The Collector

Then there were the drawers full of clothes—shirts, skirts, dresses, coloured stockings, an extraordinary selection of week-end-in-Paris underwear, night-dresses. I could see they were about my size. They’re too large, but he says he’s seen me wear the colours.

Everything in my life seemed fine. There was G.P. But even that was strange. Exciting. Exciting.

Then this.

I slept a little with the light on, on top of the bed. I would have loved a drink, but I thought it might be drugged. I still half expect the food to be doped.

Seven days ago. It seems like seven weeks.

He looked so innocent and worried when he stopped me. He said he’d run over a dog. I thought it might be Misty. Exactly the sort of man you would not suspect. The most unwolflike.

Like falling off the edge of the world. There suddenly being an edge.

Every night I do something I haven’t done for years. I lie and pray. I don’t kneel, I know God despises kneelers. I lie and ask him to comfort M and D and Minny, and Caroline who must feel so guilty and everyone else, even the ones it would do good to suffer for me (or for anyone else). Like Piers and Antoinette. I ask him to help this misery who has me under his power. I ask him to help me. Not to let me be raped or abused and murdered. I ask him for light.

Literally. Daylight.

I can’t stand the absolute darkness. He’s bought me night-lights. I go to sleep with one glowing beside me now. Before that I left the light on.

Waking up is the worst thing. I wake up and for a moment I think I’m at home or at Caroline’s. Then it hits me.

I don’t know if I believe in God. I prayed to him furiously in the van when I thought I was going to die (that’s a proof against, I can hear G.P. saying). But praying makes things easier.

It’s all bits and pieces. I can’t concentrate. I’ve thought so many things, and now I can’t think of one.

But it makes me feel calmer. The illusion, anyway. Like working out how much money one’s spent. And how much is left.

October 15th

He has never had any parents, he’s been brought up by an aunt. I can see her. A thin woman with a white face and a nasty tight mouth and mean grey eyes and dowdy beige tea-cosy hats and a thing about dirt and dust. Dirt and dust being everything outside her foul little back-street world.

I told him he was looking for the mother he’d never had, but of course he wouldn’t listen.

He doesn’t believe in God. That makes me want to believe.

I talked about me. About D and M, in a bright little matter-of-fact voice. He knew about M. I suppose the whole town knows.

My theory is that I have to unmartyr him.

The time in prison. Endless time.

The first morning. He knocked on the door and waited ten minutes (as he always does). It wasn’t a nice ten minutes, all the consoling thoughts I’d scraped together during the night tan away and I was left alone. I stood there and said, if he does, don’t resist, don’t resist. I was going to say, do what you like, but don’t kill me. Don’t kill me, you can do it again. As if I was washable. Hard-wearing.

It was all different. When he came in he just stood there looking gawky and then at once, seeing him without a hat on, I knew who he was. I suppose I memorize people’s features without thinking. I knew he was the clerk from the Town Hall Annexe. The fabulous pools win. His photo in the paper. We all said we’d seen him about.

He tried to deny it, but he went red. He blushes at everything.

Simple as sneezing to put him on the defensive. His face has a sort of natural “hurt” set. Sheepish. No, giraffish. Like a lanky gawky giraffe. I kept on popping questions, he wouldn’t answer, all he could do was look as if I had no right to ask. As if this wasn’t at all what he’d bargained for.

He’s never had anything to do with girls. With girls like me, anyway.

A lilywhite boy.

He’s six feet. Eight or nine inches more than me. Skinny, so he looks taller than he is. Gangly. Hands too big, a nasty fleshy white and pink. Not a man’s hands. Adam’s apple too big, wrists too big, chin much too big, underlip bitten in, edges of nostrils red. Adenoids. He’s got one of those funny inbetween voices, uneducated trying to be educated. It keeps on letting him down. His whole face is too long. Dull black hair. It waves and recedes, it’s coarse. Stiff. Always in place. He always wears a sports coat and flannels and a pinned tie. Even cuff-links.

He’s what people call a “nice young man.”

Absolutely sexless (he looks).

He has a way of standing with his hands by his side or behind his back, as if he doesn’t know what on earth to do with them. Respectfully waiting for me to give my orders.

Fish-eyes. They watch. That’s all. No expression.

He makes me feel capricious. Like a dissatisfied rich customer (he’s a male assistant in a draper’s).

It’s his line. The mock-humble. Ever-so-sorry.

I sit and eat my meals and read a book and he watches me. If I tell him to go, he goes.