The Collector

 "You ought to know better," she said, making fun of me. Then she said, "Please come round this side and then I can get at those beautiful plates behind you." There were two by the door. "Unless you'd like to smash them yourself."

 Stop it, I said again, that's enough.

 But suddenly she came behind the sofa, going for the plates. I got between her and the door, she tried to dodge under my arm; however, I caught hers.

 Then she suddenly changed.

 "Let go," she said, all quiet. Of course I didn't, I thought she might be joking still.

 But then suddenly she said, "Let go," in a nasty voice that I did at once. Then she went and sat down by the fire.

 After a while she said, "Get a broom. I'll sweep up."

 I'll do it tomorrow.

 "I _want_ to clear up." Very my-lady.

 I'll do it.

 "It's your fault."

 Of course.

 "You're the most perfect specimen of petit bourgeois squareness I've ever met."

 Am I?

 "Yes you _are_. You despise the real bourgeois classes for all their snobbishness and their snobbish voices and ways. You do, don't you? Yet all you put in their place is a horrid little refusal to have nasty thoughts or do nasty things or be nasty in any way. Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?"

 I don't know what you're talking about, I said.

 "Yes you do. Why do you keep on using these stupid words -- nasty, nice, proper, right? Why are you so worried about what's proper? You're like a little old maid who thinks marriage is dirty and everything except cups of weak tea in a stuffy old room is dirty. Why do you take all the life out of life? Why do you kill all the beauty?"

 I never had your advantages. That's why.

 "You can change, you're young, you've got money. You can learn. And what have you done? You've had a little dream, the sort of dream I suppose little boys have and masturbate about, and you fall over yourself being nice to me so that you won't have to admit to yourself that the whole business of my being here is nasty, nasty, nasty --"

 She stopped sudden then. "This is no good," she said. "I might be talking Greek."

 I understand, I said. I'm not educated.

 She almost shouted. "You're so stupid. Perverse."

 "You have money -- as a matter of fact, you aren't stupid, you could become whatever you liked. Only you've got to shake off the past. You've got to kill your aunt and the house you lived in and the people you lived with. You've got to be a new human being."

 She sort of pushed out her face at me, as if it was something easy I could do, but wouldn't.

 Some hope, I said.

 "Look what you could do. You could . . . you could collect pictures. I'd tell you what to look for, I'd introduce you to people who would tell you about art-collecting. Think of all the poor artists you could help. Instead of massacring butterflies, like a stupid schoolboy."

 Some very clever people collect butterflies, I said.

 "Oh, clever . . . what's the use of that? Are they human beings?"

 What do you mean? I asked.

 "If you have to ask, I can't give you the answer."

 Then she said, "I always seem to end up by talking down to you. I hate it. It's you. You always squirm one step lower than I can go."

 She went like that at me sometimes. Of course I forgave her, though it hurt at the time. What she was asking for was someone different to me, someone I could never be. For instance, all that night after she said I could collect pictures I thought about it; I dreamed myself collecting pictures, having a big house with famous pictures hanging on the walls, and people coming to see them. Miranda there, too, of course. But I knew all the time it was silly; I'd never collect anything but butterflies. Pictures don't mean anything to me. I wouldn't be doing it because I wanted, so there wouldn't be any point. She could never see that.