The Collector

 A strange thought: I would not want this not to have happened. Because if I escape I shall be a completely different and I think better person. Because if I don't escape, if something dreadful happened, I shall still know that the person I was and would have stayed if this hadn't happened was not the person I now want to be.

 It's like firing a pot. You have to risk the cracking and the warping.

 Caliban's very quiet. A sort of truce.

 I'm going to ask to go up tomorrow. I want to see if he's actually doing anything.

 Today I asked him to bind me and gag me and let me sit at the foot of the cellar steps with the door out open. In the end he agreed. So I could look up and see the sky. A pale grey sky. I saw birds fly across, pigeons, I think. I heard outside sounds. This is the first proper daylight I've seen for two months. It lived. It made me cry.

    _December 6th_

 I've been up for a bath and we've been looking at the room I shall occupy. He has done some things. He's going to see if he can't find an antique Windsor chair. I drew it for him.

 It's made me feel happy.

 I'm restless. I can't write here. I feel half-escaped already.

 The thing that made me feel he was more normal was this little bit of dialogue.

 M. (_we were standing in the room_) Why don't you just let me come and live up here as your guest? If I gave you my word of honour?

 C. If fifty people came to me, real honest respectable people, and swore blind you wouldn't escape, I wouldn't trust them. I wouldn't trust the whole world.

 M. You can't go all through life trusting no one.

 C. You don't know what being alone is.

 M. What do you think I've been these last two months?

 C. I bet a lot of people think about you. Miss you. I might be dead for all anyone I knew ever cared.

 M. Your aunt.

 C. Her.

 (_There was a silence_.)

 C. (_he suddenly burst out with it_) You don't know what you are. You're everything. I got nothing if you go.

 (_And there was a great silence_.)

    _December 7th_

 He's bought the chair. He brought it down. It's nice. I wouldn't have it down here. I don't want anything from down here. A complete change.

 Tomorrow I'm going upstairs for good. I asked him afterwards, last night. And he agreed. I haven't got to wait the whole week.

 He's gone into Lewes to buy more things for the room. We're going to have a celebration supper.

 He's been much nicer, these last two days.

 I'm not going to lose my head and try and rush out at the first chance. He'll watch me, I know. I can't imagine what he'll do. The window will be boarded and he'll lock the door. But there'll be ways of seeing daylight. Sooner or later there'll be a chance (if he doesn't let me go of his own accord) to run for it.

 But I know it will be only one chance. If he caught me escaping he'd put me straight back down here.

 So it must be a really good chance. A sure one.

 I tell myself I must prepare for the worst.

 But something about him makes me feel that this time he will do what he has said.

 I've caught his cold. It doesn't matter.

 Oh my God my God I could kill myself.

 He's going to kill me with despair.

 I'm still down here. He never meant it.

 He wants to take photographs. That's his secret. He wants to take my clothes off and . . . oh God I never knew till now what loathing was.

 He said unspeakable things to me. I was a street-woman, I asked for what he suggested.

 I went mad with rage. I threw a bottle of ink at him.

 He said that if I didn't do it he'd stop me having baths or going out in the cellar. I'll be here all the time.

 The hate between us. It came seething out.

 I've caught his wretched cold. I can't think straight.

 I couldn't kill myself, I'm too angry with him.

 He's always abused me. From the very beginning. That story about the dog. He uses my heart. Then turns and tramples on it.

 He hates me, he wants to defile me and break me and destroy me. He wants me to hate myself so much that I destroy myself.

 The final meanness. He's not bringing me any supper. I'm to fast, on top of everything else. Perhaps he's going to leave me to starve. He's capable of it.

 I've got over the shock. He won't beat me. I won't give in. I won't be broken by him.

 I've got a temperature, I feel sick.

 Everything's against me, but I won't give in.

 I've been lying on the bed with G.P.'s picture beside me. Holding the frame in one hand. Like a crucifix.

 I will survive. I will escape. I will not give in.

 I will not give in.

 I hate God. I hate whatever made this world, I hate whatever made the human race, made men like Caliban possible and situations like this possible.

 If there is a God he's a great loathsome spider in the darkness.

 He _cannot be good_.

 This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn't necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing.

 All in vain. All wasted.

 The older the world becomes, the more obvious it is. The bomb and the tortures in Algeria and the starving babies in the Congo. It gets bigger and darker.

 More and more suffering for more and more. And more and more in vain.