Scruffy - A Diversion (40 page)

Major Clyde remarked, “That ought to do the trick if anything can.”

Tim, regarding the monster as it trundled past them and vanished through the door of the operating theatre, groaned, “My God, you shouldn’t be seeing that, Felicity.”

But Felicity’s eyes were shining with excitement as she cried, “But I am absolutely fascinated!”

The lower lip of Mrs. Constance Lovejoy began to quiver and tears came to her eyes. “Oh, oh,” she moaned, “my poor Amelia. I never should have allowed it.”

Sergeant Lovejoy, who had slipped far more easily than one would ever have expected into the role of husband and protector, laid a comforting hand upon her arm and said, “There now, Constance, don’t take on so. She’ll be right as rain. I never saw an ’ealthier specimen. It’ll be no more trouble to ’er than layin’ an egg.”

But if so, the egg was a long time coming for quarter-hours passed in agonizing succession with no news from behind the closed door.

To Tim the waiting had become a double torment. For all of Felicity’s gallantry and lightheartedness the passage of the thermosphygalamometer had shaken him badly, dramatizing as it did the fact that birth which ordinarily ought to be a smooth and natural affair, sometimes isn’t. Waiting upon the delivery of this confounded monkey, upon whom so much seemed to depend, was like a preview and at the same time a travesty of what the production of his own child would be like, only then Felicity, his beloved Felicity, would be the silent victim hidden behind the silent door. It seemed somehow grotesque that she should be present during these alarums and excursions attendant upon the parturition of this monkey, and which would have been comic had not Major Clyde so effectively pointed up the seriousness of the situation. Win or lose, they were all embarked upon a project in whose importance they all believed and it had to be carried through.

Major Clyde joined Tim on the well-worn carpet strip and said, “Move over and let someone pace who knows how.”

Felicity watched them gravely for a moment and then said to Major McPherson, “Aren’t you going to join them?”

Major McPherson half-started up from the edge of his seat in obedience to the suggestion, which showed how nervous
he
was. The four of them then burst simultaneously into roars of laughter which were stilled abruptly when the doors of the operating theatre opened, this time with swift urgency, and Sir Archibald Cruft appeared on the threshold. His white cap was askew on his hair and his surgeon’s mask had slipped under his chin. He was worried, and his alarm at once communicated itself to the waiting group as Sir Archibald said curtly, “We’re in trouble! There is a blockage.”

“Blockage!” repeated Major Clyde. “What does that mean?”

“Can’t you do something?” shouted Tim.

Mrs. Lovejoy emitted a wail of anguish and threw herself into her husband’s arms, much to the Sergeant’s embarrassment.

“She’s not presenting properly,” Sir Archibald explained. “She should have been bred much earlier. Special instruments are wanting. The only chance would be a Caesarean.”

“Then get on with it, man,” ordered Clyde. “Do it.”

“What are you waiting for?” cried Tim.

Sir Archibald refused to be flustered. He was still very much in command of the situation. “We lose the mother if we do,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is no other choice.”

And suddenly it was comedy no longer, not even to the irrepressible Felicity, and for the first time she experienced doubts with regard to her coming ordeal which up to that moment she had faced with fearless gaiety and calm anticipation. She read the horror in her husband’s eyes as the import of what the gynaecologist had told them struck home. He was faced not only with the problem resulting from his job, but she knew that in his mind he was transferring this dilemma to himself—
which will you have—mother or child—I cannot save both!
Then it was true what people said. There was danger. Things could go wrong. Husbands were right to worry and pace. Nature was not all that kind and genial.

“Damn the mother!” snapped Major Clyde. “It’s the kid we want.”

Mrs. John C. Lovejoy extracted herself from her husband’s arms, swollen with all the indignation of a foster mother and animal lover, to which was added the dignity of her recent bride-hood. “Oh no you don’t!” she cried. “Don’t you dare touch my Amelia! I’m going in there right now and—”

Desperation had left Tim momentarily speechless and Felicity fairly ached with sympathy for him, coupled with the feeling of helplessness and a strange new kind of nervousness she had never experienced before.

The voice that brought them all to a kind of shocked standstill belonged to Sergeant Lovejoy. “Look here,” he said, “what about letting me have a go?”

“You?” shouted Major Clyde, who for the first time since he had engaged in fighting a war felt as though
his
nerves might be about to go. “What the devil can you do when the greatest gyno in England can’t—”

“It’s my wife’s hape, sir,” replied Lovejoy, “and if it wasn’t for me she wouldn’t be in the trouble she’s in. If I ’ad alf a crown for every one of them creatures I’d ’elped when it was in a bit of difficulty—”

Sir Archibald looked sharply at Lovejoy. “What’s that you say? You’ve been present at births?”

Lovejoy snorted. “Like I said, if I ’ad ’alf a crown—”

“Never mind your half-crowns, man,” interrupted Sir Archibald. “Go in then and don’t stand there gassing. Get into Colonel Wheeler’s surgical gown and cap. The theatre sister will show you how to scrub. Hurry, man—in there!” and he pointed to the door of the operating theatre.

Lovejoy rose, marched to it with a firm tread and went through. Mrs. Lovejoy looked after her husband as though she had just seen God.

Felicity uttered a plaintive little cry, half-arose from her chair, and then sat down again with the most peculiar and frightened expression on her face. Quite suddenly there was something timorous and childlike in her looks and voice as she said, “Oh dear, Tim. I don’t think I feel very well.”

Tim plunged to her side in what amounted almost to a rugby tackle, landing on his knees with his arms about her. “Felicity, darling, what’s wrong? What is it?”

It seemed no longer absurd or ridiculous that her husband should be showing every sign of being reduced to dithering panic. She found that she was even glad. It was right that it should be so. She said, “It’s—it’s just that—I mean, with all the excitement and everything I think that—”

“Oh, my God,” shouted Tim, and disintegrated completely. “Sir Archibald!” he bawled. “Quick! Get Sir Archibald!”

That individual, who was standing no more than two feet behind Tim, said testily, “Yes, yes, I can hear you, you needn’t shout! Come on, my boy, pull yourself together and let me have a look.” He pushed Tim aside, examined Felicity briefly with no more than a knowing professional glance, and said, “Ah, well, here we are. And I must say I’m not surprised. I always thought you were wrong about the date.”

At that moment the theatre sister appeared at the door and said, “Dr. Lovejoy is ready and waiting for you, sir.”

“What? Who?” said Sir Archibald. “Oh yes, of course, I’ll be along in a moment. In the meantime take Mrs. Bailey here to Room C and prepare her. Call Sister Thomas and Nurse Agnew. I’ll look in as soon as I can.”

He started for the door only to find his way blocked by Tim. “You’ll do what? To hell with these bloody monkeys! You’ll look after her right now! She’s my wife! You can’t leave her!”

Sir Archibald again managed to remain calm and controlled. He was still the leading actor in the drama, now a double one. He said, “Will someone take this lunatic off me and explain the facts of life to him? It will be hours yet before Mrs. Bailey will have any need of me. In the meantime—” he brushed Tim aside, stalked into the operating theatre and vanished.

Major Clyde murmured, “Maybe the doors of history are being thrown open again. What will happen when they find Sergeant Lovejoy standing there?”

Within the glaringly light-blue painted operating theatre the question was being answered.

On the operating table on her back lay the miserable, quivering lump of fur that was Amelia. She was whimpering and trembling in every limb and her hazel-coloured eyes were filled with pain and terror. Over her bent the figures of two men.

If the purpose of a uniform is to make all men alike or designate the kind of service they perform, the surgical cap, gown, mask and rubber gloves can swallow up the individual inside it more quickly than any other costume, and for the moment Sir Archibald Cruft forgot that it was one Sergeant John Lovejoy, a Royal Artilleryman and Keeper of the Apes who was inside the garments, and addressed him in the manner of a learned colleague, bandying Latin gynaecological phrases to the effect that the unborn infant on whom Major Clyde and through him the nation was basing its hopes of an important and successful psychological warfare gambit, had got itself skew-wiff in the uterus and because of several more unintelligible Latin and medical terms could not survive another three minutes. It was too late practically now even for a Caesarean section.

Sergeant Lovejoy, looking down upon the suffering creature, said, “Gord luv you, sir, you’ve got ’er wrong end to and top side up to be of any ’elp to ’er. I’ve seen ’em like this many a time. ’Ere, let me show you, sir.”

Swiftly and with practised hands he turned the ape around on her stomach and then drew up her legs beneath her, putting his arm down just above the top of her head. “When they’re out in the wild, sir, they can get ’old of a branch or a bit of rock for purchase. Now you watch ’er.”

Gratefully Amelia was already clutching the brawny forearm of the Sergeant and was moving her body in a kind of rhythm accompanied by shrill squeals.

“Now what I usually does,” continued the Sergeant, “when they gets about this far along is I puts me thumb ’ere,” and he suited the action to the words, “ ’olding ’er like this, pushing a little, and out she pops. There you are, sir.”

And out indeed it did pop, a tiny wet creature with fingers and toes that were almost transparent and a miniature face that was terrifyingly human.

“Well, I’m blowed,” were the exact words of Sir Archibald Cruft, the great gynaecologist. “Dr.—I mean Sergeant,” he paused in the eulogy he was about to deliver, for the Sergeant was staring down at the body of the monkey which had not yet relaxed and was saying, “ ’ello, ’ello.”

Sir Archibald too scrutinized the beast. “Dear me,” he said, “what’s this? There’s another one in there. Do they ever?”

“Not to my knowledge,” replied Lovejoy, “but I ’ave heard of it once in ten thousand times maybe, or a million I read somewhere once. But then the second is always stillborn. They ain’t got the staying power for it, sir.”

“Well, this one isn’t going to be,” declared Sir Archibald Cruft with a sudden fierceness. “Here, help me. Show me what you did before. We’ve got to bring this little fellow out alive. The thermosphygalamometer, Sister.”

The theatre sister wheeled the contraption over and now Sir Archibald proceeded to show how and why he was the great man he was. Working surely and deftly he fastened the various attachments in the proper places to stimulate the blood, oxygen, and sugar supply of the beast, bolstered her heart, took the strain off her pelvis, all the while muttering, “Damnedest technique I ever saw, Sergeant. Absolutely brilliant. We can adapt that to cases of—” and here he went off into another page-long harangue out of the medical dictionary. And now it was Lovejoy’s turn to look upon the other man with approval for he understood enough about the physiology of the apes he had attended so long to be able to see what the surgeon was doing for her.

Amelia began to squeak and chitter again, and her small body moved. “Now then,” said Sir Archibald, “where was it exactly you put your thumb?”

“Right here, sir, you can feel—”

“That’s it,” said Sir Archibald exultantly. “I might have spared the Countess of Crite a nasty hour with this. Well—next time. Push, you say!”

“And out she pops.”

And out popped the second, alive and identical to the first.

Sir Archibald gave a perfunctory glance and murmured, “Boy and a girl! What more could they want?”

Sergeant Lovejoy regarded Sir Archibald, his eyes above his mask filled with undaunted admiration. “By Gord, sir, you’ve done it! It’s never been done before with an ape. Two for the price of one, sir. Major Clyde won’t arf be pleased.”

Sir Archibald was not ungenerous. “It’s your technique, Sergeant,” he said, “and when I write a paper on this I shall give it your name. Well, let’s get on with it.”

A short time later the door to the operating theatre was thrown open revealing Sir Archibald and Sergeant Lovejoy, still gowned, with the theatre sister. The metamorphosis of Lovejoy was astonishing. He looked like one of those old-fashioned country surgeons. The face of the theatre sister had assumed that expression akin to the various Madonnas of the Italian school, for she was looking down upon two tiny objects carefully wrapped so that only their faces showed and cradled in her arms.

Sir Archibald’s wonderful countenance bore the grand and illuminating smile he reserved for the occasion. “Twins,” he announced proudly. “A boy and a girl.”

“Not Felicity,” quavered Tim Bailey.

“No, Amelia.”

Major Clyde was up and upon them with a whoop and a holler. “Eureka in spades!” he shouted. “Amelia’s done it! This will shake the horrible Hun to his heels. What we won’t do with this bit of news.”

They crowded around to look down into the tiny faces. Tim was both astonished and startled, for they did not look like monkeys but humans, or rather caricatures of humans.

Sir Archibald said to the sister, “Take them back to their mother now and see that they are kept warm. I’ll look in again in an hour.” And to Mrs. Lovejoy he said, “The mother is doing fine. No complications. Nothing to worry about. Your husband is a genius, Madam. You can thank him—”

Major Timothy Bailey seized the great gynaecologist by his surgical gown and shouted, “What about my Felicity? Who the hell cares about a couple of lousy—”