The Collector

help the world. I won’t do the smallest good thing for humanity. I’ll just think of myself and humanity can go and stew for all I care. (It’s like continually slapping someone across the face—almost a wince.) What use do you think money is unless it’s used? Do you understand what I’m talking about?

C. Yes.

M. Well?

C. Oh . . . you’re right. As always.

M. Are you being sarcastic again?

C. You’re like my Aunt Annie. She’s always going on about the way people behave nowadays. Not caring and all that.

M. You seem to think it’s right to be wrong.

C. Do you want your tea?

M. (superhuman effort) Look, for the sake of argument, we’ll say that however much good you tried to do in society, in fact you’d never do any good. That’s ridiculous, but never mind. There’s still yourself. I don’t think the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has much chance of actually affecting the government. It’s one of the first things you have to face up to. But we do it to keep our self-respect to show to ourselves, each one to himself or herself, that we care. And to let other people, all the lazy, sulky, hopeless ones like you, know that someone cares. We’re trying to shame you into thinking about it, about acting. (Silence—then I shouted.) Say something!

C. I know it’s evil.

M. Do something, then! (He gawped at me as if I’d told him to swim the Atlantic.) Look. A friend of mine went on a march to an American air-station in Essex. You know? They were stopped outside the gate, of course, and after a time the sergeant on guard came out and spoke to them and they began an argument and it got very heated because this sergeant thought that the Americans were like knights of old rescuing a damsel in distress. That the H-bombers were absolutely necessary—and so on. Gradually as they were arguing they began to realize that they rather liked the American. Because he felt very strongly, and honestly, about his views. It wasn’t only my friend. They all agreed about it afterwards. The only thing that really matters is feeling and living what you believe—so long as it’s something more than belief in your own comfort. My friend said he was nearer to that American sergeant than to all the grinning idiots who watched them march past on the way. It’s like football. Two sides may each want to beat the other, they may even hate each other as sides, but if someone came and told them football is stupid and not worth playing or caring about, then they’d feel together. It’s feeling that matters. Can’t you see?

C. I thought we were talking about the H-bomb.

M. Go away. You exhaust me. You’re like a sea of cotton wool.

C. (he stood up at once) I do like to hear you talk. I do think about what you say.

M. No, you don’t. You put what I say in your mind and wrap it up and it disappears for ever.

C. If I wanted to send a cheque to the . . . this lot . . . what’s the address?

M. To buy my approval?

C. What’s wrong with that?

M. We need money. But we need feeling even more. And I don’t think you’ve got any feeling to give away. You can’t win that by filling in a football coupon.

C. (there was an awkward silence) See you later, then.

(Exit Caliban. I hit my pillow so hard that it has looked reproachful ever since.)

(This evening—as I knew I would and could—I coaxed and bullied him, and he wrote out a cheque for a hundred pounds, which he’s promised to send off tomorrow. I know this is right. A year ago I would have stuck to the strict moral point. Like Major Barbara. But the essential is that we have money. Not where the money comes from, or why it is sent.)

October 19th

I have been out.

I was copying all the afternoon (Piero) and I was in the sort of mood where normally I have to go out to the cinema or to a coffee-bar, anywhere. But out.

I made him take me by giving myself to him like a slave. Bind me, I said, but take me.

He bound and gagged me, held my arm, and we walked round the garden. Quite a big one. It was very dark, I could just make out the path and some trees. And it is very lonely. Right out in the country somewhere.

Then suddenly in the darkness I knew something was wrong with him. I couldn’t see him, but I was suddenly frightened, I just knew he wanted to kiss me or something worse. He tried to say something about being very happy; his voice very strained. Choked. And then, that I didn’t think he had any deep feelings, but he had. It’s so terrible not being able to speak. My tongue’s my defence with him, normally. My tongue and my look. There was a little silence, but I knew he was pent up.

All the time I was breathing in beautiful outdoor air. That was good, so good I can’t describe it. So living, so full of plant smells and country smells and the thousand mysterious wet smells of the night.

Then a car passed. So there is a road which is used in front of the house. As soon as we heard the engine his grip tightened. I prayed the car would stop, but its lights just swept past behind the house.

Luckily I’d thought it out before. If I ever try to escape, and fail, he’ll never let me out again. So I must not jump at the first chance. And I knew, out there, that he would have killed me rather than let me get away. If I’d tried to run for it. I couldn’t have, anyway, he held my arm like a vice.)

But it was terrible. Knowing other people were so near. And knew nothing.

He asked me if I wanted to go round again. But I shook my head. I was too frightened.

Back down here I told him that I had to get the sex business cleared up.

I told him that if he suddenly wanted to rape me, I wouldn’t resist, I would let him do what he liked, but that I would never speak to him again. I said I knew he would be ashamed of himself, too. Miserable creature, he looked ashamed enough as it was. It was “only a moment’s weakness.” I made him shake hands, but I bet he breathed a sigh of relief when he got outside again.

No one would believe this situation. He keeps me absolutely prisoner. But in everything else I am mistress. I realize that he encourages it, it’s a means of keeping me from being as discontented as I should be.

The same thing happened when I was lameducking Donald last spring. I began to feel he was mine, that I knew all about him. And I hated it when he went off to Italy like that, without telling me. Not because I was seriously in love with him, but because he was vaguely mine and didn’t get permission from me.

The isolation he keeps me in. No newspapers. No radio. No TV. I miss the news terribly. I never did. But now I feel the world has ceased to exist.

I ask him every day to get me a newspaper, but it’s one of those things where he sticks his heels in. No reason. It’s funny, I know it’s no good asking. I might just as well ask him to drive me to the nearest station.

I shall go on asking him, all the same.

He swears blind that he sent the CND cheque, but I don’t know. I shall ask to see the receipt.

Incident. Today at lunch I wanted the Worcester sauce. He hardly ever forgets to bring anything I might want. But no Worcester sauce. So he gets up, goes out, undoes the padlock holding the door open, locks the door, gets the sauce in the outer cellar, unlocks the door, re-padlocks it, comes back. And then looks surprised when I laugh.

He never gives the locking-unlocking routine a miss. Even if I do get out into the outer cellar unbound, what can I do? I can’t lock him in, I can’t get out. The only chance I might have is when he comes in with the tray. Sometimes he doesn’t padlock the door back first. So if I could get past him then, I could bolt him in. But he won’t come past the door unless I’m well away from it. Usually I go and take the tray.

The other day I wouldn’t. I just leant against the wall by the door. He said, please go away. I just stared at him. He held out the tray. I ignored it. He stood there undecided. Then he bent very cautiously, watching my every