The Collector

You had to go out through the back where there was a door beside the back door. He took the key from under a flowerpot. Of course the electricity was off, but he had a torch. It was cold out of the sun, damp, nasty. There were stone steps down. At the bottom he shone his torch round. Someone had whitewashed the walls, but it was a long time ago, and pieces had come off so that the walls looked mottled.

Runs the whole length, he said, and there’s this too. He shone the torch and I saw a doorway in the corner of the wall facing us as we came down the stairs. It was another large cellar, four big steps down from the first one, but this time with a lower roof and a bit arched, like the rooms you see underneath churches sometimes. The steps came down diagonally in one corner so the room ran away, so to speak.

Just the thing for orgies, he said.

What was it for? I asked, ignoring his silly facetiousness.

He said they thought it might be because the cottage was so on its own. They’d have to store a lot of food. Or it might have been a secret Roman Catholic chapel. One of the electricians later said it was a smugglers’ place when they used to be going to London from Newhaven.

Well, we went back upstairs and out. When he locked the door and put the key back under a flowerpot, it was like down there didn’t exist. It was two worlds. It’s always been like that. Some days I’ve woken up and it’s all been like a dream, till I went down again.

He looked at his watch.

I’m interested, I said. Very interested. I was so nervous he looked at me surprised and I said, I think I’ll have it. Just like that. I really surprised myself. Because before I always wanted something up to date, what they call contemporary. Not an old place stuck away.

He stood there looking all gormless, surprised that I was so interested, surprised I had money, I suppose, like most of them.

He went away back to Lewes then. He had to fetch someone else interested, so I said I would stay in the garden and think things over before a final decision.

It was a nice garden, it runs back to a field which had lucerne then, lovely stuff for butterflies. The field goes up to a hill (that is north). East there are woods on both sides of the road ru

I went back to the house and got the key out and went down into the cellars again. The i

Some might say I was lucky to find the place first go, however I would have found somewhere else sooner or later. I had the money. I had the will. Fu

I read in the paper the other day (Saying of the Day)—“What Water is to the Body, Purpose is to the Mind.” That is very true, in my humble opinion. When Miranda became the purpose of my life I should say I was at least as good as the next man, as it turned out.

I had to give five hundred more than they asked in the advert, others were after it, everyone fleeced me. The surveyor, the builder, the decorators, the furniture people in Lewes I got to furnish it. I didn’t care, why should I, money was no object. I got long letters from Aunt A

I got the electricians to run a power cable down to the cellar, and the plumbers water and a sink. I made out I wanted to do carpentry and photography and that would be my workroom. It wasn’t a lie, there was carpentry to do all right. And I was already taking some photographs I couldn’t have developed in a shop. Nothing nasty. Just couples.

At the end of August, the men moved out and I moved in. To begin with, I felt like in a dream. But that soon wore off. I wasn’t left alone as much as I expected. A man came and wanted to do the garden, he’d always done it, and he got very nasty when I sent him away. Then the vicar from the village came and I had to be rude with him. I said I wanted to be left alone, I was Nonconformist, I wanted nothing to do with the village, and he went off la-di-da in a huff. Then there were several people with van-shops and I had to put them off. I said I bought all my goods in Lewes.

I had the telephone disco

I soon got in the habit of locking the front gate, it was only a grille, but had a lock. Once or twice I saw tradesmen looking through, but people soon seemed to get the point. I was left alone, and could get on with my work.

I worked for a month or more getting my plans ready. I was alone all the time; not having any real friends was lucky. (You couldn’t call the A

I used to do odd jobs for Aunt A

One problem of course was doors and noise. There was a good old oak frame in the door through to her room but no door, so I had to make one to fit, and that was my hardest job. The first one I made didn’t work, but the second one was better. Even a man couldn’t have bust it down, let alone a little thing like her. It was two-inch seasoned wood with sheet metal on the inside so she couldn’t get at the wood. It weighed a ton and it was no joke getting it hung, but I did it. I fixed ten-inch bolts outside. Then I did something very clever. I made what looked like a bookcase, only for tools and things, out of some old wood and fitted it with wooden latches in the doorway, so that if you gave a casual look it just seemed that it was just an old recess fitted up with shelves. You lifted it out and there was the door through. It also stopped any noise getting out. I also fitted a bolt on the i

What I did in the first cellar was I put in a small cooker and all the other facilities. I didn’t know there wouldn’t be snoopers and it would look fu

All this time I never thought it was serious. I know that must sound very strange, but it was so. I used to say, of course, I’ll never do it, this is only pretending. And I wouldn’t have pretended even like that if I hadn’t had all the time and money I wanted. In my opinion a lot of people who may seem happy now would do what I did or similar things if they had the money and the time. I mean, to give way to what they pretend now they shouldn’t. Power corrupts, a teacher I had always said. And Money is Power.