Agatha Christie - They Came to Baghdad

‘ 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: