The Mind of Mr Soames (17 page)

‘Nonsense,’ Takaito declared. ‘We merely believe that Mr Soames ought to be brought out into the light of day and given a real chance to live and learn like an ordinary human being. One does not lock up a backward child in a hospital. The child lives a normal home life but is given special training. That is rather the position with Mr Soames—except that he is not even a backward child, merely a misguided and uneducated adult with a potentially brilliant mind.’

‘And it is precisely because he is an adult that he has to be temporarily segregated,’ Breuer stated. ‘You saw what happened yesterday—the way he reacted to that Martinez girl...’

‘A perfectly normal reaction,’ Takaito said sternly. ‘He finds the opposite sex physically attractive. That is a good start. He also learned that females do not like to be coarsely handled. They scream and struggle and kick and bite. In just a few seconds Mr Soames learned more about sexual behaviour from personal experience than you or your staff could teach him in months with the aid of books and diagrams.’

‘Nevertheless, you cannot let a man like that loose in society—not yet, anyway.’

Takaito shrugged. ‘Why not? Mr Soames Is no fool. He will learn quickly the normal standards of behaviour by the approval or disapproval of others, But he must be left to solve his own problems, with guidance and kindness and understanding. With love, if you like. Until one is offered love, one can never reciprocate.’

Breuer snorted audibly, ‘One minute you talk of education, the next minute of love. I’m afraid Dr Takaito, that we shall never see eye to eye on this subject, and I feel you have rendered the Institute, myself and members of my staff a great disservice—a very great disservice indeed.’

‘As you wish,’ Takaito said, standing up. ‘Under the circumstances you will naturally wish me to move out of the Institute.’

‘I did not say that. I would be the last to withdraw hospitality. My purpose is to express my great disapproval of your action—irresponsible action, in my view—in making such a statement to the press. Whether you continue to stay here or leave is a matter for you yourself to decide.’

Takaito considered for a moment, his eyes remote behind his concave glasses. ‘If I leave, the press will assume that I was expelled from the Institute, or that I left because of a personal conflict with the executive. That is not strictly true. We have disagreed, admittedly, but on a purely professional level. On the other hand, if I stay, you will naturally demand an undertaking that I make no further public criticism of your work.’

‘Is that unreasonable?’ Breuer demanded.

‘Eminently reasonable.’ Takaito smiled cordially. ‘It would be as ungracious for me to decline further hospitality as it would be for you to withdraw it, Dr Breuer. I think the best compromise is for me to stay until the Ministry conference is held, during which time I undertake to make no further comment to the press. Afterwards, when the future of Mr Soames has been determined, I shall leave, reserving the right to comment as I see fit.’

‘Very well,’ Breuer agreed.

‘Unless, of course, I should be asked by the Ministry to accept personal responsibility for the education of Mr Soames, in which case I shall continue to stay.’

‘That would be most improbable,’ Breuer said with a hint of assured sarcasm in his voice.

Takaito bowed politely and left the room.

❖

Throughout that day Mr Soames remained in a subdued restless mood, eating but little, and spending a great deal of time pacing disconsolately up and down his tiny room like an animal in a cage. Occasionally he would peer through the window at the distant green of the grass and trees, and then he would fling himself on the bed and lie quite still for an hour, hardly moving and simply staring blankly at the ceiling.

It had rained consistently since early morning so that exercise in the grounds was out of the question. The tuition programme had been temporarily suspended until the proposed conference had taken place. Mr Soames, therefore, had nothing to do other than amuse himself with his toys, jigsaws, poster paints and books, but he chose to remain idle and unsettled—an attitude which gave rise to some anxiety so far as Conway was concerned, for he was more and more coming round to the view that complete mismanagement of Soames’s education coupled with segregation and virtual imprisonment was driving his innocent mind into a serious condition of neurosis.

In the evening, when Dr Hoff came on duty, Conway returned to his room to find a letter awaiting him. Something about the handwriting on the envelope seemed vaguely familiar, but he was unable to identify it immediately, and it was not until he had opened it and read the signature that he realised it was from Penelope’s father.

With an oppressive sense of foreboding he read the contents, which began cordially enough with ‘My dear David.’

I fully realise that relations between my daughter, Penelope, and yourself have been strained for some months now, and that there is the possibility of divorce proceedings being started. I feel it is my duty, however, to tell you that Penelope was involved in a car accident a few days ago and was rather seriously injured. She is at present in Brockfield District Hospital, Surrey.

Penelope particularly asked me not to advise you of what had happened, but I thought you ought to know. Naturally you will decide for yourself whether you wish to see her or not under the circumstances.

With kind regards, etc.

He allowed the letter to drop idly on to his bed while his thoughts spun aimlessly for a while. This was a complication of course, though not necessarily a major complication.

Clearly he would have to go and see her, so much was obvious, but first he needed time to think and perhaps talk to Ann.

Ann, he recalled, had gone out to visit a friend in Hampstead, but would be back around ten. For a while he stood undecided, unable to make up his mind what to do with the rest of his evening. Finally, feeling tired and rather dry, he went out of the building to the car park at the rear and drove off towards The Green Man.

Blarney was there, In the saloon bar, with another member of the medical staff named Hughes, downing pints of bitter. Conway joined them and spent the next hour and a half in desultory conversation and shop talk until he found himself unable to respond any further to Blarney’s facetious manner of speech and decided to return to the Institute.

He parked the car, then slowly, quite preoccupied, wandered through the cool night air around the side of the building towards the main entrance. The drizzle was still falling in a fine mist, but he was hardly aware of it as he trudged through the wet grass. Absently he changed his direction and made his way towards the small lake and the distant fringe of trees. At first there was only utter darkness, but as his eyes adapted themselves the sky lightened fractionally and the shape of the ground hardened into a blacker outline. Beyond the trees a faint luminous haze hung in the sky—a reflection of the bright neon lights of a cinema beyond the south wall of the grounds.

At the lake he stopped, his eyes straining to discern the scarcely visible movement of the water in the gloom. If he was thinking at all, it was in an undefined abstract way, thinking with feeling rather than thoughts. No words came into his mind, but he was conscious of a changing, modulating mood, a composite of many smaller conflicting moods which could not be translated into language. Probably Mr Soames had thought in this same way in the early days before he was presented with the twin gifts of vocabulary and grammar and no doubt everyone at some point in his life reverted to this kind of blank animal thinking, when the weary brain abandoned its civilised veneer of language. The sensation was restful, if not peaceful, and in such a mood one could spend hours walking through the night in defiance of the rain.

Something moved among the trees on his left. Instantly his mind snapped into sensitive alertness, and his ears strained to pick up a repetition of the sound. Traffic roared remotely on the highway, swamping the night air with random noise, and then the sound came again—like the scuffing of feet through wet grass and twigs.

There was no immediate reaction of alarm, just an abrupt tautening of his body like a spring tensed for instant release at the touch of a trigger. Stealthily, almost with a prowling movement, he turned away from the lake and began to advance towards the black pattern of the trees. Better, he decided, to try to intercept the intruder and detain him physically, if possible, than return to the clinic to raise the alarm and perhaps allow him to escape over the boundary wall.

There was no further repetition of the sound. Although he walked slowly and carefully, lifting his feet clear of the grass to make as little noise as possible, he was possessed by an uneasy conviction that the other man was standing quite still among the trees watching him and he came closer. The darkness seemed to thicken into tangible ebony, and suddenly he was aware that his clothes were saturated in the incessant drizzle, but he kept on in stubborn determination.

Something crackled a few yards ahead. He paused instinctively. For a disconcerting moment he imagined he could hear deep breathing quite near to him, but it seemed to come from all sides fugitively. The tension increased to the point of apprehension, and his brain seemed to scintilate as the adrenalin in his blood heightened his perception.

He continued his cautious progress, and now he was among the trees, and the darkness swirled in meaningless, shapeless blotches before his eyes. Again the crackling sound, loud and close. He stopped and held his breath.

Fingers suddenly gripped his arm. A voice made a hissing sound in his ear. He remained frozen.

‘Don’t make a sound,’ whispered the voice, so quietly that it was almost inaudible. The fingers relinquished their grasp.

‘Who are you?’ asked the voice.

Recognition flooded Conway’s mind with welcome relief. The tension drained away. Even in the whisper there was a certain clipped inflexion and an air of authority which established identity.

‘Dr Conway,’ he replied.

‘Not so loud. I’m Dr Takaito. Don’t move. Just listen and watch.’

Obediently Conway set himself firmly on his legs in a stand-at-ease position. Takaito, he presumed, was on his left, not more than three or four feet away, and he could discern the faint sound of his breathing, but over and above it another noise disturbed the stillness of the night air—the scuffing through grass and twigs that had first attracted his attention by the lake. It was fax away, deep among the trees.

It stopped, then started again, and it seemed to him that it was coming closer. A slow tentative shambling, he thought, rather like some
big
animal wandering aimlessly among the trees in a leisurely manner. Already his eyes were growing accustomed to the mare intense darkness beneath the cavernous roof of the overhanging branches, and it was possible to see patches of sky, like isolated jigsaw fragments among the ebony foliage. Here and there he could now distinguish the tall columnar trunks of nearby trees silhouetted against the distant ovoid iridescence of the lake as it glistened in the rain.

‘Look,’ breathed Or Takaito.

Conway looked. At first there was nothing to see, but the shuffling sounds were very close and backed by a subtler noise—the rhythm of heavy breathing. A figure came into view, moving anonymously from shadow to shadow, not clearly defined at all until suddenly it was sharply etched against the lighter background of the lake. There was no great surprise when recognition came; from the moment he had encountered Dr Takaito, Conway had half guessed the identity of the other man among the trees. It was Mr Soames, of course, an extremely wet but apparently happy Mr Soames, mooching along in soaking pyjamas and bare feet, touching the trees as if feeling his way in the darkness, and occasionally stopping to bend and snatch at the limp grass with his hands.

Mr Soames passed by, seemingly quite unaware that he had an audience of two. Soon he had melted into the blackness of the copse and the sound of his bare feet in the wet grass dissolved into the murmur of distant traffic.

‘Come with me,’ Dr Takaito whispered, ‘but be very quiet.’

Walking with meticulous care Conway followed the small Japanese doctor through the trees, circling round to the west of the lake. As they came out into the open once more, Takaito stopped, catching Conway’s arm and pulling him into the shadow of a towering oak tree. Not more than twenty yards ahead Mr Soames was progressing aimlessly across the field towards the lake. At the water’s edge he paused, then dropped to hands and knees, lowering his head as if peering intently at the ripples. He put his hand gently into the water, moving it to and fro so that the surface of the lake became distorted by circling and interlocking waves. Minutes later he lay down flat on the saturated grass and immersed his head and arms in the cold water, remaining quite motionless for so long that Conway felt impelled to intervene—at which point, apparently satiated, Soames stood up, smoothed his dripping hands down his wet pyjamas, and continued to walk on round the lake, not hurrying, and stopping frequently to inspect something on the ground like a small boy on a country ramble.

When he was more than a hundred yards away, Conway said to Takaito: ‘What goes on?’

‘I allowed him to escape. During Dr Hoff’s absence I sent the male nurse off on a long and futile errand and left the door of the room open.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I wish to observe his behaviour when he is not under continual supervision—when he is free to follow the inclinations of his own simple mind. You have seen that he does not mind the rain and he suffers no discomfort, even though he is wearing so little clothing. He takes a lively personal interest in the things around him—the trees, the grass, and of course the lake—you witnessed the ritual of the lake, the subconscious cold tank baptism of peace and security. Now he probably feels cleansed and refreshed.’

‘But what does it prove, Dr Takaito?’

‘Only that there is nothing sinister or subtle in our Mr Soames. Like all of us he needs freedom, and he will take it when he can. When he has had enough he will return to the relative warmth and comfort of his own room and bed, like a dog returning to its kennel after a romp round the garden.’