The Haunting of Toby Jugg Read Free Page A

if the Vichy French had let them occupy the island it would have made a perfect base from which to launch an invasion of the Union.
    Thank goodness it looks now as if we have put paid to that one in advance. The report says that at dawn today British naval and military forces arrived off the north-west coast of the island, landed in Courier Bay, and proceeded inland across the neck of the isthmus towards the naval base at Diego Suarez.
    Well, good luck to them. How I wish I were there, instead of here! Of course, naval aircraft must have been used to cover the landing; slow, unwieldy old kites compared with the types I used to fly. Still, I’d cheerfully take up even a Gladiator against the enemy, rather than have to face this loathsome, inhuman thing that haunts the courtyard, and has recently been trying to find its way into this room.
    How do I know that? I cannot say. But something inside myself tells me positively that it is so. That something can only be a supersensory apparatus which, to give it is medical name, is called man’s higher consciousness; but old-fashioned people would say it was my spirit—or soul—that, knowing itself to be in danger, sends me these frantic warnings.
    As I was brought up to be an atheist, the last thing I should have admitted to, up to the age of eighteen, was that I had a soul; but since then my horizons have broadened a lot; and only yesterday, on arguing matters out with myself, I reached the conclusion that, logically, one must accept the eternal verities. That too, even in these materialistic times, is still a fundamental belief held by the vast majority of educated, as well as uneducated, people.
    Judging by those I met during the two-and-a-half years that I was free of Helmuth’s tutelage, genuine atheists must be very rare. Most of the young men I knew were pretty hard cases—they had to be or they would have cracked under the strain—but most of them became quite offended when sometimes, for the fun ofgetting up an argument, I suggested that they had no souls. To have agreed with me would have been to degrade themselves to the level of animals—or rather, a bag of salts and a few buckets of water kept going only by a series of chemical reactions—and, in their heart of hearts, they were convinced that they possessed some intrinsic quality which lifts mankind above all other species of creation.
    That makes it all the more curious that most people these days rarely think about their souls. But, I suppose, if they did for any length of time it would interfere with the innumerable petty interests of their daily lives.
    Nearly everybody will readily admit that they believe in some form of after-life. But they take it for granted that God cannot possibly be the sort of jealous, sacrifice-loving, tyrannical potentate depicted in the Old Testament, and that the fiery-furnace version of Hell was kept going by the Churches only as a convenient means of blackmailing the laity. When they do think of such matters they visualise the Creator as a nice old gentleman with a long white beard, who invariably speaks English, and confidently anticipate that when their time is up here they will be given a pretty reasonable deal as a start off in some new existence.
    As for the Devil, they never give a thought to him at all—except when it comes to discussing possible costumes for the Four Arts Ball. Neither, I confess, did I, until I suddenly found myself in the situation of a rabbit who sees a ferret with red eyes and bared teeth coming after him.
    One thing is certain. In these days, the vast majority of people live out their lives without bothering to propitiate the Deity, yet nothing of this kind ever catches up with them. Sooner or later, though, they have all got to die; and, maybe, when they do they will meet with a rude awakening. If so, perhaps I really ought to consider myself fortunate in being forced to thrash out these problems now.
    All the same I would give anything, at the