The Mind of Mr Soames (22 page)

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 bales 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.

He tripped time and time again, to sprawl helplessly on damp earth, but always he picked himself up immediately to continue his headlong flight. He passed the Dutch barn with its bales of straw without even hesitating, for he no longer had any intention of using it as a place of shelter. On and on he ran, across the ploughed field, stumbling and falling over the furrows, until he came to the wooden fence. Once over it he paused to look back and recover his breath in long sighing gasps. There was no longer any indication of pursuit, but he was not prepared to take any risk, and soon set off again at a jog trot across country, away from the farm and the distant arterial road.

Some twenty minutes later, at the bottom of the hill, he reached another road that curved off in both directions to disappear behind clumps of trees. Here at least was a possible haven of partial shelter, somewhere among the trees but not too close to the road.

He began to walk towards the trees, crossing the road obliquely, and that instant the second horror of the night came upon him. Something roared behind him. He half-turned to find himself blinded by twin lights sweeping round the bend of the road at incredible speed. Horns blared resonantly and tyres screamed in angry protest against the road surface.

Something struck him in the side of the ribs. For a moment he seemed to be floating and spinning in the air, and then the ground itself rose up and beat the consciousness from his body.

❖

‘My God, you’ve killed him,’ she said, white-faced.

He sat at the wheel, staring blankly at the trees outlined by the headlamp beams. The car had slewed across the road, with two wheels up on the grass verge. The pungent smell of gin sharpened the faint odour of petrol in the car.

‘We’d better drive on,’ he said. His voice was little more than a husky whisper.

‘Richard, we can’t...’

‘We
must
! after all that drink tonight, and already being disqualified for five years...’

She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

He glanced towards her, his plump, moustached face pale and blank. ‘I didn’t see him until it was too late, Jenny, you know that. At this time of night...’

‘It’s a blind bend. You cornered too fast. You wouldn’t have seen him until it was too late, anyway, even in full daylight.’

She opened the car door and got out.

‘Wait here, Richard. Better straighten the car up on the road in case anyone comes along.’

He started the engine with fingers that trembled uncontrollably and reversed on to the road in nervous, demoralised movements. In the headlamps he could now see his wife kneeling beside a huddled shape at the edge of the road some twenty yards ahead. As in a dream he engaged bottom gear and trundled jerkily forward until he was close to them, then switched off the engine and got out.

‘I think he’s all right,’ she said. ‘Unconscious and shaken, but no blood. His clothes are in a mess.’

‘Thank God,’ he murmured.

‘We’ll have to take him to hospital.’

‘No, Jenny. Another drunk driving charge will mean jail...’

‘We can’t leave him here.’

He thought for a moment. ‘If we could say we’d found him lying beside the road.’

‘Nobody would believe you, Richard, the way your hands are shaking and the way your breath smells of gin. You look too much like a ghost, anyway.’

‘Then... can’t we just leave him here?’

‘They’d track us down. We don’t know what he saw before we hit him. I think we’d better take him back with us.’

‘What good will that do?’

‘It will give us time to think and sober up, and you’ll have a chance to examine him for broken bones.’

‘I’m not a doctor, Jenny.’

She stood up, now calm and controlled. ‘No, Richard, you’re not, thank heaven. An alcoholic businessman is one thing, but an alcoholic doctor would be unthinkable.’

Stooping down, she lifted the unconscious man’s shoulders. ‘Come on, Richard. Lend a hand. We don’t want to be here all night.’

He
awoke suddenly, because somebody was patting his cheek. Alarm trembled in his brain, then subsided into anxiety. He found himself lying between white sheets in a comfortable bed looking up at a woman. One side of his body seemed to pulsate with a dull ache as he breathed, and there was a faint throbbing pain in his head. The woman appeared to be friendly, and she was pleasant to look at with her bronze coloured hair and clear blue eyes.

‘How do you feel, Mr Forsyth?’ she asked.

He made no reply, for he was trying to assess the meaning of this new development. The room was not overlarge, though bigger than his own room at the Institute, but it was comfortable. The green patterned wallpaper was soothing, and morning sunshine threw bars of liquid light across the fawn carpet of the floor from the tall window across the room. There was a slender wardrobe in light wood and an elegant dressing-table with oval mirrors and a glass top. The air was warm but fresh.

‘I’m afraid you have rather a nasty bruise on your left side, and some scratches here and there, but apart from that...’ She regarded him intently. ‘Can’t you remember what happened?’