The Collector

It made me think of Collioure last summer. The day we went, all four of us with the French students, up through the ilexes to the tower. The ilexes. An absolutely new colour, amazing chestnut, rufous, burning, bleeding, where they had cut away the cork. The cicadas. The wild azure sea through the stems and the heat and the smell of everything burnt in it. Piers and I and everyone except Minny got a bit tipsy. Sleeping in the shade, waking up staring through the leaves at the cobalt blue sky, thinking how impossible things were to paint, how can some blue pigment ever mean the living blue light of the sky. I suddenly felt I didn’t want to paint, painting was just showing off, the thing was to experience and experience for ever more.

The beautiful clean sun on the blood-red stems.

And coming back I had a long talk with the nice shy boy, Jean-Louis. His bad English and my bad French, yet we understood each other. Terribly timid he was. Frightened of Piers. Jealous of him. Jealous of his throwing an arm round me, the silly lout Piers is. And when I discovered he was going to be a priest.

Piers was so crude afterwards. That stupid clumsy fright-ened-of-being-soft English male cruelty to the truth. He couldn’t see that of course poor Jean-Louis liked me, of course he was sexually attracted, but there was this other thing, it wasn’t really shyness, it was a determination to try to be a priest and to live in the world. A simply colossal effort of coming to terms with oneself. Like destroying all the paintings one’s ever done and making a new start. Only he had to do it every day. Every time he saw a girl he liked. And all Piers could say was: I bet he’s having dirty dreams about you.

So ghastly, that arrogance, that insensitivity, of boys who’ve been to public schools. Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can’t have affected you. I always know when he doesn’t understand something. He gets cynical, he says something shocking.

When I told G.P. about it much later, he just said, poor frog, he was probably on his knees praying to forget you.

Watching Piers throw stones out to sea—where was it?—somewhere near Valencia. So beautiful, like a young god, all golden-brown, with his dark hair. His swimming-slip. And Minny said (she was lying beside me, oh, it’s so clear) she said, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Piers was dumb.

And then she said, could you go to bed with him?

I said, no. Then, I don’t know.

Piers came up then and wanted to know what she was smiling about.

Nanda’s just told me a secret, she said. About you.

Piers made some feeble joke and went off to get the lunch from the car with Peter.

What’s the secret, I wanted to know.

Bodies beat minds, she said.

Clever Carmen Grey always knows what to say.

I knew you’d say that, she said. She was doodling in the sand and I was on my tummy watching her. She said, what I mean is he’s so terribly good-looking, one could forget he’s so stupid. You might think, I could marry him and teach him. Couldn’t you? And you know you couldn’t. Or you could go to bed with him just for fun and one day you’d suddenly find you were in love with his body and you couldn’t live without it and you’d be stuck with his rotten mind for ever and ever.

Then she said, doesn’t it terrify you?

Not more than so many other things.

I’m serious. If you married him I’d never speak to you again.

And she was serious. That very quick grey shy look she puts on, like a little lance. I got up and kissed her on the way up and went to meet the boys. And she sat there, still looking down at the sand.

We’re both terrible lookers-through. We can’t help it. But she’s always said, I believe this, I shall act like this. It’s got to be someone you at least feel is your equal, who can look through as well as you. And the body thing’s always got to be second. And I’ve always secretly thought, Carmen will be another spinster. It’s too complicated for set ideas.

But now I think of G.P. and I compare him to Piers. And Piers has got nothing on his side. Just a golden body throwing stones aimlessly into the sea.

November 5th

I gave him hell tonight.

I started throwing things around upstairs. First cushions and then plates. I’ve been longing to break them.

But I was beastly, really. Spoilt. He suffered it all. He’s so weak. He ought to have slapped me across the face.

He did catch hold of me, to stop me breaking another of his wretched plates. We so rarely touch. I hated it. It was like icy water.

I lectured him. I told him all about himself and what he ought to do in life. But he doesn’t listen. He likes me to talk about him. It doesn’t matter what I say.

I won’t write any more. I’m reading Sense and Sensibility and I must find out what happens to Marianne. Marianne is me; Eleanor is me as I ought to be.

What happens if he has a crash? A stroke. Anything.

I die.

I couldn’t get out. All I did the day before yesterday was to prove it.