Scruffy - A Diversion

by Paul Gallico

  In deference to his cargo, Cranch made an eggshell landing on the Ceuta air-strip, and in accordance with his instructions, remained at the far end of the runway. The Consul had done his work well in the matter of bribes. Eight Guardias Civil in their patent leather hats, and armed with carbines, formed a cordon around the aircraft; the car appeared with a Moroccan driver who exhibited a mouthful of gold teeth, quickly removed the case of Scotch and the transportation box to the rear of his vehicle, and motioned the Group Captain into the front seat. They set off in the direction of the darkling and sombre hills back of the coastline. The time was six o’clock.

  By this time some of the gloom cast over him by his mission had begun to evaporate from Cranch, who was too cheerful an individual to remain depressed over long periods. He reflected that he was off the Rock; it obviously was going to be an overnight job; Ceuta was a place not exactly noted for its restrictions; he’d bung the powder into the old monkey, sew her up into her box, and go off on the town. Things could be a lot worse. He might even be able to import a few bottles of Spanish brandy, though this was known on the Rock as The Fate Worse Than Death, and indicated why the Spaniards put such a high value on honest Scotch whisky.

  The Group Captain’s spirits lifted further as the road on which his driver took him, instead of leading to some slum or scruffy bit of farmland, began to pass through exquisitely cultivated fruit orchards and private estates featuring splendid villas with red roofs and walls almost hidden beneath wistaria and bougainvillaea. In his mind he had pictured the monkey-keeping Señor Irun as being a ragged fellow with a stubble beard and broken teeth who stank of garlic.

  Now they were obviously heading for the residential section—the Señor might even be the type who would offer a chap a snort.

  The villas grew larger and more luxurious, and finally they turned up a broad avenue of palms, passed through a pair of large wrought-iron gates, and drew up before a hacienda of truly magnificent style and proportions. An African in snow-white baggy trousers, red jacket and tarboosh opened the door, another took the Group Captain’s cap. Cranch revised his opinion of Señor Irun upwards again, and imagined the owner of so much magnificence as a stately Don, when a small, rotund man with somewhat sagging cheeks and ten long hairs laid in parallel lines across his otherwise bald head appeared and said, “You are the Captain Cranch? I am Blasco Irun. You are most welcome here.” And then he added with just a trace of anxiety, “You have eet weeth you?”

  “It’s just out in the car, Señor,” Cranch reported, “all tickety-boo. Dropped it in light as a feather. I’ll bet there wasn’t even a ripple.”

  The Señor brightened perceptibly and clapped his hands; four more Africans appeared and he went into a torrent of instructions in Spanish, with elegant and expressive pantomime from which the Group Captain gathered they had been advised to transport the case as gently as though it were the corpse of their late grandmother.

  Cranch, who had been in Spain long enough to appreciate the décor, noted that the huge room in which he found himself was a treasure chamber luxuriously furnished in examples of Spanish, Moorish, and African art and handicraft. “Blimey,” he said to himself, “there’s lolly ’ere.”

  The four Africans entered bearing the case with the reverence called for, and brought it to another feather landing on the floor. Two more approached with hammer and chisel and applied themselves to the task of prying open the case with the same care used by an archaeologist approaching some priceless find embedded in the earth. The Señor, clad in immaculate white trousers and white shirt, bound with a broad red sash draped about his protuberant stomach, hovered over them, his hands fluttering, lips pursed, and eyes filled with anxiety. Cranch made another quick revision, but this time downwards. “Oh no, no, no,” he said to himself, “this drain isn’t buying a drink. He’ll want it all for himself.”

  With a gentle creaking the lid came off, revealing the bottles secured in straw, and each one sealed and intact.

  As the Group Captain had reported, not even a ripple had disturbed their contents. The round, anxious face of the Señor now relaxed into an enchanting and childlike smile. “Muy bien,” and he went over and shook Cranch solemnly by the hand. “Well,” he said, “well, well,” and Cranch suddenly realized he was translating from “bien” and meant “good”. “Now come weeth me, please.”

  He led the Group Captain through a succession of rooms of bewildering beauty and luxury until they came to a conservatory at one end of which was a large cage in which sat a full-grown African Macaque or Barbary ape, squatting on her haunches and eating a banana. Upon their entrance she ceased for a moment, looked and regarded them with disinterest out of her golden-brown eyes, and then returned to her fruit.

  The Señor flung out an arm proudly, “There she ees! Ees she not beautiful? She make you ver” fine babies, I theenk. Her name ees Ramona.”

  Something in the name stirred a memory in Group Captain Cranch, a memory of other times and other places, of girls and parties, wailing saxophones and dancing. He suddenly filled his lungs and in his resonant baritone gave forth with:

  “Ramona, I hear the mission bells above.

  Ramona, they’re ringing out our song of love.

  I press you, caress you,

  And bless the day you taught me to care—”

  The song filled the patio, causing Ramona to drop her banana in amazement, and the Señor to regard the Group Captain with a kind of astonished and excited interest.

  Señor Irun cried, “You seeng?”

  The Group Captain was now seized with the exaltation that sometimes filled him when he heard the sound of his own voice. “Do I sing?” he repeated. “Do I sing?” And then, filling the vast box of his chest with air, he let fly with “Ridi Pagliacci’, causing some Moorish lamps hanging from the ceiling to stir uneasily, and Ramona to leap up the side of her cage and chatter at him, though whether it was with love or anger was impossible to say.

  At the conclusion of the rendition Cranch swept the rotund little man a bow. Irun clapped two small, pudgy hands together and cried, “Well! Magnifico! Maravilloso! You are very versatile, no?”

  The Group Captain swept the Señor another bow. “Howard Arthur Cranch, at your service,” he said. “Songs, dances, impersonations and recitations, sleight-of-hand, and tricks with string.”

  Señor Irun did not react to this note of pleasantry as one might have expected him to, either as a wealthy Spanish gentleman or a fellow who could take a joke. Instead the look that he turned upon the Group Captain was full of a curious kind of eagerness mingled with wistfulness. “Thees is true?” he asked. “You can do all theese theengs?”

  “Bookings available now until Christmas,” Cranch replied. “Performances guaranteed, or money refunded.”

  “Maybe,” the Señor said, “maybe perhaps then you could stay and we could have a little party?”

  The word “party” acted upon Cranch like an electric shock, and drove all banter out of his system. “Eh—what’s that?” he said. “A party? Do you mean it?”

  “Oh yes, pleese,” the Señor said. A certain amount of becoming shyness suddenly suffused him as he asked, “Do you like girls?”

  The Group Captain turned his eyes heavenward and repeated the question twice, “Do I like girls? He asks me do I like girls?”

  “I like girls,” the Señor confided.

  The Group Captain extended one of his large hands and said, “Señor, that makes us brothers.”

  “Oh well, well!” cried the Señor, confusing Cranch momentarily until he translated it back into, “Good, good!” “I know many girls who like the party. They live in the town. I will invite them and they will come because I am the black ship.”

  “Are you, old boy?” said Cranch. “Sort of a piraty chap, what? Skull and crossbones, eh?”

  “No, no,” the Señor said. “The black ship of the family. The other ships have white wool—mine, she is black, because I am the playboy. Always I have bee
n the playboy. No nice girl of a good family will marry with me, even though I am ver’ wealthy. But of thees I am glad, because I am different from other Spaniards. I love the party. I will invite the girls. You have brought the liquor, and you will seeng and do for us all your tricks. Then they will love you ver’ much.”

  For a moment Cranch felt a dreamlike quality as though he had suddenly been trapped into acting out a major role in a story which had just gone the rounds of the Services on the Rock, and which began: “It seems that this commercial traveller suddenly found himself in the Sultan’s harem with all these beautiful girls around him, when—” He shook himself mentally like a terrier to snap himself out of it. For all he knew the Señor might produce a lot of old bags with buck teeth. However, the chance was well worth taking, the Scotch was real and so was the Señor’s eagerness. He placed his finger alongside his nose and said, “Whish,” took a few tiptoe steps up and down the room, and said, “Lead on, son. Let’s get cracking.”

  “Oh well, well!” cried Señor Irun, and clapped his hands. The slaves of his particular lamp appeared from all doorways.

  The party was a huge and outstanding success. The measure of its attainment can be judged by the fact that the Group Captain was not compelled to exaggerate when upon his return he narrated the story for the benefit of his fellow officers. The girls resembled either Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable, or a blending of both. They were gay and untrammelled. The young men called upon to fill in the interstices were handsome and docile, immediately relinquishing any young lady with whom either the Señor or the Group Captain wished to dance.

  There were two orchestras imported from Ceuta so that the music was continuous, except when Cranch was rendering his speciality numbers that did not call for orchestral accompaniment. There were car-loads of sherry, lorry-loads of champagne, caviar and foie gras, but the basis of it all was really the case of Black and White Scotch whisky, which provided in a way the theme of the party. The war had shut down the supply and the communicants approached this gift of the gods with veneration and gratitude. It even, black ship or not, brought out some of the nice people, who applauded Howard Cranch’s performance with enthusiasm. None of them had ever seen anyone like Group Captain Cranch before; Cranch had never had such an audience, or such a good time, in his life, and towards the middle of the evening he re-wrote his couplet into: “Blessing on old Blasco—the Señor’s the Tabasco,” and after a while they all sang it like a hymn.

  The Señor himself waddled from room to room to make sure that everybody was having a good time, thus enjoying the best of good times himself.

  The high point of the affair was reached about 1 a.m., when Group Captain Cranch, who had retired to a bedroom for a change of costume (it seems that the Señor, who also had a predilection for fancy-dress balls, kept a supply in hand), appeared as a Chinaman with a long queue, and aided by the Señor, the orchestra and the ape of that name, sang “Ramona” as it probably never had been rendered before.

  It was fortunate that the monkey actually liked noise and people, and when freed from her cage leaped about and screeched and screamed as enthusiastically as any of them. She had taken a shine to Cranch apparently, and offered no difficulties when called upon to assist him in the execution of the famous song.

  “Lamona,” sang the Chinese Cranch, “I hear the mission bells above.”

  Over his head Señor Irun rang a large dinner bell.

  “Lamona, they’re ringee out our song of love. I press-ee you, caress-ee you . . .”

  Ramona loved that part, and pressed and caressed right back, howling with excitement.

  “Lamona, when day is done I’ll hear you call . . .” (Aside: you can hear this one clear down to Tangier.) “Lamona, I’ll meet you by the waterfall.”

  This performance taking place in the patio where there was a fountain, the Group Captain suited action to the words and got into it.

  “I dread the dawn when I awake-ee to find you gawn . . .”

  Ramona here supplied the action, not caring for water, and went up on to the balcony.

  “Lamona,” sang the Group Captain, raising his arms to her, “I need you—my own.”

  It was agreed that there had never before in the history of Spanish Africa, or any other place, been a party the like of this, and Señor Irun was as happy as a child.

  But afterwards, when he had got out of his Chinese costume and reappeared to mingle with the guests in uniform, Cranch for the first time was preoccupied. His recent act had reminded him of something which had quite slipped his mind; he had a mission to perform which was only half-completed. He had delivered the case of whisky all right, but there was still this chimp, or rather, Ramona, to be handed over to some dim bulbs by the names of Bailey, McPherson and Clyde.

  Vaguely through his somewhat fume-invaded mind there passed recollections of instructions, warnings, a contraption of strings, straps, and slings and rubber bands, and white powder in an envelope, leather gloves, Top Secret, hush-hush, and “For God’s sake, old man, don’t fail us.”

  The gloves, he suddenly remembered, were back in the aeroplane, some ten miles off, but the envelope with the knock-out powder which would enable him to place Ramona in her box was in the inside breast pocket of his tunic, and he could feel it crackling there.

  Señor Irun came up and said, “Here, what’s this, Howard? You are looking serious? This is not the time for serious! Gay-gay-gay! Always gay! You have make me the best party. Come, we weel have a dreenk of Black and Whites together and then you will laugh again.”

  But now that memory had returned Cranch was not to be put off. He said, “No, no, old boy, it isn’t that easy. We’ve got a problem on our hands. You remember that little box I brought? We’ve got to get Ramona into it so she won’t get hurt.” He produced the envelope with the powder and said, “They gave me this to quiet her down—but how the devil do we get it inside her?”

  The Señor who, like Cranch, gave no outward sign of the amount of liquor he had consumed, found himself equally baffled by the problem, but knew one ready step to solution. He said, “We weel go have a drink, and perhaps these will give us idea.” He put his fingers to his mouth and emitted a shrill whistle, whereupon Ramona came running and hopping from wherever she had been and leaped on to his shoulder.

  They went up to the Señor’s bedroom, where the case of Scotch had been stashed, since it would have been fatal to let the thirsty mob at it in one fell swoop, and they had been doling it out a bottle at a time. They poured themselves each a dollop and toasted one another.

  Somehow a whiff of the spirit was wafted to Ramona, and she reached up a long, thin arm and begged for a sip. The Group Captain and the Spaniard exchanged glances as the penny dropped simultaneously for both of them. Not a word was spoken. Cranch produced the envelope with the powder, Señor Irun filled a fifth of a tumbler with Scotch whisky, the powder dissolved without a trace, leaving the liquid clear and amber-coloured. The Señor handed the potion to Ramona, who tossed it off like a debutante, sneezed, coughed, and then applauded violently, smacking her lips at the same time.

  “There you are, my pretty,” said the Señor, “you will sleep now. Come, you shall sleep on my bed, for it is your last night here before you journey to Gibraltar to be a bride.”

  He picked up the monkey and laid her on the silken coverlet of his bed, where she curled up with her hands over her face, as though to shield herself from the light.

  “Come,” said Señor Irun, “she will be asleep in the morning when we will return and put her in the box, and you will fly away. But now there are still more hours left to be gay. When will you show us your tricks with streeng?”

  As they left the room Cranch looked back over his shoulder. He had the impression that the fingers of the ape’s hands had opened, and that her golden-brown eyes looking through them were watching them depart. He could not quite catch the expression in them.

  There was only one incident to mar the best of all parties: so
meone stole a bottle of the Scotch whisky, a breach of hospitality that Señor Irun would not have believed possible even from some of the town characters. But there was no doubt about it; when they returned to the bedroom for a fresh bottle, one was missing. Someone had found their cache. On the silken counterpane Ramona was sleeping like an angel, the potion having evidently knocked her for six in jig-time, as Major Bailey had predicted. A search of the room yielded no clues. Señor Irun then decided to put the little unpleasantness out of his mind entirely, and to prevent a repetition of it he and Cranch gathered up the remaining bottles and took them below. The pace and tempo of the party stepped up.

  Eventually came the party’s end and the dawn. Unlike the song, Ramona was not “gawn” but still reposed on the silk coverlet, out like the well-known light. She was not only out, she was limp, and tight as they were themselves, the two men had no difficulty in inserting her into the intricate network of webbing that Major Bailey had devised for her security.

  Now that he saw how it worked, the Group Captain was quite stiff with admiration for the ingenuity of his colleague. “Clever chap,” he kept muttering. “Damned clever chap! She’ll ride like a baby.” While Señor Irun kept repeating, “Well,” over and over.

  He insisted upon driving the Group Captain to the air-strip himself in his special-bodied Fleetwood Cadillac, the back of which he first loaded with a parting gift of the last remaining bottle of Scotch, a case of champagne, a case of sherry, and half a dozen bottles of Fundador brandy of a superior type which was almost drinkable, for at some time during the morning he and Cranch had sworn blood brotherhood and eternal friendship, and the promise of another party when the war was concluded.

  At the air-strip the Guardia Civil formed ranks, Ramona, slumbering still peacefully in her shock-proof crate, was placed next the pilot, where the whisky had been, after which the potables were stowed in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the balance of the Albatross or meet the eye of casual inspection.