Scruffy - A Diversion Read online

  The Brigadier took a long, deep breath, and then two more, since murder was not his idea of bringing to a close an honourable, if undistinguished, military career. Then he said, “Captain Bailey, am I to understand that you are presuming to offer me advice?”

  “No, sir—except, of course, where the apes are concerned—”

  “You know it all.”

  Tim tried to look modest. “Well, sir, I have made a study of the job since I took it over a year or so ago, and I must say I’ve learned a good deal.”

  Brigadier Gaskell found suddenly that his massive choler and temper had evaporated, almost as though he had held it in too long. Now that he had use for it, it was no longer there. To his Staff Captain he said, “Thank you, Captain Quennel, you may go,” and after his departure said quietly enough, “Sit down, Captain Bailey, and let’s have a word together.”

  Tim stopped perspiring internally and gave a mental “Whew!” It looked as though he were about to get away with it, and he even harboured notions, now that he appeared to have talked the Brigadier out of his rage, of putting over some of the pet ideas for the comfort and happiness of his apes that he had been working on for so long.

  “Bailey,” the Brigadier asked with almost an air of amiability, “do you know why I put you into the job of Officer in Charge of Apes?”

  Tim was always one to repay amiability with the like. “Well, no, sir,” he said with what he hoped was an agreeable expression, “not really.”

  “I selected you,” interrupted the Brigadier, and then pronounced each word of the following sentence separately, “because—I—didn’t—want—any—trouble.”

  “Trouble, sir?”

  “Trouble! Trouble with those seeping apes. Bailey, you may or may not realize it, but this is a military outpost of the Empire. If war comes, as it most likely will, I shall be called upon to defend it. I have things to do, Bailey. You may be too young to realize it, but the command of a Brigade of Royal Artillery is complicated and arduous. For God-knows-why the Government has seen fit to encumber me with the further responsibility of a pack of foul and undisciplined monkeys. I am to keep track of their numbers, look after their welfare, write reports, and otherwise waste my time on this pack of repulsive slobs.”

  Tim thought it wise to remain silent at this point, and he did so.

  “That same Government in its benevolence,” continued the Brigadier, “has seen fit to permit me to delegate authority by appointing an O.I.C., or Officer in Charge of Apes.” The Brigadier’s fists suddenly clenched again, his jaw muscles tightened, and he hissed, “That’s you, Bailey, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir, and I’ve tried—”

  “Who asked you to try?” the C.R.A. cut in. “Who asked you to make a career out of those filthy beasts? When I asked Old Nosey Peeb—that is to say Colonel Peebles—for a recommendation for an O.I.C. Apes I said I wanted a young chap who could be trusted to carry on in the tradition of his predecessors. ‘Right,’ said Colonel Peebles, ‘I have just the man for you, Young Bailey. Just sent to us; enthusiastic and seems to like animals. Always picking up strays of one kind or another. Good record. Doesn’t give his superiors any trouble.’ That’s why I picked you for this important job. And you know what I expect of you?”

  “Well—” began Tim.

  “No ‘wells’ if you please,” the Brigadier retorted. “Two reports a year on births, deaths, number of apes in each pack, and no trouble. I expected you to work out your own way of keeping the beggars out of town, and if they persisted in coming down, well—I gather even the young men of today haven’t quite forgotten how to handle a rifle or a sporting gun.”

  Tim could not keep the horror from showing on his countenance. “What, sir,” he cried, “you mean—?”

  The Brigadier regarded him evenly, and then said grimly, “One of the things we expect from our young officers is initiative. Well, and what did I get?”

  “Well, if I may say so, sir,” began Tim, and could not keep his eyes from looking in the direction of the papers he had laid out on the Brigadier’s desk.

  Crash! went the Brigadier’s fist on them. “Bumph!” he shouted. “Bloody, all-fired, eternal bumph! You’ve buried me in bumph. Every time I come to my desk in the morning there’s some bumph from you suggesting this, suggesting that, demanding this, that or the other, using me as a messenger boy or postal station to pass along your nonsensical notions to the Colonial Secretary or the Governor, filling my head that ought to be kept clear for the men of my Brigade with monkey-nuts, oatmeal, carrots, onions, or whatever you’re trying to cadge—concreting of shelters, building of cages, installation of salt-water system for cleaning and cooling of cages, reduction of rat colony—” He interrupted his list with another violent bang of his fist. “Goddamn it, if you want to reduce the rat colony, why don’t you get a pea-shooter and go out and do it yourself? Do you want to see what I’ve had to put up with since you took over, Captain Bailey?” He pressed a button, and when the Senior Warrant Officer appeared, said, “Get me Captain Bailey’s file, and Major Patterson’s too, while you’re at it.”

  The chief clerk returned carrying a stack of six bulging manilla envelopes, and one small, thin one, which he deposited side-by-side on the Brigadier’s desk.

  “Look at that, Bailey,” the Brigadier said. He picked up the thin envelope and said, “Why the devil can’t you be like your predecessor, Major Patterson? There you are—two reports a year; so many born, so many died, to hell with them, and there’s an end to it.”

  Tim looked down with distaste at his predecessor’s file. “He didn’t love them, sir,” he said. “What I found out was: it isn’t just a tally job—they need love and attention. You see, in a way, they’re sort of like us.”

  The Brigadier’s absent temper returned again. “What’s that?” he yelled. “Are you trying to tell me that—?” He shut off what would have been Tim’s elucidation with another crash of his fist. “Do you know what’s been the matter with those animals since you’ve taken over? They’re filthy, rotten spoiled, that’s what they are.”

  Here he came to the point that he had really been meaning to make and jabbed a finger at Tim. “Let me tell you something, young man,” he said, “the Colonial Secretary is sick and tired of you and your bumph, the Governor is sick and tired of you and your bumph, and (crash) most important, I am sick and tired of it. And what’s more, you’ve become the town bore on the subject. People avoid you. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  The Brigadier choked off another reply that Tim would have made, and said, “That’s how it is, young man. And now I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. First of all we’ll cut out the bumph. I don’t want to see another communication from you for the next six weeks. Then you keep that confounded ape out of this town. The next time he comes down I’ll shoot him myself. And just to help you along and fire you with diligence and enthusiasm, hereafter all damage to personal property perpetuated by any of your bloody monkeys comes out of your pay. Thank you, Captain Bailey, that will be all.”

  Somehow Tim found himself headed for the door.

  “And take this bumph with you,” the Brigadier shouted.

  Tim went back, collected it, stuffed it into his file, saluted without really having his heart in it, and went out. There was no enthusiasm left in him. For the first time he felt genuinely crushed.

  3

  What O.I.C. Apes Means

  Emerging from the Brigadier’s office Tim, with his file pressed to his side, his head sunk in moody reflection, wondered whether what the Brigadier had said was true. He rather thought it might be. And if so then it wanted a bit of thinking about and sorting out. He climbed into his car and drove out of the town along Willis Road, past the ruins of the old Moorish castle and upwards into Queen’s Road towards the village of the apes.

  On the way he passed through Theatre Royal Square where the Admiral Nelson was located and where he was sure Lovejoy was to be found. For an instant he wished that proto
col didn’t forbid him joining the Gunner for a drink, for Tim was in need of the sympathetic company of a kindred soul, even though he knew that much of what had happened at the car park could be laid at the Gunner’s door.

  There was in the Gunner, Tim thought, a faint “Bolshie” streak, similar to the large one which manifested itself in Scruffy. The Gunner was anti-people and in particular anti-civilians. For instance, there were signs up all over the area warning tourists that the apes were wild animals and would react violently to sudden movements and sounds. These signs forbade them to stroke and handle the apes, and advised them further that they frequently carried away such articles as cameras and handbags. If they chose to disregard these signs, which invariably they did, that was no business of the Gunner’s. Furthermore, Lovejoy, who understood the apes, their ways and their moods better than they did themselves, always knew well in advance when there was going to be an incident. At such times he would wander nonchalantly over to the rail guarding the precipice, throw a leg over, light a cigarette, and contentedly wait for it to happen. When taken to task by Tim for this callous attitude towards the appendages and property of human beings, Lovejoy would reply, “They can read, can’t they, sir? You can’t tell ’em anything—it’s the only way they’ll ever learn.” Perhaps it was just as well he couldn’t see the Gunner at that moment.

  Tim’s car climbed steadily up the narrow road lined on both sides with dusty olive trees, fig and locust beans, and the prickly pear cacti with their oval, spiny leaves.

  He came to the concrete square protected by a railing just below Prince Ferdinand’s Battery, the playground of the apes, from which there was the splendid and much-photographed view of the town and harbour of Gibraltar spread out below. To the left across the Straits on a clear day Mount Atlas would loom, but not in the haze and sticky humidity of July.

  Plainly visible were the harbour installations with their forests of cranes, the dockyards, where a destroyer or two nestled, and the basins of the dry docks. Immediately below, seen through the flat tops of the pine trees clinging to the side of the hill and the royal palms lining the streets, were blocks of apartment buildings, the roof-tops of the town, and the line of Main Street cutting its way through the centre. Across the bay the white town of Algeciras glittered in the sun.

  This was Gibraltar—the lock on the door to the Mediterranean, and to which his country held the key. He and all the rest of the members of his Artillery Brigade were a part of that key, which in time of emergency must very swiftly be turned in that lock, shutting off ingress and exit to the Mediterranean to all but the friendly. What the devil, then, was he doing messing about with a pack of apes?

  He drove on to the concrete facing the sea, from whence a two-funnel passenger liner was steaming into port to discharge its load of tourists, and sat there to think things out. He was alone, since it was the lunch hour and there were no trippers about—not entirely alone, though, for a small apelet with sad eyes and an old man’s face, whose mother was probably snoozing somewhere near by, swung itself up the side of the car and into his lap.

  “Hello, chum,” Tim said. “Where’s your mum?”

  The apelet gazed up at him for a moment, liked the tone of his voice and threw its arms about him and cuddled to his chest, clutching and pressing his face close to Tim’s khaki shirt.

  Tim scratched and stroked the small, furry head and, as always, felt the essential loneliness of these creatures and the mystery of affliction that seemed to lie deep within their eyes. No child could have demonstrated the need for closeness, warmth and affection more vividly than the apelet which clung to him now, and yet it was an animal entering upon the threshold of life. Was this the tragedy—that they had just missed being people—and was that good or bad? And how could one be thrust into contact with these creatures and not be aware of the calamity that had befallen them when the law of natural selection had left them behind?

  Tim Bailey, who had grown up as an average young man and officer who had never really cared greatly about anything, had suddenly found an avocation in the care and study of these caricatures of human beings.

  He had been resigned at first when he had been stuck with the job of O.I.C. Apes. This was The Army; he was the new boy in the Garrison and gathered that was about what one might expect.

  But the strange plight of the monkey had laid hold of Captain Bailey, engaged his sympathies, touched his heart and turned what had originally started out as another army chore to be endured until it could be passed on to another victim into an interest and a project in which he threw himself with all the enthusiasm of youth and a sunny nature. The result was that he was not only a trial to his superiors, but in a short time had evolved into a kind of Regiment character, an “Oh-God-here-comes-Bailey-we’re-going-to-have-to-hear-about-his-flipping apes’ sort of thing.

  The small figure had begun to chew the middle button of his shirt and almost had it off. “Ahem,” said Tim. “You know who and what I am, I trust? Officer in Charge of Apes, and a blinking nuisance to everybody.” He pried open the small teeth and rescued his button. “Officer in charge of you, my fine fellow. As His Majesty’s representative and your personal and private Captain detailed to look after your wants I direct that you return to your dear old Mum and chew on her for a while.” He detached the apelet from his person, turned it around, gave it a spank on its bottom and sent it on its way. Then he climbed out of the car himself, went to the railing and stood looking down at the panorama of the city.

  He thought back to the beginning of it all, when he had been summoned to the Brigadier’s office to meet a Major Patterson who had been posted home. “Captain Bailey,” the Brigadier had said, “this is Major Patterson, who is leaving us. Among other things he’s been our Officer in Charge of Apes. Done a damn fine job. I’ve been looking for someone I can entrust with his duties, and in whom I can have confidence. The Rock apes have been the responsibility of the Royal Artillery since 1806—a traditional matter—important post, in a way. I suggest you go along with the Major to his office and he’ll give you the form. Glad you decided to take it on, Bailey. Well, that will be all, gentlemen.”

  Tim hadn’t decided to take it on, in fact he hadn’t opened his mouth during the entire interview, but like so many things in army life, it seemed to be settled, and he went along with the Major to his office, where Patterson turned out a file of records on papers and official correspondence going back apparently to 1921.

  Patterson had said, “There’s nothing to it, Bailey. The fact of the matter is that they’re a pack of filthy, bad-tempered brutes, and the farther you keep away from them the better for you and the better for them. There’s a clot by the name of Gunner Lovejoy looks after them and does all the dirty work—dim bulb, and half an ape himself—which is probably why he gets on with the middens. You can leave it all to him. Every six months you bung in a report to the old man which says: ‘All present and accounted for.’ Or if one of the little bastards got himself shredded in a brawl, you write, ‘Regretfully announce the passing of Mona, or Kathleen, or Pat, or whatever the stinker’s name is. Please omit flowers.’ And that’s that. Well, good luck, old man. And—ah—you might watch out for an old tusker by the name of Harold, better known as Scruffy—he’s been known to give a bit of trouble at times. If he comes at you, get your back to a wall and let fly with a good kick to you-know-where.”

  Tim was remembering the first day he had come up there to pay a visit to his charges and see what it was all about.

  He had driven by himself up to this so-called ape village located by Prince Ferdinand’s Battery, which was no more than an area of some flat rocks where the apes came at their feeding time. Some previous administration had erected a kind of structure of poles and bars on which the apes could swing and entertain themselves and, incidentally, the visitors.

  But that was all. There was no shelter of any kind against inclement weather, no place where a sick monkey could be isolated, or mothers with young babies
could be protected from the savagery of the males and the danger of the brawls that sometimes involved the entire packs.

  There had been only one ape there at the time, sitting on the wall, the rest of the pack being off in the trees down the road somewhere. He was a young male who perhaps was not feeling very well, for when Tim arrived, instead of scampering off or coming over to beg he had just remained sitting there. Tim remembered now, as sharply as though it had been yesterday and not over a year ago, the way the beast had turned its head and looked at him, and the ineffable and penetrating sadness in its eyes which had struck home to his heart more powerfully than anything he could remember.

  So strong had been the emotions of pity and awe in the presence of this monkey, that he had sat down on an outcropping of rock and studied the ape. Equally motionless the ape had regarded him. And thus they had remained for perhaps five minutes in silent contemplation, these two who had once had a common ancestor, and now were separated for ever by aeons of time and evolution.

  Thoughts which never before would have troubled the mind of young Bailey now racketed through his head. One of them was: “Why you and not I?” What cosmic accident had decreed that he, Timothy Bailey, should be sitting clad in the uniform of an officer of His Majesty’s Royal Artillery, a unit dedicated to the long-distance piecemeal dismemberment of his fellow man, looking upon a miserable caricature of himself, instead of vice versa?

  A wisp of his education floated through his stream of consciousness, a recollection that it all had something to do with the thumb; man had been made from monkey by the mobility of his thumb. Tim had looked at his own broad, stubby, capable ones and shuddered slightly.