Agahta Christie: An autobiography

by Agatha Christie

  ‘But why shouldn’t she?’ I said. ‘You can speak to her.’

  ‘I can’t–she’s Spanish. She says “Senorita’ and then she says a lot of things I can’t understand.’

  ‘You mustn’t be so silly, Rosalind.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right. You can go to dinner. I don’t mind being left alone as long as I’m in bed. Then I can shut my eyes and pretend to be asleep when the chamber-maid comes in.’ It is odd what children like or don’t like. When we got on a boat to come back it was rough, and a large, hideously ugly Spanish sailor took Rosalind in his arms, and jerked up with her from the boat to the gangway. I thought she would roar with disapprobation, but not at all. She smiled at him with the utmost sweetness.

  ‘He’s foreign, and you didn’t mind,’ I said.

  ‘Well, he didn’t talk to me. And anyway I liked his face–a nice, ugly face.’ Only one incident of note happened as we left Las Palmas for England. We arrived at Puerto de la Cruz to catch the Union Castle boat, and the discovery was made that Blue Teddy had been left behind. Rosalind’s face immediately blanched. ‘I won’t leave without Teddy,’ she said. The bus driver who had brought us was approached. Largesse was pressed upon him, though he hardly even seemed to want it. Of course he would find the little one’s blue monkey–of course, he would drive back like the wind. In the meantime he was sure the sailors would not let the boat leave–not without the favourite toy of a child. I did not agree with him. I thought the boat would leave. It was an English boat, en route from South Africa. If it had been a Spanish boat, no doubt it would have remained a couple of hours if necessary. However, all was well. Just as whistles began blowing, and everyone was told to go ashore, the bus was seen approaching in a cloud of dust. Out jumped the driver; Blue Teddy was passed to Rosalind on the gangway; and she clasped him to her heart. A happy ending to our stay there.

  VII

  My plan of life henceforward was more or less established, but I had to make one last decision. Archie and I met by appointment. He looked ill and tired. We talked of ordinary things and people we knew. Then I asked him what he felt now; whether he was quite sure he could not come back to live with Rosalind and me. I said once again that he knew how fond of him she was, and how much she had been puzzled over his absence. She had said once, with the devastating truthfulness of childhood: ‘I know Daddy likes me, and would like to be with me. It’s you he doesn’t seem to like.’

  ‘That shows you,’ I said, ‘that she needs you. Can’t you manage to do it?’ He said, ‘No, no, I’m afraid I can’t. There’s only one thing that I really want. I want madly to be happy, and I can’t be happy unless I can get married to Nancy. She’s been round the world on a trip for the last ten months, because her people hoped it would get her out of it too, but it hasn’t. That’s the only thing I want or can do.’ It was settled at last. I wrote to my lawyers and went to see them. Things were put in train. There was nothing more to do, except to decide what to do with myself. Rosalind was at school, and she had Carlo and Punkie to visit her. I had till the Christmas holidays–and I decided that I would seek sunshine. I would go to the West Indies and Jamaica. I went to Cook’s and fixed up my tickets. It was all arranged. Here we come to Fate again. Two days before I was to leave I went out to dinner with friends in London. They were not people I knew well, but they were a charming couple. There was a young couple there, a naval officer, Commander Howe, and his wife. I sat next to the Commander at dinner, and he talked to me about Baghdad. He had just come back from that part of the world, since he had been stationed in the Persian Gulf. After dinner his wife came and sat by me and we talked. She said people always said Baghdad was a horrible city, but she and her husband had been entranced by it. They talked about it, and I became more and more enthusiastic. I said I supposed one had to go by sea.

  ‘You can go by train–by the Orient Express.’

  ‘The Orient Express?’ All my life I had wanted to go on the Orient Express. When I had travelled to France or Spain or Italy, the Orient Express had often been standing at Calais, and I had longed to climb up into it. Simplon-Orient Express–Milan, Belgrade, Stamboul… I was bitten. Commander Howe wrote down for me places I must go and see in Baghdad. ‘Don’t get trapped into too much Alwiyah and Mem-sahibs and all that. You must go to Mosul–Basra you must visit–and you certainly ought to go to Ur.’

  ‘Ur?’ I said. I had just been reading in The Illustrated London News about Leonard Woolley’s marvellous finds at Ur. I had always been faintly attracted to archaeology, though knowing nothing about it. Next morning I rushed round to Cook’s, cancelled my tickets for the West Indies, and instead got tickets and reservations for a journey on the Simplon-Orient Express to Stamboul; from Stamboul to Damascus; and from Damascus to Baghdad across the desert. I was wildly excited. It would take four or five days to get the visas and everything, and then off I should go.

  ‘All by yourself?’ said Carlo, slightly doubtful. ‘All by yourself to the Middle East? You don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Oh, that will be all right,’ I said. ‘After all, one must do things by oneself sometime, mustn’t one?’ I never had before–I didn’t much want to now–but I thought: ‘It’s now or never. Either I cling to everything that’s safe and that I know, or else I develop more initiative, do things on my own.’ And so it was that five days later I started for Baghdad. It is the name, really, that so fascinates one. I don’t think I had any clear picture in my mind of what Baghdad was like. I was certainly not expecting it to be the city of Haroun-al-Raschid. It was just a place that I had never thought of going to, so it held for me all the pleasures of the unknown. I had been round the world with Archie; I had been to the Canary Islands with Carlo and Rosalind; now I was going by myself I should find out now what kind of person I was–whether I had become entirely dependent on other people as I feared. I could indulge my passion for seeing places–any place I wanted to see. I could change my mind at a moment’s notice, just as I had done when I chose Baghdad instead of the West Indies. I would have no one to consider but myself. I would see how I liked that. I knew well enough that I was a dog character: dogs will not go for a walk unless someone takes them. Perhaps I was always going to be like that. I hoped not.

  PART VIII

  SECOND SPRING

  I

  Trains have always been one of my favourite things. It is sad nowadays that one no longer has engines that seem to be one’s personal friends. I entered my wagon lit compartment at Calais, the journey to Dover and the tiresome sea voyage disposed of, and settled comfortably in the train of my dreams. It was then that I became acquainted, with one of the first dangers of travel. With me in the carriage was a middle-aged woman, a well-dressed, experienced traveller, with a good many suitcases and hat-boxes–yes, we still travelled with hat-boxes in those days–and she entered into conversation with me. This was only natural, since we were to share the carriage, which, like all second-class ones, had two berths. It was in some ways much nicer to travel by second rather than first class, since it was a much bigger carriage, and enabled one to move about. Where was I going? my companion asked. To Italy? No, I said, further than that. Where then was I going? I said that I was going to Baghdad. Immediately she was all animation. She herself lived in Baghdad. What a coincidence. If I was staying there with friends, as she presumed, she was almost sure to know them. I said I wasn’t going to stay with friends.

  ‘But where are you going to stay, then? You can’t possibly stay in a hotel in Baghdad.’ I asked why not. After all, what else are hotels for? That at least was my private thought, though not uttered aloud. Oh! the hotels were all quite impossible. ‘You can’t possibly do that. I tell you what you must do: you must come to us!’ I was somewhat startled.

  ‘Yes, yes, I won’t take any denial. How long did you plan to stay there?’ ‘Oh, probably quite a short time,’ I said.

  ‘Well, at any rate you must come to us to start with, and then we can pass you on to someone els
e.’ It was very kind, very hospitable, but I felt an immediate revolt. I began to understand what Commander Howe had meant when he advised me not to let myself be caught up in the social life of the English colony. I could see myself tied hand and foot. I tried to give a rather stammering account of what I planned to do and see, but Mrs C.–she had told me her name, that her husband was already in Baghdad, and that she was one of the oldest residents there–quickly put aside all my ideas.

  ‘Oh, you’ll find it quite different when you get there. One has a very good life indeed. Plenty of tennis, plenty going on. I think you really will enjoy it. People always say that Baghdad is terrible, but I can’t agree. And one has lovely gardens, you know.’ I agreed amiably to everything. She said, ‘I suppose you are going to Trieste, and will take a boat there on to Beirut?’ I said no, I was going the whole way through by the Orient Express. She shook her head a bit over that. ‘I don’t think that’s advisable, you know. I don’t think you would like it. Oh well, I suppose it can’t be helped now. Anyway, we shall meet, I expect. I’ll give you my card, and as soon as you get to Baghdad, if you just wire ahead from Beirut, when you are leaving, my husband will come down and meet you and bring you straight back to our house.’ What could I say except thank you very much and add that my plans were rather unsettled? Fortunately Mrs C. was not going to make the whole journey with me–thank God for that, I thought, as she would never have stopped talking. She was going to get out at Trieste, and take a boat to Beirut. I had prudently not mentioned my plans for staying in Damascus and Stamboul, so she would probably come to the conclusion that I had changed my mind about travelling to Baghdad. We parted on the most friendly terms the next day in Trieste, and I settled down to enjoy myself. The journey was all that I had hoped for. After Trieste we went through Yugoslavia and the Balkans, and there was all the fascination of looking out at an entirely different world: going through mountain gorges, watching ox-carts and picturesque wagons, studying groups of people on the station platforms, getting out occasionally at places like Nish and Belgrade and seeing the large engines changed and new monsters coming on with entirely different scripts and signs. Naturally I picked up a few acquaintances en route, but none of them, I am glad to say, took charge of me in the same way as my first had done. I passed the time of day agreeably with an American missionary lady, a Dutch engineer, and a couple of Turkish ladies. With the last I could not do much conversing, though we managed a little sporadic French. I found myself in what was the obviously humiliating position of having only had one child, and that a daughter. The beaming Turkish lady had had, as far as I could understand her, thirteen children, five of whom were dead, and at least three, if not four miscarriages. The sum total seemed to her quite admirable though I gathered that she was not giving up hope of continuing her splendid record of fertility. She pressed on me every possible remedy for increasing my family. The things with which I was urged to stimulate myself: tisanes of leaves, concoctions of herbs, the use of certain kinds of what I thought might be garlic, and finally the address of a doctor in Paris, who was ‘absolutely wonderful’. Not until you travel by yourself do you realise how much the outside world will protect and befriend you–not always quite to one’s own satisfaction. The missionary lady urged various intestinal remedies on me: she had a wonderful supply of aperient salts. The Dutch engineer took me seriously to task as to where I was going to stay in Stamboul, warning me of all the dangers in that city. ‘You have to be careful,’ he said. ‘You are well brought up lady, living in England, protected I think always by husband or relations. You must not believe what people say to you. You must not go out to places of amusement unless you know where you are being taken.’ In fact he treated me like an innocent of seventeen. I thanked him, but assured him that I would be fully on my guard. To save me from worse dangers he invited me out to dinner on the night I arrived. ‘The Tokatlian,’ he said, ‘is a very good hotel. You are quite safe there. I will call for you about 9 o’clock, and will take you to a very nice restaurant, very correct. It is run by Russian ladies–White Russians they are, all of noble birth. They cook very well and they keep the utmost decorum in their restaurant.’ I said that would be very nice, and he was as good as his word. Next day, when he had finished his business, he called for me, showed me some of the sights in Stamboul, and arranged a guide for me. ‘You will not take the one from Cook’s–he is too expensive–but I assure you this one is very respectable.’ After another pleasant evening, with the Russian ladies sailing about, smiling aristocratically and patronising my engineer friend, he showed me more of the sights of Stamboul and finally delivered me once more at the Tokatlian Hotel. ‘I wonder,’ he said, as we paused on the threshold. He looked at me inquiringly. ‘I wonder now–’ and the inquiry became more pronounced as he sized up my likely reaction. Then he sighed, ‘No. I think it will be wiser that I do not ask.’

  ‘I think you are very wise,’ I said, ‘and very kind.’ He sighed again. ‘It would have been pleasant if it had been otherwise, but I can see–yes, this is the right way.’ He pressed my hand warmly, raised it to his lips, and departed from my life for ever. He was a nice man–kindness itself–and I owe it to him that I saw the sights of Constantinople under pleasant auspices. Next day I was called on by Cook’s representatives in the most conventional fashion, and taken across the Bosphorus to Haidar Pasha, where I resumed my journey on the Orient Express. I was glad to have my guide with me, for anything more like a lunatic asylum than Haidar Pasha Station cannot be imagined. Everyone shouted, screamed, thumped, and demanded the attention of the Customs Officer. I was introduced then to the technique of Cook’s Dragomen. ‘You give me one pound note now,’ he said. I gave him one pound note. He immediately sprang up on the Customs benches and waved the note aloft. ‘Here, here,’ he called. ‘Here, here!’ His cries proved effective. A customs gentleman covered with gold braid hurried in our direction, put large chalk marks all over my baggage, said to me ‘I wish you good voyage’–and departed to harry those who had not as yet adopted the Cook’s one pound procedure. ‘And now I settle you in train,’ said Cook’s man. ‘And now?’ I was a little doubtful how much, but as I was looking among my Turkish money–some change, in fact, which had been given me on the wagon lit–he said with some firmness, ‘It is better that you keep that money. It may be useful. You give me another pound note.’ Rather doubtful about this but reflecting that one has to learn by experience, I yielded him another pound note, and he departed with salutation and benedictions. There was a subtle difference on passing from Europe into Asia. It was as though time had less meaning. The train ambled on its way, running by the side of the Sea of Marmara, and climbing mountains–it was incredibly beautiful all along this way. The people in the train now were different too–though it is difficult to describe in what the difference lay. I felt cut off, but far more interested in what I was doing and where I was going. When we stopped at the stations I enjoyed looking out, seeing the motley crowd of costumes, peasants thronging the platform, and the strange meals of cooked food that were handed up to the train. Food on skewers, wrapped in leaves, eggs painted various colours–all sorts of things. The meals became more unpalatable and fuller of hot, greasy, tasteless morsels as we went further East. Then, on the second evening, we came to a halt, and people got out of the train to look at the Cilician Gates. It was a moment of incredible beauty. I have never forgotten it. I was to pass that way many times again. both going to and coming from the Near East and, as the train schedules changed, I stopped there at different times of day and night: sometimes in the early morning, which was indeed beautiful; sometimes, like this first time, in the evening at six o’clock; sometimes, regrettably, in the middle of the night. This first time I was lucky. I got out with the others and stood there. The sun was slowly setting, and the beauty indescribable. I was so glad then that I had come–so full of thankfulness and joy. I got back into the train, whistles blew, and we started down the long side of a mountain gorge, passing from on
e side to the other, and coming out on the river below. So we came slowly down through Turkey and into Syria at Aleppo. Before we reached Aleppo, however, I had a short spell of bad luck. I was, as I thought, badly bitten by mosquitoes, up my arms and the back of my neck, and on my ankles and knees. I was still so innocent of travel abroad that I did not recognise that what I had been bitten by was not mosquitoes but bed-bugs, and that I was going to be all my life peculiarly susceptible to such bites. They came out of the old-fashioned wooden railway carriages, and fed hungrily on the juicy travellers in the train. My temperature rose to 102 and my arms swelled. Finally, with the aid of a kindly French commercial traveller, I slit the sleeves of my blouse and coat–my arms were so swelled inside them that there was nothing else one could do. I had fever, headache and misery, and thought to myself, ‘What a mistake I have made to come on this journey!’ However, my French friend was very helpful: he got out and purchased some grapes for me–the small sweet grapes which you get in that part of the world. ‘You will not want to eat,’ he said. ‘I can see that you have fever. It is better that you stick to these grapes.’ Though trained by mother and grandmothers to wash all food before eating it abroad, I no longer cared about this advice. I fed myself with grapes every quarter of an hour, and they relieved a lot of the fever. I certainly did not want to eat anything else. My kind Frenchman said goodbye to me at Aleppo, and by the next day my swelling had abated and I was feeling better. When I finally arrived at Damascus, after a long weary day in a train that never seemed to go more than five miles an hour, and constantly paused at something hardly distinguishable from the surroundings but which was called a station, I emerged into the midst of clamour, porters seizing baggage off me, screaming and yelling, and other ones seizing it from them in turn, the stronger wrestling with the weaker. I finally discerned outside the station a handsome looking motor-bus labelled Orient Palace Hotel, A grand person in livery rescued me and my baggage, and together with one or two other bewildered voyagers we piled in and were driven to the hotel, where a room had been reserved for me. It was a most magnificent hotel, with large marble glittering halls–but with such poor electric light: that one could hardly see one’s surroundings. Having been ushered up marble steps and shown into an enormous apartment, I mooted the question of a bath with a kindly-looking female who came in answer to a bell, and who seemed to understand a few words of French.