Agatha Christie_A Biography

by Janet Morgan

  the hottest day I have ever known. Table Mountain seemed to get red hot and you just breathed red hot dust.… The first night in the train was quite all right. When I woke up the following morning we were in the Karoo – all dust and stones and tiny bushes and little hills – rather wild-looking and desolate – and attractive from that point of view – but it got steadily hotter and hotter till the train was like an oven or a peach house in summer. Belcher and I played piquet most of the day and drank lemon squashes without ceasing!

  On through the hills to Durban, where they were reunited with Archie. Here there was another outburst:

  Belcher had been charming on leaving Cape Town, but at Bloemfontein General Hertzog had refused point blank to meet him, and his temper suffered in consequence. Also a new BEE pamphlet, supposedly written in Afrikaans, turns out be be in High Dutch and the wretched Bates was nearly slain in consequence. In fact, he was officially dismissed and told he could return to Southampton at once by the first boat – but the sentence appears to be commuted to separation from the High War Lord, to be attached to Archie and myself for Johannesburg and Rhodesia. Belcher is not going to Rhodesia – he is returning by the Briton to Cape Town and sailing on the Sophocles if he can get through in time. But Archie and I fear he won’t, and that we shall have him with us on the Aeneas after all!!

  After a brief look at Durban’s tropical gardens (‘like all really beautiful places – just like Torquay’), Archie, Agatha and Bates set off together for Johannesburg and Rhodesia, a journey more hazardous that they had expected, for they found themselves on the fringe of the Rand Rebellion (provoked by the efforts of the Chamber of Mines to cut costs by increasing the black workforce in the goldmines at the expense of the better-paid whites).

  At Germiston a wire was handed in from the Trade Commissioner … saying Jo’burg was unsafe, he would meet us on the platform there and had arranged accommodation for us at Pretoria instead.… All the Hotels had shut down that afternoon with their waiters etc. on strike – and there was no meat and no bread, as the bakers had come out, and the strikers had stopped all taxis and pulled out the drivers. They were throwing hand grenades in the street.… Today they have proclaimed Martial law in Jo’burg – and all the bars are shut here. It seems an idiotic moment for coming to try and talk about an exhibition that is to be held in two years’ time – but we are off to Rhodesia on Tuesday, so must do what we can. They don’t think the Railways will come out, and this place is pretty quiet.

  Agatha had by now received letters from home – Clara had bought Monty an invalid chair, there were various questions about the purchase of Chinese bonds, Rosalind had a cough. From the Grand Hotel in Pretoria Agatha wrote to her daughter; her letter has a sentence or two about butterflies and ‘choo-choos’ but is less of a message to a two-year-old than a reminder to Auntie Punkie (as Madge was now called) and a reflection of Agatha’s own anxiety that Rosalind might forget her: ‘I expect you love Uncle Jim and Auntie Punkie very much now, but if anyone asks you “who do you love?” you must say “Mummy”!’

  Agatha and Archie were marooned in Pretoria for almost a week: ‘Once there, we couldn’t get away again, the strike having turned into a young revolution.’ There were armoured cars in the town and bombs could be heard in the distance. Agatha, Archie and Bates passed the time swimming, playing bridge and examining the archives, but after five days they began to worry that they might never reach Rhodesia. They badgered their hosts but permission to leave was refused, until suddenly one morning, while Agatha was still in bed, a government representative arrived to say a car would be at their hotel in twenty minutes.

  Frenzied toilet and packing! We just took suitcases, all we could cram in, and left trunks with Bates who was to rejoin Belcher at the Cape as soon as a train runs. Had a splendid run into Jo’burg, stopped once or twice by cheerful-looking City gentlemen, smoking pipes, with bayonets tucked rakishly under their arms. Our train was due to leave at 10.45 and it got off at 11.30 to the sound of artillery and shrapnel, as the great attack on Fordsberg, which was to end the war, was just beginning.

  The Rebellion was crushed by the Army and its ringleaders, members of the Third International, condemned to death. Agatha and Archie were now able to leave for Rhodesia, via Bechuanaland, where at every station natives were selling rugs, beads, baskets and small carved animals, which Agatha bought in vast quantities for Rosalind. Their overnight journey to Bulawayo was disturbed at three o’clock in the morning when ‘an exquisitely dressed young man, looking like a musical comedy hero of the Wild West, entered our compartment and asked Archie where he was going. Disregarding Archie’s first murmur of “Tea – but no sugar in it”, he repeated his question, laying stress on the fact that he was not a waiter but an immigration officer. Archie, still fast asleep, replied: “Australia – at least, no, I’m going to Salisbury first.”’

  After a couple of days in Salisbury, playing bridge and examining citrus estates, they at last came to the Victoria Falls, with which Agatha was entranced. She wrote to Clara from the Victoria Falls Hotel:

  I can’t bear to leave. It’s not just the Falls themselves, although they are very wonderful – especially the width of them, I didn’t realise that they stretched for a mile and a quarter – but the whole place. No road, only paths, just the Hotel, primeval woods for miles and miles stretching into blueness. A delightful Hotel, long and low and white, with beautifully clean rooms, and wired all over like a fine meat safe against malarial mosquitoes.

  Even here, however, there was a reminder of worldly responsibilities. ‘An urgent telegram arrived from Belcher, telling us to return to Capetown via Johannesburg and “complete original programme” and demanding an answer by wireless, so he really has gone on the Sophocles, for which the Lord be thanked.’

  Returning reluctantly to Cape Town, they found letters from Archie’s family and John Lane. Agatha fired off a complaint to Madge: ‘Do write. The only letters that arrive are from Mrs Hemsley, William and Campbell [Archie’s step-father and brother] – all my family might be dead. Write me about my baba. It’s a month now without a word – the first three weeks I got letters from Mother. Also, I want to know about Monty and everything – but especially my Rosalind.’ There was, however, some news about the critics’ reception of The Secret Adversary: ‘Two batches of press cuttings from John Lane – all good – not one bad one. I’m very pleased with the Punch one.… No grateful thanks from the people to whom I sent copies of the SA (NB even my nephew has not responded!!).’ One stroke of luck was the discovery of a ‘very nice ex-naval man, Captain Crowther’, travelling in South Africa for what turned out to be Wilfred Pirie’s firm. Agatha persuaded him to take the collection of wooden animals – elands, giraffes, hippopotamus, zebras (three cases altogether) – home to Southampton for posting to Torquay.

  The SS Aeneas, of the Blue Funnel Line, sailed from Cape Town on April 9th. When they arrived at Adelaide, the ‘Wild Man’, as Agatha had taken to calling Belcher, was not there, but he had left a trail of messages, informing them that he had gone on to Melbourne and that they were to join him before setting off to Tasmania. In Melbourne, Agatha and Archie found Belcher ‘laid up with a bad leg again and quite tame for the moment!’ The trip to Tasmania reminded Agatha and Archie of how obnoxious Belcher had become: ‘Wild Man worse than ever this morning. He is in his room darkened like a primeval cave, eating bread and milk, and growling at everybody. I offered to bandage his leg for him, and his polite reply was, “Why can’t I be left alone?” He would not say whether he was going to Tasmania or not, and would not advance any money for anyone else to go.…’ When they arrived at Launceston there was more trouble.

  We went into the Town Hall and were kept waiting a few minutes while they looked for the Mayor. Fresh explosions from B. When found, he genially asked Belcher who and what he was – I thought he would have apoplexy! We then adjourned to the Commerical Travellers Club for ginger ale and ‘squash lemons’, Belcher muttering: ‘T
here’s only one thing to do! I shall go back to Melbourne the first thing tomorrow morning!’ Fortunately, he was asked to make a short speech, which slightly restored him, but a further crushing blow awaited him at the station. No saloon – merely a first class reserved carriage! He really does think he is a King, or Lord Northcliffe – it’s a sort of – do I mean meglamania? [sic]… Australians will not stand ‘side’ – they are extraordinarily nice and kind, and awfully hospitable, but ‘swank’ does not go down well.

  On arrival at Hobart, their duties began once more – an excursion to a jam factory and, for Archie, Agatha and Bates, an exhibition of Tasmanian goods: ‘We explained B’s absence as best we could, exaggerated his leg, and calmed everyone down, and Archie made quite a good speech, without mumbling, speaking quite distinctly …’ Agatha liked Tasmania, where the air was chilly but invigorating, and especially a visit to a power station, three thousand feet up and very cold, ‘but through beautiful country, all silvery blue gums. All Australian scenery that I have seen has a faintly austere quality, the distances all a soft blue green – sometimes almost grey – and the white trunks of the blue gums give a totally different effect, and here and there great clumps of trees have been ringbarked and have died, and then they are ghost trees, all white, with white waving branches. It’s all so – virginal – if there were nymphs in the woods, they would never be caught.’ The next day was interesting, too, for she looked over the museum, to learn more about skulls and skeletons and Aborigine history. ‘There were death casts of several of the Aborigines, and a great collection of sketches and water colour drawings of the Tasmania of a 100 years or so ago – some of them perfectly lovely – done on that pale yellow and grey paper and just tinted.’

  Back in Melbourne, the Mission discovered a parcel of mail, which Belcher and Archie had been carrying about in the belief that it was cigarettes. The package contained the news that Madge, who had been writing a play, had found a producer. ‘Awfully exciting,’ wrote Agatha, ‘and I shall be furious if she arrives “on the film” before I do. It seems as though there was such a thing as an agent who is some good. I’ve been rather idle – but have written a Grand Guignol sketch and a short story.’ In fact, she made good use of scraps of time, writing long letters and short stories and drafting her next book, in interludes between tea parties, ladies’ luncheons, official dinners and expeditions. Belcher’s latest requirement was that the Mission should be given a tour of the bush, and this duly took place, the party sitting on bags of sawdust, travelling in horse-drawn trucks. The pace never slowed. Next day there was a tour of a brick field, a freezing works, a ‘dried milk place’, a lunch, a ride on a ‘bush tram’, Agatha travelling part of the way on the engine, and each night ‘the usual Australian meal, a plate with a slice of beef, a slice of turkey, a slice of ham, some parsnips, some carrots, two kinds of potatoes always, bread sauce, horseradish and stuffing and a portion of Yorkshire pudding, and a good strong cup of black tea. Then apple pie and enormous jugs of cream.’

  Belcher returned from Tasmania in parsimonious mood. ‘He dined at the club (to save a shilling, but as he forgot to give up his room on leaving, and they kept it for him, the saving will not be appreciable); a fresh economy has occurred to him (since he is now a teetotaller), that all members of the Mission shall pay for their own drinks! We are resisting to the last ditch!’ Since Agatha loathed the taste of alcohol and disliked its effect, in her case the objection to Belcher’s proposal was entirely altruistic.

  It was now late May. Agatha, whose stamina was always impressive, continued to enjoy herself enormously and in a picture in the Melbourne Herald she looked well and happy. The photography session, ‘rather like Mr Pecksniff and Salisbury Cathedral, “From the North-East, from the North-West, from the East, from the South, from the South-East etc.”’, was part of an interview she gave to an Australian journalist, who wrote a pleasant if earnest piece: ‘Mrs Christie’s early girlhood was spent in trying to decide on a career. She had thoughts of a convent.…’ It was the first time, but not the last, that Agatha was to find how different casual remarks can look when they are embellished in a newspaper article. Spurred on by these attentions, however, and by Madge’s success, she did manage to write some short stories and, far away though she was, remembered to instruct Monty in his duties at Ashfield: ‘Look after Mother, and see she changes her clothes after she’s been hosing the garden. She’s always sopped through.’ She also put to good use her visits to innumerable canneries, writing in a letter to Clara: ‘If you are buying canned peaches, Shepperton Packing Co. Green Label “Fancy” are good.’

  It was while the Expedition was at Brisbane that Agatha made friends with some young women who were not only to remain close to her but whose influence at that particular moment was important. She had now been travelling for nearly six months, some of the time quietly with Archie but for the most part with three men who were all in different ways demanding – Bates, who needed to be teased but reassured, Archie, who had to be given special wifely attention but without fuss, and Belcher, who required good-humoured deference. Constant travelling, conversations, official meals and visits of inspection, too much time spent at close quarters with the same people – all this was making Bates more moody, Archie nervy, and Belcher explosive.

  If Agatha’s own temper was becoming ragged, she managed not to show it in her letters, which remained good-tempered and cheerful. But she welcomed the solace she received one evening, when, while dining alone in the hotel, she was invited by a Major Bell, ‘whom Belcher and Archie had been confabbing with on cattle the night before’, to meet his sister, who was also staying there. This was Miss Una Bell, who lived with her parents and brothers and sisters on an enormous farming station at Coochin. Miss Bell and her brother reminded Agatha of that large, affectionate, energetic and easy family, the Lucys in Torquay, and she immediately felt at home. Una asked Agatha to stay and, after ‘a somewhat dreary garden party at Government House’, Agatha set off the next evening for Coochin, leaving Archie to carry out a heavy programme of engagements. It was, she told Clara, ‘a long deadly journey of about six hours in a train that crawled. We arrived at ten o’clock after motoring five miles, and the room seemed full of tall energetic girls cooking scrambled eggs over the fire and all talking at once! I went to bed dazed … I was to stay two days, but I stayed a week … I sorted out the Bells at last! Mrs Bell is delightful, full of character, and intent on her garden.… They seem to own most of the cattle in Australia, and are really rather like a royal family with a little country of their own, and look after all their people with great seriousness.…’ There were many reminders of the happy, frivolous times Agatha had known in Torquay before the War:

  They were getting up a show for their small village on the Friday night, and we made costumes and rehearsed etc. Doll and I did imitations of Moving Pictures and ‘Film Dramas’ and really had the greatest fun, and I sang and had a great success – possibly owing to Aileen and Victor who went round the village in the morning carefully creating the impression that I was Melba’s latest pupil and discovery! They were all over in England during the war. The boys were training at Beverley and they had a house there – so of course we knew all the same people.… I felt quite one of the family by the time I left! And quite sad to leave.

  The Bells were just the right people to recharge Agatha’s batteries, taking her into their warm embrace and making a fuss of her, welcoming her to a home after so many weeks in hotels. She was attracted to them partly because they were a large, gregarious family, but also because the sisters were unlike any set of people she had ever met. Tough, vigorous and independent, they took a significant interest in the management of the station and the supervision of their cattle-farmers. They strode about in breeches, rode miles over the scrub, and expressed their opinions as decidedly as the men. At the same time, they were attractive and much sought after in society – London society as well as Australian, for they had entertained the Prince of Wales a
t Coochin and spent a good part of the year in Europe. The ‘beautiful Bell sisters’ were to Agatha an example of what women could be like: independent, confident and, simultaneously, feminine and gay. Furthermore, they showed her to herself in a new light, as someone now sufficiently well-travelled and sure to accept an invitation to a strange house, who was not in the least shy of joining in a local concert and dance, ready indeed to follow the first item, Miss Una’s Jazz Band, with various songs and ‘Moving Picture Stunts’. For weeks Agatha had been an auxiliary member of the Mission, vital to the team’s happiness and general welfare and probably its most conscientious and genuinely interested participant when it came to inspecting canneries, saw-mills and so forth, but she had thought of herself as an appendage to the main force of speech-makers and negotiators. Suddenly she was the centre of attention – an adventurous, experienced woman of thirty-two, who had been on the edge of a revolution in South Africa, was full of amusing stories, married to a war hero, had published poetry and two detective novels, who entered into the spirit of dressing-up and acting, and enjoyed the family’s jokes. She was unaccompanied but she could shine. She returned to Sydney, and to Archie, greatly refreshed.

  The Mission’s next stop was New Zealand; they travelled on the Manuka, a three-day voyage remarkable mainly for the propaganda of a fellow-passenger whom the Mission called the Dehydrator. He had patented a device for drying food, ‘never looked at anything in the food line without thinking how he could dehydrate it’, and at every meal sent over platefuls of tasteless dried food to Belcher’s party, who felt obliged to control their feelings and do their best with it, as the Dehydrator ‘was very rich and powerful and could prove of great benefit to the Exhibition’.

  Their first engagement was at Parliament House, ‘where a gentleman was making a speech boasting about “borrowing at par,” which aroused Archie’s financial contempt.’ Archie, incidentally, had been mistaken for the Governor of the Bank of England by one South African newspaper – he was, as it happened, as lean as Montagu Norman, though younger and less lugubrious in appearance – and this error persisted throughout their journey. Agatha played golf and bridge with local ladies, visited a woollen factory, and – the worst ordeal – was guest of honour at what a local newspaper called ‘a delightful little impromptu morning tea’ given by the Committee of the Canterbury Women’s Club. The same newspaper reported that Agatha wore ‘over her mole coloured marocain frock, a charming loose Paisley wrap, with mole collar and a small mole hat of hatter’s plush, with upturned brim trimmed with pastel tinted ribbons that toned with the wrap.’ Though fortified against the cold, Agatha was unprepared for the request that she make a speech. ‘Horror!’ she wrote to Clara, but she clearly performed satisfactorily, being reported as speaking ‘most enthusiastically of the scenic beauties of New Zealand’. Agatha’s compliments were genuine. She thought this country the loveliest place she had ever seen, particularly Otira Gorge, which she explored with the rest of the Mission, and the hot springs and geysers at Rotorua, which she visited alone, ‘a wonderful place – the air full of sulphur fumes and boiling steam coming up from the ground and great quaking boiling mud pits, and all the Maoris bathing and washing clothes in the hot pools.’