Scruffy - A Diversion

by Paul Gallico

  Major Clyde took a deep breath and expelled it with a “Phew! Would anyone believe it?”

  “And finally,” concluded the Major producing a very grubby bit of paper, scrawled upon almost illegibly in pencil, “I have got out of Lovejoy the gen on the present number and status of apes on the Rock. I might report that the Gunner’s morale is low. He still loves the apes, but he doesn’t love your Lieutenant Barton or anybody else, and is drowning his sorrows. He tells me that the Queen’s Gate pack is down to nine, of which no females are of breedable age and four are young apes not yet in adult stage. This is the outfit your friend Scruffy runs. There had been ten but this morning Scruffy killed one of his rivals. The Middle Hill pack is down to eleven, of which only two are of any value in breeding. The Gunner says that when the packs get down that low with less females available the fights to own them are more frequent and savage. He expects there will be pieces of apes scattered all over the top.”

  “That’s right,” Tim said. “That’s in my notes.”

  “So how would you like to be O.I.C. Apes again? Clyde asked with no change in the inflexion of his voice, letting the question carry its own impact.

  Tim’s snap back back was almost immediate. “Fine,” he said.

  “He wouldn’t,” remarked Felicity.

  “Oh,” said Tim, looking over at her in surprise. “Sorry, I thought I would.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Felicity reiterated, and the two men saw that her eyes were shining and her face rosy. They also noticed that the level of the liquid attributed to King William had fallen considerably. The bottle which had been passing around between them clockwise had been halted close beside her for a considerable time.

  “You’ve been treated ablominably,” she said. Or at least that is what it sounded like to Tim. “They’ve got themselves into a mess or Major Clyde wouldn’t be here and now they want you to pull their horseshoes out of the fire for them.” She reflected. “It is horseshoes, isn’t it, Tim?”

  “Horse chestnuts,” said Tim. “You were half-way home.”

  “And that’s a fact,” added Major Clyde, though he didn’t state what.

  “They humiliated you because you were doing the best job ever on your—on their filthy apes. They gave you a slum to live in, all the Brigade dirty work they could find to pile on to you, and now because old Smarmy-In-The-Box over there has got under their skins and people on the Rock are beginning to get the jitters, they think they can—”

  Major Clyde interrupted sharply, “See here, young lady, how do you know people on the Rock have got the jitters?”

  “I heard it at my hairdressers,” Felicity replied, “where all of you M.I. boys would go if you had any—”

  “I know, I know,” Major Clyde said hastily, “I was only saying the same to McPherson earlier today. Well, never mind.”

  “Ablominably,” Felicity said again, and now Tim squinted at her and was sure that that was what she had said, and also that she was a little tight. She continued, “You’re scared that your nasty old apes will all die, the Germans will find out and egg the Spaniards into the war and the legend will come true. And you want Tim to pull—”

  Tim said, “I thought you loved the apes, Felicity.”

  “I do, but I love you more. It’s true, isn’t it?” This last was addressed to Major Clyde who was considering the powers of accurate analysis which could descend upon a woman when some decent, uncut Scotch mixed with long-seething indignation.

  The entrance of Spain into the war had been an ever-present menace and a worry since the beginning of the conflict, and from the first they had been engaging in a game of bluff on the Rock which up to that moment had been successful. But only he knew that with its Latin population easy to work into hysterics, an isolated garrison, Gibraltar was as psychologically vulnerable as it was exposed to the Spanish guns should they ever begin firing. The one key bastion of the Empire where morale must not be allowed to lapse was on the Rock. This had been his immediate concern for the past weeks.

  The Major said, “May I have the bottle, please?” Felicity giggled and said, “Oh dear, I’m so sorry, I’ve been pigging it.”

  The Major poured a good dollop and topped Tim’s drink as well. “Well then,” he said, “supposing we get down to business and discuss price.”

  Tim started to speak but was too slow and Felicity was in the breach with lightning speed. “Some rank,” she said, “not temporary. Permanent. Just you try to get anything done around here as a Captain. A sergeant has more rank than a Captain.”

  “I see,” said Major Clyde smoothly. “Anything in mind, Ma’am?”

  “Well,” replied Felicity, “he ought to be able to look you in the eye.”

  Tim gawked at his wife in utter amazement and his glance went from her to the bottle to his own glass from which he proceeded to take a long draught. If this was tiger juice he’d better have some too.

  Major Clyde had got out a pencil and was scribbling on the back of one of the documents. “Major Bailey,” he murmured half to himself. “Anything else, young lady?”

  “Decent living quarters. They’ve treated him ab—”

  “Blominably,” Major Clyde found himself completing for Felicity. “I know. Lieutenant-Colonel Hoskins’s house is going. He’s posted out to Aden.”

  Felicity instantly turned all woman. “You mean that ducky cottage in Battery Street? Would I be allowed to do it over?”

  “I suggest you wait until the Colonel has departed before you start pulling down curtains. He’s house-proud. Well, is it a deal?”

  The tigress returned once more. “Anything Tim says goes,” announced Felicity. “And anything he wants—cages, caves, bananas, and no interference from anybody. And Lovejoy is to have his scrounging privileges restored.”

  “Darling,” Tim said, “one can’t have everything.”

  Major Clyde said to Tim, “Look here, Bailey, if one got you what you needed and you had, say, unlimited—currency, how long would it take you to build up the ape packs back to pre-war strength and keep them there?”

  Tim did some quick figuring based on his experience and devotion to the apes, as well as his African contacts. “Nine months,” he said, “nine months to a year at most, but in the meantime the existing pack would be kept up to strength and we ought to have nothing to worry about. We could get cracking at once on—” he stopped and suddenly looked bleakly at both Felicity and Clyde. “But what’s the use?” he said half-angrily. “We’re out and they’re in. The Brigadier wouldn’t hear of it and, begging your pardon, sir, you’re only a Major. What the hell are we all sitting here gassing about?”

  Major Clyde gathered up his papers and files, restoring them to his case, arose and considering the amount of King William he himself had consumed reached the door with commendable steadiness. There he turned for a moment before going out and spoke but one sentence, “Just you wait, Major Bailey,” and then he was gone.

  1 3

  The Prime Minister Expresses Concern

  Brigadier J. W. Gaskell, O.B.E., D.S.O., M.C., sat at the desk which at that moment occupied the centre of a shattered world and contemplated the most appalling and disturbing signal that had come to his attention in his entire military career. It was from the Secretary of State to the Governor of Gibraltar. It had been transmitted in top-secret cypher and decoded privately by the chief of the Decoding Bureau, Wren 2nd Officer F. Bailey. On the margin had been scrawled and signed with the Governor’s initials, “J.W.G., this came this morning. Your toddler, I think. Keep me posted. F.L.”

  It read as follows:

  THE PRIME MINISTER HAS EXPRESSED SOME CONCERN AS TO WELFARE OF BARBARY APES ON GIBRALTAR ABOUT WHICH HE HAS HEARD DISQUIETING RUMOURS. HE IS MOST ANXIOUS THAT THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO DIE OUT. I HAVE RECEIVED DIRECTION FROM THE PRIME MINISTER THAT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF APES SHOULD BE NO LESS THAN 24 AND THAT EVERY EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE TO ACHIEVE THIS NUMBER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND MAINTAINING IT AS A MINIMUM THEREAFTER.
GRATEFUL IF YOU WOULD TAKE STEPS ACCORDINGLY AND INFORM ME AS TO THE RESULT.

  There it lay upon his desk, a single sheet of white bumph, and he sat looking at it as though it were a snake, transfixed and fascinated. Words from the message leaped up from the page and burned through the bone of his skull into the unhappy grey matter beneath. “Prime Minister,” “expresses concern,” “disquieting rumours,” “NOT be allowed to die out,” “every effort should be made.” If he had read the communication once he had been through it some dozens of times. He knew it by heart and yet what refused to filter through to his brain was the connection between the Prime Minister— THE PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN, Winston Churchill, the director and guiding genius of the Empire and of the war—and a pack of monkeys.

  The Brigadier was a soldier and not a psychologist. He had been growing greyer for months with the problems of defending an indefensible position should Spain become involved. He was part of a command under which absolute prodigies were being performed by British engineers hollowing out the Rock so as to provide bomb-proof shelters, shops and ammunition depots. An air strip was taking form in a frenzy of round-the-clock labour, all under the noses of the Germans, of course, but time was desperately wanted, and men and money. All this was going reasonably well, discounting frustrations and exasperations to be expected when a work of this nature is being rushed through in the face of possible enemy action at any moment. And here was the leader of the greatest nation on the face of the earth expressing concern over a pack of apes—monkeys. Filthy beasts that prowled the street, urinating, defecating, and spoiling people’s gardens.

  It is axiomatic that no commander except the genius at the very top is able to see a war as more than a piece with which he is intimately concerned. That anyone’s concern over the welfare of a pack of ugly and useless Macaques could have something to do with gaining some of the time so desperately needed to complete the works in progress was a connection too tenuous and far-fetched to be appreciated by a military man responsible for the lives of the civilian as well as military population under his command.

  The apes had not been called to his attention for almost a year, ever since he had dismissed Captain Bailey and installed a new O.I.C. Apes. He had successfully got rid of a recurring irritation and if ever a thought of them had intruded upon him he had congratulated himself upon the successful way in which he had coped.

  And now out of the blue the whole subject of apes was suddenly revived, alive, vibrating, worrying, and at the hands of none other than the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The Prime Minister!

  And here as he said the potent and magic name to himself the thoughts of the Brigadier whirled and tumbled and panicked as to what he was to do. For old and experienced and full of rank as he was, the chain of command was still a part of his life, and if he was a potentate before whom Captains and Subalterns trembled, yes and Majors and Lieutenant-Colonels too, so he himself was but a callow youth trembling before the august presence of the P.M. and even more the power that he represented. All the lives, the fears and the hopes of the British people and of himself as well were bound up in the person of this one great man. And there he was demanding to know about a lot of monkeys.

  The Brigadier touched a button and when his secretary appeared ordered, “Get me Lieutenant Barton and tell Major Quennel I want to see him when he comes in.”

  Ten minutes later Lieutenant Barton, O.I.C. Apes, was ushered in. He was a fresh-faced boy with rosy cheeks and curly hair with the still innocent eyes of one who had not yet discovered that most men will lie, cheat or steal to gain their ends. He went through the ritual of the greeting salutes and attention as though he meant it, which indeed he did.

  “Sit down, Barton,” commanded the Brigadier. “Now what’s all this about those rotten apes?”

  “What’s all what, sir?”

  Momentarily disarmed by the innocence of the young man’s eyes the Brigadier realized that he had started off wrong. The boy could have no knowledge of the contents of the message on the desk before him, and at that moment the Brigadier was not altogether wishful that he should. What he wanted was information. Right information, proper information, happy information. Something he could bung into an answering telegram to the Secretary of State who would convey it to the ear of the great man and close off this little matter for ever. He tried a new and more affable tack. “How are you and the monkeys getting along, Barton?”

  The young man looked surprised but not yet distressed. “Why—why I don’t know, sir.”

  Brigadier Gaskell glared. “You don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? You’re O.I.C. Apes, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right, sir, but you said I wasn’t to go near them. You said I was to make out my report on a single sheet of paper twice a year and if you ever caught me mucking about the apes’ village or sticking my nose into any kind of monkey business you’d have the pips off my shoulders quicker than I could sing ‘Who is Sylvia?’ Those were your words, sir,”

  They were too, as the Brigadier remembered. He said, “Oh, come now, Barton, I may have joked a bit but when you accepted the O.I.C. Apes you assumed certain responsibilities which I expected you to carry out.”

  The innocent eyes widened somewhat and some of the innocence began to fade. Lieutenant Barton was encountering some of man’s inhumanity to man and what seemed to be the beginning of a military double-cross in the higher echelons. “But, sir, you said—”

  “Never mind what I said, you’re supposed to use your head in this service, that’s why we make you officers.”

  “You said,” Lieutenant Barton went on doggedly, continuing to bat on the only wicket available, “you said I was to leave everything to that slob Lovejoy and if you ever caught me—”

  Gaskell cut him short. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard that. Now then, how many apes are there at present in the Queen’s Gate pack?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t counted them, sir. My report isn’t due for another two months, sir.”

  Major Quennel came in.

  “Oh, there you are, Quennel,” the Brigadier said. “Have you seen this yet?” He passed him the signal. The aide read it and as an old and trusted assistant permitted himself a whistle.

  “Damnable, what?” the Brigadier said. He turned to young Barton again. “Well, what about their health? Are they in good health or bad?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t been near—”

  Gaskell suddenly looked cunning. “Well,” he said, “have you heard any rumours that they weren’t feeling too fit perhaps?”

  “Only the Nazi broadcast, sir.”

  The Brigadier was genuinely startled. “The what?” he cried.

  “The broadcasts in Spanish from that German station in Algeciras saying the apes were dying out. I didn’t pay any attention to it. Anyway, I thought you’d be pleased.”

  A sinking feeling differing from his initial bewilderment played with the pit of the Brigadier’s stomach. For the first time it began to dawn upon him that there was more behind the message on the desk before him than he had imagined. He turned angrily upon Quennel. “Had you heard those broadcasts, Quennel?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then why wasn’t I informed?”

  “I thought you’d have heard them yourself, sir, and anyway it was a matter for O.I.C. Apes.”

  That frightened officer leaped into that breach with all his youth and agility. “You said I wasn’t to mention apes to you, sir, not under any circum—”

  The Brigadier felt the trap closing in about him and struggled to break the strands. “My God,” he said, “I am surrounded by imbeciles. What’s the good of my relying on you, Quennel? And this forty-watter here,” indicating the hurt and unhappy Barton. “Doesn’t know how many apes there are, where they are, whether they are sick or well, alive or dead.”

  Major Quennel said soothingly, “Why don’t you have a word with Gunner Lovej
oy, sir, he knows all about them.”

  “Get him then,” the Brigadier ordered, “and quickly.”

  The Brigade Major said some harsh things into the black mouthpiece of his telephone and the Gunner was produced with miraculous rapidity almost resembling a pantomime entrance. He stood at rigid attention. All his buttons were buttoned and his mind was galloping at a thousand revs per minute in an endeavour to deliver an estimate of the offence he was about to be charged with, and how long it would be before he would once more emerge into the sunshine from durance vile. He had never before been called before such high brass.