The Collector

 Once upon a time (I said, and he stared bitterly bitterly at the floor) there was a very ugly monster who captured a princess and put her in a dungeon in his castle. Every evening he made her sit with him and ordered her to say to him, "You are very handsome, my lord," And every evening she said, "You are very ugly, you monster." And then the monster looked very hurt and sad and stared at the floor. So one evening the princess said, "If you do this thing and that thing you might be handsome," but the monster said, "I can't, I can't." The princess said, "Try, try." But the monster said, "I can't, I can't." Every evening it was the same. He asked her to lie, and she wouldn't. So the princess began to think that he really enjoyed being a monster and very ugly. Then one day she saw he was crying when she'd told him, for the fiftieth time, that he was ugly. So she said, "You can become very handsome if you do just one thing. Will you do it?" Yes, he said, at last, he would try to do it. So she said, then set me free. And he set her free. And suddenly, he wasn't ugly any more, he was a prince who had been bewitched. And he followed the princess out of the castle. And they both lived happily ever afterwards.

 I knew it was silly as I was saying it. Fey. He didn't speak, he kept staring down.

 I said, now it's your turn to tell a fairy story.

 He just said, I love you.

 And yes, he had more dignity than I did then and I felt small, mean. Always sneering at him, jabbing him, hating him and showing it. It was funny, we sat in silence facing each other and I had a feeling I've had once or twice before, of the most peculiar closeness to him -- not love or attraction or sympathy in any way. But linked destiny. Like being shipwrecked on an island -- a raft -- together. In _every_ way not wanting to be together. But together.

 I feel the sadness of his life, too, terribly. And of those of his miserable aunt and his cousin and their relatives in Australia. The great dull hopeless weight of it. Like those Henry Moore drawings of the people in the Tubes during the blitz. People who would never see, feel, dance, draw, cry at music, feel the world, the west wind. Never _be_ in any real sense.

 Just those three words, said and meant. I love you.

 They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer.

 His fairy story.

    _October 31st_

 Nothing. I psycho-analyzed him this evening.

 He would sit so stiffly beside me.

 We were looking at Goya's etchings. Perhaps it was the etchings themselves, but he sat and I thought he wasn't really looking at them. But thinking only of being so close to me.

 His inhibition. It's absurd. I talked at him as if he could easily be normal. As if he wasn't a maniac keeping me prisoner here. But a nice young man who wanted a bit of chivvying from a jolly girl-friend.

 It's because I never see anyone else. He becomes the norm. I forget to compare.

 Another time G.P. It was soon after the icy douche (what he said about my work). I was restless one evening. I went round to his flat. About ten. He had his dressing-gown on.

 I was just going to bed, he said.

 I wanted to hear some music, I said. I'll go away. But I didn't.

 He said, it's late.

 I said I was depressed. It had been a beastly day and Caroline had been so silly at supper.

 He let me go up and made me sit on the divan and he put on some music and turned out the lights and the moon came through the window. It fell on my legs and lap through the skylight, a lovely slow silver moon. Sailing. And he sat in the armchair on the other side of the room, in the shadows.

 It was the music.

 The _Goldberg Variations_.

 There was one towards the end that was very slow, very simple, _very sad_, but so beautiful beyond words or drawing or anything but music, beautiful there in the moonlight. Moon-music, so silvery, so far, so noble.

 The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face.

 Accepting the sadness. Knowing that to pretend it was all gay was treachery. Treachery to everyone sad at that moment, everyone ever sad, treachery to such music, such truth.

 In all the fuss and anxiety and the shoddiness and the business of London, making a career, getting pashes, art, learning, grabbing frantically at experience, suddenly this silent silver room full of that music.

 Like lying on one's back as we did in Spain when we slept out looking up between the fig-branches into the star-corridors, the great seas and oceans of stars. Knowing what it was to be _in_ a universe.

 I cried. In silence.

 At the end he said, now can I go to bed? Gently, making fun of me a little bit, bringing me back to earth. And I went. I don't think we said anything. I can't remember. He had his little dry smile, he could see I was moved.

 His perfect tact.