The Collector (15 page)

How can he love me? How can you love someone you don’t know?

He wants desperately to please me. But that’s what madmen must be like. They aren’t deliberately mad, they must be as shocked in a way as everyone else when they finally do something terrible.

It’s only this last day or two I could speak about him so.

All the way down here in the van it was nightmare. Wanting to be sick and afraid of choking under the gag. And then being sick. Thinking I was going to be pulled into some thicket and raped and murdered. I was sure that was it when the van stopped, I think that was why I was sick. Not just the beastly chloroform. (I kept on remembering Penny Lester’s grisly dormitory stories about how her mother survived being raped by the Japanese, I kept on saying, don’t resist, don’t resist. And then someone else at Ladymont once said that it takes two men to rape you. Women who let themselves be raped by one man want to be raped.) I know now that wouldn’t be his way. He’d use chloroform again, or something. But that first night it was, don’t resist, don’t resist.

I was grateful to be alive. I am a terrible coward, I don’t want to die, I love life so passionately, I never knew how much I wanted to live before. If I get out of this, I shall never be the same.

I don’t care what he does. So long as I live.

It’s all the vile unspeakable things he
could
do.

I’ve looked everywhere for a weapon, but there’s nothing of any use, even if I had the strength and skill. I prop a chair against the iron door every night, so at least I shall know if he tries to get in without my hearing.

Hateful primitive wash-stand and place.

The great blank door. No keyhole. Nothing.

The silence. I’ve got a little more used to it now. But it is
terrible
. Never the least sound. It makes me feel I’m always waiting.

Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.

The collection of books on art. Nearly fifty pounds’ worth, I’ve added them up. That first night it suddenly dawned on me that they were there for
me
. That I wasn’t a haphazard victim after all.

Then there were the drawers full of clothes—shirts, skirts, dresses, coloured stockings, an extraordinary selection of week-end-in-Paris underwear, night-dresses. I could see they were about my size. They’re too large, but he says he’s seen me wear the colours.

Everything in my life seemed fine. There was G.P. But even that was strange. Exciting. Exciting.

Then this.

I slept a little with the light on, on top of the bed. I would have loved a drink, but I thought it might be drugged. I still half expect the food to be doped.

Seven days ago. It seems like seven weeks.

He looked so innocent and worried when he stopped me. He said he’d run over a dog. I thought it might be Misty. Exactly the sort of man you would
not
suspect. The most unwolflike.

Like falling off the edge of the world. There suddenly being an edge.

Every night I do something I haven’t done for years. I lie and pray. I don’t kneel, I know God despises kneelers. I lie and ask him to comfort M and D and Minny, and Caroline who must feel so guilty and everyone else, even the ones it would do good to suffer for me (or for anyone else). Like Piers and Antoinette. I ask him to help this misery who has me under his power. I ask him to help me. Not to let me be raped or abused and murdered. I ask him for light.

Literally. Daylight.

I can’t stand the absolute darkness. He’s bought me night-lights. I go to sleep with one glowing beside me now. Before that I left the light on.

Waking up is the worst thing. I wake up and for a moment I think I’m at home or at Caroline’s. Then it hits me.

I don’t know if I believe in God. I prayed to him furiously in the van when I thought I was going to die (that’s a proof
against
, I can hear G.P. saying). But praying makes things easier.

It’s all bits and pieces. I can’t concentrate. I’ve thought so many things, and now I can’t think of one.

But it makes me feel calmer. The illusion, anyway. Like working out how much money one’s spent. And how much is left.

He has never had any parents, he’s been brought up by an aunt. I can see her. A thin woman with a white face and a nasty tight mouth and mean grey eyes and dowdy beige tea-cosy hats and a thing about dirt and dust. Dirt and dust being everything outside her foul little back-street world.

I told him he was looking for the mother he’d never had, but of course he wouldn’t listen.

He doesn’t believe in God. That makes me want to believe.

I talked about me. About D and M, in a bright little matter-of-fact voice. He knew about
M.
I suppose the whole town knows.

My theory is that I have to unmartyr him.

The time in prison. Endless time.

The first morning. He knocked on the door and waited ten minutes (as he always does). It wasn’t a nice ten minutes, all the consoling thoughts I’d scraped together during the night tan away and I was left alone. I stood there and said, if he does, don’t resist, don’t resist. I was going to say, do what you like, but don’t kill me. Don’t kill me, you can do it again. As if I was washable. Hard-wearing.

It was all different. When he came in he just stood there looking gawky and then at once, seeing him without a hat on, I knew who he was. I suppose I memorize people’s features without thinking. I knew he was the clerk from the Town Hall Annexe. The fabulous pools win. His photo in the paper. We all said we’d seen him about.

He tried to deny it, but he went red. He blushes at everything.

Simple as sneezing to put him on the defensive. His face has a sort of natural “hurt” set. Sheepish. No, giraffish. Like a lanky gawky giraffe. I kept on popping questions, he wouldn’t answer, all he could do was look as if I had no right to ask. As if
this
wasn’t at all what he’d bargained for.

He’s never had anything to do with girls. With girls like me, anyway.

A lilywhite boy.

He’s six feet. Eight or nine inches more than me. Skinny, so he looks taller than he is. Gangly. Hands too big, a nasty fleshy white and pink. Not a man’s hands. Adam’s apple too big, wrists too big, chin much too big, underlip bitten in, edges of nostrils red. Adenoids. He’s got one of those funny inbetween voices, uneducated trying to be educated. It keeps on letting him down. His whole face is too long. Dull black hair. It waves and recedes, it’s coarse. Stiff. Always in place. He always wears a sports coat and flannels and a pinned tie. Even cuff-links.

He’s what people call a “nice young man.”

Absolutely sexless (he looks).

He has a way of standing with his hands by his side or behind his back, as if he doesn’t know what on earth to do with them. Respectfully waiting for me to give my orders.

Fish-eyes. They watch. That’s all. No expression.

He makes me feel capricious. Like a dissatisfied rich customer (he’s a male assistant in a draper’s).

It’s his line. The mock-humble. Ever-so-sorry.

I sit and eat my meals and read a book and he watches me. If I tell him to go, he goes.

He’s been secretly watching me for nearly two years. He loves me desperately, he was very lonely, he knew I would always be “above” him. It was awful, he spoke so awkwardly, he always has to say things in a roundabout way, he always has to justify himself at the same time. I sat and listened. I couldn’t look at him.

It was his heart. Sicked up all over the hideous tangerine carpet. We just sat there when he had finished. When lie got up to go I tried to tell him that I understood, that I wouldn’t say anything if he would take me home, but he backed away out. I tried to look very understanding, very sympathetic, but it seemed to frighten him.

The next morning I tried again, I found out what his name was (vile coincidence!), I was very reasonable, I looked up at him and appealed, but once again it just frightened him.

At lunch I told him I could see he was ashamed of what he was doing, and that it wasn’t too late. You hit his conscience and it gives, but it doesn’t hurt him at all. I am ashamed, he says; I know I ought, he says. I told him he didn’t look a wicked person. He said, this is the first wicked thing I’ve ever done.

It probably is. But he’s been saving up.

Sometimes I think he’s being very clever. He’s trying to enlist my sympathy by pretending he’s in the grip of some third thing.

That night I tried not being decent, being sharp and bitchy instead. He just looked more hurt than ever. He’s very clever at looking hurt.

Putting the tentacles of his being hurt around me.

His not being my “class.”

I know what I am to him. A butterfly he has always wanted to catch. I remember (the very first time I met him) G.P. saying that collectors were the worst animals of all. He meant art collectors, of course. I didn’t really understand, I thought he was just trying to shock Caroline—and me. But of course, he is right. They’re anti-life, anti-art, anti-everything.

I write in this terrible nightlike silence as if I feel normal. But I’m not. I’m so sick, so frightened, so alone. The solitude is unbearable. Every time the door opens I want to rush at it and out. But I know now I must save up my escape attempts. Outwit him. Plan ahead.

Survive
.

It’s afternoon. I should be in life class. Does the world go on? Does the sun still shine? Last night, I thought—I am dead. This is death. This is hell. There wouldn’t be other people in hell. Or just one, like him. The devil wouldn’t be devilish and rather attractive, but like him.

I drew him this morning. I wanted to get his face, to illustrate this. But it wasn’t any good, and he wanted it. Said he would pay TWO HUNDRED guineas for it. He is mad.

It is me. I am his madness.

For years he’s been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me.

I can’t write in a vacuum like this. To no one. When I draw I always think of someone like G.P. at my shoulder.

All parents should be like ours, then sisters really become sisters. They
have
to be to each other what Minny and I are.

Dear Minny.

I have been here over a week now, and I miss you very much, and I miss the fresh air and the fresh faces of all those people I so hated on the Tube and the fresh things that happened every hour of every day if only I could have seen them—their freshness, I mean. The thing I miss most is fresh light. I can’t live without light. Artificial light, all the lines lie, it almost makes you long for darkness.

I haven’t told you how I tried to escape. I thought about it all night, I couldn’t sleep, it was so stuffy, and my tummy’s all wrong (he tries his best to cook, but it’s hopeless). I pretended something was wrong with the bed, and then I just turned and ran. But I couldn’t get the door shut to lock him in and he caught me in the other cellar. I could see daylight through a keyhole.

He thinks of everything. He padlocks the door open. It was worth it. One keyholeful of light in seven days. He foresaw I would try and get out and lock him in.

Then I treated him for three days with a view of my back and my sulky face. I fasted. I slept. When I was sure he wouldn’t come in I got up and danced about a bit, and read the art books and drank water. But I didn’t touch his food.

And I brought him to terms. His condition was six weeks. A week ago six hours would have been too much. I cried. Brought him down to four weeks. I’m not less horrified at being with him. I’ve grown to know every inch of this foul little crypt, it’s beginning to grow on me like those coats of stones on the worms in rivers. But the four weeks seem less important.

I don’t seem to have any energy, any will, I’m constipated in all ways.

Minny, going upstairs with him yesterday. First, the outside air, being in a space bigger than ten by ten by twenty (I’ve measured it out), being under the stars, and breathing in wonderful wonderful, even though it was damp and misty, wonderful air.

I thought I might be able to run. But he gripped my arm and I was gagged and bound. It was so dark. So lonely. No lights. Just darkness. I didn’t even know which way to run.

The house is an old cottage. I think it may be timbered outside, indoors there are a lot of beams, the floors all sag, and the ceilings are very low. A lovely old house really, done up in
the
most excruciating women’s magazine “good taste.” Ghastliest colour-clashes, mix-up of furniture styles, bits of suburban fuss, phoney antiques, awful brass ornaments. And the pictures! You wouldn’t believe me if I described the awfulness of the pictures. He told me some firm did all the furniture choosing and decorating. They must have got rid of all the junk they could find in their store-rooms.

The bath was delicious. I knew he might burst in (no lock on the door, couldn’t even shut it, there was a screwed-in bit of wood). But somehow I knew he wouldn’t. And it was so lovely to see a bathful of hot water and a proper place that I almost didn’t care. I made him wait hours. Just outside. He didn’t seem to mind. He was “good.”

Nothing makes him mind.

But I’ve seen a way to get a message out. I could put a message in a little bottle down the place. I could put a bright ribbon round it. Perhaps someone would see it somewhere some day. I’ll do it next time.

I listened for traffic, but there was none. I heard an owl. And an aeroplane.

If only people knew what they flew over.

We’re all in aeroplanes.

The bathroom window was boarded up. Great screws. I looked everywhere for a weapon. Under the bath, behind the pipes. But there’s nothing. Even if I found one I don’t know how I’d use it. I watch him and he watches me. We never give each other a chance. He doesn’t look very strong, but he’s much stronger than me. It would have to be by surprise.