To celebrate the end of the season we decided to organise a race for the men. This had never been done before. There were to be several splendid prizes and it was open to all the men to compete.
There was a great deal of talk about it. To begin with, some of the grave, older men questioned whether they might not lose dignity by competing in such an event. Dignity was always very important. To compete with younger men, possibly beardless boys, was not the sort of thing that a dignified man, a man of substance, ought to do. However, they all came round to it in the end, and we arranged the details. The course was to be about three miles, and they would cross the Khosr River just beyond the mound of Nineveh. Rules were drawn up carefully. The main rule was that there were to be no fouls; nobody was to throw anybody down, do any bumping or boring, crossing, or any such thing. Although we hardly expected that such a rule would be respected, we hoped that the worst excesses would be avoided.
The prizes were first, a cow and calf; second, a sheep; third, a goat. There were several smaller prizes–hens, sacks of flour, and from a hundred eggs down to ten. There was also, for everyone who completed the course, a handful of dates and as much halva as a man could hold clasped in his two hands. These prizes, I may say, cost us £10. Those were the days, no doubt about it.
We called it the A.A.A.A.–the Arpachiyah Amateur Athletic Association. The river was in flood at the moment, and nobody could cross the bridge to attend, but the R.A.F. was invited to watch the race from the sky.
The day came, and it was a memorable sight. The first thing that happened, of course, was that everyone made a concerted rush forward when the starting pistol went, and most of them fell flat on their faces into the Khosr. Others disentangled themselves from the swarming mass and ran on. The foul play was not too bad; nobody actually knocked anybody down There had been a great deal of betting on the race, but none of the favourites was even placed or looked like being placed. Three dark horses won–and the applause was terrific. First was a strong and athletic man; second–a most popular win–a very poor man, who always looked half-starved; and third was a young boy. That night there was immense rejoicing: the foremen danced, the men danced; and the man who had won the second prize of the sheep killed it immediately and feasted all his family and friends. It was a great day for the Arpachiyah Amateur Athletic Association.
We departed to cries of good will: ‘God bless you!’, ‘You will come again’ ‘God is very merciful’ and so on. We then went to Baghdad, where all our finds were waiting in the Museum, and there Max and John Rose unpacked them and the division took place. It was by then May, and in Baghdad it was 108 in the shade. The heat did not suit John, and he looked terribly ill each day. I was fortunate in that I was not part of the packing squad. I could stay in the house.
Times in Baghdad were gradually worsening politically and though we hoped to return next year, either to move on to another mound or to excavate Arpachiyah a little further, we were already doubtful whether it would be possible. After we left trouble arose over the shipping of the antiquities, and there was great difficulty in getting our cases out. Things were smoothed over at last, but it took many months, and for that reason it was declared inadvisable for us to come out and dig the following year. For some years practically no one excavated in Iraq any longer; everyone went to Syria. And so it was that the following year we too decided to choose a suitable site in Syria.
One last thing I remember which was like a portent of things to come. We had been having tea in Dr Jordan’s house in Baghdad. He was a good pianist, and was sitting that day playing us Beethoven. He had a fine head, and I thought, looking at him, what a splendid man he was. He had seemed always gentle and considerate. Then there was a mention by someone, quite casually, of Jews. His face changed; changed in an extraordinary way that I had never noticed on anyone’s face before.
He said: ‘You do not understand. Our Jews are perhaps different from yours. They are a danger. They should be exterminated. Nothing else will really do but that.’
I stared at him unbelievingly. He meant it. It was the first time I had come across any hint of what was to come later from Germany. People who had travelled there were, I suppose, already realising it at that time, but for ordinary people, in 1932 and 1933, there was a complete lack of fore-knowledge.
On that day as we sat in Dr Jordan’s sitting-room and he played the piano, I saw my first Nazi–and I discovered later that his wife was an even fiercer Nazi than he was. They had a duty to perform there: not only to be Director of Antiquities or even to work for their country, but also to spy on their own German Ambassador. There are things in life that make one truly sad when one can make oneself believe them.
V
We came home to England, flushed with triumph, and Max began a busy summer writing up his account of the campaign. We had an exhibition at the British Museum of some of our finds; and Max’s book on Arpachiyah came out either that year or the next–there was to be no time lost in publishing it, Max said: all archaeologists tend to put off publishing for too long, and knowledge ought to be released as soon as possible.
During the Second World War, when I was working in London, I wrote an account of our time in Syria. I called it Come, Tell Me How You Live, and I get pleasure in reading it over from time to time, and remembering our days in Syria. One year on a dig is very like another–the same sort of things happen–so repetition would not avail much. They were happy years, we enjoyed ourselves immensely, and had a great measure of success in our digging.
Those years, between 1930 and 1938, were particularly satisfying because they were so free of outside shadows. As the pressure of work, and especially success in work, piles up, one tends to have less and less leisure; But these were carefree years still, filled with a good deal of work, yes, but not as yet all-absorbing. I wrote detective stories, Max wrote archaeological books, reports and articles. We were busy but we were not under intense strain.
Since it was difficult for Max to get down to Devonshire as much as he wanted to, we spent Rosalind’s holidays there, but lived most of the time in London, moving to one or other of my houses, trying to decide which one we liked the best. Carlo and Mary had searched for a suitable house while we were out in Syria one year, and had a listful for me. They said I must certainly go and look at No. 48 Sheffield Terrace. When I saw it I wanted to live there as badly as I had ever wanted to live in any house. It was perfect, except perhaps for the fact that it had a basement. It had not many rooms, but they were all big and well-proportioned. It was just what we needed. As one went in there was a large dining-room on the right. On the left was the drawing-room. On the half-landing there was a bathroom and lavatory, and on the first floor, to the right, over the dining-room, the same-sized room for Max’s library–plenty of space for large tables to take the papers and bits of pottery. On the left, over the drawing-room, was a large double bedroom for us. On the floor above were two more big rooms and a small room between them. The small room was to be Rosalind’s; the big room over Max’s study was to be a double spare-room when we wanted it; and the left-hand room, I declared, I was going to have for my own workroom and sitting-room. Everybody was surprised at this, since I had never thought of having such a thing before, but they all agreed that it was quite time for poor old Missus to have a room of her own.
I wanted somewhere where I would not be disturbed. There would not be a telephone in the room. I was going to have a grand piano; large, firm table; a comfortable sofa or divan; a hard upright chair for typing; and one armchair to recline in, and there was to be nothing else. I bought myself a Steinway grand, and I enjoyed ‘my room’ enormously. Nobody was allowed to use the Hoover on that floor while I was in the house, and short of the house being on fire, I was not to be approached. For once, I had a place of my own, and I continued to enjoy it for the five or six years until the house was bombed in the war. I don’t know why I never had anything of the kind again. I suppose I got used to using the dining-room table or the corner of the
washstand once more.
48 Sheffield Terrace was a happy house; I felt it the moment I came into it. I think if one has been brought up with large rooms, such as we had at Ashfield, one misses that feeling of space very much. I had lived in several charming small houses–both the Campden Street houses and the little Mews house–but they were never quite right. It is not a question of grandeur; you can have a very smart, tiny flat, or you can rent a large, shabby, country vicarage, rapidly falling to pieces, for much less money. It is the feeling of space round you–of being able to deploy yourself.
Indeed, if you have any cleaning to do yourself it is much easier to clean a large room than to get round all the corners and bits of furniture in a small room, where one’s behind is always getting terribly in the way.
Max indulged himself by personally superintending the building of a new chimney in his library. He had dealt with so many fire-places and chimneys in burnt-brick in the Middle East that he rather fancied himself at the job. The builder looked doubtfully at the plans. You never can tell with chimneys or flues, he said, according to all the rules they ought to go right, but they didn’t.
‘And this one of yours here isn’t going to go right, I can tell you that,’ he said to Max.
‘You build it exactly as I say,’ said Max, ‘and you’ll see.’
Much to Mr Withers’ sorrow, he did see. Max’s chimney never smoked once. It had a great Assyrian brick with cuneiform writing on it inset over the mantelpiece, and the room was therefore clearly labelled as an archaeologist’s private den.
Only one thing disturbed me after moving in to Sheffield Terrace, and that was a pervasive smell in our bedroom. Max couldn’t smell it and Bessie thought I was imagining things, but I said firmly that I wasn’t: I smelt gas. There was no gas in the house, Max pointed out. There was no gas laid on.
‘I can’t help it,’ I said, ‘I smell gas.’
I had the builders in, and the gas-men, and they all lay down on their stomachs and sniffed under the bed and told me I was imagining it.
‘Of course, what it may turn out to be, if there is anything–though I can’t smell it, lady,’ said the gas-man, ‘is a dead mouse, or maybe it’s a dead rat. I don’t think it’s a rat, though, because I’d smell if it were–but it might be a mouse. A very small mouse.’
‘It might, I suppose,’ I said. ‘If so, it is a very dead small mouse, at any rate.’
‘We’ll have the boards up.’
So they had the boards up, but they couldn’t find any dead mouse, large or small. Yet, whether gas or dead mouse, something continued to smell.
I went on sending for builders, gas people, plumbers, and everybody I could think of. They looked at me with loathing in the end. Everyone got fed up with me–Max, Rosalind, Carlo–they all said it was ‘Mother’s imagination’. But Mother knew gas when she smelt it, and she continued to say so. Finally, after I had driven everyone nearly insane, I was vindicated. There was an obsolete gas pipe under the floor of my bedroom, and gas was continuing to escape from it. Whose meter it was being charged on, nobody knew–there was no gas meter in our house–but there was a disused gas pipe still connected and gas was quietly seeping away. I was so conceited about having been proved right on this point that I was unbearable to live with for some time–and more than ever, I may say, confident in the prowess of my nose.
Before the acquisition of Sheffield Terrace, Max and I had bought a house in the country. We wanted a small house or cottage, because travelling to and from Ashfield for weekends was impracticable. If we could have a country cottage not too far from London, it would make all the difference.
Max’s two favourite parts of England were near Stockbridge, where he had stayed as a boy, or else near Oxford. His time at Oxford had been one of the happiest times of his life. He knew all the country round there, and he loved the Thames. So we also went up and down the Thames in our search. We looked at Goring, Wallingford, Pangbourne. Houses were difficult on the Thames, because they were either hideous late Victorian or else the kind of cottage that was completely submerged during the winter.
In the end I saw an advertisement in The Times. It was about a week before we were going abroad to Syria one autumn.
‘Look, Max,’ I said. ‘There’s a house advertised in Wallingford. You know how much we liked Wallingford? Now, if this should be one of those houses on the river. There was nothing to let when we were there.’ We rang up the agent, and dashed down.
It was a delightful, small, Queen Anne house, rather close to the road, but behind it was a garden with a walled kitchen section–bigger than we wanted–and below that again what Max has always thought of as ideal: meadows sweeping right down to the river. It was a pretty bit of river, about a mile out of Wallingford. The house had five bedrooms, three sitting-rooms, and a remarkably nice kitchen. Looking out of the drawing-room window, through the pouring rain, we saw a particularly fine cedar tree, a cedar of Lebanon. It was actually in the field, but the field came right up to a ha-ha near the house, and I thought to myself that we would have a lawn beyond the ha-ha, and would push the meadows further down, so that the cedar tree would be in the middle of the lawn, and on hot days in summer we could have tea under it.
We hadn’t much time to dilly-dally. The house was remarkably cheap, for sale freehold, and we made up our minds then and there. We rang up the agent, signed things, spoke to lawyers and surveyors, and, subject to the usual surveyor’s approval, bought the house.
Unfortunately we were not able to see it again for about nine months. We left for Syria, and spent the whole time there wondering whether we had been terribly foolish. We had meant to buy a tiny cottage, instead we had bought this Queen Anne house with gracious windows and good proportions. But Wallingford was a nice place. It had a poor railway service, and was therefore not at all the sort of place people came to, either from Oxford or from London. ‘I think,’ said Max, ‘we are going to be very happy there.’
And sure enough we have been very happy there, for nearly thirty-five years now, I suppose. Max’s library has been enlarged to twice its length, and he looks right down the length of it to the river. Winterbrook House, Wallingford, is Max’s house, and always has been. Ashfield was my house, and I think Rosalind’s.
So our lives went on. Max with his archaeological work and his enthusiasm for it, and I with my writing, which was now becoming more professional and therefore a great deal less enthusiastic.
It had been exciting, to begin with, to be writing books–partly because, as I did not feel I was a real author, it was each time astonishing that I should be able to write books that were actually published. Now I wrote books as a matter of course. It was my business to do so. People would not only publish them–they would urge me to get on with writing them. But the eternal longing to do something that is not my proper job, was sure to unsettle me; in fact it would be a dull life if it didn’t.
What I wanted to do now was to write something other than a detective story. So, with a rather guilty feeling, I enjoyed myself writing a straight novel called Giant’s Bread. It was mainly about music, and betrayed here and there that I knew little about the subject from the technical point of view. It was well reviewed and sold reasonably for what was thought to be a ‘first novel’. I used the name of Mary Westmacott, and nobody knew that it was written by me. I managed to keep that fact a secret for fifteen years.
I wrote another book under the same pseudonym a year or two later, called Unfinished Portrait. Only one person guessed my secret: Nan Watts–now Nan Kon. Nan had a very retentive memory, and some phrase I had used about some children, and a poem in the first book, attracted her attention. Immediately she said to herself, ‘Agatha wrote that, I am certain of it.’
One day she nudged me in the ribs and said in a slightly affected voice: ‘I read a book I liked very much the other day; now let me see–what was it? Dwarf’s Blood–that’s it–Dwarf’s Blood!’ Then she winked at me in the most wicked manner. When I got he
r home, I said: ‘Now–how did you guess about Giant’s Bread?‘
‘Of course I knew it was you–I know the way you talk,’ said Nan.
I wrote songs from time to time, mostly ballads–but I had no idea that I was going to have the stupendous luck to step straight into an entirely different department of writing, and to do it, too, at an age when fresh adventures are not so easily undertaken.
I think what started me off was annoyance over people adapting my books for the stage in a way I disliked. Although I had written the play Black Coffee, I had never thought seriously of play-writing–I had enjoyed writing Akhnaton, but had never believed that it would ever be produced. It suddenly occurred to me that if I didn’t like the way other people had adapted my books, I should have a shot at adapting them myself It seemed to me that the adaptations of my books to the stage failed mainly because they stuck far too closely to the original book. A detective story is particularly unlike a play, and so is far more difficult to adapt than an ordinary book. It has such an intricate plot, and usually so many characters and false clues, that the thing is bound to become confusing and overladen. What was wanted was simplification.
I had written the book Ten Little Niggers because it was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me. Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious. I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it. It was clear, straightforward, baffling, and yet had a perfectly reasonable explanation; in fact it had to have an epilogue in order to explain it. It was well received and reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been.
Presently I went one step farther. I thought to myself it would be exciting to see if I could make it into a play. At first sight that seemed impossible, because no one would be left to tell the tale, so I would have to alter it to a certain extent. It seemed to me that I could make a perfectly good play of it by one modification of the original story. I must make two of the characters innocent, to be reunited at the end and come safe out of the ordeal. This would not be contrary to the spirit of the original nursery rhyme, since there is one version of ‘Ten Little Nigger Boys’ which ends: ‘He got married and then there were none’.
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