The Haunting of Toby Jugg (18 page)

As he had resigned his position at Weylands and there could now be no question of his taking me abroad, his co-Trustees asked him if he would like to take over the Llanferdrack estates, since it was felt that with an able man to administer them the farms, villages and forests here could make a much bigger contribution to the war. The idea of having his own small kingdom evidently appealed to him, and by a curious coincidence he left Queensclere to start his new job the same day as I left on Air Ministry orders to report at Reception Wing as one of the new intake of Cadets.

That was the beginning of months of arduous training; first at the I.T.W.; scores of lectures, hundreds of tests, then the E.F.T.S.; more lectures, more tests, solo flying, formation flying, night flying, all through the spring of the phoney war, then all through that desperate summer while Hitler smashed his way to Calais and the Loire, and on into the autumn while the Battle of Britain raged overhead.

Sometimes we saw bits of the battle fought out in the distant skies. The crowd I was training with were pretty good by then; again and again we begged to be transferred to 10 Group, or even a fighter station outside it where there might be some chance of our joining in; but the authorities were adamant.

How we raved against the old boys at the Air Ministry, with their rows of ribbons and scrambled eggs, when we learned how exhausted our first-line pilots were becoming, and were not allowed to go to their relief.

But those veterans of the last great war were right. They must have been just as worried as we were, but they knew from experience
that a pilot’s chance of survival in combat is in exact relation to the perfection, or otherwise, of his training; and they had the guts to reject the temptation even at a time of crisis to reduce by a single day the schedules of training that had been laid down in peacetime. Had they allowed us to go in three-parts trained half of us would have been massacred, and it was their refusal to be panicked into doing so that gave the R.A.F. dominance over the Luftwaffe in the following year.

So we had to go on with our lessons and pretend to ignore the fact that any night the invasion might come and find us still not on the operational list.

But at last the great day came, and I was one of the lucky ones, as I was posted to Biggin Hill, right in the thick of it. My third time up I got my first Heinkel III. Her escort had been dispersed and she was trying to sneak home alone. I was on my way in, and hadn’t much juice left, but just enough to turn and go after her. It was touch and go. I opened up at 300 yards and gave her two bursts, but nothing seemed to happen. As I circled and came in again some bullets from her spattered through my aircraft. I wasn’t hit, but my engine began to stutter. I let her have all I’d got, but a moment later I began to lose height rapidly. I was mad with rage at the thought that I would have to make a forced landing and let her get away; but just as I was coming down in a field outside Maidstone I caught sight of her again. I had got her after all and she was a swirl of flame and smoke just about to crash among some trees half a mile away.

Then two days later I got an Me. 109. But there is no point in writing all this. It’s a good thing to sit and think of, though.

Wednesday, 20th May

I have had no luck with Taffy yet; and am beginning to fear that, short of giving him a direct order to stand dead still and stare at me, I never shall. I don’t want to do that, but I have got to get a letter past Helmuth somehow and can think of no way to do so other than by making Taffy act as my unconscious agent. Unfortunately I am up against the time factor, so if I fail to pull it off today I’ll have to risk an all-or-nothing attempt on him tomorrow.

According to Dr. Bramwell, however difficult persons are to hypnotise, once they have been got under it is always much easier to get them under a second time. So I had hoped to try Taffy out once or twice with simple tests before actually giving him a letter; but there is not now a sufficient margin of time left to take any chances. If I
can
get him under I shall have to make the most of the opportunity.

In consequence, most of the time I have spent indoors today has gone in writing a letter to have ready to give Taffy should my efforts to put him under control prove successful. I have given Julia full particulars about the haunting to which I have been subject, and have implored her to come to my rescue at once; but I have said nothing about Helmuth being at the bottom of it. She has shown such faith in his abilities and his apparent devotion to me, for such a long time past, that I feel it would be unwise to make any accusation against him in a letter.

When she recalls my ‘burglar’ and my horrible experience of the broken tomb at Weylands, I am sure she will not think that I am appealing to her without real cause now; and knowing Helmuth’s apparent scepticism about such matters she will take that as my reason for asking
her
to arrange for my removal; but if I told her in addition that I believe he is deliberately attempting to drive me insane, I fear she would begin to wonder if I were not so already.

It will be time enough to tell her the sickening truth about him when she gets here. However, I’ve made it clear that I have already sounded him about my being moved, and that he is very averse to it, so she must come prepared to meet with, and overrule, his opposition. I even went so far as to suggest that she should bring with her a chit from Uncle Paul, authorising her to take me away.

That line will prove a bit of a bombshell to her, as on no previous occasion has it ever been necessary even to consider giving Helmuth a direct order concerning me. She may put it down to my being terribly overwrought, or read into it that I have told Helmuth about my ‘spooks’, and since he does not (?) believe in such things, we have quarrelled violently. Whichever way she takes it will be all to the good as in the first sense it would stress the
gravity of my condition, and, in the second, prepare her for ructions between Helmuth and myself on her arrival.

I doubt very much if she will bring a chit from Uncle Paul, as it is a hundred to one that she will think it a fantastic idea, and quite unnecessary. All the same, I hope she does, as Helmuth seems determined to keep me here and may take a high-handed line with her. But Uncle Paul is still my Guardian and I believe that even Helmuth would think twice about refusing to accept his written order.

I urged on Julia that, even if she did not bring a chit from Uncle Paul with her, she must speak to him about my letter and at least secure his verbal consent to my immediate removal, as then Helmuth would not be able to postpone the issue by saying that he must consult Uncle Paul before the matter could be finally decided.

To stress the vital importance of quashing any proposal on Helmuth’s part about postponement, I pointed out to her that the full moon is due again on the 30th, so, judging by the previous bouts, I shall be in acute danger again from about the 27th on, although there is no guarantee at all that these damnable attacks may not start even earlier.

It is already the 20th, and I have yet to get this letter off; so I said that when she does get it she must act without a moment’s delay, tell Uncle Paul any damn’ thing she liked, and come down here with his authority to take me away, if possible before the 25th.

Thursday, 21st May

Last night proved a milestone in my silent battle against Helmuth. While I was in my bath I had another crack at Taffy but, as on the two previous occasions, without result; until I suddenly thought of a new line of attack. I pretended that I had got something in my eye and, holding it open, asked him to fish the offending body out.

As there was nothing there he naturally could not find it, but he had to keep peering down into my eyes and I stared up at his. After we had had our glances locked like that for a few moments,
with only about nine inches between our faces, I said softly:

‘Taffy, you’re looking very tired. You are tired, Taffy, aren’t you—very tired?’

As he did not reply, I went on: ‘I think you had better go to sleep, Taffy. A sleep would do you good. Go to sleep, Taffy. Close your eyes.’

Imagine my elation when his eyelids drooped and those lovely dark eyelashes of his fell like two little fans upon his cheeks. I took his hands and stroked them gently, as, according to Bramwell, a lot of hypnotists have found that touch helps the thought waves to flow to the subject.

My wheeled chair was standing beside the bath, so I made him sit down in it and relax. Then I asked him a few simple questions, such as where he had been born, if he had had a nickname when he was at school, if he would have liked to be a gardener like his father or preferred being with me, and so on; all of which he answered between half-closed lips in a toneless voice, but without hesitation.

Next, I told him to stretch his right arm straight out from the shoulder, and hold it there. In a normal state the average person can hold their arm out at right angles to their body without showing fatigue for about three minutes, then their hand begins to droop. They can keep lifting it, but each time they do so it starts to sag again almost at once; and after about five minutes the pain of keeping their arm extended becomes too much for them.

Under hypnosis the muscles hardly seem to tire at all, and Bramwell’s book cites instances where subjects have remained with their arms outstretched for long periods, even when heavy weights have been attached to their wrists trebling the normal strain. I sat in the bath watching Taffy while I slowly counted five hundred. That must have been a good eight minutes, and his arm was still as rigid as when he had first stretched it out in obedience to my order. I needed no further proof that I had him properly under.

Then, to my fury, I suddenly remembered that I had not got the letter to Julia with me; it was still in the top drawer of my bedside table.

Yet, having at last succeeded with Taffy, I simply could not bring myself to abandon the opportunity of using him, so long as there was the least chance of my being able to do so.

When I have had my evening bath I am not dressed again, but put to bed; Deb gives my back a quarter-of-an-hour’s massage while Taffy gets me a cocktail; then my dinner is brought to me there. Sometimes Deb is ready, waiting for me, when I get back from the bathroom, but at others she is a few minutes late.

It is certain that both she and Taffy have instructions to take any letters I may give them for the post to Helmuth, so if I gave one to Taffy in front of her the odds are she would mention it to Helmuth and it would be taken from Taffy before he had a chance to get down to the village with it. Moreover, I am exceedingly anxious to keep secret the fact that I can hypnotise people, and Deb might have guessed the reason why Taffy’s face was looking so wooden and expressionless if she had seen him as he was when with me in the bathroom last night.

So it came to a race against time. The second after I realised my blunder in leaving the letter behind, I saw that if I could get back to my room before Deb came in to massage me, I should still be able to pull the cat out of the bag; but if she got there first I would have to abandon my plan for the time being.

One of the most maddening things about being semi-paralysed is its effect when one wants to do something in a frantic hurry. Had I had the use of my lower limbs I would have been out of that bath in a jiffy, given myself ten seconds’ rub with the towel, pulled on my dressing gown and been back in my room under the minute. As it was I had to submit to the infuriatingly slow ministrations of Taffy; and the fact that he was still under my hypnotic control did not help matters; on the contrary, it seemed to slow him up.

At last he had me back in my chair and began to wheel me along the corridor. He was still acting like an automaton, and I did not want to wake him while there was a chance that things might be all right; because I knew that, at best, I would have only a few minutes to work in, and that might not be enough to get him under again. But I was worried stiff what construction Deb would put upon it if she saw him like that. Half-way down the passage a sudden inspiration came to me, and I said:

‘If Sister Kain is in my room when we enter it, Taffy, you are to wake up. Directly you see Sister Kain you are to wake up, d’you understand? and you are to forget all that has happened in the past twenty minutes.’

‘Yes, Sir Toby,’ he muttered obediently, and at that moment we reached my door.

I suppose if I had been accustomed to hypnotising people I should have said that to him earlier. Anyhow, thank goodness I did say it before we entered my room, as Deb was there.

It was a bitter disappointment. Afterwards, on glancing at the clock, I realised that it was not Deb being unusually early that had caused me to miss the boat, but our being unusually late. In the excitement of trying to beat her to it I had quite forgotten the time I had spent in putting Taffy through the tests, and including the eight or nine minutes for which I made him hold out his arm, they must have taken up the best part of a quarter of an hour.

Still, although I was stalemated last night, I am immensely heartened by this success. Now I have had Taffy under I feel confident that I can get him under again. Moreover it means a lot to know that he reacts to post-hypnotic suggestion. It was an anxious moment as he wheeled me across to my bed and I screwed my neck round to get a glimpse of his face as soon as I could. He was wide awake, and went about his duties quite normally, without indicating by a word or look that he had just passed through an unusual experience. I feel confident now that, provided no entirely unforeseen piece of misfortune upsets my plans, I shall be able to get my letter away by him tonight.

Now I will set down the little more there is to tell of my personal history, and so be finished with it.

I continued to be a fully operational G.D. officer in the R.A.F. up to July the 10th, 1941, the date on which I was shot down for good. I had, of course, been shot down several times before, as was the case with nearly everyone who flew consistently for any length of time in the early years of the war. Once a Jerry followed me in and shot me up when I was flying too low to dare to bale out, so I had to crash-land on a reservoir. That was not funny, as I darn’ nearly drowned; but if I had to make a choice, I’d rather go through that again than repeat my only experience of baling
out over the North Sea. Fortunately that was in mid-May, as it was seven hours before they found me, and had it been earlier in the year I should have died of cold; I was blue when I was pulled out of the Drink, and if my strength had not enabled me to go on flailing my limbs for the last hour or two, I would have died of it anyhow.