The Collector

I woke up then. I have never felt such rage for M—even that day when she was drunk and hit me in front of that hateful boy Peter Catesby. I can remember standing there with her slap on my cheek and feeling ashamed, outraged, shocked, everything . . . but sorry for her. I went and sat by her bed and held her hand and let her cry and forgave her and defended her with Daddy and Minny. But this dream seemed so real, so terribly natural.

I’ve accepted that she tried to stop me from becoming an artist. Parents always misunderstand their children (no, I won’t misunderstand mine), I knew I was supposed to be the son and surgeon poor D never was able to be. Carmen will be that now. I mean I have forgiven them their fighting against my ambition for their ambitions. I won, so I must forgive.

But that hatred in that dream. It was so real.

I don’t know how to exorcise it. I could tell it to G.P. But there’s only the slithery scratch of my pencil on this pad.

Nobody who has not lived in a dungeon could understand how absolute the silence down here is. No noise unless I make it. So I feel near death. Buried. No outside noises to help me be living at all. Often I put on a record. Not to hear music, but to hear something.

I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I’ve become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I’m not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything’s quite normal. It’s like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll.

October 25th

I must must must escape.

I spent hours and hours today thinking about it. Wild ideas. He’s so cunning, it’s incredible. Foolproof.

It must seem I never try to escape. But I can’t try every day, that’s the trouble. I have to space out the attempts. And each day here is like a week outside.

Violence is no good. It must be cunning.

Face-to-face, I can’t be violent. The idea makes me feel weak at the knees. I remember wandering with Donald somewhere in the East End after we’d been to the Whitechapel and we saw a group of teddies standing round two middle-aged Indians. We crossed the street, I felt sick. The teddies were shouting, chivvying and bullying them off the pavement on to the road. Donald said, what can one do, and we both pretended to shrug it off, to hurry away. But it was beastly, their violence and our fear of violence. If he came to me now and knelt and handed me the poker, I couldn’t hit him.

It’s no good. I’ve been trying to sleep for the last half-hour, and I can’t. Writing here is a sort of drug. It’s the only thing I look forward to. This afternoon I read what I wrote about G.P. the day before yesterday. And it seemed vivid. I know it seems vivid because my imagination fills in all the bits another person wouldn’t understand. I mean, it’s vanity. But it seems a sort of magic, to be able to call my past back. And I just can’t live in this present. I would go mad if I did.

I’ve been thinking today of the time I took Piers and i Antoinette to meet him. The black side of him. No, I was stupid. They’d come up to Hampstead to have coffee and we were to go to the Everyman, but the queue was too long. So I let them bully me into taking them round.

It was vanity on my part. I’d talked too much about him. So that they began to hint that I couldn’t be so very friendly if I was afraid to take them round to meet him. And I fell for it.

I could see he wasn’t pleased at the door, but he asked us up. And oh, it was terrible. Terrible. Piers was at his slickest and cheapest and Antoinette was almost parodying herself, she was so sex-kittenish. I tried to excuse everyone to everyone else. G.P. was in such a weird mood. I knew he could withdraw, but he went out of his way to be rude. He could have seen Piers was only trying to cover up his feeling of insecurity.

They tried to get him to discuss his own work, but he wouldn’t. He started to be outrageous. Four-letter words. All sorts of bitter cynical things about the Slade and various artists—things I know he doesn’t believe. He certainly managed to shock me and Piers, but of course Antoinette just went one better. Simpered and trembled her eyelashes, and said something fouler still. So he changed tack. Cut us short every time we tried to speak (me too).

And then I did something even more stupid than the having gone there in the first place. There was a pause, and he obviously thought we would go. But I idiotically thought I could see Antoinette and Piers looking rather amused and I was sure it was because they felt I didn’t know him as well as I’d said. So I had to try to prove to them that I could manage him.

I said, could we have a record, G.P. ?

For a moment he looked as if would he say no, but then he said, why not? Let’s hear someone saying something. for a change. He didn’t give us any choice, he just went and put a record on.

He lay on the divan with his eyes closed, as usual, and Piers and Antoinette obviously thought it was a pose.

Such a thin strange quavering noise, and such a tense awkward atmosphere had built up; I mean it was the music on top of everything else. Piers started to smirk and Antoinette had a fit of—she can’t giggle, she’s too slinky, her equivalent—and I smiled. I admit it. Piers cleaned out his ear with his little finger and then leant on his elbow with his forehead on outstretched fingers—and shook his head every time the instrument (I didn’t know what it was then) vibrated. Antoinette half-choked. It was awful. I knew he would hear.

He did. He saw Piers cleaning his ears again. And Piers saw himself being seen and put on a clever sort of don’t-mind-us smile. G.P. jumped up and turned off the player. He said, you don’t like it? Piers said, have I got to like it?

I said, Piers, that wasn’t funny.

Piers said, I wasn’t making a noise, was I? Have we got to like it?

G.P. said, get out.

Antoinette said, I’m afraid I always think of Beecham. You know. Two skeletons copulating on a tin roof?

G.P. said (frightening, his face, he can look devilish), first, I’m delighted that you should admire Beecham. A pompous little duckarsed bandmaster who stood against everything creative in the art of his time. Second, if you can’t tell that from a harpsichord, Christ help you. Third (to Piers) I think you’re the smuggest young layabout I’ve met for years and you (me)—are these your friends?

I stood there, I couldn’t say anything, he made me furious, they made me furious and anyhow I was ten times more em-barrassed than furious.

Piers shrugged, Antoinette looked bewildered, but vaguely amused, the bitch, and I was red. It makes me red again to think of it (and of what happened later—how could he?).

Take it easy, said Piers. It’s only a record. I suppose he was angry, he must have known it was a stupid thing to say.

You think that’s only a record, G.P. said. Is that it? It’s just a record? Are you like this stupid little bitch’s aunt—do you think Rembrandt got the teeniest bit bored when he painted? Do you think Bach made funny faces and giggled when he wrote that? Do you?

Piers looked deflated, almost frightened. Well, DO YOU? shouted G.P.

He was terrible. Both ways. He was terrible, because he had started it all, he had determined to behave in that way. And wonderfully terrible, because passion is something you never see. I’ve grown up among people who’ve always tried to hide passion. He was raw. Naked. Trembling with rage.

Piers said, we’re not as old as you are. It was pathetic, feeble. Showed him up for what he really is.

Christ, said G.P. Art students. ART students.

I can’t write what he said next. Even Antoinette looked shocked.

We just turned and went. The studio door slammed behind us when we were on the stairs. I hissed a damn-you at Piers at the bottom and pushed them out. Darling, he’ll murder you, said Antoinette. I shut the door and waited. After a moment I heard the music again. I went up the stairs and very slowly opened the door. Perhaps he heard, I don’t know, but he didn’t look up and I sat on a stool near the door until it was finished.

He said, what do you want, Miranda?

I said, to say I’m sorry. And to hear you say you’re sorry.

He went and stared out of the window.