The Collector

by John Fowles

  M. Don’t be so wet.

  C. I was a private in the army. You can’t tell me. My lot just do what they’re told (_he was really quite worked up—for him_) and better look out if they don’t.

  M. You haven’t caught up with yourself. You’re rich now. You’ve got nothing to be hurt about.

  C. Money doesn’t make all that difference.

  M. Nobody can order you about any more.

  C. You don’t understand me at all.

  M. Oh, yes I do. I know you’re not a teddy. But deep down you feel like one. You hate being an underdog, you hate not being able to express yourself properly. They go and smash things, you sit and sulk. You say, I won’t help the world. I won’t do the smallest good thing for humanity. I’ll just think of myself and humanity can go and stew for all I care. (_It’s like continually slapping someone across the face—almost a wince_.) What use do you think money is unless it’s used? Do you understand what I’m talking about?

  C. Yes.

  M. Well?

  C. Oh … you’re right. As always.

  M. Are you being sarcastic again?

  C. You’re like my Aunt Annie. She’s always going on about the way people behave nowadays. Not caring and all that.

  M. You seem to think it’s right to be wrong.

  C. Do you want your tea?

  M. (_superhuman effort_) Look, for the sake of argument, we’ll say that however much good you tried to do in society, in fact you’d never do any good. That’s ridiculous, but never mind. There’s still yourself. I don’t think the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has much chance of actually affecting the government. It’s one of the first things you have to face up to. But we do it to keep our self-respect to show to ourselves, each one to himself or herself, that we care. And to let other people, all the lazy, sulky, hopeless ones like you, know that someone cares. We’re trying to shame you into thinking about it, about acting. (_Silence—then I shouted_.) Say something!

  C. I know it’s evil.

  M. Do something, then! (_He gawped at me as if I’d told him to swim the Atlantic_.) Look. A friend of mine went on a march to an American air-station in Essex. You know? They were stopped outside the gate, of course, and after a time the sergeant on guard came out and spoke to them and they began an argument and it got very heated because this sergeant thought that the Americans were like knights of old rescuing a damsel in distress. That the H-bombers were absolutely necessary—and so on. Gradually as they were arguing they began to realize that they rather liked the American. Because he felt very strongly, and honestly, about his views. It wasn’t only my friend. They all agreed about it afterwards. The only thing that really matters is feeling and living what you believe—so long as it’s something more than belief in your own comfort. My friend said he was nearer to that American sergeant than to all the grinning idiots who watched them march past on the way. It’s like football. Two sides may each want to beat the other, they may even hate each other as sides, but if someone came and told them football is stupid and not worth playing or caring about, then they’d feel together. It’s feeling that matters. Can’t you see?

  C. I thought we were talking about the H-bomb.

  M. Go away. You exhaust me. You’re like a sea of cotton wool.

  C. (_he stood up at once_) I do like to hear you talk. I do think about what you say.

  M. No, you don’t. You put what I say in your mind and wrap it up and it disappears for ever.

  C. If I wanted to send a cheque to the … this lot … what’s the address?

  M. To buy my approval?

  C. What’s wrong with that?

  M. We need money. But we need feeling even more. And I don’t think you’ve got any feeling to give away. You can’t win that by filling in a football coupon.

  C. (_there was an awkward silence_) See you later, then.

  (_Exit Caliban. I hit my pillow so hard that it has looked reproachful ever since_.)

  (This evening—as I knew I would and could—I coaxed and bullied him, and he wrote out a cheque for a hundred pounds, which he’s promised to send off tomorrow. I know this is right. A year ago I would have stuck to the strict moral point. Like Major Barbara. But the essential is that we have money. Not where the money comes from, or why it is sent.)

  October 19th

  I have been out.

  I was copying all the afternoon (Piero) and I was in the sort of mood where normally I have to go out to the cinema or to a coffee-bar, anywhere. But out.

  I made him take me by giving myself to him like a slave. Bind me, I said, but take me.

  He bound and gagged me, held my arm, and we walked round the garden. Quite a big one. It was very dark, I could just make out the path and some trees. And it is very lonely. Right out in the country somewhere.

  Then suddenly in the darkness I knew something was wrong with him. I couldn’t see him, but I was suddenly frightened, I just knew he wanted to kiss me or something worse. He tried to say something about being very happy; his voice very strained. Choked. And then, that I didn’t think he had any deep feelings, but he had. It’s so terrible not being able to speak. My tongue’s my defence with him, normally. My tongue and my look. There was a little silence, but I knew he was pent up.

  All the time I was breathing in beautiful outdoor air. That was good, so good I can’t describe it. So living, so full of plant smells and country smells and the thousand mysterious wet smells of the night.

  Then a car passed. So there is a road which is used in front of the house. As soon as we heard the engine his grip tightened. I prayed the car would stop, but its lights just swept past behind the house.

  Luckily I’d thought it out before. If I ever try to escape, and fail, he’ll never let me out again. So I must not jump at the first chance. And I knew, out there, that he would have killed me rather than let me get away. If I’d tried to run for it. I couldn’t have, anyway, he held my arm like a vice.

  But it was terrible. Knowing other people were so near. And knew nothing.

  He asked me if I wanted to go round again. But I shook my head. I was too frightened.

  Back down here I told him that I had to get the sex business cleared up.

  I told him that if he suddenly wanted to rape me, I wouldn’t resist, I would let him do what he liked, but that I would never speak to him again. I said I knew he would be ashamed of himself, too. Miserable creature, he looked ashamed enough as it was. It was “only a moment’s weakness.” I made him shake hands, but I bet he breathed a sigh of relief when he got outside again.

  No one would believe this situation. He keeps me absolutely prisoner. But in everything else I am mistress. I realize that he encourages it, it’s a means of keeping me from being as discontented as I should be.

  The same thing happened when I was lameducking Donald last spring. I began to feel he was mine, that I knew all about him. And I hated it when he went off to Italy like that, without telling me. Not because I was seriously in love with him, but because he was vaguely mine and didn’t get permission from me.

  The isolation he keeps me in. No newspapers. No radio. No TV. I miss the news terribly. I never did. But now I feel the world has ceased to exist.

  I ask him every day to get me a newspaper, but it’s one of those things where he sticks his heels in. No reason. It’s funny, I know it’s no good asking. I might just as well ask him to drive me to the nearest station.

  I shall go on asking him, all the same.

  He swears blind that he sent the CND cheque, but I don’t know. I shall ask to see the receipt.

  Incident. Today at lunch I wanted the Worcester sauce. He hardly ever forgets to bring anything I might want. But no Worcester sauce. So he gets up, goes out, undoes the padlock holding the door open, locks the door, gets the sauce in the outer cellar, unlocks the door, re-padlocks it, comes back. And then looks surprised when I laugh.

  He never gives the locking-unlocking routine a m
iss. Even if I do get out into the outer cellar unbound, what can I do? I can’t lock him in, I can’t get out. The only chance I might have is when he comes in with the tray. Sometimes he doesn’t padlock the door back first. So if I could get past him then, I could bolt him in. But he won’t come past the door unless I’m well away from it. Usually I go and take the tray.

  The other day I wouldn’t. I just leant against the wall by the door. He said, please go away. I just stared at him. He held out the tray. I ignored it. He stood there undecided. Then he bent very cautiously, watching my every move, and put the tray down in the doorway. Then went back into the outer cellar.

  I was hungry. He won.

  No good. I can’t sleep.

  It’s seemed a funny day. Even for here.

  He took a lot more photos of me this morning. He really enjoys it. He likes me to smile at the camera, so twice I pulled shocking faces. He was not amused. Then I put my hair up with one hand and pretended I was a model.

  You ought to be a model, he said. Quite serious. He didn’t realize I was guying the whole idea.

  I know why he likes the photographing business. He thinks it makes me think he’s artistic. And of course he hasn’t a clue. I mean he gets me in focus, and that’s all. No imagination.

  It’s weird. Uncanny. But there is a sort of relationship between us. I make fun of him, I attack him all the time, but he senses when I’m “soft.” When he can dig back and not make me angry. So we slip into teasing states that are almost friendly. It’s partly because I’m so lonely, it’s partly deliberate (I want to make him relax, both for his own good and so that one day he may make a mistake), so it’s part weakness, and part cunning, and part charity. But there’s a mysterious fourth part I can’t define. It can’t be friendship, I loathe him.

  Perhaps it’s just knowledge. Just knowing a lot about him. And knowing someone automatically makes you feel close to him. Even when you wish he was on another planet.

  The first days, I couldn’t do anything if he was in the room. I pretended to read, but I couldn’t concentrate. But now I sometimes forget he’s here. He sits by the door and I read in my chair, and we’re like two people who’ve been married years.

  It is not that I have forgotten what other people are like. But other people seem to have lost reality. The only real person in my world is Caliban.

  It can’t be understood. It just is.

  October 20th

  It’s eleven o’clock in the morning.

  I’ve just tried to escape.

  What I did was to wait for him to unbolt the door, which opens outwards. Then to push it back as violently as possible. It’s only metal-lined on this side, it’s made of wood, but it’s very heavy. I thought I might hit him with it and knock him out, if I did it at just the right moment.

  So as soon as it began to move back, I gave it the biggest push I could manage. It knocked him back and I rushed out, but of course it depended on his being stunned. And he wasn’t at all. He must have taken the force of it on his shoulder, it doesn’t swing very smoothly.

  At any rate he caught my jumper. For a second there was that other side of him I sense, the violence, hatred, absolute determination not to let me go. So I said, all right, and pulled myself away and went back.

  He said, you might have hurt me, that door’s very heavy.

  I said, every second you keep me here, you hurt me.

  I thought pacifists didn’t believe in hurting people, he said.

  I just shrugged and lit a cigarette. I was trembling.

  He did all the usual morning routine in silence. Once he rubbed his shoulder in rather an obvious way. And that was that.

  Now I’m going to look properly for loose stones. The tunnel idea. Of course I’ve looked before, but not really closely, literally stone by stone, from top to bottom of each wall.

  It’s evening. He’s just gone away. He brought me my food. But he’s been very silent. Disapproving. I laughed out loud when he went away with the supper-things. He behaves exactly as if I ought to be ashamed.

  He won’t be caught by the door trick again. There aren’t any loose stones. All solidly concreted in. I suppose he thought of that as well as of everything else.

  I’ve spent most of today thinking. About me. What will happen to me? I’ve never felt the mystery of the future so much as here. What will happen? What will happen?

  It’s not only now, in this situation. When I get away. What shall I do? I want to marry, I want to have children, I want to prove to myself that all marriages needn’t be like D and M’s. I know exactly the sort of person I want to marry, someone with a mind like G.P.’s, only much nearer my own age, and with the looks I like. And without his one horrid weakness. But then I want to use my feelings about life. I don’t want to use my skill vainly, for its own sake. But I want to make beauty. And marriage and being a mother terrifies me for that reason. Getting sucked down into the house and the house things and the baby-world and the child-world and the cooking-world and the shopping-world. I have a feeling a lazy-cow me would welcome it, would forget what I once wanted to do, and I would just become a Great Female Cabbage. Or I would have to do miserable work like illustrating, or even commercial stuff, to keep the home going. Or turn into a bitchy ginny misery like M (no, I couldn’t be like her). Or worst of all be like Caroline, running along pathetically after modern art and modern ideas and never catching up with them because she’s someone quite different at heart and yet can never see it.

  I think and think down here. I understand things I haven’t really thought about before.

  Two things. M. I’ve never really thought of M objectively before, as another person. She’s always been my mother I’ve hated or been ashamed of. Yet of all the lame ducks I’ve met or heard of, she’s the lamest. I’ve never given her enough sympathy. I haven’t given her this last year (since I left home) one half of the consideration I’ve given the beastly creature upstairs just this last week. I feel that I could overwhelm her with love now. Because I haven’t felt so sorry for her for years. I’ve always excused myself—I’ve said, I’m kind and tolerant with everyone else, she’s the one person I can’t be like that with, and there has to be an exception to the general rule. So it doesn’t matter. But of course that’s wrong. She’s the last person that should be an exception to the general rule.

  Minny and I have so often despised D for putting up with her. We ought to go down on our knees to him.

  The other thing I think about is G.P.

  When I first met him I told everyone how marvellous he was. Then a reaction set in, I thought I was getting a silly schoolgirl hero-pash on him, and the other thing began to happen. It was all too emotional.

  Because he’s changed me more than anything or anybody. More than London, more than the Slade.

  It’s not just that he’s seen so much more life. Had so much more artistic experience. And is known. But he says exactly what he thinks, and he always makes me think. That’s the big thing. He makes me question myself. How many times have I disagreed with him? And then a week later with someone else I find I’m arguing as he would argue. Judging people by his standards.

  He’s chipped off all (well, some of, anyway) my silliness, my stupid fussy frilly ideas about life and art, and modern art. My feyness. I’ve never been the same since he told me how he hated fey women. I even learnt the word from him.

  List of the ways in which he has altered me. Either directly. Or confirmed alterations in progress.

  1. If you are a real artist, you give your whole being to your art. Anything short of that, then you are not an artist. Not what G.P. calls a “maker.”

  2. You don’t gush. You don’t have little set-pieces or set-ideas you gush out to impress people with.

  3. You have to be Left politically because the Socialists are the only people who care, for all their mistakes. They feel, they want to better the world.

  4. You must make, always. You must ac
t, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you’re going to paint. The most terrible bad form.

  5. If you feel something deeply, you’re not ashamed to show your feeling.

  6. You accept that you are English. You don’t pretend that you’d rather be French or Italian or something else. (Piers always talking about his American grandmother.)

  7. But you don’t compromise with your background. You cut off all the old you that gets in the way of the maker you. If you’re suburban (as I realize D and M are—their laughing at suburbia is just a blind), you throw away (cauterize) the suburbs. If you’re working class, you cauterize the work-ing class in you. And the same, whatever class you are, because class is primitive and silly.

  (It’s not only me. Look at that time Louise’s boy-friend—the miner’s son from Wales—met him, and how they argued and snarled at each other, and we were all against G.P. for being so contemptuous about working-class people and working-class life. Calling them animals, not human beings. And David Evans, all white and stammering, don’t you tell me my father’s a bloody animal I’ve got to kick out of the way, and G.P. saying I’ve never hurt an animal in my life, you can always make out a case for hurting human beings, but human animals deserve every sympathy. And then David Evans coming up to me last month and actually admitting it had changed him, that evening.)

  8. You hate the political business of nationality. You hate everything, in politics and art and everything else, that is not genuine and deep and necessary. You don’t have any time for silly trivial things. You live seriously. You don’t go to silly films, even if you want to; you don’t read cheap newspapers; you don’t listen to trash on the wireless and the telly; you don’t waste time talking about nothing. You use your life.

  I must have always wanted to believe in those things; I did believe in them in a vague sort of way, before I met him. But he’s made me believe them; it’s the thought of him that makes me feel guilty when I break the rules.

  If he’s made me believe them, that means he’s made a large part of the new me.