PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (11 page)

“Gregory,
I believe it could have been my fault.”  I say this and try at the same time to
look as innocent as I can, so I dip my head and widen my eyes like a doll.

“What
could have been your fault?”  He looks up as he steadies another spoonful of
soup towards his mouth.  He is holding his soup spoon with the same elegance that
a fairy might carry a flower, just as he was taught so many years ago in this
very same room, betraying the capabilities of his man-sized hand.  The soup
dribbles away from his thick lips, spilling back into the bowl and displacing a
few drops on his shirt.  For the second time today he picks up his napkin from
his lap and dabs at the distracting spillages, leaving me no option but to consider
what a pathetic bastard I married.

“The
lamb chops,” I say once his attention has returned.  There is a small carrot-orange
mark on his white shirt, like the crest of a sunrise, the rays of which have
been smeared across his shirt in the style of Monet.

“What?”
he says looking up, his napkin now back across his knees. 

“The
lamb chops.  The fact they were burnt.”  I see him begin to panic, wondering if
this is a misfortunate show of paranoia, which we both know would not be a good
sign.  “I was sick.  I asked Ishiko to clean up after me.  I had no idea that
she was cooking.  I really do feel bad for her.”  I could almost feel the
judgment of Ishiko, her cries of innocence from within the creases of my
pocket.  I reached into my pocket and scrunched her up, strangulating her
efforts to halt my progress.

He
reaches a hand over to my side of the table.  It wasn’t expected.  He places it
on top of my hand and says, “It’s not your fault.”  Words I love to hear.  I
smile and eat a mouthful of soup.

“I’m
going out for coffee with Marianne this afternoon.”

“Oh?” 
He seems surprised and I can understand why.  The clatter of plates echoes from
the kitchen, and it distracts us both.  Ishiko seems in a bad mood for which I
feel both entirely responsible and satisfied in a way that I have not felt in a
long time.  Sometimes, the most vindictive of actions elicit an entirely
positive response within oneself.  This merciless route to self preservation is
often an art lost to polite society, a misplaced belief that it is wrong.  But
I see that within the act of retaliation comes a sharp lesson, not for me, but
for the perpetrator whose actions have lead to harm.  Ishiko has learnt
something valuable today.  She will remember this lesson with much greater
clarity than a thousand thanks.    

“Yes,
we will go somewhere in the town, sit in the warm and have a little chit chat. 
Perhaps she will know a charity for me to get involved with.”  Marianne would
in fact be the only person I would not ask such a question.  Marianne has both
a job and a life outside of Wexley and therefore has no time for charity work. 
He knew this too and smiled at my adorable naivety. 

“Well,
have a wonderful afternoon.”

“What
are you planning to do?”  I need to know where he will be, what he is planning,
and what time he intends to meet with his little handmaid. 

“I
will stay here for a little while, and then I will go back to the hotel.  When
are you leaving?”

“I’m
not sure.  What time are you planning to leave?”  He fidgets in his cushioned
chair before resting his spoon in the bowl in the three o'clock position.  He wipes
his mouth, and squares up his knife alongside the central axis of his side
plate.  Before he can answer Ishiko arrives and he beckons her forth to clear
the plates.  She can’t look at me but I stare at her with a smile on my face
that might look creepy but which I think I get away with.  I realise now that I
have eaten almost nothing.  I take a piece of bread and tear at it and he seems
startled by the crumbs falling onto the table and I can see his skin
contracting across his body, but due to my good mood and apparent sanity he
lets the atrocity pass.  “I will leave when you leave, I think.  That way we
can spend some time together.”  He nodded and stood up.  Lunch was over.  I
could see the hassle I had created, the disruption to his plans.  I wondered
what he expected of me.  Did he think I would make it easy for him?  Did he
really think that I could just roll over and play dead, and let the hunt carry
on around me?  Is this what I am trying to hang on to?  I am degrading myself
for this.  For him.

This
is who he is though.  This is how he was raised.  Privileged and entitled.  After
the accident, in the months when he still loved me, I asked him why I never
returned to my old home.  He told me that I stayed because we fell madly in
love, that I told him that I couldn’t face leaving, that to sleep without him
at my side had become an impossible task.  I doubt this to be true, but I
accept that it is possible I said these things.  I have always been, and remain
hungry for the love and care of another.  He also chose to remind me that his
parents were mortified by my continued presence.  He told me about one of their
last visits to the house.  They brought a photograph of a lovely young blond
woman.  It was a head and shoulders shot but she was tall and slim, you could
tell from the neck.  A swan’s neck, long and elegant was how she described it. 
Beatrice, whose Rolex I am wearing, showed me the girl in the photograph. 
Wouldn’t she be perfect for Gregory, she begged of me.  I had been living in
the house for three months at the time.  He had proposed the week before.  Beatrice
had cried, his father remained silent.  He insists that he threw them out after
this but I doubt it very much. 

Beatrice
cried at the wedding too, and Mallory held her up compassionately, steadying
her when her feet gave way at the horror of what she saw.  He patted her head
and stroked her hair whilst she took some deep breaths as if she was giving
birth.  It was a hot day, some said.  It was the humidity, said another.  One
even suggested the food. None of these things were true.  It was me.  I could
feel her eyes upon me like I can Ishiko’s.  She died a week later, and some
blamed the shock.  I do recall that I took a great deal of pleasure in
arranging her funeral.  I created the most delightful day, an appropriate mix
of wealth and mourning.  The casket was oil black, adorned with gold handles
and so heavily set that it needed six pallbearers.  I chose it to weight her
down, so that her hateful spirit could never grapple its way back to the
surface.  I chose the music of the only classical composer not in her
collection, Mozart, who she disliked and claimed to be overrated.  I chose his
requiem Lacrimosa.   Its haunting and gothic choral verse rang out through the
church, and the crowd loved it.  A perfect end of.  They all congratulated me on
the arrangements and I thought of how disappointing she would find it that in
her death I would find praise.  I did not try to cry, and neither did Gregory
or his father.  They would not miss her, and the rich do not worry what others
will think.  Lacrimosa wept for us, and did our mourning.  It wept for
everybody.  We threw in the soil and that was that.  Mallory died only a month
later.  Stroke.  We performed as expected, just as we had when she died, and
privately celebrated our freedom, Gregory by renovating the hotel, me by
introducing the pink roses in the conservatory.  They were the least painful
deaths I have ever known and I remember them as clearly as I remember the sight
of Ishiko entering her bedroom last night and whispering goodnight.  Dr. Abrams
told me that he believes the human brain remembers everything, but that we do
not have the capacity to recall it.  But to have forgotten so much of the life
which has delivered me to this point in time would suggest an utter lack of
symbiosis between myself and my mind.  I believe we remember the important
things, and I know why I have not forgotten these deaths.  I thank his parents
for their impact on my life.  For it was these deaths that taught me that a
passing to the other side, a place where I have teetered for so long, does not
always have to cause pain.  Sometimes it can be celebrated, a relief, a
cherished beginning for which many have longed.  Sometimes it can lead to
freedom.  Sometimes it is exactly what you need.

His
car is last on the driveway, so he reverses out and drives away first.  There
is a small coating of frost on the windows and I am sure the light is already
fading.  I turn up the heaters in my car and the frost melts.  I follow, and
flash my lights as he pulls away at the end of the private drive.  I watch as
his charcoal Mercedes E Class slips away, snaking into the streets towards town,
waiting for the first admiring eyes to fall upon it and follow its path.  I
pull out behind him and drive in the same direction.  It’s 3:30 PM.  I have time.

I
pull the car out onto the road and drive behind him far enough away so that I
can see him, but so that he will not notice me.  I must stay hidden like a
lioness in the hunt if I want to catch my prey.  I watch his car travel past
the lake, and for once I barely notice it at my side, the great mass of
emptiness, water filling it so we do not see the ugly depth of secrets at the
bottom.  If I could drain it I might be able to find what I am looking for. 
Perhaps everything would be easier if I could just complete this impossible
task.

I
watch as he pulls up outside of the hotel, parked on the road, hazard lights
blinking.  I drive past, unable to stop without being seen.  I watch as he
walks in, coat flapping in the breeze behind him, his cheeks pink from the
sudden slap of the cold against them, like the red buttocks of a scorned little
boy.  He dips into the hotel and I glide past, before taking a series of left
turns, completing an almost perfect circle, which ejects me right behind the
hotel.  I cannot see his car from here, but it is pointing in my direction.  I
lie in wait, the nose of my car just in view, but unexpected enough that even
if he passes me he isn't likely to see me.  If he does, I doubt it would even
matter.  Something unexpected is what he has come to expect from me.  There
have been many words used at different times to describe my behaviour. 
Unusual, strange, odd, unpredictable.  Sometimes people called me difficult, or
weird.  But the polite word was quirky.  It implies that one’s differences have
been embraced, that the quirks to which they refer have been accepted.  Gregory
does not describe me as quirky.  He reserves it for eccentric types, artists,
street performers, the ramblers who set forth from Glenridding towards the
unforgiving ridges of the Helvellyn mountain beyond.  He uses it for those who
do it on purpose, who play a role, a character, or who dress for an occasion.  He
uses it for himself.  His favourite word to describe me was unwell.  I heard it
until I began to believe it may in fact be my name. 
You are Unwell
, he used
to say to me.  He doesn’t say it anymore, but I know it sits on the tip of his
tongue.  I haven’t heard it for a few months.  For a while he started to use
the word recovering. 
You are Recovering.
  He hasn’t said this for a
while either, but only because generally, he doesn’t really speak to me at all
anymore.

He
had to swerve to avoid me as his car raced past.  It startled me and woke me
from my daydream.  My eyes bat open in a state of frenzied seizure and I find my
leather gloved hands are gripped onto the steering wheel as if trying to
prevent being sucked into his jet stream as he flew past.  Fifteen minutes have
passed.  I expected to see him leave the hotel, make a small turn and head
straight back home, safe in the knowledge that I was out of harm’s way for his afternoon
rendezvous with Ishiko.  No doubt she would be at home preparing herself for
his arrival, waiting for his slack skin to slide over her, his vegetable breath
to tickle her ear.  I shook off the idea, left its nasty taste behind me, and
trailed after him.  By the time I got to the nearest junction I had no idea
which route he had taken, and I was left panting like a dog for nothing, my
scrunched up eyes batting left and right as if following a tennis match.  Knowing
it was game, set, and match to Gregory I drove back towards the hotel, circled
the closest streets, and as I expected found no trace of him.  Where was he
going in that direction?  I thought about driving home, wondering if he had
seen me and he thought that by driving away in the wrong direction he would
throw me off his scent.  But then I thought about what I might do if I found
them in bed together, if I would be angry or not, if I would shout, if I would
pull her by her hair across the floor and out into the street, her naked skin
scraping along the icy floor for Dana and Jemima, and more importantly, Mr.
Wexley and Marianne to watch.  I wondered if it would be me that came off
looking like the bad guy, the crazy one, or if they would just look at each
other as if to say,
well what did he expect her to do, crazy woman like that
. 
Besides the obvious shark tooth tearing pain it would cause me to witness the
extent of their betrayal, there is no way that I wouldn’t appear the crazy one,
standing over her like a Spartan warrior over his latest kill.  And I have only
just begun to appear sane.  So instead, I park the car, decide to let them have
their fun, and go to meet Marianne.

Marianne
is waiting for me in the cafe.  She has picked a table close to the door, as
far away from the windows as possible.  She smiles and waves, her hand
apologetic and nervous, uncertain of what it’s doing.  It may as well have been
painted white, her shouting
I surrender
.  As I sit, I notice that I
cannot see even an inch of lake.  It doesn’t matter where I go, this lake is
the elephant that I drag behind me, the entity that nobody wishes to discuss. 
It is like my cancer, the disease that took my hair and that leaves me
bedbound.  If it was a cancer I could rip of my wig and get one of those T
shirts that have an unmockable slogan like
I am kicking Cancer’s ass,
or
Tumours suck. 
When you get cancer, everybody loves you.  That’s why we embrace
it like we do.  We raise money for it, we bake cakes for it, we research why we
get it, we give it ourselves by smoking, or lay in the sun for it to take hold
of us.  Everybody wants to be a survivor of cancer.  Is there anybody who wants
to live more than somebody with cancer?  Cancer patients hang on, they grip onto
life with their brittle chemo-damaged finger nails if they have to.  But me? 
Not me.  My T-shirt wouldn’t be so celebratory.  Mine might say
In the end,
I didn’t kill myself,
or,
I didn’t cut deep enough, after all
.  I
only managed to sneak my way back into life by luck.  That doesn’t count as
surviving.  Nobody wants to be the survivor of a suicide attempt.  Nobody makes
a T-shirt for me, and nobody wants to comment how well I look now that I’m free
of disease.  And it’s because they know that really, I’m not.  They know
suicide doesn’t leave you.  They know it’s still there, just like the lake that
pulsates around me and watches my every move.  I escaped it, but they all know
it is following me, waiting for a second chance, waiting for me to relapse. 
Just like I did in the past.