They Came to Baghdad Read online

  “Twenty minutes, half an hour. I go and do it now.”

  With a fatherly smile he withdrew. Victoria sat down on the bed and passed an experimental hand over her hair. It felt clogged with dust and her face was sore and gritty. She looked at herself in the glass. The dust had changed her hair from black to a strange reddish brown. She pulled aside a corner of the curtain and looked out on to a wide balcony which gave on the river. But there was nothing to be seen of the Tigris but a thick yellow haze. A prey to deep depression, Victoria said to herself: “What a hateful place.”

  Then rousing herself, she stepped across the landing and tapped on Mrs. Clipp’s door. Prolonged and active ministrations would be required of her here before she could attend to her own cleansing and rehabilitation.

  II

  After a bath, lunch and a prolonged nap, Victoria stepped out from her bedroom onto the balcony and gazed with approval across the Tigris. The dust storm had subsided. Instead of a yellow haze, a pale clear light was appearing. Across the river was a delicate silhouette of palm trees and irregularly placed houses.

  Voices came up to Victoria from the garden below. She stepped to the edge of the balcony and looked over.

  Mrs. Hamilton Clipp, that indefatigable talker and friendly soul, had struck up an acquaintanceship with an Englishwoman—one of those weather-beaten Englishwomen of indeterminate age who can always be found in any foreign city.

  “—and whatever I’d have done without her, I really don’t know,” Mrs. Clipp was saying. “She’s just the sweetest girl you can imagine. And very well connected. A niece of the Bishop of Llangow.”

  “Bishop of who?”

  “Why, Llangow, I think it was.”

  “Nonsense, there’s no such person,” said the other.

  Victoria frowned. She recognized the type of County Englishwoman who is unlikely to be taken in by the mention of spurious Bishops.

  “Why, then, perhaps I got the name wrong,” Mrs. Clipp said doubtfully.

  “But,” she resumed, “she certainly is a very charming and competent girl.”

  The other said “Ha!” in a noncommittal manner.

  Victoria resolved to give this lady as wide a berth as possible. Something told her that inventing stories to satisfy that kind of woman was no easy job.

  Victoria went back into her room, sat on the bed, and gave herself up to speculation on her present position.

  She was staying at the Tio Hotel, which was, she was fairly sure, not at all inexpensive. She had four pounds seventeen shillings in her possession. She had eaten a hearty lunch for which she had not yet paid and for which Mrs. Clipp was under no obligation to pay. Travelling expenses to Baghdad were what Mrs. Clipp had offered. The bargain was completed. Victoria had got to Baghdad. Mrs. Hamilton Clipp had received the skilled attention of a Bishop’s niece, an ex-hospital nurse, and competent secretary. All that was over, to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. Mrs. Hamilton Clipp would depart on the evening train to Kirkuk—and that was that. Victoria toyed hopefully with the idea that Mrs. Clipp might press upon her a parting present in the form of hard cash, but abandoned it reluctantly as unlikely. Mrs. Clipp could have no idea that Victoria was in really dire financial straits.

  What then must Victoria do? The answer came immediately. Find Edward, of course.

  With a sense of annoyance she realized that she was quite unaware of Edward’s last name. Edward—Baghdad. Very much, Victoria reflected, like the Saracen maid who arrived in En gland knowing only the name of her lover “Gilbert” and “England.” A romantic story—but certainly inconvenient. True that in En gland at the time of the Crusades, nobody, Victoria thought, had had any surname at all. On the other hand England was larger than Baghdad. Still, En gland was sparsely populated then.

  Victoria wrenched her thoughts away from these interesting speculations and returned to hard facts. She must find Edward immediately and Edward must find her a job. Also immediately.

  She did not know Edward’s last name, but he had come to Baghdad as the secretary of a Dr. Rathbone and presumably Dr. Rathbone was a man of importance.

  Victoria powdered her nose and patted her hair and started down the stairs in search of information.

  The beaming Marcus, passing through the hall of his establishment, hailed her with delight.

  “Ah, it is Miss Jones, you will come with me and have a drink, will you not, my dear? I like very much English ladies. All the English ladies in Baghdad, they are my friends. Everyone is very happy in my hotel. Come, we will go into the bar.”

  Victoria, not at all averse to free hospitality, consented gladly.

  III

  Sitting on a stool and drinking gin, she began her search for information.

  “Do you know a Dr. Rathbone who has just come to Baghdad?” she asked.

  “I know everyone in Baghdad,” said Marcus Tio joyfully. “And everybody knows Marcus. That is true, what I am telling you. Oh! I have many many friends.”

  “I’m sure you have,” said Victoria. “Do you know Dr. Rathbone?”

  “Last week I have the Air Marshal commanding all Middle East passing through. He says to me, ‘Marcus, you villain, I haven’t seen you since ’46. You haven’t grown any thinner.’ Oh he is very nice man. I like him very much.”

  “What about Dr. Rathbone? Is he a nice man?”

  “I like, you know, people who can enjoy themselves. I do not like sour faces. I like people to be gay and young and charming—like you. He says to me, that Air Marshal, ‘Marcus, you like too much the women.’ But I say to him: ‘No, my trouble is I like too much Marcus…’” Marcus roared with laughter, breaking off to call out, “Jesus—Jesus!”

  Victoria looked startled, but it appeared that Jesus was the barman’s Christian name. Victoria felt again that the East was an odd place.

  “Another gin and orange, and whisky,” Marcus commanded.

  “I don’t think I—”

  “Yes, yes, you will—they are very very weak.”

  “About Dr. Rathbone,” persisted Victoria.

  “That Mrs. Hamilton Clipp—what an odd name—with whom you arrive, she is American—is she not? I like also American people but I like English best. American peoples, they look always very worried. But sometimes, yes, they are good sports. Mr. Summers—you know him?—he drink so much when he come to Baghdad, he go to sleep for three days and not wake up. It is too much that. It is not nice.”

  “Please, do help me,” said Victoria.

  Marcus looked surprised.

  “But of course I help you. I always help my friends. You tell me what you want—and at once it shall be done. Special steak—or turkey cooked very nice with rice and raisins and herbs—or little baby chickens.”

  “I don’t want baby chickens,” said Victoria. “At least not now,” she added prudently. “I want to find this Dr. Rathbone. Dr. Rathbone. He’s just arrived in Baghdad. With a—with a—secretary.”

  “I do not know,” said Marcus. “He does not stay at the Tio.”

  The implication was clearly that anyone who did not stay at the Tio did not exist for Marcus.

  “But there are other hotels,” persisted Victoria, “or perhaps he has a house?”

  “Oh yes, there are other hotels. Babylonian Palace, Sennacherib, Zobeide Hotel. They are good hotels, yes, but they are not like the Tio.”

  “I’m sure they’re not,” Victoria assured him. “But you don’t know if Dr. Rathbone is staying at one of them? There is some kind of society he runs—something to do with culture—and books.”

  Marcus became quite serious at the mention of culture.

  “It is what we need,” he said. “There must be much culture. Art and music, it is very nice, very nice indeed. I like violin sonatas myself if it is not very long.”

  Whilst thoroughly agreeing with him, especially in regard to the end of the speech, Victoria realized that she was not getting any nearer to her objective. Conversation with Marcus was, she thought, most
entertaining, and Marcus was a charming person in his childlike enthusiasm for life, but conversation with him reminded her of Alice in Wonderland’s endeavours to find a path that led to the hill. Every topic found them returning to the point of departure—Marcus!

  She refused another drink and rose sadly to her feet. She felt slightly giddy. The cocktails had been anything but weak. She went out from the bar on to the terrace outside and stood by the railing looking across the river, when somebody spoke from behind her.

  “Excuse me, but you’d better go and put a coat on. Dare say it seems like summer to you coming out from England, but it gets very cold about sundown.”

  It was the Englishwoman who had been talking to Mrs. Clipp earlier. She had the hoarse voice of one who is in the habit of training and calling to sporting dogs. She wore a fur coat, had a rug over her knees and was sipping a whisky and soda.

  “Oh thank you,” said Victoria and was about to escape hurriedly when her intentions were defeated.

  “I must introduce myself. I’m Mrs. Cardew Trench.” (The implication was clearly: one of the Cardew Trenches.) “I believe you arrived with Mrs.—what’s her name—Hamilton Clipp.”

  “Yes,” said Victoria, “I did.”

  “She told me you were the niece of the Bishop of Llangow.”

  Victoria rallied.

  “Did she really?” she inquired with the correct trace of light amusement.

  “Got it wrong, I suppose?”

  Victoria smiled.

  “Americans are bound to get some of our names wrong. It does sound a little like Llangow. My uncle,” said Victoria improvising rapidly, “is the Bishop of Languao?”

  “Languao?”

  “Yes—in the Pacific Archipelago. He’s a Colonial Bishop, of course.”

  “Oh, a Colonial Bishop,” said Mrs. Cardew Trench, her voice falling at least three semitones.

  As Victoria had anticipated: Mrs. Cardew Trench was magnificently unaware of Colonial Bishops.

  “That explains it,” she added.

  Victoria thought with pride that it explained it very well for a spur of the moment plunge!

  “And what are you doing out here?” asked Mrs. Cardew Trench with that inexorable geniality that conceals natural curiosity of disposition.

  “Looking for a young man I talked to for a few moments in a public square in London,” was hardly an answer that Victoria could give. She said, remembering the newspaper paragraph she had read, and her statement to Mrs. Clipp:

  “I’m joining my uncle, Dr. Pauncefoot Jones.”

  “Oh, so that’s who you are.” Mrs. Cardew Trench was clearly delighted at having “placed” Victoria. “He’s a charming little man, though a bit absentminded—still I suppose that’s only to be expected. Heard him lecture last year in London—excellent delivery—couldn’t understand a word of what it was all about, though. Yes, he passed through Baghdad about a fortnight ago. I think he mentioned some girls were coming out later in the season.”

  Hurriedly, having established her status, Victoria chipped in with a question.

  “Do you know if Dr. Rathbone is out here?” she asked.

  “Just come out,” said Mrs. Cardew Trench. “I believe they’ve asked him to give a lecture at the Institute next Thursday. On ‘World Relationships and Brotherhood’—or something like that. All nonsense if you ask me. The more you try to get people together, the more suspicious they get of each other. All this poetry and music and translating Shakespeare and Wordsworth into Arabic and Chinese and Hindustani. ‘A primrose by the river’s brim,’ etc…what’s the good of that to people who’ve never seen a primrose?”

  “Where is he staying, do you know?”

  “At the Babylonian Palace Hotel, I believe. But his headquarters are up near the Museum. The Olive Branch—ridiculous name. Full of young women in slacks with unwashed necks and spectacles.”

  “I know his secretary slightly,” said Victoria.

  “Oh yes, whatshisname Edward Thingummy—nice boy—too good for that long-haired racket—did well in the war, I hear. Still a job’s a job, I suppose. Nice-looking boy—those earnest young women are quite fluttered by him, I fancy.”

  A pang of devastating jealousy pierced Victoria.

  “The Olive Branch,” she said. “Where did you say it was?”

  “Up past the turning to the second bridge. One of the turnings off Rashid Street—tucked away rather. Not far from the Copper Bazaar.”

  “And how’s Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones?” continued Mrs. Cardew Trench. “Coming out soon? I hear she’s been in poor health?”

  But having got the information she wanted, Victoria was taking no more risks in invention. She glanced at her wristwatch and uttered an exclamation.

  “Oh dear—I promised to wake Mrs. Clipp at half past six and help her to prepare for the journey. I must fly.”

  The excuse was true enough, though Victoria had substituted half past six for seven o’clock. She hurried upstairs quite exhilarated. Tomorrow she would get in touch with Edward at the Olive Branch. Earnest young women with unwashed necks, indeed! They sounded most unattractive…Still, Victoria reflected uneasily that men are less critical of dingy necks than middle-aged hygienic Englishwomen are—especially if the owners of the said necks were gazing with large eyes of admiration and adoration at the male subject in question.

  The evening passed rapidly. Victoria had an early meal in the dining room with Mrs. Hamilton Clipp, the latter talking nineteen to the dozen on every subject under the sun. She urged Victoria to come and pay a visit later—and Victoria noted down the address carefully, because, after all, one never knew…She accompanied Mrs. Clipp to Baghdad North Station, saw her safely ensconced in her compartment and was introduced to an acquaintance also travelling to Kirkuk who would assist Mrs. Clipp with her toilet on the following morning.

  The engine uttered loud melancholy screams like a soul in distress, Mrs. Clipp thrust a thick envelope into Victoria’s hand, said: “Just a little remembrance, Miss Jones, of our very pleasant companionship which I hope you will accept with my most grateful thanks.”

  Victoria said: “But it’s really too kind of you, Mrs. Clipp,” in a delighted voice, the engine gave a fourth and final supreme banshee wail of anguish and the train pulled slowly out of the station.

  Victoria took a taxi from the station back to the hotel since she had not the faintest idea how to get back to it any other way and there did not seem anyone about whom she could ask.

  On her return to the Tio, she ran up to her room and eagerly opened the envelope. Inside were a couple of pairs of nylon stockings.

  Victoria at any other moment would have been enchanted—nylon stockings having been usually beyond the reach of her purse. At the moment, however, hard cash was what she had been hoping for. Mrs. Clipp, however had been far too delicate to think of giving her a five-dinar note. Victoria wished heartily that she had not been quite so delicate.

  However, tomorrow there would be Edward. Victoria undressed, got into bed and in five minutes was fast asleep, dreaming that she was waiting at an aerodrome for Edward, but that he was held back from joining her by a spectacled girl who clasped him firmly round the neck while the aeroplane began slowly to move away….

  Eleven

  Victoria awoke to a morning of vivid sunshine. Having dressed, she went out onto the wide balcony outside her window. Sitting in a chair a little way along with his back to her was a man with curling grey hair growing down onto a muscular red brown neck. When the man turned his head sideways Victoria recognized, with a distinct feeling of surprise, Sir Rupert Crofton Lee. Why she should be so surprised she could hardly have said. Perhaps because she had assumed as a matter of course that a VIP such as Sir Rupert would have been staying at the Embassy and not at a hotel. Nevertheless there he was, staring at the Tigris with a kind of concentrated intensity. She noticed, even, that he had a pair of field glasses slung over the side of his chair. Possibly, she thought, he studied birds.
r />   A young man whom Victoria had at one time thought attractive had been a bird enthusiast, and she had accompanied him on several weekend tramps, to be made to stand as though paralysed in wet woods and icy winds, for what seemed like hours, to be at last told in tones of ecstasy to look through the glasses at some drab-looking bird on a remote twig which in appearance as far as Victoria could see, compared unfavourably in bird appeal with a common robin or chaffinch.

  Victoria made her way downstairs, encountering Marcus Tio on the terrace between the two buildings of the hotel.

  “I see you’ve got Sir Rupert Crofton Lee staying here,” she said.

  “Oh yes,” said Marcus, beaming, “he is a nice man—a very nice man.”

  “Do you know him well?”

  “No, this is the first time I see him. Mr. Shrivenham of the British Embassy bring him here last night. Mr. Shrivenham, he is very nice man, too. I know him very well.”

  Proceeding in to breakfast Victoria wondered if there was anyone whom Marcus would not consider a very nice man. He appeared to exercise a wide charity.

  After breakfast, Victoria started forth in search of the Olive Branch.

  A London-bred Cockney, she had no idea of the difficulties involved in finding any particular place in a city such as Baghdad until she had started on her quest.

  Coming across Marcus again on her way out, she asked him to direct her to the Museum.

  “It is a very nice museum,” said Marcus, beaming. “Yes. Full of interesting, very very old things. Not that I have been there myself. But I have friends, archaeological friends, who stay here always when they come through Baghdad. Mr. Baker—Mr. Richard Baker, you know him? And Professor Kalzman? And Dr. Pauncefoot Jones—and Mr. and Mrs. McIntyre—they all come to the Tio. They are my friends. And they tell me about what is in the Museum. Very very interesting.”

  “Where is it, and how do I get there?”

  “You go straight along Rashid Street—a long way—past the turn to the Feisal Bridge and past Bank Street—you know Bank Street?”

  “I don’t know anything,” said Victoria.