They Came to Baghdad (15 page)

That this was not quite true was proved very shortly afterwards.

Edward came to her with some sheets of manuscripts and said:

“Dr. Rathbone would like this typed out at once, please, Victoria. Be especially careful of the
second page,
there are some rather tricky Arab names on it.”

Victoria, with a sigh, inserted a sheet of paper in her typewriter and started off in her usual dashing style. Dr. Rathbone's handwriting was not particularly difficult to read and Victoria was just congratulating herself that she had made less mistakes than usual. She laid the top sheet aside and proceeded to the next—and at once realized the meaning of Edward's injunction to be careful of the second page. A tiny note in Edward's handwriting was pinned to the top of it.

The following day was Friday, the weekly holiday. Victoria's spirits rose mercurially. She would wear her jade-green pullover.
She ought really to get her hair shampooed. The amenities of the house where she lived made it difficult to wash it herself. “And it really needs it,” she murmured aloud.

“What did you say?” Catherine, at work on a pile of circulars and envelopes, raised her head suspiciously from the next table.

Victoria quickly crumpled up Edward's note in her hand as she said lightly:

“My hair wants washing. Most of these hairdressing places look so frightfully dirty, I don't know where to go.”

“Yes, they are dirty and expensive too. But I know a girl who washes hair very well and the towels are clean. I will take you there.”

“That's very kind of you, Catherine,” said Victoria.

“We will go tomorrow. It is holiday.”

“Not tomorrow,” said Victoria.

“Why not tomorrow?”

A suspicious stare was bent upon her. Victoria felt her usual annoyance and dislike of Catherine rising.

“I'd rather go for a walk—get some air. One is so cooped up here.”

“Where can you walk? There is nowhere to walk in Baghdad.”

“I shall find somewhere,” said Victoria.

“It would be better to go to the cinema. Or is there an interesting lecture?”

“No, I want to get out. In En gland we like going for walks.”

“Because you are English, you are so proud and stuck up. What does it mean to be English? Next to nothing. Here we spit upon the English.”

“If you start spitting on me you may get a surprise,” said Vic
toria, wondering as usual at the ease with which angry passions seemed to rise at the Olive Branch.

“What would you do?”

“Try and see.”

“Why do you read Karl Marx? You cannot understand it. You are much too stupid. Do you think they would ever accept you as a member of the Communist Party? You are not well enough educated politically.”

“Why shouldn't I read it? It was meant for people like me—workers.”

“You are not a worker. You are bourgeoise. You cannot even type properly. Look at the mistakes you make.”

“Some of the cleverest people can't spell,” said Victoria with dignity. “And how can I work when you keep talking to me?”

She rattled off a line at break-neck speed—and was then somewhat chagrined to find that as a result of unwittingly depressing the shift key, she had written a line of exclamation marks, figures and brackets. Removing the sheet from the machine she replaced it with another and applied herself diligently until, her task finished, she took the result in to Dr. Rathbone.

Glancing over it and murmuring, “Shiraz is in
Iran
not Iraq—and anyway you don't spell Iraq with a k…
Wasit
—not Wuzle—er—thank you, Victoria.”

Then as she was leaving the room he called her back.

“Victoria, are you happy here?”

“Oh yes, Dr. Rathbone.”

The dark eyes under the massive brows were very searching. She felt uneasiness rising.

“I'm afraid we do not pay you very much.”

“That doesn't matter,” said Victoria. “I like to work.”

“Do you really?

“Oh yes,” said Victoria. “One feels,” she added, “that this sort of thing is really worthwhile.”

Her limpid gaze met the dark searching eyes and did not falter.

“And you manage—to live?”

“Oh yes—I've found quite a good cheap place—with some Armenians. I'm quite all right.”

“There is a shortage at present of shorthand typists in Baghdad,” said Dr. Rathbone. “I think, you know, that I could get you a better position than the one you have here.”

“But I don't want any other position.”

“You might be
wise
to take one.”

“Wise?” Victoria faltered a little.

“That is what I said. Just a word of warning—of advice.”

There was something faintly menacing now in his tone.

Victoria opened her eyes still wider.

“I really don't understand, Dr. Rathbone,” she said.

“Sometimes it is wiser not to mix oneself up in things one does not understand.”

She felt quite sure of the menace this time, but she continued to stare in kitten-eyed innocence.

“Why did you come and work here, Victoria? Because of Edward?”

Victoria flushed angrily.

“Of course not,” she said indignantly. She was much annoyed.

Dr. Rathbone nodded his head.

“Edward has his way to make. It will be many many years before he is in a position to be of any use to you. I should give up
thinking of Edward if I were you. And, as I say, there are good positions to be obtained at present, with a good salary and prospects—and which will bring you amongst your own kind.”

He was still watching her, Victoria thought, very closely. Was this a test? She said with an affectation of eagerness:

“But I really am very keen on the Olive Branch, Dr. Rathbone.”

He shrugged his shoulders then and she left him, but she could feel his eyes in the centre of her spine as she left the room.

She was somewhat disturbed by the interview. Had something occurred to arouse his suspicions? Did he guess that she might be a spy placed in the Olive Branch to find out its secrets? His voice and manner had made her feel unpleasantly afraid. His suggestion that she had come there to be near Edward had made her angry at the time and she had vigorously denied it, but she realized now that it was infinitely safer that Dr. Rathbone should suppose her to have come to the Olive Branch for Edward's sake than to have even an inkling that Mr. Dakin had been instrumental in the matter. Anyway, owing to her idiotic blush, Rathbone probably
did
think that it was Edward—so that all had really turned out for the best.

Nevertheless she went to sleep that night with an unpleasant little clutch of fear at her heart.

I

I
t proved fairly simple on the following morning for Victoria to go out by herself with few explanations. She had inquired about the Beit Melek Ali and had learnt it was a big house built right out on the river some way down the West Bank.

So far Victoria had had very little time to explore her surroundings and she was agreeably surprised when she came to the end of the narrow street and found herself actually on the riverbank. She turned to her right and made her way slowly along the edge of the high bank. Sometimes the going was precarious—the bank had been eaten away and had not always been repaired or built-up again. One house had steps in front of it which, if you took one more, would land you in the river on a dark night. Victoria looked down at the water below and edged her way round. Then, for a while, the way was wide and paved. The houses on her right hand had an agreeable air of secrecy. They offered no hint as to their occupancy. Occasionally the central door stood
open and peering inside Victoria was fascinated by the contrasts. On one such occasion she looked into a courtyard with a fountain playing and cushioned seats and deck chairs round it, with tall palms growing up and a garden beyond, that looked like the backcloth of a stage set. The next house, looking much the same outside, opened on a litter of confusion and dark passages, with five or six dirty children playing in rags. Then she came to palm gardens in thick groves. On her left she had passed uneven steps leading down to the river and an Arab boatman seated in a primitive rowing boat gesticulated and called, asking evidently if she wanted to be taken across to the other side. She must by now, Victoria judged, be just about opposite the Tio Hotel, though it was hard to distinguish differences in the architecture viewed from this side and the hotel buildings looked more or less alike. She came now to a road leading down through the palms and then to two tall houses with balconies. Beyond was a big house built right out on to the river with a garden and balustrade. The path on the bank passed on the inside of what must be the Beit Melek Ali or the House of King Ali.

In a few minutes more Victoria had passed its entrance and had come to a more squalid part. The river was hidden from her by palm plantations fenced off with rusty barbed wire. On the right were tumbledown houses inside rough mudbrick walls, and small shanties with children playing in the dirt and clouds of flies hanging over garbage heaps. A road led away from the river and a car was standing there—a somewhat battered and archaic car. By the car, Edward was standing.

“Good,” said Edward, “you've got here. Get in.”

“Where are we going?” asked Victoria, entering the bat
tered automobile with delight. The driver, who appeared to be an animate bundle of rags, turned round and grinned happily at her.

“We're going to Babylon,” said Edward. “It's about time we had a day out.”

The car started with a terrific jerk and bumped madly over the rude paving stones.

“To Babylon?” cried Victoria. “How lovely it sounds. Really to Babylon?”

The car swerved to the left and they were bowling along upon a well-paved road of imposing width.

“Yes, but don't expect too much. Babylon—if you know what I mean—isn't quite what it was.”

Victoria hummed.

“I used to sing that when I was a small child. It always fascinated me. And now we're really going there!”

“And we'll get back by candlelight. Or we should do. Actually you never know in this country.”

“This car looks very much as though it might break down.”

“It probably will. There's sure to be simply everything wrong with it. But these Iraqis are frightfully good at tying it up with string and saying Inshallah and then it goes again.”

“It's always Inshallah, isn't it?”

“Yes, nothing like laying the responsibility upon the Almighty.”

“The road isn't very good, is it?” gasped Victoria, bouncing in her seat. The deceptively well-paved and wide road had not lived up to its promise. The road was still wide but was now corrugated with ruts.

“It gets worse later on,” shouted Edward.

They bounced and bumped happily. The dust rose in clouds round them. Large lorries covered with Arabs tore along in the middle of the track and were deaf to all intimations of the horn.

They passed walled-in gardens, and parties of women and children and donkeys and to Victoria it was all new and part of the enchantment of going to Babylon with Edward beside her.

They reached Babylon bruised and shaken in a couple of hours. The meaningless pile of ruined mud and burnt brick was somewhat of a disappointment to Victoria, who expected something in the way of columns and arches, looking like pictures she had seen of Baalbek.

But little by little her disappointment ebbed as they scrambled over mounds and lumps of burnt brick led by the guide. She listened with only half an ear to his profuse explanations, but as they went along the Processional Way to the Ishtar Gate, with the faint reliefs of unbelievable animals high on the walls, a sudden sense of the grandeur of the past came to her and a wish to know something about this vast proud city that now lay dead and abandoned. Presently, their duty to Antiquity accomplished, they sat down by the Babylonian Lion to eat the picnic lunch that Edward had brought with him. The guide moved away, smiling indulgently and telling them firmly that they must see the Museum later.

“Must we?” said Victoria dreamily. “Things all labelled and
put into cases don't seem a bit real somehow. I went to the British Museum once. It was awful, and dreadfully tiring on the feet.”

“The past is always boring,” said Edward. “The future's much more important.”

“This isn't boring,” said Victoria, waving a sandwich towards the panorama of tumbling brick. “There's a feeling of—of greatness here. What's the poem ‘
When you were a King in Babylon and I was a Christian Slave?
' Perhaps we were. You and I, I mean.”

“I don't think there were any Kings of Babylon by the time there were Christians,” said Edward. “I think Babylon stopped functioning somewhere about five or six hundred
BC.
Some archaeologist or other is always turning up to give lectures about these things—but I really never grasp any of the dates—I mean not until proper Greek and Roman ones.”

“Would you have liked being a King of Babylon, Edward?”

Edward drew a deep breath.

“Yes, I should.”

“Then we'll say you were. You're in a new incarnation now.”

“They understood
how
to be Kings in those days!” said Edward. “That's why they could rule the world and bring it into shape.”

“I don't know that I should have liked being a slave much,” said Victoria meditatively, “Christian or otherwise.”

“Milton was quite right,” said Edward. “‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' I always admired Milton's Satan.”

“I never quite got around to Milton,” said Victoria apologetically. “But I did go and see
Comus
at Sadler's Wells and it was lovely and Margot Fonteyn danced like a kind of frozen angel.”

“If you were a slave, Victoria,” said Edward, “I should free you
and take you into my harem—over there,” he added gesticulating vaguely at a pile of debris.

A glint came into Victoria's eye.

“Talking of harems—” she began.

“How are you getting on with Catherine?” asked Edward hastily.

“How did you know I was thinking about Catherine?”

“Well, you were, weren't you? Honestly, Viccy, I do want you to become friends with Catherine.”

“Don't call me Viccy.”

“All right, Charing Cross. I want you to become friends with Catherine.”

“How fatuous men are! Always wanting their girlfriends to like each other.”

Edward sat up energetically. He had been reclining with his hands behind his head.

“You've got it all wrong, Charing Cross. Anyway, your references to harems are simply silly—”

“No, they're not. The way all those girls glower intensely at you and yearn at you! It makes me mad.”

“Splendid,” said Edward. “I love you to be mad. But to return to Catherine. The reason I want you to be friends with Catherine is that I'm fairly sure she's the best way of approach to all the things we want to find out. She knows something.”

“You really think so?”

“Remember what I heard her say about Anna Scheele?”

“I'd forgotten that.”

“How have you been getting on with Karl Marx? Any results?”

“Nobody's made a beeline at me and invited me into the fold. In fact, Catherine told me yesterday the party wouldn't accept me, because I'm not sufficiently politically educated. And to have to read all that dreary stuff—honestly, Edward, I haven't the brains for it.”

“You are not politically aware, are you?” Edward laughed. “Poor Charing Cross. Well, well, Catherine may be frantic with brains and intensity and political awareness, my fancy is still a little Cockney typist who can't spell any words of three syllables.”

Victoria frowned suddenly. Edward's words brought back to her mind the curious interview she had had with Dr. Rathbone. She told Edward about it. He seemed much more upset than she would have expected him to be.

“This is serious, Victoria, really serious. Try and tell me exactly what he said.”

Victoria tried her best to recall the exact words Rathbone had used.

“But I don't see,” she said, “why it upsets you so.”

“Eh?” Edward seemed abstracted. “You don't see—But my dear girl, don't you realize that this shows that they've got wise to you. They're warning you off. I don't like it Victoria—I don't like it at all.”

He paused and then said gravely:

“Communists, you know, are very ruthless. It's part of their creed to stick at nothing. I don't want you knocked on the head and thrown into the Tigris, darling.”

How odd, thought Victoria, to be sitting amidst the ruins of Babylon debating whether or not she was likely in the near future to be knocked on the head and thrown into the Tigris. Half closing
her eyes she thought dreamily, “I shall wake up soon and find I'm in London dreaming a wonderful melodramatic dream about dangerous Babylon. Perhaps,” she thought, closing her eyes altogether, “I am in London…and the alarm clock will go off very soon, and I shall get up and go to Mr. Greenholtz's office—and there won't be any Edward….”

And at that last thought she opened her eyes again hastily to make sure that Edward was indeed really there (and what was it I was going to ask him at Basrah and they interrupted us and I forgot?) and it was not a dream. The sun was glaring down in a dazzling and most un-London-like way, and the ruins of Babylon were pale and shimmering with a background of dark palms and sitting up with his back a little towards her was Edward. How extraordinarily nicely his hair grew down with a little twirl into his neck—and what a nice neck—bronzed red brown from the sun—with no blemishes on it—so many men had necks with cysts or pimples where their collars had rubbed—a neck like Sir Rupert's for instance, with a boil just starting.

Suddenly with a stifled exclamation Victoria sat bolt upright and her daydreams were a thing of the past. She was wildly excited.

Edward turned an inquiring head.

“What's the matter, Charing Cross?”

“I've just remembered,” said Victoria, “about Sir Rupert Crofton Lee.”

As Edward still turned a blank inquiring look upon her Victoria proceeded to elucidate her meaning which truth to tell, she did not do very clearly.

“It was a boil,” she said, “on his neck.”

“A boil on his neck?” Edward was puzzled.

“Yes, in the aeroplane. He sat in front of me, you know, and that hood thing he wore fell back and I saw it—the boil.”

“Why shouldn't he have a boil? Painful, but lots of people get them.”

“Yes, yes, of course they do. But the point is that that morning on the balcony he
hadn't.
”

“Hadn't what?”

“Hadn't got a boil. Oh, Edward, do try and take it in. In the aeroplane he had a boil and on the balcony at the Tio he hadn't got a boil. His neck was quite smooth and unscarred—like yours now.”

“Well, I suppose it had gone away.”

“Oh no, Edward, it couldn't have. It was only a day later, and it was just coming up. It couldn't have gone away—not completely without a trace. So you see what it means—yes, it must mean—the man at the Tio wasn't Sir Rupert at all.”

She nodded her head with vehemence. Edward stared at her.

“You're crazy, Victoria. It must have been Sir Rupert. You didn't see any other difference in him.”

“But don't you see, Edward, I'd never really looked at him properly—only at his—well, you might call it general effect. The hat—and the cape—and the swashbuckling attitude. He'd be a very easy man to impersonate.”

“But they'd have known at the Embassy—”

“He didn't stay at the Embassy, did he? He came to the Tio. It was one of the minor secretaries or people who met him. The Ambassador's in England. Besides, he's travelled and been away from En gland so much.”

“But why—”

“Because of Carmichael, of course. Carmichael was coming
to Baghdad to meet him—to tell him what he'd found out. Only they'd never met before. So Carmichael wouldn't know he wasn't the right man—and he wouldn't be on his guard. Of course—it was Rupert Crofton Lee (the false one) who stabbed Carmichael! Oh, Edward, it all fits in.”