Jasmine Nights Read Online Free PDF

ordinary day.
    The envelope was still in her hand as she looked straight at Saba and said, ‘This is the last bloody straw,’ almost as if she hated her.
    ‘What?’ Saba had shouted.
    ‘And you’re not bloody going.’
    Saba had rushed into the kitchen and then out the back door where they kept the kindling. When she returned, her mother was still sitting poleaxed by the unlit fire. Tansu sat opposite her, mumbling away at herself in Turkish the way she did when she was agitated or afraid.
    ‘Give me that.’ Joyce snatched the paper and the kindling from Saba’s hands. She scrumpled the paper, stabbed it with the poker they kept in a brass ship near the fire.
    ‘You look tired, Mum.’ Saba, who’d put a few lumps of coal on top of the wood, was trying diplomacy. ‘I’ll bring you in some tea, then you can read the letter again.’
    ‘I don’t want to read the bloody letter again,’ her mother had shouted. ‘And you’re not going anywhere until we’ve asked your father.’
    The flames roared as she put a match to the paper. Tansu, nervous and scampering, had gone to get the tea, while Joyce sat breathing heavily, bright spots of temper colour on her cheeks.
    Saba then made things worse by telling her mother that she thought it was a wonderful opportunity for her, and that even Mr Chamberlain had said on the wireless that everyone should now do their bit for the war effort.
    ‘I’ve done enough for the sodding war effort,’ Joyce shouted. ‘Your sister’s gone and God knows when she’ll be back. Your father’s never here. I’m working all hours at Curran’s. It’s time you got a job there too.’
    ‘I’m not talking about you, Mum!’ Saba roared. ‘I’m talking about me. You were the one who told me to dream big bloody dreams.’
    ‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’ Her mother snatched off her turban and lashed on her pinafore. ‘That was a joke. And anyway, Mr Chamberlain didn’t mean you singing songs and waving your legs in the air.’
    Saba stared at her mother in disbelief. Had she honestly and truly said that? The same Joyce who’d thundered roaring and laughing down the aisle with her at Snow White at the Gaiety when they’d asked for children on the stage. Who’d taken her to all those ballet lessons, squishing her plump feet into good toes, naughty toes. Who’d stayed up half the night, only three months ago, sewing the red dress for the hospital concert, and cried buckets when she’d heard her sing ‘All Through the Night’ only the week before.
    ‘It wasn’t a joke, Mum,’ she shrieked, her dander well up now. ‘Or if it was, you might have bloody let me in on it.’ She was thinking of the harder stuff – the diets, the singing lessons, breaking two ribs when the trapeze they used for ‘Showtime’ had snapped.
    ‘Yes it was. It was off a film, and we’re not people in films.’
    And then Tansu, usually her one hundred per cent friend and ally, had made that disapproving Turkish tut tut tut sound, the clicking of the tongue followed by a sharp intake of breath, that really got on Saba’s nerves, and which loosely translated to no, no, no, no . Tansu said if she went to London, the bombs would fall on her head. Saba replied that bombs were falling on their bloody heads here. There had already been one in Pomeroy Street. Joyce said she would wash Saba’s mouth out with soap if she swore at her gran again, then Joyce and Tansu stomped into the kitchen.
    ‘Listen!’ Saba followed them. ‘I could go anywhere: to Cairo, or India, or France or somewhere.’ As she said it, she saw herself silhouetted against a bright red sky, singing for the soldiers.
    ‘Well you can forget about that, too.’ Her mother slammed the potatoes into cold water and lit the gas, her hands fiery with chilblains. ‘Your father will go mad. And for once, I don’t blame him.’
    Ah! So they had come to it at last: the real heart of the matter. Her father would go mad. Mum’s emotional