They were performing at a fuel depot close to an infantry camp near Burg el Arab; Arleta was pretending to be Josephine Baker dancing the famous banana dance that had enchanted tout Paris; Willie was the ravenous little boy eating her bananas while she leapt around blissfully unaware. It was very funny and Saba loved it. She was roaring with laughter in the wings when she saw Willie’s eyes go blank and float up into his lids. She thought it was a stunt, until he crashed heavily to the floor and the curtain came hurriedly down.He fell on a rusty nail in the wings that shot into a hand that instantly spurted blood. Janine whipped off her tights, twisted them into a makeshift tourniquet, and then ran on muscles of steel towards the much-derided panic bag for emergency iodine and bandages, all applied with ice-cool efficiency.The cause of his initial faint was diagnosed as jaundice, possibly contracted from food from one of the fly-blown street stalls he insisted were far safer than the jellied-eel stands in London.
