They Came to Baghdad Read online

  “And then there is another street—also going down to a bridge and it is along there on the right. You ask for Mr. Betoun Evans, he is English Adviser there—very nice man. And his wife, she is very nice, too, she came here as Transport Sergeant during the war. Oh, she is very very nice.”

  “I don’t really want to go actually to the Museum,” said Victoria. “I want to find a place—a society—a kind of club called the Olive Branch.”

  “If you want olives,” said Marcus, “I give you beautiful olives—very fine quality. They keep them especially for me—for the Tio Hotel. You see, I send you some to your table tonight.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Victoria and escaped towards Rashid Street.

  “To the left,” Marcus shouted after her, “not to the right. But it is a long way to the Museum. You had better take a taxi.”

  “Would a taxi know where the Olive Branch was?”

  “No, they do not know where anything is! You say to the driver left, right, stop, straight on—just where you want to go.”

  “In that case, I might as well walk,” said Victoria.

  She reached Rashid Street and turned to the left.

  Baghdad was entirely unlike her idea of it. A crowded main thoroughfare thronged with people, cars hooting violently, people shouting, European goods for sale in the shop windows, hearty spitting all round her with prodigious throat clearing as a preliminary. No mysterious Eastern figures, most of the people wore tattered or shabby Western clothes, old army and air force tunics, the occasional shuffling black-robed and veiled figures were almost inconspicuous amongst the hybrid European styles of dress. Whining beggars came up to her—women with dirty babies in their arms. The pavement under her feet was uneven with occasional gaping holes.

  She pursued her way feeling suddenly strange and lost and far from home. Here was no glamour of travel, only confusion.

  She came at last to the Feisal Bridge, passed it and went on. In spite of herself she was intrigued by the curious mixture of things in the shop windows. Here were babies’ shoes and woollies, toothpaste and cosmetics, electric torches and china cups and saucers—all shown together. Slowly a kind of fascination came over her, the fascination of assorted merchandise coming from all over the world to meet the strange and varied wants of a mixed population.

  She found the Museum, but not the Olive Branch. To one accustomed to finding her way about London it seemed incredible that here was no one she could ask. She knew no Arabic. Those shopkeepers who spoke to her in English as she passed, pressing their wares, presented blank faces when she asked for direction to the Olive Branch.

  If one could only “ask a policeman,” but gazing at the policemen actively waving their arms, and blowing their whistles, she realized that here that would be no solution.

  She went into a bookshop with English books in the window, but a mention of the Olive Branch drew only a courteous shrug and shake of the head. Regrettably they had no idea at all.

  And then, as she walked along the street, a prodigious hammering and clanging came to her ears and peering down a long dim alley, she remembered that Mrs. Cardew Trench had said that the Olive Branch was near the Copper Bazaar. Here, at least, was the Copper Bazaar.

  Victoria plunged in, and for the next three-quarters of an hour she forgot the Olive Branch completely. The Copper Bazaar fascinated her. The blow-lamps, the melting metal, the whole business of craftsmanship came like a revelation to the little Cockney used only to finished products stacked up for sale. She wandered at random through the souk, passed out of the Copper Bazaar, came to the gay striped horse blankets, and the cotton quilted bedcovers. Here European merchandise took on a totally different guise, in the arched cool darkness it had the exotic quality of something come from overseas, something strange and rare. Bales of cheap printed cottons in gay colours made a feast for the eyes.

  Occasionally with a shout of Balek, Balek, a donkey or laden mule pushed past her, or men bearing great loads balanced on their backs. Little boys rushed up to her with trays slung round their necks.

  “See, lady, elastic, good elastic, English elastic. Comb, English comb?”

  The wares were thrust at her, close to her nose, with vehement urgings to buy. Victoria walked in a happy dream. This was really seeing the world. At every turn of the vast arched cool world of alleyways you came to something totally unexpected—an alley of tailors, sitting stitching, with smart pictures of European men’s tailoring; a line of watches and cheap jewellery. Bales of velvets and rich metal embroidered brocades, then a chance turn and you were walking down an alley of cheap and shoddy secondhand European clothes, quaint pathetic little faded jumpers and long straggly vests.

  Then every now and then there were glimpses into vast quiet courtyards open to the sky.

  She came to a vast vista of men’s trouserings, with cross-legged dignified merchants in turbans sitting in the middle of their little square recesses.

  “Balek!”

  A heavily-laden donkey coming up behind her made Victoria turn aside into a narrow alleyway open to the sky that turned and twisted through tall houses. Walking along it she came, quite by chance, to the object of her search. Through an opening she looked into a small square courtyard and at the farther side of it an open doorway with THE OLIVE BRANCH on a huge sign and a rather impossible looking plaster bird holding an unrecognizable twig in its beak.

  Joyously Victoria sped across the courtyard and in at the open door. She found herself in a dimly lit room with tables covered with books and periodicals and more books ranged round on shelves. It looked a little like a bookshop except that there were little groups of chairs arranged together here and there.

  Out of the dimness a young woman came up to Victoria and said in careful English:

  “What can I do for you, yes, please?”

  Victoria looked at her. She wore corduroy trousers and an orange flannel shirt and had black dank hair cut in a kind of depressed bob. So far she would have looked more suited to Bloomsbury, but her face was not Bloomsbury. It was a melancholy Levantine face with great sad dark eyes and a heavy nose.

  “This is—is this—is—is Dr. Rathbone here?”

  Maddening still not to know Edward’s surname! Even Mrs. Cardew Trench had called him Edward Thingummy.

  “Yes. Dr. Rathbone. The Olive Branch. You wish to join us? Yes? That will be very nice.”

  “Well, perhaps. I’d—can I see Dr. Rathbone, please?”

  The young woman smiled in a tired way.

  “We do not disturb. I have a form. I tell you all about everything. Then you sign your name. It is two dinars, please.”

  “I’m not sure yet that I want to join,” said Victoria, alarmed at the mention of two dinars. “I’d like to see Dr. Rathbone—or his secretary. His secretary would do.”

  “I explain. I explain to you everything. We all are friends here, friends together, friends for the future—reading very fine educational books—reciting poems each to other.”

  “Dr. Rathbone’s secretary,” said Victoria loudly and clearly. “He particularly told me to ask for him.”

  A kind of mulish sullenness came into the young woman’s face.

  “Not today,” she said. “I explain—”

  “Why not today? Isn’t he here? Isn’t Dr. Rathbone here?”

  “Yais, Dr. Rathbone is here. He is upstairs. We do not disturb.”

  A kind of Anglo-Saxon intolerance of foreigners swept over Victoria. Regrettably, instead of the Olive Branch creating friendly international feelings, it seemed to be having the opposite effect as far as she was concerned.

  “I have just arrived from England,” she said—and her accents were almost those of Mrs. Cardew Trench herself—“and I have a very important message for Dr. Rathbone which I must deliver to him personally. Please take me to him at once! I am sorry to disturb him, but I have got to see him.

  “At once!” she added, to clinch matters.

  Before an imperious Brit
on who means to get his or her own way, barriers nearly always fall. The young woman turned at once and led the way to the back of the room and up a staircase and along a gallery overlooking the courtyard. Here she stopped before a door and knocked. A man’s voice said, “Come in.”

  Victoria’s guide opened the door and motioned to Victoria to pass in.

  “It is a lady from En gland for you.”

  Victoria walked in.

  From behind a large desk covered with papers, a man got up to greet her.

  He was an imposing-looking elderly man of about sixty with a high domed forehead and white hair. Benevolence, kindliness and charm were the most apparent qualities of his personality. A producer of plays would have cast him without hesitation for the role of the great philanthropist.

  He greeted Victoria with a warm smile and an outstretched hand.

  “So you’ve just come out from England,” he said. “First visit East, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder what you think of it all…You must tell me sometime. Now let me see, have I met you before or not? I’m so shortsighted and you didn’t give your name.”

  “You don’t know me,” said Victoria, “but I’m a friend of Edward’s.”

  “A friend of Edward’s,” said Dr. Rathbone. “Why, that’s splendid. Does Edward know you’re in Baghdad?”

  “Not yet,” said Victoria.

  “Well, that will be a pleasant surprise for him when he gets back.”

  “Back?” said Victoria, her voice falling.

  “Yes, Edward’s at Basrah at the moment. I had to send him down there to see about some crates of books that have come out for us. There have been most vexatious delays in the Customs—we simply have not been able to get them cleared. The personal touch is the only thing, and Edward’s good at that sort of thing. He knows just when to charm and when to bully, and he won’t rest till he’s got the thing through. He’s a sticker. A fine quality in a young man. I think a lot of Edward.”

  His eyes twinkled.

  “But I don’t suppose I need to sing Edward’s praises to you, young lady?”

  “When—when will Edward be back from Basrah?” asked Victoria faintly.

  “Well—now that I couldn’t say, he won’t come back till he’s finished the job—and you can’t hurry things too much in this country. Tell me where you are staying and I’ll make sure he gets in touch with you as soon as he gets back.”

  “I was wondering—” Victoria spoke desperately, aware of her financial plight. “I was wondering if—if I could do some work here?”

  “Now that I do appreciate,” said Dr. Rathbone warmly. “Yes, of course you can. We need all the workers, all the help we can get. And especially English girls. Our work is going splendidly—quite splendidly—but there’s lots more to be done. Still, people are keen. I’ve got thirty voluntary helpers already—thirty—all of ’em as keen as mustard! If you’re really in earnest, you can be most valuable.”

  The word voluntary struck unpleasantly on Victoria’s ear.

  “I really wanted a paid position,” she said.

  “Oh dear!” Dr. Rathbone’s face fell. “That’s rather more difficult. Our paid staff is very small—and for the moment, with the voluntary help, it’s quite adequate.”

  “I can’t afford not to take a job,” explained Victoria. “I’m a competent shorthand typist,” she added without a blush.

  “I’m sure you’re competent, my dear young lady, you radiate competence, if I may say so. But with us it’s a question of £.s.d. But even if you take a job elsewhere, I hope you’ll help us in your spare time. Most of our workers have their own regular jobs. I’m sure you’ll find helping us really inspiring. There must be an end of all the savagery in the world, the wars, the misunderstandings, the suspicions. A common meeting ground, that’s what we all need. Drama, art, poetry—the great things of the spirit—no room there for petty jealousies or hatreds.”

  “N-no,” said Victoria doubtfully, recalling friends of hers who were actresses and artists and whose lives seemed to be obsessed by jealousy of the most trivial kind, and by hatreds of a peculiarly virulent intensity.

  “I’ve had A Midsummer Night’s Dream translated into forty different languages,” said Dr. Rathbone. “Forty different sets of young people all reacting to the same wonderful piece of literature. Young people—that’s the secret. I’ve no use for anybody but the young. Once the mind and spirit are muscle-bound, it’s too late. No, it’s the young who must get together. Take that girl downstairs, Catherine, the one who showed you up here. She’s a Syrian from Damascus. You and she are probably about the same age. Normally you’d never come together, you’d have nothing in common. But at the Olive Branch you and she and many many others, Russians, Jewesses, Iraqis, Turkish girls, Armenians, Egyptians, Persians, all meet and like each other and read the same books and discuss pictures and music (we have excellent lecturers who come out) all of you finding out and being excited by encountering a different point of view—why, that’s what the world is meant to be.”

  Victoria could not help thinking that Dr. Rathbone was slightly overoptimistic in assuming that all those divergent elements who were coming together would necessarily like each other. She and Catherine, for instance, had not liked each other at all. And Victoria strongly suspected that the more they saw of each other the greater their dislike would grow.

  “Edward’s splendid,” said Dr. Rathbone. “Gets on with everybody. Better perhaps, with the girls than with the young men. The men students out here are apt to be difficult at first—suspicious—almost hostile. But the girls adore Edward, they’ll do anything for him. He and Catherine get on particularly well.”

  “Indeed,” said Victoria coldly. Her dislike of Catherine grew even more intense.

  “Well,” said Dr. Rathbone, smiling, “come and help us if you can.”

  It was a dismissal. He pressed her hand warmly. Victoria went out of the room and down the stairs. Catherine was standing near the door talking to a girl who had just come in with a small suitcase in her hand. She was a good-looking dark girl, and just for a moment Victoria fancied that she had seen her before somewhere. But the girl looked at her without any sign of recognition. The two young women had been talking eagerly together in some language Victoria did not know. They stopped when she appeared and remained silent, staring at her. She walked past them to the door, forcing herself to say “Good-bye” politely to Catherine as she went out.

  She found her way out from the winding alley into Rashid Street and made her way slowly back to the hotel, her eyes unseeing of the throngs around her. She tried to keep her mind from dwelling on her own predicament (penniless in Baghdad) by fixing her mind on Dr. Rathbone and the general setup of the Olive Branch. Edward had had an idea in London that there was something “fishy” about his job. What was fishy? Dr. Rathbone? Or the Olive Branch itself?

  Victoria could hardly believe that there was anything fishy about Dr. Rathbone. He appeared to her to be one of those misguided enthusiasts who insist on seeing the world in their own idealistic manner, regardless of realities.

  What had Edward meant by fishy? He’d been very vague. Perhaps he didn’t really know himself.

  Could Dr. Rathbone be some kind of colossal fraud?

  Victoria, fresh from the soothing charm of his manner, shook her head. His manner had certainly changed, ever so slightly, at the idea of paying her a salary. He clearly preferred people to work for nothing.

  But that, thought Victoria, was a sign of common sense.

  Mr. Greenholtz, for instance, would have felt just the same.

  Twelve

  I

  Victoria arrived back at the Tio, rather footsore, to be hailed enthusiastically by Marcus who was sitting out on the grass terrace overlooking the river and talking to a thin rather shabby middle-aged man.

  “Come and have a drink with us, Miss Jones. Martini—sidecar? This is Mr. Dakin. Miss Jones from England. Now then, my dear, wh
at will you have?”

  Victoria said she would have a sidecar “and some of those lovely nuts?” she suggested hopefully, remembering that nuts were nutritious.

  “You like nuts. Jesus!” He gave the order in rapid Arabic. Mr. Dakin said in a sad voice that he would have a lemonade.

  “Ah,” cried Marcus, “but that is ridiculous. Ah, here is Mrs. Cardew Trench. You know Mr. Dakin? What will you have?”

  “Gin and lime,” said Mrs. Cardew Trench, nodding to Dakin in an offhand manner. “You look hot,” she added to Victoria.

  “I’ve been walking round seeing the sights.”

  When the drinks came, Victoria ate a large plateful of pistachio nuts and also some potato chips.

  Presently, a short thickset man came up the steps and the hospitable Marcus hailed him in his turn. He was introduced to Victoria as Captain Crosbie, and by the way his slightly protuberant eyes goggled at her, Victoria gathered that he was susceptible to feminine charm.

  “Just come out?” he asked her.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Thought I hadn’t seen you around.”

  “She is very nice and beautiful, is she not?” said Marcus joyfully. “Oh yes, it is very nice to have Miss Victoria. I will give a party for her—a very nice party.”

  “With baby chickens?” said Victoria hopefully.

  “Yes, yes—and foie gras—Strasburg foie gras—and perhaps caviare—and then we have a dish with fish—very nice—a fish from the Tigris, but all with sauce and mushrooms. And then there is a turkey stuffed in the way we have it at my home—with rice and raisins and spice—and all cooked so! Oh it is very good—but you must eat very much of it—not just a tiny spoonful. Or if you like it better you shall have a steak—a really big steak and tender—I see to it. We will have a long dinner that goes on for hours. It will be very nice. I do not eat myself—I only drink.”

  “That will be lovely,” said Victoria in a faint voice. The description of these viands made her feel quite giddy with hunger. She wondered if Marcus really meant to give this party and if so, how soon it could possibly happen.