They Came to Baghdad

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. Any way 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 on to 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:

Insert advertisement?

Try Foreign Office?

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?

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. ‘Goodbye.’

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 bird-like 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 qualifications 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 any time 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.’

‘Why, I’m sure—’ Mrs Clipp began, but her husband interrupted.

‘Time’s very short, you know. This plane leaves day after tomorrow. Now have you got a passport, Miss Jones?’

‘Yes.’ Victoria felt thankful that owing to a short holiday trip to France last year, her passport was up to date. ‘I brought it with me in case,’ she added.

‘Now that’s what I call businesslike,’ said Mr Clipp approvingly. If any other candidate had been in the running, she had obviously dropped out now. Victoria with her good recommendations, and her uncles, and her passport on the spot had successfully made the grade.

‘You’ll want the necessary visas,’ said Mr Clipp, taking the passport. ‘I’ll run round to our friend Mr Burgeon in American Express, and he’ll get everything fixed up. Perhaps you’d better call round this afternoon, so you can sign whatever’s necessary.’

This Victoria agreed to do.

As the door of the apartment closed behind her, she heard Mrs Hamilton Clipp say to Mr Hamilton Clipp:

‘Such a nice straightforward girl. We really are in luck.’

Victoria had the grace to blush.

She hurried back to her flat and sat glued to the telephone prepared to assume the gracious refined accents of a Bishop’s secretary in case Mrs Clipp should seek confirmation of her capability. But Mrs Clipp had obviously been so impressed by Victoria’s straightforward personality that she was not going to bother with these technicalities. After all, the engagement was only for a few days as a travelling companion.

In due course, papers were filled up and signed, the necessary visas were obtained and Victoria was bidden to spend the final night at the Savoy so as to be on hand to help Mrs Clipp get off at 7 a.m. on the following morning for Airways House and Heathrow Airport.

CHAPTER 5

The boat that had left the marshes two days before paddled gently along the Shatt el Arab. The stream was swift and the old man who was propelling the boat needed to do very little. His movements were gentle and rhythmic. His eyes were half closed. Almost under his breath he sang very softly, a sad unending Arab chant:

‘Asri bi lel ya yamali

Hadhi alek ya ibn Ali.’

Thus, on innumerable other occasions, had Abdul Suleiman of the Marsh Arabs come down the river to Basrah. There was another man in the boat, a figure often seen nowadays with a pathetic mingling of West and East in his clothing. Over his long robe of striped cotton he wore a discarded khaki tunic, old and stained and torn. A faded red knitted scarf was tucked into the ragged coat. His head showed again the dignity of the Arab dress, the inevitable keffiyah of black and white held in place by the black silk agal. His eyes, unfocused in a wide stare, looked out blearily over the river bend. Presently he too began to hum in the same key and tone. He was a figure like thousands of other figures in the Mesopotamian landscape. There was nothing to show that he was an Englishman, and that he carried with him a secret that influential men in almost every country in the world were striving to intercept and to destroy along with the man who carried it.

His mind went hazily back over the last weeks. The ambush in the mountains. The ice-cold of the snow coming over the Pass. The caravan of camels. The four days spent trudging on foot over bare desert in company with two men carrying a portable ‘cinema.’ The days in the black tent and the journeying with the Aneizeh tribe, old friends of his. All difficult, all fraught with danger—slipping again and again through the cordon spread out to look for him and intercept him.

‘Henry Carmichael. British Agent. Age about thirty. Brown hair, dark eyes, five-foot-ten. Speaks Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Armenian, Hindustani, Turkish and many mountain dialects. Befriended by the tribesmen. Dangerous.’

Carmichael had been born in Kashgar where his father was a Government official. His childish tongue had lisped various dialects and patois—his nurses, and later his bearers, had been natives of many different races. In nearly all the wild places of the Middle East he had friends.

Only in the cities and the towns did his contacts fail him. Now, approaching Basrah, he knew that the critical moment of his mission had come. Sooner or later he had got to re-enter the civilized zone. Though Baghdad was his ultimate destination, he had judged it wise not to approach it direct. In every town in Iraq facilities were awaiting him, carefully discussed and arranged many months beforehand. It had had to be left to his own judgement where he should, so to speak, make his landing ground. He had sent no word to his superiors, even through the indirect channels where he could have done so. It was safer thus. The easy plan—the aeroplane waiting at the appointed rendezvous—had failed, as he had suspected it would fail. That rendezvous had been known to his enemies. Leakage! Always that deadly, that incomprehensible, leakage.

And so it was that his apprehensions of danger were heightened. Here in Basrah, in sight of safety, he felt instinctively sure that the danger would be greater than during the wild hazards of his journey. And to fail at the last lap—that would hardly bear thinking about.

Rhythmically pulling at his oars, the old Arab murmured without turning his head.

‘The moment approaches, my son. May Allah prosper you.’

‘Do not tarry long in the city, my father. Return to the marshes. I would not have harm befall you.’

‘That is as Allah decrees. It is in his hands.’

‘Inshallah,’ the other repeated.

For a moment he longed intensely to be a man of Eastern and not of Western blood. Not to worry over the chances of success or of failure, not to calculate again and again the hazards, repeatedly asking himself if he had planned wisely and with forethought. To throw responsibility on the All Merciful, the All Wise. Inshallah, I shall succeed!

Even saying the words over to himself he felt the calmness and the fatalism of the country overwhelming him and he welcomed it. Now, in a few moments, he must step from the haven of the boat, walk the streets of the city, run the gauntlet of keen eyes. Only by feeling as well as looking like an Arab could he succeed.

The boat turned gently into the waterway that ran at right angles to the river. Here all kinds of river craft were tied up and other boats were coming in before and after them. It was a lovely, almost Venetian scene; the boats with their high scrolled prows and the soft faded colours of their paintwork. There were hundreds of them tied up close alongside each other.

The old man asked softly:

‘The moment has come. There are preparations made for you?’

‘Yes, indeed my plans are set. The hour has come for me to leave.’

‘May God make your path straight, and may He lengthen the years of your life.’

Carmichael gathered his striped skirts about him and went up the slippery stone steps to the wharf above.

All about him were the usual waterside figures. Small boys, orange-sellers squatting down by their trays of merchandise. Sticky squares of cakes and sweetmeats, trays of bootlaces and cheap combs and pieces of elastic. Contemplative strollers, spitting raucously from time to time, wandering along with their beads clicking in their hands. On the opposite side of the street where the shops were and the banks, busy young effendis walked briskly in European suits of a slightly purplish tinge. There were Europeans, too, English and foreigners. And nowhere was there interest shown, or curiosity, because one amongst fifty or so Arabs had just climbed on to the wharf from a boat.

Carmichael strolled along very quietly, his eyes taking in the scene with just the right touch of childlike pleasure in his surroundings. Every now and then he hawked and spat, not too violently, just to be in the picture. Twice he blew his nose with his fingers.

And so, the stranger come to town, he reached the bridge at the top of the canal, and turned over it and passed into the souk.

Here all was noise and movement. Energetic tribesmen strode along pushing others out of their way—laden donkeys made their way along, their drivers calling out raucously. Balek—balek … Children quarrelled and squealed and ran after Europeans calling hopefully, Baksheesh, madame, Baksheesh. Meskin-meskin …

Here the produce of the West and the East were equally for sale side by side. Aluminium saucepans, cups and saucers and teapots, hammered copperware, silverwork from Amara, cheap watches, enamel mugs, embroideries and gay patterned rugs from Persia. Brass-bound chests from Kuwait, second-hand coats and trousers and children’s woolly cardigans. Local quilted bedcovers, painted glass lamps, stacks of clay water-jars and pots. All the cheap merchandise of civilization together with the native products.

All as normal and as usual. After his long sojourn in the wilder spaces, the bustle and confusion seemed strange to Carmichael, but it was all as it should be, he could detect no jarring note, no sign of interest in his presence. And yet, with the instinct of one who has for some years known what it is to be a hunted man, he felt a growing uneasiness—a vague sense of menace. He could detect nothing amiss. No one had looked at him. No one, he was almost sure, was following him or keeping him under observation. Yet he had that indefinable certainty of danger.

He turned up a narrow dark turning, again to the right, then to the left. Here among the small booths, he came to the opening of a khan, he stepped through the doorway into the court. Various shops were all round it. Carmichael went to one where ferwahs were hanging—the sheepskin coats of the north. He stood there handling them tentatively. The owner of the store was offering coffee to a customer, a tall bearded man of fine presence who wore green round his tarbush showing him to be a Hajji who had been to Mecca.

Carmichael stood there fingering the ferwah.

‘Besh hadha?’ he asked.

‘Seven dinars.’

‘Too much.’

The Hajji said, ‘You will deliver the carpets at my khan?’

‘Without fail,’ said the merchant. ‘You start tomorrow?’

‘At dawn for Kerbela.’

‘It is my city, Kerbela,’ said Carmichael. ‘It is fifteen years now since I have seen the Tomb of the Hussein.’

‘It is a holy city,’ said the Hajji.

The shopkeeper said over his shoulder to Carmichael:

‘There are cheaper ferwahs in the inner room.’

‘A white ferwah from the north is what I need.’

‘I have such a one in the farther room.’

The merchant indicated the door set back in the inner wall.

The ritual had gone according to pattern—a conversation such as might be heard any day in any souk—but the sequence was exact—the keywords all there—Kerbela—white ferwah.

Only, as Carmichael passed to cross the room and enter the inner enclosure, he raised his eyes to the merchant’s face—and knew instantly that the face was not the one he expected to see. Though he had seen this particular man only once before, his keen memory was not at fault. There was a resemblance, a very close resemblance, but it was not the same man.

He stopped. He said, his tone one of mild surprise, ‘Where, then, is Salah Hassan?’

‘He was my brother. He died three days ago. His affairs are in my hands.’

Yes, this was probably a brother. The resemblance was very close. And it was possible that the brother was also employed by the department. Certainly the responses had been correct. Yet it was with an increased awareness that Carmichael passed through into the dim inner chamber. Here again was merchandise piled on shelves, coffee pots and sugar hammers of brass and copper, old Persian silver, heaps of embroideries, folded abas, enamelled Damascus trays and coffee sets.

A white ferwah lay carefully folded by itself on a small coffee table. Carmichael went to it and picked it up. Underneath it was a set of European clothes, a worn, slightly flashy business suit. The pocket-book with money and credentials was already in the breast pocket. An unknown Arab had entered the store, Mr Walter Williams of Messrs Cross and Co., Importers and Shipping Agents would emerge and would keep certain appointments made for him in advance. There was, of course, a real Mr Walter Williams—it was as careful as that—a man with a respectable open business past. All according to plan. With a sigh of relief Carmichael started to unbutton his ragged army jacket. All was well.