Scruffy - A Diversion Read online

  Brigadier Gaskell, however, said, “Stand easy, Lovejoy. I want you to answer some questions. How many apes are there in the Queen’s Gate pack?”

  “Nine, sir. There’s old Scruff, Pat, Tony, Helen, Pansy—”

  “Never mind the names. Is that all?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many were there originally?”

  For one instant the eyes of Gunner Lovejoy shifted to O.I.C. Apes Barton and back again, and now the young Lieutenant knew that he was really in for it. He was to be squeezed between top and bottom for doing what he had been told was his duty and carrying out his orders.

  “Originally, sir? Originally when?”

  “Well, whenever you like, or, say, when Lieutenant Barton took over.”

  “Twenty-six, sir.”

  The sinking feeling returned to the Brigadier’s centre. “And the Middle Hill pack?”

  “Eleven, sir—no, ten. I found Martha dead this morning.”

  “Martha?” queried the Brigadier.

  “She was Bill’s wife, sir, or rather he had his eye on her, when she moved over to Alf. Bill took it ’ard. There was a bloody row. Martha got herself in the middle of it.”

  The Brigadier was nearing the boiling point once more. “Who the devil are you talking about, Lovejoy?”

  “The apes, sir.”

  The Brigadier exhaled a long breath. “Ten down from what?”

  “Twenty-four, sir.”

  “Why? What’s been happening?”

  “Lots of sickness, sir. We’ve had some bad storms. Not getting enough to eat, sir. Malnurtition! Weakens ’em. Along comes a big wet and down they go.”

  “Look here,” said Gaskell, “that won’t do. Aren’t you supposed to be looking after them?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why don’t you feed them properly?”

  The Gunner’s eyes went to Lieutenant Barton again. The Subaltern, although he was learning fast, was both a gentleman as well as an officer. He said, “Not enough food for them on rations, sir. Lovejoy there used to scrounge the rest. I caught him at it and put a stop to it. Seven days’ punishment. You said—”

  Brigadier Gaskell thought that if he heard the phrase “you said” once more the top of his head would blow off.

  “It would break your ’eart, sir,” Lovejoy said, “to see them like that. It’s the wrong time of the year for them to forage for themselves after the dry spell, and the prickly pears, locust beans and American fruit being off.”

  The Brigadier did not think it would break his heart, and then very quickly, as his eye caught the fatal signal on his desk, he thought it probably would. The answer to it was going to be very dusty indeed unless a miracle of some kind were to take place. There were half a dozen questions which sprang to his lips and he was at pains to stifle all of them and think again since there was every likelihood that they would lead to that extraordinary dim bulb of a Barton saying: “But you said, sir—” He supposed one might maintain the status quo by increasing the rations, but if the Gunner’s information and calculations were correct he was six filthy beasts off what the Prime Minister had laid down as minimum. He said to Lovejoy, “Don’t they, ah—breed? I thought monkeys were always—”

  “No, sir,” replied the Gunner. “It’s just exploration, sir, in a way of speaking. The females don’t come on until the winter, about a month from the middle of December through January.”

  “What’s the gestation period?”

  “About six months, sir.”

  The Brigadier did some rapid calculations in his head. Three months to fertility, after which if every male did his duty and was on target, one might reasonably expect the Prime Minister’s quota to be reached by the following June or July.

  The Gunner, who had seen the Brigadier’s lips moving as he did his mental mathematics, dashed these hopes very quickly.

  “There’s not enough females, sir,” he said. “It wants about eight to ten females to one male for proper breeding. You lose a lot of them young hapelets anyway. I’ve had ’em stillborn or killed in fights.”

  “Well,” said Gaskell, “get some more females then. The Prime Minister wants the apes kept up to strength.”

  “Get them from where, sir?”

  The net was closing in indeed. The Brigadier threw what almost might have been interpreted as a despairing glance at his O.I.C. Apes, but young Barton, who had been badly bruised, was not having any. “I don’t know, sir,” he put in. “I just thought they sort of were here all the time, or came through a tunnel.”

  The Brigadier was too beaten even to permit himself the luxury of a fury. “Very well,” he said. “Double ration for the time being. I’ll speak to the Quartermaster. That will be all.”

  Outside the office Lovejoy pinched himself unbelieving. He had been in the very lair of the tiger and emerged not only unscathed but with double rations for the apes. But it had been a most shattering experience. He felt badly in need of a Guinness and lime.

  Lieutenant Barton and the Gunner departed, leaving the Brigadier and his Brigade Major alone. They had been together long enough for Gaskell to be able to relax when by himself with Quennel. “What the devil do we do now, Roger?”

  The compelling bit of paper with its ineradicable message lay on the desk before them. A name, an unspoken name hovered in the air between them. The Brigadier did not wish to speak it, in fact was quite incapable of bringing it forth, and his adjutant did not dare and in fact had actually been warned against it during a briefing he had had several days ago from a mysterious Major who had arrived on the Rock from London not long before, one of the hush-hush boys who had joined Major McPherson, the Security Officer. The briefing had in a way been prophetic, and Major Quennel was marvelling at the manner in which the present had followed the line of the future that the mystery Major had predicted. He now proceeded as instructed to carry out the final part of the briefing. He picked up the message, read it again, put it down and said, “There’s a Major Clyde here, sir, I wonder if perhaps—”

  “What? Who?” snapped the Brigadier, ready to grasp at any straw.

  “Major Clyde, sir. Posted to Major McPherson in Intelligence.”

  “Does he know anything about apes?”

  “I don’t know, sir, but he’s just out here from home.” He indicated the cable with his head. “He might know something more about that—I mean, those Intelligence chaps manage to get their fingers into all sorts of pies. They seem to pull a lot of weight, sir, if you know what I mean.”

  “Humph,” snorted the Brigadier, and then said, “I don’t suppose it would do any harm to have a word with him.”

  Major Quennel reached for the telephone.

  When it rang in Major McPherson’s office the Scot picked up the receiver and then handed it to Major Clyde with an expression of amazement on his face. “My God,” he said. “Right on schedule. You said he’d be calling before ten.”

  Major Clyde spoke into the instrument saying, “Yes, Major. Certainly, Major. Not at all, Major. I’ll be right over.” He hung up, picked up his cap and swagger stick and went to the door.

  McPherson looked after him admiringly and said, “How the devil do you do it, Slinker?”

  Clyde merely grinned. “You might give old Bailey a buzz,” he said, “and tell him to get ready to move.”

  “I was wondering,” Brigadier Gaskell said to the tall, gangling, odd-looking Major who sat at his desk, “whether you might have heard anything connected with this.” He slid the signal across.

  They were alone, Major Quennel having been excused upon the arrival of Major Clyde, and was having to content himself with straining his ears to the murmur of voices which came through the thin partition dividing the Brigadier’s office from his own. The Brigadier was being cagy and tentative. For the interview Major Clyde had suppressed his natural flamboyance and was playing the respectful officer in the presence of a powerful superior.

  The Major took the telegram and gave a credita
ble performance of interest and surprise at reading it, since he had been familiar with the contents for some time, indeed had been responsible for some of the wording in which the wishes of the P.M. had finally been couched.

  “A great man,” the Major murmured when he had finished.

  “Eh?” said the Brigadier.

  “Nothing gets past him.”

  “Then you think it is serious?”

  “Very.”

  And in just such a simple and subtle manner, without even having really said anything, the Major established his ascendancy, and himself as someone in the know on the subject. By means of silence and respectful attention and all the things he didn’t say, Major Clyde had succeeded almost in evoking an image of himself as the personal representative of the Prime Minister in the mind of the Brigadier.

  “Quite frankly,” Gaskell said, “I’m worried. It’s got to be answered; something’s got to be done. I have had the clots in who are supposed to be looking after the beasts. Completely clueless. All they kept saying was that it wasn’t their can.”

  Major Clyde nodded and merely remarked, “Not very helpful, sir,” and waited.

  “Look here,” said the Brigadier suddenly, “there’s a chap here on the Rock who knows a lot about these stinkers—I mean he seems to have made himself fairly knowledgeable on the subject.”

  The Major waited, his eyes downcast as though re-studying the message.

  “Fellow named Bailey. Captain Bailey. Used to be O.I.C. Apes before the war.”

  Major Clyde raised his eyes from the paper and the Brigadier searched them for any hint of reaction or knowledge of whom he was speaking, but they appeared to be blank and at the same time filling up with soothing sympathy for the Brigadier and his dilemma. The Major continued to say nothing.

  “The thing is,” the Brigadier burst out, “I’ve treated the man damnably!”

  There, it was out. For some time now he had been aching to purge himself of his guilt, to speak the name of Captain Timothy Bailey and to confess that his dealing with him had been somewhat less than fair, for the Brigadier was a gentleman.

  And who better to confess to than this stranger whose existence he had not been aware of until five minutes before, this quiet, intelligent officer who did not go shooting off advice to him or try to tell him what to do in the manner of the young soldiers of the day. “He irritated me with his seeping monkeys and his demands for them. Got on my nerves. What was I sent out here to command? Guns or a pack of monkeys? Still, I oughtn’t to have done it. The man was doing the job I’d set him to and doing it well. Better zeal in an officer than slackness, what?”

  The Major nodded gently, “Still, too much zeal—”

  The Brigadier now knew that he liked this Major, liked him very much indeed. “Exactly,” he said. “You’ve hit the nail on the head. Always coming in here laying bumph on my desk. Wanting cages built! Concrete shelters! Concrete flooring! Cooling systems! Germ-proof maternity wards! Special kinds of food! Own veterinary! Bananas out of season! Pampering and coddling! Gave him the sack for it.” And then as his eyes were once more offended by the mandatory signal, he muttered a deflated sigh and said, “I wish I’d listened to him.”

  “And you’d like him to help you now,” the Major murmured quite impersonally and half to himself.

  “Impossible,” said the Brigadier. “Couldn’t look the fellow in the eye. Humiliated him. Had him bunged into Siberia.”

  The Major elevated a gently questioning eyebrow to draw the C.R.A. further.

  “The Point Europa end of the Rock,” the Brigadier elucidated. “You don’t know Gibraltar yet. Worst quarters on the peninsula. Damned vindictive of me, but there it is. But if you’d heard him carry on about these haemorrhaging chimpanzees, you’d have—”

  “I know,” agreed the Major. “Those one-track Johnnies can drive you right up the wall.”

  “There you have it,” said Gaskell eagerly, “yet—”

  “And yet I suppose,” Major Clyde suggested, “if he were an all-right chap and we made amends—”

  The Brigadier was looking at the Major with a faint light of hope in his eyes. The “we” used by the Major Clyde had struck a particularly responsive chord. At last there seemed to be somebody prepared to stand by and help.

  “Offer him promotion, say,” the Major went on. “Set him up in better quarters—he’s married I take it?”

  The Brigadier made a grimace. “Admiral’s daughter. Rotten for her,” he confessed, “but then she oughtn’t to have married the fellow. Parents dead set against it. Nobody in the garrison could stand him. Him and his eternal monkeys. He even got on the Chaplain’s nerves.”

  “Still,” suggested the Major.

  Hope faded from the Brigadier’s expression. “It won’t do, Major. Not a chance. Too young. He’s not due for three years. Might create ill feeling. Yet—” He looked to Major Clyde to see whether any help might be forthcoming, so quickly had he been conditioned to lean upon him.

  The Major continued to act smoothly and without precipitation. Instead of replying immediately he picked up the message from the Secretary of State and pretended to read it again. “Sir,” he said, “I don’t know how much aware you are of it, but this is a very powerful signal. One would not like to see it entrusted in the hands of someone less scrupulous than yourself.”

  Gaskell was regarding him warily. “Eh?” he said. “I don’t quite understand.”

  “The dynamite,” said the Major, “is contained in the phrase ‘every effort should be made’. For instance,” he continued, “what is it you are most in need of at the moment?”

  All of the Brigadier’s troubles, the difficulties that beset every commanding officer in a war when there is never enough of anything and everything to meet his needs, came flooding back upon the Brigadier and he replied savagely, “Cement! A bloody great shipload of it for concrete. The engineers are hollowing out this Rock and they need concrete, concrete, concrete. We need it for the shops; we need it for the bomb-proofs, for ammunition dumps. We’re getting it in driblets, confounded parsimonious spoonfuls—”

  Major Clyde flicked the cable with a finger-nail. “There you are, sir,” he said quietly. “All you require.”

  Gaskell was still groping for the penny; he looked his query in the direction of the Major.

  “Major Bailey will be requesting concrete for the shelters he’d be building for the apes—” Clyde said.

  The penny made a fine brazen clangour within the Brigadier’s skull as it finally dropped. “By God!” he exclaimed. “You mean—?”

  “Oh yes,” replied the Major simply. “Quite! We’ll see that there’s enough for everyone.”

  It was the turn of the Brigadier to pick up the signal and regard it, and the look he bestowed upon it was now a fond one. By some alchemy it had been transformed from his enemy to his friend. And the five words “every effort should be made” now stood out from the pages as though they had been written in raised and burnished gold. “You mean promote young Bailey and no trouble?”

  “Exactly, sir. When the P.M. says he wants every effort made—no one’s going to stop to ask questions.”

  “God,” said Gaskell again, glancing once more at the treasure between his fingers, then, “I say, look here, Major.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You chaps know a lot more about this kind of thing than I do.”

  “If I can be of any help, sir.”

  “Well, I thought perhaps if I turned the whole business over to you to look after—”

  “If you wanted me to, sir.”

  “Well, I do want it. I’d appreciate it.”

  “I’d be glad to, sir— If you’d just initial that perhaps and let me have it. You might add that I have your instructions and they are to be carried out.”

  The Brigadier almost upset the ink in his eagerness to reach the pen. “Exactly. And you’d send a signal to—”

  “Of course,” said Major Clyde, “saying tha
t all steps to comply with the wishes of the P.M. were being undertaken and in hand.”

  “Splendid,” said the Brigadier, and he scribbled upon the sheet and handed it to the Major, arising. “Very good of you. Wish they’d send out a few more officers like yourself.” He arose and proffered his hand which the Major shook warmly and departed. Gaskell felt as though the entire weight of the Rock had been lifted from his shoulders.

  1 4

  Group Captain Cranch is Briefed

  The first council of war following the reinstatement of Captain, now Major Bailey as Officer in Charge Apes took place in the office of Major McPherson. Present were the Majors Bailey, Clyde and McPherson and Gunner Lovejoy. For the first time Tim was loaded with bumph, plans, maps and statistics, none of which was going to be thrown back at him. Also he had a bandaged thumb.

  Major McPherson raised an eyebrow and queried, “Hit it with a hammer moving in?”

  Tim shook his head. “Welcome home from Scruffy,” he replied happily. “Got me in the same place. Nothing like an occasional bit of human blood for old Scruff.”

  McPherson took the chair. “Okay, Tim, let’s hear.”

  “It really breaks down into two parts,” Tim began. “Surviving Apes, Care and Protection Of, and New Apes, Purchase Of and Transporting To.”

  “That’s right, boy,” Major Clyde said with a straight face, “keep it all official.”

  “You don’t belong to the same Army I do,” Tim said. “Eventually all this is going to wind up in some Colonel’s inbasket, maybe even the Brigadier’s.”

  “Not the Brigadier’s,” Clyde remarked. “He’s been short-circuited. Own request. Anyway, he’s as happy as a sandboy. We are getting him enough cement to duplicate the pyramids. Also he’s asked for steel to armour-plate his bunkers. You know what getting steel is like. We’ve bunged it under additional fencing for apes’ cages. The old boy is purring like a kitten. He goes around muttering to himself the new password to Brigadier’s heaven—‘The P.M. wants it’.”