They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [5]
‘Discreet?’ barked Mr Greenholtz.
Victoria met his gaze with an innocent stare.
‘Discreet,’ she said gently.
Remembering sundry letters taken down and typed by Victoria, Mr Greenholtz decided that prudence was the better part of rancour.
He snatched back the paper, tore it up and indited a fresh one.
Miss Jones has been with me for two months as a shorthand typist. She is leaving owing to redundancy of office staff.
‘How about that?’
‘It could be better,’ said Victoria, ‘but it will do.’
II
So it was that with a week’s salary (less ninepence) in her bag Victoria was sitting in meditation upon a bench in FitzJames Gardens which are a triangular plantation of rather sad shrubs flanking a church and overlooked by a tall warehouse.
It was Victoria’s habit on any day when it was not actually raining to purchase one cheese, and one lettuce and tomato sandwich at a milk-bar and eat this simple lunch in these pseudo-rural surroundings.
Today, as she munched meditatively, she was telling herself, not for the first time, that there was a time and place for everything – and that the office was definitely not the place for imitations of the boss’s wife. She must, in future, curb the natural exuberance that led her to brighten up the performance of a dull job. In the meantime, she was free of Greenholtz, Simmons and Lederbetter, and the prospect of obtaining a situation elsewhere filled her with pleasurable anticipation. Victoria was always delighted when she was about to take up a new job. One never knew, she always felt, what might happen.
She had just distributed the last crumb of bread to three attentive sparrows who immediately fought each other with fury for it, when she became aware of a young man sitting at the other end of the seat. Victoria had noticed him vaguely already, but her mind full of good resolutions for the future, she had not observed him closely until now. What she now saw (out of the corner of her eye) she liked very much. He was a good-looking young man, cherubically fair, but with a firm chin and extremely blue eyes which had been, she rather imagined, examining her with covert admiration for some time.
Victoria had no inhibitions about making friends with strange young men in public places. She considered herself an excellent judge of character and well able to check any manifestations of freshness on the part of unattached males.
She proceeded to smile frankly at him and the young man responded like a marionette when you pull the string.
‘Hallo,’ said the young man. ‘Nice place this. Do you often come here?’
‘Nearly every day.’
‘Just my luck that I never came here before. Was that your lunch you were eating?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think you eat enough. I’d be starving if I only had two sandwiches. What about coming along and having a sausage at the SPO in Tottenham Court Road?’
‘No thanks. I’m quite all right. I couldn’t eat any more now.’
She rather expected that he would say: ‘Another day,’ but he did not. He merely sighed – then he said:
‘My name’s Edward, what’s yours?’
‘Victoria.’
‘Why did your people want to call you after a railway station?’
‘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