The Collector

When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost everyday sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe, she and her younger sister used to go in and out a lot, often with young men, which of course I didn’t like. When I had a free moment from the files and ledgers I stood by the window and used to look down over the road over the frosting and sometimes I’d see her. In the evening I marked it in my observation diary, at first with X, and then when I knew her name with M. I saw her several times outside too. I stood right behind her once in a queen at the public library down Crossfield Street. She didn’t look once at me, but I watched the back of her head and hair in a long pigtail. It was very pale, silky, like burnet cocoons. All in one pigtail coming down almost to her waist, sometimes in front, sometimes in the back. Sometimes she wore it up. Only once, before she came to be my guest here, did I have the privilege to see her with it loose, and it took my breath away it was so beautiful like a mermaid.

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The first paragraph of Fowles’ masterpiece THE COLLECTOR.