Scruffy - A Diversion (37 page)

Felicity looked shocked, “Bailey, you must be careful! Don’t let it get around or you will have people thinking you love me more than that revolting chimpanzee.”

“Macaque,” Tim corrected.

“They’re all monkeys to me!” She reached up and kissed him. “Go, my white knight, your country calls.” She glanced at her watch, “Dammit, and so does mine. Do you suppose we’ll ever be able to live together like normal people?”

She climbed into her roadster and he into his utility car. They waved farewell to one another and Tim drove up the hill to Ferdinand’s Battery fifteen minutes earlier.

Thus Major Bailey was in some measure not wholly unprepared for the scene and the shock that awaited him upon his arrival at the apes’ village. He let himself into the locked-off area and then proceeded through to the cages where the sight that met his eyes was one which not only defied description but beggared it as well.

“All I could think of,” he explained later in trying to put together a coherent picture of what he had seen, “was that old Scruff had got loose somehow and scalped this scorp. There he was lying on his back with his haircut down over his eyes and the morning sun shining on his nut.” But this was only the beginning. The scorp, of course, was Treugang Ramirez still sleeping it off, and on the bench opposite him was the living corpse of Sergeant John C. Lovejoy, likewise dead to the world.

When he had collapsed the night before, Ramirez’s flailing arms had somehow managed to dislodge his hair-piece and push it over his face, giving him the aspect somewhat of a man trying to hide underneath a mat. Open at his side was a box of coloured balloons and strewn about him was the wreckage of four torn bits of red, white, blue and yellow rubber.

Although the setting for this mystery tableau was in the great outdoors, nevertheless there was a familiar scent or fragrance that hung about the place and which the educated nostrils of Major Bailey had no difficulty in identifying as of second-hand alcohol.

Coming on top of the dream he had recounted to Felicity only a few minutes before, the Major was not to be blamed for the terrors and fears which assailed him. Drunk? Drugged? Sabotaged? Murdered? There was something familiar about the man under the hair-piece. He had seen him before, but could not think where. But if Lovejoy was in a stupor and dead out as he appeared to be, God knows what had happened to the apes, and hardly daring to do so Major Bailey turned to the inner cage and looked, and strong man that he was, he thought he might faint if he didn’t grasp hold of the mesh of the cages to support himself.

He stared. He closed his eyes and rubbed them hard, and stared again, and the spectacle remained unaltered. For Scruffy and Amelia were locked in an embrace for which the word close was wholly inadequate.

For a few moments Major Timothy Bailey felt that he must be bereft of his senses because a reproduction of the statue of Cupid and Psyche that he had seen not long before flashed through his mind. Then he thought of a reissue of an old Greta Garbo–John Gilbert film that had recently been shown in the Garrison Cinema and finally of himself and Felicity preparatory to going to sleep.

Major Bailey succeeded in banishing the incongruous pictures from his mind, but not the marvellous, incredible, miraculous, and wonderful vision that remained before his eyes.

So tightly were the two intertwined that it was impossible to tell who was in whose arms, how many hands and feet there were, where which began and who left off. One didn’t need to be a physiologist, a veterinarian or even an O.I.C. Apes who for two years had lived in close association with the Macaque and had made a study of their ways and habits, to know that bells should be pealed, cannon fired, patriotic songs chanted, and a holiday be declared with dancing in the streets in national costume. For the King of Apes had consented to receive and bless his Queen. And if the Lord were good and the watchdogs of science, medicine and midwifery were on their toes, she would in due time be delivered of an heir, and the land and the nation would rejoice and flourish.

But what this incomprehensible miracle had to do with the shambles behind him from which arose alcoholic fumes and the unlovely snores of the two unconscious men, Tim could not fathom. And at that moment Sergeant John C. Lovejoy opened first one eye then the other, sat up and gradually what he saw with each eye blended and focused into one scene, and if there was confusion and wonder in the soul of Major Bailey, it was as a clear and lucid light compared to what went on inside the Sergeant as he looked upon his Major, the still unconscious Treugang Ramirez, the burst balloons and the oblivious and wholly enamoured couple a few yards away in the cage.

And yet at that very moment when the Sergeant should have been overwhelmed by the grandfather of all hangovers and unable to give the right answer if asked the sum of two and two, his mind was working at a furious and incredibly accelerated speed. What had taken over in Lovejoy, who if nothing else in the first flash had recognized the enormity of the crisis and the depth of the mess he was in, was the instinct of self-preservation. And just as though he had never touched a drop, all the guile, cunning and accumulated experience of twenty-five years of dealing with the officer class were alert and ready to come to his rescue.

If only he could solve the mystery of the man lying on the floor who appeared to have the hide of some small fur-bearing animal instead of a face, balloons burst and whole scattered all over the place, the two Magots apparently trying to emulate Romeo and Juliet, and Major Bailey looking ecstatically happy and alternately furiously angry. Of the events of the night before the Sergeant had not so much as a glimmer. All was a blank, but already his razor-sharp wits told him that the Major was both annoyed with him and highly pleased with the development in the cage. It was plain that what was good must be exploited to ameliorate what was bad. But how?

At that moment the mystery object on the floor returned to the world with a deep groan of pain as simultaneously consciousness and the full force of
his
hangover hit him. He sat up, pushed the hair-piece back into position on to the shining egg of his skull and suddenly became once more Treugang Ramirez, but a Ramirez who was looking not at all well. The eyes behind the thick spectacle lenses were bloodshot, the small polyp mouth framed a sickish expression and what HE saw further reduced him into a state of absolute quaking terror.

For he, the great patriot spy and saboteur who ought to have been safely in his home or on his way to his work-bench in the Optical Department of the Navy Yard, laughing up his sleeve at the stupidity of the British, was now caught red-handed upon the scene of his crime, surrounded by the evidence of the weapons he had used to commit it, nabbed not only by Lovejoy but that fool of a British officer who concerned himself with the apes and who would now unquestionably and summarily hand him over to be shot. And one further guilty glance in the direction of the cage where he expected to see two corpses littering the floor told him that when he was stood up against a wall and riddled with bullets for the Fatherland there would not even be any point in murmuring “Heil Hitler’, for he would be expiring ingloriously and in vain. The apes were quite the opposite from dead. Treugang had none of the reserves that Sergeant Lovejoy could bring to bear to help him.

“Lovejoy,” Tim demanded. “What the devil is the meaning of all this?”

“Meaning of what, sir?” replied Lovejoy, elbowing for one smidgen, one fraction, one split iota of time. Never had he needed or wanted time so badly. For his spinning wits had already revealed one aspect of the case against him, he had been asleep at his post when Major Bailey had arrived, not an inconsiderable crime in wartime, and the object on the floor having evolved itself into Alfonso Ramirez he had likewise obviously admitted an unauthorized person into the most top secret and closely guarded area on the Rock. And to know what one is about to be charged with, if not half the battle, at least permits one to organize one’s defences.

“Don’t waffle, Sergeant,” Tim said sternly. “You know crashing well what I mean. Drunk and asleep on duty. Who the devil is that midden on the floor over there? What’s the meaning of the balloons all over the place? What’s been going on here?”

Rule Number One, Lovejoy’s quarter of a century in the Army had taught him, was when charged to sow doubt immediately. “Oh, not drunk, sir,” he said sorrowfully. “Not drunk.”

The shock of this bare-faced denial threw Tim momentarily out of stride and now that wonder-worker, that other Lovejoy, the trained psychologist, applied the gambit diversion, and the well-tried move of changing the subject to something pleasant. “Coo,” he said indicating the two apes with his glance and ignoring the Major’s other questions and accusations as well as the presence of Ramirez. “Look at ’em there like a pair of lovers canoodling in ’Yde Park, sir. ’Oo would have believed it possible?”

With a rush, joy, excitement and sense of fulfilment swept through Major Bailey, temporarily displacing the choler which had collected there. “By God, Lovejoy,” he cried. “We’ve done it, haven’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lovejoy, swiftly following up his advantage, “by the looks of them you have, sir, and congratulations. Wait ’til Major Clyde hears about this. He won’t half be pleased.”

“That’s right,” said Tim, “get on the blower from St. Michael’s Hut and tell him to come up here as fast as he can, and bring McPherson. But don’t give away what’s happened.”

“Yes, sir, I will! No, sir, I won’t,” replied Lovejoy, delighted to be allowed to retire from the scene for a moment.

He hustled to St. Michael’s Hut to carry out his errand, called Fortress H.Q. and transmitted Major Bailey’s message to Major Clyde. Then, before returning, he took a moment of desperate endeavour to recapture something of what must have happened before, and dimly, like that most faint and almost indistinguishable image one can sometimes catch on a light-struck film, he saw the Admiral Nelson and remembered a polishing motion that the barman had been making on the surface of the long bar. Ramirez, too, was vaguely on the film. Then he had been there and he must have got very drunk. Yet somehow he had managed to get to his post, he and Ramirez together.

Back at the cages Tim continued to ignore the groaning man still seated on the floor; it would be up to Lovejoy to explain that one, and once more he turned his attention to the Sergeant who had returned to report.

“Did you get him?” Tim asked.

“Yes, sir. He and Major McPherson will be right along.”

“Did he want to know what it was about?”

“He was very worried, sir. Wanted to know if the worst ’ad ’appened. I said he was to cheer up, that life wasn’t all that bad, and he’d see when he got here.”

Major Bailey nodded approval and then said, “So you weren’t drunk last night?”

“No, sir,” said Lovejoy. “Ill. Very ill, I’m afraid, sir.”

Tim said, “Humph. What’s that stink of booze about the place?”

“My medicine, sir, I expect,” Lovejoy replied. “It’s got some funny stuff in it. I can taste it for days afterwards.”

Tim said, “Humph,” again and then indicated with his head in the direction of Ramirez. “And that?”

“My pal, sir. He brought me here. I didn’t want to disturb you, sir, I thought if I got here I’d be all right. I didn’t think I was going to pass out, sir.”

“And him?” Tim questioned. “Was he sick too?”

“I couldn’t say, sir,” Lovejoy replied, and then added for truth perforce, “he doesn’t look very well, does he?” He tried the subject change again, “The main thing is, sir, you’ve pulled it off. You’ve got the pair together. There ought to be a gong in it for you!”

“Come off it, I wasn’t here last night,” Tim said curtly, and turned once more to study the situation in the light of Lovejoy’s explanation so far. He was wondering whether it would stand up.

And Lovejoy’s alert, lively and brilliantly functioning mind was speculating upon a characteristic of the Army and the sometimes complicated relationship between officer and man. Some officers were twerps and liked nothing better than to tear a strip off a ranker, but there were others who not only were human but sometimes downright protective when you were in trouble, particularly if you worked well for them and they depended upon you. That kind of officer relied upon you when you were in difficulties to invent a story that somehow he could manage to believe. It made everything that much easier, avoided the complications of disciplinary action, bumph, paper work and a lot of fuss. Tim was one of these and in their two years’ association working for the apes an understanding, if not a kind of affection, had grown up between them. The fact that Tim had not chewed him out for the palpable lie about not being drunk, but ill, told the Sergeant that if he could only cook up a story which would slide down the Major’s gullet without choking him, he would be home. But what story?

What had happened during the night when he was unconscious, blotto? What was the meaning of the box of balloons, and above all the burst ones? Had he himself blown them up? No distant bell rang in answer. Then Ramirez must have. But why? Surely not with malice intent, since Ramirez was his pal who bought him drinks and when he was sozzled had brought him up to his post so that he wouldn’t be A.W.O.L. But there he was and there was likewise the evidence of
something.

Unquestionably some extraordinary hanky-panky had gone on there during the night, but what it was at the moment he could not tell. All that was certain was that it had achieved the effect that they had all been striving for in vain ever since the arrival of Amelia.

Major Bailey looked once more with undiminished amazement at the twin huddle of monkeys and then at Ramirez.

“Who is this bloke?” he asked of Lovejoy.

Lovejoy’s reply was one of those pure, heaven-sent inspirational flashes. The occasion called for a whopping, but digestible lie. Lovejoy thought he had it.

“He’s an expert, sir. An expert on apes.”

“He’s a what?” said Tim.

Sick, terrified, bewildered and baffled as he was, what Lovejoy had just said penetrated to the ears of Ramirez and stirred the first faint whisper of hope within his breast. For some reason he was unable to fathom the Sergeant was not going to give him away immediately. Perhaps secretly, even, the Sergeant was one of them. How fortunate that he had not yet revealed himself. But he must not rejoice too soon, perhaps this was only a trap into which he was being led to gain a full and easy confession.