Scruffy - A Diversion Read online

  4

  Felicity

  So had run the thoughts and recollections of young Captain Bailey as he stood leaning on the rail and looking out over the town shimmering in the summer heat haze. He became aware of a slight movement next to him, turned and saw the object of his deliberations seated on a rock near by regarding him malevolently.

  “Oh, it’s you, you clot,” said Captain Bailey, for at that moment his thoughts had managed to put him out of sorts with the beast who was messing up his plans to create the best of all possible worlds for the worst of all possible monkeys. “Why the hell don’t you behave yourself? Don’t you realize you’re spoiling it for everyone? What I ought to do is catch you and give you a dam’ good hiding.”

  Scruffy said nothing, but kept regarding Tim balefully. And, as always when he became angry with this creature, Tim grew repentant. He said, “Sorry, old boy, I didn’t mean it. I oughtn’t to have said that. Had a trying session with the old Brig. Forget it, will you?”

  As always, the concentrated fury and hatred in Scruffy’s eyes moved Tim to do something to win him. He reached into a side pocket and produced a peanut, a small supply of which he always carried, held it up and said, “All right then, come over here and have one on me.”

  The animal lifted his head slightly to make sure what it was Tim was holding out to him, then rose and with deliberation he marched over to Tim on all fours, reached up with his left paw and took the peanut. With his right paw he seized hold of Tim’s wrist and quietly and firmly bit him in the hand. The blood spurted forth, Scruffy gave a tremendous leap which moved him ten yards away, where he turned his immediate attention to the monkey-nut. Tim let out a yell and a rich army curse which was topped by a feminine scream.

  “Oh! The nasty thing! I saw him do it.”

  Startled, Tim looked up and saw a small car drawn up by the concrete platform, with a stout girl at the wheel.

  She wasn’t really fat, Tim observed upon second glance, but only rather plump, as though the baby fat had not yet entirely been melted away. The tanned arms at the steering wheel had dimples at both the elbows and the wrists and there was somewhat too much flesh on the oval of her face. Tim’s thought was that if she were to thin down she might possibly be quite good-looking. Even so, he was struck by the clarity and brilliance of her eyes which were the colour of aquamarine, and were now filled with sympathy. The roundness of her face made her nose seem slightly too small, if delectable, but the mouth was firm and full of character. All this was surmounted by a twist of short-cut, unruly hair the colour of wild honey.

  “Oh,” said Tim, “I didn’t know—I do beg your pardon.”

  “That’s quite all right,” said the girl, and hers was a soft voice that fell pleasantly upon the ears. “I should have said worse myself. He did it deliberately. Why don’t you go and give him a kick?”

  It was almost automatic for Tim to spring to Scruffy’s defence. He said, “It wasn’t his fault.”

  The girl said severely, “Oh, yes it was. He planned it. I saw him making up his mind to do it two minutes ago. Look at your poor hand!”

  Tim did. His life’s gore was welling from two holes and dripping to the ground.

  “Shall I do it up for you?” she asked.

  Tim felt embarrassed at having a fuss made over him. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s nothing. It stops after a bit.”

  Ten yards away Scruffy was jumping up and down on all fours and coughing, which meant that he was delighted with what he had accomplished and felt he ought to be rewarded with more monkey-nuts. So habitual was the performance that before Tim knew what he was doing he plunged his uninjured hand into his pocket, withdrew a half-dozen or so nuts and threw them to the ape, who collected them and bared his fangs once more.

  “Oh, you men!” said the girl, and got out of her car, opening her handbag and shaking her head. She produced a clean handkerchief and said, “I do it very well. I’ve had First Aid training. And then you ought to have it cauterized. I’m sure that thing is poisonous.”

  As she came over Tim thought she must be twenty-one or two. A girl that old ought not to be quite so chubby, and yet once one had been caught up in her eyes it did not seem to matter—in fact, one quite forgot everything else, everything except, of course, one’s problems. Her touch was gentle, her hair and clothes smelled of fresh air and sunlight. She wiped away the blood, examined the two holes with clinical and enthusiastic interest, and then deftly and efficiently bound his wounds.

  “There,” said the girl. “Now,” and she motioned with a bob of her sunny head in the direction of Scruffy, who was gorging himself, “aren’t you going to do anything about him?”

  “No,” Tim replied. “Thank you.” And then suddenly, as a wholly new idea came in answer to this question of Scruffy’s behaviour which had so long been plaguing him, he said, “I say, do you know what? I’ve just had a thought—do you suppose it could be because he hasn’t any tail?”

  This query, if one wanted to make something out of it, could go to show how a single sentence carelessly uttered can sometimes change entire lives, and even the course of history, for the young girl had already begun to wend her way back to her vehicle, convinced that there was no present, and certainly no future, in any young man so tame and spiritless as to let himself be shredded by an ungrateful beast upon whom he had just conferred a favour, without offering so much as a cuff, pinch or tweak in retaliation. He had seemed a nice-looking boy, but she was not in the habit of collecting saints. However, his remark stopped her in mid-air, so to speak, with her foot on the running-board. “What?” she said. “Because who hasn’t got a tail?”

  “Old Scruff over there. By Jove, do you know, I think I’ve got it.”

  She came walking back slowly. “Hasn’t he one?” she asked. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Tim said, “No? I’ll show you.” He then called out, “Hoy—Scruffy. Come here, old boy,” knowing full well that the animal would do just the opposite, which indeed he did, turning his back at the summons and elevating his buttocks into their faces.

  “There you are,” said Tim.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with it,” the girl said, “or why it should make him bite you just after you had presented him with a lovely monkey-nut.”

  Tim already saw himself preparing a monograph upon the subject and submitting it to the Zoological Society and being possibly rewarded with an F.Z.S. after his name. “Frustration,” he said. “Disappointment. Frightful feeling of inferiority. Not one thing or the other, don’t you see. Social and physical liability. Bound to prey on his mind and cause him to have a bilious outlook on the world. Every other monkey has a tail. Uses it to swing from or pick up small objects. Rounds him out. Dogs have tails; cats have tails—and here’s poor old Scruff going around without one. Debasing and humiliating. The kind of thing you can’t get away from. Always imagining people are talking behind their hands even when they’re not.”

  It was not so much the theory as the earnestness and satisfaction of the young man with his idea which now began to interest the girl. She had returned all the way from her car and stood beside him, not quite reaching up to his shoulder, and looking at Scruffy who, having shown his contempt for them, had now reversed his position and was sitting with his canines bared.

  “How did he lose it?” she asked. “Caught it in a door—or did someone cut it off to get even?”

  “No, no—of course not. He simply hasn’t got one—none of them have. It’s that kind of monkey. They are known as Macaques, but those are the only tail-less ones.”

  The girl frowned in slight bewilderment. “You mean, none of them have any tails?— Are they all then as nasty as that one?”

  “Oh, no,” said Tim, again swift to spring to the defence of his charge, “only old Scruff there is something special in that department.”

  A look of triumph fired the charmingly chubby countenance of the girl. “Oh-ho,” she cried, “so then it’s not because
he hasn’t a tail. If the others haven’t got one either and are sweet about it; it’s just because he’s a nasty, surly, bad-tempered, mean old—”

  She stopped suddenly in mid-description. “Oh dear,” the girl continued in genuine sympathy and contrition, “I’ve spoiled your perfectly beautiful idea, haven’t I?”

  “That’s quite all right,” Tim said, even though his F.Z.S. had gone a-glimmering.

  “Oh dear,” the girl repeated, “you care about him, don’t you?”

  Tim nodded and said, “One can’t help it. He’s so extraordinarily and consistently wicked. It’s something like having a very naughty child—you feel that somewhere there must be a little bit of good in it, if only you could get at it. Nothing on this earth ought to be that absolutely and completely useless and destructive. There must be some reason—”

  The girl shook her head slowly and said, “He’s just plain bad—”

  A female ape appeared out of a tree with an apelet clinging to her back. Scruffy gave a cough of rage and let fly a cuff that swept the apelet off the mother’s back and into the dust of the road. He then took a bite at the female’s flank, sending her shrieking down the road.

  The girl watched the performance with her grave eyes and murmured, “Sweet.”

  Tim said, “He’s never cared for her a great deal.”

  The girl asked, “Do you come up here often to visit him?”

  Tim replied, “Well—yes, in a way. You see, I’m Officer in Charge. I’m O.I.C. Apes.”

  The girl now turned her gaze upon him in full astonishment and said, “I beg your pardon—you’re what?”

  Tim said, “Officer in Charge of Apes. Forgive me, I should have introduced myself—and you’ve been so kind. My name is Tim Bailey.”

  The girl was still regarding him with utter disbelief and amazement. She said, “Do you mean to tell me that the Royal Artillery actually appoints a Captain on active service to a post called Officer of Apes?”

  Tim bristled perceptibly. “I do. The care of the Barbary apes of Gibraltar has been a tradition of the Royal Artillery for over a hundred and thirty years.”

  Again a wave of contrition and extraordinary tenderness came into the face of the girl. “Oh dear, I am sorry. I didn’t mean— Of course— But you see, I didn’t know. We’re Navy. I mean I’ve just come out here to join my parents.” And she repeated again, “Oh dear—I am making such a muddle of this. I’ve hurt your feelings, and I didn’t mean to. I’m Felicity French. We live at the Mount—and after you’ve been so sweet about that nasty—I mean, your friend. Do forgive me.”

  “Please, please,” Tim said, “that’s quite all right. I assure you I don’t mind a bit. Quite a few people think it’s odd.” In his mind a brief addition of two and two making four had taken place: the Mount and the name of French, and the fact that he was conversing, obviously, with the daughter of Admiral Sir Richard French, Flag Officer, and Second-in-Command of the Rock. He turned to her suddenly as a new idea entered his head and asked, “Had you ever thought what it must be like to be a monkey—I mean chaps like these who live where there are people?”

  Felicity replied, “No, I hadn’t.” She went over and sat on the rail. Scruffy, having finished his peanuts, loped off, the mother ape returned, presented her rear end to her offspring, who climbed aboard her back and clung to her.

  “There you are,” said Tim. “What kind of a future is there in store for that little thing?” He went over to it, plucked it from its mother’s back and let it hang from one of his fingers. He said, “That’s the girl, Adele—show the lady some of your tricks.” He placed the apelet on to his palm, where she did a neat handstand.

  Felicity applauded. “Oh good!” and then asked, “Do they all have names?”

  “Of course,” Tim replied. “I name them when they’re six months old and it looks as though they’re going to make it. But there again you have it—what’s the good of having a name if you can’t make use of it, like signing cheques or writing to your pals? What’s this little creature got to look forward to but being bitten to pieces in a fight, or dying of pneumonia when a Levanter moves in? That’s the kind of thing I’m trying to stop.”

  “Tell me about it,” Felicity said, and knew not what she did.

  Tim looked at her swiftly for an instant to see whether she was serious or having a pull at his leg, for recently everyone had been avoiding him, and it was less than an hour ago that the Brigadier had referred to him as the town bore on the subject of apes. “Do you really mean it?”

  Felicity said, “Yes, please,” and now suspected that she might be in for something of a session. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette on you, would you?”

  “Yes, of course. How very rude of me.” He offered her one from his case and lit it. She inhaled the smoke gratefully, folded her hands and waited.

  After a moment’s mental floundering, Tim said, “You see, they’re all so lonely. Even though they have their own friends and families here, they’re lonely inside—and disappointed. It’s as though whoever made us had tried things out with them first and then cast them aside. But there they are.”

  And from this earnest beginning he launched into the full narrative of his arrival on the Rock, his being made O.I.C., and his suddenly awakened interest in the Barbary apes entrusted to his care.

  He talked and talked and talked, did Captain Bailey, the story, for the first time falling upon willing ears, pouring from him in a seemingly endless torrent. Felicity listened without interruption, smoking quietly and never seeming to take her grave, sweet eyes from his face. Much of what he was saying was unintelligible to her—statistics and logistics, measurements and complicated mechanical devices for protecting and controlling the apes, but dirough the story that he told somehow never involving himself or his disappointments directly, there emerged the picture of a good, kind and loving man in whose make-up there appeared more than the usual shred of tenderness and gentleness allotted to men, and concern for fellow creatures on the earth other than himself and his kind. And this picture went straight to the heart of Felicity and touched her.

  Tim talked on. He told her about Lovejoy, the stickiness of bureaucracy, its sole concern with statistics and entries on the right side of the ledger, and the difficulty of getting its administrators to see or even consider the human—or rather, the animal—side of the question. With laughter directed at himself, he revealed the latest blow-up of the Brigadier which had sent him along up to the apes’ village to do some soul-searching, concluding with, “I suppose the Brig. has got more to worry about than monkeys—and old Scruff did tear up the town. Wait until the C.R.A. gets the list of damage he did up here before starting below.”

  Tim ran down a bit at that point, and in the hiatus Felicity said firmly, “I think he’s horrid. You’re not appreciated.”

  “Oh, it isn’t that,” Tim said, “I don’t mind—I’ve never had quite so much fun or been so interested in anything—it’s for them, don’t you see, that I get discouraged and a little low sometimes. Nobody seems to care about them really but Gunner Lovejoy and myself.”

  “I do!” Felicity heard herself cry with a fierceness that astonished her. “I do now, since you’ve told me about them. I think they’re sweet.” She was rewarded by a look of gratitude and worship combined that poured from Tim’s eyes. “And you’re not to become discouraged,” Felicity added firmly. “Supposing something happened and they all went away—they’d change their tune then soon enough.”

  “Yes,” Tim said eagerly, “do you think so? Well, of course, there’d never be any chance of that happening.”

  “What we ought to do,” Felicity said, and now she was frowning again from the intensity of her concentration on the subject, “is think up something which would call everybody’s attention to the wonderful work you’re doing.” Her face became suddenly exquisitely illuminated with the idea that had smitten her. “I’ve got it!” she cried. “You wouldn’t have one without a name, would you?”
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  Tim reflected. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact we have. There’s one just about the age of that little creature there that Lovejoy and I were going to name—but it’s a she.”

  The two aquamarines in Felicity’s countenance were now lustrous with excitement. “Splendid!” she said. “You write to the King and tell him you’d like to name the new apelet Elizabeth after the Princess.”

  Shock went through Captain Bailey in waves. “What?” he cried. “Write to the King? Why, I’d be court mar—”

  “Nonsense,” said Felicity. “Anyone can write to the King as long as they don’t threaten him. It’s not as though you were going over anyone’s head. After all, you are O.I.C. Apes, aren’t you—and they’re in your charge, aren’t they—and you do have to find names for them, don’t you—and he is your King, isn’t he? Then why can’t you tell him what you’d like to do?”

  “Do you know what,” said Tim, “that’s absolutely brilliant! Do you think the Princess would like it?”

  “Certainly,” Felicity replied firmly, “she’d be thrilled. She may be a princess, but don’t forget she’s a thirteen-year-old girl, too—and she’d want a picture of it to put in her room.”

  “I could send one along.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Felicity. “And what’s more, you must do it at once. Then perhaps you won’t be bullied by that nasty Brigadier any longer.”

  She looked at her watch and said, “Goodness, I’ve kept you too long from your work. I had no idea it was so late. It’s been so nice meeting you. Do let me know what happens after you’ve written to the King.” She rose from the railing, offered him a cool hand and firm pressure, and said, “Good-bye then,” went to her car and drove off.