I
I am writing this in 1965. And that was in 1945. Twenty years, but it does not seem like twenty years.
The war years do not seem like real years, either. They were a nightmare in which reality stopped. For some years afterwards I was always saying, ‘Oh, so-and-so happened five years ago,’ but each time, really, I ought to have added another five. Now, when I say a few years ago, I mean quite a lot of years. Time has altered for me, as it does for the old.
My life began again, first with the ending of the German war. Though technically the war continued with Japan, our war ended then. Then came the business of picking up the pieces, all the bits and pieces scattered everywhere–bits of one’s life.
After having some leave, Max went back to the Air Ministry. The Admiralty decided to derequisition Greenway–as usual, at a moment’s notice–and the date they chose for it was Christmas Day. There could not have been a worse day for having to take over an abandoned house. We narrowly missed one bit of good fortune. Our electric generator engine, by which we made our own electricity, had been on its last legs when the Admiralty took over. The American Commander had told me several times he was afraid it would conk out altogether before long. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘we’ll put you in a jolly good new one when we do replace it, so you will have something to look forward to.’ Unfortunately the house was derequisitioned just three weeks before the electric generator was scheduled to be replaced.
Greenway was beautiful when we went down there again on a sunny winter’s day–but it was wild, wild as a beautiful jungle. Paths had disappeared, the kitchen garden, where carrots and lettuces had been grown, was all a mass of weeds, and the fruit-trees had not been pruned. It was sad in many ways to see it like that, but its beauty was still there. The inside of the house was not as bad as we had feared. There was no linoleum left, which was tiresome, and we could not obtain a permit to get any more because the Admiralty had taken it over and paid us for it when they moved in. The kitchen was indescribable, with the blackness and oily soot of the walls–and there were, as I have said, fourteen lavatories along the stone passage down there.
I had a splendid man who battled for me with the Admiralty, and I must say the Admiralty needed some battling with. Mr Adams was a firm ally of mine. Somebody had told me that he was the only man capable of wringing blood from a stone or money from the Admiralty!
They refused to allow sufficient to redecorate rooms on the absurd pretext that the house had been freshly painted only a year or two before they took over–therefore they’d only allow for a portion of each room. How can you decorate three quarters of a room? However, it turned out the boat house had been a good deal damaged, with stones removed, steps broken down, and various things like that, and this was costly structural damage, for which they had to pay–so when I got the money for that I was able to redecorate the kitchen.
We had another desperate battle about the lavatories, because they said they ought to be charged against me as improvements. I said it was no improvement to have fourteen lavatories that you didn’t need along a kitchen passage. What you needed there was the larder and the wood shed and the pantry that had been there originally. They said all those lavatories would be an enormous improvement if the place was going to be turned into a girls’ school. I pointed out it was not going to be turned into a girls’ school. They could leave me one extra lavatory, I said, very graciously. However, they wouldn’t do that. Either they were going to take all the lavatories away, or I should have to pay the cost of them as installed against what was allowed for other damage. So, like the Red Queen, I said, ‘Take them all away!’
This meant a lot of trouble and expense for the Admiralty, but they had to take them away. Then Mr Adams got their people to come back again and again to take them away properly, as they always left pipes and bits of things sticking out, and to replace the pantry and larder fittings. It was a long dreary battle.
In due course, the removers came and redistributed the furniture all over the house. It was amazing how little anything had been damaged or spoilt, apart from the destruction by moths of carpets. They had been told to mothproof them, but had neglected to do so through false optimism: ‘It will be all over by Christmas.’ A few books had been damaged by damp–but surprisingly few. Nothing had come through the roof of the drawing-room, and all the furniture had remained in remarkably good condition.
How beautiful Greenway looked in its tangled splendour; but I did wonder if we would ever clear any of the paths again, or even find where they were. The place became more of a wilderness every day, and was regarded as such in the neighbourhood. We were always turning people out of the drive. They would often walk up there in the spring, pulling off great branches of rhododendrons, and carelessly ruining the shrubs. Of course the place was empty for a time after the Admiralty moved out. We were in London, and Max was still at the Air Ministry. There was no caretaker, and everybody came in to help themselves freely to everything–not just picking flowers, but breaking off the branches anyhow.
We were able to settle in at last, and life began again, though not as it had been before. There was the relief that peace had at last come, but no certainty in the future of peace, or indeed of anything. We went gently, thankful to be together, and tentatively trying out life, to see what we would be able to make of it. Business was worrying too. Forms to fill up, contracts to sign, tax complications–a whole welter of stuff one didn’t understand.
It is only now that I fully realise, looking back over my wartime output, that I produced an incredible amount of stuff during those years. I suppose it was because there were no distractions of a social nature; one practically never went out in the evenings.
Besides what I have already mentioned, I had written an extra two books during the first years of the war. This was in anticipation of my being killed in the raids, which seemed to be in the highest degree likely as I was working in London. One was for Rosalind, which I wrote first–a book with Hercule Poirot in it–and the other was for Max–with Miss Marple in it. Those two books, when written, were put in the vaults of a bank, and were made over formally by deed of gift to Rosalind and Max. They were, I gather, heavily insured against destruction.
‘It will cheer you up,’ I explained to them both, ‘when you come back from the funeral, or the Memorial Service, to think that you have got a couple of books, one belonging to each of you!’ They said they would rather have me, and I said: ‘I should hope so, indeed!’ And we all laughed a good deal.
I cannot see why people are always so embarrassed by having to discuss anything to do with death. Dear Edmund Cork, my agent, always used to look most upset when I raised the question of ‘Yes, but supposing I should die?’ But really the question of death is so important nowadays, that one has to discuss it. As far as I could make out from what lawyers and tax people told me about death duties–very little of which I ever understood–my demise was going to be an unparalleled disaster for all my relations, and their only hope was to keep me alive as long as possible!
Seeing the point to which taxation has now risen, I was pleased to think it was no longer really worth-while for me to work so hard: one book a year was ample. If I wrote two books a year I should make hardly more than by writing one, and only give myself a great deal of extra work. Certainly there was no longer the old incentive. If there was something out of the ordinary that I really wanted to do, that would be different.
About then the B.B.C. rang me up and asked me if I would like to do a short radio play for a programme they were putting on for some function to do with Queen Mary. She had expressed the wish to have something of mine, as she liked my books. Could I manage that for them quite soon? I was attracted by the idea. I thought hard, walked up and down, then rang them back and said Yes. An idea came to me that I thought would do, and I wrote the little radio sketch called Three Blind Mice. As far as I know Queen Mary was pleased with it.
That would seem to be the end of that, but shortly afterwards it was suggested I might enlarge it into a short story. The Hollow, which I had adapted for the stage, had been produced by Peter Saunders, and had been successful. I had so enjoyed it myself that I began to think about further essays in play-writing. Why not write a play instead of a book? Much more fun. One book a year would take care of finances, so I could now enjoy myself in an entirely different medium.
The more I thought of Three Blind Mice, the more I felt that it might expand from a radio play lasting twenty minutes to a three-act thriller. It wanted a couple of extra characters, a fuller background and plot, and a slow working up to the climax. I think one of the advantages The Mousetrap, as the stage version of Three Blind Mice was called, has had over other plays is the fact that it was really written from a précis, so that it had to be the bare bones of the skeleton coated with flesh. It was all there in proportion from the first. That made for good construction.
For its title, I must give full thanks to my son-in-law, Anthony Hicks. I have not mentioned Anthony before, but of course he is not really a memory, because he is with us. Indeed I do not know what I would do without him in my life. Not only is he one of the kindest people I know he is a most remarkable and interesting character. He has ideas. He can brighten up any dinner table by suddenly producing a ‘problem’. In next to no time, everyone is arguing furiously.
He once studied Sanskrit and Tibetan, and can also talk knowledge-ably on butterflies, rare shrubs, the law, stamps, birds, Nantgar as china, antiques, atmosphere and climate. If he has a fault, it is that he discusses wine at too great length; but then I am prejudiced because I don’t like the stuff.
When the original title of Three Blind Mice could not be used–there was already a play of that name–we all exhausted ourselves in thinking of titles. Anthony came up with ‘The Mousetrap’. It was adopted. He ought to have shared in the royalties, I think, but then we never dreamed that this particular play was going to make theatrical history.
People are always asking me to what I attribute the success of The Mousetrap. Apart from replying with the obvious answer, ‘Luck!’–because it is luck, ninety per cent. luck, at least, I should say–the only reason I can give is that there is a bit of something in it for almost everybody: people of different age groups and tastes can enjoy seeing it. Young people enjoy it, elderly people enjoy it, Mathew and his Eton friends, and later Mathew and his University friends, went to it and enjoyed it, dons from Oxford enjoy it. But I think, considering it and trying to be neither conceited nor over-modest, that, of its kind–which is to say a light play with both humour and thriller appeal–it is well constructed. The thing unfolds so that you want to know what happens next, and you can’t quite see where the next few minutes will lead you. I think, too, though there is a tendency for all plays that have run a long time to be acted, sooner or later, as if the people in them were caricatures, the people in The Mousetrap could all be real people.
There was a case once where three children were neglected and abused, after they had been placed by the Council on a farm. One child did die, and there had been a feeling that a slightly delinquent boy might grow up full of the desire for revenge. There was another murder case, too, remember, where someone had cherished a childish grudge of some kind for many years and had come back to try to avenge it. That part of the plot was not impossible.
Then the characters themselves: a young woman, bitter against life, determined to live only for the future; the young man who refuses to face life and yearns to be mothered; and the boy who childishly wanted to get his own back on the cruel woman who hurt Jimmy–and on his young school teacher–all those seem to me real, natural, when one watches them.
Richard Attenborough and his enchanting wife Sheila Sim played the two leads in the first production. What a beautiful performance they gave. They loved the play, and believed in it and Richard Attenborough gave a great deal of thought to playing his part. I enjoyed the rehearsals–I enjoyed all of it.
Then finally it was produced. I must say that I had no feeling whatsoever that I had a great success on my hands, or anything remotely resembling that. I thought it went quite well, but I remember–I forget if it was at the first performance or not; I think it was the beginning of the tour at Oxford–when I went with some friends, that I thought sadly it had fallen between two stools. I had put in too many humorous situations; there was too much laughter in it; and that must take away from the thrill. Yes, I was a little depressed about it, I remember.
Peter Saunders, on the other hand, nodded his head gently at me, and said, ‘Don’t worry! My pronouncement is that it will run over a year–fourteen months I am going to give it.’
‘It won’t run that long,’ I said. ‘Eight months perhaps. Yes, I think eight months.’
And now, as I write, it is just coming to the end of its thirteenth year, and has had innumerable casts. The Ambassadors Theatre has had to have entirely new seating–and a new curtain. I now hear it has got to have a new set–the old one is too shabby. And people are still going to it.
I must say it seems to me incredible. Why should a pleasant, enjoyable evening’s play go on for thirteen years. No doubt about it, miracles happen.
And to whom do the profits go? Mainly, of course, they go out in tax, like everything else, but apart from that who is the gainer? I have given many of my books and stories to other people. The serial rights in one short story, Sanctuary, were given to the Westminister Abbey Appeal Fund, and other stories have been given to one or other among my friends.
The fact that you can sit down and write something, and that then it passes direct from you to someone else, is a much happier and more natural feeling than handing out cheques or things of that kind. You may say it is all the same in the end, but it is not the same. One of my books belongs to my husband’s nephews; though that was published many years ago they are still doing nicely out of it. I gave my share in the film rights of Witness for the Prosecution to Rosalind.
The play, The Mousetrap, was given to my grandson. Mathew, of course, was always the most lucky member of the family, and it would be Mathew’s gift that turned out the big money winner.
One thing that gave me particular pleasure was writing a story–a long-short I think they call it: something between a book and a short story–the proceeds of which went to put a stained glass window in my local church at Churston Ferrers. It is a beautiful little church and the plain glass east window always gaped at me like a gap in teeth. I looked at it every Sunday and used to think how lovely it would look in pale colours. I knew nothing about stained glass, and I had a most difficult time visiting studios and getting different sketches made by stained glass artists. It was narrowed down in the end to a glass artist called Patterson, who lived in Bideford and who sent me a design for a window that I really admired very much–particularly his colours, which were not the ordinary red and blue but predominantly mauve and pale green, my favourite ones. I wanted the central figure to be the Good Shepherd. I had a little difficulty over this with the Diocese of Exeter, and, I may say, with Mr Patterson; both insisting that the central pattern of an east window had to be the Crucifixion. However, the Diocese, on making some research into the matter, agreed that I could have Jesus as the Good Shepherd, since it was a pastoral parish. I wanted this to be a happy window which children could look at with pleasure. So in the centre is the Good Shepherd with His lamb, and the other panels are the manger and the Virgin with the Child, the angels appearing to the shepherds in the field, the fishermen in their boat with their nets, and the Figure walking on the sea. They are all the simpler scenes of the Gospel story, and I love it and enjoy looking at it on Sundays. Mr Patterson has made a fine window. It will, I think, stand the test of the centuries because it is simple. I am both proud and humble that I have been permitted to offer it with the proceeds of my work.
II
One night at the theatre stands out in my memory especially; the first night of Witness for the Prosecution. I can safely say that that was the only first night I have enjoyed.
First nights are usually misery, hardly to be borne. One has only two reasons for going to them. One is–a not ignoble motive–that the poor actors have got to go through with it, and if it goes badly it is unfair that the author should not be there to share their torture. I learnt about some of these agonies on the first night of Alibi. The script calls for the butler and the doctor to beat on a locked study door, and then, in growing alarm, to force it open. On the first night the study door did not wait to be forced–it opened obligingly before anyone had put a fist on it, displaying the corpse just arranging himself in a final attitude. This made me nervous ever afterwards of locked doors, lights that do not go out when the whole point is that they should go out, and lights that do not go on when the whole point is that they should go on. These are the real agonies of the theatre.
The other reason for going to first nights is, of course, curiosity. You know you will hate it; that you will be miserable; that you will notice all the things that go wrong, all the lines that are muffed, all the fluffs and the gaps and the drying up. But you go because of that ‘elephant’s child’ insatiable curiosity–you have to know for yourself Nobody else’s account is going to be any good. So there you are, shivering, feeling cold and hot alternately, hoping to heaven that nobody will notice you where you are hiding yourself in the higher ranks of the Circle.
The first night of Witness for the Prosecution was not misery. It was one of my plays that I liked best myself. I was as nearly satisfied with that play as I have been with any. I didn’t want to write it; I was terrified of writing it. I was forced into it by Peter Saunders, who has wonderful powers of persuasion. Gentle bullying, subtle cajoling. ‘Of course you can do it.’
‘I don’t know a thing about legal procedure. I should make a fool of myself.’
‘That’s quite easy. You can read it up, and we’ll have a barrister on hand to clear up anomalies and make it go right.’
‘I couldn’t write a court scene.’
‘Yes, you could–you’ve seen court scenes played. You can read up trials.’
‘Oh I don’t know…I don’t think I could.‘
Peter Saunders continued to say that of course I could, and that I must begin because he wanted the play quickly. So, hypnotised and always amenable to the power of suggestion, I read quantities of the Famous Trials series; I asked questions of solicitors as well as barristers; and finally I got interested, and suddenly felt I was enjoying myself–that wonderful moment in writing which does not usually last long but which carries one on with a terrific verve as a large wave carries you to shore. ‘This is lovely–I am doing it–it’s working–now, where shall we get to next?’ There is that priceless moment of seeing the thing–not on the stage but in your mind’s eye. There it all is, the real thing, in a real court–not the Old Bailey because I hadn’t been there yet–but a real court sketchily etched in the background of my mind. I saw the nervous, desperate young man in the dock, and the enigmatic woman who came into the witness box to give evidence not for her lover but for the Crown. It is one of the quickest pieces of writing that I have done–I think it only took me two or three weeks after my preparatory reading.
Naturally it had to have some changes in the procedure, and I had also to fight desperately for my chosen end to the play. Nobody liked it, nobody wanted it, everyone said it would spoil the whole thing. Everyone said: ‘You can’t get away with that,’ and wanted a different end–preferably one used in the original short story I had written years ago. But a short story is not a play. The short story had no court scene in it, no trial for murder. It was a mere sketch of an accused person and an enigmatic witness. I stuck out over the end. I don’t often stick out for things, I don’t always have sufficient conviction, but I had here. I wanted that end. I wanted it so much that I wouldn’t agree to have the play put on without it.
I got my end, and it was successful. Some people said it was a double cross, or dragged in, but I knew it wasn’t; it was logical. It was what could have happened, what might have happened, and in my view probably would have happened–possibly with a little less violence, but the psychology would have been right, and the one little fact that lay beneath it had been implicit all through the play.
A barrister and his managing clerk duly gave advice and came to the rehearsals of the play on two occasions. The severest criticism came from the managing clerk. He said, ‘Well, it’s all wrong, to my mind, because, you see, a trial like this would take three or four days at least. You can’t squeeze it into an hour and a half or two hours.’ He couldn’t, of course, have been more right, but we had to explain that all court scenes in plays had to be given the benefit of theatrical licence, and three days had to be condensed into a period counted in hours not in days. A dropped curtain here and there helped, but in Witness for the Prosecution the continutiy kept in the court scene, I think, was valuable.
Anyway, I enjoyed that evening when the play was first produced. I suppose I went to it with my usual trepidation, but once the curtain rose my pleasure began. Of all the stage pieces I have had produced, this came closest in casting to my own mental picture: Derek Bloomfield as the young accused; the legal characters whom I had never really visualised clearly, since I knew little of the law, but who suddenly came alive; and Patricia Jessel, who had the hardest part of all, and on whom the success of the play most certainly depended. I could not have found a more perfect actress. The part was a difficult one, especially in the first act, where the lines cannot help. They are hesitant, reserved, and the whole force of the acting has to be in the eyes, the reticence, the feeling of something malign held back. She suggested this perfectly–a taut, enigmatic personality. I still think her acting of the part of Romaine Helder was one of the best performances I have seen on the stage.
So I was happy, radiantly happy, and made even more so by the applause of the audience. I slipped away as usual after the curtain came down on my ending and out into Long Acre. In a few moments, while I was looking for the waiting car, I was surrounded by crowds of friendly people, quite ordinary members of the audience, who recognised me, patted me on the back, and encouraged me–‘Best you’ve written, dearie!’ ‘First class–thumbs up, I’d say!’ ‘V-signs for this one!’ and ‘Loved every minute of it!’ Autograph books were produced and I signed cheerfully and happily. My self-consciousness and nervousness, just for once, were not with me. Yes, it was a memorable evening. I am proud of it still. And every now and then I dig into the memory chest, bring it out, take a look at it, and say ‘That was the night, that was!’
Another occasion I remember with great pride, but I must admit with suffering all the same, is the tenth anniversary of The Mousetrap. There was a party for it–there had to be a party for it, and what is more I had to go to the party. I did not mind going to small theatrical parties just for the cast, or something of that kind; one was among friends then, and, although nervous, I could get through it. But this was a grand, a super-party at the Savoy. It had everything that is most awful about parties: masses of people, television, lights, photographers, reporters, speeches, this, that and the other–nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was. Still, I saw that it had to be got through. I would have not exactly to make a speech, but to say a few words–a thing I had never done before. I cannot make speeches, I never make speeches, and I won’t make speeches, and it is a very good thing that I don’t make speeches because I should be so bad at them.
I knew any speech I made that night would be bad. I tried to think of something to say, and then gave it up, because thinking of it would make it worse. Much better not to think of anything at all, and then when the awful moment came I should just have to say something–it wouldn’t much matter what, and it couldn’t be worse than a speech I had thought out beforehand and stammered over.
I started the party in an inauspicious manner. Peter Saunders had asked me to get to the Savoy about half an hour before the scheduled time. (This, I found, when I got there, was for an ordeal of photography. A good thing to get it over, perhaps, but something I had not quite realised was going to happen on such a large scale.) I did as I was told, and arrived, bravely alone, at the Savoy. But when I tried to enter the private room reserved for the party, I was turned back. ‘No admission yet, Madam. Another twenty minutes before anyone is allowed to go in.’ I retreated. Why I couldn’t say outright, ‘I am Mrs Christie and I have been told to go in,’ I don’t know. It was because of my miserable, horrible inevitable shyness.
It is particularly silly because ordinary social occasions do not make me shy. I do not enjoy big parties, but I can go to them, and whatever I feel is not really shyness. I suppose, actually, the feeling is–I don’t know whether every author feels it, but I think quite a lot do–that I am pretending to be something I am not, because, even nowadays, I do not quite feel as though I am an author. I still have that overlag of feeling that I am pretending to be an author. Perhaps I am a little like my grandson, young Mathew, at two years old, coming down the stairs and reassuring himself by saying: ‘This is Mathew coming downstairs!’ And so I got to the Savoy and said to myself: ‘This is Agatha pretending to be a successful author, going to her own large party, having to look as though she is someone, having to make a speech that she can’t make, having to be something that she’s no good at.’
Anyway, like a coward, I accepted the rebuff, turned tail and wandered miserably round the corridors of the Savoy, trying to get up my courage to go back and say–in effect, like Margot Asquith–‘I’m Me!’ I was, fortunately, rescued by dear Verity Hudson, Peter Saunders’ general manager. She laughed–she couldn’t help laughing–and Peter Saunders laughed a great deal. Anyway, I was brought in, subjected to cutting tapes, kissing actresses, grinning from ear to ear, simpering, and having to suffer the insult to my vanity that occurs when I press my cheek against that of some young and good-looking actress and know that we shall appear in the news the next day–she looking beautiful and confident in her role, and I looking frankly awful. Ah well, good for one’s vanity, I suppose!
All passed off well, though not as well as it would have done if the queen of the party had had some talent as an actress and could give a good performance. Still I made my ‘speech’ without disaster. It was only a few words, but people were kind about it: everybody told me it was all right. I couldn’t go as far as believing them, but I think it served sufficiently well. People were sorry for my inexperience, realised I was trying to do my best, and felt kindly towards my effort. My daughter, I may say, did not agree with this. She said, ‘You ought to have taken more trouble, Mother, and prepared something properly beforehand.’ But she is she, and I am I, and preparing something properly beforehand often leads in my case to much greater disaster than trusting to the spur of the moment, when at any rate chivalry is aroused.
‘You made theatrical history tonight,’ said Peter Saunders, doing his best to encourage me. I suppose that is true, in a way.
III
We were staying some years ago at the Embassy in Vienna, when Sir James and Lady Bowker were there and Elsa Bowker took me seriously to task when reporters had come for an interview.
‘But, Agatha!’ she cried in her delightful foreign voice, ‘I do not understand you! If it were me I should rejoice, I should be proud. I should say yes! come, come, and sit down! It is wonderful what I have done, I know it. I am the best detective story writer in the world. Yes, I am proud of the fact. Yes, yes, of course I will tell you. But I am delighted. Ah yes, I am very clever indeed. If I were you I should feel clever, I should feel so clever that I could not stop talking about it all the time.’
I laughed like anything, and said, ‘I wish to goodness, Elsa, you and I could change into each other’s skins for the next half-hour. You would do the interview so beautifully, and they would love you for it. But I just am not qualified at all to do things properly if I have to do them in public.’
On the whole I have had sense enough not to do things in public, except when it has been absolutely necessary, or would hurt people’s feelings badly if I didn’t. When you don’t do a thing well it is so much more sensible not to attempt it, and I don’t really see any reason why writers should–it’s not part of their stock-in-trade. There are many careers where personalities and public relations matter–for instance if you are an actor, or a public figure. An author’s business is simply to write. Writers are diffident creatures–they need encouragement.
The third play that I was to have running in London (all at the same time) was Spider’s Web. This was specially written for Margaret Lockwood. Peter Saunders asked me to meet her and talk about it. She said that she liked the idea of my writing a play for her, and I asked her exactly what kind of play she wanted. She said at once that she didn’t want to continue being sinister and melodramatic, that she had done a good many films lately in which she had been the ‘wicked lady’. She wanted to play comedy. I think she was right, because she has an enormous flair for comedy, as well as being able to be dramatic. She is a very good actress, and has that perfect timing which enables her to give lines their true weight.
I enjoyed myself writing the part of Clarissa in Spider’s Web. There was a little indecision at first as to the title; we hesitated between ‘Clarissa Finds a Body’ and ‘Spider’s Web’, but in the end ‘Spider’s Web’ got it. It ran for over two years, and I was very pleased with it. When Margaret Lockwood proceeded to lead the Police-Inspector up the garden path she was enchanting.
Later I was to write a play called The Unexpected Guest, and another which, though not a success with the public, satisfied me completely. It was put on under the title of Verdict–a bad title. I had called it No
Fields of Amaranth, taken from the words of Walter Landor’s: ‘There are no flowers of amaranth on this side of the grave’. I still think it is the best play I have written, with the exception of Witness for the Prosecution. It failed, I think, because it was not a detective story or a thriller. It was a play that concerned murder, but its real background and point was that an idealist is always dangerous, a possible destroyer of those who love him–and poses the question of how far you can sacrifice, not yourself, but those you love, to what you believe in, even though they do not.
Of my detective books, I think the two that satisfy me best are Crooked House and Ordeal by Innocence. Rather to my surprise, on re-reading them the other day, I find that another one I am really pleased with is The Moving Finger. It is a great test to re-read what one has written some seventeen or eighteen years later. One’s view changes. Some do not stand the test of time, others do.
An Indian girl who was interviewing me once (and asking, I must say, a good many silly questions), included among them, ‘Have you ever written and published a book you consider really bad?’ I replied with indignation that I had not. No book, I said, was exactly as I wanted it to be, and I was never quite satisfied with it, but if I thought a book I had written was really bad I should not publish it.
However, I have come near it, I think, in The Mystery of the Blue Train. Each time I read it again, I think it commonplace, full of cliches, with an uninteresting plot. Many people, I am sorry to say, like it. Authors are always said to be no judge of their own books
How sad it will be when I can’t write any more, though I should not be greedy. After all, to be able to continue writing at the age of seventy-five is very fortunate. One ought to be content and prepared to retire by then. In fact, I played with the idea that perhaps I would retire this year, but I was lured on by the fact that my last book had sold more than any of the previous ones: it seemed rather a foolish moment to stop writing. Perhaps now I had better make a deadline of eighty?
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find–at the age of fifty, say–that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about. You find that you like going to picture exhibitions, concerts and the opera, with the same enthusiasm as when you went at twenty or twenty-five. For a period, your personal life has absorbed all your energies, but now you are free again to look around you. You can enjoy leisure; you can enjoy things. You are still young enough to enjoy going to foreign places, though you can’t perhaps put up with living quite as rough as you used to. It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you. With it, of course, goes the penalty of increasing old age–the discovery that your body is nearly always hurting somewhere: either your back is suffering from lumbago; or you go through a winter with rheumatism in your neck so that it is agony to turn your head; or you have trouble with arthritis in your knees so that you cannot stand long or walk down hills–all these things happen to you, and have to be endured. But one’s thankfulness for the gift of life is, I think, stronger and more vital during those years than it ever has been before. It has some of the reality and intensity of dreams–and I still enjoy dreaming enormously.
IV
By 1948 archaeology was rearing its erudite head once more. Everyone was talking of possible expeditions, and making plans to visit the Middle East. Conditions were now favourable again for digging in Iraq.
Syria had provided the cream of the finds before the war, but now the Iraqi authorities and the Department of Antiquities were offering fair terms. Though any unique objects found would go to the Baghdad Museum, any ‘duplicates’, as they were called, would be divided up and the excavator would get a fair share. So, after a year’s tentative digging on a small scale here and there, people began to resume work in that country. A Chair of Western Asiatic Archaeology had been created after the war, of which Max became Professor at the Institute of Archaeology at London University. He would have time for so many months every year for work in the field.
With enormous pleasure we started off once more, after a lapse of ten years, to resume our work in the Middle East. No Orient Express this time, alas! It was no longer the cheapest way–indeed one could not take a through journey by it now. This time we flew–the beginning of that dull routine, travelling by air. But one could not ignore the time it saved. Still sadder, there were no more journeys across the desert by Nairn; you flew from London to Baghdad and that was that. In those early years one still spent a night here or there on the way, but it was the beginning of what one could see plainly was going to become a schedule of excessive boredom and expense without pleasure.
Anyway, we got to Baghdad, Max and I, together with Robert Hamilton, who had dug with the Campbell-Thompsons and later had been Curator of the Museum in Jerusalem. In due course we went up together, visiting sites in the North of Iraq, between the lesser and the greater Zab, until we arrived at the picturesque mound and town of Erbil. From there we went on towards Mosul, and on the way paid our second visit to Nimrud.
Nimrud was just as lovely a part of the country as I remembered it on our visit long ago. Max examined it with particular zeal this time. Before it had not been even a practical possibility, but now, although he did not say so at this moment, something might be done. Once again we picnicked there. We visited a few other mounds, and then reached Mosul.
The result of this tour was that Max finally came into the open and said firmly that all he wanted to do was to dig Nimrud. ‘It’s a big site, and an historic site–a site that ought to be dug. Nobody has touched it for close on a hundred years, not since Layard, and Layard only touched the fringe of it. He found some beautiful fragments of ivory–there must be heaps more. It is one of the three important cities of Assyria. Assur was the religious capital, Nineveh was the political capital, and Nimrud, or Calah, as its name was then, was the military capital. It ought to be dug. It will mean a lot of men, a lot of money, and it will take several years. It has every chance, if we are lucky, of being one of the great sites, one of the historic digs which will add to the world’s knowledge.’
I asked him if he had now had his fun with pre-historic pottery. He said Yes; so many of the questions had been answered now that he was wholly interested in Nimrud as a historic site to dig.
‘It will rank,’ he said, ‘with Tut-ankh-amun’s Tomb, with Knossos in Crete, and with Ur. For a site like this, too,’ he said, ‘you can ask for money.’
Money was forthcoming; not much to start with, but as our finds grew, it increased. The Metropolitan Museum in New York was one of our biggest contributors; there was money from the Gertrude Bell School of Archaeology in Iraq; and many other contributors: the Ashmolean, the Fitzwilliam, Birmingham. So we began what was to be our work for the next ten years.
This year, this very month, my husband’s book Nimrud and its Remains will be published. It has taken him ten years to write. He has always had the fear that he might not live to complete it. Life is so uncertain, and things like coronary thrombosis, high blood-pressure and all the rest of the modern ills seem to be lying in wait, particularly for men. But all is well. It is his life work: what he has been moving steadily towards ever since 1921. I am proud of him and happy for him. It seems a kind of miracle that both he and I should have succeeded in the work we wanted to do.
Nothing could be further apart than our work. I am a lowbrow and he a highbrow, yet we complement each other, I think, and have both helped each other. Often he has asked me for my judgment on certain points, and whilst I shall always remain an amateur I do know quite a lot about his special branch of archaeology–indeed, many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn’t have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, ‘Don’t you realise that at this moment you know more about pre-historic pottery than almost any woman in England.’
At that moment perhaps I did, though things did not remain like that. I shall never have a professional attitude or remember the exact dates of the Assyrian kings, but I do take an enormous interest in the personal aspects of what archaeology reveals. I like to find a little dog buried under the threshold, inscribed on which are the words: ‘Don’t stop to think, Bite him!’ Such a good motto for a guard-dog; you can see it being written on the clay, and someone laughing. The contract tablets are interesting, throwing light on how and where you sell yourself into slavery, or the conditions under which you adopt a son. You can see Shalmaneser building up his zoo, sending back foreign animals from his campaigns, trying out new plants and trees. Always greedy, I was fascinated when we discovered a stele describing a feast given by the King in which he lists all the things they had to eat. The oddest thing seemed to me, after a hundred sheep, six hundred cows and quantities of that kind, to come down to a mere twenty loaves of bread. Why should it be such a small number? Indeed why have loaves of bread at all?
I have never been a scientific enough digger really to enjoy levels, plans, and all the rest of it, which are discussed with such gusto by the modern school. I am unabashedly devoted to the objects of craftsmanship and art which turn up out of the soil. I daresay the first is more important, but for me there will never be any fascination like the work of human hands: the little pyxis of ivory with musicians and their instruments carved round it; the winged boy; the wonderful head of a woman, ugly, full of energy and personality.
We lived in a portion of the Sheikh’s house in the village between the tell and the Tigris. We had a room downstairs for eating in and stacking things, a kitchen next door to it, and two rooms upstairs–one for Max and myself and a little one over the kitchen for Robert. I had to do the developing in the dining-room in the evenings, so Max and Robert would go upstairs. Every time they walked across the room, bits of mud used to fall off the ceiling and drop into the developing dish. Before starting the next batch, I would go up and say furiously: ‘Do remember that I’m developing underneath you. Every time you move something falls. Can’t you just talk without moving?’
They always used, in the end, to get excited, and rush off to a suit-case to take out a book and consult it, and down would fall the dried mud again.
In the courtyard was a storks’ nest, and the storks used to make a terrific noise mating, with their wings flapping and a noise like the rattling of bones. Storks are highly thought of in most of the Middle East, and everyone treats them with great respect.
When we left at the end of the first season, we got everything settled for building a house of mud-brick actually on the mound. The bricks were made and laid out to be dried, and the roofing was arranged for.
When we came out the following year we were very proud of our house. There was a kitchen; next to it a long mess-room and sitting-room, and next to that a drawing-office and antica-room. We slept in tents. A year or two later we built on to the house: a small office with a desk and a window in front of it through which one could pay the men on pay-day, and on the other, side an epigraphist’s desk. Next to this was the drawing-office and work-room, with trays of things being repaired. Beyond that again was the usual dog-hole in which the wretched photographer had to develop and do loading. Every now and then there was a terrific dust-storm and a wind which came up from nowhere. Immediately we would rush out and hang on to the tents with all our might while all the dust-bin lids blew away. In the end the tents usually came down with a flop, burying someone underneath their folds.
Finally, a year or two later still, I petitioned to be allowed to have a small room added on of my own. This I would pay for myself. So, for £50, I built on a small, square, mud-brick room, and it was there that I began writing this book. It had a window, a table, an upright chair, and the collapsed remains of a former ‘Minty’ chair, so decrepit it was difficult to sit on, but still quite comfortable. On the wall I had hung two pictures by young Iraqi artists. One was of a sad-looking cow by a tree; the other a kaleidoscope of every colour imaginable, which looked like patchwork at first, but suddenly could be seen to be two donkeys with men leading them through the Suq–a most fascinating picture, I have always thought. I left it behind in the end, because everyone was attached to it, and it was moved into the main sitting-room. But some day I think I want to have it back again.
On the door, Donald Wiseman, one of our epigraphists, fixed the placard in cuneiform, which announces that this is the Beit Agatha–Agatha’s House, and in Agatha’s house I went every day to do a little of my own work. Most of the day, however, I spent on photography or on mending and cleaning ivories.
We had a splendid succession of cooks. One of them was mad. He was a Portuguese Indian. He cooked well, but he became quieter and quieter as the season went on. Finally the kitchen boys came and said they were worried about Joseph–he was becoming very peculiar. One day he was missing. We searched for him, and notified the police, but in the end it was the Sheikh’s people who brought him back. He explained that he had had a command from the Lord and had to obey, but he had now been told that he must come back and ascertain the Lord’s wishes. There seemed to be some slight confusion in his mind between the Almighty and Max. He strode round the house, fell on his knees before Max, who was expounding something to some workmen, and kissed the bottom of his trousers, much to Max’s embarrassment.
‘Get up, Joseph,’ said Max.
‘I must do what you command me, Lord. Tell me where to go and I will go there. Send me to Basra and I will go to Basra. Tell me to visit Baghdad and I will visit Baghdad; to go to the snows of the north and I will go to the snows of the north.’
‘I tell you,’ said Max, accepting the role of the Almighty. ‘I tell you to go forthwith to the kitchen, to cook us food for our needs.’
‘I go, Lord,’ said Joseph, who then kissed the turn-up of Max’s trousers once more and left for the kitchen. Unfortunately the wires seemed crossed, for other commands kept coming to Joseph and he used to stray away. In the end we had to send him back to Baghdad. His money was sewn up in his pocket and a wire was dispatched to his relations.
Thereupon our second house-boy, Daniel, said he had a little knowledge of cooking and would carry on for the last three weeks of the season. We had permanent indigestion as a result. He fed us entirely on what he called ‘Scotch eggs’ excessively indigestible, and cooked in most peculiar fat. Daniel disgraced himself before leaving. He had a row with our driver, who then split on him and informed us that he had already salted away in his luggage twenty-four tins of sardines and sundry other delicacies. The riot act was read, Daniel was told that he was disgraced both as a Christian and a servant, that he had lowered the Christian in Arab eyes, and that he would no more be engaged by us. He was the worst servant we ever had.
To Harry Saggs, one of the epigraphists, Daniel went, saying ‘You are the only good man on this dig; you read your Bible–I have seen you. Therefore since you are a good man, you will give me your best pair of trousers.’
‘Indeed,’ said Harry Saggs, ‘I shall do nothing of the sort.’
‘You will be a Christian if you give me your best trousers.’
‘Not my best trousers, nor my worst trousers,’ said Harry Saggs. ‘I need both my pairs of trousers.’ Daniel retired to try to cadge something elsewhere. He was extremely lazy, and always managed to clean the shoes after dark so that no one would see that he was not really cleaning them at all but just sitting and humming to himself, smoking.
Our best house-boy was Michael, who had been in service with the British Consulate in Mosul. He looked like an El Greco, with a long, melancholy face and enormous eyes. He was always having great trouble with his wife. Occasionally she tried to kill him with a knife. In the end the doctor persuaded him to take her to Baghdad.
‘He has written to me,’ said Michael, appearing one day, ‘and he says it is only a matter of money. If I will give him £200 he will try to cure her.’
Max urged him to take her to the main hospital to which he had already given him a chit, and not to be victimised by quacks.
‘No,’ said Michael, ‘this is a very grand man, he lives in a grand street in a grand house. He must be the best.’
Life at Nimrud for the first three or four years was relatively simple. Bad weather often separated us from the so-called road, which, kept a lot of visitors away. Then one year, owing to our growing importance, a kind of track was made to link us to the main road, and the actual road to Mosul itself was tarmacked for a good length of its way.
This was very unfortunate. For the last three years we could have employed one person to do nothing but show people round, do the courtesies, offer drinks of tea or coffee, and so on. Whole charabancs of school-children came out. This was one of the worst headaches, because there were large excavations everywhere and the crumbling tops of these were unsafe unless you knew exactly where you were walking. We begged the school-teachers to keep the children away from the actual excavations, but they, of course, adopted the usual attitude of ‘Inshallah, all will be well.’ In time a great many babies got brought out by their parents.
‘This place,’ Robert Hamilton said in a dissatisfied tone as he looked round the drawing-office, which was filled up with three carry-cots containing squalling infants, ‘this place is nothing but a creche!’ he sighed. ‘I shall go out and measure up those levels.’
We all screamed at Robert in protest. ‘Now then, Robert, you are a father of five. You are the right person to be in charge of the creche. You can’t leave these young bachelors to look after babies!’
Robert looked coldly at us and departed.
They were good days. Every year had its fun, though in a sense, every year life became more complicated, more sophisticated, more urban.
As for the mound itself, it lost its early beauty, owing to all the great dumps. Gone was that innocent simplicity, with the stone heads poking up out of the green grass, studded with red ranunculus. The flocks of bee-eaters–lovely little birds of gold, green and orange, twittering and fluttering over the mound–still came every spring, and a little later the rollers, bigger birds, also blue and orange, which had a curious way of falling suddenly and clumsily from the sky–hence their name. In the legend, they had been punished by Ishtar by being bitten through the wing because they had insulted her in some way.
Now Nimrud sleeps.
We have scarred it with our bull-dozers. Its yawning pits have been filled in with raw earth. One day its wounds will have healed, and it will bloom once more with early spring flowers.
Here was once Calah, that great City. Then Calah slept…
Here came Layard to disturb its peace. And again Calah-Nimrud slept…
Here came Max Mallowan and his wife. Now again Calah sleeps…Who shall disturb it next?
We do not know.
I have not yet mentioned our house in Baghdad. We had an old Turkish house on the West bank of the Tigris. It was thought a very curious taste on our part to be so fond of it, and not to want one of the modern boxes, but our Turkish house was cool and delightful, with its courtyard and the palm-trees coming up to the balcony rail. Behind us were irrigated palm-gardens, and a tiny squatter’s house, made of tutti (petrol tins). Children played there happily. The women came in and out and went down to the river to wash their pots and pans. The rich and the poor live cheek by jowl in Baghdad.
How enormously it has grown since I first saw it. Most of the modern architecture is very ugly, wholly unsuitable for the climate. It is copied from modern magazines–French, German, Italian. You no longer go down into a cool sirdab in the heat of the day; the windows are not small windows in the top of the walls, keeping you cool from the sunlight. Possibly their plumbing is better now–it could hardly be worse–but I doubt it. Modern plumbing looks all right, has the proper lilac or orchid lavatory basins and fittings, but the sewerage has nowhere much to go. It has to discharge itself into the Tigris in the old way, and the amount of water for flushing seems, as always, woefully inadequate. There is something peculiarly irritating about handsome modern bathroom and lavatory fixtures which do not function owing to the lack of proper disposal and an ample water intake.
I must mention the first visit we paid to Arpachiyah after an interval of fifteen years. We were recognised at once. The whole village came out. There were cries, shouts, greetings, welcome. ‘You remember me, Hawajah,’ said one man. ‘I was basket-boy when you left. Now I am twenty-four, I have a wife, I have big son, grown-up son–I show you.’
They were astonished that Max could not remember every face and every name. They recalled the famous race that had passed into history. We were always meeting our friends of fifteen years before.
One day as I drove through Mosul in the lorry, the policeman directing traffic suddenly held it all up with his baton, and yelling out, ‘Mama! Mama!’ advanced upon the lorry, seizing me by the hand, and shaking it wildly.
‘What joy to see you, Mama! I am Ali! I am Ali the pot-boy–you remember me? Yes? Now I am policeman!’
And so, every time I drove into Mosul, there was Ali, and the moment he recognised us, all the traffic in the street was held up, we exchanged greetings, and then our lorry proceeded with full priority. How good it is to have these friends. Warm-hearted, simple, full of enjoyment of life, and so well able to laugh at everything. Arabs are great ones for laughing, great ones for hospitality too. Whenever you happen to pass through a village where one of your workmen lives, he rushes out and insists you should come in and drink sour milk with him. Some of the town effendis in purple suits are tiresome, but the men of the land are good fellows and splendid friends.
How much I have loved that part of the world.
I love it still and always shall.
PART XI. autumn