Scruffy - A Diversion (11 page)

“But the Army, Felicity,” Lady French said. “It’s the one branch of Service with which—I mean today, darling, one simply doesn’t. I suppose there was a time once when it was respectable, but it hasn’t been for ever so long. Some of us were discussing—I mean I happened to mention the young man’s name—I’m afraid he’s a nobody.”

Something that came into Felicity’s face, an expression, a flash of fire in the otherwise gentle eyes suddenly threw Lady French into confusion and she said, “I don’t mean really a nobody, my dear. Of course I’m sure they’re quite nice people, it’s just that they’ve always been only Army and never anything better than a Colonel, I gather. Your father was only a Lieutenant when I married him, but it was one of the best naval families. He was bound to succeed. The Baileys don’t seem to have been very ambitious. Commander Whitcombe’s wife knew a story about one of them who resigned his commission, went into business and made money. Can you imagine such a thing?”

Felicity reflected carefully before she replied, “Well oddly enough I think I can. They seem to be able to concentrate.”

Lady French took a deep breath, as one does before plunging into a cold bath, and then plunged. “Felicity, my dear,” she said, “I don’t like to say this, but are you aware that this Captain Bailey is rather loathed on the Rock—in the Army, I mean, amongst his own creatures? He’s supposed to have some kind of obsession with apes. People simply can’t stand him. He doesn’t appear to have a single, solitary friend.”

Felicity considered this revelation too without rancour, and murmured, “Perhaps that’s why he appeals to me. Mother instinct! And I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be a very famous man some day.” She turned off the prophecy and discussion with, “I shall wear my pink tonight. Don’t worry, Mummy, I shan’t keep you waiting.” She got up, went over, took her mother’s face between her hands and kissed one cheek with extraordinary tenderness, and then went out.

Dinner that night at the Brigadier’s was identical with the evening the Brigadier and his wife had dined at the Mount with the Admiral, except for the difference in quarters, the Brigadier occupying a villa on the heights on the way to Europa Point. The same people were there, the same food was served, and Lady French was in the process of dissecting an identical slice of fish enveloped in gluey white sauce, when she heard her husband say, “What’s all this about one of your apes to be named after Princess Elizabeth, Brigadier? Read about it in the papers. One of your chaps supposed to have written to the King about it. Bit cheeky, what?”

“Eh?” said the Brigadier. “What’s that? You mean Captain Bailey? Not at all. Only carrying out my instructions. Thought it was about time we had a bit of favourable publicity and attention here on the Rock. Clever chap, that Bailey. Just the right touch. ‘Put it in your own words,’ I said to him. By Jove, the story’s gone out all over the world. Impressive.”

Lady French felt her head drawn up as though by a magnet. She did not wish at this moment to look at her daughter, but she was unable to control the turn of her head upon her neck. Felicity was again sitting next to Staff Captain Quennel, to whom she was still paying no attention. At that moment she was glowing like a hundred-watt incandescent bulb, and in addition managing to look like a cat who has swallowed a whole pet shop supply of canaries.

Lady French once more desisted from the fish course.

“Hmm—yes, I see,” said the Admiral, somewhat disappointed that his dig at the Brigadier had not turned out as well as expected. He had thought to set him off again. He then asked the question which was on all lips, and which was bound to come up during the evening: “Do you think there’s going to be a war, Brigadier?”

And in this he was also disappointed, for the Commander of the Artillery Brigade this time did not fuff and huff and pontificate, but suddenly looked a little grey, worried and tired as he replied with the earnestness of a man who has been thinking about little else, “Yes, I am afraid there will be. And very soon, too soon for us.”

7
Wherefore Art Thou Juliette

A
nd then the war was no longer a matter of conjecture, but one of fact.

It was a strange one at the beginning, particularly for Gibraltar. It was far off. It was phoney. And outside of a few minor restrictions it appeared to have little effect upon the lives of those dwelling on the Rock. Horse-racing went on, the theatre, concerts and cinema and the Saturday-night dances at the Rock Hotel; the Garden Club continued to exhibit and make plans, as did the amateur theatrical group. After a preliminary black-out trial lights blazed; transatlantic liners came and went and ten thousand Spanish workmen continued daily to cross the line from La Linea and enter the fortress to go to their jobs in and about the dockyards and military installations, turning any idea of security into a vast joke.

This was the surface of Gibraltar. Beneath this surface there was an anxiety and a ceaseless coming and going of men in command growing haggard over the essential dangers of a position which rested upon a number of ifs. In London office lights were burning late at night considering these same potentialities, which included the possible entry of Mussolini into the war as an Axis partner and the even more appalling prospect that Franco would sell out to Hitler and the Germans and Spaniards would attack Gibraltar from the land side.

For the declaration of war simply crystallized what the Army and Navy had known for several years, but in view of the general complacency at Whitehall had not been able to do much about—namely that the lock of the door of the Mediterranean, which was Gibraltar, the door which if opened would lead to Malta, Egypt, India and possibly the total collapse of the British Empire, was rusty and one firm concerted blow might shatter it.

The fact of the war had turned Gibraltar, taken for granted for years as an impregnable key fortress, into a liability as the planners and strategists recognized that in terms of modern warfare it had become almost obsolete and practically unusable as a Naval base if the Spaniards entered the war against Great Britain.

Overnight more subtle abstractions such as diplomacy, psychology and morale became paramount and took on greater importance than guns.

One of those most deeply concerned with such problems and charged with responsibility for them far above his rank was a certain Major William S. Clyde, one of those queer characters thrown up by the war who inhabited the warrens of M.I.5, were not much seen and not much heard, but had a wide acquaintance in high places and wielded an astonishing amount of influence.

If the military-intelligence boffins prided themselves upon selecting officers for their service who didn’t look like agents, spies, investigators or undercover men, they had outdone themselves in the case of Major William (S for Slinker, to his friends) Clyde. Or rather nature had aided them by supplying them with a man and a character who not only didn’t look like an agent, but also managed not to look like an officer. What he did resemble was a kind of fearfully busy, abstracted stork flapping about on long, stilt-like legs. He was further handicapped by refusing to take himself or the Secret Service seriously, and affecting a conspiratorial air which irritated his superiors of the Regular Army, but amused those more highly placed.

He was six foot four and a half inches tall and excessively thin, and hence shambled about with a slight stoop in order to communicate with medium-sized mortals without seeming constantly to be bending down to them. His hair was darkly Celtic but he had a reddish moustache of which he was very proud and wore droopingly. For the rest his features were aquiline and his eyes quite wild.

The Master of Christchurch, who was becoming somewhat annoyed at the manner in which the Army, the Navy and the Air Force were raiding his staff, had recommended Clyde to Intelligence almost in a vengeful mood when he had been asked for another bright young Don, this time one with a background of psychological training. He would hate to lose Clyde, but it would serve the Army right, and, the Master reflected, might even do the country some good. His conscience did dictate, however, when he spoke on the telephone to the departmental head who had made the request that he say, “Look here, I think you ought to know. This is a bright boy, but he is also quite mad. All of those chaps who go in seriously for that subject are a little dotty.”

The departmental head had laughed bitterly and said, “He ought to fit beautifully into my squirrel cage then,” and thanked the Master.

It soon developed that Clyde was not only bright and as mad as the Master of the House had warned, but quite extraordinary as well, and Army Intelligence found itself embarrassed by having on its hands—an intelligence. It was coupled however with charm, persuasiveness and limitless cheek.

By request he remained a Major. In fact he had acquired a phantom rank of much higher grade, and around his branch one heard such phrases as, “What does Clyde think about this—? Why don’t you have a word with Clyde—? Has Clyde agreed to this—?” His job was not even exactly defined. In America he would have been known as a trouble-shooter, and he was moved about where his type of sardonic intelligence and above all his apparent grasp of what went on in the mind of the other fellow appeared most needed.

And since the world over it is the custom to hand the new boy the impossible job that no one else has been able to solve, Major Clyde had found himself with Gibraltar dumped into his lap. And a preliminary visit to that bastion and a briefing by Major McPherson, the local security officer, had made it quite plain as to why he had been passed this hot potato.

The Naval base was not only indefensible physically without the moving thither of a vast number of guns and men which were not available, but from the security point of view was nothing but a goldfish bowl. Here was one of the most important key fortresses of the Empire with its built-in fifth column of Spanish workmen without whose labour the dockyard and installations could not exist.

This made the task of keeping out spies practically insuperable. Sensitive departments might button themselves up against agents and saboteurs, but the community of Gibraltar as a whole was exposed to every kind of infiltration.

Clyde had flown back to London with the suggestion which at first had raised the hair upon the heads of his superiors, but later had been adopted not only because it was the thing to do but because it appeared that the new boy had actually come up with a solution. Since Gibraltar was not only a goldfish bowl, but an open book, it was the Major’s idea that its pages should at all times reflect the best of all possible British worlds. As there was no way to stop visits from German and Spanish spies, let them see and hear that the British were unworried, unruffled and unhampered.

Hence Gibraltar all during the war would be brightly illuminated and all luxury items such as white flour for bread, silks, tobacco, sugar, etc., which the Spanish workmen in peacetime were accustomed to smuggle across the line beneath their shirts, should be available, fulfilling the dual purpose of diddling the enemy and bolstering up the inhabitants.

It was Clyde who had recognized from the very beginning and maintained through the darkest days that the problem of Gibraltar was purely one of morale. If the Spaniards were to be kept out of the war the window of Gibraltar through which they looked must show them constantly that it would be unprofitable. Should Franco once reach the conclusion that the native Gibraltarians as well as the British had got the wind up, the fat might well be in the fire. Major Clyde concerned himself with the window-dressing. Thus, in the early days of the war Gibraltar was a kind of paradisical oasis.

But if life on the Rock had remained basically unchanged, the war had radically altered the plans of Miss Felicity French and turned them from immediate wedding bells, chintzes and cushions at Harrods to serious reflections as to how best to arrange the future intelligently and satisfactorily. Felicity was not the daughter of an Admiral for nothing. She was likewise far-sighted.

In the ordinary way of affairs, had there not been a war, propinquity and Felicity would have continued to soften up Captain Bailey as well as the opposition of her parents; there would have been a Service wedding with all the trimmings, after which she would have settled down happily enough with Tim in married officers’ quarters and followed him about through station after station of his military career. Now other considerations intruded, such as, for instance, serving her country.

At the same time being a woman and having thus properly put first things first she saw no reason why they could not be combined with her other designs. She remembered what Tim had told her about the existence of an evacuation plan of women and children, from Gibraltar. If such a plan were put into effect the only women who could remain upon the Rock would be those in service. There was no reason why with her intelligence and connections she should not be one of these. At the same time if she were already married she would never be accepted by the W.R.N.S. In the meantime Tim had not yet mentioned the subject. The apes and his emergency plans for them were taking up a good deal of his time.

Christmas had come and gone. 1940 had been ushered in and the war was still static with the French manning the Maginot Line and a British expeditionary force sitting on the northern flank near Luxemburg. It was time, Felicity thought, to put her plan into action.

They were working upon a young female ape at the small ape clinic set up in St. Michael’s hut. Her name was Juliette, she was nine months old and had suffered a deep gash from a bite on her buttocks inflicted, of course, by Scruffy.

Felicity subscribed to the theory that a man is more likely to succumb to a female who makes herself a partner in his games and hobbies. If Tim’s concern and passion was apes, then so was hers. She had made herself almost indispensable to him, accompanying him on his rounds of the apes’ village and helping him during the minor emergencies and surgeries that arose, and soon had found herself happily accepted as his second pair of hands.