Agahta Christie: An autobiography

by Agatha Christie

Rosalind also gave me a few words of advice on the subject of marriage: ‘You know,’ she said, ‘when you are married to Max, you will have to sleep in the same bed as him?’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘Well, yes, I supposed you did know, because after all you were married to Daddy, but I thought you might not have thought of it.’ I assured her I had thought of everything relevant to the occasion.

  So the weeks passed. I walked on the moor and had fits of occasional misery when I thought I was doing the wrong thing and ruining Max’s life.

  Meanwhile Max threw himself into an extra amount of work at the British Museum and elsewhere, finishing off his drawings of pots and archaeological work. The last week before the marriage he stayed up till five in the morning every night, drawing. I have a suspicion that Katharine Woolley induced Len to make the work even heavier than it might have been: she was much annoyed with me for not postponing the marriage.

  Before we left London, Len had called round to see me. He was so embarrassed that I couldn’t think what was the matter with him.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it is perhaps going to make it rather awkward for us. I mean at Ur and in Baghdad. I mean it wouldn’t be–you do understand?–it wouldn’t be in any way possible for you to come on the expedition. I mean, there is no room for anyone but archaeologists.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said, ‘I quite understand that–we’ve talked it over. I’ve no useful knowledge of any kind. Both Max and I thought it would be much better this way, only he didn’t want to leave you high and dry at the beginning of the season, where there would be very little time to find anybody else to replace him.’

  ‘I thought…I know…’ Len paused. ‘I thought perhaps that–well, I mean people might think it rather odd if you didn’t come to Ur.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know why they should think that,’ I said. ‘After all, I shall come out at the end of the season to Baghdad.’

  ‘Oh yes, and I hope you will come down then and spend a few days at Ur.’

  ‘So that’s all right, isn’t it?’ I said encouragingly.

  ‘What I thought–what we thought–I mean, what Katharine–I mean, what we both thought…’

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘-was that it might be better if you didn’t come to Baghdad–now. I mean, if you are coming with him as far as Baghdad, and then he goes to Ur and you go home, don’t you think that perhaps it would look odd? I mean, I don’t know that the Trustees would think it a good idea.’

  That suddenly aroused my annoyance. I was quite willing not to come to Ur. I should never have suggested it, because I thought it would be a very unfair thing to do: but I could see no reason why I could not come to Baghdad if I wanted to.

  Actually I had already decided with Max that I did not want to come to Baghdad: it would be a rather meaningless journey. We were going to Greece for our honeymoon, and from Athens he would go to Iraq and I should return to England. We had already arranged this, but at this moment I was not going to say so.

  I replied with some asperity: ‘I think Len, it is hardly for you to suggest to me where I should and should not travel in the Middle East. If I want to come to Baghdad, I shall come there with my husband, and it is nothing to do with the dig or with you.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, I do hope you don’t mind. It was just that Katharine thought…’

  I was quite sure that it was Katharine’s thought, not Len’s. Though I was fond of her, I was not going to have her dictate my life. When I saw Max, therefore, I said that though I did not propose to come to Baghdad, I had carefully not told Len that that was so. Max was furious. I had to calm him down.

  ‘I’m almost inclined to insist that you come,’ he said.

  ‘That would be silly. It would mean a lot of expense, and it would be rather miserable parting from you there.’

  It was then that he told me that he had been approached by Dr Campbell-Thompson and that there was a possibility that in the following year he would go and dig at Nineveh in the north of Iraq. In all probability I should be able to accompany him there. ‘Nothing is settled,’ he said. ‘It all has to be arranged. But I am not going to be parted from you for another six months the season after this. Len will have had plenty of time to find a successor by then.’

  The days passed in Skye, my banns were duly read in church, and all the old ladies sitting round beamed on me with the kindly pleasure all old ladies take in something romantic like marriage.

  Max came up to Edinburgh, and Rosalind and I, Carlo, Mary, and Peter came over from Skye. We were married in the small chapel of St Columba’s Church. Our wedding was quite a triumph–there were no reporters there and no hint of the secret had leaked out. Our duplicity continued, because we parted, like the old song, at the church door. Max went back to London to finish his Ur work for another three days, while I returned the next day with Rosalind to Cresswell Place, where I was received by my faithful Bessie, who was in on the secret. Max kept away, then two days later drove up to the door of Cresswell Place in a hired Daimler. We drove off to Dover and from thence crossed the Channel to the first stopping-place of our honeymoon, Venice.

  Max had planned the honeymoon entirely himself: it was going to be a surprise. I am sure nobody enjoyed a honeymoon better than we did. There was only one jarring spot on it, and that was that the Orient Express, even in its early stages before Venice, was once again plagued by the emergence of bed-bugs from the woodwork.

  PART IX

  LIFE WITH MAX

  I

  Our honeymoon took us to Dubrovnik, and from there to Split. Split I have never forgotten. We were wandering round the place in the evening, from our hotel, when we came round the corner into one of the squares, and there, looming up to the sky, was the figure of St Gregory of Nin, one of the finest works of the sculptor Mestrovic. It towered over everything, one of those things that stand out in your memory as a permanent landmark.

  We had enormous fun with the menus there. They were written in Yugoslavian, and of course we had no idea what they meant. We used to point to some entry and then wait with some anxiety to see what would be delivered. Sometimes it was a colossal dish of chicken, on another occasion poached eggs in a highly seasoned white sauce, another time again a sort of super-goulash. All the helpings were enormous, and none of the restaurants ever wished you to pay the bill. The waiter would murmur in broken French or English or Italian: ‘Not tonight, not tonight. You can come in and pay tomorrow.’ I don’t know what happened when people had meals for a week without paying and then went off on a boat. Certainly on the last morning when we did go to pay we had the utmost difficulty in getting our favourite restaurant to accept the money. ‘Ah, you can do it later,’ they said. ‘But,’ we explained, or tried to explain, ‘we cannot do it later, because we are going off by boat at twelve o’clock.’ The little waiter sighed sadly at the prospect of having to do some arithmetic. He retired to a cubicle, scratched his head, used several pencils in turn, groaned, and after about five minutes brought us what seemed a very reasonable account for the enormous amounts we had eaten. Then he wished us good luck and we departed.

  The next stage of our journey was down the Dalmatian coast and along the coast of Greece to Patras. It was just a little cargo boat, Max explained. We stood on the quay waiting for its arrival, and became a little anxious. Then we suddenly saw a boat so minute–such a cockleshell–that we could hardly believe it was what we were waiting for. It had an unusual name, composed entirely of consonants–Srbn–how it was pronounced we never learnt. But this was the boat sure enough. There were four passengers on board–ourselves in one cabin and two others in a second. They left at the next port, so we then had the boat to ourselves.

  Never have I tasted such food as we had on that boat: delicious lamb, very tender, in little cutlets, succulent vegetables, rice, sumptuous sauce, and savoury things on skewers. We chatted to the captain in broken Italian. ‘You like the food?’ he said. ‘I am glad. I have English food I ordered.
It is very English food for you.’ I sincerely hoped he would never come to England, in case he discovered what English food was really like. He said that he had been offered promotion to a bigger passenger boat, but he preferred to stay on this one because he had a good cook here, and he enjoyed his peaceful life: he was not worried by passengers. ‘Being on a boat with passengers is having trouble all the time,’ he explained. ‘So I prefer not to be promoted.’

  We had a happy few days on that little Serbian boat. We stopped at various ports–Santa Anna, Santa Maura, Santi Quaranta. We would go ashore and the captain would explain that he would blow the funnel half an hour before he was due to depart again. So, as we wandered through olive groves or sat among the flowers, we would suddenly hear the ship’s funnel, turn round and hurry back to the ship. How lovely it was, sitting in those olive groves, feeling so completely peaceful and happy together. It was a Garden of Eden, a Paradise on earth.

  We arrived at last at Patras, bade cheerful farewells to the Captain, and got into a funny little train which was to take us to Olympia. It not only took us as passengers, it took a great many more bed-bugs. This time they got up the legs of the trousers I was wearing. The following day I had to slit the cloth because my legs were so swollen.

  Greece needs no description. Olympia was as lovely as I thought it would be. The next day we went on mules to Andritsena–and that, I must say, very nearly tore the fabric of our married life.

  With no previous training in mule-back riding, a fourteen hours’ journey resulted in such agony as is hardly to be believed! I got to a stage when I didn’t know if it would be more painful to walk or to sit on the mule. When we finally arrived, I fell off the mule, so stiff that I could not walk, and I reproached Max, saying: ‘You are really not fit to marry anybody if you don’t know what someone feels after a journey like this!’

  Actually, Max was quite stiff and in pain himself. Explanations that the journey ought not to have taken more than eight hours by his calculations were not well received. It took me seven or eight years to realise that his estimates of journeys were always to prove vastly lower than they proved to be in reality, so that one immediately added a third at least to his prognostication.

  We took two days to recover at Andritsena. Then I admitted that I was not sorry to have married him after all, and that perhaps he could learn the proper way to treat a wife–by not taking her on mule rides until he had carefully calculated the distance. We proceeded on a rather more cautious mule ride of not more than five hours, to the Temple of Bassae, and that I did not find exhausting at all.

  We went to Mycenae, to Epidaurus, and we stayed in what seemed the Royal Suite in a hotel at Nauplia–it had red velvet hangings and an enormous four-poster with gold brocaded curtains. We had breakfast on a slightly insecure but ornamented balcony, looking out towards an island in the sea, and then went down to bathe, rather doubtfully, among large quantities of jelly-fish.

  Epidaurus seemed particularly beautiful to me, but it was there really that I ran up against the archaeological character for the first time. It was a heavenly day, and I climbed up to the top of the theatre and sat there, having left Max in the museum looking at an inscription. A long time passed and he did not come to join me. Finally I got impatient, came down again, and went into the museum. Max was still lying flat on his face on the floor, pursuing his inscription with complete delight.

  ‘Are you still reading that thing?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, rather an unusual one,’ he said. ‘Look here–shall I explain it to you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s lovely outside–absolutely beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it is,’ said Max absently.

  ‘Would you mind,’ I said, ‘if I went back outside?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Max, slightly surprised, ‘that’s quite all right. I just thought you might find this inscription interesting.’

  ‘I don’t think I should find it as interesting as all that,’ I said, and went back to my seat at the top of the theatre. Max rejoined me about an hour later, very happy, having deciphered one particular obscure Greek phrase which, as far as he was concerned, had made his day.

  Delphi was the highlight, though. It struck me as so unbelievably beautiful that we went round trying to select a site where we might build a little house one day. We marked out three, I remember. It was a nice dream: I don’t know that we believed in it ourselves even at the time. When I went there a year or two ago and saw the great buses travelling up and down, and the cafes, the souvenirs, and the tourists, how glad I was that we had not built our house there.

  We were always choosing sites for houses. This was mainly owing to me, houses having always been my passion–there was indeed a moment in my life, not long before the outbreak of the second war, when I was the proud owner of eight houses. I had become addicted to finding broken-down, slummy houses in London and making structural alterations, decorating and furnishing them. When the second war came and I had to pay war damage insurance on all these houses, it was not so funny. However, in the end they all showed a good profit when I sold them. It had been an enjoyable hobby while it lasted–and I am always interested to walk past one of ‘my’ houses, to see how they are being kept up, and to guess the sort of person who is living in them now.

  On the last day we walked down from Delphi to the sea at Itea below. A Greek came with us to show us the way, and Max talked to him. Max has a very inquiring mind, and always has to ask a lot of questions of any native who is with him. On this occasion he was asking our guide the names of various flowers. Our charming Greek was only too anxious to oblige. Max would point out a flower and he would say the name, then Max would carefully write it down in his notebook. After he had written down about twenty-five specimens he noticed that there was a certain amount of repetition. He repeated the Greek name which was now being given him for a blue flower with spiky thorns on it, and recognised it as the same name as had been used for one of the first flowers, a large yellow marigold. It then dawned upon us that, in his anxiety to please, the Greek was merely telling us the names of as many flowers as he knew. As he did not know many he was beginning to repeat them for each new flower. With some disgust Max realised that his careful list of wild flowers was completely useless.

  We ended up at Athens, and there, with separation only four or five days ahead of us, disaster struck the happy inhabitants of Eden. I went down with what I took at first to be one of the ordinary tummy complaints that often strike one in the Middle East, known as Gyppy Tummy, Baghdad Tummy, Teheran Tummy, and so on. This I took to be Athens Tummy–but it proved to be worse than that.

  I got up after a few days, but when driving out on an excursion I felt so ill that I had to be driven straight back again. I found I had quite a high fever, and in the end, after many protests on my part, and when all other remedies had failed, we got hold of a doctor. Only a Greek doctor was obtainable. He spoke French, and I soon learnt that, though my French was socially adequate, I did not know any medical terms.

  The doctor attributed my downfall to the heads of red mullet, in which, according to him, there lurked great danger, especially for strangers who were not used to dissecting this fish in the proper way. He told me a gruesome tale about a cabinet minister who suffered from this to the point almost of death and only made a last moment recovery. I certainly felt ill enough to die at any minute! I went on having a temperature of 105 and being unable to keep anything down. However, my doctor succeeded in the end. Suddenly I lay there feeling human once more. The thought of eating was horrible, and I did not feel I ever wanted to move again–but I was on the mend and knew it. I assured Max that he would be able to get off the following day.

  ‘It’s awful. How can I leave you, dear?’

  Our trouble was that Max had been entrusted with the responsibility of reaching Ur in time to build on various additions to the burnt-brick expedition house so as to be ready for the Woolleys and the other members of the
expedition when they arrived in a fortnight’s time. He was to build a new dining-room and a new bathroom for Katharine.

  ‘They will understand, I’m sure,’ said Max. But he said it doubtfully, and I knew quite well that they wouldn’t. I got terrifically worked up, and pointed out that they would lay dereliction of duty on Max’s part on me. It became a point of honour with us both that Max should be there on time. I assured him that now I should be quite all right. I would lie there, quietly recovering for another week perhaps, and then go straight home by the Orient Express.

  Poor Max was torn to bits. He, too, was invested with a terrific English sense of duty. It had been put to him firmly by Leonard Woolley: ‘I trust you, Max. You may be enjoying yourself and all that, but it is really serious that you should give me your word that you will be there on the right day and take charge.’

  ‘You know what Len will say,’ I pointed out.

  ‘But you’re really ill.’

  ‘I know I’m ill, but they won’t believe it. They’ll think that I’m just keeping you away, and I can’t have that. And if you go on arguing, my temperature will go up again and I really shall be very ill indeed.’

  So, in the end, both of us feeling heroic, Max departed on the path of duty.

  The one person who did not agree with any of this was the Greek doctor, who threw his hands up to Heaven and burst into torrents of indignant French. ‘Ah, yes, they are all alike, the English. I have known many of them, oh, so many of them–they are all the same. They have a devotion to their work, to their duty. What is work, what is duty, compared with human beings? A wife is a human being, is she not? A wife is ill, and she is a human being, and that is what matters. That is all that matters–a human being in distress!’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘This is really important. He gave his word he would be there. He has a heavy responsibility.’

  ‘Ah, what is responsibility? What is work, what is duty? Duty? It is nothing, duty, to affection. But Englishmen are like that. Ah, what coldness, what froideur. What horror to be married to an Englishman! I would not wish that on any woman–no indeed, I would not!’