Gramophone Company?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sanders here.’
‘Sanders of the River? What river?’
‘River Tigris. Reporting on A. S. Arrived this morning from New York. Went to Cartier’s. Bought sapphire and diamond ring costing one hundred and twenty pounds. Went to florist’s, Jane Kent—twelve pounds eighteen shillings’ worth of flowers to be delivered at a nursing home in Portland Place. Ordered coat and skirt at Bolford and Avory’s. None of these firms known to have any suspicious contacts, but particular attention will be paid to them in future. A. S.’s room at Savoy gone through. Nothing suspicious found. Brief-case in suitcase containing papers relating to Paper Merger with Wolfensteins. All above board. Camera and two rolls of apparently unexposed films. Possibility of films being photostatic records, substituted other films for them, but original films reported upon as being straightforward unexposed films. A.S. took small overnight-case and went to sister at 17 Elmsleigh Gardens. Sister entering nursing home in Portland Place this evening for internal operation. This confirmed from nursing home and also appointment book of surgeon. Visit of A. S. seems perfectly above board. Showed no uneasiness or consciousness of being followed. Understand she is spending tonight at nursing home. Has kept on her room at the Savoy. Return passage to New York by clipper booked for twenty-third.’
The man who called himself Sanders of the River paused and added a postscript off the record as it were.
‘And if you ask what I think it’s all a mare’s nest! Throwing money about, that’s all she’s doing. Twelve pounds eighteen on flowers! I ask you!’
It says a good deal for the buoyancy of Victoria’s temperament that the possibility of failing to attain her objective did not for a moment occur to her. Not for her the lines about ships that pass in the night. It was certainly unfortunate that when she had—well—frankly—fallen for an attractive young man, that that young man should prove to be just on the verge of departure to a place distant some three thousand miles. He might so easily have been going to Aberdeen or Brussels, or even Birmingham.
That it should be Baghdad, thought Victoria, was just her luck! Nevertheless, difficult though it might be, she intended to get to Baghdad somehow or other. Victoria walked purposefully along Tottenham Court Road evolving ways and means. Baghdad. What went on in Baghdad? According to Edward: ‘Culture.’ Could she, in some way, play up culture? Unesco? Unesco was always sending people here, there and everywhere, sometimes to the most delectable places. But these were usually, Victoria reflected, superior young women with university degrees who had got into the racket early on.
Victoria, deciding that first things came first, finally bent her steps to a travel agency, and there made her inquiries. There was no difficulty, it seemed, in travelling to Baghdad. You could go by air, by long sea to Basrah, by train to Marseilles and by boat to Beirut and across the desert by car. You could go via Egypt. You could go all the way by train if you were determined to do so, but visas were at present difficult and uncertain and were apt to have actually expired by the time you received them. Baghdad was in the sterling area and money therefore presented no difficulties. Not, that is to say, in the clerk’s meaning of the word. What it all boiled down to was that there was no difficulty whatsoever in getting to Baghdad so long as you had between sixty and a hundred pounds in cash.
As Victoria had at this moment three pounds ten (less ninepence), an extra twelve shillings, and five pounds in the PO Savings Bank, the simple and straightforward way was out of the question.
She made tentative queries as to a job as air hostess or stewardess, but these, she gathered, were highly coveted posts for which there was a waiting-list.
Victoria next visited St Guildric’s Agency where Miss Spenser, sitting behind her efficient desk, welcomed her as one of those who were destined to pass through the office with reasonable frequency.
‘Dear me, Miss Jones, not out of a post again. I really hoped this last one—’
‘Quite impossible,’ said Victoria firmly. ‘I really couldn’t begin to tell you what I had to put up with.’
A pleasurable flush rose in Miss Spenser’s pallid cheek.
‘Not—’ she began—‘I do hope not—He didn’t seem to me really that sort of man—but of course he is a trifle gross—I do hope—’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Victoria. She conjured up a pale brave smile. ‘I can take care of myself.’
‘Oh, of course, but it’s the unpleasantness.’
‘Yes,’ said Victoria. ‘It is unpleasant. However—’ She smiled bravely again.
Miss Spenser consulted her books.
‘The St Leonard’s Assistance to Unmarried Mothers want a typist,’ said Miss Spenser. ‘Of course, they don’t pay very much—’
‘Is there any chance,’ asked Victoria brusquely, ‘of a post in Baghdad?’
‘In Baghdad?’ said Miss Spenser in lively astonishment.
Victoria saw she might as well have said in Kamchatka or at the South Pole.
‘I should very much like to get to Baghdad,’ said Victoria.
‘I hardly think—in a secretary’s post you mean?’
‘Anyhow,’ said Victoria. ‘As a nurse or a cook, or looking after a lunatic. Any way at all.’
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
