Scruffy - A Diversion (24 page)

Before his departure he had been additionally briefed by the Major and Tim on the importance of the operation upon which he was engaged, but truth to tell it had not entirely sunk in, due in part to his overwhelming aversion to exporting so precious a fluid and handing it over to a foreigner in exchange for some filthy kind of ape. That sort of thing simply went against the grain. And because of the seriousness of the situation the Major was actually prevented from letting the Group Captain in on exactly
how
important the matter was, and that the P.M. himself had sent a signal— Top Secret—and was keeping an eye on the affair.

As far as the Group Captain was concerned, this project appeared to be one of those wet shows cooked up by psychological warfare boffins. Still, the orders for the mission had come from the proper authority and Cranch was not in favour of irritating the Higher Ups.

However, the case of whisky at his side, which would have provided an absolutely smashing party, was very much on his mind, and all during the flight across to Africa the Group Captain, by association, was bellowing, “The Spaniard who blighted my life,” above the roar of his single engine, meaning, of course, Señor Blasco Irun, and a song which he made up himself, which went: “Blast old Blasco—bung him on his arsco,” and could get no further with than the first couplet.

In deference to his cargo, Cranch made an eggshell landing on the Ceuta air-strip, and in accordance with his instructions, remained at the far end of the runway. The Consul had done his work well in the matter of bribes. Eight Guardias Civil in their patent leather hats, and armed with carbines, formed a cordon around the aircraft; the car appeared with a Moroccan driver who exhibited a mouthful of gold teeth, quickly removed the case of Scotch and the transportation box to the rear of his vehicle, and motioned the Group Captain into the front seat. They set off in the direction of the darkling and sombre hills back of the coastline. The time was six o’clock.

By this time some of the gloom cast over him by his mission had begun to evaporate from Cranch, who was too cheerful an individual to remain depressed over long periods. He reflected that he was off the Rock; it obviously was going to be an overnight job; Ceuta was a place not exactly noted for its restrictions; he’d bung the powder into the old monkey, sew her up into her box, and go off on the town. Things could be a lot worse. He might even be able to import a few bottles of Spanish brandy, though this was known on the Rock as The Fate Worse Than Death, and indicated why the Spaniards put such a high value on honest Scotch whisky.

The Group Captain’s spirits lifted further as the road on which his driver took him, instead of leading to some slum or scruffy bit of farmland, began to pass through exquisitely cultivated fruit orchards and private estates featuring splendid villas with red roofs and walls almost hidden beneath wistaria and bougainvillaea. In his mind he had pictured the monkey-keeping Señor Irun as being a ragged fellow with a stubble beard and broken teeth who stank of garlic.

Now they were obviously heading for the residential section—the Señor might even be the type who would offer a chap a snort.

The villas grew larger and more luxurious, and finally they turned up a broad avenue of palms, passed through a pair of large wrought-iron gates, and drew up before a hacienda of truly magnificent style and proportions. An African in snow-white baggy trousers, red jacket and tarboosh opened the door, another took the Group Captain’s cap. Cranch revised his opinion of Señor Irun upwards again, and imagined the owner of so much magnificence as a stately Don, when a small, rotund man with somewhat sagging cheeks and ten long hairs laid in parallel lines across his otherwise bald head appeared and said, “You are the Captain Cranch? I am Blasco Irun. You are most welcome here.” And then he added with just a trace of anxiety, “You have eet weeth you?”

“It’s just out in the car, Señor,” Cranch reported, “all tickety-boo. Dropped it in light as a feather. I’ll bet there wasn’t even a ripple.”

The Señor brightened perceptibly and clapped his hands; four more Africans appeared and he went into a torrent of instructions in Spanish, with elegant and expressive pantomime from which the Group Captain gathered they had been advised to transport the case as gently as though it were the corpse of their late grandmother.

Cranch, who had been in Spain long enough to appreciate the
décor
, noted that the huge room in which he found himself was a treasure chamber luxuriously furnished in examples of Spanish, Moorish, and African art and handicraft. “Blimey,” he said to himself, “there’s lolly ’ere.”

The four Africans entered bearing the case with the reverence called for, and brought it to another feather landing on the floor. Two more approached with hammer and chisel and applied themselves to the task of prying open the case with the same care used by an archaeologist approaching some priceless find embedded in the earth. The Señor, clad in immaculate white trousers and white shirt, bound with a broad red sash draped about his protuberant stomach, hovered over them, his hands fluttering, lips pursed, and eyes filled with anxiety. Cranch made another quick revision, but this time downwards. “Oh no, no, no,” he said to himself, “this drain isn’t buying a drink. He’ll want it all for himself.”

With a gentle creaking the lid came off, revealing the bottles secured in straw, and each one sealed and intact.

As the Group Captain had reported, not even a ripple had disturbed their contents. The round, anxious face of the Señor now relaxed into an enchanting and childlike smile. “
Muy bien,
” and he went over and shook Cranch solemnly by the hand. “Well,” he said, “well, well,” and Cranch suddenly realized he was translating from “
bien
” and meant “good”. “Now come weeth me, please.”

He led the Group Captain through a succession of rooms of bewildering beauty and luxury until they came to a conservatory at one end of which was a large cage in which sat a full-grown African Macaque or Barbary ape, squatting on her haunches and eating a banana. Upon their entrance she ceased for a moment, looked and regarded them with disinterest out of her golden-brown eyes, and then returned to her fruit.

The Señor flung out an arm proudly, “There she ees! Ees she not beautiful? She make you ver” fine babies, I theenk. Her name ees Ramona.”

Something in the name stirred a memory in Group Captain Cranch, a memory of other times and other places, of girls and parties, wailing saxophones and dancing. He suddenly filled his lungs and in his resonant baritone gave forth with:

“Ramona, I hear the mission bells above.
Ramona, they’re ringing out our song of love.
I press you, caress you,
And bless the day you taught me to care—”

The song filled the patio, causing Ramona to drop her banana in amazement, and the Señor to regard the Group Captain with a kind of astonished and excited interest.

Señor Irun cried, “You seeng?”

The Group Captain was now seized with the exaltation that sometimes filled him when he heard the sound of his own voice. “Do I sing?” he repeated. “Do I sing?” And then, filling the vast box of his chest with air, he let fly with “Ridi Pagliacci’, causing some Moorish lamps hanging from the ceiling to stir uneasily, and Ramona to leap up the side of her cage and chatter at him, though whether it was with love or anger was impossible to say.

At the conclusion of the rendition Cranch swept the rotund little man a bow. Irun clapped two small, pudgy hands together and cried, “Well!
Magnifico! Maravilloso!
You are very versatile, no?”

The Group Captain swept the Señor another bow. “Howard Arthur Cranch, at your service,” he said. “Songs, dances, impersonations and recitations, sleight-of-hand, and tricks with string.”

Señor Irun did not react to this note of pleasantry as one might have expected him to, either as a wealthy Spanish gentleman or a fellow who could take a joke. Instead the look that he turned upon the Group Captain was full of a curious kind of eagerness mingled with wistfulness. “Thees is true?” he asked. “You can do all theese theengs?”

“Bookings available now until Christmas,” Cranch replied. “Performances guaranteed, or money refunded.”

“Maybe,” the Señor said, “maybe perhaps then you could stay and we could have a little party?”

The word “party” acted upon Cranch like an electric shock, and drove all banter out of his system. “Eh—what’s that?” he said. “A party? Do you mean it?”

“Oh yes, pleese,” the Señor said. A certain amount of becoming shyness suddenly suffused him as he asked, “Do you like girls?”

The Group Captain turned his eyes heavenward and repeated the question twice, “Do I like girls? He asks me do I like girls?”

“I like girls,” the Señor confided.

The Group Captain extended one of his large hands and said, “Señor, that makes us brothers.”

“Oh well, well!” cried the Señor, confusing Cranch momentarily until he translated it back into, “Good, good!” “I know many girls who like the party. They live in the town. I will invite them and they will come because I am the black ship.”

“Are you, old boy?” said Cranch. “Sort of a piraty chap, what? Skull and crossbones, eh?”

“No, no,” the Señor said. “The black ship of the family. The other ships have white wool—mine, she is black, because I am the playboy. Always I have been the playboy. No nice girl of a good family will marry with me, even though I am ver’ wealthy. But of thees I am glad, because I am different from other Spaniards. I love the party. I will invite the girls. You have brought the liquor, and you will seeng and do for us all your tricks. Then they will love you ver’ much.”

For a moment Cranch felt a dreamlike quality as though he had suddenly been trapped into acting out a major role in a story which had just gone the rounds of the Services on the Rock, and which began: “It seems that this commercial traveller suddenly found himself in the Sultan’s harem with all these beautiful girls around him, when—” He shook himself mentally like a terrier to snap himself out of it. For all he knew the Señor might produce a lot of old bags with buck teeth. However, the chance was well worth taking, the Scotch was real and so was the Señor’s eagerness. He placed his finger alongside his nose and said, “Whish,” took a few tiptoe steps up and down the room, and said, “Lead on, son. Let’s get cracking.”

“Oh well, well!” cried Señor Irun, and clapped his hands. The slaves of his particular lamp appeared from all doorways.

The party was a huge and outstanding success. The measure of its attainment can be judged by the fact that the Group Captain was not compelled to exaggerate when upon his return he narrated the story for the benefit of his fellow officers. The girls resembled either Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable, or a blending of both. They were gay and untrammelled. The young men called upon to fill in the interstices were handsome and docile, immediately relinquishing any young lady with whom either the Señor or the Group Captain wished to dance.

There were two orchestras imported from Ceuta so that the music was continuous, except when Cranch was rendering his speciality numbers that did not call for orchestral accompaniment. There were car-loads of sherry, lorry-loads of champagne, caviar and
foie gras
, but the basis of it all was really the case of Black and White Scotch whisky, which provided in a way the theme of the party. The war had shut down the supply and the communicants approached this gift of the gods with veneration and gratitude. It even, black ship or not, brought out some of the nice people, who applauded Howard Cranch’s performance with enthusiasm. None of them had ever seen anyone like Group Captain Cranch before; Cranch had never had such an audience, or such a good time, in his life, and towards the middle of the evening he re-wrote his couplet into: “Blessing on old Blasco—the Señor’s the Tabasco,” and after a while they all sang it like a hymn.

The Señor himself waddled from room to room to make sure that everybody was having a good time, thus enjoying the best of good times himself.

The high point of the affair was reached about 1 a.m., when Group Captain Cranch, who had retired to a bedroom for a change of costume (it seems that the Señor, who also had a predilection for fancy-dress balls, kept a supply in hand), appeared as a Chinaman with a long queue, and aided by the Señor, the orchestra and the ape of that name, sang “Ramona” as it probably never had been rendered before.

It was fortunate that the monkey actually liked noise and people, and when freed from her cage leaped about and screeched and screamed as enthusiastically as any of them. She had taken a shine to Cranch apparently, and offered no difficulties when called upon to assist him in the execution of the famous song.

“Lamona,” sang the Chinese Cranch, “I hear the mission bells above.”

Over his head Señor Irun rang a large dinner bell.

“Lamona, they’re ringee out our song of love. I press-ee you, caress-ee you . . .”

Ramona loved that part, and pressed and caressed right back, howling with excitement.

“Lamona, when day is done I’ll hear you call . . .” (Aside: you can hear this one clear down to Tangier.) “Lamona, I’ll meet you by the waterfall.”

This performance taking place in the patio where there was a fountain, the Group Captain suited action to the words and got into it.

“I dread the dawn when I awake-ee to find you gawn . . .”

Ramona here supplied the action, not caring for water, and went up on to the balcony.

“Lamona,” sang the Group Captain, raising his arms to her, “I need you—my own.”

It was agreed that there had never before in the history of Spanish Africa, or any other place, been a party the like of this, and Señor Irun was as happy as a child.

But afterwards, when he had got out of his Chinese costume and reappeared to mingle with the guests in uniform, Cranch for the first time was preoccupied. His recent act had reminded him of something which had quite slipped his mind
;
he had a mission to perform which was only half-completed. He had delivered the case of whisky all right, but there was still this chimp, or rather, Ramona, to be handed over to some dim bulbs by the names of Bailey, McPherson and Clyde.