Scruffy - A Diversion (38 page)

“Alfonso Ramirez, sir,” replied Lovejoy, rendering a formal introduction. “Works for Captain Russell in the Navy Yard, sir, Optical Department. Double A security. But he’s an expert, sir. Used to ’ave apes when he was a boy. It was his idea, sir.”

“What was his idea?”

“To scare ’em into it, sir. It’s the only thing we didn’t try.”

Major Bailey looked from Lovejoy to Ramirez to the loving apes and back to Lovejoy again.

Lovejoy watched him warily, for if Major Bailey had not twigged to at least one sequence of events that had taken place that night, he himself had. “Had a case like it, Mr. Ramirez did. Told me about it last night. Owned a pair of lemurs once that wouldn’t breed. Scared them into each other’s arms and away they went merry as crickets.”

“Is this so, Mr. Ramirez?” Major Bailey inquired.

“Gott!”
thought Treugang Ramirez apostrophizing the German rather than the English Deity in his gratitude. The stupidity of these British. Not only was he not going to be placed against a wall and shot, but he was not even going to be found out or punished, or so much as accused of anything. It was incredible, but seemingly true. “Oh yes,” he said. “Every word. It is true as my friend Lovejoy here has told.”

“ ‘If everything else fails you scare ’em,’ Mr. Ramirez says to me.” Lovejoy picked up the narrative. “ ‘But how can you frighten such a beast as Scruffy?’ he asks. You may remember, sir, that Mr. Ramirez had an unfortunate experience with the animal.”

“Oh yes,” said Tim, and involuntarily his glance strayed to the hair-piece now only slightly askew on the Señor’s head, and he immediately felt embarrassed and sorry for Ramirez.

“ ‘Why,’ ” continued Sergeant Lovejoy, “ ‘balloons,’ I said to him. ‘Old Scruff can’t abide balloons. Maybe if we blew up a couple of balloons for him it would work.’ ”

“Was that about the way it was, Mr. Ramirez?”

“Oh yes, sir! Every word of it.”

“And where did this conversation take place?” inquired Tim.

“Oh, outside the Admiral Nelson,” Lovejoy replied ingenuously. He was also a great devotee of the half-truth. “We happened to encounter there.”

“This was before you were taken ill, I gather,” Tim said solicitously.

“Ah yes, sir. My attack hadn’t come on me yet.”

“I see. Then you both came on up here—”

Sergeant Lovejoy drew a deep breath, the first since his awakening. Could it be that it really had gone down the Major’s gullet smoothly and properly and that he was actually asking for more? “That’s it, sir,” he said. “And there they was like you’ve always seen ’im. Her loving and eager; him cruel and cold. ‘Now then,’ says Mr. Ramirez, ‘shall we try? You blow one!’ ‘No,’ says I, ‘it’s your idea and your honour. You blow, I’ll observe.’ So ’e blows one. ’E blows a second. ’E blows another. You know the effect them balloons has always had on Scruff. Well this time it’s exactly the same. Terror-stricken ’e is, shaking and unnerved, sir. Only this time there’s a difference!” Sergeant Lovejoy paused dramatically, to prepare for the revelation of that difference. “This time there awaited him the arms of a comforting and loving woman. Haven’t you had that experience yourself, sir? When everything seemed to be going against you and you didn’t know which way to turn? It’s the woman that’s the saving grace of us, sir. First, it’s our mothers, later on it’s our—well, there’s always one that seems to come along when you need her most, isn’t there, sir?”

Major Bailey didn’t reply. Lovejoy hoped it was because he was too deeply moved for words.

“Well, that’s how it was with old Scruff, sir. There ’e was, one moment shivering and shaking, whimpering and crying; there she was, sir, eager to ’elp him, sympathetic, warm-hearted. ’Olding out her arms. And the next moment there
they
were!”

“You bastard
,” thought Tim.
“You clever, lying, scrimshanking, convincing bastard!”
But the point was that the story would stand up. It would stand up beautifully if one didn’t pry into or refer back to the condition the two men had been in when he arrived, and the obvious but rapidly diminishing fragrance of booze. Facts were facts, and there was no getting around the fact that there were the burst balloons and there were Scruffy and Amelia no longer two but one.

There was a snort and a clatter as a car drew up outside the enclosure and disgorged the Majors McPherson and Clyde.

In the manner of a master showman, Tim stepped aside to clear their view, pointed dramatically and said, “Behold! The miracle.”

They stared unbelieving at first, then gave vent to relieving expletives.

“By Nebuchadnezzar!” said Major Clyde.

“On a bicycle,” breathed Major McPherson.

“Tim, you are a wizard,” congratulated Major Clyde.

Major Bailey still dramatically pointing now semaphored in the direction of Señor Ramirez. “We owe it all to this gentleman here,” he declared.

The Majors McPherson and Clyde looked in the direction indicated and were momentarily stunned into silence. The person pointed to didn’t look exactly what might be expected of the saviour of the key bastion of the British Empire. The physical malaise brought about by the debauch of the night before had abated not one whit; abject terror had but recently been replaced by slowly returned confidence; his rug still wasn’t on straight and his clothes were a mess.

“He knows more about apes than any of us,” Major Bailey elucidated. “Had ’em when he was a boy. Lovejoy will tell you about it. They engineered it together. Frightened the wits out of old Scruff. Reduced him to a jelly. Quivering wreck goes for comfort to loving arms of woman. Once arrived there, nature takes its course. That about the straight of it, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Lovejoy. “But it was Mr. Ramirez’s idea.” He was thrilled about being off the hook and he wanted no part of the credit, and besides, Ramirez had come through like a brick the night before. There was still the unexplained matter of the exploded balloons, but he reasoned that quite possibly during the night Scruffy had turned savage and perhaps threatened to kill the female, and Ramirez had resorted to the trick he had heard Lovejoy discourse upon sometime or other in the Admiral Nelson. Anyway, results were results and he had no intention of pressing the matter further if Major Bailey was satisfied. He loved the Major like a brother and would wish nothing better than to spend the rest of his life serving under him. A man who could not only swallow what he had offered but blandly pass on the same serving to his pals was more than just all right. He was bang on.

The pals took another look at the trembling, sweating Ramirez and were not impressed, and then turned their gaze to Major Bailey. But there was no hint of guile in Tim’s face.

“Look here, Tim, are you sure?” Clyde queried.

Tim passed the buck, “What about it, Lovejoy?”

“I’d lay me ’ead to a stack of Bibles on it,” Lovejoy said fervently. “If I may point out, sir, it’s the right time, the right place—”

“—the right girl,” Major Clyde concluded for him.

They all turned now and gazed fondly upon the temporarily subdued Scruffy enfolded in the arms of his mistress, or vice versa. It was, of course, silly and utterly ridiculous—to reason that the eventual stability of Gibraltar and the subsequent defence of the Mediterranean stemmed from this momentary coupling of a pair of ill-matched and ill-favoured Macaques. But certainly the delighted group observing them outside their cage believed this to be the case. They had worked so long and hard upon the project, had taken so to heart the message of the Prime Minister that the apes, for reason of morale, must be kept up to strength and it seemed as though the burden of the entire war effort had been shifted to their shoulders. Now that for the first time it looked as though that burden was to be lifted and the success of Major Clyde’s long-range planning just around the corner, they were filled with relief and joy.

Major Clyde was trying to paraphrase or catch a quotation, something like, “When the doors of history are thrown open the right man is always found standing upon the threshold.” He then had a vision of great bronze doors swinging open and the shocking little man with his wig all askew, his clothes wrinkled and eyes blinking behind the thick-lensed spectacles, standing there. But he also remembered another saying from his youth that the Lord often worked in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.

His thoughts then turned wholly practical and looking towards the future, “Oughtn’t we to have a gyno?”

“My God, yes,” chimed in Major McPherson. “The best!”

“Holy smokes!” cried Major Timothy Bailey. “Me too!”

They all turned and stared at him.

2 1
Dr. Lovejoy’s Technique

T
he nurse thrust her attractive face inside the door and said, “Dr. Rosen on the line, Sir Archibald.”

Sir Archibald Cruft raised his massive head from the circular and free sample of a new drug which had come through the mail, something with the imposing name of
Pronovocosylnembucaine,
and which as far as he could make out from its components was not much more useful than aspirin, and said, “Oh, good.”

Sir Archibald was a gynaecologist. He was
the
gynaecologist. There were rich babies, poor babies, noble babies, common babies, and then there were Cruft babies. And the Cruft babies all turned out to be quite extraordinary. If it was necessary to register one’s son at Eton at birth, it was advisable to book Sir Archibald upon the announcement of one’s engagement. A Cruft baby was a guarantee. Once one had managed to pass through the portals of 81A Harley Street and into his consulting-room, which was more like the library of a stately home than a doctor’s office, with its two Renoirs and a Modigliani on the walls, all one’s worries were over. Baby would be produced with the minimum of fuss, in good health and with all its buttons. He was consultant emeritus at the births of the Royal Family was Sir Archibald. He was—

Sir Archibald picked up the telephone and said, “Hello, Saul?”

“Sir Archibald!”

If you couldn’t achieve a Cruft’s baby, you acquired a Rosen baby. Dr. Saul Rosen was as good and great a gynaecologist as Sir Archibald, but he was a Jew and a German refugee, and a number of British fathers objected to having a baby by “that foreign fellow”. Yet Rosen babies were likewise brought into the world with less fuss and cackle than the production of an egg. They were also strong, healthy specimens and some said even a trifle more acute and likely to succeed in the diplomatic and political world than the Cruft babies who tended to staff the Universities, the Army and the world of finance.

“Look here, Saul,” said Sir Archibald, and turned upon the black instrument of the telephone all the charm that he worked upon his patients which eased them so swiftly and happily through their labour, for everything about him was compelling, his head, his deep sunken eyes, his hook of a nose, his strong forward-thrust chin and his great mane of white hair, “I suppose you’ve more than you can handle as usual.”

“Well, in a way. It’s those charity cases that take up all one’s time. Why the East Enders out-produce the West Enders when they have that much less leisure—except when they’re striking— Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Yes,” said Sir Archibald, seeing no point in beating about the bush. “Can you take on Lady Streve for me?”

“Lady Streve! You mean the wife of—”

“That’s the one.”

The ten-second silence at the other end of the telephone line was as pregnant as Lady Streve, who was very. Sir Lionel Streve was one of the most important men in the Cabinet.

Sir Archibald thought he had better break into the silence before it became permanent. He said, “Anstruther,” naming his assistant, “can handle my practice until I get back, but Lady Streve is going to be very upset. But if I could tell her I had persuaded you to take her on—”

The silence at Dr. Rosen’s end was finally broken, “Yes, quite. I see. If you can persuade—I’ll be glad to—as you say, she won’t be very pleased.”

“She’s damn lucky you can take her. After all, we’re all having to make sacrifices.”

“Of course. Look here, did you say you were off somewhere? Lucky man.”

“Lucky, my foot,” growled Sir Archibald. “Of all places, Gibraltar. I passed through there once on a cruise. Filthy spot.”

Again there was a silence from Dr. Rosen’s end before he repeated, “Gibraltar! Who the devil is out there to—I beg your pardon, Sir Archibald.”

“No, no, that’s quite all right, old man, I feel exactly the same. The point is I haven’t a clue. It’s hush-hush. I couldn’t tell you because they wouldn’t tell me.”

“They?” said Dr. Rosen.

“M.I.5 fellow I’ve had in the office here for the last hour. Ever hear of a Major Clyde?”

“No,” said Dr. Rosen truthfully.

“Long gangling sort of chap. Seems to know everybody. I told him it was absolutely, utterly and finally impossible. Impossible for me to get away at all, and completely and blastedly impossible at this particular time. Then he applied the arm-twister. He said, ‘The P.M. wants it, Sir Archibald. The P.M. is vitally interested in this one.’ ”

“The P.M.!” Dr. Rosen’s shout of surprise rattled the diaphragm of the instrument. “Good God! You don’t mean to tell me—”

“No, no!” said Sir Archibald. “This Clyde fellow said it was a matter of national importance. Offered to get the P.M. on the line. I couldn’t refuse, could I?”

“Hardly,” agreed Dr. Rosen. “I’ll be happy to look after Lady Streve for you.”

“Good man,” said Sir Archibald. “They’ll be pleased in the end. More your type than mine. They’ll want it to go into politics if it’s a boy. Good luck and thank you.”

“Same to you,” said Dr. Rosen, and knew not what he wished.

“Am I to understand, sir, that I have been dragged away from my practice in London, my life risked in a flying machine that appeared to be appallingly unsteady, driven by a man who sang and muttered to himself the entire time of the flight and was obviously unbalanced” (as good a description, Major Clyde thought, of Howard Cranch in action as ever he had heard) “and set down on this exposed promontory to attend the pregnancy and delivery of a monkey? And you claim at the behest of the Prime Minister?”