order was written on a blackboard in the wings. She checked it again. The Banana Brothers first, then Willie, then her first two numbers. Her mouth and eyes felt gritty with sand, her heart beat faster. This was the high-board moment. Bagley was waiting on the other side of the stage to start the show. When he looked at her, she lifted her chin and stood straighter, blocking out everything he’d said about her shortcomings – she couldn’t afford to think of that now; that way lay the sick bucket and the leaping wolf.

Bagley lifted his hand. ‘Five minutes,’ he mouthed. He smiled at her, moving with fluid grace between the portable generator and the lights and the curtains. Arleta came up beside her and linked arms. She did a little running dance on the spot.

Bagley’s arm came down. The band struck up, Willie dashing on to the stage to some jolly farting and squeaking circus music, pretending with his butterfly net to catch the dancing insects in front of the spotlights. They were on.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, hold on to your hats because we’re here, the marvellous, the incomparable Razzle-Dazzles, live from Cairo and Orpington. Tonight there are but eight of us . . . but good things come in small packages, so be prepared to be amaaaaazed!!!!’

Bog came first, in a blue spangled suit, leaping high into two amber-coloured pools of light. Roars and laughter from the audience as Willie, trying to follow him, did rickety handstands near the wings. Bog cartwheeled hectically, one two three four five times across the stage. Lev appeared and flung Bog into the air like a juggling ball. Hey!! And now a triumphant Bog tossed on top of a shouting human pyramid, beaming and quivering his legs and making anguished faces to show how brilliant they were. When he saw the girls in the wings he winked at them and they winked back.

‘Bravo, Boggers,’ Saba said. She blew him a kiss. ‘Magnificato.’

Some of the stretcher cases were laughing now, their faces crimson-washed from the lights of the ambulances that would take them home. The able-bodied men sitting on uncomfortable tin seats were clapping wildly, the air thick with their blue cigarette smoke. Willie came back for a bit and rattled off a few gags, then Janine appeared, and he dashed after her with his butterfly net as she fluttered against the desert sky like a green moth, dashing hither and yon as if in frantic pursuit of another moth to mate with to the opening chorus from
Scheherazade
. The men looked wistful.

Saba, hearing the dying chords of violins, felt her own heart plucked hard. From where she stood, hidden by the curtain, she could see Janine waving and leaping as she flew off the stage, another person altogether. Her name was rubbed off the blackboard.

‘
Ah nooooowa, the verrrra beautiful
. . .’ Willie appeared in a huge baggy suit, clutching his throat and staggering. He glanced at her briefly in the wings to see if she was there, ‘. . .
the verrray alllarmingly charming, our own little desert song birdaa, Missa Saba Tarcaaaaan
.’

Arleta stood with her in the wings. She squeezed her hand, and gave her a push. ‘Knock ’em dead, girl,’ she whispered.

Saba felt a sluggish breeze as Bog and Lev lifted her through the red and yellow lights and placed her down in the centre of the stage. They jutted their arms towards her like stamens towards a flower. Bagley appeared behind a battered-looking piano – the spotlight on him illuminating a fresh cloud of dark insects. He raised his hand, played a few notes and they leapt together into ‘Get Happy’.

You could see so much from the stage: the faces of the nut-brown men softening, a soldier, raised up from his stretcher, beaming and waving. She flung herself into the song, loving the syncopated rhythms that Bagley slyly threw in so as not to make it too ordinary and corny, and loving too her own wide-throated ending when she threw her head back into a cloud of stars and gave it all she could. By the end of the song she was steaming with heat, the audience roaring and stamping, and when she glanced at Bagley and saw him put his thumbs up, she felt a hot surge of triumph. Not so bad, hey?

When Bagley swung into a larky version of ‘You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby’ the men moaned and hollered and stamped as she danced and sang about driving young girls mad. Bagley, in spite of a personal dislike of the saccharine, constantly reminded them to sing sweet.

‘These men don’t fight for democracy, freedom, or any of that guff. They fight for their mum or for their girl, and as far as they’re concerned, you’re it for the ten minutes you’re on stage.’

The night air felt still and soft around Saba’s face. Max had told her if things were going well to sing a third song, and they were, so she could relax now. She waited for the low rumble of a plane to pass high above the stars, and then felt a deep silence descend on the men as she told them she was going to sing her favourite song, ‘All the Things You Are’.

Insects obscured Bagley now. He played the opening bars, and when she sang, part of her could hear she was too soft. Bagley had warned her that when she was singing outdoors in a large space she would have to learn to throw her voice differently. Also, technically, it was harder to hold a line in a slow song than in one of the perky little numbers she’d started with. But she loved this song so much, she stopped caring, and after a few tentative notes hit her stride, remembering to use her microphone, as Bagley had taught her, as the confidential friend you told your secrets to, and as she and the song joined up, she felt a deep and creamy kind of contentment move through her veins. It was almost a shock at the end of it to remember where she was, to look out and see tears sparkling like diamonds in some of the men’s eyes. As she left the stage, the men roared and whistled and stamped.

‘Oh you little lamb. Well done, darling.’ Arleta, slick with sweat and scent, hugged her as she came off stage. ‘Brilliant, brilliant girl! You were nervous and you did it.’

She added something else that Saba couldn’t hear because the crowd were still clapping and shouting. She pointed towards the dark desert, the tin huts.

‘Darling, do me a huge, huge favour,’ she said. ‘Go to our tent and get me some face powder. I’m sweating like a pig. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! I’m on next.’

Still high as a kite from her performance, Saba took the torch and ran along the forty yards or so of dirt road that led to their tent. From a distance, the portable stage glowed like a huge lit-up butterfly wing and felt like the magnetic centre of the night. She could hear the boom of Willie’s voice; he was on fire now:

‘
Are you all alllllllll rigggghhhhhht?
’ And the answer: ‘
Yyeeeeesssssssss!
’

The desert night was bright with stars. When she got to the tent, there was a dim light shining inside the canvas, a dark silhouette. She pulled back the flap; Dom was sitting on a chair waiting for her. When she first saw him, she tripped on the guy rope and almost fell into his arms.

Chapter 17

As he stood up, a shock of dark hair fell over his eyes.

‘You!’ she said. ‘How on earth . . .?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’ His smile was mischievous.

‘Do you know Arleta?’ Her mind was struggling with this; her heart bounding.

‘I do now.’

‘Oh God,’ she suddenly remembered. ‘She’s on—’

‘Don’t bother,’ he said. ‘That was a put-up job – we’re both guilty.’

‘I’ve got to go back in a minute for my curtain call.’

‘You must.’ His lips had a beautiful curve to them. After months of telling herself he was out of bounds now, she was shocked by how much she wanted to kiss them.

‘I’ve borrowed a jeep,’ he said. ‘Can I take you out for supper after the show?’