Jasmine Nights (36 page)

‘There’s a young man in Istanbul, a pilot who we believe could be of great interest to us; we hope you’ll meet him – I’ll brief you on this later.’ Cleeve’s foot had started to jiggle up and down. ‘What we need is to collect any kind of intelligence we can about which way the Germans are going to jump. The British have been making plans to move in to German-occupied Greece. If this happens, they will want to make use of Turkish landing strips, which will mean Turkey cannot remain neutral for long.’

He stubbed his cigarette out, and fixed her with an intense look. ‘Can you take all this in?’

‘Yes, I can.’ She held his gaze, certain she couldn’t, but determined not to show him that.

He opened a pigskin notebook. ‘Ozan looks after his performers well – you’ll probably stay at the Pera Palace, which is charming, or the Büyük Londra. The usual run at the club is two weeks. If at any point you want to come back, or feel you have something you need to tell us, all you have to do is phone me in Cairo. My number is . . .’ He started to scribble. ‘Phone me and say: “Could you book me at the Gezirah next week?” I’ll know what you mean. Otherwise, I’ll be in Istanbul on the second of September. I’ll be staying at an apartment on Istiklal Caddesi under the name of William McFarlane. I’ll leave a note for you at the front desk of the hotel; I’ll sign it from your cousin Bill. Got it?’

‘Got it.’

He smiled at her, a fan again, his eyes glistening sincerely. ‘D’you know, I think people are so wrong to imagine that showbiz types are fragile; we’ve found you marvellous to work with on the whole – fearless and patriotic. I suppose you excite people, they want to tell you things, or maybe for you to make them feel things they might not feel by themselves . . .’ He tailed off almost sadly, as if he was talking to himself, and switched off the green lamp.

He looked at his watch. ‘Got to go, sorry, I must always seem so pressed for time,’ he said. This hadn’t occurred to her – almost everyone you met now seemed either bored or madly rushed.

Before he left, he warned her that when she was in Istanbul she must not meet anyone she didn’t know in a place outside of her hotel. He gave her an envelope with a wad of Turkish lira in it. The equivalent of £100, he told her. She must keep a careful note of what she spent, and if Mr Ozan wanted to pay her too, why not? She’d been working hard and he was as rich as Croesus, and a man like him enjoyed rewarding people.

And then, after some hesitation, he delved into his suitcase and brought out a small gun.

‘You won’t need this, but they’re always useful.’

‘I don’t know how to use it,’ she said.

‘You don’t need to,’ he twinkled. ‘It’s like baby’s first gun, all you have to do is point and shoot, exactly like a water pistol. The bullets go in here.’

She took the gun and held it in the palm of her hand; for the first time, she was afraid.

She asked him again what day she might be leaving. He said he didn’t know yet. Mr Ozan would tell her. It would probably be at the end of the week.

‘Don’t look nervous,’ he said. ‘It should be fun.’

Chapter 30

While Saba was rehearsing, Dom wandered for a while, trying not to resent this other life that took her away from him. He already recognised that when she was performing she was quite startlingly someone else, someone he shared and was in awe of, someone not quite normal in the way she was able to seem so natural, so zestful and alive in front of thousands of strangers. What had felt precious about their last few days was that this faintly troubling double image of her had disappeared and their life together had become simple.

With two hours to fill, he walked down the Rue Fuad where he found a small jeweller’s shop that sold exquisite enamel work. After careful deliberation he spotted, in its dim interior, what he hoped would be the perfect present for her: a blue enamel bracelet, carved in fine silver lines with the outlines of gods and goddesses, each one encased in its own delicate link.

The store owner was fat and expansive with one cloudy eye. He brought Dom a chair, patted his knee, and insisted they share a glass of mint tea, or maybe some Stella beer, together. He put the bracelet on some velvet and explained each symbol to him with the eagerness of a man introducing a bunch of old and much-loved pals to a new friend. This was Horus, he pointed towards the one-eyed god of protection, Osiris, god of resurrection and fertility, Isis with her magic spells, and ah, this – the man’s fat finger caressed the slender waist of a goddess with a pair of silver horns growing out of her head – this was Hathor, goddess of many things: love and music and beauty. She also represented the vengeful eye of Ra, goddess of drunkenness and destruction. The man laughed uproariously.

Oh the joy of finding the perfect present at the right time for the person you loved. Dom – who’d never gone beyond chocolates and flowers before – was so happy. He asked the jeweller to engrave her name on the back, and then, in a flash of inspiration that pleased him,
Ozkorini
. Think of me.

When the present was engraved and wrapped inside a pretty box, smelling faintly of frangipani, he longed to give it to her immediately, but there was still time to kill before meeting her. He decided on a beer at the Officers’ Club, which was within walking distance, but felt a strange reluctance to go there. Usually he was excited at the thought of joining the squadron again. But today would soon be tomorrow, and tomorrow would mean men and only men, apart from the odd ATS girl, sand, tents, reeking latrines buzzing with flies, the telephone hurling them from bed at all kinds of ungodly hours, and all the rest . . . the bone-jarring exhaustion, the cauterising of feeling and emotion. The dread of letting his flight down in some major way.

Thoughts leading, inevitably, to Jacko. The flash picture of his screaming face behind the Perspex of his Spitfire, before the flames ate him.

Stepping from the pavement’s shade into stunning heat, he thought about the awful meal with Jacko’s parents after the funeral – his mother’s sudden wild look of
j’accuse
as she passed him the gravy, swiftly modified into a hostess’s smile. Jacko would never have flown had he not met Dom, and she knew it.

‘Sorry.’ He’d bumped into an old lady who glared at him.

Pay attention.
Stop it!
There was a war on. What did he expect?

‘Heil, Dom! Old fucker!’ When he walked into the bar, the tall figure of Barney unfurled from a leather chair and walked towards him. He was so glad to see him, the height, the heft of him, he could almost have cried. People didn’t tell you how exhausting new love could be, thought Dom, sitting down beside him. The fear it brought.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Can’t talk!’ He clutched his throat like an expiring man. ‘Parched.’

Once, he thought, watching Barney slope off to get a beer, he would have made a funny story out of the row with Saba the night before – her spitting rage, his own stupidity – but the walls had shifted again.

In the middle of the night, at around three, he’d got up for a glass of water, and when he’d got back into bed, he’d lain propped up on his elbow and looked at her. And watching her like this – the candlelight flickering over her face as she’d slept, unguarded as a child – what he’d most felt was a humbling of himself. He loved her – he knew that now without a shadow of doubt. Her fierceness, her talent, her vitality. He wanted to be loyal to her, to keep her safe. His own sharp tongue, his quick temper, his impatience must be curbed. He must not hurt her.

‘Sorry, old cock, they’ve run out of Beechers, they’ve only got Guinness.’ Barney put the drinks down between them and grinned. ‘God, I’m glad to see you.’

He took a long, noisy swig. Most of the wing, he said, when his glass was mostly froth, had opted to go to Cairo for their last leave, it was safer there. He’d been bored shitless, reduced to playing bridge with some brigadier and the matron from the local hospital.

He opened a second bottle and poured it. ‘Cheers!’ They touched glasses. ‘Enjoy it while you can,’ Barney told him. He’d been at LG39 the day before to see if there was any news; the signals had been coming and going like tart’s knickers.

‘I saw some planes flying over the harbour this morning,’ Dom said. ‘I wondered if they were for us.’

‘Let’s hope,’ Barney said tersely. ‘I was talking to a fitter the day before yesterday – quite a few of ours are kaput, something about sand bunging up their backsides.’

While they were talking, four Australian pilots strolled into the bar wearing new uniforms with ironed arm creases that showed how scruffy the rest of them looked in their dusty khakis. Drinks were bought, they sprawled in the leather chairs exchanging names, squadrons, brief biographies, all affecting a nonchalant indifference that none of them felt now. Theirs was a stick insect’s reaction: camouflage, fear, prudence. More and more men were being drafted in now, according to one of the Aussie pilots; they’d heard the big one would come in less than ten days. The man sighed after this announcement as though telling them nothing more thrilling than a railway timetable.

This news went straight to Dom’s brain like a drug of delight and confusion. Only an hour ago, sitting in the jeweller’s shop, captivated by the goddess talk and with her present in his hand, he’d felt so changed, so pure, and yet this urge to fight, to fly, he felt he couldn’t control it, any more than he could control wanting her, or his growing sense of wanting to be her protector.

He ate a horrible cheese sandwich, drank another beer. In some ways, yes, it was a definite relief after the exhausting heights of the last few days to be back, so to speak, at base camp and in the company of men – to be laughing about Buster Cartwright’s hairy landing, so close to the hangar it had swept the turban off a nearby Indian fitter, or even listening to a long-winded account from one of the Aussies, a tall red-headed man with white eyebrows, about why he always attached his own car wing mirror to his own aircraft to give him an extra pair of eyes.

But halfway through his second beer, Dom thought with a rush of emotion about Saba in the bath: her body gleaming, the swirling mass of her hair underwater. She’d be singing now, focused and happy. In spite of her tears last night, she had a strong centre, and he was glad. She would need it.

A couple of beers later, he put the jewellery box in his top pocket and decided to go down to the Cheval D’Or and surprise her after her rehearsal. When Saba had warned him with a firmness that surprised him not to go there again without an invitation, he’d felt both amused and resentful. He wasn’t used to a woman giving him orders. But today, their last together, was surely different. The important thing, he reasoned as he walked towards the Corniche, was not to spoil it all by getting too morbid or sad, for he had felt dangerously close to tears himself when she’d cried the night before, and that wouldn’t do.

A swim, he thought, seeing the dazzling turquoise sea ahead of him. The perfect thing. They could go down to Stanley Beach, hire costumes from the club and drink afterwards at one of the beachside stalls; a taxi back to the flat would leave her time to wash and get dressed and get to wherever she was going to do the wireless bloody thing. Although he’d bent over backwards to make amends for his rant about the programme, the lizard-brain part of him was still thinking
damn and blast it
. Tonight, he wanted her for himself.

She must have gone straight to the recording, he thought. He had arranged himself casually against a lamp post across the road from the Cheval D’Or, waiting for the door to open. Either that, or it had been an exceptionally long rehearsal. In the harsh sunlight of early afternoon, the club with its faded awnings and dusty shutters looked spectacularly unglamorous. When he strained his ears to hear her singing, all he heard were the ordinary sounds of the Corniche, the clip-clopping of a few exhausted gharry horses, the faraway babble of foreign voices melting in the heat. Watching a pi-dog sitting in the gutter, absorbed in a fierce hunt for fleas, Dom’s delight at the prospect of seeing her went away and he felt unpleasantly furtive – this was her territory and he was encroaching on it. He stood in the blistering sun and then grew disgusted – stick to the plan, he told himself, it was undignified to stay like this, skulking now behind sandbags like some sort of cut-price spy. Walk back to the Rue Lepsius and wait for her there. It would give him time to pack.

Walking back, the houses seemed to jump and blur. From now on, he warned himself, feeling sweat trickle down his back like an insect, he must close down his emotions. It was a near cert, when he got back, that he would be promoted to flight commander. Paul Rivers – exhausted now and longing to get home – had told him that, and now the lives of many men would depend on him; he couldn’t afford to behave like a hysterical girl.

Also, Alexandria was now, officially, the most dangerous city in Egypt. The evidence was around him – the scared-looking people, the charred houses, the wild cats and dogs roaming the streets. True, a few diehards had refused to leave and were still swimming at Cleopatra Beach, or drinking Singapore Slings in deserted hotels, but it wasn’t all that long ago that lines of panicky people had queued outside embassies and banks, desperate to leave. It had been madness to meet her here, with Rommel planning to take over the city any day now. He would advise her, more forcibly than ever, to leave.

Some street children swarmed towards him shouting, ‘Any gum, chum?’ in excruciating American accents, begging him to relieve them of cigarettes and ‘first-quality whisks’.

‘Meet my sister, mister,’ said one with an unpleasant leer and the beginnings of a moustache on his top lip.

At the next street corner he watched a peasant farmer and his donkey pass, the beast piled high with bundles of sugar cane, the man shouting.

In their room on the Rue Lepsius, he sat for the first hour smoking, listening for the light skim of her tread running upstairs, the burst of song, but all he heard was a muddle of foreign voices from the street outside.