The Collector

He said, she always irritates me. I knew he didn’t want to talk about it. As we went towards the platform, I said, she’s frightened of seeming behind the times.

Aren’t you?—and he gave me one of his dry little smiles. I thought, he doesn’t like me playing at “us” against “her.”

We were passing a film poster and he said, that’s a good film. Have you seen it? Do.

When we came out on the platform, he said, come round one day. But leave your bloody aunt at home. And he smiled. A little infectious mischievous smile. Not his age, at all. Then he walked off. So by-himself. So indifferent.

So I did go round. One Saturday morning. He was surprised. I had to sit in silence for twenty minutes with him and the weird Indian music. He got straight back on to the divan and lay with his eyes shut, as if I shouldn’t have come and I felt I ought never to have come (especially without telling C), and I felt as well that it really was a bit much, a pose. I couldn’t relax. At the end he asked me about myself, curtly, as if it was all rather a bore. And I stupidly tried to impress him. Do the one thing I shouldn’t. Show off. I kept on thinking, he didn’t really mean me to come round.

Suddenly he cut me short and took me round the room and made me look at things.

His studio. The most beautiful room. I always feel happy there. Everything in harmony. Everything expressing only him (it’s not deliberate, he hates “interior decoration” and gimmicks and Vogue). But it’s all him. Toinette, with her silly female House and Garden ideas of austere good taste, calling it “cluttered.” I could have bitten her head off. The feeling that someone lives all his life in it, works in it, thinks in it, is it.

And we thawed out. I stopped trying to be clever.

He showed me how he gets his “haze” effect. Tonksing gouache. With all his little home-made tools.

Some friends of his came in, Barber and Frances Cruik-shank. He said, this is Miranda Grey I can’t stand her aunt, all in one breath, and they laughed, they were old friends. I wanted to leave. But they were going for a walk, they had come in to make him go with them, and they wanted me to go too. Barber Cruikshank did; he had special seduction eyes for me.

Supposing aunt sees us, G.P. said. Barber’s got the foulest reputation in Cornwall.

I said, she’s my aunt. Not my duenna.

So we all went to the Vale of Health pub and then on to Kenwood. Frances told me about their life in Cornwall and I felt for the first time in my life that I was among people of an older generation that I understood, real people. And at the same time I couldn’t help seeing Barber was a bit of a sham. All those funny malicious stories. While G.P. was the one who led us into all the serious things. I don’t mean that he wasn’t gay, too. Only he has this strange twist of plunging straight into what matters. Once when he was away getting drinks, Barber asked me how long I’d known G.P. Then he said, I wish to God I’d met someone like G.P. when I was a student. And quiet little Frances said, we think he’s the most wonderful person. He’s one of the few. She didn’t say which few, but I knew what she meant.

At Kenwood G.P. made us split. He took me straight to the Rembrandt and talked about it, without lowering his voice, and I had the smallness to be embarrassed because some other people there stared at us. I thought, we must look like father and daughter. He told me all about the background to the picture, what Rembrandt probably felt like at that time, what he was trying to say, how he said it. As if I knew nothing about art. As if he was trying to get rid of a whole cloud of false ideas I probably had about it.

We went out to wait for the others. He said, that picture moves me very much. And he looked at me, as if he thought I might laugh. One of those flashes of shyness he has.

I said, it moves me now, too.

But he grinned. It can’t possibly. Not for years yet.

How do you know?

He said, I suppose there are people who are purely moved by great art. I never met a painter who was. I’m not. All I think of when I see that picture is that it has the supreme mastery I have spent all my life trying to attain. And shall not. Ever. You’re young. You can understand. But you can’t feel that yet.

I said, I think I do.

He said, then that’s bad. You should be blind to failure. At your age. Then he said, don’t try to be our age. I shall despise you if you do.

He said, you’re like a kid trying to see over a six-foot wall.

That was the first time. He hated me for attracting him. The Professor Higgins side of him.

Later, when the Cruikshanks came out, he said, as they walked towards us, Barber’s a womanizer. Refuse to meet him if he asks.

I gave him a surprised look. He said, smiling at them, not you, I can’t stand the pain for Frances.

Back in Hampstead I left them and went on home. All the way back there I’d realized that G.P. was making sure Barber Cruikshank and I shouldn’t be left alone. They (Barber) asked me to come to see them if I was ever in Cornwall.