The Collector

He was only saying what I felt. I was stiff and he was supple, and it ought to be the other way round. The fault all mine. But I kept on thinking, he took me to the concert, and he came back here to her. I remembered times when I rang the bell and there had been no answer. I see now it was all sexual jealousy, but then it seemed a betrayal of principles. (I still don’t know—it’s all muddled in my mind. I can’t judge.)

I said, I’d like to hear Ravi Shankar. I couldn’t say, I forgive you.

So we listened to that. Then played chess. And he beat me. No reference to Toinette, except at the very end, on the stairs, when he said, it’s all over now.

I didn’t say anything.

She only did it for fun, he said.

But it was never the same. It was a sort of truce. I saw him a few times more, but never alone, I wrote him two letters when I was in Spain, and he sent a postcard back. I saw him once at the beginning of this month. But I’ll write about that another time. And I’ll write about the strange talk I had with the Nielsen woman.

Something Toinette said. She said, he talked about his boys and I felt so sorry for him. How they used to ask him not to go to their posh prep school, but to meet them in the town. Ashamed to have him seen. How Robert (at Marl-borough) patronizes him now.

He never talked to me about them. Perhaps he secretly thinks I belong to the same world.

A little middle-class boarding-school prig.

(Evening.) I tried to draw G.P. from memory again today. Hopeless.

C sat reading The Catcher in the Rye after supper. Several times I saw him look to see how many pages more he had to read.

He reads it only to show me how hard he is trying.

I was passing the front door tonight (bath) and I said, well, thank you for a lovely evening, goodbye now. And I made as if to open the door. It was locked, of course. It seems stuck, I said. And he didn’t smile, he just stood watching me. I said, It’s only a joke. I know, he said. It’s very peculiar—he made me feel a fool. Just by not smiling.

Of course G.P. was always trying to get me into bed. I don’t know why but I see that more clearly now than I ever did at the time. He shocked me, bullied me, taunted me—never in nasty ways. Obliquely. He didn’t ever force me in any way. Touch me. I mean, he’s respected me in a queer way. I don’t think he really knew himself. He wanted to shock me—to him or away from him, he didn’t know. Left it to chance.

More photos today. Not many. I said it hurt my eyes too much. And I don’t like him always ordering me about. He’s terribly obsequious, would I do this, would I oblige by . . . no he doesn’t say “oblige.” But it’s a wonder he doesn’t.

You ought to go in for beauty comps, he said when he was winding up his film.

Thank you, I said. (The way we talk is mad, I don’t see it till I write it down. He talks as if I’m free to go at any minute, and I’m the same.)

I bet you’d look smashing in a wotchermercallit, he said.

I looked puzzled. One of those French swimming things, he said.

A bikini? I asked.

I can’t allow talk like that, so I stared coldly at him. Is that what you mean?

To photograph like, he said, going red.

And the weird thing is, I know he means exactly that. He didn’t mean to be nasty, he wasn’t hinting at anything, he was just being clumsy. As usual. He meant literally what he said. I would be interesting to photograph in a bikini.

I used to think, it must be there. It’s very deeply suppressed, but it must be there.

But I don’t any more. I don’t think he’s suppressing anything. There’s nothing to suppress.

A lovely night-walk. There were great reaches of clear sky, no moon, sprinkles of warm white stars everywhere, like' milky diamonds, and a beautiful wind. From the west. I made him take me round and round, ten or twelve times. The branches rustling, an owl hooting in the woods. And the sky all wild, all free, all wind and air and space and stars.

Wind full of smells and far-away places. Hopes. The sea. I am sure I could smell the sea. I said (later, of course I was gagged outside), are we near the sea? And he said, ten miles. I said, near Lewes. He said, I can’t say. As if someone else had strictly forbidden him to speak. (I often feel that with him—a horrid little cringing good nature dominated by a mean bad one.)

Indoors it couldn’t have been more different. We talked about his family again. I’d been drinking scrumpy. I do it (a little) to see if I can get him drunk and careless, but so far he won’t touch it. He’s not a teetotaller, he says. So it’s all part of his warderishness. Won’t be corrupted.

M. Tell me some more about your family.

C. Nothing more to tell. That’d interest you.

M. That’s not an answer.

C. It’s like I said.

M. As I said.

C. I used to be told I was good at English. That was before I knew you.

M. It doesn’t matter.

C. I suppose you got the A level and all that.

M. Yes, I did.

C. I got O level in Maths and Biology.