The Collector (9 page)

“Oh, Ferdinand!” she said. And then twice more, Ferdinand, Ferdinand, and she sort of prayed to heaven and acted someone in great pain, so I had to laugh, but suddenly she was all serious, or pretending it.

“It’s not a little thing. It’s terrible that you can’t treat me as a friend. Forget my sex. Just relax.”

I’ll try, I said. But then she wouldn’t sit by me again. She leant against the wall reading another book.

Another day, it was downstairs, she just screamed. For no reason at all, I was fixing up a painting she’d done and wanted to see up on the wall and suddenly sitting on the bed she screamed, bloodcurdling it was and I jumped round and dropped the tape and she just laughed.

What’s up, I said.

“I just felt like a good scream,” she said.

She was unpredictable.

She was always criticizing my way of speaking. One day I remember she said, “You know what you do? You know how rain takes the colour out of everything? That’s what you do to the English language. You blur it every time you open your mouth.”

That is just one sample of many, of the way she treated me.

Another day she got round me on the subject of her parents. She’d been on for days about how they would be sick with worry and how mean I was not letting them know. I said I couldn’t take the risk. But one day after supper she said, I’ll tell you how to do it, without any risk. You wear gloves. You buy paper and some envelopes from Woolworth’s. You dictate a letter to me to write. You go to the nearest big town and post it. You can’t be traced. It might be any Woolworth’s in the country.

Well, she kept on at me so about it that one day I did what she suggested and bought some paper and envelopes. That evening I gave her a sheet and told her to write.

“I am safe and not in danger,” I said.

She wrote it, saying, “That’s filthy English, but never mind.”

You write what I say, I answered, and went on, “Do not try to find me, it is impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” she said. Cheeky as usual.

“I am being well looked after by a friend,” I went on. Then I said, that’s all, just put your name.

“Can’t I say, Mr. Clegg sends his regards?”

Very funny, I said. She wrote something more and handed me the sheet of paper. It said, See you soon, love, Nanda, at the bottom.

What’s this? I asked.

“My baby name. They’ll know it’s me.”

I prefer Miranda, I said. It was the most beautiful for me. When she had written the envelope I put the sheet in and then luckily I looked inside. At the bottom of the envelope there was a piece of paper no bigger than half a cigarette paper. I don’t know how but she must have had it ready and slipped it in. I opened it out and looked at her. She was bold as brass. She just leant back in the chair and stared at me. She’d written very very small with a sharp pencil, but the letters were clear. It wasn’t like her other note, it said:

I was really angry and shocked, I didn’t know what to do. In the end I said, are you frightened? She didn’t say anything, she just nodded.

But what have I done? I asked.

“Nothing. That’s why I’m frightened.”

I don’t understand.

She looked down.

“I’m waiting for you to do something.”

I’ve promised and I’ll promise again, I said. You get all high and mighty because I don’t take your word, I don’t know why it’s different for me.

“I’m sorry.”

I trusted you, I said. I thought you realized I was being kind. Well, I’m not going to be used. I don’t care about your letter.

I put it in my pocket.

There was a long silence, I knew she was looking at me, but I wouldn’t look at her. Then suddenly she got up and stood in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders so that I had to look at her, she made me look down into her eyes. I can’t explain it, when she was sincere she could draw the soul out of me, I was wax in her hands.

She said, “Now you’re behaving like a little boy. You forget that you are keeping me here by force. I admit it is quite a gentle force, but it is frightening.”

As long as you keep your word, I’ll keep mine, I said. I had gone red, of course.

“But I’ve not given you my word not to try and escape, have I?”

All you live for is the day you see the last of me, I said. I’m just a nobody still, aren’t I?

She turned half away. “I want to see the last of this house. Not of you.”

And mad, I said. Do you think a madman would have treated you the way I have? I’ll tell you what a madman would have done. He’d have killed you by now. Like that fellow Christie, I suppose you think I’m going for you with a carving-knife or something. (I was really fed up with her that day.) How daft can you get? All right, you think I’m not normal keeping you here like this. Perhaps I’m not. But I can tell you there’d be a blooming lot more of this if more people had the money and the time to do it. Anyway there’s more of it now than anyone knows. The police know, I said, the figures are so big they don’t dare say them.

She was staring at me. It was like we were complete strangers. I must have looked funny, it was the most I’d ever said.

“Don’t look like that,” she said. “What I fear in you is something you don’t know is in you.”

What, I asked. I was still angry.

“I don’t know. It’s lurking somewhere about in this house, this room, this situation, waiting to spring. In a way we’re on the same side against it.”

That’s just talk.

“We all want things we can’t have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.”

We all take what we can get. And if we haven’t had much most of our life we make up for it while the going’s good, I said. Of course you wouldn’t know about that.

Then she was smiling at me, as if she was much older than me. “You need psychiatric treatment.”

The only treatment I need is you to treat me like a friend.

“I am, I am,” she said. “Can’t you see that?”

There was a big silence, then she broke it.

“Don’t you feel this has gone on long enough?”

No, I said.

“Won’t you let me go now?”

No.

“You could gag me and tie me up and drive me back to London. I’d not tell a soul.”

No.

“But there must be something you want to do with me?”

I just want to be with you. All the time.

“In bed?”

I’ve told you no.

“But you want to?”

I’d rather not speak about it.

She shut up then.

I don’t allow myself to think of what I know is wrong, I said. I don’t consider it nice.

“You
are
extraordinary.”

Thank you, I said.

“If you let me go, I should want to see you, because you interest me very much.”

Like you go to the zoo? I asked.

“To try and understand you.”

You’ll never do that. (I may as well admit I liked the mystery man side of our talk. I felt it showed her she didn’t know everything.)

“I don’t think I ever should.”

Then suddenly she was kneeling in front of me, with her hands up high, touching the top of her head, being all oriental. She did it three times.

“Will the mysterious great master accept apologies of very humble slave?”

I’ll think about it, I said.

“Humble slave very solly for unkind letter.”

I had to laugh; she could act anything.

She stayed there kneeling with her hands on the floor beside her, more serious, giving me the look.

“Will you send the letter, then?”

I made her ask again, but then I gave in. It was nearly the big mistake of my life.

The next day I drove up to London. I told her I was going there, like a fool, and she gave me a list of things to buy. There was a lot. (I knew later to keep me busy.) I had to buy special foreign cheese and go to some place in Soho where they had German sausages she liked, and there were some records, and clothes, and other things. She wanted pictures by some artist, it had to be just this one name. I was really happy that day, not a cloud in the sky. I thought she had forgotten about the four weeks, well not forgotten, but accepted I would want more. Talk about a dream-world.

I didn’t get back till tea-time and of course went down straight to see her, but I knew at once something was wrong. She didn’t look at all pleased to see me and she didn’t even look at all the things I’d bought.

I soon saw what it was, it was four stones she had made loose, to make a tunnel, I suppose. There was dirt on the steps. I got one out easy. All the time she sat on the bed not looking. Behind it was stone, so it was all right. But I saw her game—the sausages and the special pictures and all that. All the soft soap.

You tried to escape, I said.

“Oh, shut up!” she cried. I began looking for the thing she had done it with. Suddenly something flew past me and clattered on the floor. It was an old six-inch nail, I don’t know how she’d got hold of it.

That’s the last time I leave you alone for so long, I said. I can’t trust you any more.

She just turned, she wouldn’t speak, and I was dead scared she’d go off on a hunger strike again, so I didn’t insist. I left her then. Later I brought her her supper. She didn’t talk, so I left her.

The next day she was all right again, though she didn’t talk, except a word, about the escape that nearly was; she never mentioned it after again. But I saw she had a bad scratch on her wrist, and she made a face when she tried to hold a pencil to draw.

I didn’t post the letter. The police are dead cunning with some things. A chap I knew in Town Hall’s brother worked at Scotland Yard. They only needed a pinch of dust and they would tell you where you came from and everything.

Of course when she asked me I went red; I said it was because I knew she didn’t trust me, etcetera. Which she seemed to accept. It may not have been kind to her parents, but from what she said they weren’t up to much, and you can’t think of everybody. First things first, as they say.

I did the same thing over the money she wanted me to send to the H-bomb movement. I wrote out a cheque and showed it to her, but I didn’t send it. She wanted proof (the receipt), but I said I had sent it anonymous. I did it to make her feel better (writing the cheque) but I don’t see the point of wasting money on something you don’t believe in. I know rich people give sums, but in my opinion they do it to get their names published or to dodge the tax-man.

For every bath, I had to screw in the planks again. I didn’t like to leave them up all the time. All went off well. Once it was very late (eleven) so I took her gag off when she went in. It was a very windy night, a proper gale blowing. When we came down she wanted to sit in the sitting-room (I got ticked off for calling it the lounge), hands bound of course, there seemed no harm, so I put the electric fire on (she told me imitation logs were the end, I ought to have real log fires, like I did later). We sat there a bit, she sat on the carpet drying her washed hair and of course I just watched her. She was wearing some slacks I bought her, very attractive she looked all in black except for a little red scarf. She had her hair all day before she washed it in two pigtails, one of the great pleasures for me was seeing how her hair was each day. Before the fire, however, it was loose and spread, which I liked best.

After a time she got up and walked round the room, all restless. She kept on saying the word “bored.” Over and over again. It sounded funny, what with the wind howling outside and all.

Suddenly she stopped in front of me.

“Amuse me. Do something.”

Well what, I asked. Photos? But she didn’t want photos.

“I don’t know. Sing, dance, anything.”

I can’t sing. Or dance.

“Tell me all the funny stories you know.”

I don’t know any, I said. It was true, I couldn’t think of one.

“But you must do. I thought all men had to know dirty jokes.”

I wouldn’t tell you one if I knew it.

“Why not?”

They’re for men.

“What do you think women talk about? I bet I know more dirty jokes than you do.”

I wouldn’t be surprised, I said.

“Oh, you’re like mercury. You won’t be picked up.”

She walked away, but suddenly she snatched a cushion off a chair, turned and kicked it straight at me. I of course was surprised; I stood up, and then she did the same with another, and then another that missed and knocked a copper kettle off the side-table.

Easy on, I said.

“Come, thou tortoise!” she cried (a literary quotation, I think it was). Anyway, almost at once she pulled a jug thing off the mantelpiece and threw that at me, I think she called catch, but I didn’t and it broke against the wall.

Steady on, I said.

But another jug followed. All the time she was laughing, there was nothing vicious exactly, she just seemed to be mad, like a kid. There was a pretty green plate with a cottage moulded in relief that hung by the window and she had that off the wall and smashed that. I don’t know why, I always liked that plate and I didn’t like to see her break it, so I shouted, really sharp, stop it!

All she did was to put her thumb to her nose and make a rude sign and put her tongue out. She was just like a street boy.

I said, you ought to know better.

“You ought to know better,” she said, making fun of me. Then she said, “Please come round this side and then I can get at those beautiful plates behind you.” There were two by the door. “Unless you’d like to smash them yourself.”