Scruffy - A Diversion (27 page)

Lovejoy said, “Yes, sir,” and waited for more.

Major Clyde continued: “Although Miss Boddy was fond of her aunt and uncle, who, incidentally, were pacifists, a philosophy with which she herself is strongly imbued, it was her absent father whom she really worshipped, and as frequently happens in these intense father and daughter relationships, when she was left alone and well off, having reached maturity, she devoted her life to him and never married. There was just one weakness afflicting Captain Boddy during these periods spent ashore in the loving care of his daughter and which he was unable to conceal from her. Can you guess what this was, Lovejoy?”

“Women,” Lovejoy suggested.

“Drink,” corrected Major Clyde. “No, it seemed that stops in foreign ports were sufficient to take care of the natural urges of the Captain and there was no scandal in his life while ashore at home, but he did like the bottle, and who,” continued the Major in an aside during which he took a pull at his glass of Scotch and water, and in which Lovejoy joined him, “shall blame him? Yet it doesn’t do to over-indulge and it was, I suspect, this addiction which kept Captain Boddy from rising in his profession.”

The Major leafed through the notes looking for something in another section and when he found it said, “As reported by some of the neighbours in the vicinity of 12 Wilton Gardens, the Captain would often come rolling home, roaring drunk, to be taken in and put to bed like a child by his daughter. Outwardly Constance Boddy ignored this failing as though it did not exist. Inwardly she formed an abiding hatred for intoxicating liquors and their effects upon human beings.”

“Shocking, sir, ain’t they,” commented Lovejoy.

Major Clyde looked at him sharply for an instant but there was only innocence on the Gunner’s countenance, and the Major saw that he meant it. “Well,” he said, “there you have a picture of Miss Boddy’s life over a period of more than fifteen years; an active delver in the fields of temperance, peace, anti-vivisection, R.S.P.C.A., and other good works during her father’s absence, and total dedication to his person and comfort when he came ashore.”

The Major again leafed through another portion of the notes and then continued: “On one of his trips shortly before the Captain succumbed suddenly to a heart attack, he brought his daughter as a gift a small female Macaque acquired during a stop in Morocoo. Apparently the mother of this apelet had strayed into the sea-port with her young one clinging to her, and had been set upon by Arab children who stoned and killed her and were tormenting the infant when Captain Boddy happened to come along and rescued it. He took the little creature aboard his vessel, fed it with a medicine dropper, nursed it into health and vigour, and upon his return to the Pool of London presented it to his daughter for a pet.”

“Most fortuitous, the Captain’s happening by just then,” remarked the Gunner, stirred to sentiment by the whisky.

“That remains to be seen,” replied the Major somewhat snappishly, as his problem settled upon his shoulders again. “The point is that a strong bond was immediately welded between the woman who had been a motherless girl and the motherless ape, who was named Amelia. This bond,” continued the Major, upon whom the whisky had the effect of drastically augmenting the imagery of his speech, “was forged later into a link of unbreakable steel when the Captain regrettably passed on during a voyage through the Straits of Malacca and was buried at sea, leaving Miss Boddy alone in the world except for Amelia. Does the strength of this attachment begin to dawn upon you, Gunner?”

“Gord, yes,” replied Lovejoy, “mother and daughter bound together inseparably by the slings and arrows of adversity.”

The Major again looked up at the Gunner sharply to see whether his leg was being pulled, but there was no guile in the soldier’s seamed countenance and Clyde felt a momentary flash of encouragement. If there was that much poetry in the Gunner’s soul his mission might stand a chance of success. “That’s it,” he said. “Got it in one. Amelia was the only living reminder of the man to whom she had devoted the whole of her adult life. The situation only confirmed Miss Boddy in her spinsterhood all the more determinedly, since no mere man could substitute for the image she had created of her father, and at the same time, by psychological processes I’ll not go into at the moment, Amelia became as her child, born of her spiritual union with her father. Do you twig some facets of the problem, Gunner?”

The odd thing was that some of it had penetrated to the Gunner, in spite of the Major’s complicated rhetoric. “Narsty it could be, sir, couldn’t it?”

“Just you wait,” the Major concluded, “for see here: her house is her own, her investments have prospered so that she is provided for and very well for the rest of her life”—the Major paused here and then some of the waspishness returning to his voice, he said—“so there is no question of bribery. Absolutely impossible! She’s a simple soul who wants nothing. She’s naturally shy of men and has high moral principles.”

“Gord,” said Lovejoy.

“We were hoping,” the Major suggested, speaking softly now, “that through your work with the apes you might manage to make some impression on her.”

“How old is she?” asked Lovejoy.

“Forty-three,” replied the Major.

The Gunner looked glum.

“And teetotal,” added the Major sternly. “Got it, Lovejoy? A dedicated enemy of the demon rum; a woman addicted to good works.”

“Gord,” said the Gunner again.

“Yes, I know,” said the Major, “a bloodless, kill-joy spinster, you’ll say, going about poking her nose into other people’s business. It all adds up to a rather repulsive picture, doesn’t it, but the point is, Miss Boddy isn’t like that at all. Here she is.” And the Major uncovered the photograph.

The Major was pleased with his effect; the Gunner was indeed surprised for in his mind he had been forming a picture of a bony, acidulous woman, hook-nosed, dried-out and resentful of having become a feminine derelict. At forty-three Miss Constance Boddy was buxom and well-padded, her body apparently still harbouring the juices of life. She had soft hair, light in colour which she wore cut short and which curled naturally and attractively. There was nothing stern or severe about the mouth or the chin; the eyes that looked up at Gunner Lovejoy from the picture seemed to be most kind and the whole expression of the face was one of friendliness and gentleness.

“Yes, yes,” said the Major, reading the thoughts mirrored on the Gunner’s open countenance, “surprising, isn’t it?” He knew that what was baffling the Gunner was the unmistakable air of gentility revealed by the photograph, in view of what he had told him of Miss Boddy’s origins. “And when you speak with her,” he added, “it is even more astonishing.” The Major had not had too much whisky to neglect to be tactful. “It isn’t too difficult to better yourself when you have a bit of money,” he commented.

Lovejoy got the point, appreciated the Major’s finesse and wished now to put him at his ease in return and said, “It’s money makes the ’orse go, sir.”

“Exactly,” agreed the Major, “but there is still another facet to the character of this rather remarkable woman which makes our problem just that much more difficult.”

Here Major Clyde reached for the bottle and repeated the potion in his and the Gunner’s glass. The Gunner looked at him diffidently and forbore to reach for it remembering the Major’s threats, but the latter nodded in a friendly enough fashion and said, “It’s all right, Lovejoy, go ahead. Your enforced monasticism doesn’t begin officially until you leave this room.” He himself quaffed deeply and then set his glass down with a sigh. “Every so often, Lovejoy,” he began, “one encounters on this earth women possessed of a deep and abiding innocence. They can be of any age beginning with six months, or in any guise, and the thing to remember is that experience of life, buffets, difficulties or disasters encountered have nothing whatsoever to do with it. They ride the storms; they emerge from the eye of the cyclone unhurt, the fundamental innocence with which they were born unaltered. One of the most innocent women I have ever encountered was a case-hardened Matto Grosso prostitute who ended up in a brothel in Singapore.”

“Ain’t it the truth, sir,” the Gunner began confidentially, “I remember once when we were out in Madras and went to a place we—”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted the Major who had merely been trying to be graphically illustrative and had not meant to embark upon an exchange of army reminiscences. “I’m sure you have. The point I have been trying to make is that such a one is Miss Constance Boddy.”

The Gunner was startled. “Good Lord, sir,” he said, “you don’t mean that she—”

“Heavens, no,” the Major exclaimed, “certainly not. I’m merely stating that she has that kind of innocence which renders her immune to men, to money, to hate, to love, wars, earthquakes, catastrophes, man-made and natural cataclysms.”

“Hasn’t she any weaknesses?” asked the Gunner.

“She has none, at least none that we have been able to ascertain. We were hoping that whoever approached her on the project might be able to find some, or at least one hitherto unsuspected, and work the vein.”

The Gunner remained silent at this implication that obviously he wouldn’t do for this job and the Major continued, “As you can well imagine, Miss Boddy is against war, cruelty, and killing and is not in sympathy with our avowed intentions of slaughtering the Germans until they cry quits. I should add here that neither is she in agreement with the German practice of dropping bombs upon the British. She believes that both sides are wrong and for all I know she may have something there. After you have been with her for a little while you find yourself inclined to think somewhat along the lines that she does. Also you can’t be angry with her for there is a certain childlike quality to her innocence. She has almost some of that enchanting feyness I would not hesitate to describe as loony if she weren’t so eminently sensible in a great many other areas.”

Lovejoy, who was becoming increasingly depressed by the Major’s recital, took a powerful swallow of his medicine, so large a one in fact that arriving at the first stop in his system it caused him to shudder violently from head to foot. He then asked: “Sir, have you—ah—presented the matter to the lady as yet?”

The Major also took a large gulp, almost as though wishing perhaps to drown the memories of the encounter. “In a roundabout way,” he replied. “It’s a subject that one simply doesn’t plunge into with a lady without a great deal of preliminary and adequate preparation, as you will discover for yourself. I have mentioned her innocence, I think.”

“And did she—”

“No. I’m afraid not,” the Major shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid not at all, not any of it. Not even the beginning of a suggestion that to lend us the services of Amelia might appreciatively shorten the war. She was quite horrified that we should even be thinking of such a thing. Wars were the concern of those who started them and she certainly was not going to involve either Amelia or herself in any manner. She must be persuaded to change her mind. We need Amelia.” He flipped a page in the file, picked up a photograph and spun it across the desk to Lovejoy. “This is Amelia,” he said.

Lovejoy glanced at the photograph then did a second take and an expression of horror came over his open countenance. “Crikey!” he said. He reached for the rest of his whisky and emptied the glass. Major Clyde did the same with his and then poured two more stiff ones.

“Oh, Crikey,” Lovejoy repeated and studied the photograph of the most misbegotten Barbary ape ever to come to his notice. To begin with she was cross-eyed. She was also deformed in some manner with one shoulder higher than the other, no doubt the result of the mishandling she had received at the time her mother was killed. Her coat was in good condition, testifying the loving care lavished upon her by Miss Boddy, but for the rest she was as repulsive a monkey as one could expect to find in a month of monkeys. She caricatured not only the human race but her own species as well.

“Gord!” The Gunner gave vent to his favourite expletive again. “Scruffy won’t like ’er.”

“He has got to like her,” the Major said fiercely. “That is provided we can ever get her hatched—what I mean to say is if we can get her across that bridge— Damn it all, man, you know what I am trying to say.”

“Yes, yes,” said the Gunner soothingly, “of course, sir, something to do about not counting your chickens before you come to them.”

“That’s it,” said the Major. “Got it in one. You’re a smart fellow, Lovejoy.”

The Gunner took a drink on this statement which tended to make him morose. Whenever officers flattered him it usually was the beginning of an assignment leading to trouble.

“Yes, sir,” reiterated the Major. “I’m beginning to like you, Lovejoy. Right! At the present moment Miss Boddy and Amelia are located in rooms comprising the entire second floor of Cooks Hotel at Hope Cove, near Kingsbridge-by-the-Sea in South Devon. Miss Boddy retired thither last year when the bombing began, not because of any question of her own safety since I might also add she is a person of indomitable courage as well as principle, but because Amelia could not stand the noise of the explosions. Hope Cove,” the Major continued, “is a tiny fishing hamlet around the corner from Bolt Tail, consisting of a group of thatched cottages, Cooks Hotel, a few boarding houses for taking summer visitors, two rowing boats and half a dozen lobster pots. You will proceed thither tomorrow, leaving Paddington at 10.30 hours and will register at the hotel where a room has been reserved for you and—”

“I don’t like it, sir,” Lovejoy interrupted suddenly with a definite shake of his head. “No, sir, I don’t like anything about it. I’m not the man for the job. Cozening innocent women, that’s not John C. Lovejoy, never ’as been, sir. I’ve ’ad me share of hard knocks and ups and downs and women ain’t played much of a part in them and such as ’as has known what they’ve been about. There it is, sir, straightforward like out of the horse’s mouth and no beating about the moss, if you’ll excuse me, sir, for speaking so frankly.”

The Major didn’t reply immediately to this outburst, but sat there regarding the Gunner silently, his thin dark brows drawn into a straight line. Hunched up in his office chair with one knee drawn up, his eyes glittering, he looked like a dark fiend, a purposeful and malevolent Mephistopheles. And yet when he spoke again there was another surprise in store for Gunner Lovejoy. His voice was soft, caressing and barely audible at first. “Lovejoy,” he asked, “do you love your country?”