She’s gone, he’d told himself trembling. Nothing to do with me now.
One or two of the local newspapers had questioned the wisdom of having an outdoor concert in Alex in the middle of winter, and in truth, before the war, and the blackout, had properly ended, but Ozan’s confident prediction that the gods would smile on them was correct (oh, how Ya’qub Halabi would gnash his teeth!) because on the night he’d planned, 17 January, the sun set in a molten lava flow of pinks, golds and oranges, followed by a calm, cold night and a sky full of stars.
By the time it grew dark, the streets were jammed with people making their way down the Corniche, by tram, donkey, gharry and taxi to the Palace Gardens.
The stones surrounding the statues of Muhammad Ali Pasha were taken down, garlands of flowers left in their place. By eight o’clock, the air in the Palace Gardens was full of the smells of roasting meat and fried chickpeas. Sleepy black-eyed children were hoisted on to their parents’ shoulders and given sweets and dates to eat. Old grandpas in djellabas were propped up by their young. Crowds of English and New Zealanders, Indian soldiers, a Scottish piper with his bagpipes were there, and the ATS girls, nurses bussed in from local field and military hospitals. And whatever hard feelings (and there were many) remained between the British, the Egyptians, the Jews, the Greeks, the Arabs who were there, they were put off for this one night. Tonight the whole city was breathing a collective sigh of relief: with luck and a fair wind it looked like they’d come through. Tonight was for singing and dancing.
Ten minutes before the curtain went up, the jugglers who’d wandered through the crowd stopped juggling and the lutists who’d been singing the old Arabic songs put away their instruments, and a rapt silence fell over the crowd.
Ozan, working on the principle of nothing succeeds like excess, had gone magnificently overboard, and when the curtain slowly rose on the stage, it appeared to open a fantastic jewellery box. When dancers rose up from the cushions, and the stage began to pulsate with colour and glitter and noise, the crowd gasped and groaned with delight. This was living; this was what they’d come for. An orchestra of twenty-five hand-picked musicians playing ouds and lutes and violins burst into a frenzy of notes. The crowd yelled, some of the women made strange wild sounds with their tongues.
At the back of the stage, the spotlight suddenly fell on a large mother-of-pearl Aladdin’s chest, and there were drum rolls and the shimmering of tambourines as Ozan stepped out. He was wearing one of the beautiful dinner suits his Parisian tailor had made before the war, and a purple cummerbund. He bounded towards the front of the stage, held his hands up to quell the madly cheering crowd, issued a torrent of Arabic words which made them cheer and clap and wave their flags, and then he roared out into the night:
‘Dance, Alexandria, dance, Hitler has no chance.’
Longing to leave, rooted to the spot, Dom waited for her. There was no programme, or none that he had been able to understand, and he had stayed away from the groups of European people. He sat through the fireworks, the acrobats, the incomprehensible Arabic comedian who had the audience howling with laughter; Faiza Mushawar, exuding a kind of haughty self-confidence; Arleta, singing and wiggling and making the Tommies hoot and yell.
When Saba came on stage after the first interval, he almost stopped breathing. She was wearing a new red dress, her hair was loose. In spite of all the nonsense that had gone on between them, his guts twisted for her. The crowd seemed enormous and she looked so small. There were only three Europeans in her backing group: a pianist, a guitarist and a double bassist.
The crowd hushed as they began to tune up. She turned and smiled at the pianist, gave him a nod of her head. He felt the surprise of the crowd around him as she sang what sounded like an Arabic song, but he couldn’t be sure. He was so hurt, and helplessly admiring too. She seemed so foreign, so focused, so sure of herself and the night. Around him the fairy lights shivered in the dark trees which swayed and sighed, and the crowd moved with them, the guitarist threw soft notes at her, the pianist looked quietly ecstatic and so did she. What could I possibly have added to that? he thought.
When the song was done, it took a while for the whooping and clapping to die down, and then the guitarist noodled away on his guitar and the lights around the stage faded to a more intimate glow. She sat down on a stool near the piano, and announced matter-of-factly that her next song would be ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’.
Their song. The song she’d sung for him.
As she held the microphone and told her secrets, he felt a sick fury spread through his body. How could you? A million stupid songs to sing, and you chose this one.
She seemed to be breathing the song and yet he could hear every word.
When it was over, she looked up, her face like a holy painting in its sadness. A triumph of training and technique and controlled emotion, no running out of air, no false notes – nothing for him, everything for the cheering crowd.
He took a step back. This night would soon be over, he told himself; by this time next year, they would all have packed up their tents and gone home.
He sat under a tree with his head in his hands. Oh Christ! he thought, clenching his teeth tight.
Don’t you dare
.
The moon had risen to its furthest height now over the Palace Gardens. It cast its glow over the trees, and the turreted fairy-tale towers at the back of the stage. When the show was over, the principal characters bounded on to the stage again and took their bows like performers in a pantomime. First the Egyptian band, waving and cheering, the local acrobats doing five handstands and a twist apiece, followed by Boguslaw and Lev, Max Bagley clasping his hands in triumph above his head like a prize fighter, Arleta Samson walking her fabulous walk, touching her crimson nails to her mouth and sending out passionate kisses, three Arab horses in scarlet bridles trotting, the fire-eaters, Faiza Mushawar, regal and with a small but distinct distance separating her from the Europeans; Saba, changed into a silver dress, smiling and waving and having the time of her life, graciously accepting the elaborate salaams of the clowns.
And lastly Ozan, hands held out in modest protest at the roar of love and appreciation that greeted him. After what Dom presumed was the Egyptian national anthem and ‘God Save the Queen’, three dozen white doves of peace were released from the bamboo cages they’d been kept in backstage all day. The flustered birds rose in the darkening air, hovered in lights that tinted them red and green, circled and flew towards the sea.
Dom glanced towards the man who had released the birds and saw him smiling broadly; he didn’t give a damn whether they came back or not. Their point was theatrical effect, their usefulness over; that was the way it was in show business it seemed. One showy gesture and they were gone.
The pavements of the Corniche were crowded after the performance, so she took a gharry, pleading with the driver to go as fast as he could. The horse kept shying, frightened by the commotion, and when they got close to the Cecil Hotel, where Cleeve had requested one last meeting, they were held up by drunken soldiers dancing a conga line.
Cleeve had told her to meet him in the cocktail bar, to the right of the hotel’s reception area and lifts. Since everyone would still be leaving the concert, it would be quiet and he had some news for her. No need for disguises now, he said, they would simply appear as a couple having a few drinks together.
It seemed to her, as she walked into the hotel with its subdued gleam of well-polished brass, its marble floors and copious flower arrangements, that Cleeve was back in his natural habitat again. In the candlelit bar, beyond the lobby, an elegant negro in a dinner jacket was noodling away at a piano underneath a potted palm tree. She could hear the clink of glasses, the murmur of well-bred voices, and there was Cleeve himself, partly concealed behind a leather banquette, elegant, long-legged, languid, the kind of well-dressed Englishman who contrived to look as if he didn’t give a hoot about his clothes, quietly taking it all in.
But that first impression of ease and sophistication didn’t last. When he saw her, he leapt to his feet and switched on a quick bright smile – like a gauche boy on his first date – and she saw, above the faultless linen of his shirt, a dried-up trickle of blood where he had shaved too closely. There’d been no time to change after the concert, so she arrived in the same beautiful silver dress she’d taken the curtain call in, her shoulders covered in a fine floating silk stole.
‘Saba,’ he said. ‘You look wonderful. Gosh, you’ve grown up.’
The fulsome compliment threw her; his smile, lopsided, sentimental, raised alarm bells. Was he drunk?
‘I’m sorry I’m late, and I can’t stay long.’ She slid into the banquette beside him. ‘Ozan’s giving a cast party – he’s asked all the local bigwigs and I can’t let him down.’
‘Of course, of course . . . it’s just that I was passing through Alexandria, and I couldn’t . . . I felt it was my last . . .’ He abandoned this and blathered helplessly, ‘Look, before I say a word, Saba . . . I mean I’ve got to . . . well I’ll just say it: what an absolutely fantastic night this must have been for you. I’ve heard you before but this . . . you were extraordinary – I shan’t forget it ever, that’s all. There, I’ve said it. Sort of.’
‘Thank you.’ It was hard to see him so lit up when she felt so empty.
‘Darling, are you all right . . . what’s wrong with me . . . a drink?’ His hand went up for the waiter. ‘It must be jolly tiring.’ He’d never called her darling before; the word hung awkwardly between them.
‘Waiter,’ he said. ‘Champagne, hors d’oeuvres, a menu for mademoiselle.’
‘I can’t stay to eat,’ she repeated. ‘Did you say you had some news for me?’
‘I did. But surely time for a small bite – there’s a terrific new chef here.’
‘Dermot, honestly, I can’t,’ she said more firmly. ‘It’s a working night for me.’
‘So, all right, sorry, crack on,’ a note of truculence in his voice. ‘Here’s my news.’
He looked around him, checking the other drinkers were well out of earshot, his face wavering through the candlelight.
‘Jenke is back in London and has been debriefed. I can’t be absolutely specific with you for security reasons, but his information, not just from Turkey but from North Africa too, has been absolutely vital . . . and you’ – he gave her his important finger-on-the-pulse look – ‘I’m here to tell you that your part in the operation has been noted at the very highest levels. How do you feel about that?’
A slight swelling of piano music from behind the palm tree; their waiter appeared flapping a napkin on her lap. She waited until he left.
‘How do I feel about what?’
‘About being . . . I don’t know . . . how should one put it . . . is heroine too much of an exaggeration?’
‘Nothing,’ she said finally, ‘I feel nothing.’
‘Really?’ He took a sip of his drink, gave her a quizzical look. ‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’ Because the price was too high, because I wasn’t particularly brave, more a child drawn into adult games I didn’t understand, because the whole thing finally felt sleazy; because it cost me Dom – all flashing through her head.
He shook his head slightly, with the air of a schoolmaster regretting the wasted talents of a bright pupil.
‘Well,’ he said huffily. ‘I obviously can’t tell you what to think, but I would have thought it was an honour.’
‘Tell me something.’ She spoke before the thought had formed in her brain. ‘Was it really worth it? Or is it something people who get caught up in this sort of thing need to feel – particularly when other people die?’
‘I don’t understand the question.’
‘You should do, or at least ask it.’
He drained his drink.
‘Steady, Saba,’ he warned her, and gave her the most peculiar look – canny and spiteful and affronted. ‘No, seriously, steady the buffs, because I have some other news to pass on to you – and you might say something you’ll regret.’
She took a deep breath and stared at her glass. Calm down, Saba, it’s not his fault what happened.
‘Really?’
He lowered his voice – the pianist had stopped playing.
‘Really.’
‘What news?’
He took a deep breath and called the waiter over.
‘Another whisky for me, please, and for mademoiselle?’
She put her hand over her champagne flute.
‘No, Dermot, please – just order for yourself. I have to go soon.’
‘I think you’ll want to stay for this, Saba.’
He leaned towards her and licked his lips.
‘They’ve found him,’ he whispered. ‘Your man – he’s in Alex.’
‘What man?’ He looked so serious she thought for one mad moment he meant Severin Mueller. ‘Who?’
‘Your pilot.’
‘My pilot?’ Nothing in his expression suggested good news. ‘Jenke?’
‘No, not Jenke,’ he said at last. ‘Dominic Benson. He’s staying at the Waterloo. It’s a small private hotel near the railway station. He’s been there for nearly a fortnight.’
‘Is this a joke?’ She felt a tremendous numbness, as if all the feeling parts of her were closing down. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’ve been looking for him. Ozan asked me to.’
‘But you said you couldn’t or wouldn’t.’
He pushed the ice around in his whisky with his finger.
‘I was told to say that. We didn’t want you derailed before the concert, but for God’s sake, Saba, don’t tell anyone I told you that.’
‘Is this true?’
He nodded his head and sighed.
‘Saw him in the street yesterday. He saw me talking to you. And so, Saba,’ he drained his drink and stubbed his cigarette out, ‘as the good fairy says in the panto: my job here is ended. News of honours and boyfriend in one evening. Or perhaps I’m more the Widow Twankey in this enterprise. Anyway, if it goes wrong, you know where to find me. I’m going back to England shortly.’
He stood up, still smiling, and when he tried to put his overcoat on missed the arm. He looked in an owlish, deliberate way at his wristwatch.