by Paul Gallico
“When?” asked the Major.
“S-Saturday night,” replied the Gunner with a sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach as he realized that he had irrevocably committed himself, it being Friday morning.
“O.K.,” said the Major. “Ring me as soon as she gives her answer,” and hung up.
The Gunner made all of the preparations consistent with the behaviour of an anxious swain who had brought himself to the point of popping the question. He walked three miles to Thurlstone to the barber to have his hair cut, took a bath, changed his linen, shaved twice over, removed some spots from his tunic and polished his shoes until his seamed and anxious face was reflected in them. The only thing he lacked was the solitaire in its box concealed about his person. Instead, he had such titbits as sugar, some fresh carrots and a package of shelled hazel nuts of which Amelia was inordinately fond.
The wording of his proposal too was worrying. He had never proposed to an ape before. Actually, he realized it was not to Amelia he would be making overtures, but to Miss Boddy, but on the other hand he was not proposing to Miss Boddy for Miss Boddy, but for Amelia. The situation was enough to try a professional poet and Lovejoy, whose inventiveness in describing the prospective groom had not flagged, now found himself bogged down.
The scene was familiar, the darkened veranda, the glowing cigarette ends, the contented chittering and caresses of Amelia.
“Miss Boddy—may I call you Constance?” Ridiculous sentences like that which he had seen in joke books flashed through the Gunner’s mind. And absurd scenes too, such as himself on his knees before Miss Boddy—also from joke books. Except that this was no joke.
And then, quite suddenly, out of the blue, almost as though she had guessed that this idyll was drawing to a close, Miss Boddy relieved him by giving him the opening for which he was desperately seeking. She said, “It has been so pleasant having you here, Mr. Lovejoy, with your wonderful stories about Harold, I feel as though I know him almost as well as I do Amelia. I suppose you will have to be getting back to him soon, he must miss you dreadfully!”
“Yes, Ma’am, that’s it!” the Gunner said, rushing the words forth lest the opportunity pass. “I ’ad a letter from ’im only the other day, I mean from the chap who’s looking after ’im. Lonely ’e is. And pining, that’s wot. A mate is what ’e needs, a mate and a family like everyone else. Look ’ere, Miss Boddy, what about letting me take Amelia back to old Harold? They’re made for each other, that’s wot they are. Think how ’appy they’d be up there on the old Rock together by Prince Ferdinand’s Battery. Coo, the view from there would knock your eye out, the ’arbour stretching out below and Mount Atlas across the Strytes. All the peanuts they could eat and a lot of little hapelets running around. You could trust her with me. I’ve had the care of hapes for twenty years. I’d see her all right, Ma’am. Why, the number of little hapes I’ve helped to deliver—”
Miss Boddy stirred uneasily in the darkness and the interruption had the effect of stemming the Gunner’s flow. Then she said softly, “Oh no, Mr. Lovejoy, I’m afraid I would not want Amelia ever to do anything like that.”
“But Ma’am,” said the Gunner impassionedly, “it’s nature, ain’t it? Amelia here has got a heart brimming over with love, look at ’er” (indeed Amelia was nibbling dreamily at the Gunner’s ear). “Every creature has got to ’ave a mate, like!”
“We don’t,” said Miss Boddy speaking even more softly. “Not Amelia and I.”
“But Ma’am,” said Lovejoy, beginning to flounder as he realized he had put his foot in it, “this is different, don’t you understand, it’s on account of the war.”
“But surely you will remember,” replied Miss Boddy, “that I don’t approve of the war.”
“But Harold there all by himself on the Rock there pining for Amelia.”
“How does he know about her, Mr. Lovejoy?”
“I wrote,” said the Gunner.
Miss Boddy was very gentle but very firm. “It’s no use, Mr. Lovejoy,” she said, “I should never permit Amelia to leave my side to go so far away even with someone as—as kind-hearted and trustworthy as you. I told the young man who came down here to speak to me about this a month or so ago and I’m very sorry to have to tell you the same. The answer is no.”
And from that position there was no budging her.
“I think I’ll go for a walk,” the Gunner said, and arose.
“Poor Mr. Lovejoy,” Miss Boddy said, “I know you are disappointed, I’m so sorry.”
It was still early, before nine o’clock in fact, and the Gunner proceeded down the path that led along the cliff to the village which consisted of no more than a post office, an arty-crafty-shoppe, a general store and The Crown and Anchor, an attractive pub done in frigate style in black and white timber with tarred rope and ships’ bells and other nautical paraphernalia enticingly displayed. Up to that moment the Gunner had passed this edifice resolutely, or had carefully planned his walks in the other direction. Now, with his mission a bust, himself a failure, the Rock snatched from the Empire and the war lost, Lovejoy came to a halt in front of the pub.
What did anything matter? What even could Major Clyde do to him, there being no rank lower than the one he occupied, and what of his own personal pride? It was also a fact that he had been more than a week without spending a sixpence and his pockets were bursting with money. Also it was Saturday night. Farewell Gibraltar, Major Bailey, Scruffy-Harold and all his friends! Adieu Miss Constance Boddy, adieu Amelia! Good-bye then to teetotalism.
With purposeful step Gunner John C. Lovejoy entered the oak-beamed lounge of The Crown and Anchor.
When he emerged at closing-time the Gunner was loaded. He had not been tossed out, nor did he have to be helped across the threshold, his reaction to strong drink being mainly internal, and he had the ability to stand up to a bar for hours without any visible change in his appearance. However, for years Lovejoy had been doing his drinking in an even temperature which enabled him to give at least the outward appearance of holding his liquor. At Hope Cove, in The Crown and Anchor, alas, he experienced new conditions, to which he was unaccustomed.
Since the pub was blacked out and every crack that might show a light to sea was stuffed, the atmosphere within can be imagined. Without, the Devon nights were cool, verging on the chill, so when Lovejoy passed from the steamy fug of the pub into the teeth of a wind that had decided to come visiting from Iceland, he suddenly found his metabolism affected with results damaging to his sense of equilibrium.
It was now dark. The last green of the Northern latitude sunset had faded from the West. The path back to the hotel seemed higher, wobblier, narrower, windier and unfamiliar. As no light was showing anywhere he had to guide himself by the faint glimmer of a not very prosperous moon seen through scudding clouds, and the phosphorescence of the sea.
Since he was a monumental flop he had no wish to encounter either Miss Boddy, Amelia, or Major Clyde again and the sea suddenly appeared to him the most direct route home to the simpler life where he need no longer be teetotal and could shuck all responsibility.
Thus he made his way on to the beach, lurching and staggering, but in his own opinion quite competent, reversing in his mind the flight plan of his journey thither and with what he remembered of school geography. He would turn left around Bolt Tail, strike out on a diagonal line for the Bay of Biscay, past France and Portugal, turn the corner after Cádiz and there he would be. Major Bailey would be glad to see him if no one else.
So fiery was the Gunner’s internal combustion that he didn’t even notice the temperature of the water that filled his shoes and sloshed around his calves as he waded in.
Fortunately, at this moment Miss Constance Boddy appeared with Amelia, it being her custom to take her pet for a final duty airing on the beach before retiring for the night. The clouds at this moment obligingly parted, permitting the moon to reveal the silhouette of Gunner Lovejoy, his military uniform now comfortably dishevelled, his c
ap askew over one eye, hip deep in the ocean, departing for Gibraltar.
The sight filled the spinster with alarm and caused Amelia at the end of her leash to leap up and down shrieking. “Mr. Lovejoy!” cried Miss Boddy. “What has happened? Are you ill? Where are you going?”
Lovejoy stopped in his tracks, creamy foam swirling about his thighs, to turn around and contemplate one of the two people he specifically didn’t wish to see. Alcohol, sea water, Arctic winds, metabolism, hurt pride and frustration all came to a boil. “ ’Ome,” he replied. “Good-bye for ever, Ma’am.”
The sight of the Gunner standing in the sea was so bizarre that Miss Boddy, in a fearful flutter and not yet realizing that he was drunk, panicked and quite naturally misunderstood, believing that it was the Gunner’s intention to take farewell not only from her but from life. “Mr. Lovejoy—dear Mr. Lovejoy,” she cried, “you mustn’t. Come back at once. Oh, please do.” Reaching new heights at the end of her chain Amelia added her cries to those of her mistress.
“Come back!” repeated the Gunner scornfully, making no move to do so. “What for I’d like to know? You and your ruddy hape! Not good enough for my Harold. What’s there for me to come back for? I’m a failure. Let the side down, that’s what I ’ave. They’ll be pointing the finger at me, ‘See that bloke there, that’s Gunner Lovejoy what lost the bloomin’ war for us!’ I’m going ’ome and bury meself.”
The word bury set up new alarms inside the poor confused woman and she could only beg him, “Oh, Mr. Lovejoy, please dear, good, kind Mr. Lovejoy, come back, I want to talk to you.”
“Ho ho! Talk to me!” echoed the Gunner, but at least he didn’t go any farther out to sea. “What’s there to talk about? You’ve made your decision, ain’t you?” His voice went into that falsetto used by a drunk or a husband trying to imitate his wife’s voice, “Oh no, Mr. Lovejoy, I could not let Amelia do anything like that!— Gord love us, look at ’er jumping up and down there. You want to ruin ’er life and keep ’er from ’aving a fambly like yourself?”
The mixtures which Lovejoy had been imbibing at The Crown and Anchor now all took hold with a will and made him angry so that he came sloshing out of the sea to be greeted with hysterical joy as one returned from the dead by Amelia, who leaped into his arms, covering his face with kisses and caresses.
“And what about you?” shouted the Gunner at Miss Boddy when he had managed to get his face disentangled from Amelia. “Where’s your patriotism? You’re British, ain’t you? What about that there flag up there?” And then he pointed to the roof of the hotel where there was no flag, but it didn’t matter to Gunner Lovejoy who now somehow had become Major Clyde. “Bonny England! It’s a symbol, old girl, it’s not ’ere you find it,” Lovejoy continued, looking to touch his skull and marking Amelia’s instead, “but down ’ere,” and this time he hit the general region of his stomach. “You don’t approve of war says you, but we’re in it and the bloody ’Uns on our tails. What do you care about the Major’s farm up there wherever it is? And the geese and the kiddies walking ’and in ’and to school, and the bloomin’ train whistles! Cor, you’re the one to talk, sitting out the war ’ere living off the fat of the land while others is dodging bombs and working themselves to the bone.”
Miss Boddy suddenly put her hand to her face and cried, “Oh, Mr. Lovejoy, you’re hurting me!”
“ ’urting you,” repeated the Gunner, dripping and swaying. “Look at what you’ve done to me.”
He took half a dozen steps forward and came closer. Miss Boddy not only looked but sniffed. “Why, Mr. Lovejoy,” she cried horrified, “you’re drunk.”
Lovejoy pulled himself erect proudly and said, “That’s it! Got it in one. I’m drunk! Good and bloody drunk. I’ve lost me battle with the demon rum. The tragedy of having to go back and tell Harold there’s nothing doing ’as proved too much for me. Look upon me, Ma’am, I’ve fallen by the wayside.”
And at this point the Gunner discovered that though many ingredients can be mingled with alcohol without disaster, emotion is not one of them . . . “And blimey,” he added, “if I don’t think I’m going to be sick too.” He then knelt upon the moonlit sands and proceeded to be so.
Miss Boddy made sympathetic clucking sounds, held his head, wiped his clammy brow and said, “Oh, poor, poor Mr. Lovejoy, come, let me help put you to bed.”
Lightened and unresisting the Gunner permitted her to guide him up to the hotel and to his room, after which he remembered no more until he awoke eleven hours later with a thundering hangover and enough of memory returning to let him know that if he hadn’t rained everything before he most certainly had now, by getting blind, staggering drunk and cursing a teetotal lady he had been sent to blandish and charm.
He arose and began throwing things into his suitcase. An hour later he paid his bill with funds provided by Major Clyde, made his farewells to Miss Neville and slipped out of the back door so as not to encounter Miss Boddy, intending to trudge the three miles to the bus route and get the hell out of there and back to London to his punishment, whatever it should be.
But he failed to reckon with Miss Constance Boddy and the processes of mind which had kept her awake half the night. When he reached the end of the lane from the hotel leading to the high-hedged road, there she was with Amelia on her shoulders straddling the path, and on her face a most curious expression, which in his own surprise and anguish of mind he failed to recognize as the zealous lovelight in the eyes of the reformer who contemplates a brand to be snatched from the burning. To her, Lovejoy had been teetotal; had struggled to fight the good fight for the white flag of purity, he had proved not strong enough, he needed help.
“Mr. Lovejoy,” she said, “I have been thinking over last night, I have decided to let Amelia go to Gibraltar. But, of course, I could not possibly be separated from her. I am sure you will be able to arrange for me to accompany her—and you.”
The Gunner set down his suitcase and sat on it because he felt his legs would no longer support him. He passed a handkerchief over his brow while Amelia came over and hugged him.
“Gord, Ma’am,” he said, “do you really mean it? I can hardly believe it. It’s mighty good of you.” He could hardly credit that victory should thus have been snatched from total catastrophe.
“It was last night that decided me,” said Miss Boddy. “It was all my fault. And after you had told me of your struggle against strong drink and the necessity from time to time of a helping hand. Yet in the hour when you needed me most I failed you.”
Some of the shine went off the Gunner’s triumph. The presence of Miss Boddy in Gibraltar monitoring his visits to the Admiral Nelson, or even picketing the place, would be disturbing. Still, the Gunner had lived long enough to accept and be grateful for half-victories and if that was the only way Amelia could be got to Gibraltar, chaperoned by her mistress, then that was how it had to be, provided he could get by Major Clyde.
But to Lovejoy’s surprise the Major found Miss Boddy’s decision no obstacle. On the contrary when the Gunner got through to him on the telephone he was both pleased and congratulatory. “Good man,” he cried. “Well done! Splendid show! You’ve saved the situation! I knew you could do it! Bravo! I’ll set up the flight back at once. Group Captain Cranch happens to be in London.”
The Gunner hung up in a daze. Never had such an all-embracing bender, which by rights should have ended in the most appalling disaster, brought such immediate and staggering rewards.
It has been recorded that only once in his entire brave and gallant career did Group Captain Howard Cranch ever conduct a flight in total silence. Noted for his entertaining songs, chatter and imitation over the W.T. and during combat as well, there was one trip he made without ever opening his mouth.
In this instance the phrase—“He was struck dumb” applied, and this was exactly what occurred in the case of Captain Cranch who waited by his ship on the tarmac of a little-used airport to begin a most secret journey on which he had been give
n no briefing except that there would be four passengers.
At precisely the time appointed, a limousine with the blinds pulled down drove out upon the concrete and up to the aircraft. Out from it spilled a stout, cheerful-looking woman. She was followed by a man Cranch had no idea was in London, Gunner Lovejoy of Gibraltar. On the Gunner’s shoulder perched quite the most repulsive ape he had ever laid eyes on, and to close the procession there came the tall, gangling figure of Major Clyde.
The Group Captain spoke only once and that was to take in vain the name of his Lord. And after that he said not a single, solitary word, except that his head never did stop shaking from side to side.
However, as always, he flew his bizarre passenger list with care and meticulousness and after the requisite number of hours landed them feather light and rolled up to the headquarters building to be met by Major Bailey and his attractive wife, the Brigadier’s Brigade Major and a man from the office of the Colonial Secretary. Only then did he once more give tongue, regrettably for a second time to take the name in vain.
1 8
Scruffy Declines
It certainly had not been anyone’s intention, but somehow the expedition from the Rock Hotel to Tim’s new cages by the apes’ village close to Ferdinand’s Battery took on the aspect of a bride’s wedding party proceeding to the church.
That morning there was actually nothing more afoot than the introduction of Amelia to Scruffy and vice versa. It had been planned to place Amelia in the cage adjoining Scrufty’s with, however, the door between them securely locked until it appeared that an exchange of visits might be agreeable to both.
Yet the party took on a most festive air. To begin with the men had put on their best uniforms and Lovejoy turned up tubbed, scrubbed, brushed and spruced almost beyond endurance. Felicity chose to wear a pair of black silk stockings for the occasion instead of the regulation cotton ones. Major McPherson carried his swagger stick. The security guard which preceded and followed the caravan fairly glittered with spit and polish. But what really set the tone was, of course, Miss Boddy, and it was as though all of them had guessed that she would be dressed for the event.