They Came to Baghdad

Victoria met his gaze with an innocent stare.

‘Discreet,’ she said gently.

Remembering sundry letters taken down and typed by Victoria, Mr Greenholtz decided that prudence was the better part of rancour.

He snatched back the paper, tore it up and indited a fresh one.

Miss Jones has been with me for two months as a shorthand typist. She is leaving owing to redundancy of office staff.

‘How about that?’

‘It could be better,’ said Victoria, ‘but it will do.’

So it was that with a week’s salary (less ninepence) in her bag Victoria was sitting in meditation upon a bench in FitzJames Gardens which are a triangular plantation of rather sad shrubs flanking a church and overlooked by a tall warehouse.

It was Victoria’s habit on any day when it was not actually raining to purchase one cheese, and one lettuce and tomato sandwich at a milk-bar and eat this simple lunch in these pseudo-rural surroundings.

Today, as she munched meditatively, she was telling herself, not for the first time, that there was a time and place for everything—and that the office was definitely not the place for imitations of the boss’s wife. She must, in future, curb the natural exuberance that led her to brighten up the performance of a dull job. In the meantime, she was free of Greenholtz, Simmons and Lederbetter, and the prospect of obtaining a situation elsewhere filled her with pleasurable anticipation. Victoria was always delighted when she was about to take up a new job. One never knew, she always felt, what might happen.

She had just distributed the last crumb of bread to three attentive sparrows who immediately fought each other with fury for it, when she became aware of a young man sitting at the other end of the seat. Victoria had noticed him vaguely already, but her mind full of good resolutions for the future, she had not observed him closely until now. What she now saw (out of the corner of her eye) she liked very much. He was a good-looking young man, cherubically fair, but with a firm chin and extremely blue eyes which had been, she rather imagined, examining her with covert admiration for some time.

Victoria had no inhibitions about making friends with strange young men in public places. She considered herself an excellent judge of character and well able to check any manifestations of freshness on the part of unattached males.

She proceeded to smile frankly at him and the young man responded like a marionette when you pull the string.

‘Hallo,’ said the young man. ‘Nice place this. Do you often come here?’

‘Nearly every day.’

‘Just my luck that I never came here before. Was that your lunch you were eating?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think you eat enough. I’d be starving if I only had two sandwiches. What about coming along and having a sausage at the SPO in Tottenham Court Road?’

‘No thanks. I’m quite all right. I couldn’t eat any more now.’

She rather expected that he would say: ‘Another day,’ but he did not. He merely sighed—then he said:

‘My name’s Edward, what’s yours?’

‘Victoria.’

‘Why did your people want to call you after a railway station?’

‘Victoria isn’t only a railway station,’ Miss Jones pointed out. ‘There’s Queen Victoria as well.’

‘Mm yes. What’s your other name?’

‘Jones.’

‘Victoria Jones,’ said Edward, trying it over on his tongue. He shook his head. ‘They don’t go together.’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Victoria with feeling. ‘If I were Jenny it would be rather nice—Jenny Jones. But Victoria needs something with a bit more class to it. Victoria Sackville-West for instance. That’s the kind of thing one needs. Something to roll round the mouth.’

‘You could tack something on to the Jones,’ said Edward with sympathetic interest.

‘Bedford Jones.’

‘Carisbrooke Jones.’

‘St Clair Jones.’

‘Lonsdale Jones.’

This agreeable game was interrupted by Edward’s glancing at his watch and uttering a horrified ejaculation.

‘I must tear back to my blinking boss—er—what about you?’

‘I’m out of a job. I was sacked this morning.’

‘Oh I say, I am sorry,’ said Edward with real concern.

‘Well, don’t waste sympathy, because I’m not sorry at all. For one thing, I’ll easily get another job, and besides that, it was really rather fun.’

And delaying Edward’s return to duty still further, she gave him a spirited rendering of this morning’s scene, re-enacting her impersonation of Mrs Greenholtz to Edward’s immense enjoyment.

‘You really are marvellous, Victoria,’ he said. ‘You ought to be on the stage.’

Victoria accepted this tribute with a gratified smile and remarked that Edward had better be running along if he didn’t want to get the sack himself.

‘Yes—and I shouldn’t get another job as easily as you will. It must be wonderful to be a good shorthand typist,’ said Edward with envy in his voice.

‘Well, actually I’m not a good shorthand typist,’ Victoria admitted frankly, ‘but fortunately even the lousiest of shorthand typists can get some sort of a job nowadays—at any rate an educational or charitable one—they can’t afford to pay much and so they get people like me. I prefer the learned type of job best. These scientific names and terms are so frightful anyway that if you can’t spell them properly it doesn’t really shame you because nobody could. What’s your job? I suppose you’re out of one of the services. RAF?’

‘Good guess.’

‘Fighter pilot?’

‘Right again. They’re awfully decent about getting us jobs and all that, but you see, the trouble is, that we’re not particularly brainy. I mean one didn’t need to be brainy in the RAF. They put me in an office with a lot of files and figures and some thinking to do and I just folded up. The whole thing seemed utterly purposeless anyway. But there it is. It gets you down a bit to know that you’re absolutely no good.’

Victoria nodded sympathetically—Edward went on bitterly:

‘Out of touch. Not in the picture any more. It was all right during the war—one could keep one’s end up all right—I got the DFC for instance—but now—well, I might as well write myself off the map.’

‘But there ought to be—’

Victoria broke off. She felt unable to put into words her conviction that those qualities that brought a DFC to their owner should somewhere have their appointed place in the world of 1950.

‘It’s got me down, rather,’ said Edward. ‘Being no good at anything, I mean. Well—I’d better be pushing off—I say—would you mind—would it be most awful cheek—if I only could—’

As Victoria opened surprised eyes, stammering and blushing, Edward produced a small camera.

‘I would like so awfully to have a snapshot of you. You see, I’m going to Baghdad tomorrow.’

‘To Baghdad?’ exclaimed Victoria with lively disappointment.

‘Yes. I mean I wish I wasn’t—now. Earlier this morning I was quite bucked about it—it’s why I took this job really—to get out of this country.’

‘What sort of job is it?’

‘Pretty awful. Culture—poetry, all that sort of thing. A Dr Rathbone’s my boss. Strings of letters after his name, peers at you soulfully through pince-nez. He’s terrifically keen on uplift and spreading it far and wide. He opens bookshops in remote places—he’s starting one in Baghdad. He gets Shakespeare’s and Milton’s works translated into Arabic and Kurdish and Persian and Armenian and has them all on tap. Silly, I think, because you’ve got the British Council doing much the same thing all over the place. Still, there it is. It gives me a job so I oughtn’t to complain.’

‘What do you actually do?’ asked Victoria.

‘Well, really it boils down to being the old boy’s personal Yes-man and Dogsbody. Buy the tickets, make the reservations, fill up the passport forms, check the packing of all the horrid little poetic manuals, run round here, there, and everywhere. Then, when we get out there I’m supposed to fraternize—kind of glorified youth movement—all nations together in a united drive for uplift.’ Edward’s tone became more and more melancholy. ‘Frankly, it’s pretty ghastly, isn’t it?’

Victoria was unable to administer much comfort.

‘So you see,’ said Edward, ‘if you wouldn’t mind awfully—one sideways and one looking right at me—oh I say, that’s wonderful—’

The camera clicked twice and Victoria showed that purring complacence displayed by young women who know they have made an impression on an attractive member of the opposite sex.

‘But it’s pretty foul really, having to go off just when I’ve met you,’ said Edward. ‘I’ve half a mind to chuck it—but I suppose I couldn’t do that at the last moment—not after all those ghastly forms and visas and everything. Wouldn’t be a very good show, what?’

‘It mayn’t turn out as bad as you think,’ said Victoria consolingly.

‘N-no,’ said Edward doubtfully. ‘The funny thing is,’ he added, ‘that I’ve got a feeling there’s something fishy somewhere.’

‘Fishy?’

‘Yes. Bogus. Don’t ask me why. I haven’t any reason. Sort of feeling one gets sometimes. Had it once about my port oil. Began fussing about the damned thing and sure enough there was a washer wedged in the spare gear pump.’

The technical terms in which this was couched made it quite unintelligible to Victoria, but she got the main idea.

‘You think he’s bogus—Rathbone?’

‘Don’t see how he can be. I mean he’s frightfully respectable and learned and belongs to all these societies—and sort of hob-nobs with Archbishops and Principals of Colleges. No, it’s just a feeling—well, time will show. So long. I wish you were coming, too.’

‘So do I,’ said Victoria.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Go round to St Guildric’s Agency in Gower Street and look for another job,’ said Victoria gloomily.

‘Goodbye, Victoria. Partir, say mourir un peu,’ added Edward with a very British accent. ‘These French johnnies know their stuff. Our English chaps just maunder on about parting being a sweet sorrow—silly asses.’

‘Goodbye, Edward, good luck.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever think about me again.’

‘Yes, I shall.’

‘You’re absolutely different from any girl I’ve ever seen before—I only wish—’ The clock chimed a quarter, and Edward said, ‘Oh hell—I must fly—’

Retreating rapidly, he was swallowed up by the great maw of London. Victoria remaining behind on her seat absorbed in meditation was conscious of two distinct streams of thought.

One dealt with the theme of Romeo and Juliet. She and Edward, she felt, were somewhat in the position of that unhappy couple, although perhaps Romeo and Juliet had expressed their feelings in rather more high-class language. But the position, Victoria thought, was the same. Meeting, instant attraction—frustration—two fond hearts thrust asunder. A remembrance of a rhyme once frequently recited by her old nurse came to her mind:

Jumbo said to Alice I love you,

Alice said to Jumbo I don’t believe you do,

If you really loved me as you say you do

You wouldn’t go to America and leave me in the Zoo.

Substitute Baghdad for America and there you were!

Victoria rose at last, dusting crumbs from her lap, and walked briskly out of FitzJames Gardens in the direction of Gower Street. Victoria had come to two decisions: the first was that (like Juliet) she loved this young man, and meant to have him.

The second decision that Victoria had come to was that as Edward would shortly be in Baghdad, the only thing to do was for her to go to Baghdad also. What was now occupying her mind was how this could be accomplished. That it could be accomplished somehow or other, Victoria did not doubt. She was a young woman of optimism and force of character.

Parting is such sweet sorrow appealed to her as a sentiment no more than it did to Edward.

‘Somehow,’ said Victoria to herself, ‘I’ve got to get to Baghdad!’

CHAPTER 3

The Savoy Hotel welcomed Miss Anna Scheele with the empressément due to an old and valued client—they inquired after the health of Mr Morganthal—and assured her that if her suite was not to her liking she had only to say so—for Anna Scheele represented DOLLARS.

Miss Scheele bathed, dressed, made a telephone call to a Kensington number and then went down in the lift. She passed through the revolving doors and asked for a taxi. It drew up and she got in and directed it to Cartier’s in Bond Street.

As the taxi turned out of the Savoy approach into the Strand a little dark man who had been standing looking into a shop window suddenly glanced at his watch and hailed a taxi that was conveniently cruising past and which had been singularly blind to the hails of an agitated woman with parcels a moment or two previously.

The taxi followed along the Strand keeping the first taxi in sight. As they were both held up by the lights in going round Trafalgar Square, the man in the second taxi looked out of the left-hand window and made a slight gesture with his hand. A private car, which had been standing in the side street by the Admiralty Arch started its engine and swung into the stream of traffic behind the second taxi.

The traffic had started on again. As Anna Scheele’s taxi followed the stream of traffic going to the left into Pall Mall, the taxi containing the little dark man swung away to the right, continuing round Trafalgar Square. The private car, a grey Standard, was now close behind Anna Scheele. It contained two passengers, a fair rather vacant-looking young man at the wheel and a smartly dressed young woman beside him. The Standard followed Anna Scheele’s taxi along Piccadilly and up Bond Street. Here for a moment it paused by the kerb, and the young woman got out.

She called brightly and conventionally:

‘Thanks so much.’

The car went on. The young woman walked along glancing every now and again into a window. A block held up the traffic. The young woman passed both the Standard and Anna Scheele’s taxi. She arrived at Cartier’s and went inside.

Anna Scheele paid off her taxi and went into the jeweller’s. She spent some time looking at various pieces of jewellery. In the end she selected a sapphire and diamond ring. She wrote a cheque for it on a London bank. At the sight of the name on it, a little extra empressément came into the assistant’s manner.

‘Glad to see you in London again, Miss Scheele. Is Mr Morganthal over?’

‘No.’

‘I wondered. We have a very fine star sapphire here—I know he is interested in star sapphires. If you would care to see it?’

Miss Scheele expressed her willingness to see it, duly admired it and promised to mention it to Mr Morganthal.

She went out again into Bond Street, and the young woman who had been looking at clip earrings expressed herself as unable to make up her mind and emerged also.

The grey Standard car having turned to the left in Grafton Street and gone down to Piccadilly was just coming up Bond Street again. The young woman showed no signs of recognition.

Anna Scheele had turned into the Arcade. She entered a florist’s. She ordered three dozen long-stemmed roses, a bowl full of sweet big purple violets, a dozen sprays of white lilac, and a jar of mimosa. She gave an address for them to be sent.

‘That will be twelve pounds, eighteen shillings, madam.’

Anna Scheele paid and went out. The young woman who had just come in asked the price of a bunch of primroses but did not buy them.

Anna Scheele crossed Bond Street and went along Burlington Street and turned into Savile Row. Here she entered the establishment of one of those tailors who, whilst catering essentially for men, occasionally condescend to cut a suit for certain favoured members of the feminine sex.

Mr Bolford received Miss Scheele with the greeting accorded to a valued client, and the materials for a suit were considered.

‘Fortunately, I can give you our own export quality. When will you be returning to New York, Miss Scheele?’

‘On the twenty-third.’

‘We can manage that nicely. By the clipper, I presume?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how are things in America? They are very sadly here—very sadly indeed.’ Mr Bolford shook his head like a doctor describing a patient. ‘No heart in things, if you know what I mean. And no one coming along who takes any pride in a good job of work. D’you know who will cut your suit, Miss Scheele? Mr Lantwick—seventy-two years of age he is and he’s the only man I’ve got I can really trust to cut for our best people. All the others—’

Mr Bolford’s plump hands waved them away.

‘Quality,’ he said. ‘That’s what this country used to be renowned for. Quality! Nothing cheap, nothing flashy. When we try mass production we’re no good at it, and that’s a fact. That’s your country’s speciality, Miss Scheele. What we ought to stand for, and I say it again, is quality. Take time over things, and trouble, and turn out an article that no one in the world can beat. Now what day shall we say for the first fitting. This day week? At 11.30? Thank you very much.’

Making her way through the archaic gloom round bales of material, Anna Scheele emerged into daylight again. She hailed a taxi and returned to the Savoy. A taxi that was drawn up on the opposite side of the street and which contained a little dark man, took the same route but did not turn into the Savoy. It drove round to the Embankment and there picked up a short plump woman who had recently emerged from the service entrance of the Savoy.

‘What about it, Louisa? Been through her room?’

‘Yes. Nothing.’

Anna Scheele had lunch in the restaurant. A table had been kept for her by the window. The Maître d’Hôtel inquired affectionately after the health of Otto Morganthal.

After lunch Anna Scheele took her key and went up to her suite. The bed had been made, fresh towels were in the bathroom and everything was spick and span. Anna crossed to the two light air-cases that constituted her luggage, one was open, the other locked. She cast an eye over the contents of the unlocked one, then taking her keys from her purse she unlocked the other. All was neat, folded, as she had folded things, nothing had apparently been touched or disturbed. A brief-case of leather lay on top. A small Leica camera and two rolls of films were in one corner. The films were still sealed and unopened. Anna ran her nail across the flap and pulled it up. Then she smiled, very gently. The single almost invisible blonde hair that had been there was there no longer. Deftly she scattered a little powder over the shiny leather of the brief-case and blew it off. The brief-case remained clear and shiny. There were no fingerprints. But that morning after patting a little brilliantine on to the smooth flaxen cap of her hair, she had handled the brief-case. There should have been fingerprints on it, her own.

She smiled again.

‘Good work,’ she said to herself. ‘But not quite good enough …’

Deftly, she packed a small overnight-case and went downstairs again. A taxi was called and she directed the driver to 17 Elmsleigh Gardens.

Elmsleigh Gardens was a quiet, rather dingy Kensington Square. Anna paid off the taxi and ran up the steps to the peeling front door. She pressed the bell. After a few minutes an elderly woman opened the door with a suspicious face which immediately changed to a beam of welcome.

‘Won’t Miss Elsie be pleased to see you! She’s in the study at the back. It’s only the thought of your coming that’s been keeping her spirits up.’

Anna went quickly along the dark hallway and opened the door at the far end. It was a small shabby, comfortable room with large worn leather arm-chairs. The woman sitting in one of them jumped up.

‘Anna, darling.’

‘Elsie.’

The two women kissed each other affectionately.

‘It’s all arranged,’ said Elsie. ‘I go in tonight. I do hope—’

‘Cheer up,’ said Anna. ‘Everything is going to be quite all right.’

The small dark man in the raincoat entered a public callbox at High Street Kensington Station, and dialled a number.

‘Valhalla Gramophone Company?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sanders here.’

‘Sanders of the River? What river?’

‘River Tigris. Reporting on A. S. Arrived this morning from New York. Went to Cartier’s. Bought sapphire and diamond ring costing one hundred and twenty pounds. Went to florist’s, Jane Kent—twelve pounds eighteen shillings’ worth of flowers to be delivered at a nursing home in Portland Place. Ordered coat and skirt at Bolford and Avory’s. None of these firms known to have any suspicious contacts, but particular attention will be paid to them in future. A. S.’s room at Savoy gone through. Nothing suspicious found. Brief-case in suitcase containing papers relating to Paper Merger with Wolfensteins. All above board. Camera and two rolls of apparently unexposed films. Possibility of films being photostatic records, substituted other films for them, but original films reported upon as being straightforward unexposed films. A.S. took small overnight-case and went to sister at 17 Elmsleigh Gardens. Sister entering nursing home in Portland Place this evening for internal operation. This confirmed from nursing home and also appointment book of surgeon. Visit of A. S. seems perfectly above board. Showed no uneasiness or consciousness of being followed. Understand she is spending tonight at nursing home. Has kept on her room at the Savoy. Return passage to New York by clipper booked for twenty-third.’

The man who called himself Sanders of the River paused and added a postscript off the record as it were.

‘And if you ask what I think it’s all a mare’s nest! Throwing money about, that’s all she’s doing. Twelve pounds eighteen on flowers! I ask you!’

CHAPTER 4

It 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.