An Autobiography

by Agatha Christie

  To Harry Saggs, one of the epigraphists, Daniel went, saying ‘You are the only good man on this dig; you read your Bible–I have seen you. Therefore since you are a good man, you will give me your best pair of trousers.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Harry Saggs, ‘I shall do nothing of the sort.’

  ‘You will be a Christian if you give me your best trousers.’

  ‘Not my best trousers, nor my worst trousers,’ said Harry Saggs. ‘I need both my pairs of trousers.’ Daniel retired to try to cadge something elsewhere. He was extremely lazy, and always managed to clean the shoes after dark so that no one would see that he was not really cleaning them at all but just sitting and humming to himself, smoking.

  Our best house-boy was Michael, who had been in service with the British Consulate in Mosul. He looked like an El Greco, with a long, melancholy face and enormous eyes. He was always having great trouble with his wife. Occasionally she tried to kill him with a knife. In the end the doctor persuaded him to take her to Baghdad.

  ‘He has written to me,’ said Michael, appearing one day, ‘and he says it is only a matter of money. If I will give him £200 he will try to cure her.’

  Max urged him to take her to the main hospital to which he had already given him a chit, and not to be victimised by quacks.

  ‘No,’ said Michael, ‘this is a very grand man, he lives in a grand street in a grand house. He must be the best.’

  Life at Nimrud for the first three or four years was relatively simple. Bad weather often separated us from the so-called road, which, kept a lot of visitors away. Then one year, owing to our growing importance, a kind of track was made to link us to the main road, and the actual road to Mosul itself was tarmacked for a good length of its way.

  This was very unfortunate. For the last three years we could have employed one person to do nothing but show people round, do the courtesies, offer drinks of tea or coffee, and so on. Whole charabancs of school-children came out. This was one of the worst headaches, because there were large excavations everywhere and the crumbling tops of these were unsafe unless you knew exactly where you were walking. We begged the school-teachers to keep the children away from the actual excavations, but they, of course, adopted the usual attitude of ‘Inshallah, all will be well.’ In time a great many babies got brought out by their parents.

  ‘This place,’ Robert Hamilton said in a dissatisfied tone as he looked round the drawing-office, which was filled up with three carry-cots containing squalling infants, ‘this place is nothing but a creche!’ he sighed. ‘I shall go out and measure up those levels.’

  We all screamed at Robert in protest. ‘Now then, Robert, you are a father of five. You are the right person to be in charge of the creche. You can’t leave these young bachelors to look after babies!’

  Robert looked coldly at us and departed.

  They were good days. Every year had its fun, though in a sense, every year life became more complicated, more sophisticated, more urban.

  As for the mound itself, it lost its early beauty, owing to all the great dumps. Gone was that innocent simplicity, with the stone heads poking up out of the green grass, studded with red ranunculus. The flocks of bee-eaters–lovely little birds of gold, green and orange, twittering and fluttering over the mound–still came every spring, and a little later the rollers, bigger birds, also blue and orange, which had a curious way of falling suddenly and clumsily from the sky–hence their name. In the legend, they had been punished by Ishtar by being bitten through the wing because they had insulted her in some way.

  Now Nimrud sleeps.

  We have scarred it with our bull-dozers. Its yawning pits have been filled in with raw earth. One day its wounds will have healed, and it will bloom once more with early spring flowers.

  Here was once Calah, that great City. Then Calah slept…

  Here came Layard to disturb its peace. And again Calah-Nimrud slept…

  Here came Max Mallowan and his wife. Now again Calah sleeps…Who shall disturb it next?

  We do not know.

  I have not yet mentioned our house in Baghdad. We had an old Turkish house on the West bank of the Tigris. It was thought a very curious taste on our part to be so fond of it, and not to want one of the modern boxes, but our Turkish house was cool and delightful, with its courtyard and the palm-trees coming up to the balcony rail. Behind us were irrigated palm-gardens, and a tiny squatter’s house, made of tutti (petrol tins). Children played there happily. The women came in and out and went down to the river to wash their pots and pans. The rich and the poor live cheek by jowl in Baghdad.

  How enormously it has grown since I first saw it. Most of the modern architecture is very ugly, wholly unsuitable for the climate. It is copied from modern magazines–French, German, Italian. You no longer go down into a cool sirdab in the heat of the day; the windows are not small windows in the top of the walls, keeping you cool from the sunlight. Possibly their plumbing is better now–it could hardly be worse–but I doubt it. Modern plumbing looks all right, has the proper lilac or orchid lavatory basins and fittings, but the sewerage has nowhere much to go. It has to discharge itself into the Tigris in the old way, and the amount of water for flushing seems, as always, woefully inadequate. There is something peculiarly irritating about handsome modern bathroom and lavatory fixtures which do not function owing to the lack of proper disposal and an ample water intake.

  I must mention the first visit we paid to Arpachiyah after an interval of fifteen years. We were recognised at once. The whole village came out. There were cries, shouts, greetings, welcome. ‘You remember me, Hawajah,’ said one man. ‘I was basket-boy when you left. Now I am twenty-four, I have a wife, I have big son, grown-up son–I show you.’

  They were astonished that Max could not remember every face and every name. They recalled the famous race that had passed into history. We were always meeting our friends of fifteen years before.

  One day as I drove through Mosul in the lorry, the policeman directing traffic suddenly held it all up with his baton, and yelling out, ‘Mama! Mama!’ advanced upon the lorry, seizing me by the hand, and shaking it wildly.

  ‘What joy to see you, Mama! I am Ali! I am Ali the pot-boy–you remember me? Yes? Now I am policeman!’

  And so, every time I drove into Mosul, there was Ali, and the moment he recognised us, all the traffic in the street was held up, we exchanged greetings, and then our lorry proceeded with full priority. How good it is to have these friends. Warm-hearted, simple, full of enjoyment of life, and so well able to laugh at everything. Arabs are great ones for laughing, great ones for hospitality too. Whenever you happen to pass through a village where one of your workmen lives, he rushes out and insists you should come in and drink sour milk with him. Some of the town effendis in purple suits are tiresome, but the men of the land are good fellows and splendid friends.

  How much I have loved that part of the world.

  I love it still and always shall.

  EPILOGUE

  The longing to write my autobiography assailed me suddenly at my ‘house’ at Nimrud, Beit Agatha.

  I have looked back to what I wrote then and I am satisfied. I have done what I wanted to do. I have been on a journey. Not so much a journey back through the past, as a journey forward–starting again at the beginning of it all–going back to the Me who was to embark on that journey forward through time. I have not been bounded by time or space. I have been able to linger where I wanted, jump backwards and forwards as I wished.

  I have remembered, I suppose, what I wanted to remember; many ridiculous things for no reason that makes sense. That is the way we human creatures are made.

  And now that I have reached the age of seventy-five, it seems the right moment to stop. Because, as far as life is concerned, that is all there is to say.

  I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the ante-room for the summons that will inevitably come. And then–I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn’t luckily have to bo
ther about that.

  I am ready now to accept death. I have been singularly fortunate. I have with me my husband, my daughter, my grandson, my kind son-in-law–the people who make up my world. I have not yet quite reached the time when I am a complete nuisance to them all.

  I have always admired the Esquimaux. One fine day a delicious meal is cooked for dear old mother, and then she goes walking away over the ice–and doesn’t come back…

  One should be proud of leaving life like that–with dignity and resolution.

  It is, of course, all very well to write these grand words. What will really happen is that I shall probably live to be ninety-three, drive everyone mad by being unable to hear what they say to me, complain bitterly of the latest scientific hearing aids, ask innumerable questions, immediately forget the answers and ask the same questions again. I shall quarrel violently with some patient nurse-attendant and accuse her of poisoning me, or walk out of the latest establishment for genteel old ladies, causing endless trouble to my suffering family. And when I finally succumb to bronchitis, a murmur will go around of ‘One can’t help feeling that it really is a merciful relief.

  And it will be a merciful relief (to them) and much the best thing to happen.

  Until then, while I’m still comfortably waiting in Death’s ante-chamber, I am enjoying myself. Though with every year that passes, something has to be crossed off the list of pleasures.

  Long walks are off, and, alas, bathing in the sea; fillet steaks and apples and raw blackberries (teeth difficulties) and reading fine print. But there is a great deal left. Operas and concerts, and reading, and the enormous pleasure of dropping into bed and going to sleep, and dreams of every variety, and quite often young people coming to see you and being surprisingly nice to you. Almost best of all, sitting in the sun–gently drowsy…And there you are again–remembering. ‘I remember, I remember, the house where I was born.

  I go back to that always in my mind. Ashfield.

  O ma chère maison, mon nid, mon gîte

  Le passé l’habite…O! ma chère maison…

  How much that means. When I dream, I hardly ever dream of Greenway or Winterbrook. It is always Ashfield, the old familiar setting where one’s life first functioned, even though the people in the dream are the people of today. How well I know every detail there: the frayed red curtain leading to the kitchen, the sunflower brass fender in the hall grate, the Turkey carpet on the stairs, the big, shabby schoolroom with its dark blue and gold embossed wallpaper.

  I went to see–not Ashfield, but where Ashfield had been, a year or two ago. I knew I would have to go sooner or later. Even if it caused me pain, I had to go.

  Three years ago now someone wrote to me, asking if I knew that the house was to be pulled down, and a new estate developed on the site. They wondered if I couldn’t do something to save it–such a lovely house–as they had heard I had lived there once.

  I went to see my lawyer. I asked if it would be possible for me to buy the house and make a gift of it to an old people’s home, perhaps? But that was not possible. Four or five big villas and gardens had been sold en bloc–all to be demolished, and the new ‘estate’ put up. So there could be no respite for dear Ashfield.

  It was a year and a half before I summoned up the resolution to drive up Barton Road…

  There was nothing that could even stir a memory. They were the meanest, shoddiest little houses I had ever seen. None of the great trees remained. The ash-trees in the wood had gone, the remains of the big beech-tree, the Wellingtonia, the pines, the elms that bordered the kitchen garden, the dark ilex–I could not even determine in my mind where the house had stood. And then I saw the only clue–the defiant remains of what had once been a monkey puzzle, struggling to exist in a cluttered back yard. There was no scrap of garden anywhere. All was asphalt. No blade of grass showed green.

  I said ‘Brave monkey puzzle’ to it, and turned away.

  But I minded less after I had seen what had happened. Ashfield had existed once but its day was over. And because whatever has existed still does exist in eternity, Ashfield is still Ashfield. To think of it causes me no more pain.

  Perhaps some child sucking a plastic toy and banging on a dustbin lid, may one day stare at another child, with pale yellow sausage curls and a solemn face. The solemn child will be standing in a green grass fairy ring by a monkey puzzle holding a hoop. She will stare at the plastic space ship that the first child is sucking, and the first child will stare at the hoop. She doesn’t know what a hoop is. And she won’t know that she’s seen a ghost…

  Goodbye, dear Ashfield.

  So many other things to remember: walking up through a carpet of flowers to the Yezidis shrine at Sheikh Adi…the beauty of the great tiled mosques of Isfahan–a fairy-story city…a red sunset outside the house at Nimrud…getting out of the train at the Cilician gates in the hush of evening…the trees of the New Forest in autumn…swimming in the sea in Torbay with Rosalind…Mathew playing in the Eton and Harrow match…Max arriving home from the war and eating kippers with me…So many things–some silly, some funny, some beautiful. Two summits of ambition fulfilled: dining with the Queen of England (how pleased Nursie would have been. ‘Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?’); and the proud ownership of a bottle-nosed Morris–a car of my own! Most poignant of experiences: Goldie the canary hopping down from the curtain pole after a day of hopeless despair.

  A child says ‘Thank God for my good dinner’.

  What can I say at seventy-five? ‘Thank God for my good life, and for all the love that has been given to me.’

  Wallingford. October IIth 1965

  SEARCHABLE TERMS

  Note: The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Absent in the Spring (‘Mary Westmacott’), 499–500

  Acton, Mrs (V.A.D. matron), 228

  Adams, Mr, 508

  Akhnaton (play), 471

  Alibi (play), 430, 434, 472, 514

  Anderson, Sister (VA.D.), 229, 232, 239

  Ankatell, Mr, 178–9

  Anna the Adventuress see Man in the Brown Suit

  Arbuthnot, Mrs, 484–5, 490–1

  Arpachiyah see Nineveh

  Ashfield, childhood in, 15–65; letting of, 67, 151, 166; after father’s death, 116; Monty returns to, 324, 326; on mother’s death, 346–8; AC visits; 408; AC occupies, 413, 466, 469–70; nostalgia for, 530–1

  Attenborough, Richard, 512

  Australia, 293–7

  Baghdad, AC visits, 361–73, 378–9, 384, 390, 397–8; museum, 465, 521; AC’s house in, 527–8

  Bailey, Mr, 218, 279

  Bailey, H. C, 342

  Baillieu, Clive, 319–20

  ‘Ballad of the Maytime’, 329

  Baird, N. H. J., 32

  Bantry, Col and Mrs (fict. characters), 434

  Barker (housemaid), 31

  Barker, Miss (headmistress), 355

  Baron, Coco, 400

  Barrie, J. M., Dear Brutus, 487

  Barttelot, Lady, 178–80

  Barter (housemaid), 103–4

  Bartlett (batman), 261, 264–5

  Basrawi, Sheikh, 399–400

  Bates, Mr (Belcher’s secretary), 289–90, 292, 303

  Belcher, Major, war-work, 284–5; on round-world mission-tour, 286, 289–92, 294–7, 302–6; and Bates, 290, 292; character, 290, 297–8, 302, 306; friendship with, 306, 351; marriage and divorce, 307; fictionalised by AC, 311–12

  Belcher, Gladys, 307

  Bell family (Australia), 295–6

  Bell, Guilford, 295, 479, 481

  Benenden school, 475

  Bernhardt, Sarah, 158–9

  Besant, Mrs Annie, 25

  Bessie (servant), 422, 468

  Big Four, The, 354

  Black Coffee (play), 433–4

  Bland, Joyce, 434

  Bloomfield, Derek, 516

>   Bodley Head (publishers), 260, 276, 283, 312, 317–8, 329–30, 346

  Body in the Library, The, 489

  Bond, Sister (V.A.D.), 228–9

  Boué, Monsieur (singing teacher), 159–61

  Bowen, Elizabeth, 409

  Bowker, Elsa, Lady, 518–19

  Bowker, Sir James, 518

  Breasted, J. H., The Dawn of Conscience, 496

  British Empire Exhibition Mission, 286, 289, 294, 297

  Brown, Mrs, 20

  Browne, Annie see Watts, Annie

  Burberry, Mrs, 344

  Burnett, Sir Charles, Air Vice-Marshal, 389

  Burnett, Sybil, Lady (‘Bauff’), 389

  Burrows, Eric Norman Bromley, S. J. (E. R. Burrows), 376–7, 391

  Burwood, Dr, 158

  Cairo, 168–74

  Caledonia School, Bexhill, 355–6, 475

  Call of Wings, The (short story), 193

  Campbell Thompson, R. see Thompson, Reginald Campbell

  Canada, 301–5

  Canary Islands, 353, 357–8, 408

  Caroline (fictional character), 434

  Carver, Dr, 386–7

  Cauterets, 75–80, 122, 152

  Chaflin, John, 218, 279

  Charlotte (Monty’s nurse), 382–3

  Christie, Dame Agatha (Dame Agatha Mallowan; née Miller) third birthday, 21; and the garden, 22; and Nursie, 22–4, 27–9, 35–7, 45, 47–8, 56, 59, 62; and imaginary companions, 23, 26–7, 39, 96–8; and her mother, 24, 118–19; and her brother, 24–5, 34–6, 288; and her sister, 24–5, 53–5; christening, 25; education, 26, 53–4, 93–5, 149–51; and ‘Goldie’, 26–7, 532; portrait of, 32; and ‘Tony’, 33–4; and dreams, 37–8; and Auntie-Grannie, 40–41; at Ealing, 44–5; nature of, 47, 104–5; and reading books, 49, 55–6, 94–5, 120–1, 147–8, 193,195, 198; and church-going, 49–50; and social life, 50–53; first short story, 55; and toys, 58–62; and her mother’s jewelry, 68; and family collections, 69; learning French, 70–5, 153; and Marie Sijé, 74–5, 79–80, 84–6; riding at Cauterets, 77–9; arriving home, 88–9; and clothes, 95; and music, 98–9, 101–2, 148–9, 153–4, 196–8; and dancing, 99–101; and theatre, 107–8, 148, 158–9; and Torquay regatta, 108–9; and father’s death, 110–13; and her father, 114; first appearance in print, 127; alone at Ashfield, 133; at Abney, 136–40 and embroidery, 138–9, 198–9; swimming, 140–7; and house-parties, 179–83; first flight, 187–8; writing verse, 190–1; early attempts at writing, 193–6; on writing, 198–9, 310–12, 333–5, 341, 409–10, 413, 430–32, 436–8, 455, 473–4, 489, 496–500, 509; and courtship, 199–208; and detective stories, 210–11, 254–9; meets Archie Christie, 212; engagement to Archie, 215–20, 226–7; financial situation, 216–18, 279–80; learning First Aid, 222–4; in V.A.D.s, 227–32, 238–40, 246–54; marriage to Archie, 233–8; and Archie, 246–7, 259–88; birth of daughter (Rosalind), 265–7; houseowning, 273, 426, 467–9, 479–81; round-the-world trip, 286–306; surfing, 292–3, 298–302; illnesses, 301–2, 349, 359, 386–8, 427–9; bridge-playing, 306; contracts and agents, 318–19; golfing, 320, 344; motor cars, 321, 343, 345, 415, 532; early driving, 332–3; on criticism, 334; artistic activities, 335; dogs, 342, 414; mother’s death, 346–9; estrangement and divorce from Archie, 349–55; journey to Baghdad, 361–73; meets and travels with Max, 391–7; on own character, 409–10; on friendships and admirers, 410–13; literary earnings, 413–14; Max proposes to, 415–18; marriage and honeymoon, 422–7; plays, 433–4, 471–5 510–11, 514–15, 519–20; on crime and criminals, 438–40; archaeological activities, 456–60, 463, 466, 523; studies photography, 478–9; wartime work as hospital dispenser, 483, 486–7, 489, 504; royalties and rights, 512–13; public appearances, 517–19; see also individual works; and ‘Westmacott, Mary’