The Collector (7 page)

“You need a doctor.”

I just made a noise.

“I’d like to help you.”

You think I’m mad because of what I’ve done. I’m not mad. It’s just, well, I’ve got no one else. There’s never been anyone but you I’ve ever wanted to know.

“That’s the worst kind of illness,” she said. She turned round then, all this was while I was tying. She looked down. “I feel sorry for you.”

Then she changed, she said, “What about washing? I’ve washed some things. Can I hang them out? Or is there a laundry?”

I said, I’ll dry them in the kitchen. You can’t send anything to the laundry.

“What now?”

And she looked round. There was something mischievous about her sometimes, you could see she was looking for trouble, in a nice way. Teasing like.

“Aren’t you going to show me your house?”

She had a real smile on, the first I ever saw; I couldn’t do anything but smile back.

It’s late, I said.

“How old is it?” She spoke as if she didn’t hear me.

There’s a stone says 1621 over the door.

“This is the wrong-coloured carpet. You ought to have rush matting or something. And those pictures—horrible!”

She moved along the landing to see them. Cunning.

They cost enough, I said.

“It’s not money you go by.”

I can’t say how strange it was, us standing there. Her making criticisms like a typical woman.

“Can I look in the rooms?”

I wasn’t myself, I couldn’t resist the pleasure, so I stood with her in the doorways and showed them, the one ready for Aunt Annie, and Mabel’s, if they ever came, and mine. Miranda looked very close round each one. Of course the curtains were drawn, and I watched right next to her to see she didn’t try any funny business.

I got a firm to do it all, I said, when we were at the door of mine.

“You’re very neat.”

She saw some old pictures of butterflies I bought in an antique shop. I chose them, I said.

“They’re the only decent things here.”

Well, there we were, she was making compliments and I admit I was pleased.

Then she said, “How quiet it is. I’ve been listening for cars. I think it must be North Essex.” I knew it was a test, she was watching me.

You’ve guessed right, I said. Acting surprised.

Suddenly she said, “It’s funny, I should be shivering with fear. But I feel safe with you.”

I’ll never hurt you. Unless you force me to.

It was suddenly as I always hoped, we were getting to know each other, she was beginning to see me for what I really was.

She said, “That air was wonderful. You can’t imagine. Even this air. It’s free. It’s everything I’m not.”

And she walked away, so I had to follow her downstairs. At the bottom in the hall she said, “Can I look in here?” Hung for a sheep as well as a lamb, I thought, anyway the shutters were across and the curtains. She went in the lounge and looked round it, touring round and looking at everything with her hands behind her back, it was comic, really.

“It’s a lovely room. It’s wicked to fill it with all this shoddy stuff. Such muck!” She actually kicked one of the chairs. I suppose I looked like I felt (offended) because she said, “But you must see it’s wrong! Those terrible chichi wall-lamps and”—she suddenly caught sight of them—“not china wild duck!” She looked at me with real anger, then back at the ducks.

“My arms ache. Would you mind tying my hands in front of me for a change?”

I didn’t want to spoil the mood, as they say, I couldn’t see any harm, as soon as I had the cords off her hands (I was all ready for trouble) she turned and held her hands out in front for me to tie, which I did. Then she shocked me. She went up to the fireplace where the wild duck were, there were three hung up, thirty-bob each and before you could say Jack Knife she had them off the hook and bang crash on the hearth. In smithereens.

Thank you very much, I said, very sarcastic.

“A house as old as this has a soul. And you can’t do things like that to beautiful things like this old, old room so many people have lived in. Can’t you feel that?”

I haven’t any experience in furnishing, I said.

She just gave me a funny look and went past me into the room opposite, what I called the dining-room, though the furniture people called it the dual-purpose room, it was half fitted out for me to work in. There were my three cabinets, which she saw at once.

“Aren’t you going to show me my fellow-victims?”

Of course I wanted nothing better. I pulled out one or two of the most attractive drawers—members of the same genus drawers, nothing serious, just for show, really.

“Did you buy them?”

Of course not, I said. All caught or bred by me and set and arranged by me. The lot.

“They’re beautifully done.”

I showed her a drawer of Chalkhill and Adonis Blues, I have a beautiful var.
ceroneus
Adonis and some var.
tithonus
Chalkhills, and I pointed them out. The var.
ceroneus
is better than any they got in the N.H. Museum. I was proud to be able to tell her something. She had never heard of aberrations.

“They’re beautiful. But sad.”

Everything’s sad if you make it so, I said.

“But it’s you who make it so!” She was staring at me across the drawer. “How many butterflies have you killed?”

You can see.

“No, I can’t. I’m thinking of all the butterflies that would have come from these if you’d let them live. I’m thinking of all the living beauty you’ve ended.”

You can’t tell.

“You don’t even share it. Who sees these? You’re like a miser, you hoard up all the beauty in these drawers.”

I was really very disappointed, I thought all her talk was very silly. What difference would a dozen specimens make to a species?

“I hate scientists,” she said. “I hate people who collect things, and classify things and give them names and then forget all about them. That’s what people are always doing in art. They call a painter an impressionist or a cubist or something and then they put him in a drawer and don’t see him as a living individual painter any more. But I can see they’re beautifully arranged.”

She was trying to be nice again.

The next thing I said was, I do photography too.

I had some pictures of the woods behind the house, and some of the sea coming over the wall at Seaford, really nice ones, I enlarged them myself. I put them out on the table where she could see them.

She looked at them, she didn’t say anything.

They’re not much, I said. I haven’t been doing it long.

“They’re dead,” She gave me a funny look sideways. “Not these particularly. All photos. When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies.”

It’s like a record, I said.

“Yes. All dry and dead.” Well I was going to argue, but she went on, she said, “These are clever. They’re good photographs as photographs go.”

After a bit I said, I’d like to take some pictures of you.

“Why?”

You’re what they call photogenic.

She looked down, then she looked up at me and said, “All right. If you want to. Tomorrow.”

That gave me a real thrill. Things were really changed.

I decided about then it was time she went down. She didn’t hardly object, just shrugged, let me tie the gag, and all went well as before.

Well, when we were down, she wanted a cup of tea (some special China she made me buy). I took the gag off and she came out in the outer cellar (her hands still bound) and looked at where I cooked her meals and all that. We didn’t say anything, it was nice. The kettle boiling and her there. Of course I kept a sharp eye on her. When it was made, I said, shall I be mother?

“That’s a
horrid
expression.”

What’s wrong with it?

“It’s like those wild duck. It’s suburban, it’s stale, it’s dead, it’s… oh, everything square that ever was. You know?”

I think you’d better be mother, I said.

Then it was strange, she smiled just like she was going to laugh, and then she stopped and turned and went into her room, where I followed with the tray. She poured out the tea, but something had made her angry, you could see. She wouldn’t look at me.

I didn’t mean to offend you, I said.

“I suddenly thought of my family. They won’t be laughing over jolly cups of tea this evening.”

Four weeks, I said.

“Don’t remind me of it!”

She was just like a woman. Unpredictable. Smiling one minute and spiteful the next.

She said, “You’re loathsome. And you make me loathsome.”

It won’t be long.

Then she said something I’ve never heard a woman say before. It really shocked me.

I said, I don’t like words like that. It’s disgusting.

Then she said it again, really screamed it at me.

I couldn’t follow all her moods sometimes.

She was all right the next morning, though she did not apologize. Also, the two vases in her room were broken on the steps when I went in. As always, she was up and waiting for me when I came in with her breakfast.

Well, the first thing she wanted to know was whether I was going to allow her to see daylight. I told her it was raining.

“Why couldn’t I go out into the other cellar and walk up and down? I want exercise.”

We had a good old argument about that. In the end the arrangement was if she wanted to walk there in daytime she would have to have the gag on. I couldn’t risk someone chancing to be round the back—not that it was likely, of course, the front gate and garage gate were locked always. But at night just the hands would do. I said I wouldn’t promise more than one bath a week. And nothing about daylight. I thought for a moment she would go into one of her sulks again, but she began to understand about that time sulks didn’t get her anywhere, so she accepted my rules.

Perhaps I was overstrict, I erred on the strict side. But you had to be careful. For instance, at week-ends there was a lot more traffic about. Fine Sundays there were cars passing every five minutes. Often they would slow as they passed Fosters, some would reverse back to have another look, some even had the cheek to push their cameras through the front gate and take photos. So on week-ends I never let her leave her room.

One day I was just driving out to go down to Lewes and a man in a car stopped me. Was I the owner? He was one of those ever-so-cultured types with a plum in their throat. The I’m-a-friend-of-the-boss type. He talked a lot of stuff about the house and how he was writing some article for a magazine and would I let him look round and take photographs, he especially wanted to have a look at the priest’s chapel.

There’s no chapel here, I said.

But my dear man, that’s fantastic, he said, it’s mentioned in the County History. In dozens of books.

You mean that old place in the cellar, I said, as if I had just cottoned on. That’s blocked up. Been bricked in.

But this is a scheduled building. You can’t do things like that.

I said, well it’s still there. It’s just you can’t see anything. It was done before I came.

Then he wanted to look indoors. I said I was in a hurry, I couldn’t wait. He’d come back—“Just tell me a day.” I wouldn’t have it. I said I got a lot of requests. He went on nosing, he even started threatening me with an order to view, the Ancient Monuments people (whoever they are) would back him up, really offensive, and slimy at the same time. In the end he just drove off. It was all bluff on his part, but that was the sort of thing I had to think about.

I took the photos that evening. Just ordinary, of her sitting reading. They came out quite well.

One day about then she did a picture of me, like returned the compliment. I had to sit in a chair and look at the corner of the room. After half an hour she tore up the drawing before I could stop her. (She often tore up. Artistic temperament, I suppose.)

I’d have liked it, I said. But she didn’t even reply to that, she just said, don’t move.

From time to time she talked. Mostly personal remarks.

“You’re very difficult to get. You’re so featureless. Everything’s nondescript. I’m thinking of you as an object, not as a person.”

Later she said, “You’re not ugly, but your face has all sorts of ugly habits. Your underlip is worst. It betrays you.” I looked in the mirror upstairs, but I couldn’t see what she meant.

Sometimes she’d come out of the blue with funny questions.

“Do you believe in God?” was one.

Not much, I answered.

“It must be yes or no.”

I don’t think about it. Don’t see that it matters.

“You’re the one imprisoned in a cellar,” she said.

Do you believe, I asked.

“Of course I do. I’m a human being.”

She said, stop talking, when I was going on.

She complained about the light. “It’s this artificial light. I can never draw by it. It lies.”

I knew what she was getting at, so I kept my mouth shut.

Then again—it may not have been that first morning she drew me, I can’t remember which day it was—she suddenly came out with, “You’re lucky having no parents. Mine have only kept together because of my sister and me.”

How do you know, I said.

“Because my mother’s told me,” she said. “And my father. My mother’s a bitch. A nasty ambitious middle-class bitch. She drinks.”

I heard, I said.

“I could never have friends to stay.”

I’m sorry, I said. She gave me a sharp look, but I wasn’t being sarcastic. I told her about my father drinking, and my mother.

“My father’s weak, though I love him very much. Do you know what he said to me one day? He said, I don’t know how two such bad parents can have produced two such good daughters. He was thinking of my sister, really. She’s the really clever one.”