The Collector

by John Fowles

  He did. He saw Piers cleaning his ears again. And Piers saw himself being seen and put on a clever sort of don’t-mind-us smile. G.P. jumped up and turned off the player. He said, you don’t like it? Piers said, have I got to like it?

  I said, Piers, that wasn’t funny.

  Piers said, I wasn’t making a noise, was I? Have we got to like it?

  G.P. said, get out.

  Antoinette said, I’m afraid I always think of Beecham. You know. Two skeletons copulating on a tin roof?

  G.P. said (frightening, his face, he can look devilish), first, I’m delighted that you should admire Beecham. A pompous little duckarsed bandmaster who stood against everything creative in the art of his time. Second, if you can’t tell that from a harpsichord, Christ help you. Third (to Piers) I think you’re the smuggest young layabout I’ve met for years and you (me) — are these your friends?

  I stood there, I couldn’t say anything, he made me furious, they made me furious and anyhow I was ten times more em-barrassed than furious.

  Piers shrugged, Antoinette looked bewildered, but vaguely amused, the bitch, and I was red. It makes me red again to think of it (and of what happened later—how could he?).

  Take it easy, said Piers. It’s only a record. I suppose he was angry, he must have known it was a stupid thing to say.

  You think that’s only a record, G.P. said. Is that it? It’s just a record? Are you like this stupid little bitch’s aunt—do you think Rembrandt got the teeniest bit bored when he painted? Do you think Bach made funny faces and giggled when he wrote that? Do you?

  Piers looked deflated, almost frightened. Well, DO YOU? shouted G.P.

  He was terrible. Both ways. He was terrible, because he had started it all, he had determined to behave in that way. And wonderfully terrible, because passion is something you never see. I’ve grown up among people who’ve always tried to hide passion. He was raw. Naked. Trembling with rage.

  Piers said, we’re not as old as you are. It was pathetic, feeble. Showed him up for what he really is.

  Christ, said G.P. Art students. ART students.

  I can’t write what he said next. Even Antoinette looked shocked.

  We just turned and went. The studio door slammed behind us when we were on the stairs. I hissed a damn-you at Piers at the bottom and pushed them out. Darling, he’ll murder you, said Antoinette. I shut the door and waited. After a moment I heard the music again. I went up the stairs and very slowly opened the door. Perhaps he heard, I don’t know, but he didn’t look up and I sat on a stool near the door until it was finished.

  He said, what do you want, Miranda?

  I said, to say I’m sorry. And to hear you say you’re sorry.

  He went and stared out of the window.

  I said, I know I was stupid, I may be little, but I’m not a bitch.

  He said, you try (I think he didn’t mean, you try to be a bitch).

  I said, you could have told us to go away. We would have understood.

  There was a silence. He turned to look at me across the studio. I said, I’m very sorry.

  He said, go home. We can’t go to bed together. When I stood up, he said, I’m glad you came back. It was decent of you. Then he said, you would.

  I went down the stairs and he came out behind me. I don’t want to go to bed with you, I’m speaking about the situation. Not us. Understand?

  I said, of course I understand.

  And I went on down. Being female. Wanting to make him feel I was hurt.

  As I opened the bottom door he said, I’ve been hitting it. He must have seen I didn’t understand, because he added, drinking.

  He said, I’ll telephone you.

  He did, he took me to a concert, to hear the Russians play Shostakovich. And he was sweet. That’s just what he was. Even though he never apologized.

  October 26th

  I don’t trust him. He’s bought this house. If he lets me go he’ll have to trust me. Or he’ll have to sell it and disappear before I can (could) get to the police. Either way it would be unlike him.

  It’s too depressing, I have to believe he’ll keep his word.

  He spends pounds and pounds on me. It must be nearly two hundred already. Any book, any record, any clothes. He has all my sizes. I sketch what I want, I mix up the colours as a guide. He even buys all my underwear. I can’t put on the black and peach creations he bought before, so I told him to go and get something sensible at Marks and Spencer. He said, can I buy a lot together? Of course it must be agony for him to go shopping for me (what does he do at the chemist’s?), so I suppose he prefers to get it all over in one go. But what can they think of him? One dozen pants and three slips and vests and bras. I asked him what they said when he gave the order and he went red. I think they think I’m a bit peculiar, he said. It was the first time I’ve really laughed since I came here.

  Every time he buys me something I think it is proof that he’s not going to kill me or do anything else unpleasant.

  I shouldn’t, but I like it when he comes in at lunch-time from wherever he goes. There are always parcels. It’s like having a perpetual Christmas Day and not even having to thank Santa Glaus. Sometimes he brings things I haven’t asked for. He always brings flowers, and that is nice. Chocolates, but he eats more of them than I do. And he keeps on asking me what I’d like him to buy.

  I know he’s the Devil showing me the world that can be mine. So I don’t sell myself to him. I cost him a lot in little things, but I know he wants me to ask for something big. He’s dying to make me grateful. But he shan’t.

  An awful thought that came to me today: they will have suspected G.P. Caroline is bound to give the police his name. Poor man. He will be sarcastic and they won’t like it.

  I’ve been trying to draw him today. Strange. It is hopeless. Nothing like him.

  I know he is short, only an inch or two more than me. (I’ve always dreamed tall men. Silly.)

  He is going bald and he has a nose like a Jew’s, though he isn’t (not that I’d mind if he was). And the face is too broad. Battered, worn; battered and worn and pitted into a bit of a mask, so that I never quite believe whatever expression it’s got on. I glimpse things I think must come from behind; but I’m never very sure. He puts on a special dry face for me sometimes. I see it go on. It doesn’t seem dishonest, though, it seems just G.P. Life is a bit of a joke, it’s silly to take it seriously. Be serious about art, but joke a little about everything else. Not the day when the H-bombs drop, but the “day of the great fry-up.” “When the great fry-up takes place.” Sick, sick. It’s his way of being healthy.

  Short and broad and broad-faced with a hook-nose; even a bit Turkish. Not really English-looking at all.

  I have this silly notion about English good looks. Advertisement men.

  Ladymont men.

  October 27th

  The tunnel round the door is my best bet. I feel I must try it soon. I think I’ve worked out a way of getting him away. I’ve been looking very carefully at the door this afternoon. It’s wood faced with iron on this side. Terribly solid. I could never break it down or lever it open. He’s made sure there’s nothing to break and lever with, in any case.

  I’ve begun to collect some “tools.” A tumbler I can break. That will be something sharp. A fork and two teaspoons. They’re aluminium, but they might be useful. What I need most is something strong and sharp to pick out the cement between the stones with. Once I can make a hole through them it shouldn’t be too difficult to get round into the outer cellar.

  This makes me feel practical. Businesslike. But I haven’t done anything.

  I feel more hopeful. I don’t know why. But I do.

  October 28th

  G.P. as an artist. Caroline’s “second-rate Paul Nash”—horrid, but there is something in it. Nothing like what he would call “photography.” But not absolutely individual. I think it’s just that he arrived at the same conclusions. And
either he sees that (that his landscapes have a Nashy quality) or he doesn’t. Either way, it’s a criticism of him. That he neither sees it nor says it.

  I’m being objective about him. His faults.

  His hatred of abstract painting—even of people like Jackson Pollock and Nicholson. Why? I’m more than half convinced intellectually by him, but I still feel some of the paintings he says are bad are beautiful. I mean, he’s too jealous. He condemns too much.

  I don’t mind this. I’m trying to be honest about him, and about myself. He hates people who don’t “think things through”—and he does it. Too much. But he has (except over women) principles. He makes most people with so-called principles look like empty tin-cans.

  (I remember he once said about a Mondrian—“it isn’t whether you like it, but whether you ought to like it”—I mean, he dislikes abstract art on principle. He ignores what he feels.)

  I’ve been leaving the worst to last. Women.

  It must have been about the fourth or fifth time I went round to see him.

  There was the Nielsen woman. I suppose (now) they’d been to bed together. I was so naive. But they didn’t seem to mind my coming. They needn’t have answered the bell. And she was rather nice to me in her glittery at-home sort of way. Must be forty—what could he see in her? Then a long time after that, it was May, and I’d been the night before, but he was out (or in bed with someone?) and that evening he was in and alone, and we talked some time (he was telling me about John Minton) and then he put on an Indian record and we were quiet. But he didn’t shut his eyes that time, he was looking at me and I was embarrassed. When the raga ended there was a silence. I said, shall I turn it? but he said, no. He was in the shadow, I couldn’t see him very well.

  Suddenly he said, Would you like to come to bed?

  I said, no I wouldn’t. He caught me by surprise and I sounded foolish. Frightened.

  He said, his eyes still on me, ten years ago I would have married you. You would have been my second disastrous marriage.

  It wasn’t really a surprise. It had been waiting for weeks.

  He came and stood by me. You’re sure?

  I said, I haven’t come here for that. At all.

  It seemed so unlike him. So crude. I think now, I know now, he was being kind. Deliberately obvious and crude. Just as he sometimes lets me beat him at chess.

  He went to make Turkish coffee and he said through the door, you’re misleading. I went and stood in the kitchen door, while he watched the vriki. He looked back at me. I could swear you want it sometimes.

  How old are you? I said.

  I could be your father. Is that what you mean?

  I hate promiscuity, I said. I didn’t mean that.

  He had his back turned to me. I felt angry with him, he seemed so irresponsible. I said, anyhow, you don’t attract me that way in the least.

  He said, with his back still turned, what do you mean by promiscuity?

  I said, going to bed for pleasure. Sex and nothing else. Without love.

  He said, I’m very promiscuous then. I never go to bed with the people I love. I did once.

  I said, you warned me against Barber Cruikshank.

  I’m warning you against myself now, he said. He stood watching the vriki. You know the Ashmolean Uccello? The Hunt? No? The design hits you the moment you see it. Apart from all the other technical things. You know it’s faultless. The professors with Middle-European names spend their lives working out what the great inner secret is, that thing you feel at the first glance. Now, I see you have the great inner secret, too. God knows what it is. I’m not a Middle-European professor, I don’t really care how it is. But you have it. You’re like Sheraton joinery. You won’t fall apart.

  He spoke it all in a very matter-of-fact voice. Too.

  It’s hazard, of course, he said. The genes.

  He lifted the vriki off the gas-ring at the last possible moment. The only thing is, he said, there’s that scarlet point in your eye. What is it? Passion? Stop?

  He stood staring at me, the dry look.

  It’s not bed, I said.

  But for someone?

  For no one.

  I sat on the divan and he on his high stool by the bench.

  I’ve shocked you, he said.

  I was warned.

  By aunt?

  Yes.

  He turned and very slowly, very carefully, poured the coffee into the cups.

  He said, all my life I’ve had to have women. They’ve mostly brought me unhappiness. The most has been brought by the relationships that were supposed to be pure and noble. There—he pointed at a photo of his two sons—that’s the fine fruit of a noble relationship.

  I went and got my coffee and leant against the bench, away from him.

  Robert’s only four years younger than you are now, he said. Don’t drink it yet. Let the grounds settle.

  He didn’t seem at ease. As if he had to talk. Be on the defensive. Disillusion me and get my sympathy at the same time.

  He said, lust is simple. You reach an understanding at once. You both want to get into bed or one of you doesn’t. But love. The women I’ve loved have always told me I’m selfish. It’s what makes them love me. And then be disgusted with me. Do you know what they always think is selfishness? He was scraping the glue away from a broken Chinese blue-and-white bowl he’d bought in the Portobello Road, and repaired, two fiendishly excited horsemen chasing a timid little fallow-deer. Very short-fingered, sure hands. Not that I will paint in my own way, live in my own way, speak in my own way—they don’t mind that. It even excites them. But what they can’t stand is that I hate them when they don’t behave in their own way.

  It was as if I was another man.

  People like your bloody aunt think I’m a cynic, a wrecker of homes. A rake. I’ve never seduced a woman in my life. I like bed, I like the female body, I like the way even the shallowest of women become beautiful when their clothes are off and they think they’re taking a profound and wicked step. They always do, the first time. Do you know what is almost extinct in your sex?

  He looked sideways at me, so I shook my head.

  Innocence. The one time you see it is when a woman takes her clothes off and cannot look you in the eyes (as I couldn’t then). Just that first Botticelli moment of the first time of her taking her clothes off. Soon shrivels. The old Eve takes over. The strumpet. Exit Anadyomene.

  Who’s she? I asked.

  He explained. I was thinking, I shouldn’t let him talk like this, he’s drawing a net round me. I didn’t think it, I felt it.

  He said, I’ve met dozens of women and girls like you. Some I’ve known well, some I’ve seduced against their better nature and my better nature, two I’ve even married. Some I’ve hardly known at all, just stood beside them at an exhibition, in the Tube, wherever.

  After a while he said, you’ve read Jung?

  No, I said.

  He’s given your species of the sex a name. Not that it helps. The disease is just as bad.

  Tell me the name, I said.

  He said, you don’t tell diseases their names.

  Then there was a strange silence, as if we’d come to a full stop, as if he’d expected me to react in some other way. Be more angry or shocked, perhaps. I was shocked and angry afterwards (in a peculiar way). But I’m glad I didn’t run away. It was one of those evenings when one grows up. I suddenly knew I had either to behave like a shocked girl who had still been at school that time the year before; or like an adult.

  You’re a weird kid, he said at last.

  Old-fashioned, I said.

  You’d be a bloody bore if you weren’t so pretty.

  Thank you.

  I didn’t really expect you to go to bed with me, he said.

  I know, I said.

  He gave me a long look. Then he changed, he got out the chess-board and we played chess and he let me beat him. He wouldn’t admit it, but I am
sure he did. We hardly said anything, we seemed to communicate through the chessmen, there was something very symbolic about my winning. That he wished me to feel. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know whether it was that he wanted me to see my “virtue” triumphed over his “vice,” or something subtler, that sometimes losing is winning.

  The next time I went he gave me a drawing he had done. It was of the vriki and the two cups on the bench. Beautifully drawn, absolutely simple, absolutely without fuss or nervousness, absolutely free of that clever art-student look the drawings of simple objects I do have.

  Just the two cups and the little copper vriki and his hand. Or a hand. Lying by one of the cups, like a plaster cast. On the back he wrote, Après, and the date. And then, pour “une” princesse lointaine. The “_une_” was very heavily underlined.

  I wanted to go on about Toinette. But I’m too tired. I want to smoke when I write, and it makes the air so stuffy.

  October 29th

  (Morning.) He’s gone into? Lewes.

  Toinette.

  It was a month after the evening of the record. I ought to have guessed, she had been purring over me for days, giving me arch looks. I thought it was something to do with Piers. And then one evening I rang the bell and then I noticed the lock was up, so I pushed the door open and looked up the stairs, at the same time as Toinette looked down round the door. And we were looking at each other. After a moment she came out on the landing and she was dressing. She didn’t say anything, she just gestured me to come up and into the studio and what was worst, I was red, and she was not. She was just amused.

  Don’t look so shocked, she said. He’ll be back in a minute. He’s just gone out for … but I never heard what it was, because I went.

  I’ve never really analyzed why I was so angry and so shocked and so hurt. Donald, Piers, David, everyone knows she lives in London as she lived in Stockholm—she’s told me herself, they’ve told me. And G.P. had told me what he was like.