The Mind of Mr Soames (11 page)

‘Mr Soames,’ Conway said with finality, ‘I’ll give you one more chance. Pick those pieces up and put them on the table. If you don’t do as you are told then you will be locked in your room and your clothes will be taken away until you do pick them up.’

‘Take them away,’ said Mr Soames. ‘I don’t want them.’

Conway walked towards the door in weary resignation, followed by the male nurse.

‘I think this is the point of no return,’ he said quietly. ‘I’d better check with Dr Mortimer first, but I imagine that as from today Mr Soames is going to be deprived of a number of privileges. Meanwhile, keep an eye on him. I’ll be back later.’

He left the annexe and went in search of Mortimer.

❖

Conway made two attempts to see his wife, driving into town and calling at her flat in Chelsea, but on each occasion there was no reply. It was a quiet tree-lined road of faintly shabby three-storey houses, with iron railings and basement areas running like a protective moat along the frontages. Penelope’s flat was on the top floor of a grey plaster-faced house about halfway along the road. The curtains on the small window were red and black in a contemporary fashion, and the leaves of a tall green and yellow plant gleamed pallidly behind the panes.

The third visit was made late one Saturday evening, about five weeks after he had first announced to Ann his intention of seeing Penelope. The time was almost eleven-thirty, and driving along the road he observed a light in her window behind the drawn red and black curtains. His heart seemed to tighten a little, as if in apprehension, but his taut features betrayed no sign of anxiety.

He parked the car on the opposite side of the road, lit a cigarette, and strolled casually towards the front door. He was about to press the bell-push when the door opened spontaneously and two young people almost tumbled out—a dark haired girl in a red-check blouse and black jeans, and a young fairhaired man in a thick green sweater. They swept by, unconcernedly, not even noticing him, leaving the front door agape. Now there was the wild sound of fast jazz music in the air, probably from a distant radiogram. He hesitated for a moment, inhaling cigarette smoke, then decided to enter and go on up.

The music grew louder as he climbed the uncarpeted wooden stairs, until he realised abruptly that the point of origin was Penelope’s flat. Mingled with the rhythmic beat were the noises of human revelry. Mechanically his feet contined to advance, step by step, carrying him inevitably upwards to the second floor. The flat door was open and a tiny wall light glimmered in a small cream-coloured vestibule. Despondently, feeling very much like an intruder, he went in.

His first impressions were transient, chaotic. Young men and young women shuffled in bear-hug fashion across a maroon carpet in a big blue room, hazy in an acrid atmosphere of cigarette smoke and gin. Cheap furniture stood poised on spindly legs around a raw brick fireplace with a built-in electric convector heater, while around the walls of the room, etched in a shadow by bracketed lamps, stood a bookcase, a desk, a narrow table bearing potted indoor plants, a divan and a cocktail trolley. A portable record player carelessly positioned in a corner of the room blared traditional jazz from a long-play record. Cigarette stubs glowed on brass ashtrays and stemmed glasses, empty and full, sprouted like crystal mushrooms.

For a while he stood by the door of the room, just smoking and observing. There were four men and four women shuffling around the floor in lazy, intimate movements, and the two who had passed him at the main entrance to the building were probably part of the assembly, perhaps gone off to procure more cigarettes, or drinks. Penelope was dancing, if that was the word, with a tall, swarthy young man who might have been an Egyptian or a Turk, holding him tightly, amorously, while his dusky hands stroked her back. He did not remember the crimson dress—it was probably new—and her hair, naturally blonde, had been dyed several shades lighter so that it was almost platinum. Her eyes were half closed, dreamily and languorously, a reliable indication that she had been drinking heavily.

Nobody paid any attention to him whatever, so, presently, he walked across the room to the record player and switched it off. For a few seconds the silence was unheeded; the pseudodancing continued to the echo of the dead music, as if the dancers were in a state of compulsive hypnosis. They stopped moving almost simultaneously, as if an invisible knife had cut through puppet strings. Heads turned towards him, eyes questioned his.

‘My God,’ Penelope said abruptly, ‘you!’

She abandoned her partner and came towards him until she was within striking distance. Seeing her in close-up, pretty and shapely as ever, and so familiar over the years, despite the long absence, he was conscious of a pang of sentiment, of nostalgia, for the things that might have been. But there was no sentiment in her face and her clear blue eyes were frosty.

‘What do
you
want?’ she demanded.

‘I thought we might talk,’ he said quietly. ‘After all, there are things we ought to discuss...’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s anything we could discuss any more. You’ve got a nerve, coming here like this...’

‘I did telephone, but there was never any reply.’

‘I’ve been away, that’s why. I’ve been in hospital.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were ill.’

She flung her head back and laughed hysterically. Her breath was laden with the sweet, pungent scent of gin. Abruptly she turned to her guests, who were watching the scene as if petrified.

‘Meet my husband,’ she announced defiantly. ‘He didn’t know I was ill.’ Again she burst into shrill laughter, and the sound was echoed in the form of subdued tittering among her audience.

She turned to Conway. ‘I’m celebrating, Dave,’ she said, stumbling over the words as she always did when she was drunk. ‘You know why? I’m celebrating my first born, that’s what I’m doing. I wanted to keep it in a bottle, but they wouldn’t let me. Don’t you think that was
mean
of them?’

He said nothing, but watched her through frowning eyes. ‘Have a drink, Dave, just for old times’ sake. Mike, fix Dave a drink.’

‘There isn’t any,’ said a red-haired youth. ‘Pete and Betty went back to their flat to get some vodka.’

Penelope waved an arm in a gesture of acknowledgement. ‘That’s all right. Dave’ll wait until they get back.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Conway said. ‘But if we could talk for a few minutes—privately.’

She eyed him in feigned surprise, spreading out her arms. ‘What is there to talk about, Dave? I was unfaithful to you so you threw me out. I found I was going to have your baby so I brought myself an abortion. That’s fair, isn’t it?’

‘My baby? Or Morry’s? Or somebody else’s?’

She slapped his face hard, then laughed again. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know!’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he retorted, moving away from the record player. ‘I just want to say this, Penny. I propose to start divorce proceedings, and I’m going to cite Morry as corespondent,’

‘That’s all right,’ she stated. ‘Perfectly all right. Crucify Morry too. Why should I care?’

‘Unless there’s somebody else you’d prefer to name?’

‘Why so squeamish about Morry—or would it be unprofessional for one doctor to cite another?’

‘I’m thinking of his wife. He got married a few weeks ago, There’s no point in digging up past dirt.’

She smiled amiably—too amiably. ‘That’s sweet of you, Dave—thinking of his wife, I mean. Perhaps if you’d thought of your own wife a bit more in the past we wouldn’t have got to this stage. So far as I’m concerned you can do what the hell you like, and if you chop up Morry and his wife in the process, so much the better. Now clear out, if you don’t mind. You’re interfering with the music.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘if that’s the way it’s to be...’

She pushed past him to the record player and started it up. Slowly he walked across the room, through the blank eyed couples towards the door. As he reached the landing the jazz burst out anew, shaking the night air with discordant music and off-beat rhythm.

At the front door he encountered the dark-haired girl in the red blouse and the young man in the green sweater, this time with a bottle tucked under his arm. He stood aside to let them pass.

He drove back to the Institute in a tense, unthinking frame of mind, balancing relief against regret in a sombre mood, detached from the past and the future and living in a kind of attenuated present in which life was the unwinding of the dark grey road before the car, beyond the invisible barrier of the windscreen, but hearing all the time in the secret recesses of his mind the blare of noisy jazz from a small record player in a room with red and black curtains.

A few
days later two events of considerable importance happened simultaneously. The first was a cable from Japan that Dr Takaito would be flying to England the following day and would be spending a week or two in London during which time he planned to observe the mental development of Mr Soames at first hand. He hoped that Dr Breuer would be able to provide adequate facilities and arrange accommodation at the Institute for a period, if necessary.

The second event, far more ominous to Breuer’s way of thinking, was a telephone call from the editor of the National Daily Courier, a certain Mr Geoffrey Finch.

‘Am I speaking to the doctor in charge of the Osborne Psychoneural Institute?’ Mr Finch asked.

‘You are,’ Breuer assured him, giving his name.

‘You will be delighted to learn,’ Mr Finch announced, ‘that we have succeeded in tracing certain relatives of Mr Soames.’

‘Oh,’ Breuer remarked non-committally.

‘We knew, of course, that his mother had gone to Canada and had married again, though we couldn’t be absolutely certain if she was still alive. Well, she is alive, Dr Breuer, and we’ve found her. You know where she was?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Breuer said irritably, suppressing an urge to hang up immediately.

‘In Peru. Married to a man called Martinez, with a nineteen-year-old daughter, named Antonetta—Toni for short. A beautiful girl, Dr Breuer. Quite fabulous. What’s more, we’ve flown them back to England, and right now they’re staying at a big West End hotel.’

‘I’m not at all sure that was a wise step to take,’ Breuer said disapprovingly. ‘Mr Soames is still undergoing intensive psychotherapeutic treatment...’

‘Exactly my point, doctor. And what could be better for his mental balance than to be reunited with his family?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with his mental balance,’ Breuer said icily. ‘He is being trained and educated, and the process is not without its difficulties. In my view it would be wrong, quite wrong, to confuse him by introducing the idea of family relationships.’

‘But, Dr Breuer, even prisoners and mental patients are allowed visitors, and as Mr Soames is neither, I really don’t see that you have the authority to refuse admission to his mother and sister.’

‘In my own Institute I have authority to use my own discretion in the best interests of my patients,’ Breuer stated flatly. ‘That’s all the authority I need.’

‘But Mr Soames doesn’t happen to be a patient,’ Mr Finch insisted. ‘Do you realise that if Mrs Martinez felt so inclined she could remove him from the Institute tomorrow. No court would deny her custody and care and control of her own son. Not that she would wish to go so far. All she wants is to see her son and talk to him for a while...’

‘Look, Mr Finch,’ Breuer said sourly, ‘why don’t you be perfectly honest with me. You know very well that you don’t give a damn for Mrs Martinez or her son. The whole thing is just a newspaper stunt and you’re hoping to cash in on the human interest angle. Well, it won’t work.’

‘We’ve spent a great deal of money on this project,’ Mr Finch said truculently, ‘and we intend to see it through, even if it means going to law. It’s a free country, Dr Breuer. You’ve no right to hold Mr Soames in isolation from his next of kin.’

‘What precisely do you want?’ Breuer asked.

‘All we want is permission for Mrs Martinez and Toni to visit Mr Soames accompanied by a reporter and photographer. For that simple facility the Courier will be glad to donate the sum of one hundred pounds to the Institute’s funds.’

‘The answer is no,’ Breuer said curtly, and hung up.

He immediately telephoned his solicitor and outlined the position to him, filling in the background of Mr Soames’s educational programme and some of the difficulties that were being encountered. ‘In particular,’ he added, ‘we’ve taken great care not to introduce the idea of sex as yet, until he has acquired a satisfactory degree of character balance. It is quite intolerable that this woman and her nineteen-year-old daughter, who is alleged to be something of a beauty, should be permitted to interfere with psychiatric policy in this way.’

The solicitor sounded pessimistic. ‘It rather looks as if the Courier executive have already investigated the legal position,’ he said. ‘The fact is that Mr Soames has not been committed as a mental patient, and I suppose in truth he’s not a patient at all. In a way he’s in much the same position as a normal man suffering from total amnesia and undergoing rehabilitation. Legally you cannot prevent access to him by anyone possessing reasonable grounds for requiring access. You might be able to keep the reporter and photographer out, but even that is debatable. The Courier could claim that the publicity is in the public interest, and the courts would probably uphold that claim unless you could produce medical evidence to show that the presence of the Courier staff would have a harmful effect on the patient.’

‘What happens if I simply refuse permission and sit tight,’ Breuer asked.

‘The Courier can obtain an injunction to restrain you from preventing access.’

‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘And if I ignored the injunction?’

‘Dr Breuer, you
can’t
—unless, of course, you wish to go to prison for contempt of court.’

‘In that case, why can’t I obtain an injunction first to restrain the Courier from bringing that Martinez woman into the Institute?’