Four
IIt says a good deal for the buoyancy of Victoria’s temperament¹ that thepossibility of failing to attain² her objective did not for a moment occur toher. Not for her the lines about ships that pass in the night. It was cer-tainly unfortunate that when she had—well—frankly—fallen for an at-tractive young man, that that young man should prove to be just on theverge of departure to a place distant some three thousand miles. He mightso easily have been going to Aberdeen or Brussels, or even Birmingham.
That it should be Baghdad, thought Victoria, was just her luck! Neverthe-less, difficult though it might be, she intended to get to Baghdad somehowor other. Victoria walked purposefully along Tottenham Court Roadevolving ways and means. Baghdad. What went on in Baghdad? Accordingto Edward: “Culture.” Could she, in some way, play up culture? Unesco?
Unesco was always sending people here, there and everywhere, some-times to the most delectable³ places. But these were usually, Victoria reflec-ted, superior young women with university degrees who had got into theracket early on.
Victoria, deciding that first things came first, finally bent⁴ her steps to atravel agency, and there made her inquiries⁵. There was no difficulty, itseemed, in travelling to Baghdad. You could go by air, by long sea to Bas-rah, by train to Marseilles and by boat to Beirut and across the desert bycar. You could go via Egypt. You could go all the way by train if you weredetermined to do so, but visas were at present difficult and uncertain andwere apt to have actually expired by the time you received them. Baghdadwas in the sterling⁶ area and money therefore presented no difficulties.
Not, that is to say, in the clerk’s meaning of the word. What it all boileddown to was that there was no difficulty whatsoever⁷ in getting to Baghdadso long as you had between sixty and a hundred pounds in cash.
As Victoria had at this moment three pounds ten (less ninepence), an ex-tra twelve shillings, and five pounds in the PO

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