The Mind of Mr Soames

by Maine, Charles Eric

  His head ached a little, as it always ached when he was thoroughly cold. It ached in a tight circle around the puckered ridge of flesh beneath his black hair, as if in some strange way that odd semicircle of distorted skin was a point of entry to his brain, vulnerable to the groping fingers of chill. It had ached in the same way on the night he had embraced the lake, immersing his head in the cold numbing water. But the pain was dull and subdued now, a faint discomfort that made it difficult to think clearly and coherently.

  The flowered shrubs surrounded him completely like a miniature woodland, and beyond them were scattered trees receding to the straight line that divided the blue sky from the green earth. But not to the rear. Here the clean pattern of blue and green was stained by a building, an immense grey shape with square corners and fussy, peering windows, and walls shaggy with ivy. For him it was a sinister building, like the Institute itself. It was a cold, aged fortress.

  Now there was yellow in his pattern of blue, green and grey-a curving gravel path that started at the door of the building and swept away towards the sun. Patches of flowers bordered the path in red and white points of colour. At the remote end of the path, close by the building, a black car gleamed in shadow.

  There was danger in the grey building and the black car, he knew. They symbolised men—the same kind of men who had watched him with cold, keen eyes at the Institute, who had examined him with shining instruments, who wore white coats and were detached and objective in their manner. They would be searching for him, as they had searched on that night until they had finally run him to earth among the parked cars.

  He turned away from the house and scanned the open country. Not far away, beyond the trees, was a wire fence that stretched from left to right as far as the eye could see, and on the other side of the fence was undulating grassland, darkened here and there by patches of trees. In the remote distance something moved slowly like a beetle—perhaps another car on an unseen road. Further towards the sun the shape of a house formed a small rectangle of dull red against the fresh green of the grass.

  Cautiously he left the shelter of the flowered bushes, advancing away from the building in the direction of the wire fence. Now that he was on the move again the fears that had been troubling his mind became quiet, and there was only the refreshing sense of progress through the cool morning air.

  He climbed the fence with little difficulty and pushed on across the wet fields, keeping the sun on his left side but veering away from the red house and the unseen road along which tiny vehicles moved from time to time. After a time the sky began to cloud over, but the transient bursts of sunshine warmed him and dried his clothes, and he began to feel better in his mind, and more cheerful.

  The world is much bigger than I thought, he told himself with a certain sense of wonder. It goes on and on, and it is quite empty. All those pictures and films they showed me were nothing like this. Why, there must be millions and millions of blades of grass in this field alone.

  He came upon animals for the first time in his life. They were like those he had seen in pictures—sheep and cows and horses—but much bigger than he had ever imagined, and solid, too, with mass and weight and big blank frightening eyes. He avoided the animals, not from fear, but rather from uncertainty; they were neither friendly nor hostile, like impassive creatures of some alien world.

  The sun rose high in the sky and began to descend, but the clouds were thickening and changing in colour from white to grey. The warmth began to fade from the air, and a cool wind blew across the fields, thrusting cold fingers through the thin, white material of his shirt. He quickened his pace.

  At a railway cutting he halted, taking stock of the long steel tracks receding and converging across the open country towards the sky. As he watched a train appeared, tiny at first with a plume of smoke trailing behind it, then growing ever larger until suddenly it was upon him like some roaring, fire-breathing monster, and the coaches clattered by in endless procession until abruptly the thing had gone past and was shrinking towards a new vanishing point.

  Warily he scrambled down the embankment and crossed the tracks, stepping over the shining rails as if afraid that physical contact hurt him in some way. On the other side of the cutting the fields condensed into a wood, and he made for this with a sure sense of imminent security.

  The wood was dark and friendly, like the small wood at the Institute, but it was much bigger and there were areas of tall ferns and bracken reaching almost to his shoulders. Beneath his feet the ground was resilient and carpetlike where the leaves had settled and died over may autumns. The branches overhead whispered and rustled in the wind but down below, among the trees and ferns, the air was still and quiet. There was a chill in the shadowy gloom, however, and he began to wish he had remembered to bring his jacket with him.

  Deep in the heart of the wood he chose to rest for a time in the centre of an immense patch of tall ferns that extended as far as he could see among the crowded trees. On hands and knees he crawled into a new kind of forest of slender green stems and waving fronds that almost shut off completely the last traces of daylight. The ground was soft as a blanket, though moist, and there was a pleasing scent of sweet decay around him.

  He lay back, fully stretched out as he had been for so many years in the cold tank, and presently fell asleep.

  ❖

  Voices woke him—intimate, half-whispered voices punctuated by a shrill excited laugh. For a moment he could not remember where he was: the quickly imagined walls of the room at the Institute crowded in on him like a packing case, then abruptly fell away into pallid stalks that swayed and hissed as he moved. Memory returned a moment later.

  Alert and cautious once more, he propped himself on one elbow and remained quite still, listening to the distant voices but unable to distinguish any words that made sense. There were two voices, he decided. One was low pitched like those of the doctors at the Institute, while the other was higher in tone, reminding him of the strangely dressed people who had been presented to him as his mother and sister. At the recollection something invisible seemed to twist like a knife in his stomach, but there was no pain, only a strange sense of compulsion, of anticipation—a kind of unborn excitement.

  He rolled over on to his hands and knees and began to move in the direction of the voices. Although he knew he could not be seen, the ferns swayed above and about him, so he moved slowly and stealthily. The voices stopped as he drew close, and for a while he crouched, holding his breath, until it seemed certain that he had not been discovered.

  The voices came again, breathlessly, then faded into heavy breathing. Reassured, he inched forward until he came upon what appeared to be a clearing among the ferns, and immediately in front of him, beyond the protective fringe of ferns that still separated him from the clearing, was a man’s grey coat thrown carelessly on the ground.

  He stared at it for a long time, trying to fit it into the pattern of voices and breathing, then began to look around, without advancing further. At that point he saw the others.

  There were two of them, as he had guessed, lying together in a small area of trampled fern and bracken, but the broken undergrowth was by no means level and they were partly obscured by the fronds of dangling ferns. If his arm had been twice as long he could have touched their heads.

  There was a coloured rug beneath them, rucked and rumpled over the ferns, and he could not see them individually, so closely were they locked together. It seemed to him that they were engaged in a violent struggle and their clothing was greatly disarranged exposing areas of naked skin, but there was a curious rhythm in their movements, a mutual thrusting of bodies, which seemed inconsistent with violence. He watched in fascination, unable to attach any meaning to what was happening.

  But if there was no meaning, at least there was reaction—a strange tenseness deep inside him and an awareness of difference—a difference that was more than just the difference between the word ‘man’ and the word ‘woman’. It was the same awaren
ess that he had experienced when he had held his sister close to him in the embrace that had triggered the fight—the startled groping of some buried urge struggling for recognition, the feeling of possession by a blind power. He could not see the woman’s face, her head was turned away from him, but her hair was long and brown and her blue dress had been swept back to expose the cream colour of her legs and hips. And, for a reason he could not fathom, it was the woman that interested him, and not the man.

  He glanced upwards at the sky glimmering in grey mosaic beyond the ferns and the trees. Already the daylight was fading, which meant that he had slept for most of the afternoon. Night was approaching, with its cold damp darkness, and he did not welcome the long hours of discomfort.

  The couple were still engrossed in their strange exercise, becoming if anything even more violent. He shook his head to disperse the hypnosis that seemed to have taken possession of him, and dismissed the inarticulate questions that crowded his brain. It was all part of the tortuous way people behaved; they did things that made no sense for reasons he could not begin to understand, and for the present here was no point in pursuing the mystery.

  He realised that he was taking an unnecessary risk in remaining so close to other people. Every human being was a possible enemy to be avoided if he wished to preserve his freedom. He was about to withdraw among the ferns when his eyes fell on the man’s grey coat lying not more than three feet away from his right hand.

  The mental process by which he reached his decision was quick and instinctive. There was no question of right or wrong and the question of theft was too subtle to have any meaning for him. He needed the coat to keep himself warm, or at least warmer, throughout the coming night, so he took it drawing it gently between the stalks of the ferns and then backing silently away from the clearing. A final glimpse at the couple revealed that they had abandoned their frenzied movements and were lying quietly together as if asleep, but while he looked the man moved lethargically, detaching himself from the woman.

  He stayed to look no more, but as he retreated through the forest of ferns, expecting at any moment to hear angry shouts and the thudding of feet on bracken, his mind struggled to comprehend and digest the revelation of that final instant when the two had separated. There was still no understanding in the confused darkness of his consciousness, but now there was knowledge of an incredible fact.

  As soon as he judged himself far enough away from the clearing, he stood up and ran crouching through the trees, holding the stolen coat in a bundle under his arm. At one point he crossed a path in the woods, and saw at the end of it an intersecting road with an empty parked car waiting as if patiently for the return of...

  The man and the woman? He did not know, nor did he bother to guess, but hurried on into the gathering dusk until he had left the wood behind and was in open fields once more.

  Then, breathing heavily, he slackened his pace and put on the coat.

  ❖

  Later that night, when a thin crescent moon had taken the place of the sun, he came upon a canal cutting straight across the dark countryside. The banks of the canal were steep and the water too deep and too wide to cross without inviting a thorough soaking, and he felt disinclined to spend another night in cold wet clothes, much as the water itself attracted him. He turned right, therefore, and followed the banks of the canal for some distance until he came to a deserted road which crossed the canal over a low bridge.

  On the other side of the canal he left the road again, but kept on walking in the new direction. It was necessary now, he realised, to find some shelter for the night among shrubs or trees, but the fields ahead seemed quite bare. Straining his eyes in the darkness, he plodded on, and presently found himself climbing a hill. The wind freshened as he neared the top, and he was glad of the coat.

  Now he was looking down on a broad sweep of phantom countryside, colourless and featureless in the pallid glow of the thin moon. Lights moved in single file along an unseen road—one of the big roads, he imagined, to judge by the amount of night traffic. He sat down for a while, watching the lights and trying to evaluate his position and plan for the future.

  I am free, he thought, and that is a fact. I have been free for a night and a day. They will try to find me—everyone will try to find me—so it may not be easy to stay free. There are things I need if I an to stay free.

  He considered for a while the things he would need. There was the dryness of his throat and the empty hollowness of his stomach. That meant water and food, and tomorrow he would have to think less of escape and more of finding something to ease his thirst and hunger. For the present sleep would be enough.

  He stroked the stubble of his unshaven face. Something would have to be done about that, too, and about his hair, which was in an ugly tangle and needed grease and a comb to put it in order. If he looked dirty and unshaven people would notice and begin to ask questions, and that might lead to the end of his freedom.

  His clothes were muddy and shapeless, except for the jacket which seemed rather new. This, too, would appear odd to others. He needed a new shirt and trousers, or at least the means to clean the ones he was wearing.

  Given these things he felt that he could encounter people without fear and without arousing suspicion. Not that he wanted to meet anyone at all, but clearly he could not forever expect to remain alone and isolated. So far he had been lucky. People he had seen in the distance had been no more than tiny doll-like figures, and he had had no difficulty in avoiding them, but there might come a time...

  Like the two in the ferns and bracken, he thought suddenly. That was a chance encounter and it. could have been dangerous, but it got me a coat.

  The tenseness began to twist again deep in his abdomen. That was something else he needed, to kill an emptiness that was like the hunger and the thirst but in some urgent way quite different. He needed to meet one of those long-haired and soft-limbed men called women and find out more about that strange struggling ritual which had provoked such excitement and fascination within him when he had played the part of onlooker.

  All these things he needed, and he would have to get them with noting more than his own two hands, a certain sharp intelligence, and the limited amount of simple general knowledge they had pushed into his mind at the Institute. For the first time he began to regret the stubborn way in which he had rejected so much of their teaching, but he had not needed it then for it had seemed to bear no relation at all to his constricted life in the small room, always watched by the orderlies and the doctors. Now, alone in the outside world with everyone a possible enemy, knowledge could be a great asset.

  He scowled into the night, aware of the first burnings in his mind of the old familiar resentment. It doesn’t matter, he told himself, setting his thoughts into a pattern of defiance. I know enough, and in time I will learn all I need to know by watching and listening.

  Cramp knotted the muscles of his right leg. He stood up painfully and flexed his foot until the pain dissolved, but there was no way of dealing with the aching stiffness of his body due to exposure and fatigue. Nevertheless he forced himself to walk, step by step in single-minded determination, following the crest of the hill so that he was moving parallel to the road with its animated lights.

  In the course of time he came to a rough wooden fence beyond which was ploughed land. To the left a cluster of buildings formed a faint silhouette against the night sky, and a curtained window showed a pallid rectangle of yellow light. Wearily he stopped to consider. Until now he had carefully avoided farms because they were focal points of humanity, and therefore dangerous, but it occurred to him that among the deserted outbuildings he might find a dry and relatively comfortable place to sleep for a few hours until daybreak. The prospect was pleasing, and the risk seemed negligible.

  He climbed the fence quite easily and skirted the ploughed field, making for the illuminated window. In a few minutes he reached what appeared to be a high shed with no walls, but under the curved roof were stacked bal
es of straw. That was one possibility; the straw was hard and bristly, but at least it was dry, and between the bales there would be shelter from the wind.

  Still not entirely satisfied he continued his exploration, passing by a long brick building which exuded the smell of animals and a tall barn with padlocked wooden doors. Another fence of wired palings impeded him for a while, but he climbed over at the third attempt, and now he was close to the house itself and the curtained window.

  The horror came at him unexpectedly—an unseen, snarling venomous thing hurling itself against his body with such force that he was almost thrown to the ground. Vicious fangs seized his arm, penetrating the coat sleeve and tearing the skin, and the thing dragged at him furiously, throwing itself from side to side in an effort to unbalance him, growling all the time with frightening savagery. Fear and anger exploded abruptly inside him like a star shell. His heart pounded frantically as iced blood surged through his veins, and then he began to fight back, seizing the long ears of the dog and using his feet and his knees to pummel its heaving body.

  He was free for an instant, and then the thing came at him again, snarling and choking in its rage. A light came on in another window of the farmhouse. He kicked hard at the thing near his feet putting the whole weight of is body into the lunge. Something snapped and the dog howled and he was falling over its threshing body to hit the ground with an impact that knocked the breath from his lungs.

  Desperately he picked himself to his feet and ran, hurling himself over the palings with no further regard for personal injury. Beyond the howling of the dog he heard a door open, and then a man’s angry voice. The beam of a torch swung a bobbing oval of light across the ground. He ducked and ran, weaving from side to side as he had done on that previous occasion when they had pursued him through the grounds of the Institute. His brain had stopped thinking, and some buried instinct had reared up from the darker depths of his mind to take control of his actions.