The Haunting of Toby Jugg (15 page)

The others he chose were Lord Embledon, Sir Stanley Wellard and Mr. C. J. Rootham—all men who had been closely associated with him in business for many years; two partners of the firm of Bartorship, Brown and Roberts and one partner from the firm of Smith & Co. The former were his chartered accountants and the latter his solicitors. In both cases the Trusteeships were really vested in the firms rather than individuals, so as to ensure that they would retain permanent representation on the Board. The accountants nominated Mr. Alec Bartorship and Mr. Charles Roberts; the solicitors, Mr. Angus Smith.

Since the inception of the Board there have been several changes. Mr. Rootham retired in 1934, after having persuaded his colleagues to accept his son, Guy Rootham, as his successor. Mr. Bartorship retired in 1935, and his firm nominated his
nephew, Claud Bartorship, to take his place. Sir Stanley Wellard died suddenly in September 1939, and as, in the excitement of those first few weeks of war, the more likely candidates for this desirable vacancy appear to have been too occupied to press their claims, Helmuth succeeded in getting himself appointed; mainly, I believe, owing to the influence exerted on his behalf by Harry Iswick and Uncle Paul.

I should have mentioned that Uncle Paul was co-opted as an additional Trustee soon after the first meeting of the Board. This was partly because everybody felt very sorry for him. The will had been drawn up four years earlier, in 1925, just after he had had to be pulled out of a most hopeless financial mess for the fourth time in six years; so the only mention of him in it was as beneficiary under a small, separate Trust, which was to administer a capital that would bring him in about fifteen hundred a year.

That really was pretty hard on the only surviving son of a multi-millionaire; and the Trustees all thought that had my grandfather made a fresh will, just before he died, he would have treated him much more generously, now that he seemed to have turned over a new leaf and looked like settling down with Julia.

Perhaps, though, their sympathy might not have gone further than to give him another chance to make good with one of the companies, had it not been for the question of myself. But it so happened that, while every member of the Board was prepared to give me a home, none of them really wanted the bother and responsibility of bringing me up.

Before Uncle Paul knew anything about the contents of the will he had announced that he considered it up to his wife and himself to take care of the orphan, and immediately after the funeral he had installed me at Kew; so he seemed to be the obvious person to act as my Guardian. As, under the will, my Guardian had to be one of the Trustees, to make him one, which would at the same time enable the Board to compensate him a little for the raw deal he had had under his father’s will by giving him a few minor directorships, was clearly the solution.

At present, therefore, the Board consists of:

Lord Embledon, who is now over eighty, and rarely attends
meetings; although he still retains the office of Chairman, which he has held from the beginning.

Harry Iswick, a very active, but, to my mind, not altogether trustworthy type; who, on Sir Stanely Wellard’s death in 1939, got himself elected as Deputy-Chairman and, owing to Emble-don’s withdrawal from affairs since the war started, now more or less runs the party.

Guy Rootham, a good, sound chap, but, unfortunately for me, one with such an expert knowledge of medium-sized shipbuilding that he is now disguised as a Brigadier and on permanent loan to the United States to help them design improved types of Landing Craft.

Charles Roberts, an elderly and very staid accountant, who, on the few occasions I have met him, appeared incapable of taking an interest in anything except figures.

Claud Bartorship, of the same firm; a nice fellow, but now a Captain in the Pay Corps stationed, when I last heard of him, in Cairo.

Angus Smith, the solicitor, who, like Embledon, is now in the neighbourhood of eighty, and won’t give up because he doesn’t want to lose the fees his directorships bring him; but has retired to his native Scotland, and comes down only to clock-in at the minimum number of board meetings requisite to prevent his co-Trustees being able legally to demand his resignation.

Uncle Paul; who, I am sure, is very well disposed towards me, but is weak as water, and could be swayed, either by Julia in my interests, or by Helmuth against them.

Dr. Helmuth Lisický, who, I am convinced, id the fly in the ointment.

So what it boils down to is that two out of my grandfather’s three remaining contemporaries, Embledon and Smith, now so rarely attend the meetings of the Board that they can know little of what goes on at it, and the third, Roberts, is so lacking in personality that he can never have exerted any great influence over its decisions; Rootham and Bartorship, the two men upon whom I could best rely to safeguard my interests, are both abroad on war services, and Uncle Paul, who knows nothing of finance, would accept without question any proposal put up by the others.
That leaves Iswick and Helmuth as the only strong men remaining in the party; and, as four out of the other six have been more or less out of the game for most of the war, they have had only old Roberts and my dull-witted uncle to deal with; so it seems pretty clear that for the past few years Messrs. I. and H. have virtually controlled the Trust between them.

Perhaps my suspicions of Iswick are entirely unfounded, but there can be no getting away from it that, if he is in collusion with Helmuth, the war has given the two of them a unique opportunity to do the Trust down. If they have, one can quite understand their now being prepared to go to pretty well any lengths rather than risk exposure by handing over the accounts.

On my coming of age, were it not for the war, I suppose there would have been gigantic celebrations; every factory and office in the combine closed for the day; beanfeasts for all the workers followed by dances and fireworks at night; a huge reception in London for all directorates and senior staffs, at which the eight Trustees would formally hand me my sceptre to the accompaniment of loud cheers and the drinking of much champagne.

As things are, all I can do is to arrange that everyone in the organisation should receive a handsome bonus. There certainly won’t be much celebrating so far as I am concerned; just a birthday lunch, which the Trustees will come down from London to attend before giving me an account of their stewardship; and for that the two old crocks will drag themselves out of their retirement to make a special appearance—so six out of eight of them will be here.

What an opportunity for a show-down with Helmuth! I had forgotten that, although he can prevent me from writing to ask them to come here, they will be coming anyhow on my birthday.

But June the 20th is still over a month away; and I’ve another full-moon period to get through before that. Somehow I’ve got to find a way to outwit Helmuth. Unless I can, I’ve a horrible conviction that by the time the big day does arrive he will have reduced me to such a state that I shall be judged incapable of taking over anything.

Monday, 18th May

I have finished Dr. Bramwell’s book on Hypnotism and reread some parts of it several times, so I have now got a pretty good grasp on the theory of the business. It remains to be seen whether I can apply it in practice. The fact that I succeeded with those two chaps in the Mess at Nether Wallop cannot be taken as an indication, since they lent themselves willingly to the experiment, whereas here I must attempt it without the co-operation of my subject.

Dr. Bramwell says that although it is not impossible to hypnotise a person against his will, it is very difficult to do so. Unfortunately he gives no information about the relative difficulty of hypnotising a person without their knowledge; and the two are obviously very different matters. In the first case, the subject having refused to play naturally sets up a strong mental resistance if he is seized, his eyes held open, and the experiment proceeded with; in the second, it seems to me that if the subject can be caught unawares, and proves susceptible, he might be got under with comparative ease—and provided, of course, that the operator could catch the subject’s glance and hold it for long enough to do the trick without him suspecting what was being attempted.

Normally such a problem does not arise, as doctors who treat patients under hypnosis naturally never do so without first having obtained their consent, except sometimes in the case of lunatics, and then to have their eyes held open is presumably the usual method. But for me, success or failure depends entirely on whether I catch my subject napping.

As Taffy is far slower-witted than Deb I shall start on him, and I have decided that the best time to make the attempt is when he is giving me my before-dinner bath. He has to lift me in and out of it, but I am still capable of washing myself except for my lower limbs. While he is waiting to do my feet and ankles he always stands at the foot of the bath. If I say something to him he looks straight at me, but otherwise he just remains there with a vacant look on his round face; and it certainly provides the best opportunity for a prolonged attempt without risk of interruption, as no
one will butt in on us and I have never known Taffy move from his habitual position until our routine is completed.

In glancing over the pages I wrote yesterday, I see that I omitted to mention what provision my grandfather had made in his will for the possibility that both my father and I might predecease him, or that both of us might die before I reached the age of twenty-one.

Here again, in the main, the old gentleman displayed his dominating desire that, even if there was no Jugg at the head of it, the Empire he had created should survive and prosper. As a gesture to Charity he left a million to the Benevolent Fund for his employees that he had already founded in his lifetime, and a further half-million to the Seamen’s Homes; but the great bulk of his fortune was willed back to the Companies out of which it had come, to be divided amongst them in proportion to the value of the holding that he had in each and the sums concerned added to their reserves, thus enormously strengthening them against the hazards of slumps, strikes, and periods of restricted trading.

The effect of my death, therefore, would be to send up the value of the shares in all the Jugg-controlled companies by several points. That would make big stockholders like Embledon, Rootham and a number of others potentially richer by several thousand pounds; but in view of their long association with the combine, it is most unlikely that they would cash in on their holdings on that account. So there is no one who would derive an immediate and really worthwhile benefit from knocking me off.

Before leaving the subject of the will and the Trust I should like to put it on record that, up to the outbreak of the war, I never had the least reason to suppose that any of the Trustees were neglecting their duties, and that I recall with gratitude the personal interest they all showed in me.

From time to time in the holidays each of them asked me to their houses, or took me out to lunch, and put me through a friendly catechism designed to satisfy themselves that I was happy, healthy and making reasonable progress with my studies. Of course, it was part of their responsibility to make sure that I was being groomed for industrial stardom, but they did it very nicely.

As I adored Julia, regarded Uncle Paul as a good-natured
stooge, and enjoyed ample opportunity for self-expression at Weylands, the only complaints I ever made were that I was seldom given the chance to be with other young people in the holidays, and was expected to continue my studies under Helmuth with as much enthusiasm as I did in term-time.

In various fashions peculiar to each they laughed that off; the gist of their refrain being that I must think of myself as a young royalty, whose duty it was to fit himself for the great power he would wield when he grew up, and that since it was necessary for me to acquire a working knowledge of a far wider range of subjects than the average boy, I must grin and bear it, if some of them had to be taken in the holidays with the result that the time I could spend just idling about with other youngsters was heavily curtailed.

As a matter of fact Julia had already sold me that one as soon as I settled down with her at Kew; and I give her full marks for the way she handled me. Her line was that the better educated I became the more enjoyment I should get out of my great wealth when I grew up; so I must not look on lessons as a bore but as a necessary preparation to the appreciation of a thousand delights to come.

She, too, encouraged me to look upon myself as different from other children, and no doubt it was in order to prevent me from realising that I was not that she kept me away from them; but, on the other hand, she checked any tendency in me to become swollen-headed by decreeing that, until I was seventeen, I should always be known in the household as ‘Master’ Toby, instead of the servants addressing me by the title I had inherited, that I should never give orders to any of them without her permission, and that my pocket money should not exceed the average amount given to boys of my age.

I do not think that my brain is in any way out of the ordinary, but Julia and Helmuth between them certainly induced me to make the best of it, as I found when I went into the R.A.F. that my general knowledge far exceeded that of the great majority of the junior officers with whom I mixed. The secret of this, I am sure, is that I was never forced to continue at any subject until I got stale and tired of it.

At Weylands, of course, one was allowed a free choice of work, but the fault of the system is that, despite the cleverness of the masters in inducing the pupils to acquire at least a smattering of the subjects that attract them least, most of them do leave with some pretty thin patches in their education, and Helmuth was taken on especially to thicken up the more faulty parts of mine, during the holidays. Even so he managed to do it without arousing in me a permanent prejudice against work, by sandwiching short spells at the uncongenial tasks between much longer ones on such fascinating matters as early voyages of discovery, Chinese art, the transmutation of metals, the causes of revolutions, the strange fish that live at great depths, and so on.