The Collector

Something I must not bungle through unpreparedness. I didn’t write about it here, in case he found this.

I rubbed talc into my face. Then when he knocked on the door this morning I swallowed a whole lot of saved-up salt and water and pressed my tongue and the timing was perfect, he came in and saw me being sick. I put on a tremendous act. Lying on the bed with my hair in a mess and holding my tummy. Still in my pyjamas and dressing-gown. Groaning a little, as if I was being terribly brave. All the time he stood and said, what’s wrong, what’s wrong? And we had a sort of desperate broken conversation, Caliban trying to get out of taking me to hospital, I insisting that he must. And then suddenly he seemed to give way. He muttered something about it being “the end” and rushed out.

I heard the iron door go (I was still staring at the wall) but no bolts. Then the outer door. And there was silence. It was weird. So sudden, so complete. It had worked. I pulled on some socks and shoes and ran to the iron door. It had sprung back an inch or two—was open. I thought it might be all a trap. So I kept up the act, I opened the door and said his name in a quiet voice and hobbled weakly across the cellar and up the steps. I could see the light, he hadn’t locked the outer door, either. It flashed across my mind that it was just what he would do, he wouldn’t go to the doctor. He’d run away. Crack up completely. But he’d take the van. So I would hear the engine. But I couldn’t. I must have waited several minutes, I should have known but I couldn’t bear the suspense. I pulled the door open and rushed out. And he was there. At once. In all the daylight.

Waiting.

I couldn’t pretend I was ill. I’d put shoes on. He had something (a hammer?) in his hand, peculiar wide eyes, I’m sure he was going to attack me. We sort of stood poised for a moment, neither of us knowing what to do. Then I turned and ran back. I don’t know why, I didn’t stop to think. He came after me, but he stopped when he saw me go inside (as I instinctively knew he would—the only safe place from him was down here). I heard him come and the bolts were shot to.

I know it was the right thing to do. It saved my life. If I had screamed or tried to escape he would have battered me to death. There are moments when he is possessed, quite out of his own control.

His trick.

(Midnight.) He brought me supper down here. He didn’t say a word. I’d spent the afternoon doing a strip cartoon of him. The Awful Tale of a Harmless Boy. Absurd. But I have to keep the reality and the horror at bay. He starts by being a nice little clerk ends up as a drooling horror-film monster.

When he was going I showed it to him. He didn’t laugh, he simply looked at it carefully.

It’s only natural, he said. He meant, that I should make such fun of him.

I am one in a row of specimens. It’s when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I’m meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it’s the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. I felt it terribly strong today. That my being alive and changing and having a separate mind and having moods and all that was becoming a nuisance.

He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day what he called his killing-bottle. I’m imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it’s all an illusion.

A thick round wall of glass.

November 7th

How the days drag. Today. Intolerably long.

My one consolation is G.P.’s drawing. It grows on me. On one. It’s the only living, unique, created thing here. It’s the first thing I look at when I wake up, the last thing at night. I stand in front of it and stare at it. I know every line. He made a fudge of one of her feet. There’s something slightly unbalanced about the whole composition, as if there’s a tiny bit missing somewhere. But it lives.

After supper (we’re back to normal) Caliban handed me The Catcher in the Rye and said, I’ve read it. I knew at once by his tone that he meant—'and I don’t think much of it.”

I feel awake, I’ll do a dialogue.

M. Well?

C. I don’t see much point in it.

M. You realize this is one of the most brilliant studies of adolescence ever written?

C. He sounds a mess to me.

M. Of course he’s a mess. But he realizes he’s a mess, he tries to express what he feels, he’s a human being for all his faults. Don’t you even feel sorry for him?

C. I don’t like the way he talks.

M. I don’t like the way you talk. But I don’t treat you as below any serious notice or sympathy.

C. I suppose it’s very clever. To write like that and all.

M. I gave you that book to read because I thought you would feel identified with him. You’re a Holden Caulfield. He doesn’t fit anywhere and you don’t.

C. I don’t wonder, the way he goes on. He doesn’t try to fit.

M. He tries to construct some sort of reality in his life, some sort of decency.

C. It’s not realistic. Going to a posh school and his parents having money. He wouldn’t behave like that. In my opinion.

M. I know what you are. You’re the Old Man of the Sea.

C. Who’s he?

M. The horrid old man Sinbad had to carry on his back. That’s what you are. You get on the back of everything vital, everything trying to be honest and free, and you bear it down.

I won’t go on. We argued—no, we don’t argue, I say things and he tries to wriggle out of them.

It’s true. He is the Old Man of the Sea. I can’t stand stupid people like Caliban, with their great deadweight of pettiness and selfishness and meanness of every kind. And the few have to carry it all. The doctors and the teachers and the artists—not that they haven’t their traitors, but what hope there is, is with them—with us.

Because I’m one of them.

I’m one of them. I feel it and I’ve tried to prove it. I felt it during my last year at Ladymont. There were the few of us who cared, and there were the silly ones, the snobbish ones, the would-be debutantes and the daddy’s darlings and the horsophiles and the sex-cats. I’ll never go back to Ladymont. Because I couldn’t stand that suffocating atmosphere of the “done” thing and the “right” people and the “nice” behaviour. (Boadicaea writing “in spite of her weird political views” on my report—how dared she?) I will not be an old girl of such a place.

Why should we tolerate their beastly Calibanity? Why should every vital and creative and good person be martyred by the great universal stodge around?

In this situation I’m a representative.

A martyr. Imprisoned, unable to grow. At the mercy of this resentment, this hateful millstone envy of the Calibans of this world. Because they all hate us, they hate us for being different, for not being them, for their own not being like us. They persecute us, they crowd us out, they send us to Coventry, they sneer at us, they yawn at us, they blindfold themselves and stuff up their ears. They do anything to avoid having to take notice of us and respect us. They go crawling after the great ones among us when they’re dead. They pay thousands and thousands for the Van Goghs and Modiglianis they’d have spat on at the time they were painted. Guffawed at. Made coarse jokes about.

I hate them.

I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and the mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren’t ashamed of being dull and little. I hate what G.P. calls the New People, the new-class people with their cars and their money and their tellies and their stupid vulgarities and their stupid crawling imitation of the bourgeoisie.

I love honesty and freedom and giving. I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.

G.P. was laughing at my being Labour one day (early on). I remember he said, you are supporting the party which brought the New People into existence—do you realize that?

I said (I was shocked, because from what he had said about other things, I thought he must be Labour, I knew he had been a Communist once), I’d rather we had the New People than poor people.