The Collector

 I couldn't pretend I was ill. I'd put shoes on. He had something (a hammer?) in his hand, peculiar wide eyes, I'm sure he was going to attack me. We sort of stood poised for a moment, neither of us knowing what to do. Then I turned and ran back. I don't know why, I didn't stop to think. He came after me, but he stopped when he saw me go inside (as I instinctively knew he would -- the only safe place from him was down here). I heard him come and the bolts were shot to.

 I know it was the right thing to do. It saved my life. If I had screamed or tried to escape he would have battered me to death. There are moments when he is possessed, quite out of his own control.

 His trick.

 (Midnight.) He brought me supper down here. He didn't say a word. I'd spent the afternoon doing a strip cartoon of him. The Awful Tale of a Harmless Boy. Absurd. But I have to keep the reality and the horror at bay. He starts by being a nice little clerk ends up as a drooling horror-film monster.

 When he was going I showed it to him. He didn't laugh, he simply looked at it carefully.

 It's only natural, he said. He meant, that I should make such fun of him.

 I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I _try_ to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. I felt it terribly strong today. That my being alive and changing and having a separate mind and having moods and all that was becoming a nuisance.

 He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day what he called his killing-bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion.

 A thick round wall of glass.

    _November 7th_

 How the days drag. Today. Intolerably long.

 My one consolation is G.P.'s drawing. It grows on me. On one. It's the only living, unique, created thing here. It's the first thing I look at when I wake up, the last thing at night. I stand in front of it and stare at it. I know every line. He made a fudge of one of her feet. There's something slightly unbalanced about the whole composition, as if there's a tiny bit missing somewhere. But it lives.

 After supper (we're back to normal) Caliban handed me _The Catcher in the Rye_ and said, I've read it. I knew at once by his tone that he meant -- "and I don't think much of it."

 I feel awake, I'll do a dialogue.

 M. Well?

 C. I don't see much point in it.

 M. You realize this is one of the most brilliant studies of adolescence ever written?

 C. He sounds a mess to me.

 M. Of course he's a mess. But he realizes he's a mess, he tries to express what he feels, he's a human being for all his faults. Don't you even feel sorry for him?

 C. I don't like the way he talks.

 M. I don't like the way you talk. But I don't treat you as below any serious notice or sympathy.

 C. I suppose it's very clever. To write like that and all.

 M. I gave you that book to read because I thought you would feel identified with him. You're a Holden Caulfield. He doesn't fit anywhere and you don't.

 C. I don't wonder, the way he goes on. He doesn't try to fit.

 M. He tries to construct some sort of reality in his life, some sort of decency.

 C. It's not realistic. Going to a posh school and his parents having money. He wouldn't behave like that. In my opinion.

 M. I know what you are. You're the Old Man of the Sea.

 C. Who's he?

 M. The horrid old man Sinbad had to carry on his back. That's what you are. You get on the back of everything vital, everything trying to be honest and free, and you bear it down.

 I won't go on. We argued -- no, we don't argue, I say things and he tries to wriggle out of them.

 It's true. He is the Old Man of the Sea. I can't stand stupid people like Caliban, with their great deadweight of pettiness and selfishness and meanness of every kind. And the few have to carry it all. The doctors and the teachers and the artists -- not that they haven't their traitors, but what hope there is, is with them -- with us.

 Because I'm one of them.

 I'm one of them. I feel it and I've tried to prove it. I felt it during my last year at Ladymont. There were the few of us who cared, and there were the silly ones, the snobbish ones, the would-be debutantes and the daddy's darlings and the horsophiles and the sex-cats. I'll never go back to Ladymont. Because I couldn't stand that suffocating atmosphere of the "done" thing and the "right" people and the "nice" behaviour. (Boadicaea writing "in spite of her weird political views" on my report -- how dared she?) I _will_ not be an old girl of such a place.

 Why _should_ we tolerate their beastly Calibanity? Why should every vital and creative and good person be martyred by the great universal stodge around?

 In this situation I'm a representative.