The Collector

 It won't be altogether a lie, I feel a responsibility towards him that I don't really understand. I so often hate him, I think I ought to forever hate him. Yet I don't always. My pity wins, and I do want to help him. I think of people I could introduce him to. He could go to Caroline's psychiatrist friend. I'd be like Emma and arrange a marriage for him, and with happier results. Some little Harriet Smith, with whom he could be mousy and sane and happy.

 I know I have to steel myself against not being freed. I tell myself it's a chance in a hundred that he'll keep his word.

 But he must keep his word.

 G.P.

 I hadn't seen him for two months, more than two months. Being in France and Spain and then at home. (I did try to see him twice, but he was away all September.) There was a postcard in answer to my letters. That was all.

 I telephoned him and asked him if I could go round, the first evening I was back with Caroline. He said the next day, there were some people there that evening.

 He seemed glad to see me. I was trying to look as if I hadn't tried to look pretty. I had.

 And I told him all about France and Spain and the Goyas and Albi and everything else. Piers. And he listened, he wouldn't really say what he had been doing, but later he showed me some of the things he'd done in the Hebrides. And I felt ashamed. Because we'd none of us done much, we'd been too busy lying in the sun (I mean too lazy) and looking at great pictures to do much drawing or anything.

 I said (having gushed for at least an hour) I'm talking too much.

 He said, I don't mind.

 He was getting the rust off an old iron wheel with some acid. He'd seen it in a junk-shop in Edinburgh, and brought it all the way down. It had strange obtuse teeth, he thought it was part of an old church clock. Very elegant tapered spoke-arms. It was beautiful.

 We didn't say anything for a while, I was leaning beside him against his bench watching him clean off the rust. Then he said, I've missed you.

 I said, you can't have.

 He said, you've disturbed me.

 I said (knight to cover his pawn), have you seen Antoinette?

 He said, no. I thought I told you I gave her the boot. He looked sideways. His lizard look. Still shocked? I shook my head.

 Forgiven?

 I said, there was nothing to forgive.

 He said, I kept on thinking about you in the Hebrides. I wanted to show you things.

 I said, I wished you were with us in Spain.

 He was busy emery-papering between the teeth. He said, it's very old, look at this corrosion. Then, in the same tone, in fact I decided that I want to marry you. I didn't say anything and I wouldn't look at him.

 He said, I asked you to come here when I was alone, be-cause I've been thinking quite hard about this. I'm twice your age, I ought to take things like this in my stride -- Christ only knows it's not the first time. No, let me finish now. I've decided I've got to stop seeing you. I was going to tell you that when you came in. I can't go on being disturbed by you. I shall be if you keep on coming here. This isn't a roundabout way of asking you to marry me. I'm trying to make it quite impossible. You know what I am, you know I'm old enough to be your father, I'm not reliable at all. Anyhow, you don't love me.

 I said, I can't explain it. There isn't a word for it.

 Precisely, he answered. He was cleaning his hands with petrol. Very clinical and matter-of-fact. So I have to ask you to leave me to find my peace again.

 I stared at his hands. I was shocked.

 He said, in some ways you're older than I am. You've never been deeply in love. Perhaps you never will be. He said, love goes on happening to you. To men. You become twenty again, you suffer as twenty suffers. All the dotty irrationalities of twenty. I may seem very reasonable at the moment, but I don't feel it. When you telephoned I nearly peed in my pants with excitement. I'm an old man in love. Stock comedy figure. Very stale. Not even funny.

 Why do you think I'll never be deeply in love, I said. He took a terribly long time to clean his hands.

 He said, I said perhaps.

 I'm only just twenty.

 He said, an ash tree a foot high is still an ash tree. But I did say perhaps.

 And you're not old. It's nothing to do with our ages.

 He gave me a faintly hurt look then, smiled and said, you must leave me some loophole.

 We went to make coffee, the wretched little kitchen, and I thought, anyhow I couldn't face up to living here with him -- just the domestic effort. A vile irrelevant wave of bourgeois cowardice.

 He said, with his back to me, until you went away I thought it was just the usual thing. At least I tried to think it was. That's why I misbehaved myself with your Swedish friend. To exorcise you. But you came back. In my mind. Again and again, up north. I used to go out of the farmhouse at night, into the garden. Look south. You do understand?

 Yes, I said.

 It was you, you see. Not just the other thing.

 Then he said, it's a sudden look you have. When you're not a kid any more.

 What sort of look?

 The woman you will be, he said.

 A nice woman?