December 4th
I shan’t go on keeping a diary when I leave here. It’s not healthy. It keeps me sane down here, gives me somebody to talk to. But it’s vain. You write what you want to hear.
It’s funny. You don’t do that when you draw yourself. No temptation to cheat.
It’s sick, sick, all this thinking about me. Morbid.
I long to paint and paint other things. Fields, southern houses, landscapes, vast wide-open things in vast wide-open light.
It’s what I’ve been doing today. Moods of light recalled from Spain. Ochre walls burnt white in the sunlight. The walls of Avila. Cordoba courtyards. I don’t try to reproduce the place, but the light of the place.
Fiat lux.
I’ve been playing the Modern Jazz Quartet’s records over and over again. There’s no night in their music, no smoky dives. Bursts and sparkles and little fizzes of light, starlight, and sometimes high noon, tremendous everywhere light, like chandeliers of diamonds floating in the sky.
December 5th
G.P.
The Rape of Intelligence. By the moneyed masses, the New People.
Things he says. They shock you, but you remember them. They stick. Hard, meant to last.
I’ve been doing skyscapes all day. I just draw a line an inch from the bottom. That’s the earth. Then I think of nothing but the sky. June sky, December, August, spring-rain, thunder, dawn, dusk. I’ve done dozens of skies. Pure sky, nothing else. Just the simple line and the skies above.
A strange thought: I would not want this not to have happened. Because if I escape I shall be a completely different and I think better person. Because if I don’t escape, if something dreadful happened, I shall still know that the person I was and would have stayed if this hadn’t happened was not the person I now want to be.
It’s like firing a pot. You have to risk the cracking and the warping.
Caliban’s very quiet. A sort of truce.
I’m going to ask to go up tomorrow. I want to see if he’s actually doing anything.
Today I asked him to bind me and gag me and let me sit at the foot of the cellar steps with the door out open. In the end he agreed. So I could look up and see the sky. A pale grey sky. I saw birds fly across, pigeons, I think. I heard outside sounds. This is the first proper daylight I’ve seen for two months. It lived. It made me cry.
December 6th
I’ve been up for a bath and we’ve been looking at the room I shall occupy. He has done some things. He’s going to see if he can’t find an antique Windsor chair. I drew it for him.
It’s made me feel happy.
I’m restless. I can’t write here. I feel half-escaped already.
The thing that made me feel he was more normal was this little bit of dialogue.
M. (_we were standing in the room_) Why don’t you just let me come and live up here as your guest? If I gave you my word of honour?
C. If fifty people came to me, real honest respectable people, and swore blind you wouldn’t escape, I wouldn’t trust them. I wouldn’t trust the whole world.
M. You can’t go all through life trusting no one.
C. You don’t know what being alone is.
M. What do you think I’ve been these last two months?
C. I bet a lot of people think about you. Miss you. I might be dead for all anyone I knew ever cared.
M. Your aunt.
C. Her.
(_There was a silence_.)
C. (_he suddenly burst out with it_) You don’t know what you are. You’re everything. I got nothing if you go.
(_And there was a great silence_.)
December 7th
He’s bought the chair. He brought it down. It’s nice. I wouldn’t have it down here. I don’t want anything from down here. A complete change.
Tomorrow I’m going upstairs for good. I asked him afterwards, last night. And he agreed. I haven’t got to wait the whole week.
He’s gone into Lewes to buy more things for the room. We’re going to have a celebration supper.
He’s been much nicer, these last two days.
I’m not going to lose my head and try and rush out at the first chance. He’ll watch me, I know. I can’t imagine what he’ll do. The window will be boarded and he’ll lock the door. But there’ll be ways of seeing daylight. Sooner or later there’ll be a chance (if he doesn’t let me go of his own accord) to run for it.
But I know it will be only one chance. If he caught me escaping he’d put me straight back down here.
So it must be a really good chance. A sure one.
I tell myself I must prepare for the worst.
But something about him makes me feel that this time he will do what he has said.
I’ve caught his cold. It doesn’t matter.
Oh my God my God I could kill myself.
He’s going to kill me with despair.
I’m still down here. He never meant it.
He wants to take photographs. That’s his secret. He wants to take my clothes off and … oh God I never knew till now what loathing was.
He said unspeakable things to me. I was a street-woman, I asked for what he suggested.
I went mad with rage. I threw a bottle of ink at him.
He said that if I didn’t do it he’d stop me having baths or going out in the cellar. I’ll be here all the time.
The hate between us. It came seething out.
I’ve caught his wretched cold. I can’t think straight.
I couldn’t kill myself, I’m too angry with him.
He’s always abused me. From the very beginning. That story about the dog. He uses my heart. Then turns and tramples on it.
He hates me, he wants to defile me and break me and destroy me. He wants me to hate myself so much that I destroy myself.
The final meanness. He’s not bringing me any supper. I’m to fast, on top of everything else. Perhaps he’s going to leave me to starve. He’s capable of it.
I’ve got over the shock. He won’t beat me. I won’t give in. I won’t be broken by him.
I’ve got a temperature, I feel sick.
Everything’s against me, but I won’t give in.
I’ve been lying on the bed with G.P.’s picture beside me. Holding the frame in one hand. Like a crucifix.
I will survive. I will escape. I will not give in.
I will not give in.
I hate God. I hate whatever made this world, I hate whatever made the human race, made men like Caliban possible and situations like this possible.
If there is a God he’s a great loathsome spider in the darkness.
He cannot be good.
This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn’t necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing.
All in vain. All wasted.
The older the world becomes, the more obvious it is. The bomb and the tortures in Algeria and the starving babies in the Congo. It gets bigger and darker.
More and more suffering for more and more. And more and more in vain.
It’s as if the lights have fused. I’m here in the black truth.
God is impotent. He can’t love us. He hates us because he can’t love us.
All the meanness and the selfishness and the lies.
People won’t admit it, they’re too busy grabbing to see that the lights have fused. They can’t see the darkness and the spider-face beyond and the great web of it all. That there’s always this if you scratch at the surface of happiness and goodness.
The black and the black and the black.
I’ve not only never felt like this before, I never imagined it possible. More than hatred, more than despair. You can’t hate what you cannot touch, I can’t even feel what most people think of as despair. It’s beyond despair. It’s as if I can’t feel any more. I see, but I can’t feel.
Oh God if there is a God.
&nbs
p; I hate beyond hate.
He came down just now. I was asleep on top of the bed. Fever.
The air so stuffy. It must be flu.
I felt so rotten I said nothing. No energy to say my hate.
The bed’s damp. My chest hurts.
I didn’t say a word to him. It’s gone beyond words. I wish I was a Goya. Could draw the absolute hate I have in me for him.
I’m so frightened. I don’t know what will happen if I’m really ill. I can’t understand why my chest hurts. As if I’ve had bronchitis for days.
But he’d have to get a doctor. He might kill me, but he couldn’t just let me die.
Oh, God, this is horrible.
(Evening.) He brought a thermometer. It was a 100 at lunch, and now it’s a 101. I feel terrible.
I’ve been in bed all day.
He’s not human.
Oh God I’m so lonely so utterly alone.
I can’t write.
(Morning.) A really bad bronchial cold. Shivering.
I haven’t slept properly. Horrid dreams. Weird, very vivid dreams. G.P. was in one. It made me cry. I feel so frightened.
I can’t eat. There’s a pain in my lung when I breathe, and I keep on thinking of pneumonia. But it can’t be.
I won’t die. I won’t die. Not for Caliban.
Dream. Extraordinary.
Walking in the Ash Grove at L. I look up through the trees. I see an aeroplane in the blue sky. I know it will crash. Later I see where it has crashed. I am frightened to go on. A girl walks towards me. Minny? I can’t see. She is in peculiar Greek clothes—drapery. White. In sunshine through the still trees. Seems to know me but I do not know her (not Minny). Never close. I want to be close. With her. I wake up.
If I die, no one will ever know.
It puts me in a fever. I can’t write.
(Night.) No pity. No God.
I shouted at him and he went mad. I was too weak to stop him. Bound and gagged me and took his beastly photographs.
I don’t mind the pain. The humiliation.
I did what he wanted. To get it over.
I don’t mind for myself any more.
But oh God the beastliness of it all.
I’m crying I’m crying I can’t write.
I will not give in.
I will not give in.
I can’t sleep. I’m going mad. Have to have the light on. Wild dreams. I think people are here. D. Minny.
It’s pneumonia.
He must get a doctor.
It is murder.
I can’t write it down. Words are useless.
(He’s come.) He won’t listen. I’ve begged him. I’ve said it’s murder. So weak. Temperature 102. I’ve been sick.
Nothing about last night, him or me.
Did it happen? Fever. I get delirious.
If only I knew what I have done.
Useless useless.
I won’t die I won’t die.
Dear dear G.P., this
Oh God oh God do not let me die.
God do not let me die.
Do not let me die.
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.