The Collector

Then she says I needn’t worry about money, it’s lasting very well. Then she hopes I got a woman who will work, she says the young ones don’t clean proper nowadays.

(There was a long silence then.)

M. Do you think it’s a nice letter?

C. She always writes like that.

M. It makes me want to be sick.

C. She never had any real education.

M. It’s not the English. It’s her nasty mind.

C. She took me in.

M. She certainly did. She took you in, and she’s gone on taking you in. She’s made an absolute fool out of you.

C. Thank you very much.

M. Well, she has!

C. Oh, you’re right. As per usual.

M. Don’t say that! (I put down my knitting and closed my eyes.)

C. She never bossed me about half as much as you do.

M. I don’t boss you. I try to teach you.

C. You teach me to despise her and think like you, and soon you’ll leave me and I’ll have no one at all.

M. Now you’re pitying yourself.

C. It’s the one thing you don’t understand. You only got to walk into a room, people like you, and you can talk with anyone, you understand things, but when . . .

M. Do shut up. You’re ugly enough without starting to whine.

I picked up my knitting and put it away. When I looked round he was standing there with his mouth open, trying to say something. And I knew I’d hurt him, I know he deserves to be hurt, but there it is. I’ve hurt him. He looked so glum. And I remembered he’d let me go out in the garden. I felt mean.

I went to him and said I was sorry and held out my hand, but he wouldn’t take it. It was queer, he really had a sort of dignity, he was really hurt (perhaps that was it) and showing it. So I took his arm and made him sit down again, and I said, I’m going to tell you a fairy story.

Once upon a time (I said, and he stared bitterly bitterly at the floor) there was a very ugly monster who captured a princess and put her in a dungeon in his castle. Every evening he made her sit with him and ordered her to say to him, “You are very handsome, my lord,” And every evening she said, “You are very ugly, you monster.” And then the monster looked very hurt and sad and stared at the floor. So one evening the princess said, “If you do this thing and that thing you might be handsome,” but the monster said, “I can’t, I can’t.” The princess said, “Try, try.” But the monster said, “I can’t, I can’t.” Every evening it was the same. He asked her to lie, and she wouldn’t. So the princess began to think that he really enjoyed being a monster and very ugly. Then one day she saw he was crying when she’d told him, for the fiftieth time, that he was ugly. So she said, “You can become very handsome if you do just one thing. Will you do it?” Yes, he said, at last, he would try to do it. So she said, then set me free. And he set her free. And suddenly, he wasn’t ugly any more, he was a prince who had been bewitched. And he followed the princess out of the castle. And they both lived happily ever afterwards.

I knew it was silly as I was saying it. Fey. He didn’t speak, he kept staring down.

I said, now it’s your turn to tell a fairy story.

He just said, I love you.

And yes, he had more dignity than I did then and I felt small, mean. Always sneering at him, jabbing him, hating him and showing it. It was funny, we sat in silence facing each other and I had a feeling I’ve had once or twice before, of the most peculiar closeness to him—not love or attraction or sympathy in any way. But linked destiny. Like being shipwrecked on an island—a raft—together. In every way not wanting to be together. But together.

I feel the sadness of his life, too, terribly. And of those of his miserable aunt and his cousin and their relatives in Australia. The great dull hopeless weight of it. Like those Henry Moore drawings of the people in the Tubes during the blitz. People who would never see, feel, dance, draw, cry at music, feel the world, the west wind. Never be in any real sense.

Just those three words, said and meant. I love you.

They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer.

His fairy story.

October 31st

Nothing. I psycho-analyzed him this evening.

He would sit so stiffly beside me.

We were looking at Goya’s etchings. Perhaps it was the etchings themselves, but he sat and I thought he wasn’t really looking at them. But thinking only of being so close to me.

His inhibition. It’s absurd. I talked at him as if he could easily be normal. As if he wasn’t a maniac keeping me prisoner here. But a nice young man who wanted a bit of chivvying from a jolly girl-friend.

It’s because I never see anyone else. He becomes the norm. I forget to compare.

Another time G.P. It was soon after the icy douche (what he said about my work). I was restless one evening. I went round to his flat. About ten. He had his dressing-gown on.

I was just going to bed, he said.

I wanted to hear some music, I said. I’ll go away. But I didn’t.

He said, it’s late.