Scruffy - A Diversion (31 page)

“Come back!” repeated the Gunner scornfully, making no move to do so. “What for I’d like to know? You and your ruddy hape! Not good enough for my Harold. What’s there for me to come back for? I’m a failure. Let the side down, that’s what I ’ave. They’ll be pointing the finger at me, ‘See that bloke there, that’s Gunner Lovejoy what lost the bloomin’ war for us!’ I’m going ’ome and bury meself.”

The word bury set up new alarms inside the poor confused woman and she could only beg him, “Oh, Mr. Lovejoy, please dear, good, kind Mr. Lovejoy, come back, I want to talk to you.”

“Ho ho! Talk to me!” echoed the Gunner, but at least he didn’t go any farther out to sea. “What’s there to talk about? You’ve made your decision, ain’t you?” His voice went into that falsetto used by a drunk or a husband trying to imitate his wife’s voice, “Oh no, Mr. Lovejoy, I could not let Amelia do anything like that!— Gord love us, look at ’er jumping up and down there. You want to ruin ’er life and keep ’er from ’aving a fambly like yourself?”

The mixtures which Lovejoy had been imbibing at The Crown and Anchor now all took hold with a will and made him angry so that he came sloshing out of the sea to be greeted with hysterical joy as one returned from the dead by Amelia, who leaped into his arms, covering his face with kisses and caresses.

“And what about you?” shouted the Gunner at Miss Boddy when he had managed to get his face disentangled from Amelia. “Where’s your patriotism? You’re British, ain’t you? What about that there flag up there?” And then he pointed to the roof of the hotel where there was no flag, but it didn’t matter to Gunner Lovejoy who now somehow had become Major Clyde. “Bonny England! It’s a symbol, old girl, it’s not ’ere you find it,” Lovejoy continued, looking to touch his skull and marking Amelia’s instead, “but down ’ere,” and this time he hit the general region of his stomach. “You don’t approve of war says you, but we’re in it and the bloody ’Uns on our tails. What do you care about the Major’s farm up there wherever it is? And the geese and the kiddies walking ’and in ’and to school, and the bloomin’ train whistles! Cor, you’re the one to talk, sitting out the war ’ere living off the fat of the land while others is dodging bombs and working themselves to the bone.”

Miss Boddy suddenly put her hand to her face and cried, “Oh, Mr. Lovejoy, you’re hurting me!”

“ ’urting you,” repeated the Gunner, dripping and swaying. “Look at what you’ve done to me.”

He took half a dozen steps forward and came closer. Miss Boddy not only looked but sniffed. “Why, Mr. Lovejoy,” she cried horrified, “you’re drunk.”

Lovejoy pulled himself erect proudly and said, “That’s it! Got it in one. I’m drunk! Good and bloody drunk. I’ve lost me battle with the demon rum. The tragedy of having to go back and tell Harold there’s nothing doing ’as proved too much for me. Look upon me, Ma’am, I’ve fallen by the wayside.”

And at this point the Gunner discovered that though many ingredients can be mingled with alcohol without disaster, emotion is not one of them . . . “And blimey,” he added, “if I don’t think I’m going to be sick too.” He then knelt upon the moonlit sands and proceeded to be so.

Miss Boddy made sympathetic clucking sounds, held his head, wiped his clammy brow and said, “Oh, poor, poor Mr. Lovejoy, come, let me help put you to bed.”

Lightened and unresisting the Gunner permitted her to guide him up to the hotel and to his room, after which he remembered no more until he awoke eleven hours later with a thundering hangover and enough of memory returning to let him know that if he hadn’t rained everything before he most certainly had now, by getting blind, staggering drunk and cursing a teetotal lady he had been sent to blandish and charm.

He arose and began throwing things into his suitcase. An hour later he paid his bill with funds provided by Major Clyde, made his farewells to Miss Neville and slipped out of the back door so as not to encounter Miss Boddy, intending to trudge the three miles to the bus route and get the hell out of there and back to London to his punishment, whatever it should be.

But he failed to reckon with Miss Constance Boddy and the processes of mind which had kept her awake half the night. When he reached the end of the lane from the hotel leading to the high-hedged road, there she was with Amelia on her shoulders straddling the path, and on her face a most curious expression, which in his own surprise and anguish of mind he failed to recognize as the zealous lovelight in the eyes of the reformer who contemplates a brand to be snatched from the burning. To her, Lovejoy had been teetotal; had struggled to fight the good fight for the white flag of purity, he had proved not strong enough, he needed help.

“Mr. Lovejoy,” she said, “I have been thinking over last night, I have decided to let Amelia go to Gibraltar. But, of course, I could not possibly be separated from her. I am sure you will be able to arrange for me to accompany her—and you.”

The Gunner set down his suitcase and sat on it because he felt his legs would no longer support him. He passed a handkerchief over his brow while Amelia came over and hugged him.

“Gord, Ma’am,” he said, “do you really mean it? I can hardly believe it. It’s mighty good of you.” He could hardly credit that victory should thus have been snatched from total catastrophe.

“It was last night that decided me,” said Miss Boddy. “It was all my fault. And after you had told me of your struggle against strong drink and the necessity from time to time of a helping hand. Yet in the hour when you needed me most I failed you.”

Some of the shine went off the Gunner’s triumph. The presence of Miss Boddy in Gibraltar monitoring his visits to the Admiral Nelson, or even picketing the place, would be disturbing. Still, the Gunner had lived long enough to accept and be grateful for half-victories and if that was the only way Amelia could be got to Gibraltar, chaperoned by her mistress, then that was how it had to be, provided he could get by Major Clyde.

But to Lovejoy’s surprise the Major found Miss Boddy’s decision no obstacle. On the contrary when the Gunner got through to him on the telephone he was both pleased and congratulatory. “Good man,” he cried. “Well done! Splendid show! You’ve saved the situation! I knew you could do it! Bravo! I’ll set up the flight back at once. Group Captain Cranch happens to be in London.”

The Gunner hung up in a daze. Never had such an all-embracing bender, which by rights should have ended in the most appalling disaster, brought such immediate and staggering rewards.

It has been recorded that only once in his entire brave and gallant career did Group Captain Howard Cranch ever conduct a flight in total silence. Noted for his entertaining songs, chatter and imitation over the W.T. and during combat as well, there was one trip he made without ever opening his mouth.

In this instance the phrase—“He was struck dumb” applied, and this was exactly what occurred in the case of Captain Cranch who waited by his ship on the tarmac of a little-used airport to begin a most secret journey on which he had been given no briefing except that there would be four passengers.

At precisely the time appointed, a limousine with the blinds pulled down drove out upon the concrete and up to the aircraft. Out from it spilled a stout, cheerful-looking woman. She was followed by a man Cranch had no idea was in London, Gunner Lovejoy of Gibraltar. On the Gunner’s shoulder perched quite the most repulsive ape he had ever laid eyes on, and to close the procession there came the tall, gangling figure of Major Clyde.

The Group Captain spoke only once and that was to take in vain the name of his Lord. And after that he said not a single, solitary word, except that his head never did stop shaking from side to side.

However, as always, he flew his bizarre passenger list with care and meticulousness and after the requisite number of hours landed them feather light and rolled up to the headquarters building to be met by Major Bailey and his attractive wife, the Brigadier’s Brigade Major and a man from the office of the Colonial Secretary. Only then did he once more give tongue, regrettably for a second time to take the name in vain.

1 8
Scruffy Declines

I
t certainly had not been anyone’s intention, but somehow the expedition from the Rock Hotel to Tim’s new cages by the apes’ village close to Ferdinand’s Battery took on the aspect of a bride’s wedding party proceeding to the church.

That morning there was actually nothing more afoot than the introduction of Amelia to Scruffy and vice versa. It had been planned to place Amelia in the cage adjoining Scrufty’s with, however, the door between them securely locked until it appeared that an exchange of visits might be agreeable to both.

Yet the party took on a most festive air. To begin with the men had put on their best uniforms and Lovejoy turned up tubbed, scrubbed, brushed and spruced almost beyond endurance. Felicity chose to wear a pair of black silk stockings for the occasion instead of the regulation cotton ones. Major McPherson carried his swagger stick. The security guard which preceded and followed the caravan fairly glittered with spit and polish. But what really set the tone was, of course, Miss Boddy, and it was as though all of them had guessed that she would be dressed for the event.

All that was missing was a cluster of roses or a spray of lilies of the valley at the shoulder of her smart blue costume. She wore a freshly starched white blouse with a white lace jabot at her neck and a half-hat, a semicircle with a bit of veiling in front. Her white gloves were immaculate, her pumps silver-buckled. There was high colour in her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes. In a sense it was she rather than Amelia who was faring forth to meet her intended.

There was something both sweet and touching in the way that she had got herself up for the occasion, and the ones who were moved most by it were Felicity and Lovejoy, Felicity who understood the woman’s heart that beat beneath the white blouse, the heart that never ceases to hope even long after the mind has surrendered, and Lovejoy, who was full of guilt for the part he had played in building up the picture of St. Harold of the Rock.

Because Lovejoy was himself a simple and uncomplicated soul he was able to detect and be oddly stirred by the simplicity of Miss Boddy. They had learned to know one another during the days in Devon and on the flight to Gibraltar and the care with which the chubby little spinster had dressed was, he knew, a manifestation of her love for her own pet as well as a tribute to the Gunner’s imagination and powers of prevarication. Miss Boddy was preparing to meet a paragon of a Macaque, a hero, one of the heavenly-elect among beasts, a veritable seraph who would confer upon her Amelia those blessings of holy matrimony which she herself had been denied. And as she came down the steps of the Rock Hotel with Amelia perched upon her shoulder there was a great charm about her and Major Clyde again reflected how right he had been in assessing her innocence as her most powerful weapon against the world.

The caravan consisted of four soldiers in the leading vehicle, a second car containing Major Clyde, Major McPherson and Gunner Lovejoy, and then a limousine in which rode Miss Boddy with Amelia, Timothy and Felicity, the latter clutching a large spray of bougainvillaea. She had been waiting outside the car and when Miss Boddy had descended the steps drawing on her white gloves, Felicity had moved to the terrace of the hotel and annexed some branches of the flowers growing there. She felt like a bridesmaid.

With Tim on the jump seat and Felicity, Miss Boddy and Amelia comfortably settled in the back, the journey up the face of the great bastion Rock began.

Miss Boddy tittered, “I’m so nervous. I feel just like a girl going to meet her first celebrity. I can hardly wait.”

Felicity and Tim exchanged looks. Felicity’s look could have been interpreted, “Oh dear!” and Tim’s, “Crikey!”

“You see,” Miss Boddy said, almost in reply to Tim’s look, “I feel that I know Harold almost as well as I do my own Amelia.”

Felicity elevated an eyebrow. The elevation meant, “Harold? Since when?”

Tim imperceptibly lowered his, meaning, “Well, you wouldn’t want her to know he was called Scruffy, would you?”

“Mr. Lovejoy has told me the most wonderful stories about Harold and what a help he has been to everyone, how he protects the motor cars from the wicked ones who would like to steal the windscreen wipers, shares his goodies with his less fortunate brothers, and retrieves lost property for the visitors.”

Felicity’s looks now became loaded with more words than she could successfully transfer via that route, and meant, “In heaven’s name, Tim, what have you done to this poor woman filling her up on lies like that? What is going to happen when she sets eyes on that utterly revolting specimen? It’s not fair.”

If the gist didn’t reach Tim the import did, but he had no success whatsoever in broadcasting back to Felicity his anguished excuses, “It weren’t me, Mum. This was Major Clyde’s idea. I just loaned him Lovejoy.”

“Of course,” said Felicity tentatively, having in mind somehow trying to soften the blow, “you might not find him
exactly
like that,”

Miss Boddy smiled sweedy and trustingly, “Oh, but I’m sure I shall,” she said. “Lovejoy has told me everything about his sweetness, his gentleness, his generosity, and besides,” concluded Miss Boddy, “he’s so beautiful.”

“Beautiful!” The exclamation, fraught with sheer horror, burst from Felicity’s lips before she could control it. But Miss Boddy was not even aware.

“Oh yes. We think he’s lovely, Amelia and I. Don’t we, dear?” and she opened her purse and withdrew a glossy print of the retouched photograph that had been sent to Lovejoy to pass on to Miss Boddy as a reproduction of Amelia’s prospective spouse. The ape gazed at the picture and chittered softly. There was a melting look in her eyes. “I have carried it about with me ever since Mr. Lovejoy gave it to me—that is ever since Amelia and I decided to come out here. And to think that in a few minutes we will be seeing him face to face.”

Felicity glanced briefly at the angelic countenance depicted, and choked. She then didn’t even bother to transfer her thoughts to her husband with a look, instead her lips directed at him the silently formed words, “You bastard!” It threw Tim into a panic, for he knew no way of lip-forming, wig-wagging, or telepathing back to her, “What about that bloke Holbein who gimmicked that portrait of Anne of Cleves? It’s all in a good cause, isn’t it?”