Scruffy - A Diversion (39 page)

The questions put by Sir Archibald Cruft closeted in Major McPherson’s office with Timothy Bailey and William Clyde were asked not so much in anger as complete and utter disbelief that such a thing could be possible.

It was a moment that Clyde rather had been dreading. He could think of nothing else to say than, “Yes, sir.”

“When you visited me in my office you led me to believe that I was to attend a human patient of national importance in whom the Prime Minister—”

Clyde felt better now. “I never said human patient, sir, I said to attend a delivery of the greatest importance to the country. The instructions of the P.M. were that no effort was to be spared. If you will remember I offered to get him on the line to have a word with you.”

The recollection threw Sir Archibald into some confusion and unsteadied him in his intention to proceed from disbelief to towering rage, and Clyde saw the worst was over. He said, “Look here, sir, I couldn’t explain to you when I called on you in London for reasons of security, there was too much at stake. You might have talked to someone.”

Sir Archibald felt a sudden pang as he remembered that he had indeed talked to someone. It was as well then that he had not known whatever this great secret was.

Clyde saw the sudden alarm on the specialist’s face and, even more certain of his ground now, he continued smoothly, “But we can tell you now.”

Briefly and succinctly, in a well-ordered sequence that would appeal to a scientific mind, he outlined to the great man the facts in the case and all that hung upon the delivery to Amelia of a healthy, active offspring, able to face photographers at an early age and interrupt by its presence the morale-shattering pattern of the decline of the Rock apes.

Sir Archibald, as one who had not been contradicted in the last twenty years and was inclined to be a trifle pompous and well aware of his position in medical society and quite pleased with it, was at the same time no fool, and Clyde’s lucid presentation of the situation and the consequences that might possibly attend failure, were obvious to him. It was not the superstition or the eventuality that the British might be driven from the Rock, Clyde emphasized. He was too clever to present this to a man of Sir Archibald’s stature, but he did make clear that belief in such a superstition was dampening on Gibraltar to the point where the Spaniards might not be able to resist entering the war. One more powerful enemy could well be the straw that would break the nation’s back.

Sir Archibald felt all his anger drain away from him, but not his doubts, fears and anxieties. “But why me, man?” he queried when Clyde had finished his recital. “Why not a veterinary? There must be half a dozen good men available. Embury and Hoskyns are two of the best.”

For a moment Clyde again experienced a pang of uneasiness. Why not indeed? And he realized that he had been perhaps carried away by his own enthusiasm. In his mind birth had been connected with a gynaecologist, and the habit he had formed ever since he had had the directive from the Prime Minister had been to accept nothing but the best in every phase of this operation. “Not good enough, sir,” he replied. “This situation calls for the best brain, the years of experience and the steadiest hand in the field.”

Sir Archibald swallowed the compliment, enjoying its savour, but then said, “That’s very kind of you, Major, but you overlooked one important factor, I have never delivered a monkey.”

“Eh?” ejaculated the Major, startled by the gynaecologist’s words.

“While I might be willing to admit,” Sir Archibald continued, “that the husbands of a number of my clients undoubtedly resemble baboons, gibbons, mandrills and chimpanzees, and their wives have demonstrated facial affinities to the lemur, the loris, the bush baby and the potto, to name some of the more delicately featured primates, the fact is that my practice has been entirely limited to the species laughingly classified
homo sapiens
, while the anthropoids—”

“Does that make any difference, sir?” Clyde asked, and actually was unable to keep the anxiety from his voice. “I thought monkeys were like—”

“—People?” Sir Archibald concluded for him. “Not at all. For one thing monkeys don’t call upon the services of gynaecologists to assist them at birth. It might be better if they did, for the incidence of stillborn babies amongst the anthropoids and primates is very high, indicating that they have problems unique to their species.” He paused and as a new thought struck him quite suddenly he clapped his hand to his noble brow and cried, “What will happen when it gets out back in London that Archie Cruft was called in to midwife a monkey? And it will get out. I’ll never be able to face them. Rosen and Oates and that sneering old bluffer Pedgely,” he groaned. “My God,” and then, “Look here, Clyde, I won’t—”

“Sir,” Tim Bailey put in, “might I—”

Sir Archibald turned his massive craggy face towards Tim and stared at him as though he had never seen him before, which indeed he had not since Tim had remained in the background taking no part in the conversation.

“It needn’t get out,” said Tim, “my wife—you see, we’re expecting, sir— If you could possibly see your way clear to—to accept her as a patient—why then
that
would be the story which would get back to London. We could see to that, sir.”

It was a straw. Sir Archibald examined Tim more closely now. “Who are you?” he asked.

Clyde reminded him, “Major Timothy Bailey, sir, O.I.C. that is, Officer in Charge of Apes. It has been his responsibility—”

“Is your wife here?” Sir Archibald asked of Bailey.

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought all of the women had been evacuated from the Rock.”

“She’s a Wren officer, sir.”

“Oh, I see. What’s her name?”

“Felicity, sir.”

Clyde put in quickly, “Admiral French’s daughter, sir.”

The stern countenance of Sir Archibald Cruft suddenly brightened. “What,” he said, “not old Tubby French’s daughter! I used to beat him at golf. Hits the ball with a twitch! I’d be pleased to see him again.”

“Will you take her, sir?” Tim asked eagerly.

“Yes, yes of course,” Sir Archibald replied somewhat testily as though it had all been settled. “Tubby French’s daughter, naturally.”

“And Amelia?” Clyde queried.

Sir Archibald reflected for a moment while they all waited anxiously. “Well,” he said, and left no doubt as to the manner in which the affair was to be handled, “as long as I’m down here looking after Tubby French’s daughter, I might as well. Suppose I have a look at the patient.”

Three sighs of relief exploded simultaneously and Major McPherson cried, “Splendid, sir! That’s very good of you. I’ll have Lovejoy take you to the upper Rock and show you Amelia.”

Sir Archibald asked, “Lovejoy? Who is Lovejoy?”

“Their keeper, sir,” Bailey explained, and Clyde added, “He’s been with them for more than twenty years.”

“Felicity will be very pleased when I tell her,” Tim beamed, “and so will her father. It’s more than kind of you, sir.”

“Yes, yes,” said Sir Archibald gruffly. “Well, let’s get on with it then. Where is this she-ape and this fellow Lovejoy? I hope he won’t be around all the time telling me what to do.”

The Military Hospital of Gibraltar was a huge, sprawling affair of grey blocks with odd Victorian trimming in black, Moorish arches and crenellated towers. The operating and labour rooms, however, were modern enough, with incubators, X-ray and all the latest scientific gadgets, and Sir Archibald pronounced himself satisfied with the equipment and the nursing staff as well. There was also a waiting-room decorated in soothing tones which had once been set aside for expectant fathers, and it was here that the three Majors Bailey, Clyde and McPherson, Sergeant Lovejoy and his bride, the former Miss Boddy, and Felicity foregathered anxiously on the day that medical science, coupled with mathematics, had determined that Amelia would produce.

Tim had been violently opposed to Felicity’s presence upon this occasion. The arithmetic in her case had decreed that she was not due for another two weeks and Tim did not wish her exposed prematurely to those grisly exhibits that are always being pushed or carried up and down hospital corridors. Felicity had overruled him. In the first place she would not have missed the show for anything in the world, and in the second she felt it her duty to be present to hold Tim’s hand. If the agitation the young man was showing at the preparations for the accouchement of Amelia were any indication, he was in for a bad time during the birth of his own child. At least Felicity could stand by for the former.

There was far too much at stake to risk chancing a natural birth for Amelia in one of the cages up in the apes’ village, and besides, Sir Archibald was unaccustomed to working in the wilderness or on the concrete floor of a monkey cage. He felt comfortable only when aseptically scrubbed, capped and gowned in a proper operating theatre with a reliable anaesthetist, theatre nurses and other help. Birth was a serious drama to him. At the moment of its occurrence it was he who was the chief actor occupying the centre of the stage, and he liked an audience.

Sir Archibald appeared at the door of the main operating theatre for a moment, gowned but not yet capped and scrubbed.

Tim, who had been chain-smoking nervously, was on his feet instantly. “Is everything all right, doctor?” he cried.

“Do you anticipate any trouble?” asked Major Clyde.

“Oh, doctor, you will take good care of our Amelia, won’t you?” pleaded Mrs. Lovejoy.

Sir Archibald had assumed his professional manner and soothing smile with his surgeon’s gown. “We haven’t even begun yet. In a Prime Ibs., as you know, the presentation is always a bit chancy. Still, I don’t anticipate any difficulty. The monkey appears to be normal. We’ll take every precaution, of course. Well, gentlemen, we shall know shortly. Don’t excite yourselves. If I encounter any trouble I’ll let you know. Not to worry, then.” He turned on his heel and strode through the door leading to the operating theatre, like an actor exiting on a good line.

Chairs ran around the walls of the waiting-room, and the six were perched on the edges of them. Through the open door they had a view of the long hospital corridor and the entrance to the operating theatre. As Tim had anticipated, they were missing none of those fearful comings and goings, openings and closings of doors, the carrying out of things hidden under cloths, probationers bearing trays, nurses arriving with syringes and medicines.

The time was nine o’clock in the evening. The nervously hurrying feet echoed in the otherwise silent hospital.

There was a larger bustle and stir as down the corridor, flanked by two gowned and masked nurses, an attendant wheeled a stretcher table. On the table was a box. Inside the box sat Amelia. She was whimpering softly. Mrs. Lovejoy half-started up from her chair, and her husband laid a restraining arm upon hers and said, “Don’t worry, there’s nothing to it.”

Major Clyde quoted, “Our birth is nothing but our death begun.”

“For God’s sake, shut up,” Tim hissed at him in a furious whisper, indicating Felicity.

Major Clyde clapped a hand over his mouth and said, “Sorry, old man! Must be the strain.”

Felicity was watching the procession in the corridor as it passed through the door into the operating theatre. She murmured something which to Tim sounded very much like “Into the valley of shadows . . .” but she was giggling and appeared to be enjoying herself hugely. Tim was able to stem his nervousness for a moment to reflect upon the miracle of the woman he had married.

From somewhere in the town a tower clock tolled the strokes of ten, the door of the theatre opened and Sir Archibald appeared minus gloves and mask, his cap pushed on to the back of his white locks. Instantly he was surrounded.

“Well, sir?”

“Has she had it?”

“My poor Amelia!”

“Is everything all right?”

“For God’s sake, Sir Archibald, say something. I can’t stand this suspense.” This last cry of anguish came from Tim, for it seemed to him that all the effort and work and worry he had put in ever since he had resumed the job of O.I.C. Apes was now concentrated into one small pinpoint of time. It was almost unbearable that things were out of his hands and there was no more he could do. The jury was out and that was that.

Sir Archibald blandly waved all queries aside. “Not yet,” he said. “We are still waiting. I have come out for a cigarette.” The three men in unison pressed smokes and fire upon him. Observing him, Clyde wondered whether the gynaecologist was concealing something from them. Tim was certain he was. The great man did not appear to be entirely at ease. He drew in and swallowed three long drags of smoke, then dropped the cigarette and stifled it with the toe of his boot. “Well,” he said, “I’d better be getting along back inside. Not to worry.”

Inside the waiting-room heavy gloom began to settle. Tim commenced to pace up and down and Felicity noted that at the place where he was walking off his nervousness the carpet beneath his feet was worn thin by several generations of feet similarly agitated. She wanted to giggle again but refrained because her heart was too full of love for him, and she reflected that she was probably the only expectant mother in all history granted the privilege of observing the birth agonies of a husband. Poor thing—what would happen to him while she was occupied with her own delivery?

Then they were all aware that the comings and goings of the nurses and messengers began to increase in tempo. Doors banged somewhat more loudly; feet scurried more quickly; and the almost unbearable atmosphere of mystery and tension was increased by the one-way conversations which were funnelled quite audibly down the long tunnel of the corridor from the switchboard located at the end of it.

The operator appeared to be searching frantically for a Colonel Wheeler. “Is Colonel Wheeler there? Calling Colonel Wheeler! Dr. Wheeler is wanted in the operating theatre!” And then afterwards there was a search by telephone and minions for some elusive and difficult to locate piece of equipment with a name which sounded like thermosphygalamometer.

Colonel-Dr. Wheeler never showed up, but the thermosphygalamometer did, justifying its name by turning out to be a terrifying-looking cabinet on wheels from which protruded tubes, arms, clamps and compressors, festooned with dials and gauges and columns of active and pulsing coloured liquids.