The Collector (14 page)

“You mean I’m to pose for obscene photographs so that if I escape I shan’t dare tell the police about you.”

That’s the idea, I said. Not obscene. Just photos you wouldn’t want to be published. Art-photographs.

“No.”

I’m only asking what you did without asking the other day.

“No, no, no.”

I know your game, I said.

“What I did then was wrong. I did it, I did it out of despair that there is nothing between us except meanness and suspicion and hate. This is different. It’s vile.”

I don’t see the difference.

She got up and went up to the end wall.

You did it once, I said. You can do it again.

“God, God, it’s like a lunatic asylum.” She looked all round the room like I wasn’t there, like there was someone else listening or she was going to bust down the walls.

Either you do it or you don’t go out at all. No walking out there. No baths. No nothing.

I said, you took me in for a bit. You’ve just got one idea. Get away from me. Make a fool of me and get the police on to me.

You’re no better than a common street-woman, I said. I used to respect you because I thought you were above what you done. Not like the rest. But you’re just the same. You do any disgusting thing to get what you want.

“Stop it, stop it,” she cried.

I could get a lot more expert than you in London. Any time. And do what I liked.

“You disgusting filthy mean-minded bastard.”

Go on, I said. That’s just your language.

“You’re breaking every decent human law, every decent human relationship, every decent thing that’s ever happened between your sex and mine.”

Hark at the pot calling the kettle black, I said. You took your clothes off, you asked for it. Now you got it.

“Get out! Get out!”

It was a real scream.

Yes or no, I said.

She turned and picked up an ink-bottle on her table and hurled it at me.

So that was that. I went out and bolted up. I didn’t take her any supper, I let her stew in her own juice. I had the chicken I bought in case and had some of the champagne and poured the rest down the sink.

I felt happy, I can’t explain, I saw I was weak before, now I was paying her back for all the things she said and thought about me. I walked about upstairs, I went and looked at her room, it made me really laugh to think of her down there, she was the one who was going to stay below in all senses and even if it wasn’t what she deserved in the beginning she had made it so that she did now. I had real reasons to teach her what was what.

Well, I got to sleep in the end, I looked at the previous photos and some books and I got some ideas. There was one of the books called
Shoes
with very interesting pictures of girls, mainly their legs, wearing different sorts of shoes, some just shoes and belts, they were really unusual pictures, artistic.

However, when I went down in the morning, I knocked and waited as usual before going in, but when I did I was very surprised she was still in bed, she’d been asleep with her clothes on just under the top blanket and for a moment she didn’t seem to know where she was and who I was, I just stood there waiting for her to fly at me, but she just sat up on the edge of the bed and rested her arms on her knees and her head on her hands, like it was all a nightmare and she couldn’t bear to wake up.

She coughed. It sounded a bit chesty. She looked a real mess.

So I decided not to say anything then, and went and got her breakfast. She drank the coffee when I brought it and ate the cereal, the no eating was off, and then she just went back to the same position, her head on her hands. I knew her game, it was to try and get my pity. She looked properly beaten but I consider it was all a pose to make me fall on my knees and beg for forgiveness or something daft.

Do you want some Coldrex, I asked. I knew she had the cold all right.

Well, she nodded, her head still in her hands, so I went and got them and when I came back she hadn’t changed her position. You could see it was a big act. Like a sulk. So I thought, well, let her sulk away. I can wait. I asked if she wanted anything, she shook her head, so I left her.

That lunch-time she was in bed when I went down. She just looked over the bedclothes at me, she said she wanted just some soup and tea, which I brought, and left. It was more or less the same at supper. She wanted aspirins. She hardly ate anything. But that was the game she played once before. We didn’t speak twenty words together all that day.

The next day it was the same, she was in bed when I went in. She was awake though, because she was lying watching me.

Well, I asked. She didn’t answer, she just lay there.

I said, if you think you take me in with all this lying in bed lark you’re mistaken.

That made her open her mouth.

“You’re not a human being. You’re just a dirty little masturbating worm.”

I acted like I hadn’t heard, I just went and got her breakfast. When I went to bring her her coffee, she said “Don’t come near me!” Real poison in her voice.

Supposing I just left you here, I said, teasing. What’d you do then?

“If only I had the strength to kill you. I’d kill you. Like a scorpion. I will when I’m better. I’d never go to the police. Prison’s too good for you. I’d come and kill you.”

I knew she was angry because her game wasn’t working. I had the cold, I knew it wasn’t much.

You talk too much, I said. You forget who’s boss. I could just forget you. Nobody’d know.

She just shut her eyes at that.

I left then, I went into Lewes and got the food. At lunch she seemed to be asleep when I said it was ready, but she made a sort of movement, so I left.

At supper she was still in bed but sitting up and reading her Shakespeare I bought.

I asked her if she was better. Sarcastic, of course.

Well, she just went on reading, wouldn’t answer, I nearly snatched the book away to teach her then, but I kept control. Half an hour later, after I had my own supper, I went back and she hadn’t eaten and when I commented on that she hadn’t, she said, “I feel sick. I think I’ve got the flu.”

However, she was stupid enough to say next, “What would you do if I needed a doctor?”

Wait and see, I answered.

“It hurts so when I cough.”

It’s only a cold, I said.

“It’s
not
a cold.” She really shouted at me.

Of course it’s a cold, I said. And stop acting. I know your game.

“I am
not
acting.”

Oh, no. You never acted in your life, I said. Of course not.

“Oh, God you’re not a man, if only you were a man.”

Say that again, I said. I had had some more champagne with my supper, there was a shop I found in Lewes with half-bottles, so I was not in the mood for her silliness.

“I said you are not a man.”

All right, I said. Get out of bed. Go on, get up. From now on I give the orders.

I had had enough, most men would have had it long before. I went and pulled the bedclothes off her and got hold of her arm to pull her up and she started to fight, scratching at my face.

I said, all right, I’m going to teach you a lesson.

I had the cords in my pocket and after a bit of a struggle I got them on her and then the gag, it was her own fault if they were tight, I got her on a short rope tied to the bed and then I went and fetched the camera and flash equipment. She struggled of course, she shook her head, she looked daggers with her eyes, as they say, she even tried to go all soft, but I kept at her. I got her garments off and at first she wouldn’t do as I said but in the end she lay and stood like I ordered (I refused to take if she did not co-operate). So I got my pictures. I took her till I had no more bulbs left.

It was not my fault. How was I to know she was iller than she looked. She just looked like she had a cold.

I got the pictures developed and printed that night. The best ones were with her face cut off. She didn’t look much anyhow with the gag, of course. The best were when she stood in her high heels, from the back. The tied hands to the bed made what they call an interesting motif. I can say I was quite pleased with what I got.

The next day she was up when I went in, in her housecoat, like she was waiting for me. What she did was very surprising, she took a step forward and went down on her knees at my feet. Like she was drunk. Her face was very flushed, I did see; she looked at me and she was crying and she had got herself up into a state.

“I’m terribly ill. I’ve got pneumonia. Or pleurisy. You’ve got to get a doctor.”

I said, get up and go back to bed. Then I went to get her coffee.

When I came back I said, you know you’re not ill, if it was pneumonia you couldn’t stand up even.

“I can’t breathe at nights. I’ve got a pain here, I have to lie on my left side. Please take my temperature. Look at it.”

Well I did and it was a 102 but I knew there were ways you could fake temperatures.

“The air’s stifling here.”

There’s plenty of air, I said. It was her fault for having used that game before.

Anyway I got the chemist in Lewes to give me something he said was very good for congestion and special anti-flu pills and inhaler, all of which she took when offered. She tried to eat something at supper, but she couldn’t manage it, she was sick, she did look off-colour then, and I can say that for the first time I had reason to believe there might be something in it all. Her face was red, bits of her hair stuck on it with perspiration, but that could have been deliberate.

I cleaned up the sick and gave her her medicines and was going to leave when she asked me to sit on the bed, so she wouldn’t have to speak loud.

“Do you think I could speak to you if I wasn’t terribly ill? After what you’ve done.”

You asked for what I did, I said.

“You must see I’m really ill.”

It’s the flu, I said. There’s a lot in Lewes.

“It’s not the flu. I’ve got pneumonia. Something terrible. I can’t breathe.”

You’ll be all right, I said. Those yellow pills will do the trick. The chemist said they’re the best.

“Not fetching a doctor is murder. You’re going to kill me.”

I tell you you’re all right. It’s fever, I said. As soon as she mentioned doctor, I was suspicious.

“Would you mind wiping my face with my flannel?”

It was funny, I did what she said and for the first time for days I felt a bit sorry for her. It was a woman’s job, really. I mean it was a time when women need other women. She said thanks.

I’ll go now then, I said.

“Don’t go. I’ll die.” She actually tried to catch hold of my arm.

Don’t be so daft, I told her.

“You must listen, you must listen,” and suddenly she was crying again; I could see her eyes filling with tears and she sort of banged her head from side to side on the pillow. I felt sorry for her by then, as I say, so I sat on the bed and gave her a handkerchief and told her I would never not get a doctor if she was really ill. I even said I still loved her and I was sorry and some other things. But the tears just kept on coming, she hardly seemed to listen. Not even when I told her she looked much better than the day before, which was not strictly true.

In the end she grew calm, she lay there with her eyes shut for a while and then when I moved she said, “Will you do something for me?”

What, I asked.

“Will you stay down here with me and let the door be open for air?”

Well, I agreed, and we turned out the lights in her room, with only the light from outside and the fan, and I sat by her for quite a time. She began to breathe in a funny quick way like she’d just run upstairs, as she said she was stifled, and she spoke several times—once she said, please don’t, and another I think she said my name but it was all blurred—well, I felt she was asleep and after I said her name and she didn’t answer, I went out and locked up and then set the alarm for early the next morning. I thought she went off to sleep so easy, I wasn’t to tell. I thought it was for the best, and I thought the pills might do the trick and she would be better the next morning, with the worst past. I even felt it was a good thing, her being ill, because if she hadn’t there would have been a lot of trouble of the old kind.

What I am trying to say is that it all came unexpected. I know what I did next day was a mistake, but up to that day I thought I was acting for the best and within my rights.

It’s the seventh night.

I keep on thinking the same things. If only they knew. If only
they
knew.

Share the outrage.

So now I’m trying to tell it to this pad he bought me this morning. His kindness.

Calmly.

Deep down I get more and more frightened. It’s only surface calm.

No nastiness, no sex thing. But his eyes are mad. Grey with a grey lost light in them. To begin with I watched him all the time. I thought it must be sex, if I turned my back I did it where he couldn’t spring at me, and I listened. I had to know exactly where he was in the room.

Power. It’s become so
real
.

I know the H-bomb is wrong. But being so weak seems wrong now too.

I wish I knew judo. Could make him cry for mercy.

This crypt-room is so stuffy, the walls squeeze in, I’m listening for him as I write, the thoughts I have are like bad drawings. Must be torn up at once.

Try try try to escape.

It’s all I think of.

A strange thing. He fascinates me. I feel the deepest contempt and loathing for him, I can’t stand this room, everybody will be wild with worry. I can sense their wild worry.