They Came to Baghdad

‘They got the Shah of Persia last year, didn’t they? They got Bernadotte in Palestine. It’s madness—that’s what it is—madness.

‘But then,’ added Mr Morganthal heavily, ‘all the world is mad.’

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_bacb508c-01cc-52ed-b89e-4866add8ad25)

Victoria Jones was sitting moodily on a seat in FitzJames Gardens. She was wholly given up to reflections—or one might almost say moralizations—on the disadvantages inherent in employing one’s particular talents at the wrong moment.

Victoria was like most of us, a girl with both qualities and defects. On the credit side she was generous, warmhearted and courageous. Her natural leaning towards adventure may be regarded as either meritorious or the reverse in this modern age which places the value of security high. Her principal defect was a tendency to tell lies at both opportune and inopportune moments. The superior fascination of fiction to fact was always irresistible to Victoria. She lied with fluency, ease, and artistic fervour. If Victoria was late for an appointment (which was often the case) it was not sufficient for her to murmur an excuse of her watch having stopped (which actually was quite often the case) or of an unaccountably delayed bus. It would appear preferable to Victoria to tender the mendacious explanation that she had been hindered by an escaped elephant lying across a main bus route, or by a thrilling smash-and-grab raid in which she herself had played a part to aid the police. To Victoria an agreeable world would be one where tigers lurked in the Strand and dangerous bandits infested Tooting.

A slender girl, with an agreeable figure and first-class legs, Victoria’s features might actually have been described as plain. They were small and neat. But there was a piquancy about her, for ‘little india-rubber face,’ as one of her admirers had named her, could twist those immobile features into a startling mimicry of almost anybody.

It was this last-named talent that had led to her present predicament. Employed as a typist by Mr Greenholtz of Greenholtz, Simmons and Lederbetter, of Graysholme Street, WC2, Victoria had been whiling away a dull morning by entertaining the three other typists and the office boy with a vivid performance of Mrs Greenholtz paying a visit to her husband’s office. Secure in the knowledge that Mr Greenholtz had gone round to his solicitors, Victoria let herself go.

‘Why do you say we not have that Knole settee, Daddee?’ she demanded in a high whining voice. ‘Mrs Dievtakis she have one in electric blue satin. You say it is money that is tight? But then why you take that blonde girl out dining and dancing—Ah! you think I do not know—and if you take that girl—then I have a settee and all done plum coloured and gold cushions. And when you say it is a business dinner you are a damn’ fool—yes—and come back with lipstick on your shirt. So I have the Knole settee and I order a fur cape—very nice—all like mink but not really mink and I get him very cheap and it is good business—’

The sudden failure of her audience—at first entranced, but now suddenly resuming work with spontaneous agreement, caused Victoria to break off and swing round to where Mr Greenholtz was standing in the doorway observing her.

Victoria, unable to think of anything relevant to say, merely said, ‘Oh!’

Mr Greenholtz grunted.

Flinging off his overcoat, Mr Greenholtz proceeded to his private office and banged the door. Almost immediately his buzzer sounded, two shorts and a long. That was a summons for Victoria.

‘It’s for you, Jonesey,’ a colleague remarked unnecessarily, her eyes alight with the pleasure occasioned by the misfortunes of others. The other typists collaborated in this sentiment by ejaculating: ‘You’re for it, Jones,’ and ‘On the mat, Jonesey.’ The office boy, an unpleasant child, contented himself with drawing a forefinger across his throat and uttering a sinister noise.

Victoria picked up her notebook and pencil and sailed into Mr Greenholtz’s office with such assurance as she could muster.

‘You want me, Mr Greenholtz?’ she murmured, fixing a limpid gaze on him.

Mr Greenholtz was rustling three pound notes and searching his pockets for coin of the realm.

‘So there you are,’ he observed. ‘I’ve had about enough of you, young lady. Do you see any particular reason why I shouldn’t pay you a week’s salary in lieu of notice and pack you off here and now?’

Victoria (an orphan) had just opened her mouth to explain how the plight of a mother at this moment suffering a major operation had so demoralized her that she had become completely light-headed, and how her small salary was all the aforesaid mother had to depend upon, when, taking an opening glance at Mr Greenholtz’s unwholesome face, she shut her mouth and changed her mind.

‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ she said heartily and pleasantly. ‘I think you’re absolutely right, if you know what I mean.’

Mr Greenholtz appeared slightly taken aback. He was not used to having his dismissals treated in this approving and congratulatory spirit. To conceal a slight discomfiture he sorted through a pile of coins on the desk in front of him. He then sought once more in his pockets.

‘Ninepence short,’ he murmured gloomily.

‘Never mind,’ said Victoria kindly. ‘Take yourself to the pictures or spend it on sweets.’

‘Don’t seem to have any stamps, either.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I never write letters.’

‘I could send it after you,’ said Mr Greenholtz but without much conviction.

‘Don’t bother. What about a reference?’ said Victoria.

Mr Greenholtz’s choler returned.

‘Why the hell should I give you a reference?’ he demanded wrathfully.

‘It’s usual,’ said Victoria.

Mr Greenholtz drew a piece of paper towards him and scrawled a few lines. He shoved it towards her.

‘That do for you?’

Miss Jones has been with me two months as a shorthand typist. Her shorthand is inaccurate and she cannot spell. She is leaving owing to wasting time in office hours.

Victoria made a grimace.

‘Hardly a recommendation,’ she observed.

‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ said Mr Greenholtz.

‘I think,’ said Victoria, ‘that you ought at least to say I’m honest, sober and respectable. I am, you know. And perhaps you might add that I’m discreet.’

‘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.’

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.