PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (18 page)

“You
are still wearing your coat, Charlotte,” he says instead.   The waiter arrives,
guided well by Gregory’s signals.  “I would like the white,” he says to the
waiter, and then, “please take her coat.”  The waiter finishes pouring and then
stands to the side waiting for me to remove my coat.

“I’m
fine Dana.  Never better,” I say as I stand up and slide my arms out of the
coat in three, maybe four quick shakes.  He waits for my gloves, but I am
already sat back down still wearing them.  I usher the waiter away.  It is the
kind of
never better
that nobody takes at face value.  It is the kind of
response that comes from a couple who have clearly had an argument before they
turned up at an event, when neither of them wants to be there but it was too
late to change the plan.  One might suggest that Gregory has no idea why I am
behaving like this, but I cannot honestly believe that. 

“Charlotte,
whatever’s the matter with you.  Look at the mess you have made.”  He is half
whispering, half shouting.  He is brushing crumbs onto the floor, embarrassed
by my mess.  If it was he who had tried to kill himself, he would surely never
be able to show his face again.  If Gregory was going to try to die, he would
without fail get it right.  The shame of failure would be too much.  Yet I have
learnt to live with it.  He has no idea of the strength I hold, the stamina to
see something through and to come out the other side.  He’ll learn. 

“There
is nothing the matter with me, Gregory.  I am quite fine,” I say picking up a
chunk of the broken roll and stuffing it into my mouth, tearing at it with my teeth.

“Well,
then act like it.  You’re acting insane.”  He looks me up and down.  “And take
off your gloves, for goodness sake.”

“But
I am insane Gregory.  Don’t you remember?”  I put my hands up to my face and
waggle my fingers around in front of my eyes as I roll them around trying to
look as mental as possible.  He isn’t amused and turns away.  My voice was
starting to break a bit, stretched out like an old tyre, worn in places and
likely to burst.  My words are laced with giggles that have nothing to do with
humour and when I catch Dana’s eye I see that she is already on her feet and
heading in my direction.

“Charlotte,
calm down,” he says, “you promised a normal night.  Stop this.”

“Come
on Charlotte, dear.”  This is Dana at my side and she is holding my shoulders
which I feel now with her hands against me are shaking.  “Let’s not do this
here.  Let’s go to the ladies toilet.”

“I’m
quite calm,” I say, sounding anything but, “and Dana, thank you, but I do not
need to go to the toilet.  Are you sure there is no lavender in the flowers.”

“Just
for a tissue.  To wipe your eyes,” she says, ignoring me.

“I
have a tissue here,” I say, and reach across for my purse.  Gregory snatches it
away and opens it up, an attempt to get me under control.  “Give me that,” I say,
snatching it back, but he has already opened the clasp and the items from
inside fall out.  Perhaps it was not one of my more sensible ideas, but I had
chosen to bring the photograph of Ishiko with me tonight.  It falls onto
Gregory’s plate as if she has been served up as his next meal.

“Why
do you have this?” he says, pulling the photograph under the table. 

He
is astonished.  He turns it over in his lap and looks at it for a while, and I
wriggle my shoulders free from Dana’s grip.  They are all staring at me, including
Ishiko with her idiotic smile and splayed jazz hands.  Staring back, judgementally. 
I lean in closer as if I am following the scent of something, eventually my
nose landing up on Gregory’s arm and I shout, “Lavender!”

“Did
you take this from her room?” he asks.

“Let’s
go to the toilets, Charlotte.  Come on.”  Dana is still trying, and I swear I
am only one more comment from cutting out her tongue with my knife and fork. 

“Why? 
Do you recognise it from her room?”  He hadn’t thought that one through.  “Have
you been in
side
it?”  I lingered over the word inside, hissing like a
snake as it rolled from my tongue.  He was flustered.  The sharp people amongst
us may have picked up on the flickers around his eye, the way it twitches when
he lies, the way his eyelids flicker just before staring at me in defiance.  It
only ever takes him a microsecond to pull himself together, to trample over his
natural reactions, but I see them.  He’s quick, but I am too.  I see him.

“Don’t
be absurd.”  He bats me away.  I know he is wondering why I have it.  Why is
screaming in his head as loudly as another much more pleasing word is screaming
in mine.  “Take off your gloves and pull yourself together.”  The rest of the
table already know the night is over before it really began.  Gregory is
holding onto the last hope of saving this situation, but the rest of us know
it’s over.  I tried.

“There
is nothing absurd about me, Gregory.  I know you.  I know you better than
anybody.  Better than anybody here who thinks they know you oh so well.  I see
you.”  I can’t get the word out of my head.  My heart is racing like a
jackhammer and my eyes are throbbing and I am sure that blood is going to rush
out from my open oozing head wound like a natural bloody geezer.  I feel sick. 
I hear nothing but my own voice and the same word rolling over in my head. 
Dying.

“You
need to go home.  Dana,” he says, looking for some assistance.

“Of
course, Gregory,” she replies, putting her hands onto my arm.

“No,”
I say.  “You are not shipping me off like that.  I have a right to be heard,
Gregory.”  I wriggle from Dana’s grip.  Jemima looks away, and John Wexley appears
gripped in total panic as if he is only moments from a painful death.  He must
have had enough of the craziness with Marianne.  “Why am I not allowed to
speak?”  I want to tell everybody that he is a liar.  A cheat.  A destroyer of
lives.  I cannot.  I settle for the baby.  “Why can’t we tell them?”

“No,
Charlotte.”  Suddenly Gregory looks panicked too.

“But
why?”  I am trying to stand up, licking at my lips like a cat with a fur ball
stuck in its throat because I can still taste the wipe from earlier.  I am
almost on my feet and I would be already if it wasn’t for Dana’s hands that have
moved up to my shoulders.

“No. 
Don’t,” he warns.

“I
want to tell everybody.  I want to be something new.  Something better.”  I
barely heard the words come out of my mouth.  They hadn’t been my intended
words, but as I said them everything seemed to move away from me and blur into
the background.  The first thing I saw were the stars.  A network of stars
racing along above me like I was floating up above our earth.  The fairy
lights.  I felt a pressure behind me and suddenly the stars disappeared.  My legs
made the first impact, quickly followed by my buttocks, my hips, back, hands,
and finally head, and the pressure behind me gave way to solid floor and the
smell of lavender wafted straight over me.  I saw heads above me blocking out
the blanket of lights above me.  There were seconds of silence followed by
panic and Gregory above me, his head close to mine.  Gasps around me.  I was
flat.  Faces peering in on top of other faces.  Eyes probing at me as I lie spent
and exhausted.

“Dana,”
I manage, almost shouting I am sure over the noise of the rising panic and
commotion.  “The baby.”

“Yes,
yes, dear.”  She is stroking my face.  The face he has come to despise.  “OK.” 
I see hundreds of eyes peering at me, some I know, some I have never seen
before.  I see Stephen Jones at the edge of the crowd but he is just one face
amongst many and within another few seconds his features have been replaced by
somebody else’s and it was all so quick I am not really sure if he was ever
there at all.  I close my eyes and succumb to the sensation of removal, my thoughts
taken and my body limp.  Still one word floats around in my head.  Dying.  This
is how it felt.

“Call
an ambulance,” somebody shouts.

“No,
it’s fine.”  I’m sure that was Gregory.

“Get
her a glass of water,” I hear.  No idea who said this. 

For
a moment my eyes flicker open and I can see two heads peering over me.  Dana
and Gregory.  But then as their faces fade again I hear the lake, the water
lurching towards the shore, pretending it is a gentle beast, fooling those who
walk near it into believing that there is no danger.  I hear the horn of the
rescue boat and Gregory shouting,
'Breathe, Charlotte.  For God's sake
breathe.'
  Dying.  I am dying.  The last words I hear are nothing more than
muffled sounds, like my ears are still underwater and I wonder again if I am
drowning.  This is how it felt.

I
am dying, I think.

I
am drowning. 

I
must be drowning.

Then
nothing.

In
the first seconds between dream and consciousness, everything felt normal.  I
woke in my own bed, I saw light streaming in through the cracked open curtains
from the sun rising high in the sky, and I could hear the clatter of plates and
the hush of voices.  I took a few deep breaths before sitting up.  My head felt
dizzy, maybe the blurring effect of drugs.  I remember this feeling from
before, only when I woke up on that occasion the room was alien and the voices
were coming from a hospital corridor.  That time when I tried the door handle
it was locked, but this time I was already through it and on the landing, tiptoeing
downstairs, the voices growing louder and louder with each step I took.

Dr.
Abrams was in the drawing room, standing next to the piano and it was him that
I saw first.  Gregory was standing at the window doing his best to look hurt
and thoughtful.  All he needed was a waistcoat and a pocket watch and the
picture of a perfect yet wronged gentleman would be complete.  Maybe a pipe,
too.  I could imagine him standing in this exact spot, discussing the feeble
minded nature of women with his physician friends and how he shouldn’t have
expected any more from me than what he got.  It is Dr. Abrams that spots me
first.  I admit, to myself at least, to feeling slightly embarrassed.

“Good
morning, Charlotte.”  Gregory doesn’t event turn to acknowledge my arrival and
continues to gaze out to the lake and to a past that we cannot forget.  “How
are you feeling today?”

“Good, Dr. Abrams.”  I take a seat on the nearest
chair, so that I can feel something underneath me.  Floating into this
atmosphere of repulsion, caused by my latest act of madness makes me feel
ungrounded, lacking gravity.  I need to feel something underneath me, a
connection to an object.  I feel the soft leather as I slide onto the chair and
I grip the edges with my hands.  I am holding on.  Just holding on. 

“Good morning, Gregory,” I say.  I want him to look at
me.  I want him to see me.  I want him to hear me.  I want him to know that I
am here with a life, two lives, and that I have a pulse and blood in my veins. 
I want him to know that I feel things.  That I am real.  That I hurt.  I want
him to see what he did.  To know that what happened last night was his fault. 

Today I feel shame when I think back to my actions of
the night before.  I was doing well, until he went and fucked me up.  I was coping. 
I was growing a life inside me and managing the one around me.  I feel
something else which I am not used to this morning, and that is repentance. 
For this reason I know they must have drugged me.  I feel like my head is
detached from my mouth and that somebody is controlling what I say and do like
a marionette puppet.  Gregory turns away from the window towards me, mustering
the strength, breath by breath to bring his eyes up to look at me.

“Good
morning.”  He is angry.  I know the hands-on-hips stance, the deep breath in,
the raised chin of superiority.  He huffs out a big breath.  A strained effort.

“Gregory,
now remember what we discussed.”  This is Dr. Abrams talking.  “Go steady with
her.  She will be feeling out of sorts today.”  They speak about me rather than
to me.  I feel as removed and powerless as I did in the hospital six months ago
where I did not discuss, I was only discussed.  I remember now how that felt,
right here in this moment.  I remember looking at Gregory through the reinforced
glass window as I listened to the sounds of madness, the bleating of agony from
up the corridor.  I was silent.  His head was resting in his hand as he
listened to the doctor, his eyes dark and sleep starved.  He looked back at me
through that window and what I saw on his face was pain.  Today it is anger
that I see.  “Charlotte, how are you feeling?”  Dr. Abrams' words bring me back
to the moment.

My
first thought was that it was a stupid question.  He just told Gregory how I
would be feeling.  It’s as if I am so far removed from them that they believe I
cannot even hear them talking to each other.  “I am feeling all right,” I lie. 
I am aware that my voice is faint, pathetic, and apologetic.  My shoulders are
slouched forward and the fingers of my left hand are working nonexistent dirt
from underneath the fingernails of my other hand.  I stop and take hold of the
chair again.  “I am alright,” I say, but I am anything but alright.  I am
married to a cunt who is fucking our housemaid after getting me pregnant and I
can hear her rattling plates in the kitchen.  If I wasn’t so drugged up I am
sure I would be able to smell lavender in this room wafting from my husband’s
skin.  I am aware that my speech is slow and slurred.  “I’m dry,” I say.  My
lips feel like they might crack and fall away from my face and crumble into my
lap like old plasterwork they are so dehydrated.  I haven’t rinsed my mouth
today.  I didn’t even consider it.  This is how I know I have been medicated. 
I forget things when I am medicated.  Important things.

“Ishiko,
water!”  Gregory calls through and within moments she brings me a glass of cold
water which I drink too quickly and spill onto me and the chair because my
hands are shaky.  She stays there and watches me whilst I drink and she takes
the glass from me when I finish.  Our fingers touch and I feel a spark of
electricity.  I think she feels it too because she looks at me when I feel
this.  I spot the faintest of smiles.  Pity, is what you would call it.

“Charlotte,
you are indeed alright.  But you are recovering from the sedative I gave you so
you will feel a little woozy,” Dr. Abrams says.  I knew it.  “You gave
everybody a little scare last night.”

“The
baby,” I say.  It is all that matters.

“Charlotte,
the baby is fine.”  Dr. Abrams looks at Gregory, who turns and once again looks
back out to the lake.  I hear another one of those tormented breaths leave his
nostrils.  I wonder if he is wishing they had left me to drown in the same way
that I sometimes wish they had.  “Try not to think about the baby right now. 
We have to get
you
well.”

“How
can I not think about it?”  The telephone is ringing in the background. 
Gregory doesn’t move.  I look back and see Ishiko answering it.  I can’t hear
what she says because she is speaking so quietly as if she doesn't want to wake
a new baby.  “How can I not think about it?” I say again, turning back to Dr.
Abrams.

“Charlotte,
we must focus on
you
.  You haven’t been to see me for a few weeks now.” 
Gregory must know this already because the revelation doesn’t startle him.  I
feel startled.  They have already discussed me at length, I am sure.  “Why is
that?”

“I,”
don’t know.  “I,” didn’t want to.  I am picking my nails again and tucking my
hair behind my ears and wondering why I don’t feel the urge to pick at my
head.  “I was fine.  I didn’t need to,” I finally say.

“I
think perhaps,” he ventures, as if it is possible that he is wrong and as if I
have the option to disagree, “you misjudged it, Charlotte.  Last night you
became very angry before you fainted.”

“I
fainted?”

“Yes.”

“The
baby?”

“I
told you Charlotte, the baby is fine.  Why did you get so angry last night?”

In
my head I tell the truth.  In my head the story I tell is of the betrayal that
I saw with my own eyes which I learnt of minutes before my problems occurred. 
In my head I tell the story of Gregory's willingness to destroy me.  In my head
I tell the truth.  In reality I say, “The baby.”

“You
were angry about the baby?”

I
am nodding, knowing there is a life beyond the haze of this awful sedative so I
cling to that idea in order that I might avoid telling Dr. Abrams the truth. 
“Yes.  I want to tell our friends that we are having a baby.”  What I really
want is to tell him is that Gregory is a cheating motherfucker and that I
cannot stop thinking of ways to kill Ishiko because they are a tag team of hurt
and deception that is destroying my chance of a decent future but I don't
because somehow under the influence of whatever it is they have given me
nothing seems as bad and so I say nothing of these facts.

“Perhaps
it is not the time yet, Charlotte.”  Dr. Abrams says softly, taking a seat on
the arm of the chair and resting a hand on my shoulder which encourages me to
look up at him.  “It may be better to wait until you are well enough to cope
with it.  We can plan it together, if you would like.  How best to do it.  Many
women wait until after the first trimester has passed before saying anything.” 
I know he is right.  

“But
I want to celebrate.  Why doesn’t he want to celebrate?”  I nod towards Gregory
who acts as if he hasn’t heard me.  Perhaps he hasn’t. 

“Because
you have been very sick, Charlotte.  He is worried about you.  He is worried
about how people will take the news.  He is worried about how you will react to
their reaction.”  Gregory stands there looking out to the lake wishing I had
died in it, chastising himself for chasing me on that day, for alerting the
authorities to what I had done.  It’s like he is not even here.  The telephone
is ringing again.  A hotline to crazy central.  Everyone wants to check on me. 
To know I am alright.  To hear how I am.  To confirm that I am still crazy.

“I
would be better if people knew the truth.”  Now Gregory is engaged, and he
turns back to face me, stares at me for a while as if I just told him that I
was from Venus.   He walks towards the piano where he sits on the stool.  He
sits with his head in his hands, his head swaying left to right like a
pendulum, the world shut out by closed eyes.  “The truth would make me feel
better,” I say.  I don’t even know if I am talking about the baby anymore. 
None of us know what I am really talking about, but we are all wondering.

“But
telling everybody now will be very difficult.  You need a little time before
everybody learns about the baby.  Gregory needs a little time.”  His voice is
soft, like he is trying to perk me up after a failed exam or a lost
opportunity.  “We have some work to do.”  I realise now that nobody listens to
a crazy person.  They hear the words but they don’t really listen.  Nobody
hears the meaning behind the words dared to be spoken.  Gregory stands up and
leaves the room.  He slips out through the door that leads to the conservatory
that I designed and that he hates.  There is a moment of silence whilst the
doctor and me adjust to being alone.  Now it feels like therapy.

“Charlotte,
have you been taking you tablets?”

“Yes.” 
My first lie.

“Are
you sure you haven’t missed any doses?  Maybe you have been confused what with
the focus on the pregnancy.”

“I
haven’t missed any, I promise.”  Second lie.

“What
about your thoughts?  Any thoughts about the lake or your father that concern
you?”

“No.” 
Number three.

“Gregory
tells me that you were seen running away from the lake to your car.”

“So?”

“There
is no shame in discussing it with me, here together now.  I thought that you
were feeling better about those elements of your life, but if you are not ready
to visit as we suggested, then we can wait.”

“The
lake doesn’t concern me.”  Whilst not strictly true, it is at least not my
primary thought right now which is both a relief and surprise.  “It concerns
Gregory a lot more.”

“Of
course it does.  Let’s leave off with the exposure therapy for a while, shall
we?”  I nod.  “Don’t go there again, not for a while.”  He stands up from the
chair and pulls the piano stool towards me and sits in front of me with his
elbows balanced on his knees.  He is so close that I can smell coffee on his
breath, mixed with musky aftershave from his cheek.  I hold the chair arms.  It
is light outside.  I don’t know what time it is.  It must be early because I
can see the postman arriving.  “He built you a very nice deck at the hotel, I
hear.”  I don’t answer.  Gifts born of guilt do not interest me, and nor should
they be acknowledged.  Dr. Abrams waits in silence but in vain, for I say
nothing.  “Charlotte, we have to start working as a team here.  Nobody wants
for you to end up back in hospital.  Your focus has to be you.”

“You
mean the baby.”

“I
mean you.  You have to be your focus.  You have to be well, with clear thoughts
and a plan for your future.”

“For
the baby.”

“Yes,
OK,” he relents, “for the baby.  But you have to be the priority.  Without you,
Charlotte, there is no baby.” 

“But
what if other people want to destroy my life?  What if other people can’t accept
me being happy and well?”  I don’t know exactly who I am talking about.  Partly
Gregory, partly Ishiko, partly everybody.  People are uncomfortable with me
when I am well.  “They don’t believe it can be true.”  They believe the madness
is lurking just underneath the surface, like I lurked just beneath the surface
of the water until they dragged me on to the boat.

“People
have your best interests at heart, Charlotte.  You however,
also
have to
have your best interests at heart.  You have to do what is right for
you
.”

“And
the...”

“Baby. 
Yes.  What’s right for you, and the baby.”  I smile.  He smiles.  I feel
better.