The Collector

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.