Jasmine Nights Read online

  Your loving Mam xoxo

  Post script (it was Joyce’s habit to always write this in full)

  I got a pattern off an old copy of Woman’s Friend, and I’ve made you a dress out of cream parachute silk. (They had a sale of it in Howell’s and the queues were round the block, I got there early.) I posted it with this letter.

  Mam. My mam. She held the letter to her cheek smiling and so glad to hear from her she could have wept.

  She read it again – it hurt thinking about her mother standing like Switzerland now between Dad and her, also to picture her queuing for hours for parachute silk, her hopeful whirlings on the Singer sewing machine she was so proud of. The Schiaparelli of Pomeroy Street. Saba wished she’d make something beautiful for herself for a change. The dress had not arrived, and even if it had, she probably wouldn’t want to wear it anyway, except out of sentiment or loyalty. How frightening it was how quickly things changed – even things you wanted to stay the same. All Saba wanted now was for them to stay alive, and for her mother to be happy while she was away – was that so terrible? Probably, she sighed, and looked out the window – she’d turned out to be a rotten daughter.

  The other letter now. The buff-coloured envelope poked out from the bag. She put her nail under the flap and had it half open when Willie appeared.

  ‘Mind if I join you for a bit?’ He sat down heavily beside her. ‘Sorry about the get-up,’ he’d changed from his khakis into a dubious-looking green striped pyjama top, ‘but I’m baking. You’ve lost your little friend, I see.’ He pointed towards Arleta, who was fast asleep four seats ahead of them.

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ She showed him the letter. ‘I’ve just got these, my first, and I think she thought . . .’ She hoped he’d take the hint, but Willie was not famous for subtlety.

  ‘I hear there was a right old dust-up earlier.’ He pointed at Janine, sitting close to the driver, as upright as a startled ostrich, and drew so close that the hairs from his ears tickled Saba’s chin. ‘That stuck-up madame needs a bit of a seeing-to,’ he said, ‘if you know what I mean. One of the acrobats said he’d do it. Lev, I think. Lovely job.’

  ‘Willie!’ She sprang away. ‘That’s naughty.’

  ‘It would help her dancing and all. I mean it. Arleta almost lost her hair.’ Willie grabbed his own bald pate and looked anguished. ‘I hear she nearly went mad.’ He gave a wheezy laugh and looked back at Arleta. ‘Very spirited, that one,’ he said softly, and then he sighed.

  ‘I hope they make up,’ said Saba. ‘It’s so boring if no one’s speaking.’

  ‘Arleta’s as good as gold,’ Willie said. ‘She’ll get her out of it. It’s bad for the company,’ he added self-righteously, ‘if people can’t get along, we’ve got to stick together.’ He mopped his damp face. ‘None of us have a clue what’s round the next corner now, do we, girl?’

  ‘No we don’t, Willie,’ she said. Both of them stopped. The bus suddenly swerved to avoid a team of camels crossing the road. The men who led them looked up at them – their eyes expressionless, faces swathed against the dust. Behind them stretched miles and miles of sand shimmering and dissolving in a heat haze. ‘We certainly don’t. Thank you for pointing that out to me.’

  When Willie went back to his seat, she pulled the buff-coloured envelope from her bag again. The heat inside the bus was now 120 degrees; her wet hand had dissolved part of her address.

  . . . ear . . . aba. Damn it! The censor’s vigilance meant the letter hung like a paper chain in her hands – she couldn’t even work out the date. She put the flimsy aerogramme against the window and in daylight so bright her eyeballs flinched, made out part of a word at the top of the letter: une and then 42. A hole above the date where the address might have been. His address, or her crazy thinking? All she knew was part of her had leapt into life like a flame when she’d seen the letter, and that now she was shocked at how disappointed she felt, and annoyed with herself too. Why would he write to her now?

  Some food came round in a cardboard box: bully-beef sandwiches and warm water, a sickly-smelling banana turning black and wilting in its own skin. After it, to block out the heat, they tried to sleep again, and when she woke, the dust had cleared and she saw more sand stretching out to the horizon like a limitless sea. If you were not in a good state of mind, the scale of it could make everything look stunningly pointless; their little lorry a piece of thistledown blown by any random wind.

  When Furness stood up to brief them on what to expect, dried saliva had caked in the corners of his mouth, and his face streamed with sweat. For the next ten days, he said, they would be whisked from place to place to perform at RAF camps, field units and hospitals in what he described vaguely as the Canal Zone; after that they’d be moving west to follow in the footsteps of the Eighth Army. Some of these camps would be secret, or too small even to have proper names. Sometimes, Arleta had whispered, they didn’t even tell you where you were, especially if you were near enemy lines.

  When Furness had stopped talking and gone back to his seat, Saba lay stretched out over two seats, feeling the juddering desert road beneath her, thinking about Dom and their exciting, painful evening together. It annoyed her to still think of him, but that evening, its disappointing ending, had got stuck in her mind like the pieces of a mismatched puzzle she needed to solve.

  She thought about the gentleness of his hand holding her foot when she’d sat down with the blister from those blasted shoes. He’d rubbed her toes between his fingers, and even though she’d been embarrassed, hoping her feet weren’t sweaty from the audition and the dancing, she’d honestly wanted to purr like a kitten because it was so sudden and shockingly intimate. The wet pavement; him kneeling, his brown eyes looking at her under a lock of dark hair, the light in them tender, that was what she thought of. It was so unexpected after their wisecracking, it had seemed to iron out all the sharp angles of the day, and she’d believed in it.

  And the next bit ruined everything. She’d definitely seen him kiss that girl in the club. Their heads had stayed together for a long time, talking intensely like lovers do, and all of it had made her think her own instincts were hopelessly wrong, and it got her goat to think of how she had let him spoil what had been such a marvellous day.

  Oh God, she woke enraged and breathing heavily and with a raging thirst, having already drunk her pint of chemical-tasting water. Sweat trickled down between her breasts as the bus was rocked down a rough bit of road. Opening her eyes, all she could see was flipping sand and a skinny goat, eating a thorn bush, that leapt away in terror at the sight of them.

  ‘Please, I am sitting?’ A pair of well-muscled thighs slid into the empty seat beside her. Boguslaw the acrobat.

  Bog, Boggers, Bog Brush – he answered to all of them – brought nerve-racking news. While she’d been dreaming, the plans had changed: tonight, instead of the small first concert planned, they would perform for up to a thousand troops, RAF personnel and medics at a transit camp near Abu Sueir. The portable stage, the piano, the props and the costumes had gone ahead; they were setting up now.

  ‘Please Gods, they don’t expect a big company and a big show,’ Bog grimaced. Max Bagley had made no secret of the fact that they were spectacularly under-rehearsed, and they’d all hoped for a day’s rest first.

  Saba hadn’t seen Bog for the past few days. The acrobats had been billeted in another part of town, and Arleta – the girls’ expert on the dark side of life – had whispered that the boys had been out on the razz.

  ‘I’m not trying to shock you,’ she’d said in her husky, thrilling voice, ‘but the boys like to play, and there’s this street they go to in Cairo called Wagh-al-Birkat that caters for all tastes: young girls, dogs, sheep, chickens. And I’ll tell you a true story,’ she added, her eyes green slits, ‘early this year, a young naval officer was caught stark naked in the Shepheard Hotel. He was had up for indecent exposure and got off by quoting from the rulebook: “an officer is deemed to be in uniform if he is appropriate
ly dressed for the port in which he is engaged”. Ha, ha, ha, isn’t that wonderful?’

  Janine’s beautifully plucked eyebrows shot up to her hairline. ‘Well you see,’ she’d said, ‘I don’t find that even remotely funny,’ and up they’d shot again when Arleta said that she personally thought that the British army should do what the French and the Italians did and set up legal brothels for soldiers. They were young and lusty – it was inhuman to expect them to do without creature comforts for so long. At which point Janine had removed a damp flannel she kept in her handbag, and wiped her hands very deliberately.

  ‘I am watching you earlier.’ Boguslaw cosied up to Saba, his left leg so close she could feel the tickle of the hairs against her leg. ‘Does your letter make you sad?’ He gave a deep sigh.

  ‘A little,’ she said.

  His leg moved closer.

  ‘You’re too pretty to be sad,’ he said. ‘Is a man?’

  ‘Yes. No.’

  ‘A strong man?’ A biceps appeared like a giant cobra in his arm. ‘Strong like this.’

  ‘Very, very strong.’ It was much too hot for flirting. When the bus slowed down, in an effort to divert him, she pointed to a fruit stand on the side of the road. A man, his donkey; a veiled wife sat passive beside a pile of dried beans, some sugar-beet stalks, some dates. The woman was swatting flies from a sleeping baby on her lap. Two other children played in the dirt beside them.

  ‘Are you married, Bog?’ she asked him – she’d teased him and taught him songs but they hadn’t talked properly yet.

  ‘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 mo
unds 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.