Kitabı oku: «They Came to Baghdad», sayfa 2
‘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!’
CHAPTER 3
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 the first taxi in sight. As they were both held up by the lights in going round Trafalgar Square, the man in the second taxi looked out of the left-hand window and made a slight gesture with his hand. A private car, which had been standing in the side street by the Admiralty Arch started its engine and swung into the stream of traffic behind the second taxi.
The traffic had started on again. As Anna Scheele’s taxi followed the stream of traffic going to the left into Pall Mall, the taxi containing the little dark man swung away to the right, continuing round Trafalgar Square. The private car, a grey Standard, was now close behind Anna Scheele. It contained two passengers, a fair rather vacant-looking young man at the wheel and a smartly dressed young woman beside him. The Standard followed Anna Scheele’s taxi along Piccadilly and up Bond Street. Here for a moment it paused by the kerb, and the young woman got out.
She called brightly and conventionally:
‘Thanks so much.’
The car went on. The young woman walked along glancing every now and again into a window. A block held up the traffic. The young woman passed both the Standard and Anna Scheele’s taxi. She arrived at Cartier’s and went inside.
Anna Scheele paid off her taxi and went into the jeweller’s. She spent some time looking at various pieces of jewellery. In the end she selected a sapphire and diamond ring. She wrote a cheque for it on a London bank. At the sight of the name on it, a little extra empressément came into the assistant’s manner.
‘Glad to see you in London again, Miss Scheele. Is Mr Morganthal over?’
‘No.’
‘I wondered. We have a very fine star sapphire here—I know he is interested in star sapphires. If you would care to see it?’
Miss Scheele expressed her willingness to see it, duly admired it and promised to mention it to Mr Morganthal.
She went out again into Bond Street, and the young woman who had been looking at clip earrings expressed herself as unable to make up her mind and emerged also.
The grey Standard car having turned to the left in Grafton Street and gone down to Piccadilly was just coming up Bond Street again. The young woman showed no signs of recognition.
Anna Scheele had turned into the Arcade. She entered a florist’s. She ordered three dozen long-stemmed roses, a bowl full of sweet big purple violets, a dozen sprays of white lilac, and a jar of mimosa. She gave an address for them to be sent.
‘That will be twelve pounds, eighteen shillings, madam.’
Anna Scheele paid and went out. The young woman who had just come in asked the price of a bunch of primroses but did not buy them.
Anna Scheele crossed Bond Street and went along Burlington Street and turned into Savile Row. Here she entered the establishment of one of those tailors who, whilst catering essentially for men, occasionally condescend to cut a suit for certain favoured members of the feminine sex.
Mr Bolford received Miss Scheele with the greeting accorded to a valued client, and the materials for a suit were considered.
‘Fortunately, I can give you our own export quality. When will you be returning to New York, Miss Scheele?’
‘On the twenty-third.’
‘We can manage that nicely. By the clipper, I presume?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how are things in America? They are very sadly here—very sadly indeed.’ Mr Bolford shook his head like a doctor describing a patient. ‘No heart in things, if you know what I mean. And no one coming along who takes any pride in a good job of work. D’you know who will cut your suit, Miss Scheele? Mr Lantwick—seventy-two years of age he is and he’s the only man I’ve got I can really trust to cut for our best people. All the others—’
Mr Bolford’s plump hands waved them away.
‘Quality,’ he said. ‘That’s what this country used to be renowned for. Quality! Nothing cheap, nothing flashy. When we try mass production we’re no good at it, and that’s a fact. That’s your country’s speciality, Miss Scheele. What we ought to stand for, and I say it again, is quality. Take time over things, and trouble, and turn out an article that no one in the world can beat. Now what day shall we say for the first fitting. This day week? At 11.30? Thank you very much.’
Making her way through the archaic gloom round bales of material, Anna Scheele emerged into daylight again. She hailed a taxi and returned to the Savoy. A taxi that was drawn up on the opposite side of the street and which contained a little dark man, took the same route but did not turn into the Savoy. It drove round to the Embankment and there picked up a short plump woman who had recently emerged from the service entrance of the Savoy.
‘What about it, Louisa? Been through her room?’
‘Yes. Nothing.’
Anna Scheele had lunch in the restaurant. A table had been kept for her by the window. The Maître d’Hôtel inquired affectionately after the health of Otto Morganthal.
After lunch Anna Scheele took her key and went up to her suite. The bed had been made, fresh towels were in the bathroom and everything was spick and span. Anna crossed to the two light air-cases that constituted her luggage, one was open, the other locked. She cast an eye over the contents of the unlocked one, then taking her keys from her purse she unlocked the other. All was neat, folded, as she had folded things, nothing had apparently been touched or disturbed. A brief-case of leather lay on top. A small Leica camera and two rolls of films were in one corner. The films were still sealed and unopened. Anna ran her nail across the flap and pulled it up. Then she smiled, very gently. The single almost invisible blonde hair that had been there was there no longer. Deftly she scattered a little powder over the shiny leather of the brief-case and blew it off. The brief-case remained clear and shiny. There were no fingerprints. But that morning after patting a little brilliantine on to the smooth flaxen cap of her hair, she had handled the brief-case. There should have been fingerprints on it, her own.
She smiled again.
‘Good work,’ she said to herself. ‘But not quite good enough …’
Deftly, she packed a small overnight-case and went downstairs again. A taxi was called and she directed the driver to 17 Elmsleigh Gardens.
Elmsleigh Gardens was a quiet, rather dingy Kensington Square. Anna paid off the taxi and ran up the steps to the peeling front door. She pressed the bell. After a few minutes an elderly woman opened the door with a suspicious face which immediately changed to a beam of welcome.
‘Won’t Miss Elsie be pleased to see you! She’s in the study at the back. It’s only the thought of your coming that’s been keeping her spirits up.’
Anna went quickly along the dark hallway and opened the door at the far end. It was a small shabby, comfortable room with large worn leather arm-chairs. The woman sitting in one of them jumped up.
‘Anna, darling.’
‘Elsie.’
The two women kissed each other affectionately.
‘It’s all arranged,’ said Elsie. ‘I go in tonight. I do hope—’
‘Cheer up,’ said Anna. ‘Everything is going to be quite all right.’
The small dark man in the raincoat entered a public callbox at High Street Kensington Station, and dialled a number.
‘Valhalla 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!’
CHAPTER 4
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 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.
‘Well now,’ he said to himself. ‘Who’d have thought of that? Anna Scheele.’
He added in an explanatory way:
‘Excuse me, Miss Jones. I was surprised to recognize a young lady whom I saw in New York only a week ago, secretary to one of our big international banks—’
He stopped as he spoke at a door in the corridor. The key was hanging in the lock and, with a brief tap, Mr Hamilton Clipp opened the door and stood aside for Victoria to precede him into the room.
Mrs Hamilton Clipp was sitting on a high-backed chair near the window and jumped up as they came in. She was a short bird-like sharp-eyed little woman. Her right arm was encased in plaster.
Her husband introduced Victoria.
‘Why, it’s all been most unfortunate,’ exclaimed Mrs Clipp breathlessly. ‘Here we were, with a full itinerary, and enjoying London and all our plans made and my passage booked. I’m going out to pay a visit to my married daughter in Iraq, Miss Jones. I’ve not seen her for nearly two years. And then what do I do but take a crash—as a matter of fact, it was actually in Westminster Abbey—down some stone steps—and there I was. They rushed me to hospital and they’ve set it, and all things considered it’s not too uncomfortable—but there it is, I’m kind of helpless, and however I’d manage travelling, I don’t know. And George here, is just tied up with business, and simply can’t get away for at least another three weeks. He suggested that I should take a nurse along with me—but after all, once I’m out there I don’t need a nurse hanging around, Sadie can do all that’s necessary—and it means paying her fare back as well, and so I thought I’d ring up the agencies and see if I couldn’t find someone who’d be willing to come along just for the fare out.’
‘I’m not exactly a nurse,’ said Victoria, managing to imply that that was practically what she was. ‘But I’ve had a good deal of experience of nursing.’ She produced the first testimonial. ‘I was with Lady Cynthia Bradbury for over a year. And if you should want any correspondence or secretarial work done, I acted as my uncle’s secretary for some months. My uncle,’ said Victoria modestly, ‘is the Bishop of Llangow.’
‘So your uncle’s a Bishop. Dear me, how interesting.’
Both the Hamilton Clipps were, Victoria thought, decidedly impressed. (And so they should be after the trouble she had taken!)
Mrs Hamilton Clipp handed the two testimonials to her husband.
‘It really seems quite wonderful,’ she said reverently. ‘Quite providential. It’s an answer to prayer.’
Which, indeed, was exactly what it was, thought Victoria.
‘You’re taking up a position of some kind out there? Or joining a relative?’ asked Mrs Hamilton Clipp.
In the flurry of manufacturing testimonials, Victoria had quite forgotten that she might have to account for her reasons for travelling to Baghdad. Caught unprepared, she had to improvise rapidly. The paragraph she had read yesterday came to her mind.
‘I’m joining my uncle out there. Dr Pauncefoot Jones,’ she explained.
‘Indeed? The archaeologist?’
‘Yes.’ For one moment Victoria wondered whether she were perhaps endowing herself with too many distinguished uncles. ‘I’m terribly interested in his work, but of course I’ve no special qualifications so it was out of the question for the Expedition to pay my fare out. They’re not too well off for funds. But if I can get out on my own, I can join them and make myself useful.’
‘It must be very interesting work,’ said Mr Hamilton Clipp, ‘and Mesopotamia is certainly a great field for archaeology.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Victoria, turning to Mrs Clipp, ‘that my uncle the Bishop is up in Scotland at this moment. But I can give you his secretary’s telephone number. She is staying in London at the moment. Pimlico 87693—one of the Fulham Palace extensions. She’ll be there any time from (Victoria’s eyes slid to the clock on the mantelpiece) 11.30 onwards if you would like to ring her up and ask about me.’
‘Why, I’m sure—’ Mrs Clipp began, but her husband interrupted.
‘Time’s very short, you know. This plane leaves day after tomorrow. Now have you got a passport, Miss Jones?’
‘Yes.’ Victoria felt thankful that owing to a short holiday trip to France last year, her passport was up to date. ‘I brought it with me in case,’ she added.
‘Now that’s what I call businesslike,’ said Mr Clipp approvingly. If any other candidate had been in the running, she had obviously dropped out now. Victoria with her good recommendations, and her uncles, and her passport on the spot had successfully made the grade.
‘You’ll want the necessary visas,’ said Mr Clipp, taking the passport. ‘I’ll run round to our friend Mr Burgeon in American Express, and he’ll get everything fixed up. Perhaps you’d better call round this afternoon, so you can sign whatever’s necessary.’
