Scruffy - A Diversion Read online

For the declaration of war simply crystallized what the Army and Navy had known for several years, but in view of the general complacency at Whitehall had not been able to do much about—namely that the lock of the door of the Mediterranean, which was Gibraltar, the door which if opened would lead to Malta, Egypt, India and possibly the total collapse of the British Empire, was rusty and one firm concerted blow might shatter it.

  The fact of the war had turned Gibraltar, taken for granted for years as an impregnable key fortress, into a liability as the planners and strategists recognized that in terms of modern warfare it had become almost obsolete and practically unusable as a Naval base if the Spaniards entered the war against Great Britain.

  Overnight more subtle abstractions such as diplomacy, psychology and morale became paramount and took on greater importance than guns.

  One of those most deeply concerned with such problems and charged with responsibility for them far above his rank was a certain Major William S. Clyde, one of those queer characters thrown up by the war who inhabited the warrens of M.I.5, were not much seen and not much heard, but had a wide acquaintance in high places and wielded an astonishing amount of influence.

  If the military-intelligence boffins prided themselves upon selecting officers for their service who didn’t look like agents, spies, investigators or undercover men, they had outdone themselves in the case of Major William (S for Slinker, to his friends) Clyde. Or rather nature had aided them by supplying them with a man and a character who not only didn’t look like an agent, but also managed not to look like an officer. What he did resemble was a kind of fearfully busy, abstracted stork flapping about on long, stilt-like legs. He was further handicapped by refusing to take himself or the Secret Service seriously, and affecting a conspiratorial air which irritated his superiors of the Regular Army, but amused those more highly placed.

  He was six foot four and a half inches tall and excessively thin, and hence shambled about with a slight stoop in order to communicate with medium-sized mortals without seeming constantly to be bending down to them. His hair was darkly Celtic but he had a reddish moustache of which he was very proud and wore droopingly. For the rest his features were aquiline and his eyes quite wild.

  The Master of Christchurch, who was becoming somewhat annoyed at the manner in which the Army, the Navy and the Air Force were raiding his staff, had recommended Clyde to Intelligence almost in a vengeful mood when he had been asked for another bright young Don, this time one with a background of psychological training. He would hate to lose Clyde, but it would serve the Army right, and, the Master reflected, might even do the country some good. His conscience did dictate, however, when he spoke on the telephone to the departmental head who had made the request that he say, “Look here, I think you ought to know. This is a bright boy, but he is also quite mad. All of those chaps who go in seriously for that subject are a little dotty.”

  The departmental head had laughed bitterly and said, “He ought to fit beautifully into my squirrel cage then,” and thanked the Master.

  It soon developed that Clyde was not only bright and as mad as the Master of the House had warned, but quite extraordinary as well, and Army Intelligence found itself embarrassed by having on its hands—an intelligence. It was coupled however with charm, persuasiveness and limitless cheek.

  By request he remained a Major. In fact he had acquired a phantom rank of much higher grade, and around his branch one heard such phrases as, “What does Clyde think about this—? Why don’t you have a word with Clyde—? Has Clyde agreed to this—?” His job was not even exactly defined. In America he would have been known as a trouble-shooter, and he was moved about where his type of sardonic intelligence and above all his apparent grasp of what went on in the mind of the other fellow appeared most needed.

  And since the world over it is the custom to hand the new boy the impossible job that no one else has been able to solve, Major Clyde had found himself with Gibraltar dumped into his lap. And a preliminary visit to that bastion and a briefing by Major McPherson, the local security officer, had made it quite plain as to why he had been passed this hot potato.

  The Naval base was not only indefensible physically without the moving thither of a vast number of guns and men which were not available, but from the security point of view was nothing but a goldfish bowl. Here was one of the most important key fortresses of the Empire with its built-in fifth column of Spanish workmen without whose labour the dockyard and installations could not exist.

  This made the task of keeping out spies practically insuperable. Sensitive departments might button themselves up against agents and saboteurs, but the community of Gibraltar as a whole was exposed to every kind of infiltration.

  Clyde had flown back to London with the suggestion which at first had raised the hair upon the heads of his superiors, but later had been adopted not only because it was the thing to do but because it appeared that the new boy had actually come up with a solution. Since Gibraltar was not only a goldfish bowl, but an open book, it was the Major’s idea that its pages should at all times reflect the best of all possible British worlds. As there was no way to stop visits from German and Spanish spies, let them see and hear that the British were unworried, unruffled and unhampered.

  Hence Gibraltar all during the war would be brightly illuminated and all luxury items such as white flour for bread, silks, tobacco, sugar, etc., which the Spanish workmen in peacetime were accustomed to smuggle across the line beneath their shirts, should be available, fulfilling the dual purpose of diddling the enemy and bolstering up the inhabitants.

  It was Clyde who had recognized from the very beginning and maintained through the darkest days that the problem of Gibraltar was purely one of morale. If the Spaniards were to be kept out of the war the window of Gibraltar through which they looked must show them constantly that it would be unprofitable. Should Franco once reach the conclusion that the native Gibraltarians as well as the British had got the wind up, the fat might well be in the fire. Major Clyde concerned himself with the window-dressing. Thus, in the early days of the war Gibraltar was a kind of paradisical oasis.

  But if life on the Rock had remained basically unchanged, the war had radically altered the plans of Miss Felicity French and turned them from immediate wedding bells, chintzes and cushions at Harrods to serious reflections as to how best to arrange the future intelligently and satisfactorily. Felicity was not the daughter of an Admiral for nothing. She was likewise far-sighted.

  In the ordinary way of affairs, had there not been a war, propinquity and Felicity would have continued to soften up Captain Bailey as well as the opposition of her parents; there would have been a Service wedding with all the trimmings, after which she would have settled down happily enough with Tim in married officers’ quarters and followed him about through station after station of his military career. Now other considerations intruded, such as, for instance, serving her country.

  At the same time being a woman and having thus properly put first things first she saw no reason why they could not be combined with her other designs. She remembered what Tim had told her about the existence of an evacuation plan of women and children, from Gibraltar. If such a plan were put into effect the only women who could remain upon the Rock would be those in service. There was no reason why with her intelligence and connections she should not be one of these. At the same time if she were already married she would never be accepted by the W.R.N.S. In the meantime Tim had not yet mentioned the subject. The apes and his emergency plans for them were taking up a good deal of his time.

  Christmas had come and gone. 1940 had been ushered in and the war was still static with the French manning the Maginot Line and a British expeditionary force sitting on the northern flank near Luxemburg. It was time, Felicity thought, to put her plan into action.

  They were working upon a young female ape at the small ape clinic set up in St. Michael’s hut. Her name was Juliette, she was nine months old and had suffered a deep gash from a
bite on her buttocks inflicted, of course, by Scruffy.

  Felicity subscribed to the theory that a man is more likely to succumb to a female who makes herself a partner in his games and hobbies. If Tim’s concern and passion was apes, then so was hers. She had made herself almost indispensable to him, accompanying him on his rounds of the apes’ village and helping him during the minor emergencies and surgeries that arose, and soon had found herself happily accepted as his second pair of hands.

  The apelet was on her stomach and was being held down by Tim while Felicity cleansed the wound and prepared to apply an antiseptic. The monkey had managed to twist its head about and was regarding Felicity with some anxiety, but also with trust and love.

  “It’s going to sting for just a minute,” Felicity said to the apelet as though she were addressing a child, “but after that it’s going to be all better.” With firm, practised fingers she washed away the dried, coagulated blood. Juliette squirmed.

  “Hold still, you little devil, will you,” said Tim. “Stop making things more difficult. We’re only doing this for your own good.” He bent over and peered into the wound now exposed. “H’m, nasty!”

  Felicity swabbed it dry once more and poured the antiseptic on a bit of gauze. “If they’d only listen to you about the cages,” she said, “these things wouldn’t happen. Poor little darling.”

  “Or at least supply us with a proper vet. That cut could do with a stitch or two.”

  “One isn’t supposed to mind having a scar there” Felicity observed. “She’ll have one too. Now then.” She applied the gauze. Juliette screamed like a child, then squirmed and whimpered.

  Tim said, soothingly, “Come on, old girl, it isn’t all that bad,” and then to Felicity, “Isn’t it awful to have to hurt them?”

  They smiled at one another across the table and Felicity said, “What a good, kind man you are, Tim.”

  The Captain flew into a perfect panic of embarrassment. “Nonsense,” he replied, “absolute rotter.”

  “Tim!”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Felicity began. Juliette took up her attention for another instant, “Oh, do hold her still for another second, can you?” and then, “I’ve been thinking we could get married after I come back. Mother will fuss dreadfully of course.”

  “Will she?” said Tim in a voice of a man whose mind is elsewhere, but who nevertheless has heard the question. “I don’t suppose there’s any use trying to keep a bandage on her, particularly on her rear. She’d have it off in a second. We’ll just have to keep catching her and cleaning it until it’s healed. Oh Lord! Your mother, you mean!” He shouted suddenly as the full import of Felicity’s last remark penetrated, and then—“What do you mean when you come back?”

  “I’m going to volunteer for the Wrens. I’m going to learn coding and signalling and be made an officer with privileges and use Daddy’s name and be sent back here. Then I thought—”

  Tim was suddenly looking at her with a curious fierceness. “You are not to come back, Felicity. I don’t want you to.”

  “Are you being unkind, Tim?”

  “Huh! Unkind! After what I told you about those German guns. They’ve sprouted a new lot, a regular plantation. I don’t want you dismembered.” His gaze was now direct and revealing. “I want you membered.”

  “And you?” queried Felicity.

  “I’m in the business,” Tim replied briefly. “I shall get under a table.”

  “Oh, Tim,” Felicity wailed, “why couldn’t you have been a Swiss clock-maker?” She took a tube of soothing antibiotic salve and squeezed some into the wound. Juliette squeaked and they began to laugh. They both suddenly felt themselves singularly happy. Felicity murmured, “Juliette, Juliette, wherefore art thou Juliette. Oh dear, that isn’t right, is it?”

  Tim asked, “Would she really kick up a row?”

  “Oh yes. And Daddy will too.”

  Tim reflected, “I imagine he will . . . I would. All done? I can’t hold her much longer.”

  Felicity replied, “Sissy!” and wiped the edges of the wound clear. Then she said, “Tim, would you rather not marry me?”

  Captain Bailey cried, “Oh, my God, Felicity!” and in the exclamation managed to express such an abysmal horror at the thought of not marrying her that he conveyed all that she needed to know.

  “I oughtn’t to be gone more than six months,” Felicity said, “seven at the most, but as soon as I have my commission—”

  Tim said, “Look here, Felicity, I haven’t got a bean, you know.”

  “Neither have I. No expectations either. Not a single rich relative. And I shall enjoy being a burden to you.”

  “Life on a Captain’s pay—”

  “Bliss!” then Felicity blinked her eyes clear of two large tears which somehow had suddenly formed there and added, “You don’t mind that I’m too fat? And not very pretty? I can cook. I mean really, not play cooking.”

  “Felicity!” Tim cried once more in a perfect agony of frustration. And once more he packed into her name whole pages of unspoken emotional literature, and then somehow found some words, “How the devil can a man hang on to a confounded wounded she-ape and at the same time tell someone what he feels—the magnitude of it—the awesomeness of it all—I mean how it makes you think you don’t know whether you’re going to burst into tears or laugh or fall down in a dead faint. It sort of tears you to pieces inside and makes you all giddy and sick and at the same time you want to yell at the top of your lungs.”

  “Oh, Tim,” Felicity said, “you make love so beautifully. You can let her go now.”

  Tim did so and reached for Felicity, but Juliette was quicker than he. In a flash the little apelet was up from the table, had leaped on to Felicity’s bosom and wrapped both her arms about her neck. She turned her wizened face towards Tim, bared her small fangs and scolded and chittered at him angrily.

  Felicity held her close and murmured, “Hush little one, you mustn’t be jealous. He loves me.” She put her chin down upon the little head and looked across the table at Tim and on her face was an expression of tenderness which pierced the man and left him shaking with the love that he was experiencing for this odd, kind and rather wonderful girl. “There’s all the rest of the time for us,” she said, and then added, “Dear Tim.”

  Ten days later Felicity sailed for England to volunteer for the Wrens. Because of the war there was no formal announcement of engagement. She and Tim parted with the understanding that when she returned with her commission they would be married.

  It was not six months, however, but a whole year and five months before Felicity was able to return to the Rock wearing the stripes of a Wren 2nd Officer. The delay in her return had been occasioned by her being just that much too good and too intelligent. She had made 3rd Officer so easily and so far at the top of her class that she had been retained to train the new cadres joining up and it was not until she had been promoted to the more exalted position of 2nd Officer and applied almost unbearable pressure on her already harassed father that she was assigned to Gibraltar in charge of all Naval signals and coding there.

  And when she did finally return it was to find Tim in disgrace, dismissed from his job as O.I.C. Apes, his morale practically non-existent and the morale of all on the Rock not much better.

  8

  Background to a Sacking

  The unpleasant consequences of war fall variously upon different communities as well as individuals in accordance with the situations and problems of those communities and individuals. Wars are always seen as through the wrong end of a telescope so that they diminish to what each person can see affecting his life and himself.

  For Captain Bailey the conflict had narrowed down to his apes, his guns and an occasional letter from Felicity. These last were cheerful, straightforward efforts containing a wealth of detail concerning life in the W.R.N.S. at the beginning of the war, and a paucity of sentimentality. Felicity had a theory that men didn’t like sopp
y stuff.

  In this she might have been wrong. In Tim’s case absence was making the heart grow not only fonder but increasingly nervous. A girl like Felicity loose amongst the Navy in Great Britain could be cutting a swath. Sooner or later she would encounter a Naval type who would attract her and who would not be carrying an anchor chain of parental disapproval about his neck. He thought her letters progressively cooler and since he had the shyness of the British and didn’t wish to press, he tempered his to hers.

  Therefore he concentrated on his guns and his monkeys. The former as far as Captain Bailey was concerned were money for jam. He was a dedicated Artilleryman who up to that time had never fired at anything but a target, but who had been passionately devoted to seeing that whatever he threw at that target, and from whatever distance, landed smack in the centre of it. This kind of keenness soon communicated itself to his teams of gun crews; perfection became a game and success a habit. The same attitude, however, was less successful when it came to carrying on in wartime his job as O.I.C. Apes.

  To begin with there had always been something faintly ludicrous in not only the official title but also in the job itself. With the declaration of war when soldiers’ jaws were supposed to set in hard, grim lines, it became absurd and not even the fact that when the souls on the Rock were counted and numbered, the apes were treated as humans and furnished with both identity and ration cards, made it any less so. In fact if anything it was even more comic. Lovejoy kept the cards in a small file box up in St. Michael’s hut close to the apes’ village. The Gunner was rather proud of them, and pleased. There had been moments when both he and Tim feared that with the onset of the war the apes might have been ordered destroyed.

  There was also a paradox involved; with the war the necessity of drilling crews for the anti-aircraft guns and the long-range batteries pointing out to sea became paramount, the infantry had to be rehearsed and the engineers began blowing, blasting, drilling and exploding so that between all of the Services, from morning until night, something was banging, cracking, booming, chaffering, rattling and crashing on the Rock. The apes, who hated noises of any kind, were in a constant state of nervousness often bordering upon panic.