They Came to Baghdad

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:

Insert advertisement?

Try Foreign Office?

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?

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.’

‘Yes?’ cried Victoria.

‘As I say, really a startling coincidence. A Mrs Hamilton Clipp—travelling to Baghdad in three days’ time—has broken her arm—needs someone to assist her on journey—I rang you up at once. Of course I don’t know if she has also applied to any other agencies—’

‘I’m on my way,’ said Victoria. ‘Where is she?’

‘The Savoy.’

‘And what’s her silly name? Tripp?’

‘Clipp, dear. Like a paper clip, but with two P’s—I can’t think why, but then she’s an American,’ ended Miss Spencer as if that explained everything.

‘Mrs Clipp at the Savoy.’

‘Mr and Mrs Hamilton Clipp. It was actually the husband who rang up.’

‘You’re an angel,’ said Victoria. ‘Goodbye.’

She hurriedly brushed her suit and wished it were slightly less shabby, recombed her hair so as to make it seem less exuberant and more in keeping with the role of ministering angel and experienced traveller. Then she took out Mr Greenholtz’s recommendation and shook her head over it.

We must do better than that, said Victoria.

From a No. 19 bus, Victoria alighted at Green Park, and entered the Ritz Hotel. A quick glance over the shoulder of a woman reading in the bus had proved rewarding. Entering the writing-room Victoria wrote herself some generous lines of praise from Lady Cynthia Bradbury who had been announced as having just left England for East Africa … ‘excellent in illness,’ wrote Victoria, ‘and most capable in every way …’

Leaving the Ritz she crossed the road and walked a short way up Albemarle Street until she came to Balderton’s Hotel, renowned as the haunt of the higher clergy and of old-fashioned dowagers up from the country.

In less dashing handwriting, and making neat small Greek ‘E’s, she wrote a recommendation from the Bishop of Llangow.

Thus equipped, Victoria caught a No. 9 bus and proceeded to the Savoy.

At the reception desk she asked for Mrs Hamilton Clipp and gave her name as coming from St Guildric’s Agency. The clerk was just about to pull the telephone towards him when he paused, looked across, and said:

‘That is Mr Hamilton Clipp now.’

Mr Hamilton Clipp was an immensely tall and very thin grey-haired American of kindly aspect and slow deliberate speech.

Victoria told him her name and mentioned the Agency.

‘Why now, Miss Jones, you’d better come right up and see Mrs Clipp. She is still in our suite. I fancy she’s interviewing some other young lady, but she may have gone by now.’

Cold panic clutched at Victoria’s heart.

Was it to be so near and yet so far?

They went up in the lift to the third floor.

As they walked along the deep carpeted corridor, a young woman came out of a door at the far end and came towards them. Victoria had a kind of hallucination that it was herself who was approaching. Possibly, she thought, because of the young woman’s tailor-made suit that was so exactly what she would have liked to be wearing herself. ‘And it would fit me too. I’m just her size. How I’d like to tear it off her,’ thought Victoria with a reversion to primitive female savagery.

The young woman passed them. A small velvet hat perched on the side of her fair hair partially hid her face, but Mr Hamilton Clipp turned to look after her with an air of surprise.