The Mind of Mr Soames

by Maine, Charles Eric

  ‘What is a trial?’

  ‘You will have to go to a place called a court of law, and there they will ask you questions to find out why you tried to kill the doctor.’

  ‘Then what will they do?’

  She hesitated, uncertain of the legal subtleties of the situation, then said: ‘I think they will probably send you to a kind of hospital where they will try to—to teach you all the things you do not know.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘I don’t know. Quite a long time, I think.’

  ‘You mean, a place like the Institute...’

  ‘Something like that.’

  He frowned, then pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. He began to pace restlessly around the room.

  ‘In the pocket of your coat,’ she said, ‘there is a wallet containing some money. You know about money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Twelve pounds in all. I will give you another ten. That will make twenty-two. With that you can travel a long way—to Scotland, perhaps, where there is a great deal of wild open country and less chance of being recognised. There is an old grey overcoat of my husband’s which you can wear. It will help to keep you warm—and it will also disguise you. You will have enough money to buy food for quite a long time. But you must keep yourself clean and tidy, otherwise they will be suspicious of you.’

  ‘But... how can I?’

  ‘I will give you a list of things you must buy—such as a razor, a mirror, soap, a towel—perhaps another shirt. And you will need a cheap bag or case to carry them in. Do not be afraid to go into a shop to buy things. As you are now, they would not recognise you unless they knew you.’

  ‘I have never been into a shop before,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘There is nothing to fear. I will tell you exactly what to do, and which shops to go in. There’s one more thing—you must change your name.’

  He eyed her blankly, not understanding.

  ‘What I mean is this—you must use a different name. If anybody should ask you who you are, you must not say John Soames.’

  ‘Then, what should I say?’

  ‘In your coat pocket there are letters, and there is a wallet containing cards with a name and address on. You had better be that person. James Forsyth. Can you remember that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment of consideration. ‘But the real man... if he wants his coat?’

  She smiled, and there was cynicism in the curve of her red lips. ‘I don’t really think the real Mr Forsyth will make much fuss about his coat—not when I make it clear to him that I know the truth about how he came to lose it. I think we can forget about him.’

  Glancing towards the clock on the mantelshelf, she added, ‘There is little enough time. I’ll get you your overcoat and write out a list of things you ought to buy, and then you must go.’

  Some ten minutes later he left the house by the side entrance and walked as instructed towards the shopping centre of the village half a mile away.

  ❖

  When darkness fell he was striding forlornly across the undulating ground of the open country once more, advancing towards a range of low hills. It had begun to rain, but the grey overcoat was warm, if too short, and he felt comfortable and secure. In his right hand he carried a brown canvas zipped bag containing the product of nearly forty minutes of intensive shopping, performed nervously and uneasily at first, but later carried out with growing confidence. The bag was heavy, but that did not matter, for there was food in tins and a can opener and a spoon—enough food to last for a week, perhaps more. And there were toilet items for washing and shaving, and a comb and cream to keep his hair tidy, and a mirror to check his physical appearance, and a plastic sheet to sleep on to keep the dampness from rising out of the ground. He had also brought a small blanket for additional warmth, and a new shirt and a tie, which he intended to put on at the earliest possible moment of assured privacy to confer respectability.

  With each purchase his self-confidence had increased, and he wondered why he had never been allowed to do things like this—ordinary things that other people did—during his enforced imprisonment at the Institute. He still had fifteen pound notes in his wallet, and some loose change, which he felt would be more than enough to meet his modest needs during the next few weeks.

  But for all his mental buoyancy he was unhappy, and his distress became more acute with each step he took into the worsening rain away from the woman and the house. Goodbye, she had said. You’re on your own from this moment on. If you can stay free for a few days without getting into trouble and hurting anyone, at least you will be able to show that you are resourceful and intelligent when left to your own devices, and it will make a difference when they come to decide what is to be done about you.

  Another thing, she had said—don’t keep to the open country all the time, because this is what they will expect you to do. In the day you can go into towns—the bigger the better—and mix with other people. You will find it easy to buy food and anything else you may need. At night, though, you will be unable to sleep, and if you try to sleep in a park then the police will arrest you and discover who you are. So at night you must move out into the countryside again. If you can do this for a week, spending your waking hours in towns and cities without getting into trouble, they will realise you are responsible enough in yourself.

  All this was good advice, he recognised, but he could not suppress his resentment at having to move on. After all, there had been no immediate danger. Why, in the village High Street he had walked right past a policeman without attracting so much as a casual glance—and two police patrol cars had passed by quite innocently. It seemed to him that there was no good reason why he could not continue indefinitely to live on the fringe of the small village. They—the vast, impersonal, invisible authority—would not expect him to be in a house; indeed, by this time, after a whole night and a day, they might well have given up the chase.

  He rested for a while in a declivity under the shelter of a hedge, and went through the contents of his canvas bag with all the pride of possession. For the first time in my life I have things that really belong to me, he thought. They are mine: I can keep them or throw them away as I choose. With the realisation his self-confidence expanded even more. I am just as clever as they are, he decided; I’ve learned a lot in a short time. I am hard to find and I can stay hard to find for—he hesitated while his mind attempted to encompass the concept of extended time—for weeks and weeks.

  The rain began to drive down faster, hissing against the small hard leaves of the thorn hedge, and now water was dripping down on to him. He pulled the coat over his head and sat in the darkness, withdrawn and miserable, waiting for the rain to cease. He thought about the woman and about the things that had happened during the strange afternoon. I never imagined, he said to himself. I never imagined such a thing. Tension began to tighten again in his stomach and he knew he could not leave her for ever.

  The sky was black and blind, the young moon concealed behind massed raincloud, and the rain increased in its dismal petulant fury. In the morning I’ll go back, he promised himself. That way, staying with her during the day and sleeping in the open at night, I could escape from the Institute for ever.

  The rain continued to beat down with increasing viciousness until the hedge was no longer an adequate protection. Finally, in desperation, he took the rubber sheet from his canvas bag and spread it over him like a shroud, prepared to sit through the dragging hours of darkness until dawn brought respite.

  16

  At some point during the night he fell asleep, while the rain continued to fall in an incessant deluge. When he awoke daylight was glowing pallidly in a gunmetal sky, and he was lying on his side on waterlogged soil under the shadow of a hedge that poured chill water on him at every thrust of the wind. The rubber sheet had slipped away and was lying awry behind his back. His overcoat was a soggy mass of wet fibre, and the rain had penetrated through to his body, so that his undercl
othing felt like saturated blotting paper. Stiffness and pain held his limbs in effete paralysis.

  Dark clouds were scudding slowly across the hostile sky, bringing with them intermittent bursts of torrential rain to modulate the steady drizzle. The canvas bag, he observed, was also soaked through, and a brief inspection of its contents confirmed that the rain had done its worst. Despondently he closed the zip and stared at the bleak outline of the forbidding foothills, shivering in his wet clothes and feeling in some strange way hot and cold at the same time.

  He was obsessed for a while with hatred of the rain, the maddening, unceasing rain that made mockery of his plans. The good fortune that had brought him into contact with the woman, Jennifer, and had given him the opportunity to clean himself up and wear clothes that were respectable enough to avoid suspicion, had been savagely washed away in the steady downpour. He was a shapeless tramp once more, and the clothes that had been so dry and tidy hung limply from him like sodden sacking.

  It’s not fair, he told himself, scowling at the bleak curve of the distant hills, veiled by the curtain of rain. I cannot fight the weather as well as the rest of the world. Even in a wood there is no shelter against rain that goes on and on like this.

  The shivering became troublesome. It came in uncontrollable spasms, as if the skin and muscles of his body had developed an electric life of their own that made them vibrate and tremble with mysterious energy, and over all his body and deep in his bones a burning coldness ached. Touching his face, he found the skin unbelievably hot He thought about the warm, comfortable bed in the house of the woman and wished he had had the force of will to have stayed there, during the night. As it was he would have to go back there to take off his wet clothes and wait while she dried and pressed them. It meant starting all over again, as if the day and the night just gone had never been.

  The sky had brightened but still the rain fell persistently and would go on doing so for a long time to come, to judge by the look of the sky. This is no good, he decided, pushing himself to his feet. At once the world around him seemed to spin, as the room had done when he had drunk the gin, and in an instant he had fallen flat on his back in the wet grass. The shivering broke out anew, while his heart beat loudly and pumped scalding blood round his chilled body.

  He sat up again, trying to understand what was happening to him. This must be illness, he thought. I have never been ill before—not in this way. I have been hurt and cut and bruised, but that was all on the surface. This time it is deep inside and it makes me lose control of my arms and legs.

  Carefully he made another attempt to stand up, kneeling first, then resting on all fours for a few moments before finally pushing himself erect. He stood swaying in the rain, watching the ground spin and fighting the wave of dizziness that threatened to make him sick, but he did not fall. He picked up the bag and set off across the fields in shuffling steps, struggling against the rain and the delirium that sucked the strength from his muscles.

  In the course of time he came near to a farm but skirted it warily, fearing an attack by a dog and knowing he would not this time be able to fight back. Drawing closer behind the cover of a hedge he came to a patch of ground in which a variety of young plants were growing in segregated beds, some under terraces of glass cloches. It might have been a nursery, or a vegetable garden—that was unimportant. The thing which attracted his attention was a large greenhouse in one corner of the patch, and through the streaming glass of the walls he could see rows of seed boxes and small green plants in red pots stacked on shelves.

  The farmhouse itself, a long low building in yellow brick, was partly screened from view by a barn and two wooden sheds. In consequence the greenhouse was relatively secluded and secure, and held the promise of dryness and perhaps warmth.

  Before advancing he looked around to make sure that he could not be observed. The countryside was deserted and desolate. Slowly he walked along the perimeter of the hedge until he came to a wooden gate. Half a minute later he was in the greenhouse.

  The warmth enfolded him like a blanket, while the rain kept up its incessant rattling on the sloping glass lights of the roof. Gratefully he inspected his surroundings. Slatted wooden staging formed two benches at waist height on either side of a central gangway, with narrow shelves mounted higher and nearer the roof. It seemed to him that every available inch of shelf space was taken up with seed boxes and pots, and even the space beneath the benches was stacked with empty pots and boxes, buckets, syringes and other utensils of unknown function. On both sides, close to the floor, ran a narrow copper pipe which was warm to the touch, and it was this, he decided, that supplied the comfortable level of heating in the greenhouse.

  He put down his bag and began to move boxes and pots from under one of the benches, pushing them to one end of the central gangway. The floor was of grey concrete, but it was quite dry and apparently clean. With a feeling of luxurious relief he sat down and removed his shoes, and then, item by item, stripped off his wet clothing, spreading it out across the floor so that it might dry off a little.

  When he was completely naked he crawled under the staging of the bench and sat huddled up, his knees drawn close to his chin, close to the heating pipe. There he remained, hardly moving at all except for occasional bouts of shivering, and presently the fever of his head and body sent him into a light, uneasy sleep.

  ❖

  He awoke suddenly at the sound of a door opening. Cold wind swept across his folded body, bringing goose-pimples up on his burning skin. A rugged masculine voice somewhere above his head said in great surprise: ‘What the hell...’

  For a few seconds he was completely unable to orientate himself, not recognising the grey floor with the damp clothing strewn over it and the wooden benches covered with boxes and pots. But immediately within his restricted field of view was a pair of muddy rubber boots folded back at the top, and brown baggy trousers glossy with wear.

  Now fear swamped him in an icy wave, sharpened by the knowledge of his naked vulnerability. The rubber boots advanced two paces, then stopped.

  ‘What the hell...’ the voice repeated.

  Any moment now the newcomer would look under the bench to find him huddled and helpless and shivering by the pipe, and what would happen then could hardly be imagined. He visualised himself pinned down by one of those heavy rubber boots planted firmly on his stomach while the stentorian voice shouted for help—for the police, perhaps. To be trapped so helplessly, so foolishly...

  There was no scope for quick movement or action; the space beneath the bench was too cramped and his limbs were stiff and painful from being held in the same position for too long.

  Cautiously he unlocked his knees and flexed the muscles of his arms, but in that same instant the other man did the inevitable—he stooped down and peered under the bench. His face was red and fleshy, with a bristling brown moustache that gave him an air of truculence. The blue eyes were surprised and suspicious.

  ‘Whup!’ said the man, with an edge of triumph in his voice. ‘All right, you. Come out.’

  A brown metal-tipped stick appeared and jabbed aggressively under the bench. It poked his naked chest several times and hurt, turning his fear into inflamed anger. He grabbed at the stick and held it tightly.

  ‘Whup!’ said the man again. ‘You would, would you!’

  The stick jerked violently backwards and forwards and broke free despite his efforts to hold it. An instant later it swung in an arc to strike him viciously across the face. Pain roared in his head like a hungry furnace.

  ‘Come out, you bastard,’ the man shouted. ‘Come out, 01 I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.’

  He came out in a hurry, rolling over and scrambling on hands and knees into the central gangway. The stick swung twice more, catching him across the shoulders and back with forceful violence. He stood up shakily, holding on to the staging fox support.

  ‘Naked, eh?’ said the man, his expression waspish, holding the stock poised ready for ano
ther blow at the slightest provocation. ‘One of them sex maniacs I’ll be bound. What d’you think you’re up to, eh?’

  ‘I wanted to dry my clothes,’ he explained, trying to control the angry trembling of his voice.

  ‘Not in my bloody greenhouse, you don’t.’ The man’s eyes became suddenly shrewd. ‘I’ll bet you’re the one in the papers who’s been sleeping out in all that rain—the one they said escaped from that mental asylum. I’ll bet you are. You got about the right build and the right coloured hair, and the papers said he might be somewhere in this part of the world. I’ll bet that’s who you are.’

  ‘No—I am Mr For...’ The name eluded him for an agonising moment, and then arrived suddenly in his conscious mind. ‘Mr Forsyth.’

  ‘That’s a likely name when you can’t even remember it properly.’ The stick waved belligerently in the air. ‘You stay here, and don’t you touch those clothes. I want the police to find you just as you are.’

  The man backed away towards the door of the greenhouse, went out into the rain, closing the behind him, and cupped his hands around his mouth.

  ‘George!’ he bellowed in the direction of the farm buildings. The sound of the shout acted as a trigger. It was if all the nerves of his aching, burning body sprang into simultaneous life. His right hand, acting almost as if of its own volition, seized a large clay pot packed with moist soil and bearing a seedling plant, then flung it at the bulky shape of the man beyond the glass door. The pane splintered with a tremendous crash and the pot continued on its trajectory to strike the other man on the side of his head. There was a roar of utter fury as the man turned, flung open the shattered door, and lumbered back into the greenhouse brandishing the stick.

  He flung another pot and yet another and then, as the stick swung viciously through the air towards his head, ducked low and picked up a bucket containing soil. The stick swished past him, striking the staging and unsettling a flat pot which toppled to the floor and smashed. Next instant he was swinging the bucket in an arc, blindly and instinctively. He did not witness the actual impact, but he saw the man collapse to the ground with blood running down the side of his face. Still possessed by a fierce animal desperation he picked up a big heavy pot and hit the other man with it until it broke, scattering friable soil over the bloodstained face.