Scruffy - A Diversion Page 6

  Tim stood looking after her, filled with the wonderful sensation of having found an ally. “What a funny kid,” he said to himself. Scruffy appeared on the concrete platform, bounced up and down on all fours, coughed and cursed. “What a jolly good kid,” Captain Bailey said aloud. And then, addressing the big Macaque: “You wouldn’t care to take a bite out of the other hand, would you, chum?”

  One might consider it not exactly fair to suggest that the fate of the British Empire, which meant the fate of the then free world as well, was influenced by the fact that Felicity French, the daughter of the Admiral commanding the Naval Base at Gibraltar, had met an unknown, impoverished and unspectacular Captain of Artillery who was further handicapped by holding down the doubtful post of Officer in Charge of Apes.

  Yet it is true that the threads of life twist, turn, cross and knot sometimes seemingly so unconnected with events they are due to affect that it is not even possible to trace them back. The fact remains that Felicity, who was a good driver and thoughtful and polite as well, set in motion a train of consequences when she came close to knocking down an individual, a Gibraltarian by the name of Alfonso T. Ramirez, with the fender of her car.

  Entering Main Street from Library Street on her way back to the Mount, she was only half-looking where she was going and not at all thinking what she was doing. Her mind was taken up with the young man she had met, the quality of his smile and the charm of his concentration on and affection for some rather nasty brutes.

  And thus she came to within a hair’s breadth of running down the man named Ramirez who was a third of the way across the street within a safety area where it was neither legal nor sporting to kill a pedestrian. All rights of the situation belonged to Ramirez.

  Young and healthy, Felicity’s reflexes were quick enough. She tramped on the brakes and twisted the wheel hard right and the strange-looking little man with the thick-lensed spectacles and the en brosse, short, stand-up haircut which so ill became his squat dumpy figure, felt no more than the breeze of her left fender passing his person.

  Because she was so frightened of what she had almost done Felicity cried out involuntarily, “Oh, why don’t you look where you’re going?”

  Then she realized that it was all her fault and that not only had she been driving dangerously but had been inexcusably rude, and she cried contritely, “Oh dear me, I am so sorry, it was all my fault.”

  Felicity had jarred the car to a halt midway on the crossing so that the individual she had so nearly erased was standing peering in at her, his face white and then flushed, level with her even though she was sitting down. Behind his thick lenses his eyes were pale and angry. His mouth was shaped like the small letter “o”.

  The awful thing was that it didn’t seem to be able to give vent to his indignation. Whatever was bottled up inside of him, fright or wrath—he couldn’t get it out. He swelled up like a balloon, the little “o” of his mouth working furiously and silently. Felicity thought suddenly of the grotesque figure in the Michelin tire advertisements and the relief from panic led her to commit another unintentional rudeness.

  She couldn’t help herself; she giggled.

  There was no point in remaining there for ever on the cross walk, traffic piling up behind her, so she tittered nervously, said once again, “I’m sorry,” and drove on, leaving behind her a vain and misanthropic little man swollen by sufficient cubic centimetres of superiority complex to fly a dirigible, who had been laughed at by a girl of an alien race.

  For Felicity it was an episode quickly forgotten, for Mr. Ramirez it was the beginning of an unfortunate day of humiliations, the end of which was to confirm him as an implacable enemy of Great Britain and all her people.

  Arrived home at the flower-trellised Georgian mansion which served as the Navy’s home for its Flag Officer at Gibraltar, Felicity abandoned her car in the gravel forecourt and went banging happily through the house with all the joy and energy of her twenty-two years.

  Eventually her ebullience washed over her mother, who was working on a piece of tapestry by the big picture window in the drawing-room that overlooked the sea and the dockyard. Lady French had started her first piece of tapestry at the time she had married young Lieutenant French, as an occupation eminently fitted to a sailor’s wife and the daughter of a baronet, while her sailor husband was away at sea. The habit formed was never broken, and the Admiral was once said to have confided in a convivial moment that when Lady French slept her fingers still continued the movements of running needle and wool through the holes of the pattern.

  Felicity’s chubbiness did not stem from her but from her father. Lady French was tall, slender and cool. Her hair was still golden; she had been a great beauty. When she had married the consensus was that she had thrown herself away. But now she was Lady French, and an Admiral’s wife, so it actually had worked out all for the best. Still, it might not have done, and she had a quiet determination that her daughter Felicity should not expose herself to the same hazard. She was glad she had her come out to the Rock for the summer. In one sense it was a small, narrow, tight-fitting community, but as a Naval and Colonial base it was full of eligible young men of good families on the threshold of important careers.

  Lady French looked up from completing a stitch and said, “Felicity darling, must you make so much noise? You know, you aren’t sixteen any more. In fact, you’ll have to be thinking very soon of—”

  “Getting married,” Felicity completed for her, for this was one she had heard before. “I think of it all of the time, Mummy. Guess what! I’ve just met the nicest young man. Maybe I could marry him.”

  Lady French was startled by this announcement, for she never knew when her daughter was joking. But ladies, in the lexicon of the Admiral’s wife, did not show emotion. She disciplined herself with three more stitches before she replied, “Really, dear? How very nice. Is it anyone we know?”

  Felicity’s lovely clear eyes were bent upon her mother with an expression of quizzical tenderness. She replied, “Captain Bailey.”

  Lady French sent the blunted needle four more times through and back, drawing the piece of red wool after it while she assessed rapidly the information her daughter had revealed. Like all mothers she felt that every young man her daughter met was a potential husband. A Captain was starting close to the top indeed; at the same time it posed another problem. “My dear,” she said, “isn’t the company of a Captain a little bit old for you?” She lifted her own beautiful golden head and looked out across the town to the mole. There was nothing there but a pair of destroyers already tied up for a fortnight, a Naval collier, and a couple of rusty freighters plus the cruise ship. A puzzled frown now appeared upon her own handsome brow and she murmured, “Captain Bailey? Is there any ship in now with a Captain Bailey?”

  Felicity struggled and won the battle to keep the corners of her mouth from twitching. She felt somehow that she ought to say, “Hang on to your needlework, Mum—this is going to be a real snorter.” But she refrained, and instead said demurely, “Captain Timothy Bailey of the Royal Artillery, Mother. Army.”

  The tapestry needle was blunt, but Lady French still managed to run it into the end of her finger. She then let fly a good round Navy swear word she had learned from her husband. Thereupon as she sucked at the drop of blood that appeared on her finger the lady inside Lady French scored one more imperishable triumph. She said quite quietly: “Oh no, Felicity—not Army, surely?”

  Felicity said, “Yes, Mother— Army.”

  Lady French then asked, “Who is he?” Three words which in these circumstances constituted a three-page questionnaire and included such vital items as: What is his family? Who is his father? What was his mother’s maiden name? What, if any, armorial bearings? Have they any money? What schools did he attend? Is he at the very least the General’s A.D.C. and headed for Staff College?

  Felicity thought that she might as well complete the job, since her mother was really bearing up wonderfully. She said, “He’s
O.I.C.—Officer in Charge of Apes.”

  Lady French was sometimes afflicted by the tortures of sinus, and found that smelling salts offered a certain relief. She now laid down her tapestry, opened her near-by handbag, took out the bottle of smelling salts, removed the stopper and took two deep whiffs that brought tears to her eyes. By the time she had wiped them away she was able to speak. “Well, I wouldn’t mention this young man to your father if I were you. You know how he feels about the Army. He’s in a state anyway—the Brigadier is coming for dinner tonight. We’re dressing, of course. Do try to do your hair nicely for once, Felicity. I don’t think your father likes the Brigadier very much—he never lets him get a word in edgeways—it’s Army, Army, Army, when he comes.”

  And indeed it was so at the dinner-party that night. The Admiral never did get to hold forth, for the Brigadier was loaded to the back of his teeth with narrative about the depredations committed by one of those confounded Rock apes, a creature by the name of Scruffy, who had invaded the town that day and wrought enough damage as might well cause an investigating committee from Parliament to descend upon them.

  It was apes this, and apes that, filthy destructive beasts, and gradually through the Brigadier’s fulminations the name of Captain Bailey surfaced. Impudent, time-wasting young cub. Just the useless type of officer they were sending out these days. The name of Scruffy receded into the background and that of Captain Timothy Bailey took over. It seemed that everything that was wrong with, on, in, around and about Gibraltar might now safely be laid at the door of a congenital idiot named Bailey.

  Lady French paled beneath her make-up, but never once wavered in the elegant and delicate dissection of the portion of fish upon her plate. She did, however, manage to throw one glance of anguish at her daughter, who sat at the opposite side next to the Brigadier’s handsome young Staff Captain, to whom she was paying not the slightest attention. She had done the best she could with her unruly hair, and had plastered it down with water, but now it was drying and beginning to stick up. Her attention was bent upon the Brigadier. She was drinking in every word he was saying, and absolutely glowing with pride and happiness.

  Lady French suddenly felt she didn’t care for any more fish.

  5

  Scruffy Lifts a Scalp

  Infuriated by having been laughed at by a young English girl as well as shaken by this narrow escape, Mr. Ramirez felt the need of a drink and continued on his way to a pub, the Admiral Nelson, where he often stopped for a beer on his way home, there to encounter his second humiliation of the day.

  It was always a lonely beer he had in the Admiral Nelson since no one ever asked him to join up or opened conversation with him. Even strangers who came into the pub in search of companionship as well as drink would not bother to pass the time of day with the unprepossessing little man with the thick lenses, pasty, unhealthy-looking skin, squat body and shoe-brush haircut.

  It was about his usual hour, just past six o’clock, when Ramirez entered the bar which had not yet begun to fill up, although at one end he saw Gunner Lovejoy.

  Ramirez knew the Gunner by sight. Everyone on the Rock knew Gunner Lovejoy, Keeper of the Apes. The Gunner on the other hand, particularly when he was having a drink, saw no one.

  This particular evening Ramirez felt the need of some kind of companionship or human contact to the point where, unfortunately, he chose to force himself upon the Gunner, who was on his third Monkey Juice, a revolting potion he had invented himself. It was Guinness’s Stout, laced with a dash of lime juice. It did something for him.

  As Ramirez entered, Lovejoy turned his head at the noise to see who had arrived and looked directly at and through Ramirez as though he were not there, although they had both been frequenting the same bar at the same hour for years.

  Lovejoy had already turned away when Ramirez spoke to the sun-tanned area that was the back of the Gunner’s neck between the collar and his tunic and his Artilleryman’s cap.

  “Would you care to have a drink, Sergeant?” he asked politely enough.

  Lovejoy, who was neither a sergeant nor a bombardier but a plain gunner, turned slowly and examined Ramirez, becoming aware of him as for the first time, and was not pleased with what he saw. He came close to articulating his thoughts, which were, “Cor, what rock did you crawl out from under?”

  He didn’t like civilians anyway and was particularly hostile to any type who tried to curry favour with him miscalling his rank, or rather lack of rank.

  He hesitated, but for only a moment. The hesitation had been caused by the fact that he was thirsty, he was alone, pay day was two days away, and a free drink was a free drink. But as he looked Ramirez up and down he was unable to keep his lip from curling or the expression upon his face as of one looking at a toad. It was an expression which Gunner Lovejoy reserved in general for civilians, but this man in addition to being non-military actually resembled that unhappy amphibian.

  Lovejoy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and replied, “I never drink with civilians,” turned his back, pulled his last half-crown from his pocket, slapped it on to the bar and said, “Another of the same, Joe,” and thereby drove another nail into what might become the coffin of the British Empire.

  That day Alfonso T. Ramirez, having been almost run down and killed and then laughed at by the rich daughter of the English—had now been spurned by the poorest of the same nation and the lowest in grade of service. The little mouth again formed into a small and angry “o” and he turned, went out of the bar and set off to keep his appointment with the ultimate encounter of the day.

  Mr. Ramirez, who was some forty years of age and an expert employed in the Optical Repairs Department of the Navy Yard, where he engaged upon the finest and most delicate precision work on range-finders, telescopes, etc., was the possessor of two secrets, one of them safely and securely buried, the other unfortunately somewhat more vulnerable.

  The one that was to remain secure from prying eyes, even through the most severe wartime security check, had to do with his middle initial. Alfonso T. Ramirez was his name, and if you asked him what the “T” stood for he would have told you Tomaso for good St. Thomas, and so indeed it was inscribed upon his birth certificate. For Ramirez was a Gibraltarian born and bred upon the Rock from a line of Gibraltarians. At some time in the past, of course, the Ramirez’s must have moved to the Rock from the Spanish mainland, but they had been Gibraltarians for generations and had assimilated all characteristics of that curiously hybrid people, as well as embracing British customs, drinks, licensing laws, police and their singular way of driving on the left-hand side of the road.

  And such a one was Alfonso T. Ramirez. His well-kept secret was that the “T” actually didn’t stand for Tomaso, but for Treugang, a name as German as the Niebelungenring. And at heart Mr. Ramirez was a Nazi.

  On his mother’s side there had been a great great grandmother, a von Waltz, from Koenigsberg in East Prussia and this had led his mother secretly to christen him Alfonso Treugang Ramirez, though officially as a good Catholic she had endowed him with the middle name of a saint. But outside of Ramirez’s home no one ever knew of this, for then Ramirez was ashamed of the name and hated it, and eventually it was dropped.

  But in his middle life with the rise of Hitler to power and the propaganda attendant upon the theory of the master race, Ramirez had reason to remember that there was German blood in his veins and quite suddenly to become secretly and vengefully proud of it.

  No blame could attach to Ramirez for being a misanthropic, lonely, despicable little man. Nothing had ever favoured him. From the fat, unwholesome-looking child with a pasty skin, he grew into an unwholesome-looking fellow with short arms and legs, and a round head that sat almost directly upon his shoulders. He resembled a slug. He had a harsh voice and an unpleasant and repellent manner. Nobody liked him.

  Ramirez lived alone in two rooms off Calle Mendoza where he cooked his own meals on a single electric hotplate, and had no friends, alt
hough there were plenty of neighbours.

  While Gibraltarians are normally a cheerful, friendly and most hospitable people, Mr. Ramirez had been at war with the world for too many years and it showed. He didn’t like children, he didn’t like animals, and he didn’t like his neighbours.

  Now for the last few years he had been buoyed up by a secret satisfaction, the philosophy of the Nazis. It didn’t matter how you looked or what people thought of you; if the blood of the master race flowed in your veins, then you were a master man. And he followed the career of the little Austrian house painter, no beauty himself, with passionate fascination. Some of these magic corpuscles were locked into his system and made him one of them.

  It was none other than Scruffy who climaxed that catastrophic day by penetrating and exposing the second secret of Mr. Alfonso T for Treugang Ramirez.

  Scruffy’s siesta could last anywhere between two and three hours, depending upon the heat of the day and how active he had been in the morning. At five-thirty that hot afternoon he awakened, yawned, stretched, scratched himself and proceeded to confound the scientists, learned men and animal psychologists by remembering that he had had a bang-up time that morning. Simultaneously he also knew by the automatic timer that he carried in his stomach, or somewhere within his unprepossessing person, that it was an hour past his feeding time. He therefore went off at a skip and a jump to Prince Ferdinand’s Battery to find that the Gunner had already delivered their rations and that in Scruffy’s absence the pack had disposed of most of them. He took a desultory nibble at a carrot end lying on the ground, then chucked it at the tin sign warning tourists not to feed the apes, scored a ringing bull’s-eye, and was off. The need for food and the recollection of what fun he had had a short time ago decided him to return to town.