Scruffy - A Diversion (2 page)

There was a moment’s silence from the other end of the telephone, and then Lovejoy said, “Well, you see, the trouble was, sir, the kid wouldn’t let go of it.”

“Oh Lord,” breathed Captain Bailey, “don’t tell me—?”

“Yes, sir, he did. But the medical officer’s fixed the kid up, and he’ll be all right. It wasn’t much of a bite—just caught ’im on the end of the finger. But they’re claiming their nipper will be maimed for life.”

A sudden wave of anger passed over Tim and he shouted into the telephone, “Dammitall, Lovejoy—what the devil were you doing all this time? Didn’t you have any balloons on you?”

“No, sir—sorry. Not a one on me person. You know how it is with the budget, sir.”

“Damn and blast the budget!” Tim shouted. “If you’d come and told me you hadn’t any I’d have bought you some out of my own pocket. We can’t have this sort of thing going on.”

This part of the conversation, which would have sounded utterly lunatic to an outsider, was a reference to the fact that the irritable Harold, or Scruffy, who feared nothing living on earth—not man or beast, not lightning, thunder, hell or high water—was subject to the thrall of but one thing, a child’s toy rubber balloon. When Gunner Lovejoy, in extremes of emergency, produced one of these in red, blue, green or yellow, and blew it up to the point where explosion was threatened, it reduced Scruffy temporarily to a wretched, cowering, quivering, panic-stricken mass of fur. In this state he could be handled, and remained tractable for a period of twenty-four hours before his nerves began to recover and he became his old, unpleasant self again. This was a secret shared between Gunner Lovejoy and Tim Bailey, and was resorted to only in the case of genuine emergencies.

Lovejoy repeated, “Sorry, sir.”

“What started him off after that?” demanded Tim. “I should have thought he’d had a lovely morning. Pleased as punch. Cost the Government over a hundred quid. I’d say he could have retired on that. You say he’s off to town? Why—?”

The Gunner said, “He caught a look at hisself in the wing mirror of one of the cars, sir.”

It was now the Captain’s turn to fall silent for a moment at his end of the telephone. Then, in a more subdued voice he said, “Oh.”

“You know how that sets ’im off, sir,” the Gunner was saying, his voice suddenly smarmy with sharing a confidence. “He hates the sight of hisself. He hates me, he hates you, he hates everybody, but worst of all he seems to hate hisself.”

“Did he break it off?” Tim asked.

“He broke them
all
off,” amended the Gunner. “Six. They were the several properties of Mr. and Mrs.—”

“All right, all right—never mind. You can give me those later. Anyway, thanks for letting me know.”

The Gunner said, “If you should be needing me later, sir, I’ll be—”

“In the Admiral Nelson,” the Captain concluded for him, and then added almost absent-mindedly, “Have one for me too,” and hung up.

He sat there for a moment looking down upon the list of destruction, and knew that with Scruffy on the loose and headed for town, this was just the beginning. Yet somehow there was really no anger in his heart against the animal, and actually the beginning of a smile was fighting its way to the corners of his mouth. He then looked at his own thumbs, one of which bore one, and the other two, whitening cicatrices, mementoes of Harold—Scruffy. The smile did not disappear—in fact it settled there, for the truth was that deep down in his heart of hearts Captain Timothy Bailey had a sneaking affection for the brute; he was so damnably and magnificently consistent, and unregeneratedly naughty.

While this conversation was going on, the subject thereof, the notable Scruffy, largest, oldest, toughest and most disagreeable Barbary ape inhabiting Gibraltar, was making his way down to the town via the remains of that spine of stone and brickwork known as King Charles V Wall. The ruins climbed straight up from below, almost like a ladder, constituting a convenient short cut for the ape population when they decided to pay a visit to the city in search of goodies and entertainment. In this instance, Scruffy was both hungry and bored as well as irritated.

Scruffy was one of the ugliest specimens of
magot
, scientifically known as
macaca silvana simia,
the African tail-less Macaque, or Barbary ape, ever domiciled on the Rock, and likewise one of the largest specimens. He was the size of a full-grown Boxer dog, but twice as strong and ten times as destructive, his for greyish, reddish brown, the hair rather thick and somewhat wavy. His black face was illuminated by a pair of golden-brown eyes brimming with meanness and shining forth malevolently from beneath cavernous brows. Large tufts of hair stood up from his ears. He was pure monkey, and yet he contrived likewise to look like a lot of people one knew, and disliked.

Scruffy’s body was thick-set, his hindquarters heavy, so that at times he resembled a fat Arctic explorer in a fur suit several sizes too large for him. He had a set of murderous canine teeth, a jaw like a steel trap, and was further armed with ten strong nails set into black paws at the end of powerful and muscular arms.

He was grumpy, wary, unfriendly, suspicious, irritable, bad-tempered and vengeful. He was wily as a Red Indian, as treacherous as a snake, and withal brave. He was one four-footed mass of animated vices, unleavened by a single thing that a human might consider a virtue—unless the humans were a pair of odd ones like Gunner John Lovejoy and Captain Timothy Bailey. Each loved and admired Scruffy in his own way, and for his own reasons; the former because he recognized the monkey in rebellion against a world in which he had not asked to be put, and because he felt, without knowing it, the tragedy of the basic loneliness of the animal.

Scruffy’s first port of call was at a back street behind Prince Edward Road, where the wall came to an end. Here he made his way to the red-tiled roof of a small cottage and for a few moments sat scratching himself contemplatively and letting ideas float up into his head.

It is the considered opinion of zoologists, anthropologists and scientists that primates cannot and do not think, though they would have encountered a stiff argument from Gunner Lovejoy and Captain Bailey on the subject, but obviously some mental process must be involved when a beast who has been sitting comfortably pleasuring his nerves by scratching itches, suddenly ceases and commences to de-tile a roof.

The scientists are insistent that primates are neither able to go back into the past beyond remembering perhaps where food was accustomed to be buried during a series of experiments, nor project themselves into the future, such as deciding: “I think if the weather is fine tomorrow I’ll go down to town, but if it’s raining, I’ll stay home and let Annette, my favourite female, get on with a bit of grooming up my fur.”

There then remains the present, and if Scruffy was denied the past and anticipating the future, his evil mind was a whizzer when it came to deciding what he would do now, or at any given instant. Thus his wicked, intelligent eyes coming to rest upon the tiling of the roof noted one that was slightly damaged and loose. At once his prying fingers completed the job, and quite naturally loosened the one next to it.

Scruffy had a dozen off before the householder, hearing the noise, came forth and began jumping up and down with rage and shouting in Gibraltese Spanish.

Since the householder was down on the street level and Scruffy was up out of his reach, the shouts of anger were no concern of his, except to arouse in him a feeling of satisfaction, but he now discovered that the flat roofing tiles when thrown sailed beautifully, almost like the flight of those wretched creatures, birds.

Scruffy now busied himself with the interesting and exciting task of making tile-birds, while, drawn by the shouts of the irate householder, a crowd began to gather in the street. The ape, who in addition to his formidable list of vices was a ham, enjoyed nothing better than witnesses. He filled the air with whizzing red birds, and when one crashed into a wall and splintered it gave him another idea. Below him and a little to the right, mounted on a black and white pole, was the attractive glass globe of a street lamp.

It took him three tile-birds to get the range and the hang of it, and then he sent the fourth crashing deliciously through it, shattering the globe into a thousand pieces.

Two of those thin Gibraltar policemen arrived, their narrow, sallow Spanish features and figures looking, as usual, out of place in the costume of the London Bobby, rather as though they had been caught coming home in daylight from a fancy-dress ball. They were understandably and righteously wroth at this destruction of public property, drew batons and prepared to mount to the roof and do something about the situation.

Again proving that when it came to the present Scruffy had all his mental buttons, he now decided that there had been sufficient entertainment for a first stop, and with a leap, a bound, a hop and a swing of his strong arms, and in spite of having to do without the assistance that every other monkey could claim, a fifth limb in the shape of a tail, Scruffy was three telegraph poles and five houses away from the scene.

The policemen made a note of damages, and called their Sergeant. The Sergeant notified the Lieutenant, who had a word with the Inspector, who picked up the phone and dialled Fortress Headquarters to ask to speak with the Brigadier.

The Chaplain to the Brigade of Royal Artillery stationed in Gibraltar, probably because of the nature of his calling, had been awarded quarters in a charming cottage not far from the French Consulate, in a grove of pepper and eucalyptus trees, but his pride and joy was his vegetable garden at the back. There was a Garden Club at Gibraltar, and the Chaplain was one of the fiercest competitors for the tiny, practically infinitesimal cups awarded for prize specimens. It had been an extraordinarily good spring, with just enough rain, and the Chaplain’s vegetables were in fine fettle. His leeks were bursting from the ground like tree trunks, his carrot-tops were lush and green; sturdy long green runner beans hung from the bean-poles, tomatoes as big as grapefruit were ripening in the sun. The Chaplain’s garden contained at least half a dozen firsts, and probably twice as many seconds and thirds, assuring him sufficient points for the Grand Championship trophy, which was about the size of an egg-cup.

Scruffy had never been in that direction before, and so he did not know of this paradise. Whim, fancy and luck took him thither on that wonderful day, and it was like a starving man who finds himself suddenly seated at a Lucullan banquet and bidden to eat his fill. Nobody had bade Scruffy, but this was beside the point.

When the Chaplain, finally roused from labours in his study by noises off, went out and stared aghast at his garden, it was all over. The tomato vines were down, the fruit trampled to a pulp, beans and peas were uprooted, ravished leeks strewed the ground, the tops had been torn off the carrots, tender courgettes shattered, the grape arbour denuded, and the place left a shambles. He was just in time to see the greyish-brown rear end of the depredator retire into a tree. When the Chaplain approached the tree, Scruffy spat out a mouthful at him and departed.

The Chaplain went and dialled the private number of the Brigadier. By the time he had got through to him there was very little, if any, Christian charity in his heart.

If the Chaplain had been proud of his vegetable garden, the librarian of the Garrison Library was equally proud of the orange tree in the lovely floral glade surrounding the building, and the golden oranges that hung thereon. Actually on his way to another part of the town, Scruffy had only paused in the orange tree for an instant to catch his breath and rest himself. For the moment he had neither mischief nor gluttony on his mind, but unfortunately the librarian had no way of knowing this. He saw only the largest and ugliest of the magots which an inscrutable Government insisted upon fostering on the Rock perched in his tree. No diplomat, and certainly no connoisseur of the vagaries of
macaca silvana simia
, the librarian picked up a large, smooth pebble from his gravel walk and shied it at the ape.

Thinking apparatus or none, one thing that Scruffy could get was an idea when it was presented to him. He therefore deliberately and methodically detached each orange from its stem and fired it at the head of the librarian. After three direct hits, the unhappy custodian of Gibraltar’s culture retreated into the library. Scruffy raised his sights and continued the bombardment, splattering the fruit up against the doors and windows of the building. When there were no more oranges on the tree he continued on his way, feeling rested and refreshed by the incident. The librarian made for the telephone.

The surveyor attached to the Colonial Secretary’s Office lived in a neat two-storey house not far from Ragged Staff Gates. It being then eleven o’clock of the morning of a working day, the Surveyor was out dutifully somewhere around Europa Point surveying, the children were at the beach with their nanny, and Mrs. Surveyor was out shopping. Like a good and careful housewife she had locked the front door and the back door, and closed the ground-floor windows. However, a window in the second storey was open to admit fresh air into the bedroom.

If there was anything Scruffy loved, it was an inside job. On his roof-top way across town to turn more of the unimaginable future into the delectable present, the open window beckoned him like a lodestone. He went down the drain-pipe, pausing only a moment to detach a loose piece of the rain gutter and throw it down into the street, and then entered the Surveyor’s bedroom. The bed looked inviting, so he got into it, uncovering in the process the Surveyor’s red and white striped flannel pyjamas, the design and colour of which irritated Scruffy, so he shredded them and threw the remains out of the window.

Encountering his ugly mug in the mirror of Madame Surveyor’s dressing-table, he was reduced to the usual state of fury, and picking up a chair whanged it into the mirror, thus causing himself to disappear. This may not have been a feat of memory, but it was certainly practical.