PART VI. Round the world

I

Going round the world was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me. It was so exciting that I could not believe it was true.
I kept repeating to myself, ‘I am going round the world.’ The highlight, of course, was the thought of our holiday in Honolulu. That I should go to a South Sea island was beyond my wildest dream. It is hard for anyone to realise how one felt then, only knowing what happens nowadays. Cruises, and tours abroad, are a matter of course. They are arranged reasonably cheaply, and almost anyone appears to be able to manage one in the end.

When Archie and I had gone to stay in the Pyrenees, we had travelled second-class, sitting up all night. (Third class on foreign railways was considered to be much the same as steerage on a boat. Indeed, even in England, ladies travelling alone would never have travelled third class. Bugs, lice, and drunken men were the least to be expected if you did so, according to Grannie. Even ladies’ maids always travelled second.) We had walked from place to place in the Pyrenees and stayed at cheap hotels. We doubted afterwards whether we would be able to afford it the following year.

Now there loomed before us a luxury tour indeed. Belcher, naturally, had arranged to do everything in first-class style. Nothing but the best was good enough for the British Empire Exhibition Mission. We were what would be termed nowadays V.I.P.s, one and all.

Mr Bates, Belcher’s secretary, was a serious and credulous young man. He was an excellent secretary, but had the appearance of a villain in a melodrama, with black hair, flashing eyes and an altogether sinister aspect.

‘Looks the complete thug, doesn’t he?’ said Belcher. ‘You’d say he was going to cut your throat any moment. Actually he is the most respectable fellow you have ever known.’

Before we reached Cape Town we wondered how on earth Bates could stand being Belcher’s secretary. He was unceasingly bullied, made to work at any hour of the day or night Belcher felt like it, and developed films, took dictation, wrote and re-wrote the letters that Belcher altered the whole time. I presume he got a good salary–nothing else would have made it worth while, I am sure, especially since he had no particular love of travel. Indeed he was highly nervous in foreign parts–mainly about snakes, which he was convinced we would encounter in large quantities in every country we went to. They would be waiting particularly to attack him.

Although we started out in such high spirits, my enjoyment at least was immediately cut short. The weather was atrocious. On board the Kildonan Castle everything seemed perfect until the sea took charge. The Bay of Biscay was at its worst. I lay in my cabin groaning with sea-sickness. For four days I was prostrate, unable to keep a thing down. In the end Archie got the ship’s doctor to have a look at me. I don’t think the doctor had ever taken sea-sickness seriously. He gave me something which ‘might quieten things down,’ he said, but as it came up as soon as it got inside my stomach it was unable to do me much good. I continued to groan and feel like death, and indeed look like death; for a woman in a cabin not far from mine, having caught a few glimpses of me through the open door, asked the stewardess with great interest: ‘Is the lady in the cabin opposite dead yet?’ I spoke seriously to Archie one evening. ‘When we get to Madeira,’ I said, ‘if I am still alive, I am going to get off this boat.’

‘Oh I expect you’ll feel better soon.’

‘No, I shall never feel better. I must get off this boat. I must get on dry land.’

‘You’ll still have to get back to England,’ he pointed out, ‘even if you did get off in Madeira.’

‘I needn’t,’ I said, ‘I could stay there. I could do some work there.’ ‘What work?’ asked Archie, disbelievingly.

It was true that in those days employment for women was in short supply. Women were daughters to be supported, or wives to be supported, or widows to exist on what their husbands had left or their relations could provide. They could be companions to old ladies, or they could go as nursery governesses to children. However, I had an answer to that objection. ‘I could be a parlour-maid,’ I said. ‘I would quite like to be a parlour-maid.’

Parlour-maids were always needed, especially if they were tall. A tall parlour-maid never had any difficulty in finding a job–read that delightful book of Margery Sharp’s, Cluny Brown–and I was quite sure that I was well enough qualified. I knew what wine glasses to put on the table. I could open and shut the front door. I could clean the silver–we always cleaned our own silver photograph frames and bric-a-brac at home–and I could wait at table reasonably well. ‘Yes,’ I said faintly, ‘I could be a parlour-maid.’

‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Archie, ‘when we get to Madeira.’

However, by the time we arrived I was so weak that I couldn’t even contemplate getting off the bed. In fact I now felt that the only solution was to remain on the boat and die within the next day or two. After the boat had been in Madeira about five or six hours, however, I suddenly felt a good deal better. The next morning out from Madeira dawned bright and sunny, and the sea was calm. I wondered, as one does with sea-sickness, what on earth I had been making such a fuss about. After all, there was nothing the matter with me really; I had just been sea-sick.

There is no gap in the world as complete as that between one who is sea-sick and one who is not. Neither can understand the state of the other. I was never really to get my sea-legs. Everyone always assured me that after you got through the first few days you were all right. It was not true. Whenever it was rough again I felt ill, particularly if the boat pitched–but since on our cruise it was mostly fair weather, I had a happy time.

My memories of Cape Town are more vivid than of other places; I suppose because it was the first real port we came to, and it was all so new and strange. The Kaffirs, Table Mountain with its queer flat shape, the sunshine, the delicious peaches, the bathing–it was all wonderful. I have never been back there–really I cannot think why. I loved it so much. We stayed at one of the best hotels, where Belcher made himself felt from the beginning. He was infuriated with the fruit served for breakfast, which was hard and unripe. ‘What do you call these?’ he roared. ‘Peaches? You could bounce them and they wouldn’t come to any harm.’ He suited his action to the word, and bounced about five unripe peaches. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘They don’t squash. They ought to squash if they were ripe.’

It was then that I got my inkling that travelling with Belcher might not be as pleasant as it had seemed in prospect at our dinner-table in the flat a month before.

This is no travel book–only a dwelling back on those memories that stand out in my mind; times that have mattered to me, places and incidents that have enchanted me. South Africa meant a lot to me. From Cape Town the party divided. Archie, Mrs Hyam, and Sylvia went to Port Elizabeth, and were to rejoin us in Rhodesia. Belcher, Mr Hyam and I went to the diamond mines at Kimberley, on through the Matopos, to rejoin the others at Salisbury. My memory brings back to me hot dusty days in the train going north through the Karroo, being ceaselessly thirsty, and having iced lemonades. I remember a long straight line of railway in Bechuanaland. Vague thoughts come back of Belcher bullying Bates and arguing with Hyam. The Matopos I found exciting, with their great boulders piled up as though a giant had thrown them there.

At Salisbury we had a pleasant time among happy English people, and from there Archie and I went on a quick trip to the Victoria Falls. I am glad I have never been back, so that my first memory of them remains unaffected. Great trees, soft mists of rain, its rainbow colouring, wandering through the forest with Archie, and every now and then the rainbow mist parting to show you for one tantalising second the Falls in all their glory pouring down. Yes, I put that as one of my seven wonders of the world.

We went to Livingstone and saw the crocodiles swimming about, and the hippopotami. From the train journey I brought back carved wooden animals, held up at various stations by little native boys, asking three-pence or sixpence for them. They were delightful. I still have several of them, carved in soft wood and marked, I suppose, with a hot poker: elands, giraffes, hippopotami, zebras–simple, crude, and with a great charm and grace of their own.

We went to Johannesburg, of which I have no memory at all; to Pretoria, of which I remember the golden stone of the Union Buildings; then on to Durban, which was a disappointment because one had to bathe in an enclosure, netted off from the open sea. The thing I enjoyed most, I suppose, in Cape Province, was the bathing. Whenever we could steal time off–or rather when Archie could–we took the train and went to Muizenberg, got our surf boards, and went out surfing together.

The surf boards in South Africa were made of light, thin wood, easy to carry, and one soon got the knack of coming in on the waves. It was occasionally painful as you took a nose dive down into the sand, but on the whole it was easy sport and great fun. We had picnics there, sitting in the sand dunes. I remember the beautiful flowers, especially, I think, at the Bishop’s house or Palace, where we must have been to a party. There was a red garden, and also a blue garden with tall blue flowers. The blue garden was particularly lovely with its background of plumbago.

Finances went well in South Africa, which cheered us up. We were the guests of the Government in practically every hotel, and we had free travel on the railways–so only our personal trip to the Victoria Falls involved us in serious expenses.

From South Africa we set sail for Australia. It was a long, rather grey voyage. It was a mystery to me why, as the Captain explained, the shortest way to Australia was to go down towards the Pole and up again. He drew diagrams which eventually convinced me, but it is difficult to remember that the earth is round and has flat poles. It is a geographical fact, but not one that you appreciate the point of in real life. There was not much sunshine, but it was a fairly calm and pleasant voyage.

It always seems to me odd that countries are never described to you in terms which you recognise when you get there. My own sketchy ideas of Australia comprised kangaroos in large quantities, and a great deal of waste desert. What startled me principally, as we came into Melbourne, was the extraordinary aspect of the trees, and the difference Australian gum trees make to a landscape. Trees are always the first things I seem to notice about places, or else the shape of hills. In England one becomes used to trees having dark trunks and light leafy branches; the reverse in Australia was quite astonishing. Silvery white-barks everywhere, and the darker leaves, made it like seeing the negative of a photograph. It reversed the whole look of the landscape. The other thing that was exciting was the macaws: blue and red and green, flying through the air in great clustering swarms. Their colouring was wonderful: like flying jewels.

We were at Melbourne for a short time, and took various trips from there. I remember one trip particularly because of the gigantic tree ferns. This sort of tropical jungle foliage was the last thing I expected in Australia. It was lovely, and most exciting. The food was not as pleasing. Except for the hotel in Melbourne, where it was very good, we seemed always to be eating incredibly tough beef or turkey. The sanitary arrangements, too, were slightly embarrassing to one of Victorian upbringing. The ladies of the party were politely ushered into a room where two chamber pots sat in isolation in the middle of the floor, ready for use as desired. There was no privacy, and it was quite difficult…

A social gaffe that I committed in Australia, and once again in New Zealand, arose in taking my place at table. The Mission was usually entertained by the Mayor or the Chamber of Commerce in the various places we visited, and the first time this happened, I went, in all innocence, to sit by the Mayor or some other dignitary. An acid-looking elderly female then said to me: ‘I think, Mrs Christie, you will prefer to sit by your husband.’ Rather shame-faced, I hurried round to take my place by Archie’s side. The proper arrangements at these luncheons was that every wife sat by her husband. I forgot this once again in New Zealand, but after that I knew my place and went to it.

We stayed in New South Wales at a station called, I think, Yanga, where I remember a great lake with black swans sailing on it. It was a lovely picture. Here, while Belcher and Archie were busy putting forth the claims of the British Empire, migration within the Empire, the importance of trade within the Empire, and so on and so forth, I was allowed to spend a happy day sitting in the orange groves. I had a nice long deck-chair, there was delicious sunshine, and as far as I remember I ate twenty-three oranges–carefully selecting the very best from the trees round me. Ripe oranges plucked straight from the trees, are the most delicious things you can imagine. I made a lot of discoveries about fruit. Pineapples, for instance, I had always thought of as hanging down gracefully from a tree. I was so astonished to find that an enormous field I had taken to be full of cabbages was in fact of pineapples. It was in a way rather a disappointment. It seemed such a prosaic way of growing such a luscious fruit.

Part of our journey was by train, but a good deal of it by car. Driving through those enormous stretches of flat pasture land, with nothing to break the horizon except periodic windmills, I realised how frightening it could be: how easy to get lost–‘bushed’, as the saying was. The sun was so high over your head that you had no idea of north, south, east or west. There were no landmarks to guide you. I had never imagined a green grassy desert–I had always thought of deserts as a sandy waste–but there seem to be far more landmarks and protuberances by which you can find your way in desert country than there are in the flat grass-lands of Australia.

We went to Sydney, where we had a gay time, but having heard of Sydney and Rio de Janeiro as having the two most beautiful harbours in the world, I found it disappointing. I had expected too much of it, I suppose. Luckily I have never been to Rio, so I can still make a fancy picture of that in my mind’s eye.

It was in Sydney that we first came in contact with the Bell family. Whenever I think of Australia I think of the Bells. A young woman, somewhat older than I was, approached me one evening in the hotel in Sydney, introduced herself as Una Bell, and said that we were all coming to stay at their station in Queensland at the end of the following week. As Archie and Belcher had a round of rather dull townships to go to first, it was arranged I should accompany her back to the Bell station at Couchin Couchin and await their arrival there.

We had a long train journey, I remember–several hours–and I was dead tired. At the end we drove and finally arrived at Coochin Coochin, near Boona in Queensland. I was still half asleep when suddenly I came into a scene of exuberant life. Rooms, lamp-lit, were filled with good-looking girls sitting about, pressing drinks on you–cocoa, coffee, anything you wanted–and all talking at once, all chattering and laughing. I had that dazed feeling in which you see not double but about quadruple of everything. It seemed to me that the Bell family numbered about twenty-six. The next day I cut it down to four daughters and the equivalent number of sons. The girls all resembled each other slightly, except for Una, who was dark. The others were fair, tall, with rather long faces; all graceful in motion, all wonderful riders, and all looking like energetic young fillies.

It was a glorious week. The energy of the Bell girls was such that I could hardly keep pace, but I fell for each of the brothers in turn: Victor, who was gay and a wonderful flirt; Bert, who rode splendidly, but was more solid in quality; Frick, who was quiet and fond of music. I think it was Frick to whom I really lost my heart. Years later, his son Guilford was to join Max and me on our archaeological expeditions to Iraq and Syria, and Guilford I still regard almost as a son.

The dominant figure in the Bell household was the mother, Mrs Bell, a widow of many years standing. She had something of the quality of Queen Victoria–short, with grey hair, quiet but authoritative in manner, she ruled with absolute autocracy, and was always treated as though she was royalty.

Amongst the various servants, station hands, general helpers, etc., most of whom were half-caste, there were one or two pure-bred Aborigines. Aileen Bell, the youngest of the Bell sisters, said to me almost the first morning: ‘You’ve got to see Susan.’ I asked who Susan was. ‘Oh, one of the Blacks.’ They were always called ‘the Blacks’. ‘One of the Blacks, but she’s a real one, absolutely pure-bred, and she does the most wonderful imitations.’ So a bent, aged Aborigine came along. She was as much a queen in her own right as Mrs Bell in hers. She did imitations of all the girls for me, and of various of the brothers, children and horses: she was a natural mimic, and she enjoyed very much doing her show. She sang, too, queer, off-key tunes.

‘Now then, Susan,’ said Aileen. ‘Do mother going out to look at the hens.’ But Susan shook her head, and Aileen said, ‘She’ll never imitate mother. She says it wouldn’t be respectful and she couldn’t possibly do a thing like that.’

Aileen had several pet kangaroos and wallabies of her own, as well as large quantities of dogs, and, naturally, horses. The Bells all urged me to ride, but I didn’t feel that my experience of rather amateurish hunting in Devon entitled me to claim to be a horsewoman. Besides, I was always nervous of riding other people’s horses in case I should damage them. So they gave in, and we dashed round everywhere by car. It is an exciting experience seeing cattle rounded up, and all the various aspects of station life. The Bells seemed to own large portions of Queensland, and if we had had time Aileen said she would have taken me to see the Northern out-station, which was much wilder and more primitive. None of the Bell girls ever stopped talking. They adored their brothers, and hero-worshipped them openly in a way quite novel to my experience. They were always dashing about, to various stations, to friends, down to Sydney, to race meetings; and flirting with various young men whom they referred to always as ‘coupons’–I suppose a relic of the war.

Presently Archie and Belcher arrived, looking jaded by their efforts. We had a cheerful and carefree weekend with several unusual pastimes, one of which was an expedition in a small-gauge train, of which I was allowed, for a few miles, to drive the engine. There was a party of Australian Labour M.P.s, who had had such a festive luncheon that they were all slightly the worse for drink, and when they took it in turns to drive the engine we were all in mortal danger as it was urged to enormous speeds.

Sadly we said farewell to our friends–or to the greater portion of them, for a quota was going to accompany us to Sydney. We had a brief glimpse of the Blue Mountains, and there again I was entranced by landscape coloured as I have never seen landscape coloured before. In the distance the hills really were blue–a cobalt blue, not the kind of grey blue that I associated with hills. They looked as if they had just been put on a piece of drawing-paper, straight from one’s paint-box.

Australia had been fairly strenuous for the British Mission. Every day had been taken up with speech-making, dinners, luncheons, receptions, long journeys between different places. I knew all Belcher’s speeches by heart by this time. He was good at speech-making, delivering everything with complete spontaneity and enthusiasm as though it had only just come into his head. Archie made quite a good contrast to him by his air of prudence and financial sagacity. Archie, at an early date–in South Africa I think–had been referred to in the newspapers as the Governor of the Bank of England. Nothing he said in contradiction of this was ever printed, so Governor of the Bank of England he remained as far as the press was concerned.

From Australia we went to Tasmania, driving from Launceston to Hobart. Incredibly beautiful Hobart, with its deep blue sea and harbour, and its flowers, trees and shrubs. I planned to come back and live there one day.

From Hobart we went to New Zealand. I remember that journey well, for we fell into the clutches of a man known to us all as ‘The Dehydrator’. It was in the days when the idea of dehydrating food was all the rage. this man never looked at anything in the food line without thinking how he could dehydrate it, and at every single meal platefuls were sent over from his table to ours, begging us to sample them. We were given dehydrated carrots, plums, everything–all, without exception, tasted of nothing.

‘If I have to pretend to eat any more of his dehydrated foods,’ said Belcher, ‘I shall go mad.’ But as the Dehydrator was rich and powerful, and could prove of great benefit to the British Empire Exhibition, Belcher had to control his feelings and continue to toy with dehydrated carrots and potatoes.

By now the first amenities of travelling together had worn off. Belcher was no longer our friend who had seemed a pleasant dinner companion. He was rude, overbearing, bullying, inconsiderate, and mean in curiously small matters. For instance, he was always sending me out to buy him white cotton socks or other necessities of underwear, and never by any chance did he pay me back for what I bought.

If anything put him in a bad temper he was so impossible that one loathed him with a virulent hatred. He behaved exactly like a spoilt and naughty child. The disarming thing was that when he recovered his temper he could display so much bonhomie and charm that somehow we forgot our teeth-grinding and found ourselves back on the pleasantest terms. When he was going to be in a bad temper one always knew, because he began to swell up slowly and go red in the face like a turkey cock. Then, sooner or later, he would lash out at everybody. When he was in a good humour he told lion stories, of which he had a large stock.

I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen. Its scenery is extraordinary. We were in Wellington on a perfect day; something which, I gathered from its inhabitants, seldom happened. We went to Nelson and then down the South Island, through the Buller Gorge and the Kawarau Gorge. Everywhere the beauty of the countryside was astonishing. I vowed then that I would come back one day, in the spring–their spring, I mean, not ours–and see the rata in flower: all golden and red. I have never done so. For most of my life New Zealand has been so far away. Now, with the coming of air travel, it is only two or three days’ journey, but my travelling days are over.

Belcher was pleased to be back in New Zealand. He had many friends there, and was happy as a schoolboy. When Archie and I left for Honolulu he gave us his blessing and urged us to enjoy ourselves. It was heaven for Archie to have no more work to do, no more contending with a crotchety and ill-tempered colleague. We had a lazy voyage, stopping at Fiji and other islands, and finally arrived at Honolulu. It was far more sophisticated than we had imagined with masses of hotels and roads and motor-cars. We arrived in the early morning, got into our rooms at the hotel, and straight away, seeing out of the window the people surfing on the beach, we rushed down, hired our surf-boards, and plunged into the sea. We were, of course, complete innocents. It was a bad day for surfing–one of the days when only the experts go in–but we, who had surfed in South Africa, thought we knew all about it. It is very different in Honolulu. Your board, for instance, is a great slab of wood, almost too heavy to lift. You lie on it, and slowly paddle yourself out towards the reef, which is–or so it seemed to me–about a mile away. Then, when you have finally got there, you arrange yourself in position and wait for the proper kind of wave to come and shoot you through the sea to the shore. This is not so easy as it looks. First you have to recognise the proper wave when it comes, and secondly, even more important, you have to know the wrong wave when it comes, because if that catches you and forces you down to the bottom, Heaven help you!

I was not as powerful a swimmer as Archie, so it took me longer to get out to the reef. I had lost sight of him by that time, but I presumed he was shooting into shore in a negligent manner as others were doing. So I arranged myself on my board and waited for a wave. The wave came. It was the wrong wave. In next to no time I and my board were flung asunder. First of all the wave, having taken me in a violent down-ward dip, jolted me badly in the middle. When I arrived on the surface of the water again, gasping for breath, having swallowed quarts of salt water, I saw my board floating about half a mile away from me, going into shore. I myself had a laborious swim after it. It was retrieved for me by a young American, who greeted me with the words: ‘Say, sister, if I were you I wouldn’t come out surfing today. You take a nasty chance if you do. You take this board and get right into shore now.’ I followed his advice.

Before long Archie rejoined me. He too had been parted from his board. Being a stronger swimmer, though, he had got hold of it rather more quickly. He made one or two more trials, and succeeded in getting one good run. By that time we were bruised, scratched and completely exhausted. We returned our surf-boards, crawled up the beach, went up to our rooms, and fell exhausted on our beds. We slept for about four hours, but were still exhausted when we awoke. I said doubtfully to Archie: ‘I suppose there is a great deal of pleasure in surfing?’ Then sighing, ‘I wish I was back at Muizenberg.’

The second time I took the water, a catastrophe occurred. My handsome silk bathing dress, covering me from shoulder to ankle was more or less torn from me by the force of the waves. Almost nude, I made for my beach wrap. I had immediately to visit the hotel shop and provide myself with a wonderful, skimpy, emerald green wool bathing dress, which was the joy of my life, and in which I thought I looked remarkably well. Archie thought I did too.

We spent four days of luxury at the hotel, and then had to look about for something cheaper. In the end we rented a small chalet on the other side of the road from the hotel. It was about half the price. All our days were spent on the beach and surfing, and little by little we learned to become expert, or at any rate expert from the European point of view. We cut our feet to ribbons on the coral until we bought ourselves soft leather boots to lace round our ankles.

I can’t say that we enjoyed our first four or five days of surfing–it was far too painful–but there were, every now and then, moments of utter joy. We soon learned, too, to do it the easy way. At least I did–Archie usually took himself out to the reef by his own efforts. Most people, however, had a Hawaiian boy who towed you out as you lay on your board, holding the board by the grip of his big toe, and swimming vigorously. You then stayed, waiting to push off on your board, until your boy gave you the word of instruction. ‘No, not this, not this, Missus. No, no, wait–now!’ At the word ‘now’ off you went, and oh, it was heaven! Nothing like it. Nothing like that rushing through the water at what seems to you a speed of about two hundred miles an hour; all the way in from the far distant raft, until you arrived, gently slowing down, on the beach, and foundered among the soft flowing waves. It is one of the most perfect physical pleasures that I have known. After ten days I began to be daring. After starting my run I would hoist myself carefully to my knees on the board, and then endeavour to stand up. The first six times I came to grief, but this was not painful–you merely lost your balance and fell off the board. Of course, you had lost your board, which meant a tiring swim, but with luck your Hawaiian boy had followed and retrieved it for you. Then he would tow you out again and you would once more try. Oh, the moment of complete triumph on the day that I kept my balance and came right into shore standing upright on my board! We proved ourselves novices in another way which had disagreeable results. We completely underestimated the force of the sun. Because we were wet and cool in the water we did not realise what the sun could do to us. One ought normally, of course, to go surfing in the early morning or late afternoon, but we went surfing gloriously and happily at midday–at noon itself, like the mugs we were–and the result was soon apparent. Agonies of pain, burning back and shoulders all night–finally enormous festoons of blistered skin. One was ashamed to go down to dinner in an evening dress. I had to cover my shoulders with a gauze scarf. Archie braved ribald looks on the beach and went down in his pyjamas. I wore a type of white shirt over my arms and shoulders. So we sat in the sun, avoiding its burning rays, and only cast off these outer garments at the moment we went in to swim. But the damage was done by then, and it was a long time before my shoulders recovered. There is something rather humiliating about putting up one hand and tearing off an enormous strip of dead skin. Our little chalet bungalow had banana trees all round it–but bananas, like pineapples, were a slight disappointment. I had imagined putting out a hand, pulling a banana off the stem and eating it. Bananas are not treated like that in Honolulu. They are a serious source of profit, and they are always cut down green. Nevertheless, even though one couldn’t eat bananas straight off the tree one could still enjoy an enormous variety such as one had never known existed. I remember Nursie, when I was a child of three or four, describing bananas in India to me, and the difference between the plantains, which were large and uneatable, and the bananas which were small and delicious–or was it the other way about? Honolulu offered about ten varieties. There were red bananas, large bananas, small bananas called ice-cream bananas, which were white and fluffy inside, cooking bananas, and so on. Apple bananas were another flavour, I think. One became very choosy as to what one ate. The Hawaiians themselves were also slightly disappointing. I had imagined them as exquisite creatures of beauty. I was slightly put off to begin with by the strong smell of coconut oil with which all the girls smeared themselves and a good many of them were not good-looking at all. The enormous meals of hot meat stews were not at all what one had imagined either. I had always thought that Polynesians lived mostly on delicious fruits of all kinds. Their passion for stewed beef much surprised me. Our holiday drew to a close, and we sighed a good deal at the thought of resuming our servitude. We were also growing slightly apprehensive financially. Honolulu had proved excessively expensive. Everything you ate or drank cost about three times what you thought it would. Hiring your surf-board, paying your boy–everything cost money. So far we had managed well, but now the moment had come when a slight anxiety for the future entered our minds. We had still to tackle Canada, and Archie’s £1000 were dwindling fast. Our sea fares were paid for already so there was no worry over that. I could get to Canada, and I could get back to England. But there were my living expenses during the tour across Canada. How was I going to manage? However, we pushed this worry out of our minds and continued to surf desperately whilst we could. Much too desperately, as it happened. I had been aware for some time of a bad ache in my neck and shoulder and began to be awakened every morning about five o’clock with an almost unbearable pain in my right shoulder and arm. I was suffering from neuritis, though I did not yet call it by that name. If I’d had any sense at all I should have stopped using that arm and given up surfing, but I never thought of such a thing. There were only three days to go and I could not bear to waste a moment. I surfed, stood up on my board, displayed my prowess to the end. I now could not sleep at night at all because of the pain. However, I still had an optimistic feeling that it would go away as soon as I left Honolulu and had stopped surfing. How wrong I was. I was to suffer neuritis, and almost unendurable pain, for the next three weeks to a month.



Belcher was far from beneficent when we met again. He appeared to grudge us our holiday. Time we did some work, he said. ‘Hanging about all this time, doing nothing. My goodness! It’s extraordinary the way this thing has been fitted out, paying people to do nothing all the time!’ He ignored the fact that he himself had had a good time in New Zealand and was regretting leaving his friends.

Since I was continually in pain, I went to see a doctor. He was not at all helpful. He gave me some ferocious ointment to rub into the hollow of my elbow when the pain was really bad. It must have been capsicum, I presume; it practically burnt a hole in my skin, and didn’t do the pain much good. I was thoroughly miserable by now. Constant pain gets one down. It started every morning early. I used to get out of bed and walk about, since that seemed to make the pain more bearable. It would go off for an hour or two, and then come back with redoubled vigour.

At least the pain took my mind off our increasing financial worries. We were really up against it now. Archie was practically at the end of his £1000, and there were still over three weeks to go. We decided that the only thing was that I should forego travelling to Nova Scotia and Labrador and instead get myself to New York as soon as the money ran out. Then I could live with Aunt Cassie or May while Archie and Belcher were inspecting the silver fox industry.

Even then things were not easy. I could afford to stay in the hotels, but it was the meals that were so expensive. However, I hit on quite a good plan: I would make breakfast my meal. Breakfast was a dollar–at that time about four shillings in English money. So I would have breakfast down in the restaurant, and I would have everything that was on the menu. That, I may say, was a good deal. I had grapefruit, and sometimes pawpaw as well. I had buckwheat cakes, waffles with maple syrup, eggs and bacon. I came out from breakfast feeling like an overstuffed boa constrictor. But I managed to make that last until evening.

We had been given several gifts during our stay in the Dominions: a lovely blue rug for Rosalind with animals on it, which I was looking forward to putting in her nursery, and various other things–scarves, a rug, and so on. Among these gifts was an enormous jar of meat extract from New Zealand. We had carried this along with us, and I was thankful now that we had, for I could see that I was going to depend on it for sustenance. I wished heartily that I had flattered the Dehydrator to the extent that he would have pressed large quantities of dehydrated carrots, beef, tomatoes, and other delicacies upon me.

When Belcher and Archie departed to their Chambers of Commerce dinners, or wherever they were dining officially, I would retire to bed, ring the bell, say I was not feeling well, and ask for an enormous jug of boiling water as a remedy for my indigestion. When this came I would add some meat extract to it and nourish myself on that until the morning. It was a splendid jar, and lasted me about ten days. Sometimes, of course, I was asked out to luncheons or dinners too. Those were the red letter days. I was particularly fortunate in Winnipeg, where the daughter of one of the civic dignitaries called for me at my hotel and took me out to lunch at a very expensive hotel. It was a glorious meal. I accepted all the most substantial viands that were offered me. She ate rather delicately herself. I don’t know what she thought of my appetite.

I think it was at Winnipeg that Archie went with Belcher on a tour of grain elevators. Of course, we should have known that anyone with a sinus condition ought never to go near a grain elevator, but I suppose it didn’t occur to him or to me. He returned that day, his eyes streaming, and looking so ill that I was thoroughly alarmed. He managed the journey the next day as far as Toronto, but once there he collapsed completely, and it was out of the question for him to continue on the tour.

Belcher, of course, was in a towering rage. He expressed no sympathy. Archie was letting him down, he said. Archie was young and strong, it was all nonsense to go down like this. Yes, of course, he knew Archie had a high temperature. If he had such poor health he ought never to have come. Now Belcher was left to hold the baby all by himself. Bates was no use, as anyone knew. Bates was only of use for packing one’s clothes, and even then he packed them all wrong. He couldn’t fold trousers the right way, silly fool.

I called in a doctor, advised by the hotel, and he pronounced that Archie had congestion of the lungs, must not be moved, and could not be fit for any kind of activity for at least a week. Fuming, Belcher took his departure, and I was left, with hardly any money, alone in a large, impersonal hotel, with a patient who was by now delirious. His temperature was over 103. Moreover, he came out with nettlerash. From head to foot he was covered with it, and suffered agony from the irritation, as well as the high fever.

It was a terrible time, and I am only glad now that I have forgotten the desperation and loneliness. The hotel food was not suitable, but I went out and got him invalid diet: a barley water, and thin gruel, which he quite liked. Poor Archie, I have never seen a man so maddened by what he went through with that appalling nettlerash. I sponged him all over, seven or eight times a day, with a weak solution of bicarbonate of soda and water, which gave him some relief. The third day the doctor suggested calling in a second opinion. Two owlish men stood on either side of Archie’s bed, looking serious, shaking their heads, saying it was a grave case. Ah well, one goes through these things. A morning came when Archie’s temperature had dropped, his nettlerash was slightly less obtrusive, and it was clear he was on the way to recovery. By this time I was feeling as weak as a kitten, mainly, I think, owing to anxiety.

In another four or five days Archie was restored to health, though still slightly weak, and we rejoined the detestable Belcher. I forget now where we went next; possibly Ottawa, which I loved. It was the fall, and the maple woods were beautiful. We stayed in a private house with a middle-aged admiral, a charming man who had a most lovely Alsatian dog. He used to take me out driving in a dog-cart through the maple trees.

After Ottawa we went to the Rockies, to Lake Louise and Banff. Lake Louise was for a long time my answer when I was asked which was the most beautiful place I had ever seen:–a great, long, blue lake, low mountains on either side, all of a most glorious shape, closing in with snow mountains at the end of it. At Banff I had a great piece of luck. My neuritis was still giving me a lot of pain and I resolved to try the hot sulphur waters which many people assured me might do good. Every morning I soaked myself in them. It was a kind of swimming pool, and by going up to one end of it you could get the hot water as it came out of the spring, smelling powerfully of sulphur. I ran this on to the back of my neck and shoulder. To my joy, by the end of four days my neuritis left me for all practical purposes, for good. To be free of pain once more was an unbelievable pleasure.

So there we were, Archie and I, at Montreal. Our roads were to part: Archie to go with Belcher and inspect silver fox farms, I to take a train south to New York. My money had by now completely run out.

I was met by darling Aunt Cassie at New York. She was so good to me, sweet and affectionate. I stayed with her in the apartment she had in Riverside Drive. She must have been a good age by then–nearly eighty, I should think. She took me to see her sister-in-law, Mrs Pierpont Morgan, and some of the younger Morgans of the family. She also took me to splendid restaurants and fed me delicious food. She talked much of my father and his early days in New York. I had a happy time. Aunt Cassie asked me towards the end of the stay what I would like to do as a treat on my last day. I told her that what I really longed to do was to go and have a meal in a cafeteria. Cafeterias were unknown in England, but I had read about them in New York, and I longed to try one. Aunt Cassie thought this a most extraordinary desire. She could not imagine anybody wanting to go to a cafeteria, but since she was full of willingness to please she went there with me. It was, she said, the first time she had been to one herself. I got my tray and collected things from the counter, and found it all a most amusing new experience.

Then the day came when Archie and Belcher were to reappear in New York. I was glad they were coming, because in spite of all Aunt Cassie’s kindness, I was beginning to feel like a bird in a golden cage. Aunt Cassie never dreamed of allowing me to go out by myself anywhere. This was so extraordinary to me, after moving about freely in London, that it made me feel restless.

‘But why, Aunt Cassie?’

‘Oh, you never know what might happen to someone young and pretty like you are, who doesn’t know New York.’

I assured her I was quite all right, but she insisted on either sending me in the car with a chauffeur or taking me herself. I felt inclined sometimes to play truant for three or four hours, but I knew that that would have worried her, so I restrained myself. I began to look forward, though, to being soon in London and able to walk out of my front door any moment I pleased.

Archie and Belcher spent one night in New York, and the next day we embarked on the Berengaria for our voyage back to England. I can’t say I liked being on the sea again, but I was only moderately sea-sick this time. The rough weather happened at rather a bad moment, however, because we had entered a bridge tournament, and Belcher insisted that I should partner him. I didn’t want to, for although Belcher was a good bridge player he disliked losing so much that he always became extremely sulky. However, I was going to be free of him soon, so he and I started on our tournament. Unexpectedly we arrived at the final. That was the day that the wind freshened and the boat began to pitch. I did not dare to think of scratching, and only hoped that I would not disgrace myself at the bridge table. Hands were dealt as we started on what might well be the last hand, and almost at once Belcher, with a terrible scowl, slammed his cards down on the table.

‘No use my playing this game really,’ he said. ‘No use at all.’ He was scowling furiously, and I think for two pins would have thrown in the hand and allowed the game as a walkover to our opponents. However, I myself appeared to have picked up every ace and king in the pack. I played atrociously, but fortunately the cards played themselves. I couldn’t lose. In the qualms of sea-sickness I pulled out the wrong card, forgot what trumps were, did everything foolish possible–but my hand was too good. We were triumphant winners of the tournament. I then retired to my cabin, to groan miserably until we docked in England.



I add, as a postscript to the year’s adventures, that we did not keep to our vow of never speaking to Belcher again. I am sure everyone who reads this will understand. The furies that take hold of one when cooped up with somebody evaporate when the time of stress is over. To our enormous surprise we found that we actually liked Belcher, that we enjoyed his company. On many occasions he dined with us and we with him. We reminisced together in perfect amity over the various happenings of the world tour, saying occasionally to him: ‘You really did behave atrociously, you know.’

‘I daresay, I daresay,’ said Belcher. ‘I’m like that, you know.’ He waved a hand. ‘And anyway I had a lot to try me. Oh, not you two. You didn’t worry me much–except Archie being such an idiot as to make himself ill. Absolutely lost I was, that fortnight when I had to do without him. Can’t you have something done to your nose and your sinus? What’s the good of going through life with a sinus like that? I wouldn’t.’ Belcher had come back from his tour, most unexpectedly engaged to be married. A pretty girl, daughter of one of the officials in Australia, had worked with him as his secretary. Belcher was fifty at least, and she, I should say, was eighteen or nineteen. At any rate he announced to us quite suddenly, ‘I’ve a piece of news for you. I’m getting married to Gladys!’ And get married to Gladys he did. She arrived by ship shortly after our return. Strangely enough I think it was quite a happy marriage, at least for some years. Gladys was good-tempered, enjoyed living in England, and managed the cantankerous Belcher remarkably well. It must have been, I think, eight or ten years later when we heard the news that a divorce was in progress.

‘She’s found another chap she liked the look of,’ Belcher announced. ‘Can’t say I blame her, really. She’s very young, and of course I am rather an elderly curmudgeon for her. We’ve remained good friends, and I’m fixing up a nice little sum for her. She’s a good girl.’ I remarked to Belcher on one of the first occasions we dined together after our return: ‘Do you know you still owe me two pounds eighteen and fivepence for white socks?’

‘Dear, dear,’ he said. ‘Do I really? Are you expecting to get it?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Quite right,’ said Belcher. ‘You won’t.’ And we both laughed.


II

Life is really like a ship–the interior of a ship, that is. It has watertight compartments. You emerge from one, seal and bolt the doors, and find yourself in another. My life from the day we left Southampton to the day we returned to England was one such compartment. Ever since that I have felt the same about travel. You step from one life into another. You are yourself, but a different self. The new self is untrammelled by all the hundreds of spiders’ webs and filaments that enclose you in a cocoon of day-to-day domestic life: letters to write and bills to pay, chores to do, friends to see, photographs to develop, clothes to mend, nurses and servants to placate, tradesmen and laundries to reprove. Your travel life has the essence of a dream. It is something outside the normal, yet you are in it. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. It brings occasional homesickness, and loneliness, and pangs of longing to see some dearly loved person–Rosalind, my mother, Madge. But you are like the Vikings or the Master Mariners of the Elizabethan age, who have gone into the world of adventure, and home is not home until you return.

It was exciting to go away; it was wonderful to return. Rosalind treated us, as no doubt we deserved, as strangers with whom she was unacquainted. Giving us a cold look, she demanded: ‘Where’s my Auntie Punkie?’ My sister herself took her revenge on me by instructing me on exactly what Rosalind was allowed to eat, what she should wear, the way she should be brought up, and so on.

After the first joys of reunion, the snags unfolded. Jessie Swannell had fallen by the wayside, unable to get on with my mother. She had been replaced by an elderly nannie, who was always known between ourselves as Cuckoo. I think she had acquired this name from the fact that when the changeover had taken place, and Jessie Swannell had departed weeping bitterly, the new nurse attempted to ingratiate herself with her new charge by shutting and opening the nursery door and hopping in and out, exclaiming brightly: ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo!’ Rosalind took a poor view of this and howled every time it happened. She became, however, exceedingly fond of her new attendant. Cuckoo was a born fusser, and an incompetent one at that. She was full of love and kindness, but she lost everything, broke everything, and made remarks of such idiocy that one could occasionally hardly believe them. Rosalind enjoyed this. She kindly took charge of Cuckoo and ran Cuckoo’s affairs for her.

‘Dear, dear,’ I would hear from the nursery. ‘Now where have I put the little dear’s brush. Now then, where could it be? In the clothes basket?’

‘I’ll find it for you, Nannie,’ Rosalind’s voice rose. ‘Here it is, in your bed.’

‘Dear, dear, how could I have put it there, I wonder?’ Rosalind found things for Cuckoo, tidied away things for Cuckoo, and even gave her instructions from the pram when they were out together: ‘Don’t cross now, Nannie, it’s just the wrong moment–there’s a bus coming…You’re taking the wrong turning, Nannie…I thought you said you were going to the wool-shop, Nannie. That’s not the way to the wool-shop.’ These instructions were punctuated by Cuckoo’s ‘Dear, dear, now why ever…What could I have been thinking of to do that?’ etc. The only people who found Cuckoo hard to endure were Archie and myself. She kept up a continual stream of conversation. The best way was to close your ears and not listen to it, but occasionally, maddened, you interrupted. Going in a taxi to Paddington, Cuckoo would keep up a continual stream of observations. ‘Look, little dear. You look out of the window now. You see that big place? That’s Selfridges. That’s a lovely place, Selfridges. You can buy anything there.’

‘It’s Harrods, Nurse,’ I would say coldly.

‘Dear, dear, now, so it is! It was Harrods all the time, wasn’t it? Now isn’t that funny, because we know Harrods quite well, don’t we, little dear?’

‘I knew it was Harrods,’ said Rosalind. I think it possible now that the ineptitude and general inefficiency of Cuckoo were responsible for making Rosalind an efficient child. She had to be. Somebody had got to keep the nursery in a vague semblance of order.


III

Arriving home may have started with joyous reunions, but reality soon raised its ugly head. We were without any money at all. Archie’s job with Mr Goldstein was a thing of the past and another young man was now installed in his place. I still had, of course, my grandfather’s nest-egg, so we could count on £100 a year, but Archie hated the idea of touching any of the capital. He must get a job of some kind, and at once, before demands for rent, Cuckoo’s salary, and the weekly food bills began to come in. Finding a job was not easy–in fact it was even more difficult than it had been immediately after the war. My memories of that particular crisis are by now fortunately dim. I do know that it was an unhappy time because Archie was unhappy, and Archie was one of those people whom unhappiness does not suit. He knew this himself. I remember he had once warned me in the early days of our marriage: ‘I’m no good, remember, if things go wrong. I’m not much good in illness, I don’t like ill people, and I can’t bear people to be unhappy or upset.’

We had taken our risk with our eyes open, content to take our chance. All that we could do now was to accept that the enjoyment was over and that the payment, in worry, frustration, etc., had now begun. I felt too, very inadequate, because I seemed to be of such little help to Archie. We would face all this together, I had told myself. I had to accept almost from the first that he would be every day in a state of irritation, or else completely silent and sunk in melancholy. If I attempted to be cheerful I was told I had no sense of the gravity of the position; if I was gloomy I was told, ‘No use pulling a long face. You knew what you were letting yourself in for!’ In fact, nothing I could do seemed to be right.

Finally Archie said firmly, ‘Look here, what I really want you to do, the only thing that would help at all, is to go right away.’

‘Go right away? Where?’

‘I don’t know. Go to Punkie–she’d be pleased to have you and Rosalind. Or go home to your mother.’

‘But, Archie, I want to be with you; I want to share this–can’t we? Can’t we share it together? Isn’t there something I could do?’

Nowadays I suppose I could have said, ‘I’ll get a job,’ but it was not a thing one even thought of saying in 1923. In the war there had been WAAFs, WRAFS, and WAACs, or jobs in munitions factories, or in the hospitals. But they were temporary; There were no jobs for women now in offices or ministries. Shops were fully staffed. Still I dug my toes in, and refused to go away. I could at least cook and clean. We had now no maid. I kept quiet and well out of Archie’s way, which seemed the only attitude that was of any help to him.

He roamed round the City offices and saw various people who might know of a job that was going. In the end he got one. It was not one that he liked–indeed he was slightly apprehensive about the firm that engaged him: they were, he said, well known to be crooks. They kept for the most part on the right side of the law, but one never knew. ‘The point is,’ said Archie, ‘that I’ll have to be very careful that they don’t ever leave me holding the can.’ Anyway, it was employment and brought some money in, and Archie’s mood improved. He was even able to find some of his daily experiences funny.

I tried to settle down to do some writing, since I felt that that was the only thing I could do that might bring in a little money. I still had no idea of writing as a profession. The stories published in The Sketch had encouraged me: that had been real money coming directly to me. Those stories, however, had been bought, paid for, and the money spent by now. I settled down and started to write another book.

Belcher had urged me, when we dined with him at his house, the Mill House at Dorney, before our trip, to write a detective story about it. ‘The Mystery of the Mill House,’ he said. ‘Jolly good title–don’t you think?’

I said yes, I thought Mystery in the Mill House or Murder in the Mill House would be very good, and I would consider the matter. When we had started on our tour he often referred to the subject.

‘But mind you,’ he said, ‘if you write The Mystery of the Mill House I’ve got to be in it.’

‘I don’t think I could put you in it,’ I said. ‘I can’t do anything with real people. I have to imagine them.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Belcher. ‘I don’t mind if it isn’t particularly like me, but I’ve always wanted to be in a detective story.’ At intervals he would ask: ‘Have you begun that book of yours yet? Am I in it?’ At one moment, when we were feeling exasperated, I said: ‘Yes. You’re the victim.’

‘What? Do you mean I’m the chap that gets murdered?’

‘Yes,’ I said, with some pleasure.

‘I don’t want to be the victim,’ said Belcher. ‘In fact I won’t be the victim–I insist on being the murderer.’

‘Why do you want to be the murderer?’

‘Because the murderer is always the most interesting character in the book. So you’ve got to make me the murderer, Agatha–do you understand?’

‘I understand that you want to be the murderer,’ I said, choosing my words carefully. In the end, in a moment of weakness, I promised that he should be the murderer. I had sketched out the plot of this book when I was in South Africa. It was to be again, I decided, more in the nature of a thriller than a detective story, comprising a good deal of the South African scene. There was some kind of revolutionary crisis on while we were there, and I noted down a few useful facts. I pictured my heroine as a gay, adventurous, young woman, an orphan, who started out to seek adventure. Tentatively writing a chapter or two, I found it terribly difficult to make the picture based on Belcher come alive. I could not write about him objectively and make him anything but a complete dummy. Then suddenly an idea came to me. The book should be written in the first person, alternately by the heroine, Ann, and the villain, Belcher.

‘I don’t believe he will like being the villain,’ I said to Archie dubiously.

‘Give him a title,’ suggested Archie. ‘I think he’d like that.’ So he was christened Sir Eustace Pedler, and I found that if I made Sir Eustace Pedler write his own script the character began to come alive. He wasn’t Belcher, of course, but he used several of Belcher’s phrases, and told some of Belcher’s stories. He too was a master of the art of bluff, and behind the bluff could easily be sensed an unscrupulous and interesting character. Soon I had forgotten Belcher and had Sir Eustace Pedler himself wielding the pen. It is, I think, the only time I have tried to put a real person whom I knew well into a book, and I don’t think it succeeded. Belcher didn’t come to life, but someone called Sir Eustace Pedler did. I suddenly found that the book was becoming rather fun to write. I only hoped The Bodley Head would approve of it. My chief handicap in the writing of this book was Cuckoo. Cuckoo, of course, in the habit of nurses in those days, did no kind of housework, cooking, or cleaning. She was a child’s nurse; she cleaned her own nursery and did the little dear’s washing, but that was all. I did not expect anything else, and I arranged my day quite well. Archie only came home in the evening, and Rosalind and Cuckoo’s lunch was simple and easy to deal with. That left me time in the mornings and afternoons to put in two or three hours work. Cuckoo and Rosalind were then en route to the park or to some shopping programme outdoors. However, there were, of course, wet days when they had to remain in the flat, and although the point was made that ‘Mummy is working’ Cuckoo was not so easily diverted. She would stand outside the door of the room where I was writing, and keep up a kind of soliloquy, ostensibly addressed to Rosalind.

‘Now, little dear, we mustn’t make a noise, must we, because Mummy is working. We mustn’t disturb Mummy when she’s working, must we? Though I should like to ask her if I should send that dress of yours to the laundry. I do think, you know, that it’s not one I can manage very well myself. Well, we must remember to ask her at teatime, mustn’t we, little dear? I mean we mustn’t go in now and ask her, must we? Oh no, she wouldn’t like that, would she? Then I want to ask about the pram too, You know it lost a nut again yesterday. Well, perhaps, little dear, we could make one little tap at the door. Now what do you think, little dear?’ Usually Rosalind would make a brief response which had no connection with what was being discussed, confirming me in my belief that she never listened to Cuckoo.

‘Blue Teddy is going to have his dinner now,’ she would declare. Rosalind had been given dolls, a dolls’ house, and various other toys, but she only really cared for animals. She had a silk creature called Blue Teddy, and another called Red Teddy, and these were joined later by a much larger rather sickly mauve teddy bear called Edward Bear. Of these three Rosalind loved with a complete and utter passion Blue Teddy. He was a limp animal, made of blue stockinette silk, with black eyes set flat into his flat face. He accompanied her everywhere, and I had to tell stories about him every night. The stories concerned both Blue Teddy and Red Teddy. Every night they had a fresh adventure. Blue Teddy was good and Red Teddy was very, very naughty. Red Teddy did some splendidly naughty things, such as putting glue on the school-teacher’s chair so that when she sat down she could not get up again. One day he put a frog in the school-teacher’s pocket, and she screamed and had hysterics. These tales met with great approval, and frequently I had to repeat them. Blue Teddy was of a nauseating and priggish virtue. He was top of his class in school and never did a naughty deed of any kind. Every day, when the boys left for school, Red Teddy promised his mother that he would be good today. On their return their mother would ask, ‘Have you been a good boy, Blue Teddy?’

‘Yes, Mummy, very good.’

‘That’s my dear boy. Have you been good, Red Teddy?’

‘No, Mummy, I have been very naughty.’ On one occasion Red Teddy had gone fighting with some bad boys and come home with an enormous black eye. A piece of fresh steak was put on it and he was sent to bed. Later Red Teddy blotted his copybook still further by eating the piece of steak that had been placed on his eye. Nobody could have been more delightful to tell stories to than Rosalind. She chuckled, laughed, and appreciated every minor point.

‘Yes, little dear’–Cuckoo, showing no signs of helping Rosalind to give Blue Teddy his dinner, continued to quack–‘Perhaps before we go we might just ask Mummy, if it doesn’t disturb her, because you know I would like to know about the pram.’ At this point, maddened, I would rise from my chair, all ideas of Ann in deadly peril in the forests of Rhodesia going out of my mind, and jerk open the door.

What is it, Nurse? What do you want?’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Ma’am. I am very sorry indeed. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘Well, you have disturbed me. What is it?’

‘Oh, but I didn’t knock on the door or anything.’

‘You’ve been talking outside,’ I said, ‘and I can hear every word you say. What is the matter with the pram?’

‘Well, I do think, Ma’am, that we really ought to have a new pram. You know I’m quite ashamed going to the park and seeing all the nice prams that the other little girls have. Oh yes indeed, I do feel that Miss Rosalind ought to have as good as anyone.’ Nurse and I had a permanent battle about Rosalind’s pram. We had originally bought it second-hand. It was a good, strong pram, perfectly comfortable; but it was not what could be called smart. There is a fashion in prams, I learned, and every year or two the makers give them a different ‘line’, a different cut of the jib, as it were–very much, of course, like motor cars nowadays. Jessie Swannell had not complained, but Jessie Swannell had come from Nigeria, and it is possible that they did not keep up so much with the Joneses in prams out there. I was to realise now that Cuckoo was a member of that sorority of nurses who met in Kensington Gardens with their infant charges, where they would sit down and compare notes as to the merits of their situations and the beauty and cleverness of their particular child. The baby had to be well dressed, in the proper fashion for babies at that moment, or Nurse would be shamed. That was all right. Rosalind’s clothes passed muster. The overalls and dresses I had made her in Canada were the dernier cri in children’s wear. The cocks and hens and pots of flowers on their black background filled everybody with admiration and envy. But where smart prams were concerned, poor Cuckoo’s pram was regrettably below the proper standard, and she never missed telling me when somebody had come along with a brand new vehicle. ‘Any nurse would be proud of a pram like that!’ However, I was hard-hearted. We were very badly off, and I was not going to get a fancy pram at large expense just to indulge Cuckoo’s vanity.

‘I don’t even think that pram’s safe,’ said Cuckoo, making a last try. ‘There’s always nuts coming off.’

‘That’s going on and off the pavement so much,’ I said. ‘You don’t screw them up before you go out. In any case, I am not going to get a new pram.’ And I went in again and banged the door.

‘Dear, dear,’ said Cuckoo. ‘Mummy doesn’t seem at all pleased, does she? Well, my poor little dear, it doesn’t seem as if we’re going to have a nice new carriage, does it?’

‘Blue Teddy wants his dinner,’ said Rosalind. ‘Come along, Nanny.’


IV

In the end The Mystery of the Mill House got finished somehow or other, in spite of the difficulties of Cuckoo’s obbligato outside the door. Poor Cuckoo! Shortly afterwards she consulted a doctor and moved to a hospital where she had an operation for cancer of the breast. She was a good deal older than she had said she was, and there was no question of her returning to work as a nurse. She went to live, I believe, with a sister.

I had decided that the next nurse should not be selected at Mrs Boucher’s Bureau, or from anyone of that ilk. What I needed was a Mother’s Help, so a Mother’s Help I advertised for.

From the moment which brought Site into our family, our luck seemed to change for the better. I interviewed Site in Devonshire. She was a strapping girl, with a large bust, broad hips, a flushed face and dark hair. She had a deep contralto voice, with a particularly lady-like and refined accent, so much so that you couldn’t help feeling that she was acting a part on the stage. She had been a Mother’s Help to two or three different establishments for some years now, and radiated competence in the way she spoke of the infant world. She seemed good-natured, good-tempered, and full of enthusiasm. She asked a low salary, and seemed quite willing to do anything, go anywhere–as they say in the advertisements. So Site returned with us to London, and became the comfort of my life.

Naturally her name at that time was not Site–it was Miss White–but after a few months of being with us Miss White became in Rosalind’s rapid pronunciation ‘Swite’. For a while we called her Swite; then Rosalind made another contraction, and thereafter she was known as Site. Rosalind was very fond of her, and Site liked Rosalind. She liked all small children, but she kept her dignity and was a strict disciplinarian in her own way. She would not stand for any disobedience or rudeness.

Rosalind missed her role as controller and director of Cuckoo. I suspect now that she transferred these activities to me–taking me in her same beneficent charge, finding things for me that I had lost, pointing out to me that I had forgotten to stamp an envelope, and so on. Certainly, by the time that she was five years old, I was conscious that she was much more efficient than I was. On the other hand she had no imagination. If we were playing a game with each other, in which two figures took part–for instance, a man taking a dog for a walk (I may say that I would be the dog and she would be the man)–there might come a moment when the dog had to be put on a lead.

‘We haven’t got a lead,’ Rosalind would say. ‘We’ll have to change that part.’

‘You can pretend you have a lead,’ I suggested.

‘How can I pretend I have a lead when I’ve nothing in my hand?’

‘Well, take the waist-belt of my dress and pretend that’s a lead.’

‘It’s not a dog lead, it’s the waist-belt of a dress.’ Things had to be real to Rosalind. Unlike me, she never read fairy stories as a child. ‘But they’re not real,’ she would protest. ‘They’re about people who aren’t there–they don’t really happen. Tell me about Red Teddy at the picnic.’

The curious thing is that by the time she was fourteen she adored fairy stories, and would read books of them again and again.

Site fitted into our household extremely well. Dignified and competent as she looked, she did not really know much more about cooking than I did. She had been an assistant always. We had to be assistants to each other in our present way of living. Although we each had dishes that we made well–I made cheese souffle, Bearnaise sauce, and old English syllabub, Site made jam tartlets and could pickle herrings–we were neither of us adept at producing what I believe is termed ‘a balanced meal’. To assemble a joint, a vegetable such as carrots, or brussels sprouts, potatoes, and a pudding afterwards, we would suffer from the fact that we did not know exactly how long these various things took to cook. The brussels sprouts would be reduced to a soggy mess, while the carrots were still hard. However, we learnt as we went along.

We divided duties. One morning I took Rosalind in charge and we set off in the serviceable, but not fashionable pram to the park–though by now we used the push-chair more often–while Site prepared the lunch and made the beds. Next morning I would stay at home and do the domestic chores and Site would depart for the park. On the whole I found the first activity more tiring than the second. It was a long way to the park, and when you got there you couldn’t sit still and rest and make your mind a blank. You had either to converse with Rosalind and play with her, or see she was suitably occupied playing with somebody else and that nobody was taking away her boat or knocking her down. During domestic chores I could relax my mind completely. Robert Graves once said to me that washing up was one of the best aids to creative thought. I think he is quite right. There is a monotony about domestic duties–sufficient activity for the physical side, so that it releases your mental side, allowing it to take off into space and make its own thoughts and inventions. That doesn’t apply to cooking, of course. Cooking demands all your creative abilities and complete attention.

Site was a welcome relief after Cuckoo. She and Rosalind occupied themselves quite happily without my hearing a peep out of them. They were either in the nursery or down on the green below, or doing some shopping.

It was a shock to me when about six months after she came to us I discovered Site’s age. I had not asked her. She seemed obviously between twenty-four and twenty-eight, which was about the age I wanted, and it did not occur to me to be more definite. I was startled when I learnt that at the time of coming into my employment she was seventeen, and was now only just eighteen. It seemed incredible; she had such an air of maturity about her. But she had worked as a Mother’s Help since she had been about thirteen. She had a natural liking for her job and full proficiency in it; and her air of experience came from really being experienced, very much in the way that the eldest child of a large family has had great experience in dealing with small brothers and sisters.

Young as Site was, I would never have hesitated to go off for long periods and leave Rosalind in her charge. She was eminently sensible. She would send for the right doctor, take a child to a hospital, find out if anything was worrying her, deal with any emergency. Her mind was always on her job. In good old-fashioned terms, she had a vocation.

I heaved an enormous sigh of relief as I finished The Mystery of the Mill House. It had not been an easy book to write, and I considered it rather patchy when I had finished it. But there it was, finished, and, like Uncle Tom Cobley and all, with old Eustace Pedler and all. The Bodley Head hemmed and hawed a bit. It was not, they pointed out, a proper detective story, as Murder on the Links had been. However, graciously, they accepted it.

It was about then that I noticed a slight change in their attitude. Though I had been ignorant and foolish when I first submitted a book for publication, I had learnt a few things since. I was not as stupid as I must have appeared to many people. I had found out a good deal about writing and publishing. I knew about the Authors’ Society and I had read their periodical. I realised that you had to be extremely careful in making contracts with publishers, and especially with certain publishers. I had learnt of the many ways in which publishers took unfair advantage of authors. Now that I knew these things, I made my plans.

Shortly before bringing out The Mystery of the Mill House, The Bodley Head threw out certain proposals. They suggested that they might scrap the old contract and make another one with me, also for five books. The terms of this would be much more favourable. I thanked them politely, said I would think about it, and then refused, without giving any definite reason. They had not treated a young author fairly, I considered. They had taken advantage of her lack of knowledge and her eagerness to publish a book. I did not propose to quarrel with them on this point–I had been a fool. Anyone is a fool who does not find out a little bit about the proper remuneration for the job. On the other hand, would I, in spite of my acquired wisdom, still have refused the chance to publish The Mysterious Affair at Styles? I thought not. I would still have published with them on the terms they had suggested, but I would not have agreed to so long a contract for so many books. If you have trusted people once and been disappointed, you do not wish to trust them any more. That is only common sense, I was willing to finish my contract, but after that I was certainly going to find a new publisher. Also, I thought, I was going to have a literary agent.

I had a request from the Income Tax about this time. They wanted to know the details of my literary earnings. I was astonished. I had never considered my literary earnings as income. All the income I had, I thought, was £100 a year from £2000 invested in War Loan. Yes, they said, they knew about that, but they meant my earnings from published books. I explained that these were not something that came in every year–I had just happened to write three books just as I had happened to write short stories before, or poems. I wasn’t an author. I wasn’t going on writing all my life. I thought, I said, coming on a phrase from somewhere, that this sort of thing was called ‘casual profit’. They said they thought by now I really was an established author, even though as yet I might not have made much from my writing. They wanted details. Unfortunately I could not give them details–I had not kept any of the royalty statements sent me (if they had even been sent me, which I could not remember). I occasionally received an odd cheque, but I had usually cashed it straight away and spent it. However, I unravelled things to the best of my ability. The Inland Revenue seemed amused, on the whole, but suggested that in future I should keep more careful accounts. It was then that I decided I must have a literary agent.

As I didn’t know much about literary agents, I thought I had better go back to Eden Philpotts’ original recommendation–Hughes Massie. So back I went. It wasn’t Hughes Massie now–apparently he had died–instead I was received by a young man with a slight stammer, whose name was Edmund Cork. He was not nearly so alarming as Hughes Massie had been–in fact I could talk to him quite easily. He seemed suitably horrified at my ignorance, and was willing to guide my footsteps in future. He told me the exact amount of his commission, of the possibility of serial rights, and publication in America, of dramatic rights, and all sorts of unlikely things (or so it seemed to me). It was quite an impressive lecture. I placed myself in his hands, unreservedly, and left his office with a sigh of relief. I felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders.



That was the beginning of a friendship which has lasted for over forty years.



An almost unbelievable thing then occurred. I was offered £500 by The Evening News for the serial rights of The Mystery of the Mill House. It was no longer The Mystery of the Mill House: I had rechristened it The Man in the Brown Suit, because the other title seemed too like Murder on the Links. The Evening News proposed to change the title yet again. They were going to call it Anna The Adventuress–as silly a title as I had ever heard, I thought; though I kept my mouth shut, because, after all, they were willing to pay me £500, and though I might have certain feelings about the title of a book, nobody could be bothered about the title of a serial in a newspaper. It seemed the most unbelievable luck. I could hardly believe it, Archie could hardly believe it, Punkie could hardly believe it. Mother, of course, could easily believe it: any daughter of hers could earn £500 for a serial in The Evening News with the utmost ease–there was nothing surprising about it.

It always seems to be the pattern of life that all the bad things and all the good things come together. I had my stroke of luck with The Evening News, now Archie was to have his. He received a letter from an Australian friend, Clive Baillieu, who had long before suggested Archie might join his firm. Archie went to see him and was offered the job he had been yearning for for so many years. He shook off the dust of his present job, and went in with Clive Baillieu. He was immediately, wonderfully, completely happy. Here at last were sound and interesting enterprises, no sharp practice, and proper entry into the world of finance. We were in the seventh heaven.

Immediately I pressed for the project that I had cherished for so long, and about which Archie had hitherto been indifferent. We would try to find a small cottage in the country from which Archie could go to the City every day, and in the garden of which Rosalind could be turned out to grass, as it were, instead of having to be pushed to the park or confined to activities on the grass strip between the flats. I longed to live in the country. If we could find a cheap enough cottage we decided we would move.

Archie’s ready agreement to my plan was mostly, I think, because golf was now occupying more and more of his attention. He had been recently elected to Sunningdale Golf Club, and our weekends together of going off by train and making expeditions on foot had palled. He thought of nothing but golf. He played with various friends at Sunningdale, and now lesser and minor courses were treated by him with scorn. He could get no fun out of playing with a rabbit like me, so little by little, though not aware of the fact yet, I was becoming that well-known figure, a golf widow.

‘I don’t mind living in the country,’ said Archie. ‘Indeed, I think I’d quite like it, and of course it would be good for Rosalind. Site likes the country, and I know you do. If so, there is really only one possible place where we can live, and that is Sunningdale.’

‘Sunningdale,’ I said with slight dismay, for Sunningdale was not quite what I meant by the country. ‘But surely that is terribly expensive, isn’t it? It’s all rich people who live there.’

‘Oh, I expect we could find something,’ said Archie, optimistically. A day or two later he asked me how I was going to spend my £500 from The Evening News. ‘It’s a lot of money,’ I said. ‘I suppose–’ I admit I spoke grudgingly, with no conviction: ‘I suppose we ought to save it for a rainy day.’

‘Oh, I don’t think we need worry too much about that now. In with the Baillieus I shall have very good prospects, and you seem to be getting on with your writing.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I could spend it–or spend some of it.’ Vague ideas of an new evening dress, perhaps gold or silver evening shoes instead of black ones, something rather ambitious like a fairy cycle for Rosalind. Archie’s voice broke into these musings. ‘Why don’t you buy a car?’ he asked.

‘Buy a car?’ I looked at him with amazement. The last thing I dreamed of was a car. Nobody I knew in our circle of friends had a car. I was still imbued with the notion that cars were for the rich. They rushed past you at twenty, thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour, containing people with their hats tied on with chiffon veils, speeding to impossible places. ‘A car?’ I repeated, looking more like a zombie than ever.

‘Why not?’ Why not indeed? It was possible. I, Agatha, could have a car, a car of my own. I will confess here and now that of the two things that have excited me most in my life the first was my car: my grey bottle-nosed Morris Cowley. The second was dining with the Queen at Buckingham Palace about forty years later. Both of those happenings, you see, had something of a fairy-tale quality about them. They were things that I thought could never happen to me: to have a car of my own, and to dine with the Queen of England.

Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been?

I’ve been to London to visit the Queen.



It was almost as good as having been born the Lady Agatha!

Pussycat, Pussycat, what did you there?

I frightened a little mouse under her chair.



I had no chance of frightening any mouse under Queen Elizabeth II’s chair, but I did enjoy my evening. So small, and slender, in her simple dark red velvet gown with one beautiful jewel–and her kindness and easiness in talking. I remember she told us one story of how they used a small drawing-room one night, and in the middle of the evening a terrific fall of soot came down the chimney and they had to rush out of the room. It is cheering to know that domestic disasters happened in the highest circles.

Posted in An Autobiography