The Collector

I said, I know I was stupid, I may be little, but I’m not a bitch.

He said, you try (I think he didn’t mean, you try to be a bitch).

I said, you could have told us to go away. We would have understood.

There was a silence. He turned to look at me across the studio. I said, I’m very sorry.

He said, go home. We can’t go to bed together. When I stood up, he said, I’m glad you came back. It was decent of you. Then he said, you would.

I went down the stairs and he came out behind me. I don’t want to go to bed with you, I’m speaking about the situation. Not us. Understand?

I said, of course I understand.

And I went on down. Being female. Wanting to make him feel I was hurt.

As I opened the bottom door he said, I’ve been hitting it. He must have seen I didn’t understand, because he added, drinking.

He said, I’ll telephone you.

He did, he took me to a concert, to hear the Russians play Shostakovich. And he was sweet. That’s just what he was. Even though he never apologized.

October 26th

I don’t trust him. He’s bought this house. If he lets me go he’ll have to trust me. Or he’ll have to sell it and disappear before I can (could) get to the police. Either way it would be unlike him.

It’s too depressing, I have to believe he’ll keep his word.

He spends pounds and pounds on me. It must be nearly two hundred already. Any book, any record, any clothes. He has all my sizes. I sketch what I want, I mix up the colours as a guide. He even buys all my underwear. I can’t put on the black and peach creations he bought before, so I told him to go and get something sensible at Marks and Spencer. He said, can I buy a lot together? Of course it must be agony for him to go shopping for me (what does he do at the chemist’s?), so I suppose he prefers to get it all over in one go. But what can they think of him? One dozen pants and three slips and vests and bras. I asked him what they said when he gave the order and he went red. I think they think I’m a bit peculiar, he said. It was the first time I’ve really laughed since I came here.

Every time he buys me something I think it is proof that he’s not going to kill me or do anything else unpleasant.

I shouldn’t, but I like it when he comes in at lunch-time from wherever he goes. There are always parcels. It’s like having a perpetual Christmas Day and not even having to thank Santa Glaus. Sometimes he brings things I haven’t asked for. He always brings flowers, and that is nice. Chocolates, but he eats more of them than I do. And he keeps on asking me what I’d like him to buy.

I know he’s the Devil showing me the world that can be mine. So I don’t sell myself to him. I cost him a lot in little things, but I know he wants me to ask for something big. He’s dying to make me grateful. But he shan’t.

An awful thought that came to me today: they will have suspected G.P. Caroline is bound to give the police his name. Poor man. He will be sarcastic and they won’t like it.

I’ve been trying to draw him today. Strange. It is hopeless. Nothing like him.

I know he is short, only an inch or two more than me. (I’ve always dreamed tall men. Silly.)

He is going bald and he has a nose like a Jew’s, though he isn’t (not that I’d mind if he was). And the face is too broad. Battered, worn; battered and worn and pitted into a bit of a mask, so that I never quite believe whatever expression it’s got on. I glimpse things I think must come from behind; but I’m never very sure. He puts on a special dry face for me sometimes. I see it go on. It doesn’t seem dishonest, though, it seems just G.P. Life is a bit of a joke, it’s silly to take it seriously. Be serious about art, but joke a little about everything else. Not the day when the H-bombs drop, but the “day of the great fry-up.” “When the great fry-up takes place.” Sick, sick. It’s his way of being healthy.

Short and broad and broad-faced with a hook-nose; even a bit Turkish. Not really English-looking at all.

I have this silly notion about English good looks. Advertisement men.

Ladymont men.

October 27th

The tunnel round the door is my best bet. I feel I must try it soon. I think I’ve worked out a way of getting him away. I’ve been looking very carefully at the door this afternoon. It’s wood faced with iron on this side. Terribly solid. I could never break it down or lever it open. He’s made sure there’s nothing to break and lever with, in any case.

I’ve begun to collect some “tools.” A tumbler I can break. That will be something sharp. A fork and two teaspoons. They’re aluminium, but they might be useful. What I need most is something strong and sharp to pick out the cement between the stones with. Once I can make a hole through them it shouldn’t be too difficult to get round into the outer cellar.

This makes me feel practical. Businesslike. But I haven’t done anything.

I feel more hopeful. I don’t know why. But I do.

October 28th

G.P. as an artist. Caroline’s “second-rate Paul Nash'—horrid, but there is something in it. Nothing like what he would call “photography.” But not absolutely individual. I think it’s just that he arrived at the same conclusions. And either he sees that (that his landscapes have a Nashy quality) or he doesn’t. Either way, it’s a criticism of him. That he neither sees it nor says it.

I’m being objective about him. His faults.

His hatred of abstract painting—even of people like Jackson Pollock and Nicholson. Why? I’m more than half convinced intellectually by him, but I still feel some of the paintings he says are bad are beautiful. I mean, he’s too jealous. He condemns too much.

I don’t mind this. I’m trying to be honest about him, and about myself. He hates people who don’t “think things through'—and he does it. Too much. But he has (except over women) principles. He makes most people with so-called principles look like empty tin-cans.

(I remember he once said about a Mondrian—'it isn’t whether you like it, but whether you ought to like it'—I mean, he dislikes abstract art on principle. He ignores what he feels.)

I’ve been leaving the worst to last. Women.

It must have been about the fourth or fifth time I went round to see him.

There was the Nielsen woman. I suppose (now) they’d been to bed together. I was so naive. But they didn’t seem to mind my coming. They needn’t have answered the bell. And she was rather nice to me in her glittery at- home sort of way. Must be forty—what could he see in her? Then a long time after that, it was May, and I’d been the night before, but he was out (or in bed with someone?) and that evening he was in and alone, and we talked some time (he was telling me about John Minton) and then he put on an Indian record and we were quiet. But he didn’t shut his eyes that time, he was looking at me and I was embarrassed. When the raga ended there was a silence. I said, shall I turn it? but he said, no. He was in the shadow, I couldn’t see him very well.

Suddenly he said, Would you like to come to bed?

I said, no I wouldn’t. He caught me by surprise and I sounded foolish. Frightened.

He said, his eyes still on me, ten years ago I would have married you. You would have been my second disastrous marriage.

It wasn’t really a surprise. It had been waiting for weeks.

He came and stood by me. You’re sure?

I said, I haven’t come here for that. At all.

It seemed so unlike him. So crude. I think now, I know now, he was being kind. Deliberately obvious and crude. Just as he sometimes lets me beat him at chess.

He went to make Turkish coffee and he said through the door, you’re misleading. I went and stood in the kitchen door, while he watched the vriki. He looked back at me. I could swear you want it sometimes.