it be most awful cheek—if I only could—’
As Victoria opened surprised eyes, stammering and blushing, Edward produced a small camera.
‘I would like so awfully to have a snapshot of you. You see, I’m going to Baghdad tomorrow.’
‘To Baghdad?’ exclaimed Victoria with lively disappointment.
‘Yes. I mean I wish I wasn’t—now. Earlier this morning I was quite bucked about it—it’s why I took this job really—to get out of this country.’
‘What sort of job is it?’
‘Pretty awful. Culture—poetry, all that sort of thing. A Dr Rathbone’s my boss. Strings of letters after his name, peers at you soulfully through pince-nez. He’s terrifically keen on uplift and spreading it far and wide. He opens bookshops in remote places—he’s starting one in Baghdad. He gets Shakespeare’s and Milton’s works translated into Arabic and Kurdish and Persian and Armenian and has them all on tap. Silly, I think, because you’ve got the British Council doing much the same thing all over the place. Still, there it is. It gives me a job so I oughtn’t to complain.’
‘What do you actually do?’ asked Victoria.
‘Well, really it boils down to being the old boy’s personal Yes-man and Dogsbody. Buy the tickets, make the reservations, fill up the passport forms, check the packing of all the horrid little poetic manuals, run round here, there, and everywhere. Then, when we get out there I’m supposed to fraternize—kind of glorified youth movement—all nations together in a united drive for uplift.’ Edward’s tone became more and more melancholy. ‘Frankly, it’s pretty ghastly, isn’t it?’
Victoria was unable to administer much comfort.
‘So you see,’ said Edward, ‘if you wouldn’t mind awfully—one sideways and one looking right at me—oh I say, that’s wonderful—’
The camera clicked twice and Victoria showed that purring complacence displayed by young women who know they have made an impression on an attractive member of the opposite sex.
‘But it’s pretty foul really, having to go off just when I’ve met you,’ said Edward. ‘I’ve half a mind to chuck it—but I suppose I couldn’t do that at the last moment—not after all those ghastly forms and visas and everything. Wouldn’t be a very good show, what?’
‘It mayn’t turn out as bad as you think,’ said Victoria consolingly.
‘N-no,’ said Edward doubtfully. ‘The funny thing is,’ he added, ‘that I’ve got a feeling there’s something fishy somewhere.’
‘Fishy?’
‘Yes. Bogus. Don’t ask me why. I haven’t any reason. Sort of feeling one gets sometimes. Had it once about my port oil. Began fussing about the damned thing and sure enough there was a washer wedged in the spare gear pump.’
The technical terms in which this was couched made it quite unintelligible to Victoria, but she got the main idea.
‘You think he’s bogus—Rathbone?’
‘Don’t see how he can be. I mean he’s frightfully respectable and learned and belongs to all these societies—and sort of hob-nobs with Archbishops and Principals of Colleges. No, it’s just a feeling—well, time will show. So long. I wish you were coming, too.’
‘So do I,’ said Victoria.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Go round to St Guildric’s Agency in Gower Street and look for another job,’ said Victoria gloomily.
‘Goodbye, Victoria. Partir, say mourir un peu,’ added Edward with a very British accent. ‘These French johnnies know their stuff. Our English chaps just maunder on about parting being a sweet sorrow—silly asses.’
‘Goodbye, Edward, good luck.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever think about me again.’
‘Yes, I shall.’
‘You’re absolutely different from any girl I’ve ever seen before—I only wish—’ The clock chimed a quarter, and Edward said, ‘Oh hell—I must fly—’
Retreating rapidly, he was swallowed up by the great maw of London. Victoria remaining behind on her seat absorbed in meditation was conscious of two distinct streams of thought.
One dealt with the theme of Romeo and Juliet. She and Edward, she felt, were somewhat in the position of that unhappy couple, although perhaps Romeo and Juliet had expressed their feelings in rather more high-class language. But the position, Victoria thought, was the same. Meeting, instant attraction—frustration—two fond hearts thrust asunder. A remembrance of a rhyme once frequently recited by her old nurse came to her mind:
Jumbo said to Alice I love you,
Alice said to Jumbo I don’t believe you do,
If you really loved me as you say you do
You wouldn’t go to America and leave me in the Zoo.
Substitute Baghdad for America and there you were!
Victoria rose at last, dusting crumbs from her lap, and walked briskly out of FitzJames Gardens in the direction of Gower Street. Victoria had come to two decisions: the first was that (like Juliet) she loved this young man, and meant to have him.
The second decision that Victoria had come to was that as Edward would shortly be in Baghdad, the only thing to do was for her to go to Baghdad also. What was now occupying her mind was how this could be accomplished. That it could be accomplished somehow or other, Victoria did not doubt. She was a young woman of optimism and force of character.
Parting is such sweet sorrow appealed to her as a sentiment no more than it did to Edward.
‘Somehow,’ said Victoria to herself, ‘I’ve got to get to Baghdad!’
The Savoy Hotel welcomed Miss Anna Scheele with the empressément due to an old and valued client—they inquired after the health of Mr Morganthal—and assured her that if her suite was not to her liking she had only to say so—for Anna Scheele represented DOLLARS.
Miss Scheele bathed, dressed, made a telephone call to a Kensington number and then went down in the lift. She passed through the revolving doors and asked for a taxi. It drew up and she got in and directed it to Cartier’s in Bond Street.
As the taxi turned out of the Savoy approach into the Strand a little dark man who had been standing looking into a shop window suddenly glanced at his watch and hailed a taxi that was conveniently cruising past and which had been singularly blind to the hails of an agitated woman with parcels a moment or two previously.
The taxi followed along the Strand keeping
