The Collector - Страница 20

It’s only a cold, I said.

“It’s not a cold.” She really shouted at me.

Of course it’s a cold, I said. And stop acting. I know your game.

“I am not acting.”

Oh, no. You never acted in your life, I said. Of course not.

“Oh, God you’re not a man, if only you were a man.”

Say that again, I said. I had had some more champagne with my supper, there was a shop I found in Lewes with half-bottles, so I was not in the mood for her silliness.

“I said you are not a man.”

All right, I said. Get out of bed. Go on, get up. From now on I give the orders.

I had had enough, most men would have had it long before. I went and pulled the bedclothes off her and got hold of her arm to pull her up and she started to fight, scratching at my face.

I said, all right, I’m going to teach you a lesson.

I had the cords in my pocket and after a bit of a struggle I got them on her and then the gag, it was her own fault if they were tight, I got her on a short rope tied to the bed and then I went and fetched the camera and flash equipment. She struggled of course, she shook her head, she looked daggers with her eyes, as they say, she even tried to go all soft, but I kept at her. I got her garments off and at first she wouldn’t do as I said but in the end she lay and stood like I ordered (I refused to take if she did not co-operate). So I got my pictures. I took her till I had no more bulbs left.

It was not my fault. How was I to know she was iller than she looked. She just looked like she had a cold.

I got the pictures developed and printed that night. The best ones were with her face cut off. She didn’t look much anyhow with the gag, of course. The best were when she stood in her high heels, from the back. The tied hands to the bed made what they call an interesting motif. I can say I was quite pleased with what I got.

The next day she was up when I went in, in her housecoat, like she was waiting for me. What she did was very surprising, she took a step forward and went down on her knees at my feet. Like she was drunk. Her face was very flushed, I did see; she looked at me and she was crying and she had got herself up into a state.

“I’m terribly ill. I’ve got pneumonia. Or pleurisy. You’ve got to get a doctor.”

I said, get up and go back to bed. Then I went to get her coffee.

When I came back I said, you know you’re not ill, if it was pneumonia you couldn’t stand up even.

“I can’t breathe at nights. I’ve got a pain here, I have to lie on my left side. Please take my temperature. Look at it.”

Well I did and it was a 102 but I knew there were ways you could fake temperatures.

“The air’s stifling here.”

There’s plenty of air, I said. It was her fault for having used that game before.

Anyway I got the chemist in Lewes to give me something he said was very good for congestion and special anti-flu pills and inhaler, all of which she took when offered. She tried to eat something at supper, but she couldn’t manage it, she was sick, she did look off-colour then, and I can say that for the first time I had reason to believe there might be something in it all. Her face was red, bits of her hair stuck on it with perspiration, but that could have been deliberate.

I cleaned up the sick and gave her her medicines and was going to leave when she asked me to sit on the bed, so she wouldn’t have to speak loud.

“Do you think I could speak to you if I wasn’t terribly ill? After what you’ve done.”

You asked for what I did, I said.

“You must see I’m really ill.”

It’s the flu, I said. There’s a lot in Lewes.

“It’s not the flu. I’ve got pneumonia. Something terrible. I can’t breathe.”

You’ll be all right, I said. Those yellow pills will do the trick. The chemist said they’re the best.

“Not fetching a doctor is murder. You’re going to kill me.”

I tell you you’re all right. It’s fever, I said. As soon as she mentioned doctor, I was suspicious.

“Would you mind wiping my face with my flannel?”

It was funny, I did what she said and for the first time for days I felt a bit sorry for her. It was a woman’s job, really. I mean it was a time when women need other women. She said thanks.

I’ll go now then, I said.

“Don’t go. I’ll die.” She actually tried to catch hold of my arm.

Don’t be so daft, I told her.

“You must listen, you must listen,” and suddenly she was crying again; I could see her eyes filling with tears and she sort of banged her head from side to side on the pillow. I felt sorry for her by then, as I say, so I sat on the bed and gave her a handkerchief and told her I would never not get a doctor if she was really ill. I even said I still loved her and I was sorry and some other things. But the tears just kept on coming, she hardly seemed to listen. Not even when I told her she looked much better than the day before, which was not strictly true.

In the end she grew calm, she lay there with her eyes shut for a while and then when I moved she said, “Will you do something for me?”

What, I asked.

“Will you stay down here with me and let the door be open for air?”

Well, I agreed, and we turned out the lights in her room, with only the light from outside and the fan, and I sat by her for quite a time. She began to breathe in a funny quick way like she’d just run upstairs, as she said she was stifled, and she spoke several times — once she said, please don’t, and another I think she said my name but it was all blurred — well, I felt she was asleep and after I said her name and she didn’t answer, I went out and locked up and then set the alarm for early the next morning. I thought she went off to sleep so easy, I wasn’t to tell. I thought it was for the best, and I thought the pills might do the trick and she would be better the next morning, with the worst past. I even felt it was a good thing, her being ill, because if she hadn’t there would have been a lot of trouble of the old kind.

What I am trying to say is that it all came unexpected. I know what I did next day was a mistake, but up to that day I thought I was acting for the best and within my rights.

2 October 14?

It’s the seventh night.

I keep on thinking the same things. If only they knew. If only they knew.

Share the outrage.

So now I’m trying to tell it to this pad he bought me this morning. His kindness.

Calmly.

Deep down I get more and more frightened. It’s only surface calm.

No nastiness, no sex thing. But his eyes are mad. Grey with a grey lost light in them. To begin with I watched him all the time. I thought it must be sex, if I turned my back I did it where he couldn’t spring at me, and I listened. I had to know exactly where he was in the room.

Power. It’s become so real.

I know the H-bomb is wrong. But being so weak seems wrong now too.

I wish I knew judo. Could make him cry for mercy.

This crypt-room is so stuffy, the walls squeeze in, I’m listening for him as I write, the thoughts I have are like bad drawings. Must be torn up at once.

Try try try to escape.

It’s all I think of.

A strange thing. He fascinates me. I feel the deepest contempt and loathing for him, I can’t stand this room, everybody will be wild with worry. I can sense their wild worry.

How can he love me? How can you love someone you don’t know?

He wants desperately to please me. But that’s what madmen must be like. They aren’t deliberately mad, they must be as shocked in a way as everyone else when they finally do something terrible.

It’s only this last day or two I could speak about him so.

All the way down here in the van it was nightmare. Wanting to be sick and afraid of choking under the gag. And then being sick. Thinking I was going to be pulled into some thicket and raped and murdered. I was sure that was it when the van stopped, I think that was why I was sick. Not just the beastly chloroform. (I kept on remembering Penny Lester’s grisly dormitory stories about how her mother survived being raped by the Japanese, I kept on saying, don’t resist, don’t resist. And then someone else at Ladymont once said that it takes two men to rape you. Women who let themselves be raped by one man want to be raped.) I know now that wouldn’t be his way. He’d use chloroform again, or something. But that first night it was, don’t resist, don’t resist.

I was grateful to be alive. I am a terrible coward, I don’t want to die, I love life so passionately, I never knew how much I wanted to live before. If I get out of this, I shall never be the same.

I don’t care what he does. So long as I live.

It’s all the vile unspeakable things he could do.

I’ve looked everywhere for a weapon, but there’s nothing of any use, even if I had the strength and skill. I prop a chair against the iron door every night, so at least I shall know if he tries to get in without my hearing.

Hateful primitive wash-stand and place.

The great blank door. No keyhole. Nothing.

The silence. I’ve got a little more used to it now. But it is terrible. Never the least sound. It makes me feel I’m always waiting.

Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.

The collection of books on art. Nearly fifty pounds’ worth, I’ve added them up. That first night it suddenly dawned on me that they were there for me. That I wasn’t a haphazard victim after all.