The Collector

by John Fowles

  I know I have to steel myself against not being freed. I tell myself it’s a chance in a hundred that he’ll keep his word.

  But he must keep his word.

  G.P.

  I hadn’t seen him for two months, more than two months. Being in France and Spain and then at home. (I did try to see him twice, but he was away all September.) There was a postcard in answer to my letters. That was all.

  I telephoned him and asked him if I could go round, the first evening I was back with Caroline. He said the next day, there were some people there that evening.

  He seemed glad to see me. I was trying to look as if I hadn’t tried to look pretty. I had.

  And I told him all about France and Spain and the Goyas and Albi and everything else. Piers. And he listened, he wouldn’t really say what he had been doing, but later he showed me some of the things he’d done in the Hebrides. And I felt ashamed. Because we’d none of us done much, we’d been too busy lying in the sun (I mean too lazy) and looking at great pictures to do much drawing or anything.

  I said (having gushed for at least an hour) I’m talking too much.

  He said, I don’t mind.

  He was getting the rust off an old iron wheel with some acid. He’d seen it in a junk-shop in Edinburgh, and brought it all the way down. It had strange obtuse teeth, he thought it was part of an old church clock. Very elegant tapered spoke-arms. It was beautiful.

  We didn’t say anything for a while, I was leaning beside him against his bench watching him clean off the rust. Then he said, I’ve missed you.

  I said, you can’t have.

  He said, you’ve disturbed me.

  I said (knight to cover his pawn), have you seen Antoinette?

  He said, no. I thought I told you I gave her the boot. He looked sideways. His lizard look. Still shocked? I shook my head.

  Forgiven?

  I said, there was nothing to forgive.

  He said, I kept on thinking about you in the Hebrides. I wanted to show you things.

  I said, I wished you were with us in Spain.

  He was busy emery-papering between the teeth. He said, it’s very old, look at this corrosion. Then, in the same tone, in fact I decided that I want to marry you. I didn’t say anything and I wouldn’t look at him.

  He said, I asked you to come here when I was alone, be-cause I’ve been thinking quite hard about this. I’m twice your age, I ought to take things like this in my stride—Christ only knows it’s not the first time. No, let me finish now. I’ve decided I’ve got to stop seeing you. I was going to tell you that when you came in. I can’t go on being disturbed by you. I shall be if you keep on coming here. This isn’t a roundabout way of asking you to marry me. I’m trying to make it quite impossible. You know what I am, you know I’m old enough to be your father, I’m not reliable at all. Anyhow, you don’t love me.

  I said, I can’t explain it. There isn’t a word for it.

  Precisely, he answered. He was cleaning his hands with petrol. Very clinical and matter-of-fact. So I have to ask you to leave me to find my peace again.

  I stared at his hands. I was shocked.

  He said, in some ways you’re older than I am. You’ve never been deeply in love. Perhaps you never will be. He said, love goes on happening to you. To men. You become twenty again, you suffer as twenty suffers. All the dotty irrationalities of twenty. I may seem very reasonable at the moment, but I don’t feel it. When you telephoned I nearly peed in my pants with excitement. I’m an old man in love. Stock comedy figure. Very stale. Not even funny.

  Why do you think I’ll never be deeply in love, I said. He took a terribly long time to clean his hands.

  He said, I said perhaps.

  I’m only just twenty.

  He said, an ash tree a foot high is still an ash tree. But I did say perhaps.

  And you’re not old. It’s nothing to do with our ages.

  He gave me a faintly hurt look then, smiled and said, you must leave me some loophole.

  We went to make coffee, the wretched little kitchen, and I thought, anyhow I couldn’t face up to living here with him—just the domestic effort. A vile irrelevant wave of bourgeois cowardice.

  He said, with his back to me, until you went away I thought it was just the usual thing. At least I tried to think it was. That’s why I misbehaved myself with your Swedish friend. To exorcise you. But you came back. In my mind. Again and again, up north. I used to go out of the farmhouse at night, into the garden. Look south. You do understand?

  Yes, I said.

  It was you, you see. Not just the other thing.

  Then he said, it’s a sudden look you have. When you’re not a kid any more.

  What sort of look?

  The woman you will be, he said.

  A nice woman?

  A much more than nice woman.

  There’s no word to say how he said it. Sadly, almost unwillingly. Tenderly, but a shade bitterly. And honestly. Not teasing, not being dry. But right out of his real self. I’d been looking down all the time we were talking, but he made me look up then, and our eyes met and I know something passed between us. I could feel it. Almost a physical touch. Changing us. His saying something he totally meant, and my feeling it.

  He remained staring at me, so that I was embarrassed. And still he stared. I said, please don’t stare at me like that.

  He came and put his arm round my shoulders then and led me gently towards the door. He said, you are very pretty, at times you’re beautiful. You are sensitive, you are eager, you try to be honest, you manage to be both your age and natural and a little priggish and old-fashioned at the same time. You even play chess quite well. You’re just the daughter I’d like to have. That’s probably why I’ve wanted you so much these last few months.

  He pushed me through the door, face forward, so I couldn’t see him.

  I can’t say such things to you without turning your head. And you mustn’t turn your head, in any sense. Now, go.

  I felt him press my shoulders an instant. And he kissed the back of my head. Pushed me away. And I went two or three steps down the stairs before I stopped and looked back. He was smiling, but it was a sad smile.

  I said, please don’t let it be too long.

  He just shook his head. I don’t know if he meant “no, not too long” or “it’s no good hoping it will be anything else but very long.” Perhaps he didn’t know himself. But he looked sad. He looked sad all through.

  Of course I looked sad. But I didn’t really feel sad. Or it wasn’t a sadness that hurt, not an all-through one. I rather enjoyed it. Beastly, but I did. I sang on the way home. The romance, the mystery of it. Living.

  I thought I knew I didn’t love him. I’d won that game.

  And what has happened since?

  That first day or two, I kept on thinking he would telephone, that it was all a sort of whim. Then I would think, I shan’t see him again for months, perhaps years, and it seemed ridiculous. Unnecessary. Stupid beyond belief. I hated what seemed his weakness. I thought, if he’s like this, to hell with him.

  That didn’t last very long. I decided to decide that it was for the best. He was right. It was best to make a clean break. I would concentrate on work. Be practical and efficient and everything that I’m not really by nature.

  All that time I kept thinking, do I love him? Then, obviously, there was so much doubt, I couldn’t.

  And now I have to write down what I feel now. Because I have changed again. I know it. I feel it.

  Looks; I know it is idiotically wrong to have preconceived notions about looks. Getting excited when Piers kisses me. Having to stare at him sometimes (not when he would notice, because of his vanity) but feeling his looks intensely. Like a beautiful drawing of something ugly. You forget about the ugliness. I know Piers is morally and psychologically ugly—just plain and dull, phoney.

  But even there I’ve changed.

  I think about G.P. hol
ding me and caressing me.

  There’s a sort of nasty perverted curiosity in me—I mean, all the women he’s had and all the things he must know about being in bed.

  I can imagine his making love to me and it doesn’t disgust me. Very expert and gentle. Fun. All sorts of things, but not the thing. If it’s to be for life.

  Then there’s his weakness. The feeling that he would probably betray me. And I’ve always thought of marriage as a sort of young adventure, two people of the same age setting out together, discovering together, growing together. But I would have nothing to tell him, nothing to show him. All the helping would be on his side.

  I’ve seen so little of the world. I know that G.P. in many ways represents a sort of ideal now. His sense of what counts, his independence, his refusal to do what the others do. His standing apart. It has to be someone with those qualities. And no one else I’ve met has them as he has. People at the Slade seem to have them—but they’re so young. It’s easy to be frank and to hell with convention when you’re our age.

  Once or twice I’ve wondered whether it wasn’t all a trap. Like a sacrifice in chess. Supposing I had said on the stairs, do what you like with me, but don’t send me away?

  No, I won’t believe that of him.

  Time-lag. Two years ago I couldn’t have dreamed of falling in love with an older man. I was always the one who argued for equal ages at Ladymont. I remember being one of the most disgusted when Susan Grillet married a Beastly Baronet nearly three times her age. Minny and I used to talk about guarding against being “father” types (because of M) and marrying father-husbands. I don’t feel that any more. I think I need a man older than myself because I always seem to see through the boys I meet. And I don’t feel G.P. is a father-husband.

  It’s no good. I could go on writing arguments for and against all night.

  Emma. The business of being between inexperienced girl and experienced woman and the awful problem of the man. Caliban is Mr. Elton. Piers is Frank Churchill. But is G.P. Mr. Knightley?

  Of course G.P. has lived a life and has views that would make Mr. Knightley turn in his grave. But Mr. Knightley could never have been a phoney. Because he was a hater of pretence, selfishness, snobbism.

  And they both have the one man’s name I really can’t stand. George. Perhaps there’s a moral in that.

  November 18th

  I have eaten nothing for five days. I’ve drunk some water. He brings me food, but I have touched not one crumb.

  Tomorrow I am going to start eating again.

  About half an hour ago, I stood up and felt faint. Had to sit down again. I haven’t felt ill so far. Just tummy pains and a bit weak. But this was something different. A warning.

  I’m not going to die for him.

  I haven’t needed food. I have been so full of hatred for him and his beastliness.

  His vile cowardice.

  His selfishness.

  His Calibanity.

  November 19th

  For all that time, I didn’t want to write. Sometimes I wanted to. Then it seemed weak. Like accepting things. I knew as soon as I wrote it down I’d go off the boil. But now I think it needs writing down. Recording. He did this to me.

  Outrage.

  What little friendship, humanity, good nature there was between us has gone.

  From now on we are enemies. Both ways. He said things that showed he hates me as well.

  He resents my existence. That’s exactly it.

  He doesn’t realize it fully yet, because he’s trying to be nice to me at the moment. But he’s much nearer than he was. One day soon he’s going to wake up and say to himself—I hate her.

  Something nasty.

  When I came round from the chloroform I was in bed. I had my last underclothes on, but he must have taken everything else off.

  I was furious, that first night. Mad with disgust. His beastly gloating hands touching me. Peeling my stockings off. Loathsome.

  Then I thought of what he might have done. And hadn’t. I decided not to fly at him.

  But silence.

  To shout at someone suggests that there’s still contact.

  Since then I’ve thought two things.

  First: he’s weird enough to have undressed me without thinking, according to some mad notion of the “proper” thing to do. Perhaps he thought I couldn’t lie in bed with my clothes on.

  And then that perhaps it was a sort of reminder. Of all the things he might have done, but hadn’t. His chivalry. And I accept that. I have been lucky.

  But I even find it frightening that he didn’t do anything. What is he?

  There is a great rift between us now. It can never be bridged.

  He says now he will release me in another four weeks. Just talk. I don’t believe him. So I’ve warned him I’m going to try to kill him. I would now. I wouldn’t think twice about it.

  I’ve seen how wrong I was before. How blind.

  I prostituted myself to Caliban. I mean, I let him spend all that money on me, and although I told myself it was fair, it wasn’t. Because I felt vaguely grateful, I’ve been nice to him. Even my teasing was nice, even my sneering and spitting at him. Even my breaking things. Because it takes notice of him. And my attitude should have been what it will be from now on—ice.

  Freeze him to death.

  He is absolutely inferior to me in all ways. His one superiority is his ability to keep me here. That’s the only power he has. He can’t behave or think or speak or do anything else better than I can—nearly as well as I can—so he’s going to be the Old Man of the Sea until I shake him off somehow.

  It will have to be by force.

  I’ve been sitting here and thinking about God. I don’t think I believe in God any more. It is not only me, I think of all the millions who must have lived like this in the war. The Anne Franks. And back through history. What I feel I know now is that God doesn’t intervene. He lets us suffer. If you pray for liberty then you may get relief just because you pray, or because things happen anyhow which bring you liberty. But God can’t hear. There’s nothing human like hearing or seeing or pitying or helping about him. I mean perhaps God has created the world and the fundamental laws of matter and evolution. But he can’t care about the individuals. He’s planned it so some individuals are happy, some sad, some lucky, some not. Who is sad, who is not, he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. So he doesn’t exist, really.

  These last few days I’ve felt Godless. I’ve felt cleaner, less muddled, less blind. I still believe in a God. But he’s so remote, so cold, so mathematical. I see that we have to live as if there is no God. Prayer and worship and singing hymns—all silly and useless.

  I’m trying to explain why I’m breaking with my principles (about never committing violence). It is still my principle, but I see you have to break principles sometimes to survive. It’s no good trusting vaguely in your luck, in Providence or God’s being kind to you. You have to act and fight for yourself.

  The sky is absolutely empty. Beautifully pure and empty.

  As if the architects and builders would live in all the houses they built! Or could live in them all. It’s obvious, it stares you in the face. There must be a God and he can’t know anything about us.

  (Same evening.) I’ve been very mean with him all day. Several times he’s tried to speak, but I’ve shut him up. Did I want him to bring me anything? I said, I want nothing. I am your prisoner. If you give me food I shall eat it to keep alive. Our relations from now on are strictly those of a prisoner and a warder. Now please leave me alone.

  Luckily I’ve plenty to read. He’ll go on bringing me cigarettes (if he doesn’t I shan’t ask him for them) and food. That’s all I want of him.

  He’s not human; he’s an empty space disguised as a human.

  November 20th

  I’m making him wish he never set eyes on me. He brought in some baked beans for lunch. I was reading on the bed. He sto
od for a moment and then started to go out. I jumped to the table, picked up the plate and hurled it at him. I don’t like baked beans, he knows it, I suppose he’d been lazy. I wasn’t in a temper, I just pretended. He stood there with the filthy little bits of orange sauce on his so-clean clothes and looking sheepish. I don’t want any lunch, I snapped at him. And turned my back.

  I ate chocolates all the afternoon. He didn’t reappear until supper-time. There was caviare and smoked salmon and cold chicken (he buys them ready-cooked somewhere)—all things he knows I like—and a dozen other things he knows I like, the cunning brute. It’s not the buying them that’s cunning, it’s just that I can’t help being grateful (I didn’t actually say I was grateful, but I wasn’t sharp), it’s that he presents them so humbly, with such an air of please-don’t-thank-me and I-deserve-it-all. When he was arranging my supper-things on the table, I had an irresistible desire to giggle. Awful. I wanted to collapse on the bed and scream. He was so perfectly himself. And I am so cooped up.

  Down here my moods change so rapidly. All determination to do one thing one hour; all for another the next.

  It’s no use. I’m not a hater by nature. It’s as if somewhere in me a certain amount of good-will and kindness is manufactured every day; and it must come out. If I bottle it up, then it bursts out.

  I wasn’t nice to him, I don’t want to be nice to him, I shan’t be nice to him. But it was a struggle not to be ordinary to him. (I mean little things like “that was a nice meal.”) As it was I said nothing. When he said, “Will that be all” (like a butler), I said, “Yes, you can go now,” and turned my back. He would have got a shock if he could have seen my face. It was smiling, and when he shut the door, I was laughing. I couldn’t help it again. Hysteria.

  Something I have been doing a lot these last days. Staring at myself in the mirror. Sometimes I don’t seem real to myself, it suddenly seems that it isn’t my reflection only a foot or two away. I have to look aside. I look all over my face, at my eyes, I try to see what my eyes say. What I am. Why I’m here.