Agahta Christie: An autobiography

by Agatha Christie

  ‘Max might have known that we should be worried,’ Katharine said. ‘We might have sent out a search party or done something silly.’ Max repeated patiently that he was sorry; it had not occurred to him that they would be alarmed. A couple of days later we left Baghdad by train for Kirkuk and Mosul, on the first leg of our journey home. My friend Colonel Dwyer came to Baghdad North Station to see us off. ‘You’ll have to stand up for yourself, you know,’ he remarked to me, confidentially.

  ‘Stand up for myself? What do you mean?’

  ‘With Her Ladyship there.’ He nodded to where Katharine Woolley was talking to a friend.

  ‘But she’s been so nice to me.’

  ‘Oh yes, I can see you feel the charm. All of us have felt it from time to time. To be honest, I feel it still. That woman could get me where she wants me any time, but, as I say, you’ve got to stand up for yourself. She could charm the birds off a tree and make them feel it was only natural.’ The train was making those peculiar banshee-like wails which I soon learnt were characteristic of the Iraqi railways. It was a piercing, eerie noise–in fact, a woman wailing for her demon lover would have expressed it exactly. However, it was nothing so romantic: merely a locomotive raring to go. We climbed aboard–Katharine and I shared one sleeping compartment, Max and Len the other–and we were off. We reached Kirkuk the following morning, had breakfast in the rest-house, and motored to Mosul. It was at that time a six to eight-hour run, most of it on a very rutted road, and included the crossing of the river Zab by ferry. The ferry-boat was so primitive that one felt almost Biblical embarking upon it. At Mosul, too, we stayed at the rest-house, which had a charming garden. Mosul was to be the centre of my life for many years in the future, but it did not impress me then, mainly because we did little sightseeing. Here I met Dr and Mrs MacLeod, who ran the hospital, and were to be great friends. They were both doctors, and whilst Peter MacLeod was in charge of the hospital his wife Peggy would occasionally assist him with certain operations. These had to be performed in a peculiar fashion owing to the fact that he was not allowed to see or touch the patient. It was impossible for a Muslim woman to be operated on by a man, even though he was a doctor. Screens, I gather, had to be rigged up; Dr MacLeod would stand outside the screen with his wife inside; he would direct her how to proceed, and she, in turn, would describe to him the conditions of the organs as she arrived at them, and all the various details. After two or three days in Mosul we started on our travels proper. We spent one night at a rest-house at Tell Afar, which was two hours or so from Mosul, then at five the following morning motored off in a trek across country. We visited some sites on the Euphrates, and departed to the north, in search of Len’s old friend Basrawi, who was Sheikh of one of the tribes there. After a good many crossings of wadis, losing and finding our way again, we finally arrived towards the evening, and were given a great welcome, a terrific meal, and at last retired for the night. There were two tumble-down rooms in a mud-brick house which were apportioned to us, with two small iron beds diagonally in the corners of each. A slight difficulty arose here. One room had a corner bed with an excellent ceiling above it–that is to say no water actually dripped through or fell on the bed: a phenomenon we were able to observe because it had started to rain. The other bed, however, was in a draughty corner with a good deal of water dripping on to it. We had a look at the second room. This one had an equally doubtful roof, and was smaller; the beds were narrower and there was less air and light.

  ‘I think, Katharine,’ said Len, ‘that you and Agatha had better have the smaller room with the two dry beds, and we’ll have the other.’

  ‘I think,’ said Katharine, ‘that I really must have the larger room and the good bed. I won’t sleep a wink if there is water dripping on my face.’

  She went firmly across to the delectable corner and placed her things on the bed.

  ‘I expect I can pull my bed out a bit and avoid the worst,’ I said.

  ‘I really don’t see,’ said Katharine, ‘why Agatha should be forced to have this bad bed with the roof dripping on it. One of you men can have it.

  Either Max or Len had better go in the bad bed in this room, and the other one can go in the other room with Agatha.’ This suggestion was considered, and Katharine, sizing up Max and Len to see which she thought would be the more useful to her, finally decided on the privilege of loving Len, and sent Max to share the small room. Only our cheerful host seemed to be amused by this arrangement–he made several remarks of a ribald nature in Arabic to Len. ‘Please yourselves,’ he said. ‘Please yourselves! Divide up how you like–either way the man will be happy.’

  However, by the morning nobody was happy. I woke at about six with rain pouring on my face. In the other corner Max was fully exposed to a deluge. He dragged my bed away from the worst leak, and pushed his own also out of the corner. Katharine had come off no better than anyone else: she, too, now had a leak. We had a meal, and took a tour round with Basrawi, surveying his domain, then went on our way once more. The weather was really bad now; some of the wadis were much swollen, and difficult to cross.

  We arrived at last, wet and extremely tired, at Aleppo, to the comparative luxury of Baron’s Hotel, where we were greeted by the son of the house, Coco Baron. He had a large round head, faintly yellow face, and mournful dark eyes.

  The one thing I yearned for was a hot bath. I discovered the bathroom to be of a semi-western, semi-eastern type, and managed to turn on some hot water, which, as usual, came out in clouds of steam and frightened me to death. I tried to turn it off but did not succeed, and had to yell to Max for help. He arrived down the passage, subdued the water, then told me to go back to my room. He would call me when he had got the bath sufficiently under control for me to enjoy it. I went back to my room and waited. I waited a long time and nothing happened. Finally I sallied forth in my dressing-gown, sponge clasped under my arm. The door was locked. At that moment Max appeared.

  ‘Where’s my bath?’ I demanded.

  ‘Oh, Katharine Woolley is in there now,’ said Max.

  ‘Katharine?’ I said, ‘Did you let her have my bath that you were running for me?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Max. ‘She wanted it,’ he explained.

  He looked me straight in the eye with a certain firmness of manner.

  I saw that I was up against something like the laws of the Medes and Persians. I said: ‘Well, I think it is very unfair. I was running that bath.

  It was my bath.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Max, ‘I know that. But Katharine wanted it.’

  I went back to my room and reflected upon Colonel Dwyer’s words.

  I was to reflect on them again the next day. Katharine’s bedside lamp gave her trouble. She was not feeling well, and was staying in bed with a miserable headache. This time of my own accord, I proffered her my bedside lamp in exchange. I took it into her room, fixed it up and left her with it. It seemed there was a shortage of lamps, so I had to read as best I could the next night with only one feeble lamp in the ceiling high above me. It was only on the next day that some slight indignation arose on my part. Katharine decided to change her room for one which would have less noise from the traffic. Since there was a perfectly good bedside lamp in her new room she had not bothered to return the other lamp to me, and it was now firmly in the possession of some third party. However, Katharine was Katharine, take it or leave it.

  I decided in future to do a little more to protect my own interests.

  The next day, though Katharine had hardly any fever, she said she felt much worse. She was in a mood when she could not bear anyone to come near her.

  ’ I f only you would all go away’ she wailed. ‘All go away and leave me.

  I cannot stand people coming in and out of my bedroom all day, asking me if I want anything–continually bothering me. If I could just be quite quiet, with nobody coming near me, then I might feel all right by this evening.’ I thought I knew just how she felt, because it was very much how I f
eel when I am ill: I want people to go away and leave me.

  It is the feeling of the dog who crawls away to a quiet corner and hopes to be left undisturbed until the miracle happens and he feels himself again.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Len helplessly. ‘Really I don’t know what to do for her.’

  ‘Well,’ I said consolingly, for I was very fond of Len, ‘I expect she knows herself what she feels is best for her. I think she does want to be left alone. I should leave her until this evening, and then see if she feels better.’

  So this was arranged. Max and I went out together on an expedition to visit a Crusader’s castle at Kalaat Siman. Len said he would remain at the hotel so as to be at hand if Katharine wanted anything.

  Max and I set off happily. The weather had improved, and it was a lovely drive. We drove over hills with scrub and red anemones, with flocks of sheep and later, as the road went higher, black goats and kids.

  Finally we arrived at Kalaat Siman, and had our picnic lunch. Sitting there and looking round, Max told me a little more about himself, his life, and the luck he had had in getting the job with Leonard Woolley, just as he was leaving the University. We picked up a few bits of pottery here and there, and finally made our way back just as the sun was setting.

  We arrived home to trouble. Katharine was enormously incensed at the way in which we had gone off and left her.

  ‘But you said you wanted to be alone,’ I said.

  ‘One says things when one doesn’t feel well. To think you and Max could go off in that heartless way. Oh well, perhaps it’s not so bad of you, because you don’t understand so well, but Max–that Max, who knows me well, who knows that I might have needed anything–could go off like that.’ She closed her eyes and said, ‘You had better leave me now.’

  ‘Can’t we get you anything, or stay with you?’

  ‘No, I don’t want you to get me anything. Really, I feel very hurt about all this. As for Len, his behaviour was absolutely disgraceful.’

  ‘What has he done?’ I asked, with some curiosity.

  ‘He left me here without a single drop to drink–not a drop of water not lemonade, nothing at all. Just lying here, helpless, parched with thirst.’

  ‘But couldn’t you have rung the bell and asked for some water?’

  I asked. It was the wrong thing to say. Katharine gave me a withering glance: ‘I can see you don’t understand the first thing about it. To think that Len could be as heartless as that. Of course, if a woman had been here, it would have been different. She would have thought.’

  We hardly dared approach Katharine in the morning, but she behaved in the most Katharine-like manner. She was in a charming mood, smiled, was pleased to see us, grateful for anything we did for her, gracious if slightly forgiving, and all was well.

  She was indeed a remarkable woman. I grew to understand her a little better as the years went on, but could never predict beforehand in what mood she would be. She ought, I think, to have been a great artist of some kind–a singer or an actress–then her moods would have been accepted as natural to her temperament. As it was, she was nearly an artist: she had done a sculptured head of Queen Shubad, which was exhibited with the famous gold necklace and head-dress on it.

  She did a good head of Hamoudi, of Leonard Woolley himself, and a beautiful head of a young boy, but she was diffident of her own powers, always apt to invite other people to help her, or to accept their opinions.

  Leonard waited on her hand and foot–nothing he could do was good enough. I think she despised him a little for that. Perhaps any woman would do so. No woman likes a doormat, and Len, who could be extremely autocratic on his dig, was butter in her hands.

  One early Sunday morning before we left Aleppo, Max took me on a tour of assorted religions. It was quite strenuous.

  We went to the Maronites, the Syrian Catholics, the Greek Orthodox, the Nestorians, the Jacobites, and more that I can’t remember. Some of them were what I called ‘Onion Priests’–that is to say, having a kind of round onion-like head-dress. The Greek Orthodox I found the most alarming, since there I was firmly parted from Max and herded with the other women on one side of the church. One was pushed into something which looked like a horse-stall, with a kind of halter looped round one, and attached to the wall. It was a splendidly mysterious service, most of which took place behind an altar curtain or veil. Rich sonorous sounds came from behind this and out into the church, accompanied by clouds of incense. We all bobbed and bowed at prescribed intervals. In due course Max reclaimed me.

  When I look back over my life, it seems that the things that have been most vivid, and which remain most clearly in my mind, are the places I have been to. A sudden thrill of pleasure comes into my mind–a tree, a hill, a white house tucked away somewhere, by a canal, the shape of a distant hill. Sometimes I have to think a moment to remember where, and when. Then the picture comes clearly, and I know.

  People, I have never had a good memory for. My own friends are dear to me, but people that I merely meet and like pass out of my mind again almost at once. Far from being able to say, ‘I never forget a face’ I might more truly say, ‘I never remember a face.’ But places remain firmly in my mind. Often, returning somewhere after five or six years, I remember quite well the road to take, even if I have only been there once before.

  I don’t know why my memory for places should be good, and for people so faint. Perhaps it comes from being far-sighted. I have always been far-sighted, so that people have a rather sketchy appearance, because they are near at hand, while places I have seen with accuracy because they are further away.

  I am quite capable of disliking a place just because the hills seem to me the wrong shape—it is very, very important that hills should be the right shape. Practically all the hills in Devonshire are the right shape. Most of the hills in Sicily are the wrong shape, so I do not care for Sicily. The hills of Corsica are sheer delight; the Welsh hills, too, are beautiful.

  In Switzerland the hills and mountains stand about you too closely.

  Snow mountains can be incredibly dull; they owe any excitement they have to the varying effects of light. ‘Views’ can be dull, too. You climb up a path to a hill top–and there! A panorama is spread before you.

  But it is all there. There is nothing further. You have seen it. ‘Superb,’ you say. And that is that. It’s all below you. You have, as it were, conquered it.

  V

  From Aleppo we went on by boat to Greece, stopping at various ports on the way. I remember best going ashore with Max at Mersin, and spending a happy day on the beach, bathing in a glorious warm sea. It was on that day that he picked me enormous quantities of yellow marigolds. I made them into a chain and he hung them around my neck, and we had a picnic lunch in the midst of a great sea of yellow marigolds.

  I was looking forward enormously to seeing Delphi with the Woolleys; they spoke of it with such lyric rapture. They had insisted that I was to be their guest there, which I thought extremely kind of them. I have rarely felt so happy and full of anticipation as when we arrived at Athens.

  But things come always at the moment one does not expect them.

  I can remember, standing at the hotel desk and being handed my mail, on top of it a pile of telegrams. The moment I saw them a sharp agony seized me, because seven telegrams could mean nothing but bad news.

  We had been out of touch for the last fortnight at least, and now bad news had caught up with me. I opened one telegram–but the first was actually the last. I put them into order. They told me that Rosalind was very ill with pneumonia. My sister had taken the responsibility of removing her from school and motoring her up to Cheshire. Further ones reported her condition as serious. The last one, the one I had opened first, stated that her condition was slightly better.

  Nowadays, of course, one could have been home in less than twelve hours, with air services going from the Piraeus every day, but then, in 1930, there were no such facilities. At the very earliest
, if I could book a seat, the next Orient Express, would not get me to London for four days.

  My three friends all reacted to my bad news with the utmost kindness.

  Len laid aside what he was doing and went out to contact travel agencies and find the earliest seat that could be booked. Katharine spoke with deep sympathy. Max said little, but he, too, went out with Len to the travel agency.

  Walking along the street, half dazed with shock, I put my foot into one of those square holes in which trees seemed eternally to be being planted in the streets of Athens. I sprained my ankle badly, and was unable to walk. Sitting in the hotel, receiving the commiserations of Len and Katharine, I wondered where Max was. Presently he came in. With him he had two good solid crepe bandages and an elastoplast. Then, he explained quietly that he would be able to look after me on the journey home and help me with my ankle.

  ‘But you are going up to the Temple of Bassae,’ I said. ‘Weren’t you meeting somebody?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve changed my plans,’ he said. ‘I think I really ought to get home, so I will be able to travel with you. I can help you along to the dining-car or bring meals along to you, and get things done for you.’