The Mind of Mr Soames (30 page)

‘Perhaps it is important to realise that we are in a sense attempting to evaluate a man, and the actions and motives of a man, who has been alive in the conscious sense for only a few months, and has spent most of that time in a psychiatric clinic. His education proceeded at a fast and concise rate, with considerable success, but naturally as his personality developed so he began to choose and select the kind of information and experience he desired, not knowing what was good for him, or bad for him in the long term. It has never been suggested that the accused knew best what education he needed, but he took it upon himself to reject the education which did not please him.

‘The question arises, inevitably—was the accused, during his period of violent freedom, the product of his mentors, as has been implied, or the product of his own stubborn independence defying his mentors? Did he kill because of his education, or failings in his education, or because his true personality, resenting the restriction of his liberty, was beginning to emerge?

‘And was it a man who killed, or a child? We have been told that in relation to his actual mental age, that is, from the time he first became conscious, the accused has an extremely high intelligence quotient, but you may consider that unremarkable since he possesses a brain that is, in physical terms, fully grown and adult. On the other hand the actual amount of knowledge and information possessed by the adult brain is probably considerably less than that of a child of eight or nine. In addition there were other influences acting as a distorting factor, influences derived from the sex instinct and emotional considerations which would not affect a child in the same way...’

The summing up had lasted for more than two and a half hours, and in the end the verdict of the jury had offered no surprise. Manslaughter was reasonable enough, with a rider that if Mr Soames was not actually insane, at least he could be regarded as possessing diminished responsibility.

Later, back at the Institute, discussing the proceedings with Ann, Conway said:

‘Really, there was no other verdict possible. It wasn’t murder, but at the same time he could not be acquitted. I’m afraid, all things considered, poor Mr Soames was well and truly guilty of manslaughter.’

‘And the sentence?’ she asked.

‘Under the circumstances, no alternative. Five years imprisonment.’

She frowned. ‘Is that honestly going to do any good?’

‘I understand an application has already been made to the Home Secretary. Mr Soames will probably be detained during Her Majesty’s pleasure, and end up in Broadmoor or somewhere similar.’

‘Just as if he were insane, after all?’

‘At least he’ll receive treatment.’

‘But, Dave, he doesn’t need treatment—just education, that’s all. Real education—living life instead of learning about it from books and films and dry-as-dust tutors.’

He smiled wryly. ‘Yes, I know. I suppose that applies to many of us in a way. We live life in a vicarious fashion, and the mistakes we make are due to lack of the experience we never had.’

After an interval of subdued silence, she said: ‘I wonder if Mr Soames will ever realise he destroyed his creator.’

‘One day, perhaps. I think, in a way, I’d rather it had been me than Takaito. He had more to contribute to the world.’

She put her fingers to his lips. ‘Dave, you mustn’t say that. I’m sorry for Takaito, but sometimes we have to be selfish.’

‘You’re right, darling,’ he murmured, taking her fingers in his hand. ‘And there are other times when we have to be unselfish.’

‘You’re thinking of Penelope,’ she said, with intuitive know-: ledge. ‘You never told me about her.’

‘Things happened too quickly after that. I never had the chance. In a way it’s a good thing. I’ve had time to pause and consider.’

‘Was she badly hurt in that accident?’

‘So-so—you know how accidents are.’

‘Well, then...?’

He hesitated for a moment. ‘I’m leaving the Institute, Ann. I’ve discussed it with Dr Breuer, and he understands the position—what with Mr Soames and other matters.’

‘You mean you’re leaving
me
, don’t you, Dave?’

‘In practical terms, yes. Not because I want to, but because I have to.’

She remained silent, with downcast eyes.

‘It may not be for ever,’ he said. ‘But for the present, perhaps months or even years, there isn’t any choice.’

‘No divorce?’ she asked, managing a rueful smile.

He shook his head. ‘Fate doesn’t permit a divorce.’

‘Well, then,’ she said, with assumed cheerfulness, ‘let’s go out and have a beer together, just this once, for old times sake.’

He kissed her lightly.

They went out for a beer.

Version History

Version #:
v3.0

Sigil Version Used:
0.7.2

Original format:
ePub

Date created:
April 1, 2015

Last edited:
April 1, 2015

Correction History:

Version History Framework for this book:

v0.0/UC
==> This is a book that that's been scanned, OCR'd and converted into HTML or EPUB. It is completely raw and uncorrected. I do essentially no text editing within the OCR software itself, other than to make sure that every page has captured the appropriate scanning area, and recognized it as the element (text, picture, table, etc.) that it should be.

v1.0
==> All special style and paragraph formatting from the OCR product is removed, except for italics and small-caps (where they are being used materially, and not as first-line-of-a-new-chapter eye-candy). Unstyled, chapter & sub-chapter headings are applied. 40-50 search templates which use Regular Expressions have been applied to correct common transcription errors: faulty character replacement like "die" instead of "the", "comer" instead of "corner", "1" instead of "I"; misplaced punctuation marks; missing quotation marks; rejoining broken lines; breaking run-on dialogue, etc.

v2.0
==> Page-by-page comparison against the original scan/physical book, to format scenebreaks (the blank space between paragraph denoting an in-chapter break), blockquotes, chapter heading, and all other special formatting. This also includes re-breaking some lines (generally from poetry or song lyrics that have been blockquoted in the original book) that were incorrectly joined during the v1 general correction process.

v3.0
==> Spellchecked in Sigil (an epub editor). My basic goal in this version is to catch most non-words, and all indecipherable words (i.e., those that would require the original text in order to properly interpret). Also, I try to add in diacritics whenever appropriate. In other words, I want to get the book in shape so that someone who wants to make full readthrough corrections will be able to do so without access to the original physical book.

v4.0
==> I've done a complete readthrough of the book, and have made any corrections to errors caught in the process. This version level is probably comparable in polish to a physical retail book.

Some additional notes:

vX.1-9
==> within my own framework, these smaller incremental levels are completely unstandardized. What it means is that I—or you!—have made some minor corrections or adjustment that leave me somewhere between "vX" and "vX+1". It's very unlikely that I'll ever use these decimal adjustments on anything less than a "v3".

Correcting my ebooks
— Even at their best, I've yet to read one of my v3.0s that was completely error free. For those of you inclined to make corrections to those books I post (v3, v4, v5, and all points in between), I gratefully welcome the help. However, I would urge you to make those correction in the original EPUB file using Sigil or some other HTML editor, and not in a converted file. The reason is this: when you convert a file, the code—and occasionally the formatting—is altered. If you make corrections in this altered version, in order to use that "corrected" version, I'm going to have to reformat it all over again from scratch, which is at best hugely inefficient and at worst impossible (if, say, I no longer have an original copy available). More likely, I'll just end up doing the full readthrough myself on my file and discarding all of your hard work. Unlike some of the saintly retail posters who contribute books that they have no interest whatsoever in reading, I never create a book that I don't want to read... at least a little. So, having to do a full readthrough on my own books isn't really going to put me out, but it will mean that the original editor's work (i.e. your work )will have been completely wasted, and I'd feel more than slightly crummy about that. So, to re-cap, I am endlessly grateful to those who add further polish to the books I make, but it's only an efficient use of your time if you make corrections in the original EPUB file as you downloaded it.