They Came to Baghdad (4 page)

I

I
t says a good deal for the buoyancy of Victoria's temperament that the possibility of failing to attain her objective did not for a moment occur to her. Not for her the lines about ships that pass in the night. It was certainly unfortunate that when she had—well—frankly—fallen for an attractive young man, that that young man should prove to be just on the verge of departure to a place distant some three thousand miles. He might so easily have been going to Aberdeen or Brussels, or even Birmingham.

That it should be Baghdad, thought Victoria, was just her luck! Nevertheless, difficult though it might be, she intended to get to Baghdad somehow or other. Victoria walked purposefully along Tottenham Court Road evolving ways and means. Baghdad. What went on in Baghdad? According to Edward: “Culture.” Could she, in some way, play up culture? Unesco? Unesco was always sending people here, there and everywhere, sometimes to the most delectable places. But these were usually, Victoria reflected, superior
young women with university degrees who had got into the racket early on.

Victoria, deciding that first things came first, finally bent her steps to a travel agency, and there made her inquiries. There was no difficulty, it seemed, in travelling to Baghdad. You could go by air, by long sea to Basrah, by train to Marseilles and by boat to Beirut and across the desert by car. You could go via Egypt. You could go all the way by train if you were determined to do so, but visas were at present difficult and uncertain and were apt to have actually expired by the time you received them. Baghdad was in the sterling area and money therefore presented no difficulties. Not, that is to say, in the clerk's meaning of the word. What it all boiled down to was that there was no difficulty whatsoever in getting to Baghdad so long as you had between sixty and a hundred pounds in cash.

As Victoria had at this moment three pounds ten (less ninepence), an extra twelve shillings, and five pounds in the PO Savings Bank, the simple and straightforward way was out of the question.

She made tentative queries as to a job as air hostess or stewardess, but these, she gathered, were highly coveted posts for which there was a waiting list.

Victoria next visited St. Guildric's Agency where Miss Spenser, sitting behind her efficient desk, welcomed her as one of those who were destined to pass through the office with reasonable frequency.

“Dear me, Miss Jones, not out of a post
again.
I really hoped this last one—”

“Quite impossible,” said Victoria firmly. “I really couldn't begin to tell you what I had to put up with.”

A pleasurable flush rose in Miss Spenser's pallid cheek.

“Not—” she began—“I do hope not—He didn't seem to me really that sort of man—but of course he
is
a trifle gross—I do hope—”

“It's quite all right,” said Victoria. She conjured up a pale brave smile. “I can take care of myself.”

“Oh, of course, but it's the
unpleasantness.
”

“Yes,” said Victoria. “It
is
unpleasant. However—” She smiled bravely again.

Miss Spenser consulted her books.

“The St. Leonard's Assistance to Unmarried Mothers want a typist,” said Miss Spenser. “Of course, they don't pay very much—”

“Is there any chance,” asked Victoria brusquely, “of a post in Baghdad?”

“In Baghdad?” said Miss Spenser in lively astonishment.

Victoria saw she might as well have said in Kamchatka or at the South Pole.

“I should very much like to get to Baghdad,” said Victoria.

“I hardly think—in a secretary's post you mean?”

“Anyhow,” said Victoria. “As a nurse or a cook, or looking after a lunatic. Anyway at all.”

Miss Spenser shook her head.

“I'm afraid I can't hold out much hope. There was a lady in yesterday with two little girls who was offering a passage to Australia.”

Victoria waved away Australia.

She rose. “If you did hear of anything. Just the fare out—that's all I need.” She met the curiosity in the other woman's eye by explaining—“I've got—er—relations out there. And I understand there are plenty of well-paid jobs. But of course, one has to get there first.

“Yes,” repeated Victoria to herself as she walked away from St. Guildric's Bureau. “One has to get there.”

It was an added annoyance to Victoria that, as is customary, when one has had one's attention suddenly focused on a particular name or subject, everything seemed to have suddenly conspired to force the thought of Baghdad onto her attention.

A brief paragraph in the evening paper she bought stated that Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, the well-known archaeologist, had started excavation on the ancient city of Murik, situated a hundred and twenty miles from Baghdad. An advertisement mentioned shipping lines to Basrah (and thence by train to Baghdad, Mosul, etc.). In the newspaper that lined her stocking drawer, a few lines of print about students in Baghdad leapt to her eyes.
The Thief of Baghdad
was on at the local cinema, and in the high-class highbrow bookshop into whose window she always gazed, a New Biography of Haroun el Rashid, Caliph of Baghdad, was prominently displayed.

The whole world, it seemed to her, had suddenly become Baghdad conscious. And until that afternoon at approximately 1:45 she had, for all intents and purposes never heard of Baghdad, and certainly never thought about it.

The prospects of getting there were unsatisfactory, but Victoria had no idea of giving up. She had a fertile brain and the optimistic outlook that if you want to do a thing there is always some way of doing it.

She employed the evening in drawing up a list of possible approaches. It ran:

 

Try Foreign Office?

Insert advertisement?

Try Iraq Legation?

What about date firms?

Ditto shipping firms?

British Council?

Selfridge's Information Bureau?

Citizen's Advice Bureau?

 

None of them, she was forced to admit, seemed very promising. She added to the list:

 

Somehow or other, get hold of a hundred pounds?

II

The intense mental efforts of concentration that Victoria had made overnight, and possibly the subconscious satisfaction at no longer having to be punctually in the office at nine a.m., made Victoria oversleep herself.

She awoke at five minutes past ten, and immediately jumped out of bed and began to dress. She was just passing a final comb through her rebellious dark hair when the telephone rang.

Victoria reached for the receiver.

A positively agitated Miss Spenser was at the other end.

“So glad to have caught you, my dear. Really the most amazing coincidence.”

“Yes?” cried Victoria.

“As I say, really a startling coincidence. A Mrs. Hamilton Clipp—travelling to Baghdad in three days' time—has broken her arm—needs someone to assist her on journey—I rang you up at
once. Of course I don't know if she has also applied to any other agencies—”

“I'm on my way,” said Victoria. “Where is she?”

“The Savoy.”

“And what's her silly name? Tripp?”

“Clipp, dear. Like a paper clip, but with two P's—I can't think why, but then she's an American,” ended Miss Spencer as if that explained everything.

“Mrs. Clipp at the Savoy.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Clipp. It was actually the husband who rang up.”

“You're an angel,” said Victoria. “Good-bye.”

She hurriedly brushed her suit and wished it were slightly less shabby, recombed her hair so as to make it seem less exuberant and more in keeping with the role of ministering angel and experienced traveller. Then she took out Mr. Greenholtz's recommendation and shook her head over it.

We must do better than that, said Victoria.

From a No. 19 bus, Victoria alighted at Green Park, and entered the Ritz Hotel. A quick glance over the shoulder of a woman reading in the bus had proved rewarding. Entering the writing room Victoria wrote herself some generous lines of praise from Lady Cynthia Bradbury who had been announced as having just left England for East Africa…
“excellent in illness,”
wrote Victoria, “
and most capable in every way.
…”

Leaving the Ritz she crossed the road and walked a short way up Albemarle Street until she came to Balderton's Hotel, renowned as the haunt of the higher clergy and of old-fashioned dowagers up from the country.

In less dashing handwriting, and making neat small Greek “E's, she wrote a recommendation from the Bishop of Llangow.

Thus equipped, Victoria caught a No. 9 bus and proceeded to the Savoy.

At the reception desk she asked for Mrs. Hamilton Clipp and gave her name as coming from St. Guildric's Agency. The clerk was just about to pull the telephone towards him when he paused, looked across, and said:

“That is Mr. Hamilton Clipp now.”

Mr. Hamilton Clipp was an immensely tall and very thin grey-haired American of kindly aspect and slow deliberate speech.

Victoria told him her name and mentioned the Agency.

“Why now, Miss Jones, you'd better come right up and see Mrs. Clipp. She is still in our suite. I fancy she's interviewing some other young lady, but she may have gone by now.”

Cold panic clutched at Victoria's heart.

Was it to be so near and yet so far?

They went up in the lift to the third floor.

As they walked along the deep carpeted corridor, a young woman came out of a door at the far end and came towards them. Victoria had a kind of hallucination that it was herself who was approaching. Possibly, she thought, because of the young woman's tailor-made suit that was so exactly what she would have liked to be wearing herself. “And it would fit me too. I'm just her size. How I'd like to tear it off her,” thought Victoria with a reversion to primitive female savagery.

The young woman passed them. A small velvet hat perched on the side of her fair hair partially hid her face, but Mr. Hamilton Clipp turned to look after her with an air of surprise.

“Well now,” he said to himself. “Who'd have thought of that? Anna Scheele.”

He added in an explanatory way:

“Excuse me, Miss Jones. I was surprised to recognize a young lady whom I saw in New York only a week ago, secretary to one of our big international banks—”

He stopped as he spoke at a door in the corridor. The key was hanging in the lock and, with a brief tap, Mr. Hamilton Clipp opened the door and stood aside for Victoria to precede him into the room.

Mrs. Hamilton Clipp was sitting on a high-backed chair near the window and jumped up as they came in. She was a short birdlike sharp-eyed little woman. Her right arm was encased in plaster.

Her husband introduced Victoria.

“Why, it's all been most unfortunate,” exclaimed Mrs. Clipp breathlessly. “Here we were, with a full itinerary, and enjoying London and all our plans made and my passage booked. I'm going out to pay a visit to my married daughter in Iraq, Miss Jones. I've not seen her for nearly two years. And then what do I do but take a crash—as a matter of fact, it was actually in Westminster Abbey—down some stone steps—and there I was. They rushed me to hospital and they've set it, and all things considered it's not
too
uncomfortable—but there it is, I'm kind of helpless, and however I'd manage travelling, I don't know. And George here, is just tied up with business, and simply can't get away for at least another three weeks. He suggested that I should take a nurse along with me—but after all, once I'm out there I don't need a nurse hanging around, Sadie can do all that's necessary—and it means paying her fare back as well, and so I thought I'd ring up the agencies and see
if I couldn't find someone who'd be willing to come along just for the fare out.”

“I'm not
exactly
a nurse,” said Victoria, managing to imply that that
was
practically what she was. “But I've had a good deal of experience of nursing.” She produced the first testimonial. “I was with Lady Cynthia Bradbury for over a year. And if you should want any correspondence or secretarial work done, I acted as my uncle's secretary for some months. My uncle,” said Victoria modestly, “is the Bishop of Llangow.”

“So your uncle's a Bishop. Dear me, how interesting.”

Both the Hamilton Clipps were, Victoria thought, decidedly impressed. (And so they should be after the trouble she had taken!)

Mrs. Hamilton Clipp handed the two testimonials to her husband.

“It really seems quite wonderful,” she said reverently. “Quite providential. It's an answer to prayer.”

Which, indeed, was exactly what it was, thought Victoria.

“You're taking up a position of some kind out there? Or joining a relative?” asked Mrs. Hamilton Clipp.

In the flurry of manufacturing testimonials, Victoria had quite forgotten that she might have to account for her reasons for travelling to Baghdad. Caught unprepared, she had to improvise rapidly. The paragraph she had read yesterday came to her mind.

“I'm joining my uncle out there. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones,” she explained.

“Indeed? The archaeologist?”

“Yes.” For one moment Victoria wondered whether she were perhaps endowing herself with too many distinguished uncles. “I'm terribly interested in his work, but of course I've no special quali
fications so it was out of the question for the Expedition to pay my fare out. They're not too well off for funds. But if I can get out on my own, I can join them and make myself useful.”

“It must be very interesting work,” said Mr. Hamilton Clipp, “and Mesopotamia is certainly a great field for archaeology.”

“I'm afraid,” said Victoria, turning to Mrs. Clipp, “that my uncle the Bishop is up in Scotland at this moment. But I can give you his secretary's telephone number. She is staying in London at the moment. Pimlico 87693—one of the Fulham Palace extensions. She'll be there anytime from (Victoria's eyes slid to the clock on the mantelpiece) 11:30 onwards if you would like to ring her up and ask about me.”