Scruffy - A Diversion

by Paul Gallico

  Major Clyde murmured, “Maybe the doors of history are being thrown open again. What will happen when they find Sergeant Lovejoy standing there?”

  Within the glaringly light-blue painted operating theatre the question was being answered.

  On the operating table on her back lay the miserable, quivering lump of fur that was Amelia. She was whimpering and trembling in every limb and her hazel-coloured eyes were filled with pain and terror. Over her bent the figures of two men.

  If the purpose of a uniform is to make all men alike or designate the kind of service they perform, the surgical cap, gown, mask and rubber gloves can swallow up the individual inside it more quickly than any other costume, and for the moment Sir Archibald Cruft forgot that it was one Sergeant John Lovejoy, a Royal Artilleryman and Keeper of the Apes who was inside the garments, and addressed him in the manner of a learned colleague, bandying Latin gynaecological phrases to the effect that the unborn infant on whom Major Clyde and through him the nation was basing its hopes of an important and successful psychological warfare gambit, had got itself skew-wiff in the uterus and because of several more unintelligible Latin and medical terms could not survive another three minutes. It was too late practically now even for a Caesarean section.

  Sergeant Lovejoy, looking down upon the suffering creature, said, “Gord luv you, sir, you’ve got ’er wrong end to and top side up to be of any ’elp to ’er. I’ve seen ’em like this many a time. ’Ere, let me show you, sir.”

  Swiftly and with practised hands he turned the ape around on her stomach and then drew up her legs beneath her, putting his arm down just above the top of her head. “When they’re out in the wild, sir, they can get ’old of a branch or a bit of rock for purchase. Now you watch ’er.”

  Gratefully Amelia was already clutching the brawny forearm of the Sergeant and was moving her body in a kind of rhythm accompanied by shrill squeals.

  “Now what I usually does,” continued the Sergeant, “when they gets about this far along is I puts me thumb ’ere,” and he suited the action to the words, “ ’olding ’er like this, pushing a little, and out she pops. There you are, sir.”

  And out indeed it did pop, a tiny wet creature with fingers and toes that were almost transparent and a miniature face that was terrifyingly human.

  “Well, I’m blowed,” were the exact words of Sir Archibald Cruft, the great gynaecologist. “Dr.—I mean Sergeant,” he paused in the eulogy he was about to deliver, for the Sergeant was staring down at the body of the monkey which had not yet relaxed and was saying, “ ’ello, ’ello.”

  Sir Archibald too scrutinized the beast. “Dear me,” he said, “what’s this? There’s another one in there. Do they ever?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” replied Lovejoy, “but I ’ave heard of it once in ten thousand times maybe, or a million I read somewhere once. But then the second is always stillborn. They ain’t got the staying power for it, sir.”

  “Well, this one isn’t going to be,” declared Sir Archibald Cruft with a sudden fierceness. “Here, help me. Show me what you did before. We’ve got to bring this little fellow out alive. The thermosphygalamometer, Sister.”

  The theatre sister wheeled the contraption over and now Sir Archibald proceeded to show how and why he was the great man he was. Working surely and deftly he fastened the various attachments in the proper places to stimulate the blood, oxygen, and sugar supply of the beast, bolstered her heart, took the strain off her pelvis, all the while muttering, “Damnedest technique I ever saw, Sergeant. Absolutely brilliant. We can adapt that to cases of—” and here he went off into another page-long harangue out of the medical dictionary. And now it was Lovejoy’s turn to look upon the other man with approval for he understood enough about the physiology of the apes he had attended so long to be able to see what the surgeon was doing for her.

  Amelia began to squeak and chitter again, and her small body moved. “Now then,” said Sir Archibald, “where was it exactly you put your thumb?”

  “Right here, sir, you can feel—”

  “That’s it,” said Sir Archibald exultantly. “I might have spared the Countess of Crite a nasty hour with this. Well—next time. Push, you say!”

  “And out she pops.”

  And out popped the second, alive and identical to the first.

  Sir Archibald gave a perfunctory glance and murmured, “Boy and a girl! What more could they want?”

  Sergeant Lovejoy regarded Sir Archibald, his eyes above his mask filled with undaunted admiration. “By Gord, sir, you’ve done it! It’s never been done before with an ape. Two for the price of one, sir. Major Clyde won’t arf be pleased.”

  Sir Archibald was not ungenerous. “It’s your technique, Sergeant,” he said, “and when I write a paper on this I shall give it your name. Well, let’s get on with it.”

  A short time later the door to the operating theatre was thrown open revealing Sir Archibald and Sergeant Lovejoy, still gowned, with the theatre sister. The metamorphosis of Lovejoy was astonishing. He looked like one of those old-fashioned country surgeons. The face of the theatre sister had assumed that expression akin to the various Madonnas of the Italian school, for she was looking down upon two tiny objects carefully wrapped so that only their faces showed and cradled in her arms.

  Sir Archibald’s wonderful countenance bore the grand and illuminating smile he reserved for the occasion. “Twins,” he announced proudly. “A boy and a girl.”

  “Not Felicity,” quavered Tim Bailey.

  “No, Amelia.”

  Major Clyde was up and upon them with a whoop and a holler. “Eureka in spades!” he shouted. “Amelia’s done it! This will shake the horrible Hun to his heels. What we won’t do with this bit of news.”

  They crowded around to look down into the tiny faces. Tim was both astonished and startled, for they did not look like monkeys but humans, or rather caricatures of humans.

  Sir Archibald said to the sister, “Take them back to their mother now and see that they are kept warm. I’ll look in again in an hour.” And to Mrs. Lovejoy he said, “The mother is doing fine. No complications. Nothing to worry about. Your husband is a genius, Madam. You can thank him—”

  Major Timothy Bailey seized the great gynaecologist by his surgical gown and shouted, “What about my Felicity? Who the hell cares about a couple of lousy—”

  Sir Archibald disentangled himself carefully. “Look here, young man,” he said, “I have handled any number of fathers, but you seem to take the prize. It will be at least another four or five hours before I can deliver Mrs. Bailey, so you had better save some of that for later, hadn’t you?”

  At this point a door farther down the corridor marked Room C opened and a young nurse came skimming quickly down the hall. When she reached the group she stood on tiptoes and whispered something into the ear of Sir Archibald which appeared to startle the great man. “Dear me,” he murmured, “you don’t say. Well, well!” He turned to Tim and said, “I’ll just go along now and have a look at Mrs. Bailey. Not to worry.”

  Tim put his hands to his head. He felt nervous, drained, exhausted, pleased, anxious, worried, frightened; his was such a turmoil of emotions that he did not see how he could bear the long wait. “Four or five hours,” he groaned, “I won’t be able to stand it.”

  “Look here, old man,” Major Clyde said, “you won’t hold it against us, but Mac and I are going to have to pull out—you know—give us the apelets and we’ll do the rest. Well, we’ve got ’em now, all right. Felicity couldn’t be in better hands.”

  Lovejoy, who had divested himself of his gown and his new profession, came and stood before Tim, a respectful and affectionate Sergeant again. “Sir, if you like,” he said, “my wife and I will stay with you. We’ve just been through it in a way, so to speak, so we know what it’s like, waiting.”

  But it was not four or five hours at all. It was no more than forty-five minutes later when Sir Archibald appeared, his face once more wreathed in his famous
another-Cruft-baby-successfully-brought-into-the-world smile.

  Tim, who had been hunched down in his chair, his head buried in his hands, looked up miserably for news of more delay.

  “A most remarkable woman indeed,” said Sir Archibald. “Never encountered anything like it before in a Prime Ibs. Had her baby quietly and without fuss in twenty minutes. Didn’t even give us time to get to the operating theatre. Didn’t need to. Astonishing girl. Wish they were all like that.”

  “Wha—what?” gasped Tim. “Did you say—”

  Sir Archibald nodded. “A boy,” he said, “mother and son doing fine. Come along, let’s have a look at them.”

  Dazed, Tim followed in the wake of the stately pace of the great man to Room C where Felicity sat propped up in bed looking as fresh and blooming as an English rose, and ten times more beautiful.

  At the side of the bed in a bassinet was something red and squealing, which at first glance caused Tim to recoil from shock. It looked so much more like a monkey than a person. The presence of Sir Archibald was embarrassing and that of the red thing completely terrifying.

  Felicity called to him, “Oh, my poor darling, you look awful. Have you suffered just terribly?”

  There was no point, Tim felt, to hurling himself across the room, taking his wife in his arms and comforting her for the travail she was supposed to have been through. She had never looked better or less in need of sympathy in her life, an unquestioned tribute to the Cruft technique. He turned his attention to the red object in the bassinet and nothing he saw there tended to diminish the panic engendered by the first glimpse. He now looked down into the tiny screwed-up countenance which so very greatly resembled those of the apes who had been his charge.

  “But—but,” he stammered, “the faces of the others were so human.”

  Sir Archibald nodded sympathetically. His vast and impressive experience included dealing with an endless procession of disappointed and panic-stricken fathers. It was the first glimpse that did it to them. “I know,” he said, “it’s a bit shaking. However, I can assure you that within a week or so the features of the other little chaps will have turned properly simian while yours will have begun to get over his astonishment at finding himself in our midst and will have commenced, I trust, to resemble his mother. Well, I congratulate you.” He turned and marched from the room.

  “Tim,” Felicity cried, “tell me, what has happened?”

  Major Bailey was still badly rattled. “You—you have had a boy,” he said, “there—here it is.”

  “Oh, my darling,” Felicity said, and voiced all of the tenderness and understanding that women have for the ridiculousness of males. “No. I mean—Amelia.”

  “She—she’s had twins! When—when old Crufts came out and announced it I thought—”

  “Oh, Tim,” Felicity cried, now thoroughly moved to commiseration, “how perfectly awful for you. You must have gone through absolute hell. Oh, why is it so easy for us and so terrible for you? Come here, my poor darling, sit here on the bed and let me hold you and rub your head, you’ve been through a perfectly frightful time.”

  To his surprise Tim found himself sitting exactly where he had been directed and letting it happen to him. It was good; he had been horribly harassed; it was soothing.

  But after a while positions were reversed and Felicity was nestled in his arms where she sighed and said, “Oh, Tim, I’m so happy. I never thought it could happen to me, but it has. I have a real Cruft baby. It’s absolutely perfect.”

  A spark stirred within Tim and was fanned to a sudden glow. “Damn it,” he said, “it’s mine. All old Crufts did was—”

  “Wave his magic wand,” Felicity concluded for him. “It’s a Bailey baby.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Tim with sudden and strange fierceness. “That’s it.” He got up and went and looked down in the bassinet. Was it his imagination or had the red object in it already begun to look slightly more human? And had it smiled?

  “And thus,” Felicity murmured to herself, “thank God, are fathers born as well.”

  2 2

  Epitaph for Two Apes

  The British Flag still flies over the Fortress, the cruise ships and passenger liners calling there discharge their quota of tourists with cameras slung about their necks, others arrive by air, touching down on the concrete strip that juts out into the blue bay of Algeciras, others still come by road down the winding coastline of Spain or burst from the folds of the brown hills to cross the border at La Linea.

  By car and on foot they spread out over the Rock, to find it an engaging backwater outpost of an Empire which the processes of history have turned into a Commonwealth, with charming people, the best rate of currency exchange in Europe, cheap goods and some breathtaking views.

  Dry-docks and dockyards are still busy; O’Hara’s Battery at the pinnacle of the Rock, its cannon as obsolete as Nelson’s twelve-pounders and carronades, still pretends to menace the Straits. The ruins of the Moorish Castle and the caves are worth a visit; the service and accommodation of the Rock Hotel are first class and no tour of Gibraltar is complete, of course, without a visit to the famous Barbary apes and their village on the Upper Rock.

  They haven’t changed. They still pry into pockets for monkey-nuts, sit on shoulders, pull hair, nip fingers, remove windscreen wipers from cars and make off with handbags, cameras, binoculars or anything one might be so incautious as to leave around unattended.

  Another Artilleryman—Bombardier Bychurch—is Keeper of the Apes, guide and Cicerone to the tourists who come to watch him feed them, and he has a tip-earning patter satisfying enough to the visitors, part of which runs:

  “They’re greedy little beggars, always on the scrounge. Mind you don’t move too quick, Ma’am, with him on your shoulders. They’re nervous like and don’t like quick movements. The apes have been here since 1763, looked after by the Royal Artillery. There’s twenty-six of them here which is known as the Queen’s Gate pack, and twenty-two around on the other side of the Rock called the Middle Hill pack. During the war when their numbers was reduced through sickness and privation the Prime Minister sent a special message saying they was to be kept up to strength and accordingly a number of them was sent over from Africa where they bred with the apes remaining on the Rock and them here is their descendants.”

  This is as far as Bombardier Bychurch’s knowledge goes; he has, of course, no idea of the means by which this was achieved and the astonishing success scored by the counter-intelligence intrigue of one Major “Slinker” Clyde in the long-ago of almost two decades past, a success far greater than he or any of the others connected with the affair had envisaged.

  For when in June 1943 the announcement of the birth of twin apelets to a Gibraltar Rock ape was made, the impact was a double one. Not only did it attest that ape-wise all was normal on the Rock, but it shook the scientific world as well, and, carried over the international Press wire, caused as great a stir as had the birth of the Dionne quintuplets.

  The effect Upon the Germans was exactly what Major Clyde had foreseen. They gave up. And themselves worshippers of science they actually carried the story in their own newspapers. The propaganda broadcasts with regard to the apes ceased immediately, as did their operation of buying up available Barbary apes in North Africa.

  But this again had further unexpected and welcome repercussions. For the Germans had caused a boom in the Macaque market and Arabs along the entire coastline from Marakesh to Oran had been scraping them off the rocks and hauling them down out of trees to cart off and sell to the German agents who were paying practically anything asked for the brutes.

  Suddenly and without warning the boom collapsed, the German agents with their gold, whisky, cigarettes, dollars or whatever was demanded, disappeared leaving the traders stuck with whole crates full of the animals. It was now they remembered the primary British interest in the purchase of these beasts and legitimate commerce being anti-no-one they returned at once to their original channels of thi
s trade.

  In a fortnight, and upon wings supplied by a chastened Group Captain Cranch, twenty of the finest specimens, male and female, of Barbary apes had been flown to the Rock to establish the quota solicited by the Prime Minister. He was informed that his orders had been carried out, and the newcomers soon adjusted themselves to the life of ease and luxury provided by His Majesty’s Royal Artillery. The crisis was at an end and never again threatened.

  As always when looking back over a war there are many turning points where one can say, “Here, if this had not happened and so-and-so had not arrived in the nick of time, all might have ended disastrously.” What actually would have occurred had the Barbary apes been wiped out will never be known, but at least the prospect appeared of sufficient importance and danger to the leader of the British Empire to engage his attention.

  But all this happened nineteen years ago. Gibraltar today is moulded into the somnolent blessings of peace, and all those involved in the affair scattered far and wide.

  Major William “Slinker” Clyde returned to Christchurch immediately he was demobilized, where he was received by a grateful Master who asked him, “Well, how was it, Bill?” to which the ex-Major replied, “Pretty silly, sir,” and that was the last he ever referred to his wartime experiences. He attained a Professorship at his College and in recent years has turned to writing brilliant and erudite detective novels under a pseudonym which bring him a small fortune.

  Felicity has never regretted her choice of mate for her husband is the youngest Colonel at Staff College and a brilliant future is predicted for him. He can write C.B.E., D.S.O. after his name and he is used constantly on the Rock when some new officer is to be stuck with the post, as an example that even such a doubtful office as O.I.C. Apes can be a springboard to greatness.