Scruffy - A Diversion (30 page)

Miss Boddy’s cigarette end glowed in the darkness and she sighed with contentment. “What a dear, good, kind man you must be, Mr. Lovejoy, to love animals so. And to think you don’t drink either like so many of the rough soldiery.”

The Gunner felt like a dog, having made a point of his teetotalism with Miss Boddy and his agreement with her that the most frequent early guise of the devil was in the shape of demon rum. However, he felt in one of his more distant bones, down around the ankles, that he might at some time or other be needing a hedge and so he said, “Y-a-a-s, Ma’am, but it ain’t been all that easy. It’s not that I haven’t had me battle with strong drink before I saw the light, or that there ain’t days when the tempteyshun comes over me to back-slide, a tempteyshun which up to now I have resisted.”

In the darkness of the black-out village Miss Boddy’s voice vibrated with emotion. “Oh, Mr. Lovejoy,” she quavered, “how very brave of you. If ever the feeling should come over you when I was with you—if you told me about it, I should be proud to help you.”

Something tickled the back of Gunner Lovejoy’s mind, a scrap of his conversation with Major Clyde in his office, something to do with the fact that Miss Boddy so far had evinced no weakness and that the Army was expecting him to discover one, if any, and make use of it.

Was this then one, this passion for prohibition, and could it be put to account? The Gunner filed this away in his mind for future reference and continued enlarging the epic of Harold, in the hopes that Miss Boddy eventually could be led to consent to the idea of giving Amelia in marriage to this paragon.

Lovejoy had his own built-in set of ethics and morals which served him very well in his profession, and though he had found it impossible to conceal his mission from Miss Boddy, he was not at all bothered by the false and smarmy picture of Harold he was setting up in the mind of Miss Boddy, or by scruples over what would occur should she yield and allow her pet to make the trip to Gibraltar. His job was to persuade her to let this happen, collect the ape, accompany it to the Rock and thereafter his responsibility would end. What took place then would be up to Captain Bailey and the rest.

But what made his task even attractive now and left his conscience free was that like so many writers he was falling a victim to his own creation and was beginning to believe wholeheartedly in its reality.

Thus Harold-Scruffy became a kind of split or dual personality. Scruffy was bad, but Harold was good. Scruffy was Scruffy and no remedy for that, but Harold became endowed with a life and character of his own, speeding towards canonization.

Nor was the legend thus created in any way diminished by the cunning photographs of Harold with which Lovejoy had been supplied by Tim Bailey and one of which now resided on the dressing-table in Miss Boddy’s room, so that in privacy she could continue to contemplate the hero to whose saga she was listening nightly.

Aside from compulsory teetotalism Gunner Lovejoy found himself enjoying his holiday in Devon. The hotel spoiled him with extra eggs and titbits and other things off-ration for his meals, having remained convinced that while his wound remained invisible he was bleeding internally. It was peaceful and quiet away from the racketing guns on the Rock and the onerous duties visited inevitably upon the ranker, and finally the pleasant personality of the plump spinster coupled with the love of Amelia combined to make the time pass quickly and delightfully.

This idyll was shattered by a telephone call which turned out to have Major Clyde sharply at the other end of the line.

“What the devil is going on down there, Lovejoy, and why haven’t you reported? The Governor is giving me hell, the Colonial Secretary is cluttering up the cables, the Brigadier is getting hot under the collar, Major Bailey is close to a nervous breakdown and the P.M. has asked what’s been done about his directive to bring and keep the Rock apes up to strength. What are you trying to do, send us all down the drain?”

“No, sir,” said the Gunner, genuinely starded to find that there was another world outside of Hope Cove, South Devon, and an irritable and angry one which apparently was still at war. “I was just thinking of writing you a letter, sir.”

“Charming of you, Lovejoy,” came the acid voice of the Major. “Send it on by pigeon post, eh? Or maybe by dog sled via the Great Circle! What’s happening, man, what’s happening? That’s what I want to know. Have you got anywhere?”

“Y-yes, sir, at least I think so. She loves me!”

There was a moment of silence from the other end of the line after which the voice of Major Clyde filled it again, so freezingly that icicles must have formed on the wires between London and Devonshire. “May I be the first to congratulate you, Gunner, and at the same time might I also remind you that this is an army at war, and not a matrimonial bureau. In this instance your private life—”

“Oh, for Gord’s sake, sir,” the Gunner rushed to explain as the penny clanked, “not ’er, Amelia, sir.”

Major Clyde said, “Well, what’s going to come of it, or do you want me to ask for an armistice until you can make up your mind?”

“No, sir,” said the unhappy Gunner, “I’ve been getting the old girl warmed up. I was going to ask ’er pretty soon to let me take Amelia—”

“When?” asked the Major.

“S-Saturday night,” replied the Gunner with a sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach as he realized that he had irrevocably committed himself, it being Friday morning.

“O.K.,” said the Major. “Ring me as soon as she gives her answer,” and hung up.

The Gunner made all of the preparations consistent with the behaviour of an anxious swain who had brought himself to the point of popping the question. He walked three miles to Thurlstone to the barber to have his hair cut, took a bath, changed his linen, shaved twice over, removed some spots from his tunic and polished his shoes until his seamed and anxious face was reflected in them. The only thing he lacked was the solitaire in its box concealed about his person. Instead, he had such titbits as sugar, some fresh carrots and a package of shelled hazel nuts of which Amelia was inordinately fond.

The wording of his proposal too was worrying. He had never proposed to an ape before. Actually, he realized it was not to Amelia he would be making overtures, but to Miss Boddy, but on the other hand he was not proposing to Miss Boddy for Miss Boddy, but for Amelia. The situation was enough to try a professional poet and Lovejoy, whose inventiveness in describing the prospective groom had not flagged, now found himself bogged down.

The scene was familiar, the darkened veranda, the glowing cigarette ends, the contented chittering and caresses of Amelia.

“Miss Boddy—may I call you Constance?” Ridiculous sentences like that which he had seen in joke books flashed through the Gunner’s mind. And absurd scenes too, such as himself on his knees before Miss Boddy—also from joke books. Except that this was no joke.

And then, quite suddenly, out of the blue, almost as though she had guessed that this idyll was drawing to a close, Miss Boddy relieved him by giving him the opening for which he was desperately seeking. She said, “It has been so pleasant having you here, Mr. Lovejoy, with your wonderful stories about Harold, I feel as though I know him almost as well as I do Amelia. I suppose you will have to be getting back to him soon, he must miss you dreadfully!”

“Yes, Ma’am, that’s it!” the Gunner said, rushing the words forth lest the opportunity pass. “I ’ad a letter from ’im only the other day, I mean from the chap who’s looking after ’im. Lonely ’e is. And pining, that’s wot. A mate is what ’e needs, a mate and a family like everyone else. Look ’ere, Miss Boddy, what about letting me take Amelia back to old Harold? They’re made for each other, that’s wot they are. Think how ’appy they’d be up there on the old Rock together by Prince Ferdinand’s Battery. Coo, the view from there would knock your eye out, the ’arbour stretching out below and Mount Atlas across the Strytes. All the peanuts they could eat and a lot of little hapelets running around. You could trust her with me. I’ve had the care of hapes for twenty years. I’d see her all right, Ma’am. Why, the number of little hapes I’ve helped to deliver—”

Miss Boddy stirred uneasily in the darkness and the interruption had the effect of stemming the Gunner’s flow. Then she said softly, “Oh no, Mr. Lovejoy, I’m afraid I would not want Amelia ever to do anything like that.”

“But Ma’am,” said the Gunner impassionedly, “it’s nature, ain’t it? Amelia here has got a heart brimming over with love, look at ’er” (indeed Amelia was nibbling dreamily at the Gunner’s ear). “Every creature has got to ’ave a mate, like!”

“We don’t,” said Miss Boddy speaking even more softly. “Not Amelia and I.”

“But Ma’am,” said Lovejoy, beginning to flounder as he realized he had put his foot in it, “this is different, don’t you understand, it’s on account of the war.”

“But surely you will remember,” replied Miss Boddy, “that I don’t approve of the war.”

“But Harold there all by himself on the Rock there pining for Amelia.”

“How does he know about her, Mr. Lovejoy?”

“I wrote,” said the Gunner.

Miss Boddy was very gentle but very firm. “It’s no use, Mr. Lovejoy,” she said, “I should never permit Amelia to leave my side to go so far away even with someone as—as kind-hearted and trustworthy as you. I told the young man who came down here to speak to me about this a month or so ago and I’m very sorry to have to tell you the same. The answer is no.”

And from that position there was no budging her.

“I think I’ll go for a walk,” the Gunner said, and arose.

“Poor Mr. Lovejoy,” Miss Boddy said, “I know you are disappointed, I’m so sorry.”

It was still early, before nine o’clock in fact, and the Gunner proceeded down the path that led along the cliff to the village which consisted of no more than a post office, an arty-crafty-shoppe, a general store and The Crown and Anchor, an attractive pub done in frigate style in black and white timber with tarred rope and ships’ bells and other nautical paraphernalia enticingly displayed. Up to that moment the Gunner had passed this edifice resolutely, or had carefully planned his walks in the other direction. Now, with his mission a bust, himself a failure, the Rock snatched from the Empire and the war lost, Lovejoy came to a halt in front of the pub.

What did anything matter? What even could Major Clyde do to him, there being no rank lower than the one he occupied, and what of his own personal pride? It was also a fact that he had been more than a week without spending a sixpence and his pockets were bursting with money. Also it was Saturday night. Farewell Gibraltar, Major Bailey, Scruffy-Harold and all his friends!
Adieu
Miss Constance Boddy,
adieu
Amelia! Good-bye then to teetotalism.

With purposeful step Gunner John C. Lovejoy entered the oak-beamed lounge of The Crown and Anchor.

When he emerged at closing-time the Gunner was loaded. He had not been tossed out, nor did he have to be helped across the threshold, his reaction to strong drink being mainly internal, and he had the ability to stand up to a bar for hours without any visible change in his appearance. However, for years Lovejoy had been doing his drinking in an even temperature which enabled him to give at least the outward appearance of holding his liquor. At Hope Cove, in The Crown and Anchor, alas, he experienced new conditions, to which he was unaccustomed.

Since the pub was blacked out and every crack that might show a light to sea was stuffed, the atmosphere within can be imagined. Without, the Devon nights were cool, verging on the chill, so when Lovejoy passed from the steamy fug of the pub into the teeth of a wind that had decided to come visiting from Iceland, he suddenly found his metabolism affected with results damaging to his sense of equilibrium.

It was now dark. The last green of the Northern latitude sunset had faded from the West. The path back to the hotel seemed higher, wobblier, narrower, windier and unfamiliar. As no light was showing anywhere he had to guide himself by the faint glimmer of a not very prosperous moon seen through scudding clouds, and the phosphorescence of the sea.

Since he was a monumental flop he had no wish to encounter either Miss Boddy, Amelia, or Major Clyde again and the sea suddenly appeared to him the most direct route home to the simpler life where he need no longer be teetotal and could shuck all responsibility.

Thus he made his way on to the beach, lurching and staggering, but in his own opinion quite competent, reversing in his mind the flight plan of his journey thither and with what he remembered of school geography. He would turn left around Bolt Tail, strike out on a diagonal line for the Bay of Biscay, past France and Portugal, turn the corner after Cádiz and there he would be. Major Bailey would be glad to see him if no one else.

So fiery was the Gunner’s internal combustion that he didn’t even notice the temperature of the water that filled his shoes and sloshed around his calves as he waded in.

Fortunately, at this moment Miss Constance Boddy appeared with Amelia, it being her custom to take her pet for a final duty airing on the beach before retiring for the night. The clouds at this moment obligingly parted, permitting the moon to reveal the silhouette of Gunner Lovejoy, his military uniform now comfortably dishevelled, his cap askew over one eye, hip deep in the ocean, departing for Gibraltar.

The sight filled the spinster with alarm and caused Amelia at the end of her leash to leap up and down shrieking. “Mr. Lovejoy!” cried Miss Boddy. “What has happened? Are you ill? Where are you going?”

Lovejoy stopped in his tracks, creamy foam swirling about his thighs, to turn around and contemplate one of the two people he specifically didn’t wish to see. Alcohol, sea water, Arctic winds, metabolism, hurt pride and frustration all came to a boil. “ ’Ome,” he replied. “Good-bye for ever, Ma’am.”

The sight of the Gunner standing in the sea was so bizarre that Miss Boddy, in a fearful flutter and not yet realizing that he was drunk, panicked and quite naturally misunderstood, believing that it was the Gunner’s intention to take farewell not only from her but from life. “Mr. Lovejoy—dear Mr. Lovejoy,” she cried, “you mustn’t. Come back at once. Oh, please do.” Reaching new heights at the end of her chain Amelia added her cries to those of her mistress.