The Collector

I accused him (not very bitterly) of not having sent the CND cheque. I challenged him to produce a receipt. He said the gift was anonymous, he hadn’t sent his address. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, I shall go and find out when I’m free. But I didn’t. Because it would be one more reason for him not to set me free. He was red, I’m sure he was lying, as he lied about the letter to D and M.

It’s not so much a lack of generosity—a real miserliness. I mean (forgetting the absurdity of the situation), he is generous to me. He spends hundreds of pounds on me. He’d kill me with kindness. With chocolates and cigarettes and food and flowers. I said I’d like some French perfume the other evening—it was just a whim, really, but this room smells of disinfectant and Airwick. I have enough baths, but I don’t feel clean. And I said I wished I could go and sniff the various scents to see which I liked best. He came in this morning with fourteen different bottles. He’d ransacked all the chemists’ shops. It’s mad. Forty pounds’ worth. It’s like living in the Arabian Nights. Being the favourite in the harem. But the one perfume you really want is freedom.

If I could put a starving child before him and give it food and let him watch it grow well, I know he’d give money. But everything beyond what he pays for and sees himself get is suspicious to him. He doesn’t believe in any other world but the one he lives in and sees. He’s the one in prison; in his own hateful narrow present world.

November 12th

The last night but one. I daren’t think about it, about not escaping. I’ve kept reminding him, recently. But now I feel I should have sprung it on him more or less suddenly. Today I decided that I would organize a little party tomorrow night. I shall say I feel differently towards him, that I want to be his friend and lameduck him in London.

It won’t be altogether a lie, I feel a responsibility towards him that I don’t really understand. I so often hate him, I think I ought to forever hate him. Yet I don’t always. My pity wins, and I do want to help him. I think of people I could introduce him to. He could go to Caroline’s psychiatrist friend. I’d be like Emma and arrange a marriage for him, and with happier results. Some little Harriet Smith, with whom he could be mousy and sane and happy.

I know I have to steel myself against not being freed. I tell myself it’s a chance in a hundred that he’ll keep his word.

But he must keep his word.

G.P.

I hadn’t seen him for two months, more than two months. Being in France and Spain and then at home. (I did try to see him twice, but he was away all September.) There was a postcard in answer to my letters. That was all.

I telephoned him and asked him if I could go round, the first evening I was back with Caroline. He said the next day, there were some people there that evening.

He seemed glad to see me. I was trying to look as if I hadn’t tried to look pretty. I had.

And I told him all about France and Spain and the Goyas and Albi and everything else. Piers. And he listened, he wouldn’t really say what he had been doing, but later he showed me some of the things he’d done in the Hebrides. And I felt ashamed. Because we’d none of us done much, we’d been too busy lying in the sun (I mean too lazy) and looking at great pictures to do much drawing or anything.

I said (having gushed for at least an hour) I’m talking too much.

He said, I don’t mind.

He was getting the rust off an old iron wheel with some acid. He’d seen it in a junk-shop in Edinburgh, and brought it all the way down. It had strange obtuse teeth, he thought it was part of an old church clock. Very elegant tapered spoke-arms. It was beautiful.

We didn’t say anything for a while, I was leaning beside him against his bench watching him clean off the rust. Then he said, I’ve missed you.

I said, you can’t have.

He said, you’ve disturbed me.

I said (knight to cover his pawn), have you seen Antoinette?

He said, no. I thought I told you I gave her the boot. He looked sideways. His lizard look. Still shocked? I shook my head.

Forgiven?

I said, there was nothing to forgive.

He said, I kept on thinking about you in the Hebrides. I wanted to show you things.

I said, I wished you were with us in Spain.

He was busy emery-papering between the teeth. He said, it’s very old, look at this corrosion. Then, in the same tone, in fact I decided that I want to marry you. I didn’t say anything and I wouldn’t look at him.