Scruffy - A Diversion (17 page)

“Darling,” he said, “I can’t let you. I’ve been dropped so many numbers I’ll be a Captain until I’m forty. I’ve been banished to these quarters. If the C.O. could have knocked a pip off my shoulder he would have done so. I can’t drag you down.”

Felicity sat on the edge of the table. Her now long, fine-spun hair was gathered in a bun at the back of her head. Trojan Helen had never looked more beautiful. She said, “You love me, don’t you, Tim?”

Tim replied, “Oh, my God.”

“Well,” said Felicity firmly, “that’s where we start from.”

The wartime marriage of Tim and Felicity was a quiet affair conducted in the chapel in the presence of the Admiral, Tim’s best man and a few friends, and Gunner Lovejoy slipping into the rear of the church at the last moment.

Denied the support of his wife who was back in England, and faced with a determined Felicity, the Admiral had not had sufficient stamina to continue his objections, even though he was aware that in the interim his son-in-law had not made himself any more desirable. However, the young people had survived a long separation and since Felicity was insistent the Admiral put the best face he could upon the matter, and the modest celebration of the union took place.

There was no leave granted for a honeymoon. When Tim applied for it his application was turned down. The dog-house was still operating as far as the Army was concerned, except now they were to occupy a kennel built for two, for the married quarters assigned to them were the shabbiest and most run-down located in Outer Siberia. This, it should be added, was not at all the doing of the Brigadier, who was no longer even aware of the fact of Captain Bailey’s existence beyond his satisfactory performance of his duties with his guns. The General had other worries as has been noted. The vindictiveness was simply that continuation of the
status quo.
Captain Bailey had been declared beyond the pale and would be maintained there until someone higher up ordered him out of limbo.

None of this affected Felicity whatsoever. She simply moved in with her husband. The honeymoon, a doubtful blessing, was not missed, for they discovered very quickly how genuinely lucky they had been to choose one another, as they now proceeded to fall violently and passionately in love in quite a different way than they had ever dreamed possible.

At first Timothy was harrowed by the depressing bungalow in the tatty and unimproved neighbourhood down near Point Europa, but Felicity soon cured him of that. She was a comfortable girl, sensible and agreeable, with no false notions about being owed anything by life. As far as that went she felt overpaid, for she had acquired all for herself the one man who had touched her deeply and permanently.

In her spare time she set about making their home as cheerful as possible, with plaster walls peeling and cracking from the dampness, bed sheets that were never quite dry, Government furniture that was ugly and insufficient and the garden patch where nothing would grow because they were allowed no water for such purposes. Undaunted, Felicity bought artificial flowers and set them out in the garden patch, where their colour cheered the entire neighbourhood, at least until the first rainstorm undid them. When Tim saw Felicity giggling at the wreckage he loved her more than ever and no longer worried about her.

There, too, was enjoyed their first and practically last quarrel, the issue of which was unimportant, the main point being that they had no more than really warmed up to a tempestuous exchange of amenities and personalities when suddenly and simultaneously they recognized the absurdity of the proceedings, called it a draw and began to shout with laughter.

Thus they were off to a more than auspicious start to a slightly less than humdrum life of a married Service couple when Gunner Lovejoy decided to change the formula of his usual drink at the Admiral Nelson and thereby altered the lives of a great number of people.

1 1
Mr. Ramirez Writes a Letter

“ ’A
lf me apes dead or dying from malnutrition and diseases resulting from privations due to same and no one to turn to. That’s what’s got me down. It’s enough to drive a man to drink!” And so saying Gunner John Lovejoy, to emphasize the last point, took a large swallow of the drink he had been driven to. In this instance a variation of his usual tipple was in some ways a fatal one. He was accustomed and conditioned to his own invented combination, Guinness laced with a dash of lime juice, but upon this occasion, and due no doubt to the anguish collected in his soul, he was substituting Malaga wine for the lime juice.

The Gunner was holding forth in the Admiral Nelson before a mixed audience consisting of several of his Artillery pals, two sailors from a destroyer undergoing repairs at the Navy Yard, some civilians from the town, and Alfonso T. Ramirez.

Ramirez was always eager and willing to stand treat, and if the Gunner had given any thought to the matter he would have felt certain that the incident of the stolen wig had been forgotten. In this, however, he would have been wrong. Ramirez was merely biding his time.

“If they want apes let them have apes,” the Gunner said, “and if they don’t want them let them shoot the beggars and have done with it. But don’t let the creatures starve to death and die off piecemeal before me very eyes, that’s looked after them the past twenty years. It’s more’n flesh and blood can stand.”

All the listeners made sympathetic noises and shuffled their feet and hoped for more, for this was fine talk to be listening to while drinking, containing as it did elements of news, story, sentiment and emotion.

The Gunner himself lifted up his dark glass and drank deeply. The acids of the Malaga joined hands with the esters of Lord Iveagh’s Guinness and mounting airily to his head they further unloosed his tongue to permit him to pour forth details of the tragedy that was being enacted before his eyes.

“ ’Ow would you like to see your personal friends carried off one after the other? Seems like every time I go up there these days I’m trippin’ over the corpse of one of me pals. You’ve all ’eard tell, ’aven’t you, how them apes are supposed to disappear when they die and not a flippin’ sign of ’em? Well, that’s a lot of malarky too. Last week it was Tess rolled up in a ball with her stummick all swole out like she’s swallered a balloon. This morning it was Mona. I showed ’em to a medic friend of mine. ‘Colic,’ he says, ‘from eating unripe fruit. I’ve seen babies like that, only babies can get rid of it; monkeys can’t.’ Like me own daughters they were, Mona and Tess. Brought ’em up practically by hand as you might say, when their mothers was killed. Fed ’em with a medicine dropper and then out of a bottle. Cried like a baby I did when I met Captain Tim in town today and told him. That’s Captain Bailey who used to be O.I.C. Apes, and a proper one too. I thought ’e was about to bawl same as me. He was there when they was born. Very fond ’e was of their mothers and them too. It was a black day for the hapes when Captain Bailey was sacked and that’s a fact, and they put in that yellow belly as doesn’t dare show the flag or stick up for the poor brutes for fear of blotting ’is copybook.”

“I buy another drink,” said Alfonso T. Ramirez. “Another drink all round.” All of the men at the bar stirred approvingly.

“That’s big-hearted of you, chum,” conceded the Gunner, “I could do with another.” The barman set them up. Ramirez paid.

The Gunner took a long, deep, draught. “And Scruffy on the rampage and doing in old Arthur. He was bound to kill him sooner or later, they two never getting on. But it seemed like he knowed we couldn’t afford to lose no hapes and done it a-purpose. And me not able to use the balloons on him to stop it.”

One of the sailors asked the question that Ramirez was popping to put in. “Balloons? Did I ’ear yer say balloons?”

“You did that,” replied the Gunner, and fishing into his pocket brought out a small red rubber toy balloon, the stem of which he set to his lips. Taking a deep breath he began to blow. The balloon filling with the mixed fumes of Malaga and Guinness swelled out to enormous size, distending beyond its capacity, and blew up with an appalling bang.

“There you are,” the Gunner said, “that’s ’ow it’s done. It’s the only way to control old Scruff. Terrifies him. Like a lamb ’e is when the balloon goes up. But what good is it now, I ask? When I come upon Scruff and Arthur he’d got his tusks in Arthur’s throat and his ’ead nearly tore off—”

Ramirez asked, “Why you not blow?”

The Gunner regarded him with contempt, “Asked like a hamateur,” he said. “What, and kill ’em both? Ain’t I just told you the hapes are nervous wrecks from all the shooting? That’s what got into old Scruff there, all the banging and blasting. He couldn’t stand no noise. If I gave ’em a balloon like as not he could have died on me ’ands, and then where would we have been?” He looked around for an answer but collected no more than some sympathetic shakes of the head until Ramirez said, “You have a difficult job, Gunner. I buy another drink.”

The Gunner regarded Ramirez now with benevolence. “Mannie,” he said, “you’ve hit upon me needs. So with Arthur dying of ’aving no ’ead that puts the Queen’s Gate pack down below ’arf.”

Ramirez, in the act of paying for his investment, turned and asked, “Did you say half, Gunner?”

“You count ’em,” replied the Gunner. “There used to be twenty-six in the Queen’s Gate pack. Who’s left now? There’s old Scruff, Pat and Tony, Ronnie and Millie, Kathleen, Sally, Judy and three hapelets that don’t look like they’d last more’n a couple of days. And it’s the same with the Middle Hill bunch. They get the worst of it when there’s shooting; they can’t stand noise and they just quietly gets a nervous breakdown and dies.” The Gunner now looked around at his once more enthralled audience and queried, “And what am I to do? Knock on the brass’s door and say, ‘Brigadier, your bleeding hapes are dying off and unless you call off that babu you’ve put in as O.I.C. Apes there won’t be none left?’ Not me, chums. I got seven days and another seven from that half-wit Lieutenant for laying me hands on a bit of extra rations for me friends, a couple of lettuces and some mouldy carrots and bread. And who put ’im in there with instructions to do same? The Brigadier.”

And the Gunner, now well lubricated, had a further question to ask of his audience. “What’s to happen if the whole blooming lot dies out? What’s the Rock going to be like without apes? What ’appens to me job? And what about where it tells what’s to become of us British when there’s no more apes here? Kicked off the Rock, that’s what the Spanish say. Who am I to say that it can’t happen? Or you, or you?”

Those singled out by this direct question shook their heads in lugubrious assent.

“If the brass ain’t thinking about it, I am,” asserted the Gunner. “A legend they calls it, but what’s the use of having a legend if yer don’t live by it? I’ve given me life to raising and looking after their ruddy apes and there they all are sending it down the drain.” The Gunner’s mind suddenly took them back to the morning’s tragedy. “Like a daughter she was to me, was Mona. There she was curled up in a thorn tree, her belly blown up like someone took a bicycle pump to her. Her little face looked that natural, I cried like a baby.” The tears once more rolled down the seams and furrows of the Gunner’s leathery face.

One of the Artillerymen put his arm around the Gunner’s shoulder and said, “Don’t take it so ’ard, pal, there must be plenty more where they came from.”

One of the sailors said, “That’s tough, chum,” and the other one agreed, “Yeah, that’s tough.”

Alfonso T. Ramirez drained his glass of beer and set it back upon the bar soundlessly. He stood there regarding it for a moment and then as quietly left. No one saw him go, or would have cared if they had, which was an error. For Mr. Ramirez had been struck with an idea and he was hastening home as quickly as he could to seek the privacy of his four walls and have it out to look at.

The fact that he wished to be in his room with the door securely locked before entertaining the thought which had invaded his mind in the Admiral Nelson was the measure of the courage of Mr. Ramirez, or rather total lack of it. He was a physical and moral coward, fearing death, pain, disgrace, punishment, all of the deterrents against wrong-doing, yet at the same time he enjoyed the greatest fantasies and illusions of grandeur and derring-do.

In his secret soul he was a dedicated Nazi and potential traitor by virtue of his hatred of the British, fanned by such unfortunate incidents as have been noted. In his mind’s eye he saw the Knight’s Cross being pinned on his breast by Hitler himself for some glorious and definitive exploit such as blowing up the ammunition dump at Gibraltar; sabotaging the water supply; discovering and giving away the secret pathway up which, should war be declared, the Germans could enter and overwhelm the Rock.

That same imagination, however, was equally capable of projecting another film upon the same screen, showing Alfonso T. Ramirez poised by the trap-door with a rope around his neck, or with his back to a wall facing a British firing squad for espionage or treason during wartime. So terrifying were these rushes that Ramirez didn’t so much as dare to fiddle with a prism in the optical shop of the Naval Yard where he worked. But ever since the declaration of war, burning with resentment against the British, he had been nursing the ambition to have some small share in the eventual triumph of the master race, to perform some deed or exploit which would aid in the downfall of the English.

There was a German Consulate in Algeciras, over-staffed to the point of absurdity, and everyone in Gibraltar knew that this was the operating base of the German Gestapo and Intelligence Service, and it was known as well that there must unquestionably be spies among the workmen who crossed the line every day. At one time Ramirez had entertained the idea of nipping across the border to that same German Consulate and offering his services, his value being that he had access to at least one sensitive spot in the scheme of British operations and defence, namely the Navy Yard.

His cowardice and his shrewdness had combined to prevent him from carrying out any project so rash. For he was clever enough to know that if a spy can be rewarded, he can also be blackmailed by his masters, and once committed can be ordered or compelled to undertake all kinds of hazardous operations. He saw himself being required to steal plans, plant bombs, even collaborate perhaps in assassinations. He had no stomach for any of this. He was terrified of weapons and even more fearful of being caught.