The Collector - Страница 6

There’s other things I can’t tell you. I’m in his power.

She stood up with her hands in her skirt pockets. She stared at herself in the mirror (metal, of course, not glass) for a change.

“What’s he going to do to me?”

I don’t know.

“Where is he now?”

He’ll be coming. I expect.

She said nothing for a minute. Then she suddenly looked as if she’d thought of something nasty, what I said might be true sort of thing.

“Of course. This must be his house in Suffolk.”

Yes, I said, thinking I was clever.

“He hasn’t got a house in Suffolk,” she said, all cold.

You don’t know, I said. But it sounded feeble.

She was going to speak but I felt I had to stop her questions, I didn’t know she was so sharp. Not like normal people.

I came to ask you what you’d like for breakfast, there’s cereal, eggs, etcetera.

“I don’t want any breakfast,” she said. “This horrid little room. And that anaesthetic. What was it?”

I didn’t know it would make you sick. Really.

“Mr. Singleton should have told you.” You could see she didn’t believe it about him. She was being sarcastic.

I said in a hurry, would you like tea or coffee and she said coffee, if you drink some first, so with that I left her and went out to the outer cellar. Just before I shut the door she said, “You’ve forgotten your lighter.”

I’ve got another. (I hadn’t.)

“Thank you,” she said. It was funny, she almost smiled.

I made the Nescafe and I took it in and she watched me drink some and then she drank some. All the time she asked questions, no, all the time I felt she might ask a question, she’d come out quickly with a question to try and catch me. About how long she had to stay, why I was being so kind to her. I made up answers, but I knew they sounded feeble, it wasn’t easy to invent quickly with her. In the end I said I was going into the shops and she was to tell me what she wanted. I said I’d buy anything she wanted.

“Anything?” she said.

In reason, I said.

“Mr. Singleton told you to?”

No. This is from me.

“I just want to be set free,” she said. I couldn’t get her to say anything more. It was horrible, she suddenly wouldn’t speak, so I had to leave her.

She wouldn’t speak again at lunch. I cooked the lunch in the outer cellar and took it in. But hardly any of it was eaten. She tried to bluff her way out again, cold as ice she was, but I wasn’t having any.

That evening after her supper, which she likewise didn’t eat much, I went and sat by the door. For some time she sat smoking, with her eyes shut, as if the sight of me tired her eyes.

“I’ve been thinking. All you’ve told me about Mr. Singleton is a story. I don’t believe it. He’s just not that sort of man, for one thing. And if he was, he wouldn’t have you working for him. He wouldn’t have made all these fantastic preparations.”

I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t look at her.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble. All those clothes in there, all these art books. I added up their cost this afternoon. Forty-three pounds.” It was like she was talking to herself. “I’m your prisoner, but you want me to be a happy prisoner. So there are two possibilities: you’re holding me to ransom, you’re in a gang or something.”

I’m not. I told you.

“You know who I am. You must know my father’s not rich or anything. So it can’t be ransom.”

It was uncanny, hearing her think it out.

“The only other thing is sex. You want to do something to me.” She was watching me.

It was a question. It shocked me.

It’s not that at all. I shall have all proper respect. I’m not that sort. I sounded quite curt.

“Then you must be mad,” she said. “In a nice kind way, of course.”

“You admit that the Mr. Singleton story is not true?”

I wanted to break it gently, I said.

“Break what?” she asked. “Rape? Murder?”

I never said that, I answered. She always seemed to get me on the defensive. In my dreams it was always the other way round.

“Why am I here?”

I want you to be my guest.

“Your guest!”

She stood up and walked round the armchair and leant against the back, eyes on me all the time. She’d taken her blue jumper off, she stood there in a dark green tartan dress, like a schoolgirl tunic, with a white blouse open at the throat. Her hair swept back into the pigtail. Her lovely face. She looked brave. I don’t know why, I thought of her sitting on my knees, very still, with me stroking her soft blonde hair, all out loose as I saw it after.

Suddenly I said, I love you. It’s driven me mad.

She said, “I see,” in a queer grave voice.

She didn’t look at me any more then.

I know it’s old-fashioned to say you love a woman, I never meant to do it then. In my dreams it was always we looked into each other’s eyes one day and then we kissed and nothing was said until after. A chap called Nobby in R.A.P.C. who knew all about women, always said you shouldn’t ever tell a woman you loved her. Even if you did. If you had to say “I love you,” you said it joking — he said that way it kept them after you. You had to play hard to get. The silly thing was I told myself a dozen times before I mustn’t tell her I loved her, but let it come naturally on both sides. But when I had her there my head went round and I often said things I didn’t mean to.

I don’t mean I told her everything. I told her about working in the Annexe and seeing her and thinking about her and the way she behaved and walked and all she’d meant to me and then having money and knowing she’d never look at me in spite of it and being lonely. When I stopped she was sitting on the bed looking at the carpet. We didn’t speak for what seemed a long time. There was just the whir of the fan in the outer cellar.

I felt ashamed. All red.

“Do you think you’ll make me love you by keeping me prisoner?”

I want you to get to know me.

“As long as I’m here you’ll just be a kidnapper to me. You know that?”

I got up. I didn’t want to be with her any more.

“Wait,” she said, coming towards me, “I’ll make a promise. I understand. Really. Let me go. I’ll tell no one, and nothing will happen.”

It was the first time she’d given me a kind look. She was saying, trust me, plain as words. A little smile round her eyes, looking up at me. All eager.

“You could. We could be friends. I could help you.”

Looking up at me there.

“It’s not too late.”

I couldn’t say what I felt, I just had to leave her; she was really hurting me. So I closed the door and left her. I didn’t even say good night.

No one will understand, they will think I was just after her for the obvious. Sometimes when I looked at the books before she came, it was what I thought, or I didn’t know. Only when she came it was all different, I didn’t think about the books or about her posing, things like that disgusted me, it was because I knew they would disgust her too. There was something so nice about her you had to be nice too, you could see she sort of expected it. I mean having her real made other things seem nasty. She was not like some woman you don’t respect so you don’t care what you do, you respected her and you had to be very careful.

I didn’t sleep much that night, because I was shocked the way things had gone, my telling her so much the very first day and how she made me seem a fool. There were moments when I thought I’d have to go down and drive her back to London like she wanted. I could go abroad. But then I thought of her face and the way her pigtail hung down a bit sideways and twisted and how she stood and walked and her lovely clear eyes. I knew I couldn’t do it.

After breakfast — that morning she ate a bit of cereal and had some coffee, when we didn’t speak at all — she was up and dressed, but the bed had been made differently from at first so she must have slept in it. Anyhow she stopped me when I was going out.

“I’d like to talk with you.” I stopped.

“Sit down,” she said. I sat down on the chair by the steps down.

“Look, this is mad. If you love me in any real sense of the word love you can’t want to keep me here. You can see I’m miserable. The air, I can’t breathe at nights, I’ve woken up with a headache. I should die if you kept me here long.” She looked really concerned.

It won’t be very long. I promise.

She got up and stood by the chest of drawers, and stared at me.

“What’s your name?” she said.

Clegg, I answered.

“Your first name?”

Ferdinand.

She gave me a quick sharp look.

“That’s not true,” she said. I remembered I had my wallet in my coat with my initials in gold I’d bought and I showed it. She wasn’t to know F stood for Frederick. I’ve always liked Ferdinand, it’s funny, even before I knew her. There’s something foreign and distinguished about it. Uncle Dick used to call me it sometimes, joking. Lord Ferdinand Clegg, Marquis of Bugs, he used to say.

It’s just a coincidence, I said.

“I suppose people call you Ferdie. Or Ferd.”

Always Ferdinand.

“Look, Ferdinand, I don’t know what you see in me. I don’t know why you’re in love with me. Perhaps I could fall in love with you somewhere else. I…” she didn’t seem to know what to say, which was unusual “… I do like gentle, kind men. But I couldn’t possibly fall in love with you in this room, I couldn’t fall in love with anyone here. Ever.”