The Collector

3

WHAT I am trying to say is that it all came unexpected.

It started off badly because when I went down at half past seven I saw her lying by the screen, she’d knocked it over in falling, and I knelt by her and her hands were like ice, but she was breathing, it was a kind of rasping sigh, very quick, and when I lifted her back to bed she came to, she must have fainted in the night when she’d gone behind the screen. She was cold all over, she began to shiver terribly, and then to sweat more and she was delirious, she kept on saying, get the doctor, get the doctor, please get the doctor (sometimes it was general practitioner — G.P., G.P. she kept on, over and over again, like a rhyme), it wasn’t her ordinary voice but what they call sing-song, and she didn’t seem to be able to fix her eyes on me. She was silent a while, and then it was “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” only the words were all slurred like she was drunk and she stopped in the middle. Twice she called Minny Minny like she thought she was in the next room (it was her sister), and then she started to mumble a lot of names and words, all mixed up with bits of sentence. Then it was she wanted to get up and I had to stop her. She really struggled. I kept on talking to her and she would stop a minute, but so soon as I went away to look after the tea or something she was off again. Well, I held her up to try to help her to drink the tea but it made her cough, she turned her head away, she didn’t want it. I forgot to say she had nasty yellow pimples one corner of her lips. And she didn’t smell fresh and clean like before.

In the end I got her to take a double dose of the pills, it said on the packet not to exceed the stated dose, but I heard once you ought to take twice what they said, they were scared to make it too strong for legal reasons.

I must have gone down four or five times that morning, I was that worried. She was awake but said she wanted nothing, she knew what was what, she shook her head anyhow. At lunch she drank a little tea and then went off to sleep and I sat out in the outer room. Well, the next time I switched on her light it was about five she was awake. She looked weak, very flushed, but she seemed to know where she was all right and who I was, her eyes followed me quite normally and I thought she was past the worse, the crisis as they call it.

She had a bit more tea and then she made me help her behind the screen, she could just about walk and so I left her a few minutes and came back and helped her back. She lay awhile in bed with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling, she had difficulty in getting her breath as usual and I was going to go away, but she made me stop.

She started to talk in a low hoarse voice, quite normal mentally, though. She said, “I’ve got pneumonia. You must get a doctor.”

I said, you’re over the worse, you look much better.

“I must have penicillin or something.” Then she began to cough, and she couldn’t breathe and she certainly sweated terribly.

Then she wanted to know what had happened in the night and the morning and I told her.

“Terrible nightmares,” she said. Well, I said I’d stay with her all night and that she looked better and she asked me if I was sure she looked better and I said she was. I wanted her to be better by then, so I suppose I was seeing things.

I promised that if she wasn’t well the next day I would carry her upstairs and get a doctor to come. So then she wanted to go up at once, she even wanted to know the time and when I told her, not thinking, she pointed out it was night and no one would see. But I said none of the rooms or beds was aired.

Then she changed, she said, “I feel so afraid. I’m going to die.” She didn’t speak quickly, there were pauses.

She said, “I’ve tried to help you. You must try to help me now.” I said of course I would, I sponged her face again and she seemed to be dropping off, which was what I wanted, but she spoke up again.

She said in a loud voice, “Daddy? Daddy?”

Go to sleep, I said. You’ll be recovered tomorrow.

She began to cry again. It wasn’t like ordinary crying, she just lay there with the tears around her eyes as if she didn’t know she was crying. Then suddenly she said, “What will you do if I die?”

I said, you’re not going to die, don’t be silly.

“Will you tell anyone?”

I’m not going to talk about it, I said.

“I don’t want to die,” she said. And then, “I don’t want to die,” again. And a third time, and each time I said don’t talk about it, but she didn’t seem to hear.

“Would you go away? If I died?”

I said, you’re daft.

“What would you do with your money?”

I said, please let’s talk about something else, but she insisted, after a pause, she was speaking normally, but there were funny gaps and then she’d suddenly say something again.

I said I didn’t know, I hadn’t thought. I was just humouring her.

“Leave it to the children.”

I said, what children, and she said, “We collected money for them last term, they eat earth,” and then a bit later, “We’re all such pigs, we deserve to die,” so I reckon they pinched the money they should have given in. Well, the next thing was she went to sleep for it must have been ten minutes. I didn’t move, I thought she was well asleep but suddenly she said, “Would you?” again, as if we hadn’t stopped talking. Then, “Are you there?” and she even tried to sit up to see me. Of course I calmed her down but she was awake again and she would go on about this fund she had collected for.

I gave up trying to say it was all silly, she wasn’t going to die, so I said, yes, I would, but she wasn’t, and so on.

“You promise?”

Yes.

Then she said, “Promises.” Then some time after, “They eat earth.” And she said that two or three times while I tried to pat her calm, it seemed it really distressed her.

The last thing she said was, “I forgive you.”

She was delirious of course, but I said I was sorry again.

You might say things were different from this time. I forgot all she did in the past and I was sorry for her, I was truly sorry for what I did that other evening, but I wasn’t to know she was really ill. It was spilt milk; it was done and there was an end to it.

It was really funny, though, how just when I thought I was really fed up with her all the old feelings came back. I kept on thinking of nice things, how sometimes we got on well and all the things she meant to me back home when I had nothing else. All the part from when she took off her clothes and I no longer respected her, that seemed to be unreal, like we both lost our minds. I mean, her being ill and me nursing seemed more real.

I stayed in the outer room like the night before. She was quiet half an hour or so, but then she began talking to herself, I said are you all right, and she stopped, but then later on she began talking again, or rather muttering and then she called my name out really loud, she said she couldn’t breathe, and then she brought up a mass of phlegm. It was a funny dark brown, I didn’t like the look of it at all, but I thought the pills might have coloured it. After that she must have dozed off for an hour or so, but suddenly she began to scream, she couldn’t, but she was trying and when I rushed in she was half out of bed. I don’t know what she was trying to do, but she didn’t seem to know me and she fought like a tiger, in spite of being so weak. I really had to fight to lie her down again.

Then she was in a horrible sweat, her pyjamas were soaked, and when I tried to get the top off to put on new ones she started fighting, rolling about as if she was mad, and getting in a worse sweat. I never had a worse night, it was so terrible I can’t describe it. She couldn’t sleep, I gave her as many sleeping tablets as I dared but they seemed to have no effect, she would doze off a little while and then she would be in a state again, trying to get out of bed (once she did before I could get to her and fell to the floor). Sometimes she was in delirium, calling for a G.P. and talking to people who she’d known, I suppose. I didn’t mind that so much, as long as she lay quiet. I took her temper-ature, it was over 104 degrees, and I knew she was ill, really ill.

Well, just about five the next morning I went up to have a breath of fresh air, it seemed another world out there, and I made up my mind that I would have to get her upstairs and ask a doctor in, I couldn’t put it off any longer. I was there about ten minutes standing in the open door but then I heard her calling again, she brought up a bit more of the red-brown phlegm and then she was sick, so I had to get her out of bed and make it up again while she lay slopped in the chair. It was the way she breathed that was worst, it was so quick and gasping, as if she was panting all the time.

That morning (she seemed quieter) she was able to take in what I said, so I told her I was going for the doctor and she nodded, I consider she understood, though she didn’t speak. That night seemed to take all her strength away, she just lay there still.

I know I could have gone to the village and phoned or got a doctor but for obvious reasons I never had dealings there, village gossip being what it is.

Anyhow I was so without sleep I didn’t know what I was doing half the time. I was all on my own, as always. I had no one to turn to.

Well I went into Lewes and (it was just after nine) into the first chemist I saw open and asked for the nearest doctor, which the girl told me from a list she had. It was a house in a street I’d never been. I saw on the door surgery began at 8:30 and I ought to have guessed there would be a lot of people as usual, but for some reason I just saw myself going in and seeing the doctor straight off. I must have looked daft in the room, with all the people looking at me, all the seats were taken and another young man was standing up. Well, they all seemed to be looking at me, I hadn’t the nerve to go straight through to the doctor so I stood by the wall. If only I could have gone straight in I’d have done it, everything would have been all right, it was having to be with all those other people in that room. I hadn’t been in a room with other people for a long time, only in and out of shops, it felt strange, as I say, they all seemed to look at me, one old woman especially wouldn’t take her eyes off me, I thought I must look peculiar in some way. I picked a magazine off the table, but of course I didn’t read it.

Well, I began to think there all about what would happen, it would be all right for a day or two, the doctor and M perhaps wouldn’t talk, but then… I knew what he would say, she must go into hospital, I couldn’t look after her properly. And then I thought I might get a nurse in, but she wouldn’t be long finding out what happened — Aunt Annie always said nurses were the nosiest parkers of them all, she never could abide people with long noses and nor could I. The doctor came out just then to call in the next patient, he was a tall man with a moustache, and he said, “Next” as if he was sick of seeing all these people. I mean, he sounded really irritated, I don’t think it was my imagination, I saw a woman make a face at the one next to her when he went back in his room.

He came out again and I could see he was the officer type in the army, they’ve got no sympathy with you, they just give you orders, you’re not their class and they treat everyone else as if they were dirt.

On top of that, this old woman started staring at me again and she made me hot under the collar, I hadn’t slept all night and I was wrought up, I suppose. Anyhow, I knew I’d had enough. So I turned and walked out and went and sat in the van.

It was seeing all those people. It made me see Miranda was the only person in the world I wanted to live with. It made me sick of the whole damn lot.

What I did then was to go to a chemist and say I wanted something for very bad flu. It was a shop I hadn’t been to before, luckily there was no one else there, so I could give my story. I said I had a friend who was a Peculiar Person (they don’t believe in doctors) and he had very bad flu, perhaps pneumonia, and we had to give him something secretly. Well, the girl produced the same stuff as I’d bought before and I said I wanted penicillin or the other stuff, but she said it had to be on doctor’s prescription. Unfortunately, the boss came out that moment, and she went and told him and he came up and said I must see a doctor and explain the case. I said I’d pay anything, but he just shook his head and said it was against the law. Then he wanted to know if my friend lived locally, and I left before he started nosing any further. I tried two other chemists, but they both said the same and I was scared to ask any more so I took some medicine they could sell, a different kind.

Then I went back. I could hardly drive, I was so tired.

Of course I went down as soon as I got back, and she was lying there breathing away. As soon as she saw me she began talking, she seemed to think I was someone else because she asked me if I’d seen Louise (I never heard her talk of her before) — luckily she didn’t wait for an answer, she started talking about some modern painter, then she said she was thirsty. It wasn’t sense, things seemed to come in her head and go. Well, I gave her a drink and she lay still a while and she suddenly seemed to get half back to normal (in mind, that is) because she said, when will Daddy come, you have been?

I lied, it was a white lie, I said he’d be here soon. She said, wash my face, and when I did, she said he must see some of . that stuff I’ve brought up. I say she said, but it was all in a whisper.

She said she wished she could sleep.

It’s the fever, I said, and she nodded, for a bit she quite understood all I was saying, and no one could believe it but I decided to go back to Lewes to get a doctor. I helped her behind the screen, she was so weak I knew she couldn’t run away, so what I decided was I would go up and try and get two hours’ sleep and then I’d carry her upstairs and I’d go down to Lewes and get another doctor out.

I don’t know how it happened, I always get up as soon as the alarm sounds; I think I must have reached out and turned it off in my sleep, I don’t remember waking up, once. Anyway it was four, not half past twelve when I woke up. Of course, I rushed down to see what had happened. She had pulled all the top clothes off her chest, but luckily it was warm enough. I don’t think it mattered then anyway, she was in a terrible fever and she didn’t know me, and when I lifted to take her upstairs she tried to struggle and scream, but she was so weak she couldn’t. What’s more her coughing stopped her screaming and seemed to make her realize where we were. I had a proper job getting her upstairs, but I managed it and put her in the bed in the spare room (I had got it all warmed), where she seemed happier. She didn’t say anything, the cold air had made her cough and bring up, her face was the funny purplish colour, too. I said, the doctor’s coming, which she seemed to understand.

I stayed a bit to see if she would be all right, I was afraid she might have just the strength to go to the window and attract the attention of anyone passing. I knew she couldn’t really, but I seemed to find reasons not to go. I went several times to her open door, she was lying there in the darkness, I could hear her breathing, sometimes she was muttering, once she called for me and I went and stood beside her and all she could say was doctor, doctor, and I said he’s coming, don’t worry and I wiped her face, she couldn’t stop sweating. I don’t know why I didn’t go then, I tried, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t face the idea of not knowing how she was, of not being able to see her whenever I wanted. I was just like in love with her all over again. And another thing, all those days I used to think, well, she’ll be getting over it a long time, she’ll need me, it will be very nice when she has turned the corner.

I don’t know why, I also thought the new room might help. It would make a change.

It was like when I had to take Mabel out in her chair. I could always find a dozen reasons to put it off. You ought to be grateful you have legs to push, Aunt Annie used to say (they knew I didn’t like being seen out pushing the chair). But it’s in my character, it’s how I was made. I can’t help it.

Time passed, it must have been midnight or more and I went up to see how she was, to see if she’d drink a cup of tea, and I couldn’t get her to answer me, she was breathing faster than ever, it was terrifying the way she panted, she seemed to catch at the air as if she could never get it fast enough. I shook her but she seemed asleep although her eyes were open, her face was very livid and she seemed to be staring at something on the ceiling. Well I felt really frightened, I thought, I’ll give her half an hour and then I must go. I sat by her, I could see that things were definitely worse by the way she was sweating and her face was terrible. Another thing she did those days was picking at the sheets. Pimples had spread all over both corners of her mouth and lips.

Well at last having locked her door in case, I set off again to Lewes, I remember I got there just after 1:30, everything shut up, of course. I went straight to the street where the doctor lived and stopped a bit short of his house. I was just sitting there in the dark getting ready to go and ring the bell, getting my story straight and so on, when there was a tapping on the window. It was a policeman.

It was a very nasty shock. I lowered the window.

Just wondered what you were doing here, he said.

Don’t tell me it’s no parking.

Depends what your business is, he said. He had a look at my licence, and wrote down my number, very deliberate. He was an old man, he can’t have been any good or he wouldn’t have been a constable still.

Well, he said, do you live here?

No, I said.

I know you don’t, he said. That’s why I’m asking what you’re doing here.

I haven’t done anything, I said. Look in the back, I said, and he did, the old fool. Anyhow it gave me time to think up a story. I told him I couldn’t sleep and I was driving around and then I got lost and I had stopped to look at a map. Well, he didn’t believe me or he didn’t look as if he did, he said I should get on home.

Well the result of it all was that I drove away, I couldn’t get out with him watching and go to the doctor’s door, he’d have smelt a rat at once. What I thought I would do was drive home and see if she was worse and if she was I’d drive her in to the hospital and give a false name and then drive away and then I’d have to run away and leave the country or something — I couldn’t think beyond giving her up.

Well, she was on the floor again, she’d tried to get out of bed, I suppose to go to the bathroom or to try to escape. Anyway I lifted her back to bed, she seemed to be half in a coma, she said some words but I couldn’t make them out and she didn’t understand anything I said.

I sat by her almost all night, some of the time I slept off. Twice she struggled to get out of bed again, it was no good, she hadn’t the strength of a flea. I said the same old things again, I said the doctor was coming and it seemed to calm her. Once she asked what day it was, and I lied, I said it was Monday (it was Wednesday) and she seemed a bit calmer then, too. She just said Monday, but you could tell it didn’t mean anything. It was like her brain was affected, too.

I knew she was dying then, I knew all that night, I could have told anyone.

I just sat there, listening to her breathing and muttering (she never seemed to sleep properly) and thinking about the way things turned out. Thinking about my rotten life and her life, and everything else.

Anyone there would see what it was like. I was truly and really in despair, although I say it myself. I couldn’t do anything, I wanted her to live so, and I couldn’t risk getting help, I was beaten, anyone would have seen it. All those days I knew I would never love another the same. There was only Miranda for ever. I knew it then.

Another thing was, she was the only one who knew I loved her. She knew what I really was. Not like anyone else could ever understand.

Well, it dawned, the last day came. Strange, it was a beauty, I don’t believe there was a cloud all day, one of those cold winter days when there’s no wind and the sky is very blue. It seemed specially arranged, most appropriate, seeing she passed away so peaceful. The last words she spoke were about ten when she said (I think), “the sun” (it was coming in the window), and she tried to sit up but she could not manage it.

She never said another word to be understood, she lingered on all the morning and afternoon and went with the sun. Her breathing had got very faint and (just to show what I was like) I even thought she had gone into a sleep at last. I don’t know exactly when she died, I know she was breathing about half past three when I went downstairs to do a bit of dusting and so on to take my mind off things, and when I came back about four, she was gone.

She was lying with her head to one side and it looked awful, her mouth was open and her eyes were staring white like she’d tried to see out of the window one last time. I felt her and she was cold, though her body was still warm. I ran and got a mirror. I knew that was the way and held it over her mouth but there was no mist. She was dead.

Well, I shut her mouth up and got the eyelids down. I didn’t know what to do then, I went and made myself a cup of tea.

When it was dark I got her dead body and carried it down to the cellar. I know you’re meant to wash dead bodies, but I didn’t like to, it didn’t seem right, so I put her on the bed and combed out her hair and cut a lock. I tried to arrange her face so it had a smile but I couldn’t. Anyway she looked very peaceful. Then I knelt and said a prayer, the only one I knew was Our Father, so I said some of that and God rest her soul, not that I believe in religion, but it seemed right. Then I went upstairs.

I don’t know why it was one little thing that did it; you’d think it would be seeing her dead or carrying her down the last time, but it wasn’t; it was when I saw her slippers in the room where she was upstairs. I picked them up and suddenly I knew she wouldn’t ever wear them again. I wouldn’t ever go down and draw the bolts again (funny, I had still bolted her in, though), and none of it would ever happen again, the good or the bad. I suddenly knew she was dead and dead means gone for ever, for ever and ever.

Those last days I had to be sorry for her (as soon as I knew it wasn’t acting), and I forgave her all the other business. Not while she was living, but when I knew she was dead, that was when I finally forgave her. All sorts of nice things came back. I remembered the beginning, the days in the Annexe just seeing her come out of the front door, or passing her the other side of the street, and I couldn’t understand how it all happened so that she was there below, dead.

It was like a joke mousetrap I once saw, the mouse just went on and things moved, it couldn’t ever turn back, but just on and on into cleverer and cleverer traps until the end.

I thought how happy I was, feelings I had those weeks I never had before and I wouldn’t ever have again.

The more I thought about it, the worse it seemed.

It came to midnight and I couldn’t sleep, I had to have all the lights on, I don’t believe in spirits but it seemed better with the lights.

I kept on thinking of her, thinking perhaps it was my fault after all that she did what she did and lost my respect, then I thought it was her fault, she asked for everything she got. Then I didn’t know what to think, my head seemed to go bang bang bang, and I knew I couldn’t live at Fosters any more. I wanted to drive away and never come back.

I thought, I could sell up and go out to Australia. But then there was all the covering up to do first. It was too much. The next thing was I got the police on the brain. I decided the best thing was to go to the police and tell them the lot. I even got my coat on to drive down.

I thought I was going mad, I kept on looking in the mirror and trying to see it in my face. I had this horrible idea, I was mad, everyone else could see it, only I couldn’t. I kept remembering how people in Lewes seemed to look at me sometimes, like the people in that doctor’s waiting-room. They all knew I was mad.

It came to two o’clock. I don’t know why, I began to think her being dead was all a mistake, perhaps she had just been asleep. So I had to go down to make sure. It was horrible. Soon as I went down in the outer cellar I started imagining things. Like she might step out of a corner with a hatchet. Or she would not be there — even though the door was bolted she would have vanished. Like in a horror-film.

She was there. Lying there, all in the silence. I touched her. She was so cold, so cold it gave me a shock. I still couldn’t understand it was true, how she’d been living only a few hours before, and just a few days back walking about, drawing, doing her knitting. And now this.

Then something moved at the other end of the cellar, back by the door. It must have been a draught. Something broke in me, I lost my head, I rushed out and fell up the stair in the outer cellar and out. I locked the door down double quick and got into the house and locked that door and all the bolts home.

After a while the shaking stopped, I calmed down. But all I could think was how this was the end. I couldn’t live with her down there like that.

It was then I got the idea. It kept on coming back, this feeling that she was lucky to be done with it all, no more worries, no more hiding, no more things you want to be and won’t ever be. But finished, the lot.

All I had to do was kill myself, then the others could think what they liked. The people in the waiting-room, the Annexe people, Aunt Annie and Mabel, all of them. I would be out of it.

I started thinking how I could do it, how I could go into Lewes as soon as the shops opened and get a lot of aspros and some flowers, chrysanths were her favourite. Then take the aspros and go down with the flowers and lie beside her. Post a letter first to the police. So they would find us down there together. Together in the Great Beyond.

We would be buried together. Like Romeo and Juliet.

It would be a real tragedy. Not sordid.

I would get some proper respect if I did it. If I destroyed the photos, that was all there was, people would see I never did anything nasty to her, it would be truly tragic.

I thought it out, and then I went and got the photos and the negatives, all ready to burn first thing in the morning.

It was like I had to have some definite plan. Anything, so long as it was definite.

There was the money, but I didn’t care any more. Aunt Annie and Mabel would get it. Miranda talked about the Save the Children fund, but she was already half off her rocker. All those charities are run by crooks. Save the Trustees, more like.

I wanted what money couldn’t buy. If I really had got a nasty mind I would not have gone to all the trouble I did, I would have just visited the women you read about on the boards in Paddington and Soho and done what I wanted. You can’t buy happiness. I must have heard Aunt Annie say that a hundred times. Ha ha, I always thought, just let’s have a try first. Well, I had my try.

Because what it is, it’s luck. It’s like the pools — worse, there aren’t even good teams and bad teams and likely draws. You can’t ever tell how it will turn out. Just A versus B, C versus D, and nobody knows what A and B and C and D are. That’s why I never believed in God. I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.

About three o’clock I dozed off, so I went up to get a last sleep, I lay in bed seeing it all, the going into Lewes when I woke up, coming back, having a bonfire, locking up (one last look at my collection) and then going down. She was waiting for me down there. I would say we were in love, in the letter to the police. A suicide pact. It would be “The End.”