Scruffy - A Diversion (13 page)

“Your time is up, Captain Bailey,” the Brigadier repeated, “but I am going to allow myself the pleasure of extending it for the privilege of a little chat with you. Major Quennel tells me that your crew has topped the list again in firing practice, and I am pleased to hear this. The time may come when all our lives may depend upon such accuracy, and if you continue to be a conscientious officer and keep your men up to this mark you have set, you will go far in this Service. On the other hand if you persist in wasting one minute more of my time upon those apes you will, I’m afraid, find this desirable trend severely reversed.”

Gaskell sat up in his chair, leaned his elbows on the desk, folded his hands and said with amazing calmness, “You asked me for concrete, Captain Bailey,” and here his calmness suddenly abandoned him as the word triggered his own despair. “Concrete!” and he slammed a fist down upon his desk. “Concrete which I have begged for, pleaded for, humiliated myself for! I need concrete for shelters for my soldiers, Captain Bailey, for bomb-proofs for civilians, for dumps, magazines, shops, first-aid dressing stations and hospitals! Can you picture how sorely I need concrete, Captain Bailey? Aircraft, guns, food and ammunition, and steel and everything needed to make this vulnerable sitting duck that we are defensible? And I am getting none.”

For an instant Tim experienced a pang of culpability. Engrossed with his own problem and responsibility he had for one instant been let into a glimpse of greater responsibilities by a man who was desperately trying to live up to them. Yet at the same time something within Tim maintained that each man had his job according to his rank and experience and was required to get on with it. He had not asked to be made O.I.C. Apes. The beasts were there; they had a part in the life and times of the Rock and had to be coped with.

“And as for superstition, Captain Bailey, may I point out that we are no longer living in the Dark Ages. We are commanding men of modern times who have been at least to elementary school, and if they are not aware that this waffle about a legend is childish and idiotic it is time they found out. I gather that you will hardly wish to sit there and tell me that our position here is dependent upon the behaviour of these monkeys or what happens to them.”

There was no room left for reply, for the Brigadier returned once more to that ominous calm which Tim felt was far more difficult than if he had blown his top. “Let me put it this way, Captain Bailey: where in peacetime I might be inclined to condone the zeal of an officer I had appointed O.I.C. Apes and have put up with the fact that for what reason I cannot fathom the best and proudest branch of the Service is saddled with a pack of filthy, thieving, defecating apes, in wartime such an attitude becomes a bloody nuisance, and if I may say so, slightly absurd as well. Or don’t you reckon human lives as more valuable than monkeys?”

Tim stifled the quite ridiculous cry that arose in him. “But, sir, they didn’t ask to be made monkeys, or to be domesticated.” Instead he said nothing.

“So let me suggest,” concluded the Brigadier, “that you continue to carry out your duties in connection with these brutes as best you may under the circumstances, and if you ever again refer to them in my presence, or if you should be so unfortunate as to have them called to my attention again in any way, shape, manner, or form, you will bitterly regret it. That is all, Captain Bailey.”

9
The Great Gunpowder Plot

T
he final stain on Captain Bailey’s copybook, which brought to a swift close his sideline avocation as little father to the anthropoids and came close to unseating him as an officer as well, was provided by none other than Alfonso T. Ramirez. Ramirez’s object had not been to get Captain Bailey sacked but to destroy Scruffy. His motive was not yet the sabotaging of the British position on Gibraltar but revenge pure and simple for unbearable humiliation. The effects, however, of the Great Gunpowder Plot of A. T. Ramirez were far-reaching.

The episode of the purloined hair-piece had been quite the most shaming and mortifying experience that Mr. Ramirez had ever been called upon to endure, but it was nothing to what was to follow and stemmed from that same catastrophe as well as the tolerated friendship which had grown up between him and the Gunner.

The replacement of the toupée had gone off very well and to Mr. Ramirez’s satisfaction. The wig maker in Algeciras had outdone himself in speed and reproduction; the new one looked even better than the original, and payment by the British Government quickly forthcoming.

In fact so pleased was the little Gibraltarian at having got his own back from the British that on the day his scalp had been delivered to him he felt once more himself and had again risked a snub in the Admiral Nelson by offering to buy Gunner Lovejoy a drink. Only this time, and to do justice to the occasion, Lovejoy unbent and accepted and permitted Ramirez to set up a couple of Monkey Juices for him. As the Gunner downed these he made the astonishing and not unpleasant discovery that there was no change in the flavour of this drink, or in the effects it had upon his innards, though they had been paid for by a civilian. And thus the ice was broken and the two men became bar neighbours, on speaking and drinking terms.

But there was more to it than that. Lovejoy had detested Ramirez so thoroughly and for so little genuine cause that in the end guilty feeling led him to lean over backwards to conceal this dislike, and to his horror after a period of practising this concealment he found his feeling had actually turned into a kind of grudging affection. He had insulted the little man, reviled him, turned his back on him, practically spat in his eye, and still found him inclined to be friendly and trying to buy him drinks. In a sense, Ramirez, like the apes, was an outcast too.

And finally there was the guilty knowledge, shared with Captain Bailey, that they had diddled the little man in the matter of Scruffy and his treasure.

However, alcohol, which encourages toleration and companionship, also loosens tongues, and one day the Gunner, standing at the bar which at the close of the working day was filled with Gibraltarians, Service men and Government clerks, was well oiled. Feeling magnanimous towards the ugly little man with the thick-lensed spectacles he elected to tell the tale of the wig, not cruelly but rather as an achievement scored by one who had managed to get a new hair-piece out of the British Government. He told the story of the theft, the chase, the failure to recover and the restitution in which His Majesty’s Government had forked out £13 10s. 8d. and there boys it was, right before their very eyes.

This was bad enough even though well meant, for it brought it all back to Mr. Ramirez, and his small and mean little eyes filled with rage as he suddenly found himself and his toupée the centre of attraction in the bar, for after three or four Monkey Juices the Gunner’s voice was enlarged by a great many decibels.

But the Gunner was not content to let bad enough alone. He was well away now and continued, “Still got it he ’as, ’as old Scruff. Wouldn’t part with it for anything. He loves that hairpiece ’e does, like it was his popsy. Likes to bring it down to town around noon and sit atop the Southport Gate lovin’ it up. A sight to melt the ’ardest heart, that’s what it is. Romero on ’is balcony got nothing on old Scruff. You take a look next time you go by and you’ll see him like as not ’ugging and kissing of it. That’s monkey for you!”

This was quite true. It was now four months after the episode and the hair-piece had worn extraordinarily well, in spite of being dragged around night and day through all weather by the big ape, and being subjected to wear and tear not ordinarily built into a toupée. And it was also true that Scruffy used to select some public place such as the Southport Gates, the Trafalgar Cemetery or the school yard to sit and croon over and cuddle this article, but the people, used to the ways of the apes and their appearances, had never much bothered about what it was the big Macaque had been fondling.

Twenty-four hours, however, after the Gunner’s story in the Admiral Nelson and the tale was all over Gibraltar, in and out of shops and barracks and homes and offices. And now whenever Scruffy appeared with his treasure a small crowd would gather for rude remarks and raucous laughter.

Alfonso T. Ramirez was plunged into such an abyss of humiliation, rage, frustration and shame that it was a wonder his mind was no more turned than it was. It was bad enough to be an unpopular little man, but now added to this he had become the standing joke of the Rock, with Scruffy furnishing fresh reminders practically daily.

The Great Gunpowder Plot and the opportunity to blow the instigator of his troubles into smithereens was born out of an accident of passage. But when it occurred, and Mr. Ramirez was suddenly brought face to face with the means for securing his revenge, he became aware of the depth of his emotions and the fact that nothing short of total and violent destruction of Scruffy would satisfy him for what he had suffered.

The wherewithal to accomplish this faced him one late afternoon in the grimy window of a small shop in Algeciras fronting some corrugated iron sheds devoted to the manufacture and sale of fireworks. The Spaniards were always involved in fiestas, holy days, political and historical celebrations that called for cannon fire, jubilant explosions and rockets in the sky.

It was the custom of Mr. Ramirez, who was the possessor of a small car, to journey to Algeciras once a week for the purpose of visiting a lady with whom he had come to an arrangement which enabled him to spend an afternoon in her company. Because of the kind of person he was or even perhaps due to the Teutonic genes in his blood-stream, Ramirez was furtive about this business, cautious in his approach and somewhat guilt-stricken in his departure.

In order that no one should be able to deduce a pattern he always parked his car several streets away from the lady’s lodgings and approached on foot and then returned by other back streets. And it was during one such devious journey to his vehicle that Ramirez came across the obscure little fireworks factory and was brought to a halt by the sight of the object displayed in the window.

It was a firework, or what the Americans would call a giant salute or cannon-cracker of truly gargantuan and formidable proportions, and consisted of a shiny blue cardboard cylinder some fifteen centimetres in diameter, Ramirez estimated, and probably sixty centimetres more or less in height, from the top of which protruded a piece of saltpetre fuse.

In an instant there leaped into the mind of Mr. Ramirez a picture of Scruffy hugging this object to his breast; there would follow an appalling explosion and when the smoke cleared away one might perhaps find small shreds of hair where the brute had been. There were always reports in the Press about small boys blowing off their thumbs or landing in hospital from clinging too long to celebration fireworks of far smaller calibre than this. Here was a bomb calculated to pulverize his enemy, and yet if by some mischance it were found in Mr. Ramirez’s possession before he had a chance to plant it, it was just a cracker piously hoarded to wake up some saint at the next holy day.

Mr. Ramirez went inside the shop. A bell jangled and the proprietor appeared through a curtained-off partition at the rear. He was a rather untidy-looking Spaniard with a too-large head on a too-thin neck, and he had a tick or tremor which caused his head constantly to nod “yes” upon his neck. Mr. Ramirez had never before encountered a person with such an affliction and fell into the trap of interpreting the nods as affirmations in accordance with his own thoughts and questions.

“That one in the window . . . ” began Mr. Ramirez.

“Ho, ho,” nodded the proprietor, “that one!”

“It is expensive?”

“It is not cheap,” agreed the proprietor. “A thousand pesetas. On the other hand if you are looking for something—”

“Special?” Mr. Ramirez filled in.

The proprietor’s head bobbed in acquiescence, “Something of grandeur and nobility.”

Mr. Ramirez found his own head now nodding likewise almost in the same tempo as that of the proprietor. “Yes, yes.”

“Something of stunning and memorable impact—”

“That’s it,” nodded Ramirez.

“A veritable volcano when activated! If it is your intention both to surprise as well as entertain, to create a stupefying and unforgettable effect—”

They were both nodding away at one another now like two mechanical toys. “Exactly,” said Mr. Ramirez, for he could not have heard a better description of what he had in store for Scruffy.

“Then this is our finest piece! Nine hundred pesetas to you.”

“And throw in a longer fuse?” Ramirez’s plan for the delivery of this bomb was already formulating. He wanted to be sure that when it went off he wouldn’t be there.

The proprietor’s head and intentions were still in agreement. “But of course. As long as you like. With a piece of this magnitude the longer the fuse the greater the suspense. The greater the suspense the more powerful the effect. It will take but a moment to make the change. Shall we say a fuse of twenty minutes? If you desire a shorter period you may cut it yourself.”

It was exactly what Mr. Ramirez had in mind. His own nodding head put the seal on the deal as he reached for his wallet. The proprietor took the huge firework out of the window and retired with it through the curtains. He reappeared within five minutes with a new fuse neatly coiled. He wrapped the firework in brown paper and said, “I congratulate you. You will create a sensation.”

Ramirez tucked the bundle under his arm, looked carefully right and left up and down the street before emerging from the doorway, but there was no one about to witness his exit. He hurried off to his car where he dumped the package innocently enough on to the back seat where it would rest with other purchases he would make in Algeciras.

Nervous though he was he anticipated no difficulties at the British control point on the border. He was well known to the police, Army and customs guards; working in a sensitive part of the Navy Yard his pass and security were A.1. The customs man gave a perfunctory glance at the paper bags in the rear of the car from which protruded the usual fresh fruits such as bananas, oranges, apples, etc., and waved him through. Mr. Ramirez drove swiftly to his home, mounted the stairs, entered and locked the door, closed the shutters and unpacked the dangerous-looking object which would be the means of his regaining his lost self-respect. There only remained the question of the how and the when of the delivery.