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The Collector

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One request — no, I don’t ask him for things, I order them. I commanded him to try and buy a George Paston. I gave him a list of galleries where he might find things by G.P. I even tried to get him to go to the studio.

But as soon as he heard it was in Hampstead, he smelt a rat. He wanted to know if I knew this George Paston. I said, no, well, just by name. But it didn’t sound very convincing; and I was afraid he wouldn’t buy any of his pictures anywhere. So I said, he’s a casual friend of mine, he’s quite old, but he’s a very good painter, and he badly needs money and I should very much like some of his pictures. We could hang them on the walls. If you bought straight from him we wouldn’t be paying money to the galleries, but I can see you’re frightened to go, I said, so there’s an end to it. Of course he didn’t fall for that.

He wanted to know if G.P. was one of these paintpot-at-the-wall chaps. I just gave him a look.

C. I was only joking.

M. Then don’t.

After a bit, he said, he would want to know where I came from and all.

I told him what he could say, and he said he’d think about it. Which is Calibanese for “no.” It was too much to expect; and there probably won’t be anything in any of the galleries.

And I don’t worry because I’m not going to be here this time tomorrow. I’m going to escape.

He’ll go off after breakfast. He’s going to leave my lunch. So I shall have four or five hours (unless he cheats and doesn’t get all I’ve asked, but he’s never failed before).

I felt sorry for Caliban this evening. He will suffer when I am gone. There will be nothing left. He’ll be alone with all his sex neurosis and his class neurosis and his uselessness and his emptiness. He’s asked for it. I’m not really sorry. But I’m not absolutely unsorry.

November 4

I couldn’t write yesterday. Too fed up.

I was so stupid. I got him away all yesterday. I had hours to escape. But I never really thought of the problems. I saw myself scooping out handfuls of soft loamy earth. The nail was useless, it wouldn’t dig the cement properly. I thought it would crumble away. It was terribly hard. I took hours to get one stone out. There wasn’t earth behind, but another stone, a bigger one, chalk, and I couldn’t even find where its edge was. I got another stone out of the wall, but it didn’t help. There was the same huge stone behind. I began to get desperate, I saw the tunnel was no good. I hit violently at the door, I tried to force it with the nail, and managed to hurt my hand. That’s all. All I had at the end was a sore hand and broken fingernails.

I’m just not strong enough, without tools. Even with tools.

In the end I put the stones back and powdered (as well as I could) the cement and mixed it with water and talcum powder to camouflage the hole. It’s typical of the states I get in here — I suddenly told myself that the digging would have to be done over a number of days, the only stupid thing was to expect to do it all in one.

So I spent a long time trying to hide the place.

But it was no good, little bits fell out, and I’d started in the most obvious place, where he’s bound to spot it.

So I gave up. I suddenly decided it was all petty, stupid, useless. Like a bad drawing. Unrescuable.

When he came at last, he saw it at once. He always sniffs round as soon as he enters. Then he started to see how far I had gone. I sat on the bed and watched him. In the end I threw the nail at him.

He’s cemented the stones back. He says it’s solid chalk behind all the way round.

I wouldn’t speak to him all the evening, or look at the things he’d bought, even though I could see one of them was a picture-frame.

I took a sleeping-pill and went to bed straight after supper.

Then, this morning (I woke up early) before he came down, I decided to pass it off as something unimportant. To be normal.

Not to give in.

I unpacked all the things he’d bought. First of all, there was G.P.’s picture. It is a drawing of a girl (young woman), a nude, not like anything else of his I have seen, and I think it must be something he did a long time ago. It is his. It has his simplicity of line, hatred of fussiness, of Topolskitis. She’s half-turned away, hanging up or taking down a dress from a hook. A pretty face? It’s difficult to say. Rather a heavy Maillol body. It’s not worth dozens of things he’s done since.

But real.

I kissed it when I unwrapped it. I’ve been looking at some of the lines not as lines, but as things he has touched. All morning. Now.

Not love. Humanity.

Caliban was surprised that I seemed so positively gay when he came in. I thanked him for all he had bought. I said, you can’t be a proper prisoner if you don’t try to escape and now don’t let’s talk about it — agreed?

He said that he’d telephoned every gallery I gave him the name of. There was only the one thing.

Thank you very much, I said. May I keep it down here? And when I go, I’ll give it to you. (I shan’t — he said he’d rather have a drawing of mine, in any case.)

I asked him if he had posted the letter. He said he had, but I saw he was going red. I told him I believed him and that it would be such a dirty trick not to post the letter that I was sure he must have posted it.

I feel almost certain he funked it, as he funked the cheque. It would be just like him. But nothing I say will make him post it. So I’ve decided that I will suppose he has posted it.

Midnight. I had to stop. He came down.

We’ve been playing the records he bought.

Bartok’s Music for Percussion and Celesta.

The loveliest.

It made me think of Collioure last summer. The day we went, all four of us with the French students, up through the ilexes to the tower. The ilexes. An absolutely new colour, amazing chestnut, rufous, burning, bleeding, where they had cut away the cork. The cicadas. The wild azure sea through the stems and the heat and the smell of everything burnt in it. Piers and I and everyone except Minny got a bit tipsy. Sleeping in the shade, waking up staring through the leaves at the cobalt blue sky, thinking how impossible things were to paint, how can some blue pigment ever mean the living blue light of the sky. I suddenly felt I didn’t want to paint, painting was just showing off, the thing was to experience and experience for ever more.

The beautiful clean sun on the blood-red stems.

And coming back I had a long talk with the nice shy boy, Jean-Louis. His bad English and my bad French, yet we understood each other. Terribly timid he was. Frightened of Piers. Jealous of him. Jealous of his throwing an arm round me, the silly lout Piers is. And when I discovered he was going to be a priest.

Piers was so crude afterwards. That stupid clumsy fright-ened-of-being-soft English male cruelty to the truth. He couldn’t see that of course poor Jean-Louis liked me, of course he was sexually attracted, but there was this other thing, it wasn’t really shyness, it was a determination to try to be a priest and to live in the world. A simply colossal effort of coming to terms with oneself. Like destroying all the paintings one’s ever done and making a new start. Only he had to do it every day. Every time he saw a girl he liked. And all Piers could say was: I bet he’s having dirty dreams about you.

So ghastly, that arrogance, that insensitivity, of boys who’ve been to public schools. Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can’t have affected you. I always know when he doesn’t understand something. He gets cynical, he says something shocking.

When I told G.P. about it much later, he just said, poor frog, he was probably on his knees praying to forget you.

Watching Piers throw stones out to sea — where was it? — somewhere near Valencia. So beautiful, like a young god, all golden-brown, with his dark hair. His swimming-slip. And Minny said (she was lying beside me, oh, it’s so clear) she said, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Piers was dumb.

And then she said, could you go to bed with him?

I said, no. Then, I don’t know.

Piers came up then and wanted to know what she was smiling about.

Nanda’s just told me a secret, she said. About you.

Piers made some feeble joke and went off to get the lunch from the car with Peter.

What’s the secret, I wanted to know.

Bodies beat minds, she said.

Clever Carmen Grey always knows what to say.

I knew you’d say that, she said. She was doodling in the sand and I was on my tummy watching her. She said, what I mean is he’s so terribly good-looking, one could forget he’s so stupid. You might think, I could marry him and teach him. Couldn’t you? And you know you couldn’t. Or you could go to bed with him just for fun and one day you’d suddenly find you were in love with his body and you couldn’t live without it and you’d be stuck with his rotten mind for ever and ever.

Then she said, doesn’t it terrify you?

Not more than so many other things.

I’m serious. If you married him I’d never speak to you again.

And she was serious. That very quick grey shy look she puts on, like a little lance. I got up and kissed her on the way up and went to meet the boys. And she sat there, still looking down at the sand.

We’re both terrible lookers-through. We can’t help it. But she’s always said, I believe this, I shall act like this. It’s got to be someone you at least feel is your equal, who can look through as well as you. And the body thing’s always got to be second. And I’ve always secretly thought, Carmen will be another spinster. It’s too complicated for set ideas.