They Came to Baghdad Read online

  She was immediately moved to furious indignation.

  “It’s perfectly true,” she said. “Every word of it!”

  The stranger looked more disbelieving than ever.

  “Very remarkable,” he said in a cold tone.

  Despair seized Victoria. How unfair it was that whilst she could always make a lie sound plausible, in recitals of stark truth she lacked the power to make herself believed. Actual facts she told badly and without conviction.

  “And if you haven’t got anything to drink with you, I shall die of thirst,” she said. “I’m going to die of thirst anyway, if you leave me here and go on without me.”

  “Naturally I shouldn’t dream of doing that,” said the stranger stiffly. “It is most unsuitable for an Englishwoman to be wandering about alone in the wilds. Dear me, your lips are quite cracked…Abdul.”

  “Sahib?”

  The driver appeared round the side of the mound.

  On receiving instructions in Arabic he ran off towards the car to return shortly with a large Thermos flask and a bakelite cup.

  Victoria drank water avidly.

  “Oo!” she said. “That’s better.”

  “My name’s Richard Baker,” said the Englishman.

  Victoria responded.

  “I’m Victoria Jones,” she said. And then, in an effort to recover lost ground and to replace the disbelief she saw by a respectful attention, she added:

  “Pauncefoot Jones. I’m joining my uncle, Dr. Pauncefoot Jones on his excavation.

  “What an extraordinary coincidence,” said Baker, staring at her surprisedly. “I’m on my way to the Dig myself. It’s only about fifteen miles from here. I’m just the right person to have rescued you, aren’t I?”

  To say that Victoria was taken aback is to put it mildly. She was completely flabbergasted. So much so that she was quite incapable of saying a word of any kind. Meekly and in silence she followed Richard to the car and got in.

  “I suppose you’re the anthropologist,” said Richard, as he settled her in the back seat and removed various impedimenta. “I heard you were coming out, but I didn’t expect you so early in the season.”

  He stood for a moment sorting through various potsherds which he removed from his pockets and which, Victoria now realized, were what he had been picking up from the surface of the mound.

  “Likely looking little Tell,” he said, gesturing towards the mound. “But nothing out of the way on it so far as I can see. Late Assyrian ware mostly—a little Parthian, some quite good ring bases of the Kassite period.” He smiled as he added, “I’m glad to see that in spite of your troubles your archaeological instincts led you to examine a Tell.”

  Victoria opened her mouth and then shut it again. The driver let in the clutch and they started off.

  What, after all, could she say? True, she would be unmasked as soon as they reached the Expedition House—but it would be infinitely better to be unmasked there and confess penitence for her inventions, than it would be to confess to Mr. Richard Baker in the middle of nowhere. The worst they could do to her would be to send her into Baghdad. And, anyway, thought Victoria, incorrigible as ever, perhaps before I get there I shall have thought of something. Her busy imagination got to work forthwith. A lapse of memory? She had travelled out with a girl who had asked her to—no, really, as far as she could see, she would have to make a complete breast of it. But she infinitely preferred making a clean breast of it to Dr. Pauncefoot Jones whatever kind of man he was, than to Mr. Richard Baker, with his supercilious way of lifting his eyebrows and his obvious disbelief of the exact and true story she had told him.

  “We don’t go right into Mandali,” said Mr. Baker, turning in the front seat. “We branch off from the road into the desert about a mile farther on. A bit difficult to hit the exact spot sometimes with no particular landmarks.”

  Presently he said something to Abdul and the car turned sharply off the track and made straight for the desert. With no particular landmarks to guide him, as far as Victoria could see, Richard Baker directed Abdul with gestures—the car now to the right—now to the left. Presently Richard gave an exclamation of satisfaction.

  “On the right track now,” he said.

  Victoria could not see any track at all. But presently she did catch sight every now and again of faintly marked tyre tracks.

  Once they crossed a slightly more clearly marked track and when they did so, Richard made an exclamation and ordered Abdul to stop.

  “Here’s an interesting sight for you,” he said to Victoria. “Since you’re new to this country you won’t have seen it before.”

  Two men were advancing towards the car along the cross track. One man carried a short wooden bench on his back, the other a big wooden object about the size of an upright piano.

  Richard hailed them, they greeted him with every sign of pleasure. Richard produced cigarettes and a cheerful party spirit seemed to be developing.

  Then Richard turned to her.

  “Fond of the cinema? Then you shall see a performance.”

  He spoke to the two men and they smiled with pleasure. They set up the bench and motioned to Victoria and Richard to sit on it. Then they set up the round contrivance on a stand of some kind. It had two eye-holes in it and as she looked at it, Victoria cried:

  “It’s like things on piers. What the butler saw.”

  “That’s it,” said Richard. “It’s a primitive form of same.”

  Victoria applied her eyes to the glass-fronted peephole, one man began slowly to turn a crank or handle, and the other began a monotonous kind of chant.

  “What is he saying?” Victoria asked.

  Richard translated as the singsong chant continued:

  “Draw near and prepare yourself for much wonder and delight. Prepare to behold the wonders of antiquity.”

  A crudely coloured picture of Negroes reaping wheat swam into Victoria’s gaze.

  “Fellahin in America,” announced Richard, translating.

  Then came:

  “The wife of the great Shah of the Western world,” and the Empress Eugénie simpered and fingered a long ringlet. A picture of the King’s Palace in Montenegro, another of the Great Exhibition.

  An odd and varied collection of pictures followed each other, all completely unrelated and sometimes announced in the strangest terms.

  The Prince Consort, Disraeli, Norwegian Fjords and Skaters in Switzerland completed this strange glimpse of olden far-off days.

  The showman ended his exposition with the following words:

  “And so we bring to you the wonders and marvels of antiquity in other lands and far-off places. Let your donation be generous to match the marvels you have seen, for all these things are true.”

  It was over. Victoria beamed with delight. “That really was marvellous!” she said. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  The proprietors of the travelling cinema were smiling proudly. Victoria got up from the bench and Richard who was sitting on the other end of it was thrown to the ground in a somewhat undignified posture. Victoria apologized but was not ill pleased. Richard rewarded the cinema men and with courteous farewells and expressions of concern for each other’s welfare, and invoking the blessing of God on each other, they parted company. Richard and Victoria got into the car again and the men trudged away into the desert.

  “Where are they going?” asked Victoria.

  “They travel all over the country. I met them first in Transjordan coming up the road from the Dead Sea to Amman. Actually they’re bound now for Kerbela, going of course by unfrequented routes so as to give shows in remote villages.”

  “Perhaps someone will give them a lift?”

  Richard laughed.

  “They probably wouldn’t take it. I offered an old man a lift once who was walking from Basrah to Baghdad. I asked him how long he expected to be and he said a couple of months. I told him to get in and he would be there late that evening, but he thanked me and said no. Two month
s ahead would suit him just as well. Time doesn’t mean anything out here. Once one gets that into one’s head, one finds a curious satisfaction in it.”

  “Yes. I can imagine that.”

  “Arabs find our Western impatience for doing things quickly extraordinarily hard to understand, and our habit of coming straight to the point in conversation strikes them as extremely ill-mannered. You should always sit round and offer general observations for about an hour—or if you prefer it, you need not speak at all.”

  “Rather odd if we did that in offices in London. One would waste a lot of time.”

  “Yes, but we’re back again at the question: What is time? And what is waste?”

  Victoria meditated on these points. The car still appeared to be proceeding to nowhere with the utmost onfidence.

  “Where is this place?” she said at last.

  “Tell Aswad? Well out in the middle of the desert. You’ll see the Ziggurat very shortly now. In the meantime, look over to your left. There—where I’m pointing.”

  “Are they clouds?” asked Victoria. “They can’t be mountains.”

  “Yes, they are. The snowcapped mountains of Kurdistan. You can only see them when it’s very clear.”

  A dreamlike feeling of contentment came over Victoria. If only she could drive on like this forever. If only she wasn’t such a miserable liar. She shrank like a child at the thought of the unpleasant denouement ahead of her. What would Dr. Pauncefoot Jones be like? Tall, with a long grey beard, and a fierce frown. Never mind, however annoyed Dr. Pauncefoot Jones might be, she had circumvented Catherine and the Olive Branch and Dr. Rathbone.

  “There you are,” said Richard.

  He pointed ahead. Victoria made out a kind of pimple on the far horizon.

  “It looks miles away.”

  “Oh no, it’s only a few miles now. You’ll see.”

  And indeed the pimple developed with astonishing rapidity into first a blob and then a hill and finally into a large and impressive Tell. On one side of it was a long sprawling building of mudbrick.

  “The Expedition House,” said Richard.

  They drew up with a flourish amidst the barking of dogs. White robed servants rushed out to greet them, beaming with smiles.

  After an interchange of greetings, Richard said:

  “Apparently they weren’t expecting you so soon. But they’ll get your bed made. And they’ll take you in hot water at once. I expect you’d like to have a wash and a rest? Dr. Pauncefoot Jones is up on the Tell. I’m going up to him. Ibrahim will look after you.”

  He strode away and Victoria followed the smiling Ibrahim into the house. It seemed dark inside at first after coming in out of the sun. They passed through a living room with some big tables and a few battered armchairs and she was then led round a courtyard and into a small room with one tiny window. It held a bed, a rough chest of drawers and a table with a jug and basin on it and a chair. Ibrahim smiled and nodded and brought her a large jug of rather muddy-looking hot water and a rough towel. Then, with an apologetic smile, he returned with a small looking glass which he carefully affixed upon a nail on the wall.

  Victoria was thankful to have the chance of a wash. She was just beginning to realize how utterly weary and worn out she was and how very much encrusted with grime.

  “I suppose I look simply frightful,” she said to herself and approached the looking glass.

  For some moments she stared at her reflection uncomprehendingly.

  This wasn’t her—this wasn’t Victoria Jones.

  And then she realized that, though her features were the small neat features of Victoria Jones, her hair was now platinum blonde!

  Nineteen

  I

  Richard found Dr. Pauncefoot Jones in the excavations squatting by the side of his foreman and tapping gently with a small pick at a section of wall.

  Dr. Pauncefoot Jones greeted his colleague in a matter-of-fact manner.

  “Hallo Richard my boy, so you’ve turned up. I had an idea you were arriving on Tuesday. I don’t know why.”

  “This is Tuesday,” said Richard.

  “Is it really now?” said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones without interest. “Just come down here and see what you think of this. Perfectly good walls coming out already and we’re only down three feet. Seems to me there are a few traces of paint here. Come and see what you think. It looks very promising to me.”

  Richard leapt down into the trench and the two archaeologists enjoyed themselves in a highly technical manner for about a quarter of an hour.

  “By the way,” said Richard, “I’ve brought a girl.”

  “Oh have you? What sort of girl?”

  “She says she’s your niece.”

  “My niece?” Dr. Pauncefoot Jones brought his mind back with a struggle from his contemplation of mudbrick walls. “I don’t think I have a niece,” he said doubtfully, as though he might have had one and forgotten about her.

  “She’s coming out to work with you here, I gathered.”

  “Oh.” Dr. Pauncefoot Jones’ face cleared. “Of course. That will be Veronica.”

  “Victoria, I think she said.”

  “Yes, yes, Victoria. Emerson wrote to me about her from Cambridge. A very able girl, I understand. An anthropologist. Can’t think why anyone wants to be an anthropologist, can you?”

  “I heard you had some anthropologist girl coming out.”

  “There’s nothing in her line so far. Of course we’re only just beginning. Actually I understood she wasn’t coming out for another fortnight or so, but I didn’t read her letter very carefully, and then I mislaid it, so I didn’t really remember what she said. My wife arrives next week—or the week after—now what have I done with her letter?—and I rather thought Venetia was coming out with her—but of course I may have got it all wrong. Well, well, I dare say we can make her useful. There’s a lot of pottery coming up.”

  “There’s nothing odd about her, is there?”

  “Odd?” Dr. Pauncefoot Jones peered at him. “In what way?”

  “Well, she hasn’t had a nervous breakdown or anything?”

  “Emerson did say, I remember, that she had been working very hard. Diploma or degree or something, but I don’t think he said anything about a breakdown. Why?”

  “Well, I picked up her up at the side of the road, wandering about all by herself. It was on that little Tell as a matter of fact that you come to about a mile before you turn off the road—”

  “I remember,” said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. “You know I once picked up a bit of Nuzu ware on that Tell. Extraordinary really, to find it so far south.”

  Richard refused to be diverted to archaeological topics and went on firmly:

  “She told me the most extraordinary story. Said she’d gone to have her hair shampooed, and they chloroformed her and kidnapped her and carried her off to Mandali and imprisoned her in a house and she’d escaped in the middle of the night—the most preposterous rigmarole you ever heard.”

  Dr. Pauncefoot Jones shook his head.

  “Doesn’t sound at all probable,” he said. “Country’s perfectly quiet and well-policed. It’s never been safer.”

  “Exactly. She’d obviously made the whole thing up. That’s why I asked if she’d had a breakdown. She must be one of those hysterical girls who say curates are in love with them, or that doctors assault them. She may give us a lot of trouble.”

  “Oh, I expect she’ll calm down,” said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones optimistically. “Where is she now?”

  “I left her to have a wash and brush up.” He hesitated. “She hasn’t got any luggage of any kind with her.”

  “Hasn’t she? That really is awkward. You don’t think she’ll expect me to lend her pyjamas? I’ve only got two pairs and one of them is badly torn.”

  “She’ll have to do the best she can until the lorry goes in next week. I must say I wonder what she can have been up to—all alone and out in the blue.”

  “Girls are amazing nowadays
,” said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones vaguely. “Turn up all over the place. Great nuisance when you want to get on with things. This place is far enough out, you’d think, to be free of visitors, but you’d be surprised how cars and people turn up when you can least do with them. Dear me, the men have stopped work. It must be lunchtime. We’d better go back to the house.”

  II

  Victoria, waiting in some trepidation, found Dr. Pauncefoot Jones wildly far from her imaginings. He was a small rotund man with a semi-bald head and a twinkling eye. To her utter amazement he came towards her with outstretched hands.

  “Well, well, Venetia—I mean Victoria,” he said. “This is quite a surprise. Got it into my head you weren’t arriving until next month. But I’m delighted to see you. Delighted. How’s Emerson? Not troubled too much by asthma, I hope?”

  Victoria rallied her scattered senses and said cautiously that the asthma hadn’t been too bad.

  “Wraps his throat up too much,” said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. “Great mistake. I told him so. All these academic fellows who stick around universities get far too absorbed in their health. Shouldn’t think about it—that’s the way to keep fit. Well, I hope you’ll settle down—my wife will be out next week—or the week after—she’s been seedy, you know. I really must find her letter. Richard tells me your luggage has gone astray. How are you going to manage? Can’t very well send the lorry in before next week?”

  “I expect I can manage until then,” said Victoria. “In fact I shall have to.”

  Dr. Pauncefoot Jones chuckled.

  “Richard and I can’t lend you much. Toothbrush will be all right. There are a dozen of them in our stores—and cotton wool if that’s any good to you and—let me see—talcum powder—and some spare socks and handerchiefs. Not much else, I’m afraid.”

  “I shall be all right,” said Victoria and smiled happily.

  “No signs of a cemetery for you,” Dr. Pauncefoot Jones warned her. “Some nice walls coming up—and quantities of potsherds from the far trenches. Might get some joins. We’ll keep you busy somehow or other. I forget if you do photography?”