The Collector

Luckily I’d thought it out before. If I ever try to escape, and fail, he’ll never let me out again. So I must not jump at the first chance. And I knew, out there, that he would have killed me rather than let me get away. If I’d tried to run for it. I couldn’t have, anyway, he held my arm like a vice.)

But it was terrible. Knowing other people were so near. And knew nothing.

He asked me if I wanted to go round again. But I shook my head. I was too frightened.

Back down here I told him that I had to get the sex business cleared up.

I told him that if he suddenly wanted to rape me, I wouldn’t resist, I would let him do what he liked, but that I would never speak to him again. I said I knew he would be ashamed of himself, too. Miserable creature, he looked ashamed enough as it was. It was “only a moment’s weakness.” I made him shake hands, but I bet he breathed a sigh of relief when he got outside again.

No one would believe this situation. He keeps me absolutely prisoner. But in everything else I am mistress. I realize that he encourages it, it’s a means of keeping me from being as discontented as I should be.

The same thing happened when I was lameducking Donald last spring. I began to feel he was mine, that I knew all about him. And I hated it when he went off to Italy like that, without telling me. Not because I was seriously in love with him, but because he was vaguely mine and didn’t get permission from me.

The isolation he keeps me in. No newspapers. No radio. No TV. I miss the news terribly. I never did. But now I feel the world has ceased to exist.

I ask him every day to get me a newspaper, but it’s one of those things where he sticks his heels in. No reason. It’s funny, I know it’s no good asking. I might just as well ask him to drive me to the nearest station.

I shall go on asking him, all the same.

He swears blind that he sent the CND cheque, but I don’t know. I shall ask to see the receipt.

Incident. Today at lunch I wanted the Worcester sauce. He hardly ever forgets to bring anything I might want. But no Worcester sauce. So he gets up, goes out, undoes the padlock holding the door open, locks the door, gets the sauce in the outer cellar, unlocks the door, re-padlocks it, comes back. And then looks surprised when I laugh.

He never gives the locking-unlocking routine a miss. Even if I do get out into the outer cellar unbound, what can I do? I can’t lock him in, I can’t get out. The only chance I might have is when he comes in with the tray. Sometimes he doesn’t padlock the door back first. So if I could get past him then, I could bolt him in. But he won’t come past the door unless I’m well away from it. Usually I go and take the tray.

The other day I wouldn’t. I just leant against the wall by the door. He said, please go away. I just stared at him. He held out the tray. I ignored it. He stood there undecided. Then he bent very cautiously, watching my every move, and put the tray down in the doorway. Then went back into the outer cellar.

I was hungry. He won.

No good. I can’t sleep.

It’s seemed a funny day. Even for here.

He took a lot more photos of me this morning. He really enjoys it. He likes me to smile at the camera, so twice I pulled shocking faces. He was not amused. Then I put my hair up with one hand and pretended I was a model.

You ought to be a model, he said. Quite serious. He didn’t realize I was guying the whole idea.

I know why he likes the photographing business. He thinks it makes me think he’s artistic. And of course he hasn’t a clue. I mean he gets me in focus, and that’s all. No imagination.

It’s weird. Uncanny. But there is a sort of relationship between us. I make fun of him, I attack him all the time, but he senses when I’m “soft.” When he can dig back and not make me angry. So we slip into teasing states that are almost friendly. It’s partly because I’m so lonely, it’s partly deliberate (I want to make him relax, both for his own good and so that one day he may make a mistake), so it’s part weakness, and part cunning, and part charity. But there’s a mysterious fourth part I can’t define. It can’t be friendship, I loathe him.

Perhaps it’s just knowledge. Just knowing a lot about him. And knowing someone automatically makes you feel close to him. Even when you wish he was on another planet.

The first days, I couldn’t do anything if he was in the room. I pretended to read, but I couldn’t concentrate. But now I sometimes forget he’s here. He sits by the door and I read in my chair, and we’re like two people who’ve been married years.

It is not that I have forgotten what other people are like. But other people seem to have lost reality. The only real person in my world is Caliban.

It can’t be understood. It just is.

October 20th

It’s eleven o'clock in the morning.

I’ve just tried to escape.