The Collector

 I'm not being frank. I still want money. But I know that it's wrong. I believe G.P. -- I don't have to believe him when he says it, I can see it's true -- he hardly worries about money at all. He has just enough to buy his materials, to live, to have a working holiday every year, to manage. And there're a dozen others -- Peter. Bill McDonald. Stefan. They don't live in the world of money. If they have it they spend it. If they don't they go without.

 Persons like Caliban have no head for money. They've only got to have a little, like the New People, and they become beastly. All the horrid people who wouldn't give me money when I was collecting. I could tell, I only had to look in their faces. Bourgeois people give because they're embarrassed if you pester them. Intelligent people give or at least they look honestly at you and say no. They're not ashamed not to give. But the New People are too mean to give and too small to admit it. Like the horrid man in Hampstead (he was one of them) who said, I'll give you half a dollar if you can prove it doesn't go into someone's pocket. He thought he was being funny.

 I turned my back on him, which was wrong, because my pride was less important than the children. So I put a half-crown in for him later.

 But I still hate him.

 With Caliban it's as if somebody made him drink a whole bottle of whisky. He can't take it. The only thing that kept him decent before was being poor. Being stuck to one place and one job.

 It's like putting a blind man in a fast car and telling him to drive where and how he likes.

 A nice thing to end with. The Bach record came today, I've played it twice already. Caliban said it was nice, but he wasn't "musical." However, he sat with the right sort of expression on his face. I'm going to play the parts I like again. I'm going to lie in bed in the darkness and the music and think I'm with G.P. and he's lying over there with his eyes shut and his pitted cheek and his Jew's nose; as if he was on his own tomb. Only there's nothing of death in him.

 Even so. This evening Caliban was late coming down.

 Where've you been, I snapped at him. He just looked surprised, said nothing. I said, you seem so late.

 Ridiculous. I wanted him to come. I often want him to come. I'm as lonely as that.

    _November 10th_

 We had an argument this evening about his money. I said he ought to give most of it away. I tried to shame him into giving some away. But he won't trust anything. That's what's really wrong with him. Like my man in Hampstead, he doesn't trust people to collect money and use it for the purpose they say they will. He thinks everyone is corrupt, everyone tries to get money and keep it.

 It's no good my saying I know it's used for the right purpose. He says, how do you know? And of course I can't tell him. I can only say I feel sure -- it _must_ go where it's needed. Then he smiles as if I'm too naпve to have any right on my side.

 I accused him (not very bitterly) of not having sent the CND cheque. I challenged him to produce a receipt. He said the gift was anonymous, he hadn't sent his address. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, I shall go and find out when I'm free. But I didn't. Because it would be one more reason for him not to set me free. He was red, I'm sure he was lying, as he lied about the letter to D and M.

 It's not so much a lack of generosity -- a real miserliness. I mean (forgetting the absurdity of the situation), he is generous to me. He spends hundreds of pounds on me. He'd kill me with kindness. With chocolates and cigarettes and food and flowers. I said I'd like some French perfume the other evening -- it was just a whim, really, but this room smells of disinfectant and Airwick. I have enough baths, but I don't feel clean. And I said I wished I could go and sniff the various scents to see which I liked best. He came in this morning with _fourteen_ different bottles. He'd ransacked all the chemists' shops. It's mad. Forty pounds' worth. It's like living in the Arabian Nights. Being the favourite in the harem. But the one perfume you really want is freedom.

 If I could put a starving child before him and give it food and let him watch it grow well, I know he'd give money. But everything beyond what he pays for and sees himself get is suspicious to him. He doesn't believe in any other world but the one he lives in and sees. He's the one in prison; in his own hateful narrow present world.

    _November 12th_

 The last night but one. I daren't think about it, about not escaping. I've kept reminding him, recently. But now I feel I should have sprung it on him more or less suddenly. Today I decided that I would organize a little party tomorrow night. I shall say I feel differently towards him, that I want to be his friend and lameduck him in London.