They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [98]
‘Oh, do you really want me?’ cried Victoria.
For some reason Richard Baker became very pink in the face. He coughed and polished his pince-nez.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘we could find you – er – quite useful.’
‘I’d love it,’ said Victoria.
‘In that case,’ said Richard, ‘you’d better collect your luggage and come along back to the Dig now. You don’t want to hang about Baghdad, do you?’
‘Not in the least,’ said Victoria.
II
‘So there you are, my dear Veronica,’ said Dr Pauncefoot Jones. ‘Richard went off in a great state about you. Well, well – I hope you’ll both be very happy.’
‘What does he mean?’ asked Victoria bewildered, as Dr Pauncefoot Jones pottered away.
‘Nothing,’ said Richard. ‘You know what he’s like. He’s being – just a little – premature.’
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Agatha Christie in Baghdad
Essay by Charles Osborne
Agatha Christie in Baghdad
From An Autobiography
As Christie biographer Charles Osborne1 reminds us, “Published posthumously [in 1977], An Autobiography…was begun in Iraq in 1950 and finished in England in 1965.”
In 1927 Agatha Christie separated from Archibald Christie; their divorce was swiftly finalized in April of 1928.
It was settled at last. I wrote to my lawyers and went to see them. Things were put in train. There was nothing more to do, except to decide what to do with myself. Rosalind2 was at school, and she had Carlo3 and Punkie4 to visit her. I had till the Christmas holidays—and I decided that I would seek sunshine. I would go to the West Indies and Jamaica. I went to Cook’s and fixed up my tickets. It was all arranged.
Here we come to Fate again. Two days before I was to leave I went out to dinner with friends in London. They were not people I knew well, but they were a charming couple. There was a young couple there, a naval officer, Commander Howe, and his wife. I sat next to the Commander at dinner, and he talked to me about Baghdad. He had just come back from that part of the world, since he had been stationed in the Persian Gulf. After dinner his wife came and sat by me and we talked. She said people always said Baghdad was a horrible city, but she and her husband had been entranced by it. They talked about it, and I became more and more enthusiastic. I said I supposed one had to go by sea.
‘You can go by train—by the Orient Express.’
‘The Orient Express?’
All my life I had wanted to go on the Orient Express. When I had travelled to France or Spain or Italy, the Orient Express had often been standing at Calais, and I had longed to climb up into it. Simplon-Orient Express—Milan, Belgrade, Stamboul…
I was bitten. Commander Howe wrote down for me places I must go and see in Baghdad. ‘Don’t get trapped into too much Alwiyah and Mem-Sahibs and all that. You must go to Mosul—Basra you must visit—and you certainly ought to go to Ur.’
‘Ur?’ I said. I had just been reading in The Illustrated London News about Leonard Woolley’s marvelous finds at Ur. I had always been faintly attracted to archaeology, though knowing nothing about it.
Next morning I rushed round to Cook’s, cancelled my tickets for the West Indies, and instead got tickets and reservations for a journey on the Simplon-Orient Express to Stamboul; from Stamboul to Damascus; and from Damascus to Baghdad across the desert. I was wildly excited. It would take four or five days to get the visas and everything, and then off I should go.
‘All by yourself?’ said Carlo, slightly doubtful. ‘All by yourself to the Middle East? You don’t know anything about it.’
‘Oh, that will be all right,’ I said. ‘After all, one must do things by oneself some time, mustn’t one?’ I never had before—I didn’t much want to now—but I thought: ‘It’s now or never. Either I cling to everything that’s safe and that I know, or else I develop more initiative, do things on my own.’
And so it was that five days later I started for Baghdad.
It is the name, really, that so fascinates one. I don’t think I had any clear picture in my mind of what Baghdad was like. I was