PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (7 page)

They
congratulated him on his achievement, sympathised at the duration of play, that
it had taken two difficult years to finally get me to concede.  Each of the
ladies suggested a different charity with which I may wish to become involved
but that I just simply had to join The Ladies of Windermere, a mundane charity
that helps schools and holds baking days.  Marianne stayed quiet, not a fully
signed up member of the group, and for her silence I was grateful.  I thought
for a moment that I may have heard somebody mention that it would be a good
time to start a family, but I had zoned out by this point and Gregory had
already moved the conversation along by the time I had registered it. 

We
sat at the table, boy girl boy girl.  There are flowers in the centre, deep red
roses from the garden scattered with a bit of evergreen.  Ishiko’s work.  Jemima
compliments me on the flowers and Dana Sedgwick who arrived in her obnoxious
black Range Rover as predicted, driven by Mr. Sedgwick as predicted, tells me
that the quality of the linen which covers the table and matches the napkins in
evident and asked me where I got it from.  I told her Collings and Rawlings in
the centre of town which is a shop known to sell expensive linen, but this is a
lie because I don't really know where it came from.   It doesn’t take long
before Ishiko brings in a tray of tiny dishes which are so small they could
never contain anything of substance.  She serves them to us on matching saucers
with tiny matching spoons which I had no idea that we owned.  It is an amuse
bouche.  Something fancy and certainly something that Gregory has requested. 
It looked decidedly Japanese and I am concerned at the direction the food is
taking, but eat it anyway and praise its balance and delicacy without any
prompting.  Afterwards I fumble at the scar on my head and find that it stings
to touch and I feel relieved.  Shortly after taking the flowers away, Ishiko returns
with a large central platter which she places on the table to surround sound
applause.  I see the rice and raw fish, and the pieces of sushi that I had
specifically stated we should not eat. 

“Ishiko,”
Gregory says, without looking at her, “bring more of this red.  Fill up the
glasses.”  She does so.  She is filling up empty glasses and holding empty
bottles.  “Ishiko, would you please serve Dana.”  He turns to pat Dana’s arm
and I can see Ishiko blush in the cheeks. 

“Oh
Gregory, it’s a delight to try something new,” says Marianne, who is
encouraging Wexley to eat the morsel she has put on his plate.  He looks
uncertain, and is swallowing so hard and stroking at his neck and pulling at
his tie.  Almost everybody has food on their plate.  Only my plate remains
empty.  Wexley would have loved the venison.  He flicks a piece of raw fish
which I think is tuna off the top of a ball of rice and gently separates it
into bearable bite-sized pieces. 

“Gregory
what is this one?” Jemima is asking of her second selection. 

“Ishiko,”
he calls who returns with a bottle of red wine, Merlot, cheeks still flushed. 
He gestures to Jemima to ask again, offering his hand out to present our
Japanese maid.  “What is this one?”

“Oshinko
Maki,” she says, her slight accent seemingly stronger.  Everybody oohs and
ahhs, even Wexley but I am certain that he is no longer thinking about the
food.  At this point Ishiko leaves and the table breaks away into smaller discussion
groups, and for a moment Gregory and I are left next to each other with no
other interruptions.  I lean in close to him as he places a piece of Oshinko Maki
on my plate. 

“What
happened to the venison?”  My question was genuine.  Perhaps there had been an
issue, that it wasn’t available, or an accident had warranted a last minute
change of plan.

“Not
now, Charlotte.”  It seemed I was not due an explanation and he was already
turning away from me and placing another Sashimi roll in his mouth.  I ate two
pieces of Oshinko Maki which was nicer than I hoped it would be, and remained
hungry for the rest of the night.  I consoled myself with a glass of Merlot
which I drank very quickly and then remembered that I was pregnant and worried
about if I had just done the baby any harm to the point that I was forced to go
to the toilet to make myself sick.  I made a substandard effort to poke at the
back of my throat, and when I failed to regurgitate the fish I settled for
inspecting the wound on my head and the pink stained hairs that surround it.  I
washed my hands three times with the soap that promises to remove 99.9% of
germs before returning to the table.  The rest of the night happened without my
participation, although I remained at the table in a silent world of my own.  I
don’t know for how long.

They
left their gifts on the table in the drawing room, and by half past eleven at
night they had all left in their cars to travel the two hundred meters to their
homes, except for Wexley who had walked across the garden from next door. 
Gregory and I stood at the door step, his arm around me and we both smiled and
waved our goodbyes.  We had done it.

“I
am very tired,” he said as he closed the door.  “I think I will go to bed.”

“I
thought we might have announced the pregnancy tonight, Gregory.”  I wasn't
expecting to say this with such a sudden sting, but it slipped out without
thinking, without warning.

“There
is such a thing as a time and a place, Charlotte.”

“If
tonight is neither of those things, when are we supposed to tell our friends
that we are having a baby?”  I almost laughed when I said the word friends, but
it was good leverage.  “Is it not nice to share this with our friends?  You
would rather tell them about me giving up work?”

“Charlotte,
I am not in the mood for an argument.”  I can see Ishiko creeping around in the
kitchen, waiting to see where this discussion goes.  She manoeuvres her way to
the door and pushes it slightly closed in an effort to appear uninterested,
bless her, but she can obviously still hear us.  

“And
the sushi!  What happened to the fucking venison?”

“Charlotte,
you were seen today, sitting out by the lake again, running back to your car
all flustered and....... weak.  Anyway, I thought you wanted pheasant!”  He
said the word
weak
as if it were a disease that he might catch.  As if
it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I
didn’t want pheasant!  Or sushi.  Venison, I asked for!”  The vein is pulsating
on the side of his head and his lips which are usually quite big and juicy
looking have been sucked back in, revealing his teeth.  My head is throbbing
almost uncontrollably to the point I fear it might explode, and I am forced to
wonder if the tingling in my fingers is the start of another seizure.

“Dana
Sedgwick saw you.  When did this all start again?” 

“When
did what start?”

“The
lake!  The fucking lake, Charlotte,” he spat out.  “I’m not prepared to start
all of this nonsense again.  I won’t.  I promise you I won’t.” He is pacing now
with his hands on his hips.  I teeter between ashamed and obnoxious and my head
is throbbing and I can feel the blood filling up underneath the scar drop by
drop and I am absolutely certain that a seizure is on the way.  I pull at the
wound and I can feel a few drops of blood and the shame flows away with it and
it is Obnoxious Charlotte that comes out of me as he bats my hand away from the
scar.

“You
won’t get a choice,” I say.

“This
has to stop, Charlotte.  Has to STOP, I’m warning you.  I’m going to call Dr.
Abrams in the morning.  These tablets are not working.  You are intolerable!”

“What
about you?”  I screamed, not listening to him.

“I
was very pleased regarding your decision to stop working, but when Dana told me
what she had seen.....”

“What
about how you are with me?” I ask.  He is stood in front of me, face red, lips
moving.  I am not hearing him anymore.  He is talking but it isn’t really to me. 
I am thinking about the lake and how it might feel if I let my feet rest at the
edge, maybe wearing the black boots with the small heel that I was wearing
today.  The water would creep in slowly through the zip and the elastic, like a
dripping tap.  It would slowly fill until my feet were cold and sodden but..... 

“It
makes me wonder where exactly we are going, Charlotte.”

.....if
we still had a boat, I think I would take it out on the lake now, take it into
the centre of the water through the fog and into the dark where you can barely
see your own hand and where you can feel the two tides rocking you back and
forth from the east and the west shores.  I would wait for a while, maybe just
hanging my head over the side, feeling the occasional spray from the water.  I
wonder if I was there now if I would be able to stop myself.  I wish so much
that we had announced the pregnancy tonight.  I would perhaps feel less like
dying if we had. 

“Where
are we going, Charlotte?”  I don’t hear him at first, but then he grabs my
forearm tight enough to hurt and I wake up.  “Where are we going?”  When I look
at him and he can see that I am back with him in the land of the living he
slackens his grip and in only seconds he seems to calm down.  His head becomes
heavy and it hangs down, moving left and right with his eyes closed before he
looks back to me.  “I’m going to have to call Dr. Abrams tomorrow, Charlotte. 
Honestly, I am.  Unless you agree with me about our future, I have to call
him.  Do you want me to call him?”  He doesn’t want to call him.  He doesn’t
want to go back to where we were.

“No. 
I don’t.”

“But
I am scared about where we are going with all this nonsense.”  He has rubbed
his face twice, pulling sweat from his brow into his big hands and spreading it
across his cheeks so that his face glistens.  His hair has flopped forward and
he looks like he just ran some sort of race.

“Forwards,”
I said robotically, as I had been programmed.  “We are going forwards.”

“I
do hope so,” he says, swallowing hard, one hand on his hip, one on his chin.  “I
wouldn’t like to believe anything to the contrary.  Would you?”

“No,”
I said quietly.  It was over six months ago, but it was still there, still
breathing like a monster in the cellar, waiting for an opportunity to rise.  I
can feel it inside of me like an ulcer, throbbing and gnawing at me, like acid
burning at my insides.  He can feel it too.  He turned to walk up the stairs,
and within just a breath he was gone, a flicker of a candle flame
extinguished.  I left my gifts on the drawing room table and followed him.

I
lay in bed that night alone.  Feeling restless and not wishing to disturb my
sleep after a long day, Gregory had decided to sleep alone in the guest
bedroom.  The reasoning behind his absence is my own, for he didn’t tell me
that he would not be sleeping with me tonight.  I saw him slip through the
guest bedroom door as I neared the top of the stairs.  I wondered for a while
if he was simply using the bathroom, and that he might eventually reappear.  After
filling the toilet with raw fish and red wine, rinsing my mouth twice with
water and once with mouthwash, I washed my hands three times and then sank into
my pillows where I waited for him.  After half an hour I dozed off, alone.  I
woke to hear the gentle closing of a door along the corridor.  I turned to look
at the clock.  It was 1:17 AM.  I had been asleep for over an hour.  I could
not be certain of which door it was, but it didn’t matter.  All bedrooms had
bathrooms, and nobody had reason to move around at night.  I sat upright and
turned on the lights waiting for another sound, another movement.  Fifteen
minutes later I heard the creak of the wooden floorboards, and I jumped out of
bed and crept to the door.  I waited with my fingers gripped around the handle,
not knowing if I should open it or not.  The passing moments slowed as I
considered each option.  What would I do with the information on the other side? 
What would I do if I saw him or her returning to their bedroom?  Confront
them?  I couldn’t answer this question but without any conscious resolution I
found myself turning the handle.  As I pulled open the door I saw Ishiko, her
hand turning her bedroom door handle.  She heard me and turned.  Through the
shadows we saw each other, me coming out of my door, her going in through
hers.  I turned briefly and saw the light flickering under the doorframe of the
guest bedroom.  She smiled, mouthed goodnight, and then went into her bedroom.

After
she closed the door I stood there for a while, silent and without a single
thought in my mind.  I stood watching the lights flicker underneath the guest
bedroom door as if hypnotised.  I remained there in a trance until I saw the
lights go out, returning to blackness.  I quietly closed the door behind me and
walked back towards my bed.  The lack of thought had cleared a space for a
vision to fill my mind.  It was Gregory with his slut maid in the guest bedroom
on sheets that I had chosen from Collings and Rawlings, mounting her like an
animal in ways that he had tried to do with me but that I hadn’t permitted.  I
took off my night gown and got on the bed, lying flat facing the ceiling,
illuminated only by the moonlight through the window.  It was cold, and my bare
skin was goose pimpled and my nipples hard like stones.  I placed one hand on my
swollen breast as Gregory had done earlier, and one between my legs.  I touched
myself, all the while thinking about him trying to push her head into the
pillow to muffle her groans so that I wouldn’t hear what they were doing. 
Afterwards I stood in the shower under a dribble of cold water, wiped what
could have been a tear away from my cheeks, and concentrated on once again trying
not to feel anything at all.