PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (19 page)

“So
you think I have to concentrate on me.  The things I want.  The things I need.”

“Yes. 
But you must come and see me.  We can plan for the things you want together.”

“OK.” 
He is collecting his coat and patting me on the shoulder like a pet and I am
smiling at him.  I wonder if he noticed the glued down photographs.  Maybe they
discussed them and I am grateful that he didn’t raise it now in conversation. 

“See
you on Wednesday,” he says.

“See
you on Wednesday,” I repeat.  He buttons up his coat and bends down to eye
level.  I smell the coffee breath again.  “You don’t have to do this alone.  I
will help you.”  He smiles and touches my hand.  I feel the warmth of his skin,
the faint pulse of his veins through his wrist.  Within only moments he is gone
and I am left alone in a room that smells of Gregory’s brandy, my birthday
presents still unopened on the table. 

According
to my psychiatrist, I must be the focus.  I must focus on what I want and what
I need.  Before I was medicated and forced to sleep, I had already worked out
what I needed.  I had a plan.  I had to make Gregory want me again.  I had
decided that it was up to me, my duty as his wife to show him how to want me,
by showing him the consequences of his mistakes.  I intended to show him what
happens when people get betrayed.  It will be several hours before the sedative
wears off, but once it does I will feel better.  I will feel my brain chipping
through soon enough, the clear version of it.  I can still feel the real Charlotte
underneath this soft and slurring exterior.  I am still here, crawling back to
the surface, perhaps gasping for breath and weak, but slowly I am slipping back
into my skin like a wetsuit, or water flooding into a basement.

After
the doctor left I returned to bed where I woke up a few hours later.  I have a
vague recollection that it was Ishiko who helped me to bed, although the vision
remains cataract-cloudy and I am unsure.  For a while I know that I drifted in
and out of sleep like the waves, rolling back and forth, promising to reach the
beach.  But in the end I always got sucked back in by the pull of sleep.  At
one point I woke to the sound of my bedroom door closing, the smell of lavender
from Ishiko’s skin still hanging above me.  Another time I woke to the sound of
laughter.  I couldn’t be certain if it was from outside the house or coming from
inside, from behind another closed door.   It sounded childish and silly.  My
windows are closed.  There are no children living in my road.

When
I wake for the final time I am strong enough to push myself up.  I sit upright
as if recovering from surgery, my legs limp and weak, the muscles wasted.  I
shuffle the pillows and get myself comfortable.  I sit for a while, uncertain what
to do.  I consider getting up, but wonder what I might find on the other side
of the door.  I wonder if it will feel like walking out into a parallel
universe or falling down the rabbit hole, where everybody walks upside down and
where everything is the same and yet somehow different.  I wonder if it will
feel like I belong, or if I will re-live the days of six months ago when I
float through the house without purpose or hope, my mind and actions slow.  I
remember Gregory from this time.  He was different back then.

When
I woke up in this same position last August it was his face at my side, his eyes
red and bloodshot, his tears running into his snotty nose creating streaks of
slime running down to his chin, or occasionally smeared across his cheek.  When
I heard voices in the corridor behind my locked door it was his that rose above
the others.  When I needed water, it was his feet that ran to the kitchen, and
his hands that held the cup as the water hit my parched lips.  It was Gregory
who had printed off the information about secondary drowning and asked me
constantly if my chest hurt or if my breathing felt difficult.  I can remember
him brushing the hair from my face and wiping the sweat from my brow as he
carefully worked his way around the well dressed wound.  We sat together in the
box of thick near soundproof walls, suitable for screamers and cutters and
those at risk.  But I was none of these things.  I was a drowner.  A wannabe
drowner at least.  I failed and he was so glad, and yet now as he hangs his
head low and keeps his eyes averted, I believe he wishes I had succeeded.  I am
awake and he is nowhere close.  I find myself wishing that even Ishiko were
here with me, just to know that she wasn’t there with him.

I
lie there listening, waiting for any sound that tells me that I am not alone,
but my hearing still feels like I have mufflers on my ears.  For a long time
after waking I hear nothing, and eventually I get up and press my face against
the window to see if his car is on the driveway.  It is, but I see him walking
as if he has been out of foot, plodding slowly towards the house.  He is alone,
and then I hear the bedroom door handle. 

“Mrs.
Astor, you are awake?”  Ishiko is standing in the space between the door and
the wall, her face in shadow because of the lamp that shines behind her.  I
look at her sleek and slender shape, so youthful and willing.  I rest my hand
against my stomach and feel the tiniest of swellings.  Soon I will be none of
the things that she is.

“Yes?”
I question.

“I
will make food and bring it to you.”

“No,
thank you.”  I am not hungry.  My voice is flat and calm, medication-friendly. 
Even the unruliest of patients can be subdued with the right medication.

“Then
I will bring you tea.”

“No
Ishiko.  I don’t want anything.”  I look out at the baby blue sky.  I imagine
the swallows who will return to these skies in only a couple of months.  I can
almost see them circling in a figure of eight as if they were kites, moving at
the will of the child on the end of the string, fighting and darting to cut
each other’s glass coated lines. 

“Mr.
Astor will be home soon.  He told me to make sure you eat.”  She has obviously
heard him on the driveway, or saw him coming.

“But
I am not hungry, Ishiko.”  She stands there waiting like a child who has been
told no, but believes that with time the answer she was hoping for will be
given.  She fiddles with a stubborn pleat in her skirt that appears adamant to remain
buckled and I am distracted by her busy fingers as they try to smooth it down. 
For the first time I am not angry at her, and I have no desire to cause her harm. 
She is looking down at her shoes, little red ballet pumps with a thin buckle
strap.  What is she thinking?  Is she anxious?  I hear the front door open, and
after her head darts towards the stairs I see her turn back towards me, the
whites of her eyes as bright as stars.  She is pleading with me to allow her to
fulfil her instructions.  “Prepare something light,” I say.  “I will be down
shortly.” 

She
nods her head and leaves.  Before long I hear voices and the clatter of plates,
Charlotte related activity taking place.  Gregory will no doubt be preparing to
assume an air of superiority in the drawing room, and Ishiko will be preparing
lunch around him trying to look both efficient and alluring.  I glance down at
the clock and see that it is almost half past four in the afternoon.  I put on
my robe and wander downstairs, appropriately dressed for any time during the
day except for the afternoon.  Halfway down the stairs I realise that I have
forgotten to rinse my mouth and wash my hands.  I cannot even taste the dust in
my throat at the moment.  I am obviously still under a greater influence of Dr.
Abrams drugs than I assumed.  At least this explains why I do not hate Ishiko
today.  I consider going back upstairs to do it, but instead I ignore the pull,
realising that today it doesn’t feel as strong as usual.

I
eat the smoked salmon and soft cheese sandwich that Ishiko prepared whilst
sitting alone in the conservatory and it makes me feel sick.  I can hear
Gregory in the drawing room, the occasional crackle of newspaper pages as he
wrestles the broadsheet across his lap.  I have watched him many times as he appears
to read the newspaper.  He believes a man of his standing and social position
should read a broadsheet and understand the world news.  When our ‘friends’
discuss the developments in the Middle East or the financial crisis that hit
Europe he always has an adequate number of interjections prepared in advance to
throw into conversation, but I do not believe that he really digests what he
reads.  I have paid close attention to the number of times he departs the
conversation when he is required to offer a personal opinion.  He might have a
pressing telephone call, or an urgent toilet break, anything which facilitates
his avoidance from participation in a well considered debate.  The only well
formed opinion he has is of me, and he is avoiding me, it seems, as well. 

The
telephone is ringing and I hear the knock of the door.  I hear a female voice,
it sounds kind, and reminds me of my last lucid moments on the floor of The
Sailing Club.  It is Dana.  I think about getting up, but I hear the door
close.  She has been sent away. 

I
feel something in my blood today that I have not felt in a long time, and I do
not like it.  It is vulnerability.  I feel like I am open to the world and that
everybody is here screaming at me so loudly that I can no longer hear my own
voice above the crowd.  I know inside I am screaming, but my words are being
drowned out.  At some point after finishing my sandwiches I am aware that I feel
Ishiko’s hands on me, guiding me, pushing me or pulling me, one of the two.  I am
back in bed and she is looking at me and smiling.  She kisses me on the
forehead and strokes away my hair.  I realise I am nearly asleep.  I ask her
why she is being so kind to me today.  She tells me she sees sadness in me and
that it must pass.  I know somewhere in the blur of my medicated sleep I tell
her that it is her fault, but she tells me,
assures
me, it is not.  She
tells me that I am wrong. 

“That
is not correct, Mrs. Astor.”  She says something in Japanese and I don’t
understand.  I ask her what she said. 

“What
did you.....Ishi.......what did you....” 

“Say?”
she looks at me and for a moment I focus on her eyes which are brilliant hazel
disks, alive as if they have been charged up to the point that I think I can
almost hear them buzzing, like a pylon in the rain.  I nod, and I am losing her
already, my eyes trembling shut.  “A frog in the well, knows not of the ocean,
Mrs. Astor.”  She is speaking in my language now, but still I don’t understand.

“I
don’t understand,” I splutter, suddenly able to snatch a few words together,
powered on by frustration.  My head drops to the side and my necklace falls with
it, the pendant so heavy the chain feels like it is choking me.  I realise that
she picks it up, places it in the dip of my neck so that it rests in the
hollow.  She strokes the Triquetra, never once taking her eyes from me.  She
looks at me in a way so different to anybody else.  Sometimes it feels like she
is the only one who sees me.

“Beware
the truth, Mrs. Astor,” she says as she strokes her hands across my forehead,
before once again stroking the pendant into my neck with the delicacy of a brushstroke
from a Monet.  My skin tingles and goose pimples from her touch.

“I
don’t know what you mean,” I say.  She says something else that I don’t hear properly
and I tell her to repeat herself.  She leans down and gets close to my ear and
I feel her breath tickling me and my hairs fluttering away like leaves in an
Autumn breeze.  She is so close I can feel the electricity from her skin, from
her eyes, from her fingers, her nerve endings charged and firing at me.  I tell
her again.  “I don’t understand.”

She
leans in so close that I think I can feel her lips on my neck.  My ear becomes
red hot, my cheeks and whole body flushed as ripe as a cherry.  She says only
two words before I slip into sleep.  “You will.”

The
doorbell wakes me with a start, eyes wide and ready for the day.  I know the
drugs have worn off.  My skin is hot from its captivity underneath the duvet,
and my first thoughts are of Ishiko.  They are not kind thoughts.  I am back. 
I look at the clock.  It is nine thirty in the morning.

I
hear steps on the stairs.  They are urgent and racing.  They are coming in my
direction and I hear a voice.  It is a woman.  The voice is opening my door. 
Ishiko is behind her.  I see her first and I have a vague recollection of what
she said the night before.  I wipe the beads of night sweat from my forehead
and feel an instant and overwhelming urge to hurt her.

It
is Marianne and she is still talking to Ishiko.

“I
won’t hear of it,” she is saying without a hint of an accent, stomping her way
across the floor and waving her hand backwards over her shoulder, “I don’t care
what you say.”

“Mrs.
Astor, I’m sorry,” Ishiko pleads, almost out of breath and for the first time
ever in my memory she appears flustered.  “She wouldn’t listen to me.”  Ishiko points
her finger at Marianne like a child in the playground.  I can almost hear her
say,
She started it! 
Marianne, looks unimpressed and rolls her eyes at
me.  “She just barged straight through,” Ishiko begs, panting.

“Go
downstairs,” Marianne says, and starts wafting her hands in Ishiko’s direction
as if she was trying to shoo a cat, or clear a bad smell.  “I don’t know who
she thinks she is?”  Marianne is looking at me whilst Ishiko is still making a
slight effort to protest.  I am amused that Marianne has no clue that I hate
them both equally and tolerate her only because to do so suits me.

“It’s
OK, Ishiko,” I say, quieter than intended, my throat dry and hoarse.  “Leave
us.”

I
shuffle myself up quickly and straighten up the night dress that somebody has
dressed me in.  I assume that it was Ishiko who undressed me and I wonder what
she made of my body when she saw it naked.  I wonder if she noticed the small
insignificant scars that decorate my knees and shoulder, whose stories have
been long forgotten, or the scars on my wrists whose story will stay with me
until my last breath.  They are old, made when I was fourteen years old and naïve
enough to believe that the world wasn’t cruel and lonely.  They have faded and
are barely visible now, but if you pay attention you would spot them, say if
you were holding my wrist to thread my arm through the sleeve of a nightshirt. 
Faded they might be, but I still feel them running all the way through to the
centre of my chest and into the meat of my heart, like deep and incisive fault
lines.  I wonder if she paid attention to the smooth bump that is pushing out
my belly.  She could have done anything to me and I wouldn’t have known.  This
is one of the reasons why I hate the medication.  It is supposed to bring you
back to life, but instead it only half inserts you back into reality, hovering
you somewhere above the ground so that you see everything but feel nothing, and
it never really lets you go.  And yes, the bit about not being a cutter?  Well,
that wasn’t quite the full story.  But I haven’t taken a blade to my skin in
many years.  The precision of the cut doesn’t draw me in anymore.  I take no
pleasure from it.  I guess I am a bit like an alcoholic who doesn’t drink
anymore.  Everybody knows it only takes one moment of weakness, one drink, one
slip up.  That’s why Gregory locked away most of the knives.

“Oh,
Charlotte.  I was so worried when I found out about what happened.”  This is
Marianne and she is taking gentle steps towards the bed whilst I pull my
nightgown sleeves down over my wrists.  I find Marianne loud and clumsy.  She
never once considered not making the scene at my front door that would have
been necessary in order to get access to me today.  She never once considered not
getting drunk and telling me everything about her affair with John Wexley. 
There is nothing discreet about her, and I imagine that Wexley is regretting
the day he ever got mixed up with her.  “How are you?  You look awful,” she
announces through screwed up eyes as if I am under intense scrutiny.

Ishiko
pulls the door of my bedroom closed.  I am trying to remember what it was that
she said last night, and work out what she meant.  All I can hear is Marianne
talking and talking as I stare at the door, wondering if Ishiko is listening on
the other side of it.  I am barely listening to Marianne, and the only thing
that jolts me back into reality is when she sits on my bed.  She is holding my
arms.

“Charlotte? 
Charlotte, can you hear me?”  She is looking at me like my mind went walkabout
and she is trying to offer me a lifeline back to reality.

“Could
you wait for me downstairs, Marianne?  Ask Ishiko to prepare something for you. 
Tea, coffee.  Anything you like.  I’ll join you soon.”

“Maybe
you should stay in bed?”

“Marianne. 
I am fine.  Really.”  She is unconvinced, her face as scrunched up as a Pug dog. 
She is judging me by her own standards and expects me to be wallowing in a pit
of depression and self-loathing.  She is looking around the room, looking for
the disturbance, the indication or evidence that something deranged and
aberrant hides here.  I watch her as she scans the bedside table and see’s
nothing but a book and lamp.  She looks for heaped up clothes, discarded on the
floor and loaded with melancholy.  But there is nothing for her to grip at.  No
indication of madness that she can rescue me from, no way to be the saviour, or
the one friend who could understand.  I have ruined her plans just by being
alright.  By being normal enough not to need a rescue.  I guess we are both
looking for a new label.  She’ll have one soon enough.  I promise her that.

After
sending her downstairs I head to the bathroom and get back on track with
normality by rinsing my mouth and washing my hands three times and as I always
do when I am feeling like myself.  I get dressed in a pair of jeans and pull on
a baby blue V-neck jumper which has long sleeves.  The jeans are tight and
there are probably only another couple of weeks before they will be too small
for my swelling belly.  I look at it in the mirror for a while as the skin
settles over the waistband, and I try to convince myself that I look pregnant
rather than fat, but it is a struggle.  I wash my hands again.  They are still
red and dry.  I inspect the wound on my head which seems to look less red today
but I touch it and sense heat.  I pull at the edge and free a few drops of
blood, but the amount is dissatisfying.  There is more green goo that oozes
out, but less.  I wash my hands again.  Downstairs I can hear classical music
and I wonder if Gregory is home, but then I realise that if he had been here,
there is no way Marianne would have made it up the stairs.  I brush my hair and
scrape it back into a short pony tail.  The shorter bits fall annoyingly around
my face, tickling my eyes so I brush them behind my ears.  Socks.  Shoes.  Done.

Marianne
is in the drawing room standing over the CD player.  There is a cup of
something in her hand, and I think it smells like coffee.  It makes me feel
nauseas but I swallow it back down.  The nausea reminds me of the pregnancy and
I try to recall how many weeks and days pregnant I am and realise that I have
lost track already.  Two days of medication and I am all over the place.  I
remind myself that I must work it out later, but my concentration has been
broken by the music.

“Marianne,
shall we take our drinks in the conservatory?”  I startle her because she
hadn’t seen me arrive, and she quickly stops the music, fumbling her fingers
over the buttons until she finds the one that stops it.  There is a moment of
silence between us as she turns to see me stood in the doorway.  The music
playing was Moonlight Sonata, Beethoven.  This was the last song I listened to
before I took out Gregory’s boat.  He knows because he found it playing on
repeat when he arrived home to an empty house, abandoned with the doors left
open.  It was blaring loud like a warning.  I am surprised that it was this
disk queued up and ready to play when Marianne hit the button.  He must have
been listening to it.  I didn’t expect that and I cannot explain it.  He told
me that he would never be able to listen to it again.  Maybe he was reminiscing
how it could have been different if he had stayed at home, rather than race to
the lake.  It could have all been so simple if he had just left me to it.

“Oh,
yes.  Sorry.  I was,” she doesn’t know what she was doing.  She is just nosing
around.  “I spilt something,” she says and points to a splash of coffee on the
floor.  I wave my hand left to right a few times to signify the lack of importance
before beckoning her towards me.  She is too close to the piano and I don’t
want her to notice the glued down photograph. 

She
follows me to the conservatory.  I sit and she sits, in Gregory’s chair.  The
environment seems to fluster her.  She fidgets with the frills and cushions and
straightens up her clothes.  The fog outside is thick today and I am grateful
for its blanketing silence, its ability to suffocate the world around me. 
Besides the odd crow cawing, there is peace.  Today I do not think of swallows
in the spring, or the first of the daffodils breaking through the ground.  Ishiko
brings tea and a plate of sandwiches.  She sets them down, only to return with
small side plates and napkins.  Gregory has her well trained, like a small
household pet.

“It’s
so cold today, isn’t it,” she says, breaking the ice.  She is looking at my
hands, which are gloved.  “Is that why you are wearing the gloves?” 

“Marianne,
let’s just get this out in the open.”  I ignore her questions.  Why I am
wearing gloves is of absolutely no concern to her.  “I assume John told you
what happened.”  She fidgets a bit more, straightens up her plate and napkin
before finally looking at me.  She swallows hard.

“Yes,
he told me on Sunday.  He came to see me and told me what had happened.  I
couldn’t wait to get here today and just see you.  To know that you are ok.”

“What
exactly did he tell you?”

“Well,
he said that you got yourself very upset on Friday night and that you fainted.”

“That
was it?”  What a pathetic retelling of the story.  Doesn’t seem like something
to be so worried about.  She must be hiding something.

“Well,
he said it all seemed to come from nowhere.  That one minute everything was
fine and the next minute you were on the floor and not making any sense.”

“I
fainted.  I hadn’t eaten much that day and I fainted.  It happens.”  I
considered for a split second how she might react if I told her the truth but
it wouldn’t help me at all.  “So you see, it was nothing.”

“As
long as you are sure.”  She certainly isn’t.

“You
know how it is, Marianne.  It seems to them that I because I was once, I must
always be crazy.  I will always be that girl, to them.  That girl who got
depressed.  That girl who wanted to die.  That girl who nearly drowned.”  I
could go on for much longer here, perhaps for another hour at least, recounting
who that girl was, offering up a myriad of arguments that support my previous
insanity.  Slashed wrists at fourteen, possible suicide attempt (it was, but it
was never proven beyond any reasonable doubt) at twenty one, or the attack on
my fellow pupil at the age of ten that left her with less than perfect vision. 
I do not though.  “Everybody always says how desperate they are for a person
who has been ill to get well, but it seems that most people are very reluctant
to let a crazy person back into polite social circles.  I mean,” I giggle, “a
woman cannot even faint without it being down to insanity!”

She
giggles too.  We both giggle.  She understands.

“I
understand.  I just want to know that you are OK.  And the baby?”  She asks
this in such a cautious manner, almost apologetic.

“We
are both fine.”  I pour us tea.  I offer her milk, which she accepts with a nod
of the head, and I push the sugar bowl towards her.  She helps herself to a
large spoon and stirs it in her tea.  I take a triangle of sandwich, tuna and
cucumber.  It get’s near to my mouth before I realise what is in it and the
smell overtakes me.  I swallow hard and return the triangle back to my plate,
which I push away.

“Ishiko,”
I shout.  I shout it so loudly that even Marianne jumps.  “You understand
because you have been there,” I say to Marianne.  “Take these away would you,”
I say to Ishiko who has arrived at my side.  “And bring me the hand wipes.  Was
John OK with you?”

“Would
you like anything before I clear the plate Mrs. Wex.....”  Ishiko is saying
this to Marianne.

“She
doesn’t want anything,” I say to Ishiko, in spite of Marianne’s hand hovering
over the plate whilst it is suspended in mid air.  I turn back to Marianne and
say, “Because I got the impression that perhaps it was a little difficult for
you both.”

“You
mean about my.......illness?”  I nod, taking a sip of tea and Marianne does the
same.  “Well, John does remind me to be careful.  To take my tablets.  To see
my doctor.  To discuss my issues.  He was a bit angry at me that I had got
drunk the other day.  I tend to talk a lot when I am drunk.  I am sorry if I
spoke out of turn.  Especially about your friend.”

“Who?” 
I am genuinely confused because I was under the impression that I didn’t have
any.