Scruffy - A Diversion (26 page)

“You would,” commented McPherson.

“We have the organization there,” Clyde said. “If there’s a lady Barbarian in the British Isles we’ll turn her up. We’ll fly her over here. She and old Scruff get matey. Apelet is born on the Rock. An heir to the throne! All hail the crown prince! The line of succession is preserved.”

“One ruddy ape,” Bailey said unconvinced, “and say we still have three, three and one makes four. The P.M. said twenty-four—”

“The thing you don’t appreciate, my boy, and what is going to get us out of the bloody mess all of us are in, and I mean the Empire as well as just the four of us, is that while the Jerry is highly efficient and capable and a nasty fellow in a war, he is also a supreme fathead, which is something you can give odds on. He’s also a great front runner, but if you look him in the eye in the stretch he’s likely to curl and head for the outside.”

McPherson said, “I don’t get the point, Bill.”

“The point, my dear fellow, is that if we can produce an ape on the Rock and the chaps in Berlin get the idea that their bloke in Algeciras has been feeding them a lot of duff gen they’re quite likely to drop it, call off their ape buyers and forget the whole business.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” Tim asked. “If we don’t get the crown prince?”

Major Clyde stopped his doodling and looked up at them, and they saw that he had gone quite serious, the usual light-hearted gaiety missing from his expression. “Why, we just must, mates,” he replied, “if for no other reason than that people are so damn silly you never know what they’re going to do. They’re supposed to have brains and judgement, but it takes no more than a feather to tip the scales one way or another. A lot of Greeks lost a battle because some birds flew in the wrong direction. The Romans were smart enough to use omens and entrails for political purposes, but the point is the foot soldiers believed in them. And if a sheep or a lamb happened to be liverish when cut open, it could turn a brave man into a coward, eh? Right now we don’t know which way the Spaniard is going to jump. Maybe he’s looking for an omen. Maybe he isn’t. The point is either way we don’t give him one, and if we do it is one he doesn’t like. One can’t win a war like that, but you can damn well keep from losing one. I wouldn’t tell this to anyone but you blokes or the P.M.” He arose. “You handle this end, Tim. When I’ve found a prospective bride I’ll let you know.”

1 6
Lovejoy to Hope Cove via London

“L
ovejoy,” Timothy said, “you’re to go to London.”

“Yes, sir,” the Gunner replied automatically and then did what his opposite number in the American Army would have described as a triple take plus one. He stared at Tim simply pop-eyed. His mouth flew wide open. He shut it, and opened it again quickly and came close to losing his balance. “What? What did you say, sir?”

“I said you were to go to London,” Timothy repeated. “Special orders. You’re to be flown out tomorrow morning at six, they’ve even detached a Wellington for you. Simmonds is writing your orders now.”

Gunner Lovejoy was breathless with delight and could only try to stiffen his spine to attention repeatedly, in the manner of a puppy compelled to wag his entire rear end because of a too stumpy tail, and he murmured as he did so, “Oh, I say, sir.” At the moment far-off London seemed like the Persian poet’s dream of paradise.

For he was remembering, of course; the London of his youth, left behind some twenty-five years ago, Wanstead with its rows of old, ugly, comfortable houses one exactly like the other, its corner pubs fragrant with spilled bitters and the reek of pipe and cigarettes and the delectable girls who dressed themselves up and went out a-walking on Saturday nights.

In that moment of revelation the Gunner was hard put to decide which of the visions conjured up was the most attractive, the beer flowing unlimited or the Saturday-night girls. And then with a thrill the Gunner realized that there was nothing to stop him from having both—all the girls he could walk with, all the beer he could drink and once more all the old sights, sounds, smells and haunts.

London, London, London! Tubes and buses and flicks that weren’t three years old, busy shops and proper tobacconists, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, and the good honest, thick yellow London fog that a man could draw into his lungs with all the gratifying agony of cheap shag.

Poor Lovejoy! Had he only known it the London to which he was bound was only a delusion of his own fantasy. The city was under siege, the lights were out, the beer diluted, food, what there was of it, practically inedible, and all the pretty Saturday-night girls hustled away into the land army or women’s auxiliaries, factories or monopolized by open-handed American soldiers with large pay packets and no inhibitions.

Still the name London rang in the Gunner’s ears like a trumpet call. He asked, “What’s the gen, sir?”

Tim said, “Major Clyde has come across an ape, a female. You are to fly back there, collect it and bring it here. I won’t even impress upon you the importance of the mission or what it means if it fails.”

For the first time the Gunner, with his marvellous instinct for trouble a-cooking somewhere, felt some of the shine rubbed off from his beautiful fantasy. “But why me, sir?” he asked. “Why not you? After all, the responsibility—”

Tim sailed the half-sheet of the message which Felicity herself had decoded less than an hour ago across his desk to the Gunner saying, “You see what it says across the top.”

Lovejoy did indeed for it was stamped “Top Secret” and read:

“
SUITABLE FEMALE APE SIX YEARS OLD VIRGIN GUARANTEED MACAQUE SYLVANUS AFRICANUS IN PRIVATE HANDS PET OWNER PROVING TROUBLESOME EXPERT APE HANDLER OF CHARM AND PERSUASIVENESS WANTED CANNOT SPARE YOU FROM ROCK SUGGEST SEND LOVEJOY BUT CLEAN HIM UP STOP ALSO PHOTOGRAPHS WANTED REMEMBER ANNE OF CLEVES IF NO LOCAL HOLBEIN AVAILABLE SUGGEST GOOD RETOUCHING JOB OR BETTER STILL SUBSTITUTE PICTURE OF MORE AMIABLE SPECIMEN EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON MAKING GOOD IMPRESSION P.M.’S PRIVATE WELLINGTON ON AIR-STRIP
6
AM TOMORROW.
”

Lovejoy read it through twice, pushing back his cap and scratching his head. Alarm bells were going off again. He didn’t like obscurantism, obfuscation, mystery or hanky-panky, he liked everything straightforward. Who was this owner who was proving difficult, and why? What was the meaning of the nasty crack in the signal about cleaning him up?

“I don’t like it, sir,” he said.

“Don’t like what?”

“About cleaning me up, sir. What—”

“Oh,” said Tim. “That’s just Major Clyde’s way of putting the situation without using a lot of words. You know we’re pretty relaxed here on the Rock in the matter of dress. Probably a lot of spit and polish around H.Q. in London. Get your hair cut and I’ve arranged to have a new uniform issued to you which I’ll thank you to keep buttoned.”

“And what’s all that about charm and persuasiveness, sir—?”

Undoubtedly, Tim thought, Major Clyde had his reasons for being mysterious but he wished he had been a little more explicit if he expected him to cope. He said, “I shouldn’t let that worry you, Lovejoy. I’ve known you to charm a whole pack of apes down from the trees, and as for powers of persuasion if there is a better man on the Rock for talking a supply man out of Government property—”

But the Gunner was still regarding the dispatch with an unresolved frown. “I don’t quite get the picture, sir.”

“Oh, come on, man,” Tim said, tapping the signal, “it’s not all that difficult. Major Clyde has located an ape but the owner is proving sticky. You go back there and win the confidence of the beast, which you will be able to do at the drop of a hat, the owner withdraws objections and Bob’s your uncle. And besides, it’s a trip back home to London, isn’t it?”

The Gunner brightened again. “That’s right, sir,” he said, “I’ll do me best.”

Major “Slinker” Clyde didn’t exactly cause the welkin to resound with whoops of joy when Gunner John Lovejoy was ushered into his presence in the cubby-hole that served him as his office in the M.I.5 section near Whitehall.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, looking at the Gunner with a most misanthropic expression. “Is that the best those middens back there could do with you?”

Gunner Lovejoy felt deeply hurt. He was drawn up to attention; all his buttons were buttoned; the new uniform was uncomfortable, the collar was tight and not at all like the soft denims he was able to wear around the Rock, and furthermore London, wartime London—at least that portion of it which he had been able to sample before being hurried on to keep his rendezvous with the Major—had proved a bitter disappointment. “What’s the matter with me, sir?” he asked, and in an attempt to improve whatever it was that appeared to have found disfavour with the Major, stiffened still more into military rigidity.

“Everything,” Major Clyde announced flatly. He had the feeling that in a moment Gunner Lovejoy might begin to revolve like a model at a dress show in an attempt to register his good points. “Relax, man, relax. For God’s sake, sit down.”

Insulted beyond words, the Gunner, having taken a chair by the edge of the Major’s desk as commanded, reached into his tunic and produced a large envelope containing photographs and a letter which read as follows:

“Dear Slinker,

Don’t know what you’re up to but herewith the new Lovejoy. There wasn’t time for plastic surgery but we have tidied him up as best we could. There is no better hand with an ape living and I know he’ll fill the job . . . Furthermore, as you know, he has the reputation of being the foremost scrounger on the Rock which ought to take care of the persuasiveness department. I enclose herewith several photographs purporting to be old Scruff. If these don’t entice your virgin, I give up.

Good luck.

Yours,
Tim.”

The Major regarded the photographs which he extracted from the envelope and jumped as though he had sat upon a scorpion. “Holy Methuselah on a bicycle,” he exclaimed.

There was no doubt but that the photographs which had brought forth this outburst were masterpieces. If Herr Holbein had managed to make of Anne of Cleves a sixteenth-century forerunner of Greta Garbo, Tim had dug up a photographer and local retouching artist who had caused the magot supposed to represent Scruffy,
née
Harold, look like a combination of Cary Grant, an Archbishop and a Raphael Madonna. By some magic of the retoucher’s brush he had changed the usual expression of suspicion, meanness and general malevolence to be found in the piggy hazel eyes of the Barbary ape into one of love for, and faith in, all humanity and the wish, if possible, to redeem it.

The Major’s spirits rose somewhat as he fingered these two speaking unlikenesses, one profile and one full face, and he said, “Damned good job. Full marks to Bailey,” then, “Look here, Lovejoy, no offence intended. I may have been a little harsh, but then you don’t know what we’re up against. As Major Bailey says, you’re first class with the apes. You may be just the man for this job. I apologize for remarks conceived and spoken too hastily.”

While speaking the Major had been opening the bottom drawer of his desk and produced a bottle of Scotch and two tumblers. He poured a generous portion into each and pushed one over to the Gunner whose figure relaxed and eyes sparkled as he was at once shriven of all hurt and resentment by this generous gesture. He leaned forward and his fingers curled firmly around the base of the glass.

“Yes, yes,” said the Major. “Drink up and enjoy it, for it’s the last drop you’re going to have until this mission is completed.” His countenance suddenly assumed the darkest hues of villainy. “If I hear of you so much as smelling the cork of a bottle or even walking past a pub on the same side of the street, you’re for the Tower. Now bring your chair around to this side of the desk and listen carefully to what I have to say.”

The Gunner did as he had been bade, moved his chair around to the side of the Major’s desk and waited.

Clyde arose, locked the door of his office and pulled down the window blinds. “There are spies everywhere,” he said, which sounded to Lovejoy like a joke, he having tabbed the Major as one of those odd officer types inclined to exaggeration and jape. The trouble was, there was a good deal of truth in it. He went to a wall safe, opened it and removing a file stamped “Top Top Secret’, returned with it to his desk. He regarded the first pages moodily for a moment, leafing through the material, and then began:

“The owner of this ape is a Miss Constance Boddy, spinster, of 12 Wilton Gardens, Streatham, though at present she is residing at Cooks Hotel, Hope Cove, South Devonshire. She was born in Tilbury where her mother kept a kind of seafarer’s boarding house. Her father was a sea captain, about whom more later, and her mother it seems died when Miss Boddy was very young, and hence she never knew her very well. Since her father, who never rose above the captaincy of small, insignificant tramp steamers, was always on voyages of long duration, she was brought up by an aunt and uncle, her father’s brother, who had a greengrocer’s shop in Streatham. This aunt and uncle raised their niece inculcated with all the virtues and stern morality of the British, and when Miss Boddy had reached the age of 25, they abruptly departed this world within a few weeks of one another. They left her not only the greengrocer’s business, but since she was the only relation and they were childless, the tidy fortune they had amassed during their lifetime, a matter of some £15,000.”

Major Clyde looked up for a moment from the file which had been feeding him this information and said, “And so you see, that made her completely independent.”

Lovejoy said, “And very nice for her too.”

“The young Miss Constance Boddy,” the Major went on, “was no fool with her money. She sold the greengrocer’s business, thus adding to her capital, invested the money wisely, and settled down in the small house in Streatham to make a home for her father, Captain Boddy, during the periods he spent ashore, which were few and far between.”

Major Clyde looked up from the file again and said, “I make the point, Lovejoy, that this is one way a man can maintain a reputation as a kind of little tin god, if you know what I mean. He is away enough of the time to build up the image of perfection and doesn’t stick around long enough to break it down. That’s why there are so few divorces in the families of sea captains.”