They Came to Baghdad

one who knocked at his door. I’ve seen her since – here in Baghdad – and what’s more, at the Olive Branch. The first day I went there. She came in and spoke to Catherine. I thought then I’d seen her before.’

After a moment’s silence, Victoria said:

‘So you must admit, Edward, that it isn’t all my fancy.’

Edward said slowly:

‘It all comes back to the Olive Branch – and to Catherine. Victoria, all ragging apart, you’ve got to get closer to Catherine. Flatter her, butter her up, talk Bolshie ideas to her. Somehow or other get sufficiently intimate with her to know who her friends are and where she goes and whom she’s in touch with outside the Olive Branch.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ said Victoria, ‘but I’ll try. What about Mr Dakin. Ought I to tell him about this?’

‘Yes, of course. But wait a day or two. We may have more to go on,’ Edward sighed. ‘I shall take Catherine to Le Select to hear the cabaret one night.’

And this time Victoria felt no pang of jealousy. Edward had spoken with a grim determination that ruled out any anticipation of pleasure in the commission he had undertaken. 

II

Exhilarated by her discoveries, Victoria found it no effort to greet Catherine the following day with an effusion of friendliness. It was so kind of Catherine she said, to have told her of a place to have her hair washed. It needed washing terribly badly. (This was undeniable, Victoria had returned from Babylon with her dark hair the colour of red rust from the clogging sand.)

‘It is looking terrible, yes,’ said Catherine, eyeing it with a certain malicious satisfaction. ‘You went out then in that dust-storm yesterday afternoon?’

‘I hired a car and went to see Babylon,’ said Victoria. ‘It was very interesting, but on the way back, the dust-storm got up and I was nearly choked and blinded.’

‘It is interesting, Babylon,’ said Catherine, ‘but you should go with someone who understands it and can tell you about it properly. As for your hair, I will take you to this Armenian girl tonight. She will give you a cream shampoo. It is the best.’

‘I don’t know how you keep your hair looking so wonderful,’ said Victoria, looking with what appeared to be admiring eyes at Catherine’s heavy erections of greasy sausage-like curls.

A smile appeared on Catherine’s usually sour face, and Victoria thought how right Edward had been about flattery.

When they left the Olive Branch that evening, the two girls were on the friendliest of terms. Catherine wove in and out of narrow passages and alleys and finally tapped on an unpromising door which gave no sign of hairdressing operations being conducted on the other side of it. They were, however, received by a plain but competent looking young woman who spoke careful slow English and who led Victoria to a spotlessly clean basin with shining taps and various bottles and lotions ranged round it. Catherine departed and Victoria surrendered her mop of hair into Miss Ankoumian’s deft hands. Soon her hair was a mass of creamy lather.

‘And now if you please…’

Victoria bent forward over the basin. Water streamed over her hair and gurgled down the waste-pipe.

Suddenly her nose was assailed by a sweet rather sickly smell that she associated vaguely with hospitals. A wet saturated pad was clasped firmly over her nose and mouth. She struggled wildly, twisting and turning, but an iron grip kept the pad in place. She began to suffocate, her head reeled dizzily, a roaring sound came in her ears…

And after that blackness, deep and profound.

Chapter 18

When Victoria regained consciousness, it was with a sense of an immense passage of time. Confused memories stirred in her – jolting in a car – high jabbering and quarrelling in Arabic – lights that flashed into her eyes – a horrible attack of nausea – then vaguely she remembered lying on a bed and someone lifting her arm – the sharp agonizing prick of a needle – then more confused dreams and darkness and behind it a mounting sense of urgency…

Now at last, dimly, she was herself – Victoria Jones…And something had happened to Victoria Jones – a long time ago – months – perhaps years…after all, perhaps only days.

Babylon – sunshine – dust – hair – Catherine. Catherine, of course, smiling, her eyes sly under the sausage curls – Catherine had taken her to have her hair shampooed and then – what had happened? That horrible smell – she could still smell it – nauseating – chloroform, of course. They had chloroformed her and taken her – where?

Cautiously Victoria tried to sit up. She seemed to be lying on a bed – a very hard bed – her head ached and felt dizzy – she was still drowsy, horribly drowsy…that prick, the prick of a hypodermic, they had been drugging her…she was still half-drugged.

Well, anyway they hadn’t killed her. (Why not?) So that was all right. The best thing, thought the still half- drugged Victoria, is to go to sleep. And promptly did so.

When next she awakened she felt much more clear-headed. It was daylight now and she could see more clearly where she was.

She was in a small but very high room, distempered a depressing pale bluish grey. The floor was of beaten earth. The only furniture in the room seemed to be the bed on which she was lying with a dirty rug thrown over her and a rickety table with a cracked enamel basin on it and a zinc bucket underneath it. There was a window with a kind of wooden lattice-work outside it. Victoria got gingerly off the bed, feeling distinctly headachy and queer, and approached the window. She could see through the lattice-work quite plainly and what she saw was a garden with palm trees beyond it. The garden was quite a pleasant one by Eastern standards though it would have been looked down on by an English suburban householder. It had a lot of bright orange marigolds in it, and some dusty eucalyptus trees and some rather wispy tamarisks.

A small child with a face tattooed in blue, and a lot of bangles on, was tumbling about with a ball and singing in a high nasal whine rather like distant bagpipes.

Victoria next turned her attention to the door, which was large and massive. Without much hope she went to it and tried it. The door was locked. Victoria went back and sat on the side of the bed.

Where was she? Not in Baghdad, that was certain. And what was she going to do next?

It struck her after a minute or two that the last question did not really apply. What was more to the point was what was someone else going to do to her? With an uneasy feeling in the pit of the stomach she remembered Mr Dakin’s admonition to tell all she knew. But perhaps they had already got all that out of her whilst she was under the drug.

Still – Victoria returned to this one point with determined cheerfulness – she was alive. If she could manage to keep alive until Edward found her – what would Edward do when he found she had vanished? Would he go to Mr Dakin? Would he play a lone hand? Would he put the fear of the Lord into Catherine and force her to tell? Would he suspect Catherine at all? The more Victoria tried to conjure up a reassuring picture of Edward in action, the more the image of Edward faded and became a kind of faceless abstraction. How clever was Edward? That was really what it amounted to. Edward was adorable. Edward had glamour. But had Edward got brains? Because clearly, in her present predicament, brains were going to be needed.

Mr Dakin, now, would have the necessary brains. But would he have the impetus? Or would he merely cross off her name from a mental ledger, scoring it through, and writing after it a neat RIP. After all, to Mr Dakin she was merely one of a crowd. They took their chance, and if luck failed, it was just too bad. No, she didn’t see Mr Dakin staging a rescue. After all, he had warned her.