Struggles of Psycho

by Rhyam O'Bryam

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘With three days to go before Mike returned to his university, I knew I had to act to secure Ivy. In the immediate aftermath of her failed suicide attempt – because that’s really what it was – Ivy had been compliant and unresisting.

  ‘By day, we would often go out, even if it was just to take Bonnie for a walk on the beach. In the evenings, I would sometimes take them both to a decent restaurant (confident I had the money to do so now). And at night, well, she wasn’t very active, but at least she didn’t object when I stroked her body and fingered her. Nor, initially, did she pull back when I placed her hand against my sex. In fact, I felt a jolt, like an electric shock running right up my body to the back of my head, when her passive, still fingers suddenly began to move and her middle finger slid inside me. Of course, I was soaking wet and it was easy for her to do so, but this was the moment I had fantasized for so long.

  ‘It was like those wonderful nights in school again, when I had Ivy tied up on my bed, only this was better, because, at last, she was touching me. She was trying to make me feel pleasure. Of course, I knew better than to believe this meant she cared for me, that she wanted to return a kindness. No, there was something darker going on, perhaps a surrender of some kind in the hope of mitigating what might happen next. Like a cornered mouse surrendering and letting the cat pick it up with its teeth.

  ‘It really didn’t take at all long for me to feel an intense orgasm. She was lying alongside me, looking at the roof, but her left hand was resting where I’d put it, on my mound. And having found my sex, her finger was dipping into me and then, slick, rubbing on my clitoris, sending wave after wave of amazingly intense jolts of pleasure through me. There only one thing lacking. I was distracted by her expression. It was other-worldly, as if she were daydreaming about a book she’d read, instead of being aware of where she was and what she was doing.

  ‘“Ivy, look at me”, I commanded.

  ‘With evident reluctance, Ivy turned her head and I could look into her eyes. This close, the deep brown colour of her irises could be seen to be more complex than when viewed at a distance. They had flecks of black, grey and even dark orange in them.

  ‘“Tell me you want me to have an orgasm.”

  ‘“I want you to have an orgasm.”

  ‘“Keep saying it. And rub me faster, harder.”

  ‘“I want you to have an orgasm.”

  ‘“Again.”

  ‘“I want you to have an orgasm.”

  ‘And suddenly I was there. I kissed Ivy hard and grabbed her wrist firmly, keeping her hand tight between my thighs. It was a long, powerful, intense orgasm. The best I ever had. At that moment, if I could have trusted her, I would have loved her. But of course, I could not. So it was only the physical pleasure that I relished, along with a certain sense of triumph that despite her previous independence and near escape from me, I had won. I had gotten what I wanted.

  ‘The question now was how to keep her in my bed and try as I might I could only think of one way: to terrify her that the consequences of her leaving would be disastrous for Mike. Now, I had mildly positive feelings about Bonnie. To some extent, she was the last of my family, if we exclude my murderous uncle, and she was useful to have around. But she was the key to the situation. After all their walks together along the wet sands, after all their play around the farm, Ivy and Bonnie had formed a real bond.

  ‘That night, while Ivy turned away from me and cried into her pillow, I lay on my back, looking at the bedroom roof (which was an unusual silver-grey colour: a near-full moon was outside) and thinking about Bonnie and Ivy.’

  Philips paused to take a drink and I realised that my body was clenched. Consciously, I relaxed myself, from the legs, through the stomach to my chest. Once again, I felt that Philips was toying with us. Especially in the roundabout way that she was telling us of her relationship with Michael Patterson. Her complacency made me deeply uneasy.

  ‘Well,’ continued Philips, ‘Mike went into Wexford one Saturday and bought two ferry tickets. Back then, the company had an office on the high street. Nowadays, of course, this is all done online. He also talked to me casually about driving them both to New Ross on the day of their departure, as if I would simply let Ivy go. He was still blind at this stage, you see, Superintendent.

  ‘As far as Mike was concerned, he’d had a splendid holiday, full of the kind of submissive sex he enjoyed under the touch of a mistress he loved. And he’d helped me get control of the farm and its rents, so in his own head, he was even something of a hero. His actual behaviour on the night my uncle came with the shotgun was forgotten.

  ‘I played along, but I felt sick in my stomach and realised the time to act was upon me. Poor Bonnie. Early one Saturday morning, I think, I drugged her dog food, then went into the kitchen where Mike was standing in his dressing gown, a mug of tea in his hand.

  ‘“Good morning!” he said brightly. I just grunted. “I’m going to miss this,” With a slight wave of his mug, Mike indicated the room in front of him. I wasn’t sure if he meant the house, the farm, Wexford, Ireland, or the mistress-slave sex. “It’s been great.”

  ‘In the press beside the cooker were the heavy duty cooking items. The big pans and trays. Among them was a long roasting skewer with a sharp point at its end. I took this out. Then I stood at the back door, looking out at the lawn. My great-grandparents had spent a small part of their fortune creating a perfect croquet pitch there and the grass still looked lush and green, although it needed a cut. Perhaps Mike should mow it later.

  ‘Leaning my head against the glass of the kitchen door, I remembered a time when I was twelve years old and playing croquet with Oliver and Lucy. Oliver was only recently in the army and he was proud of his uniform. Even when on leave, he used to wear fatigues. Of course, he was much the better player. Do you play, Superintendent? Do sheep farmers learn croquet?’

  Startled by the break in her narration, I had shaken my head, instead of staring back at her with the coolness her remark about sheep farmers deserved. Of course, she was testing me, to see if her Anglo-Irish pretence at holding to islands of culture in the face of a sea of ignorant Catholicism could get a rise out of me.

  ‘No,’ she continued, ‘GAA would have been more your thing. Hurling, I expect.’ Again she was on the money and again her long inspection of me was a knowing one. It could be demoralizing, giving Philips too much credit for her control. I reminded myself that she tended to get carried away talking about sex and this would give me opportunities to make inroads into her story.

  ‘Well, in croquet,’ explained Philips, looking at McCarthy as if at a child, ‘there is a handicap system. Oliver was a scratch player. If he it was his turn and he had control of all four balls in a break, as often as not he’d peg out. That was the problem with croquet as a competitive sport. It had an upper limit. Admittedly not many people reached that level, but there were enough players around, even among our Protestant neighbours, who could clean up in one innings that the game became far less interesting to them than tennis. Every family but ours converted their croquet lawn to a tennis lawn.

  ‘We used tent pegs for bisques, which is a term used to mean “extra shots”, and Lucy had four of these while I had twelve. As we played, Oliver gave me tips and encouragement, but he wouldn’t help Lucy at all. Croquet is a very easy game to cheat at. A slight nudge here and there is all you need to get much better angles for your shots. So I tended to do better than I should have. I also kept forgetting to put the tent peg on the ground when I used a bisque. That gave me a bump up too.

  ‘Probably Oliver knew I was cheating. He was so experienced at the game, he’d have sensed when a ball had been moved. But Lucy genuinely got annoyed when I beat her. And I beat her a lot, which made her so furious one day she took her mallet and ran around smashing up the hoops, scoring the lawn deeply. I was delighted to have triggered such an effect and it intrigued me, even at early age: could I achieve the same again?


  ‘I had been daydreaming about these childhood days as I watched a magpie strut around the lawn. At last, the sounds I had been waiting for brought me back to the kitchen. Ivy came down the stairs and entered the kitchen.

  ‘“Hi, Mike, hi, Amy”, she said brightly. The poor girl. By nature she was cheerful and the combination of being only a few days away from freedom and the bright sunlight lying in blocks on the floor made her forgiving. Even I was included in her happiness.

  ‘Mike waved at her, his mouth was too full of French stick to reply. As an aside, Superintendent, I rarely saw Mike stray far from food. The experience of having been nearly starved to death had scarred him. I would find biscuits in his coat pocket; slices of bread in his satchel and he was often chewing on an apple. His weight just rose and rose, until he was the fat man you saw if you went to the mortuary.’

  Her lawyer stirred and whispered something. Philips shook her head.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I speak ill of the dead. And the word “fat” is simply an accurate one. Well, Ivy made me a cup of tea and we chatted about our plans for the day. When we had last been in Wexford, Ivy had noted a gallery was launching a new exhibition by a local painter and she wanted to go. That explained the effort she had put into her appearance. With carefully drawn eyebrow lines and a turquoise scarf of mine thrown over her left shoulder, she looked older and more mature than usual.

  ‘I bore patiently with all of the meaningless chit-chat between Ivy and Mike and even joined in a little, although my eyes probably kept straying to the skewer that I’d left on the sink draining board. At last, Ivy put down her mug and went out. Listening carefully, I heard the front door open. Good, she was going to see Bonnie.

  ‘When I was sure Mike was busy, buttering four rounds of toast, I turned my back on him and picked up the skewer, then edged around to the door with it held against my body. “See you later, Mike.”

  ‘“Sure.” Or something like that, his mouth was full again.

  ‘I arrived at the front door, just as Ivy ran up to it, horror written on her face. The skewer was now behind my back. “Oh, Amy, come quick. Bonnie is sick. Really sick!”

  ‘“Show me.”

  Ivy hurried away to the barn where Bonnie slept and before I even got there I could smell the dog sick. Just inside the big, sliding door, in a shadow, was Bonnie. My collie was panting quickly, her vomit strewn around her in red, orange and yellow streams.

  ‘Pausing in the doorway, Ivy put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘“What is it, Amy? What can we do? Let’s call the vet, quickly.”

  ‘As I pushed past her, I patted Ivy on the shoulder. “No need to panic.”

  ‘At my approach, Bonnie looked into my eyes and gave a soft whine, tail flat, ears dropped. It was almost as though she were apologizing for being sick.

  ‘“There, there.” I stroked her for the last time and her breathing eased.

  ‘“Ivy?”

  ‘“Yes.”

  ‘“I want you to watch this very carefully.”

  ‘“What? I don’t understand.”

  ‘Without hesitation I held Bonnie down with my left hand, pointed the sharp tip of the skewer above her heart with my right and rammed it home.

  ‘Surprisingly, Bonnie jumped to her feet and Ivy gave out a scream that hurt my ears; it was an unpleasant moment. There was not much blood. A sharp item, like a needle, say, pushed into a heart doesn’t leave a lot of room for the blood to exit.’

  At this, McCarthy rolled her eyes and muttered, ‘Unbelievable.’ I just wanted Philips to continue. My heart had picked up. Playing these words to the jury would certainly alert them to the fact that Philips was no ordinary woman. Surely it would suggest to them that she was, in fact, capable of murder?

  Healy caught my eye and his expression was odd, it was that of a weary, long-suffering man. He did turn towards Philips, but she just jumped in before he could speak.

  ‘We’ve all heard the description, “dead on his feet”. Well, now I actually saw it happen. The lustre and intelligence faded from Bonnie’s eyes, but she did not collapse. Not right away. Oddly, she remained there, dead but standing.

  ‘“Amy” Ivy had stopped screaming. “Why? Why not the vet?”

  ‘Before answering, I stood up and walked over to her. “Because I poisoned Bonnie.”

  ‘“Amy.” But Ivy’s voice had dropped. She was a clever girl and I could see understanding was spreading through her. Already, her eyes were full of tears and the first drops spilled from the sides of her eyes.

  ‘“You know what I’m capable of, Ivy, but you need to be reminded.” I stood right in front of her now, so that we were nearly nose to nose. She had begun to tremble. “I want you to imagine it was Mike here, sick and weak. And that I walk up to him and stick him in the heart just as I did Bonnie. Can you imagine that?”

  ‘Ivy didn’t answer.

  ‘“Well, if you leave for the ferry with Mike, that’s what is going to happen. I’m going to get him alone, and you know how easy it is for me to do that, and I’m going to press a sharp blade into his soft skin exactly as I just did to Bonnie. Can you see it? You better had Ivy, because you know I never give up.

  ‘“If you leave me, I will kill Mike. You understand that don’t you?”

  ‘Ivy didn’t reply. She staggered back against the barn door and then slowly slid down, until she was sitting, knees drawn up against her chest. Bonnie chose that moment to lose her shape too, legs splaying out unnaturally as she flopped to the ground.

  ‘“Say that you understand, Ivy.”

  ‘Ivy looked up and behind her tears was such anger and hatred. “I understand.”

  Philips caught my eye, as if to check that the penny had fallen. And it had. This was her motive. This was the scenario. Ivy had run away and left Philips, so to fulfil her vow, Philips had summoned Mike and killed him. In just the same way; just as she had promised. Why she had given us this motive, I couldn’t say, but I felt a great weight lift off my shoulders. This was something I could take to the DPP. In fact, I experienced an urge to stop the interview and take the recording directly over to O’Raghailligh and play it.

  Evidently, McCarthy felt the same, for she gave a little shrug and looked at me with surprise and a slight smile. Everyone in the room – well, except Healy – was cheerful. The same beginnings of a smile were also on the wide lips of Amy Philips and that brought me around. This had to be a trick of some sort. Everything I knew about Philips assured me she was no fool and she certainly wouldn’t help me put her away for murder.

  Somewhere in this story was an attempt to mislead me about what had happened the night Michael Patterson had died.

  ‘Go on.’

  With a wave of her hand, Philips resumed her narration. It was as though she had drawn a line under the testimony marked ‘motive’ so that we all knew where to come back to.

  ‘While Ivy sat there, moaning now, a little bit like poor, sick Bonnie had been doing only moments earlier, I set about cleaning up. I filled a large bucket with water from the tap and dashed it on the stone floor, away from Ivy, of course. And then I went back for more. Over the sound of rushing water I called out.

  ‘“The deal is this. You live with me for a year and a day and I’ll let you go. There will be sex, of course, which might not be to your taste I came back and sent another wave of cold water across the floor, “but not too much. And there will be plenty of country walks, meals out, theatre and cinema. You’ll see. It won’t be too bad.

  ‘I stopped and stood right above her. “But if you even start to mention this to Mike, the deal is off and I shall kill him. He’s so foolish he won’t figure it out without you leading him to understanding. So don’t. Got it?”

  ‘Ivy nodded and made a sniffling sound. “Amy?”

  ‘“What?” I thought she was going to say, “Why me?” or something like that. But Ivy surprised me, looking up from beneath her straight black fringe with red-ringed eyes.

  ‘�
�A year and a day? Why a year and a day?”

  ‘I laughed, the question was so unexpected. “Oh, it’s just the fairy tales from around here, you know. When a man is captured by the fairies or otherwise loses a forfeit to them, it’s always a year and a day. It’s even in old Irish law, I believe, that agreements were made for that period rather than a year.”

  ‘I held out my hand. “Come on, get up and make yourself look a bit more presentable. We’ll tell Mike that Bonnie has died, that will explain your tears. And I’ll get him to dig the grave. We can have a little ceremony later.

  ‘Ivy got herself up without my help. “You are a cold, cold, cold and cruel monster.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘Thus began a very happy period of my life. With Mike out of the way, the one cloud that had been spoiling my enjoyment of Ivy had lifted. No more sulking brat. No more having to jerk him off to keep him in line. Instead, it was just Ivy and me, in the middle of the countryside, miles from the nearest person. Really, this was all that I’d ever wanted. It was hard to believe, but every night, I had Ivy in my bed. Beautiful, raven-haired Ivy.

  ‘At evening times I would become impatient and often I couldn’t help but switch off the television mid-programme, or curtail our game, if we were playing cards or Scrabble. An eagerness to be alone under the covers with Ivy would take over me and nothing else seemed important.

  ‘I grew to know her entire body. She had an almost undetectable, soft layer of hair, like invisible fur, all over her. On her lower arms, it thickened, so you could actually see black hairs. In the modern woman, these might be removed, although they didn’t matter to me.

  ‘So Ivy had a thick tuft of black hair on her mound. Again, it didn’t matter to me. In fact, I enjoyed the sensation on my fingers, that of finding a way through the thicket to the sweet warmth of her sex. She always put on her pyjamas, you know. As if she might be going to bed in the ordinary fashion. And perhaps for a few minutes we might lie there in companionable silence, like a normal couple.