They Came to Baghdad

Chapter 4

I

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.

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:

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.’