The Mind of Mr Soames (8 page)

‘But of course. We must establish a normal pattern of behaviour by discipline, just as one would with a very young child.’

‘You mean normal in the sense of inhibited—conforming to accepted social practices and conventions?’

‘What else could I possibly mean, Dr Conway?’

Conway shrugged. ‘It’s just a question of perspective. It seems to me that Mr Soames is normal here and now. He has a virginal mind, so far unmodified by the stringent requirements of civilised communal living. In effect what we have to do is make Mr Soames abnormal, but in the same way as we are all abnormal, so that he can take his place among us and be accepted without raised eyebrows.’

‘I question the accuracy of your perspective, as you put it,’ Mortimer said, ‘but the end result is the same.’ He frowned petulantly. ‘We all have our individual interpretations of social psychology and human behaviour, but let me say this, Dr Conway—so far as this Institute is concerned we are trying to turn Mr Soames into a normal man, not an
abnormal
one, and that is the policy which must be reflected in written records and official reports.’

‘I appreciate that,’ Conway remarked. ‘It’s simply that I can’t help feeling that we’re throwing away a wonderful opportunity to find out precisely what
is
normal in an adult human being. Agreed, Mr Soames has to be taught certain obvious habits for his own good, just as one might house-train a kitten or a puppy, and he has to be taught to communicate, and he must necessarily learn something of the kind of world he is living in. Those things are fundamental. But supposing we were to let him establish his own behaviour patterns beyond that level, to adapt himself to his environment instead of forcing him to conform to the established adult syndrome.’

‘An interesting experiment,’ Mortimer said with a hint of sarcasm in his gravelly voice. ‘However, this is not an experiment at all, but simply a matter of efficiently applied psychotherapy.’ He smiled condescendingly. ‘I think it is better, ethically, to leave experiments of that kind to the specialists who practise on dogs.’

Conway said no more. He felt effectively silenced.

‘In my office,’ Mortimer continued, ‘ is a schedule—what you might call a master plan. It was drawn up by Dr Breuer and myself in collaboration with experts from the regional board and the Ministry. It details the essentials of the entire psychotherapeutic programme and forms the framework within which we must proceed. I should like you all to read it and subsequently refer to it as and when necessary. It will be readily available at all times.’

Dr Wilson said: ‘I assume we start here and now.’

Mortimer nodded. ‘Precisely. The three of you, under the general supervision of Dr Conway, will operate on a twenty-four hour duty roster so that there is always a psychiatrist available at any time of the day or night. Obviously we must regard Mr Soames as unpredictable, for some months, at least, until reliable habits have been formed. Apart from that there will be the normal routine duties in the psychiatric wards generally, but I’m hoping to arrange things so as to ease the pressure in that respect. In fact, Dr Breuer is planning to appoint two additional psychiatrists to the staff for a temporary period to take over the schizo and paranoiac wards.’

‘Good,’ Dr Bird murmured in some relief.

‘Well, then, we have our daily routine orders, as it were, and I shall always be ready to advise or refer back to Dr Breuer when necessary. As for the rest—it is up to us to act as a team, as efficiently and effectively as possible, always bearing in mind that what we accomplish will certainly be reported in newspapers throughout the world, not to mention the various official medical publications on both sides of the Atlantic. Our treatment of Mr Soames could, and I hope will, enhance the prestige of the Institute to an unbelievable degree.’

Dr Mortimer clicked his heels formally. ‘Gentlemen, you have my complete confidence.’

❖

Conway borrowed the schedule from Dr Mortimer that evening and studied it in the privacy of his room. It was a thorough and comprehensive catalogue of the psychological parameters which were to determine the limits and dimensions of Mr Soames’s thinking and living, overlapping to some extent part of the educational ground which would obviously be covered in due course by the appointed tutors, but only in so far as the ideas concerned were part of a pattern for establishing basic psychological associations. For instance, the schedule recommended that colours should be related to certain natural affinities: red, warmth, heat, fire, blood, danger; green, glass, leaves, sea, peace safety; white, bright, light, snow, ice, cool, awake, day; black, dark, shadow, empty, sleep, night—and so on. Obvious enough in their way, in terms of common usage, but in a sense of establishing an arbitrary pattern by no means reflecting all aspects of reality. The red sunset, for example, wherein lay the danger? Or was the setting of the sun symbolic of the approach of eternal night, or death? What about red pillar boxes? Or rubies? Or claret or burgundy? Green for safety, such as fluted poison bottles and venomous snakes? The white wakefulness of pillows, sheets and shrouds? Or the somnolence of black lingerie, caviare and coal (with its latent fire—cross index to red)?

Elsewhere in the schedule were functional associations (air, breathe, fly, bird; water, drink, swim, fish); structural associations (stone, steel, building; flesh, bone, man), grammatical associations (me, you, us, them), anatomical or physiological associations (eye, see, ear, hear, mouth, speak), and a host of other categories of psychological associations many of which were in the nature of vocabulary building, if one concentrated on semantics, but all of which were basically designed to amplify simple facts or concepts by filling in a background of connected ideas. Arbitrary, in a way, and in many respects too arbitrary, but nevertheless the simple structure from which Mr Soames would eventually build his own mental and intellectual architecture.

There were also, of course, a large number of instructions concerned with practical aspects of physical training, most of which implied the exercise of authoritative discipline, though what precise form such discipline was to take was not specified. Mr Soames could, perhaps, be cajoled and threatened, and perhaps pushed and poked in a tentative manner, but the tone of the schedule implied that anything so primitive as a firm cuff or swipe could not be countenanced. That was a handicap for a start, Conway decided—not that he favoured corporal punishment for misdemeanours, but because Mr Soames’s infantile mind might not prove amenable to any subtler form of correction. The schedule was being inconsistent again in the same arbitrary way. Train Mr Soames as you would a baby, it said in effect, but don’t
treat
him as you would a baby. It was a complete abandonment of the old-established pleasure-pain principle with which the vast majority instinctively taught their children the difference between right and wrong.

On the subject of sex the schedule reiterated the viewpoints expressed some weeks earlier by Dr Mortimer and Dr Breuer. Mr Soames was a mature male with, presumably, a normal if undirected sexual appetite. In order to keep this rather inconvenient instinct quiescent and avoid relating it specifically to the female (an association which might act as a stimulus and prove to be a distracting influence), it was proposed initially to segregate the patient from the opposite sex by employing male nurses, and at the same time his educational instruction would inculcate the simple notion of gender. Later, when the patient’s educational level and acquisition of self-control justified it, the function of sex in human society could be quietly explained, and Mr Soames might even be allowed to associate with women (in a purely platonic way, of course, and under careful supervision). In such a manner, it was thought, the pattern of his mental development could follow that of a normal child, and sex would take its natural place in the scheme of things, when his mind was ready to accept it.

Conway put the document aside with some misgivings and lit a cigarette. I suppose, he thought, they know what they’re up to, Breuer and Mortimer. After all, they’re men of experience—much more experience than I possess. Come to the point, I’m no authority on sex, anyway, or human relationships in general. I made a hash of my own marriage. Correction—Penelope made a hash of it for me. But in a way it was my fault. The signs of instability were there all the time and I couldn’t read them, and even when the evidence was cut and dried and handed to me on a plate I was still reluctant to believe it. In the long run one tends to believe only what one wants to believe, and consequently one frequently acts on false information and wrong premises.

Supposing I were Mr Soames, he said to himself, and supposing I awoke one day to find myself in a strange incomprehensible world. What would be my reaction? Fear, perhaps. Wonder. Amazement at simple things—glittering beads and bright colours. But, after a while there would come a sense of insecurity. It would happen when I began to notice that the strange people coming and going in my small room were of the same shape and form as me, and that I was one of them. And I would realise that they possessed much more than I did: qualities of behaviour that implied premeditated purpose; power to please or hurt, to supply food and drink or remove it, to switch on lights or switch them off. Superior beings, perhaps, acting with a common aim in view—to deprive me of my life of indolent leisure and force me to do difficult and unaccustomed things so that, presumably, I might eventually do as they do.

Conway reflected on the theme for a while, genuinely trying to put himself in the place of his patient and interpret the world through the medium of an empty mind, but the effort in psychological extrapolation proved too difficult and he gave it up. Instead he lifted the internal telephone and buzzed Ann Henderson.

‘By sheer coincidence,’ he said when she answered the phone, ‘I happen to have a few cans of beer in the cupboard, and as it’s a warm, dry evening I was wondering if you would care to accept my hospitality.’

‘I’d rather you accepted mine. I’m fresh out of a bath and too
deshabille
to go wandering round the corridors.’

‘In that case I’ll be right down,’ he said with mock alacrity, and replaced the receiver.

However, he did not hurry but spent a few minutes sitting on the edge of his bed idly scanning an evening newspaper. It was two days old, but still unread, which illustrated an insular lack of interest in the outside world rather than a shortage of leisure time, he decided. Not that much was happening, anyway. Somebody had robbed a jeweller, a famous film actress had been injured in a car crash, and the City was apparently in a state of anxiety neurosis about the Bank Rate—it was either about to go up or come down, he wasn’t sure which. There was a minor earthquake in the Middle East, Lord somebody-or-other was alarmed at the export situation, the Americans had shot a man into space, and a teenage rock ’n roll singer was stuck in a lift for two and a half hours in a building near St Giles Circus. The contemporary scene was just about ripe for psychoanalysis, he thought, putting the paper down and collecting four small cans of beer from the wall cupboard which acted as wardrobe.

Ann was wearing a dark green housecoat which made her look decidedly remote and regal, but her smile was warm enough.

‘So far as I’m concerned it’s nearly bedtime,’ she said admonishingiy. ‘Or don’t you ever sleep?’

‘Occasionally,’ Conway replied, ‘but it’s an over-rated pleasure. In a hundred years from now we shall all regret the many years of our lives we spent unconscious.’

‘But not nearly so much as poor Mr Soames. How is he?’

‘Fit, smug and incontinent.’

‘One of the daily newspapers is trying to trace his mother.’ He put down the cans of beer on the table and stared at her in some astonishment. ‘His
what
?’

‘His
mother
.’

‘D’you know,’ he said with an air of amazement, ‘I never really thought of Mr Soames as having parents at all.’

‘Did you imagine he was born spontaneously in the cold tank?’

He shrugged.‘What’s the angle? A cheap publicity stunt, I suppose.’

‘More or less. The angle is human interest and the aim is circulation. Father Soames was killed during the war, it seems, and Mother Soames married again and went off to Canada. Apparently she lost any further interest in her comatose son—it could be she preferred to keep quiet about it in case anyone thought it was fundamentally her fault, that she was the kind of woman who produces freaks and mutants.’

‘Well, then, why not let sleeping dogs lie?’ he asked.

‘What popular newspaper ever did? They plan to trace Mrs Soames if she’s still alive and fly her back to England to meet her long lost son.’

‘Having secured exclusive rights to the story complete with pictures,’ he said sourly. ‘Why the hell can’t they mind their own business? It’s not going to do Soames any good at all to have an old woman foisted on him who’s a complete stranger and be told it’s his mother. He wouldn’t even know the meaning of the word, and never will.’

She regarded him thoughtfully, with a hint of shrewdness in her eyes. ‘You might say the same about any baby, Dave, but it doesn’t take long for the child to acquire what you might call a mother fixation. With all this clever talk and planning about how to train Mr Soames through his mental childhood, as it were, hasn’t anybody ever suggested that he might need a mother more than anything else?’

Conway groaned gently. ‘He’s a
man
, darling—a tall, well-built
man
. There’s nothing wrong with his mind except that it lacks information. He’s old enough not to need a mother. All he needs is knowledge, self assurance and independence.’

‘You may be right,’ she conceded. ‘All the same, you can be sure that if Mother Soames should turn up the newspaper will do everything possible to exploit the situation.’

‘Hazarding a guess,’ he said darkly, ‘I doubt very much if Mother Soames will be allowed to set foot in the Institute at all—not if I know Dr Breuer.’

He pick up one of the beer cans and attacked it with an opener. ‘Let’s change the subject,’ he suggested. ‘There are times when I begin to wish Mr Soames had stayed in the cold tank.’