.....no longer than ten minutes as I keep it in colour code and garment type order already so I read a few of the old newspapers that are stored behind a pile of jumpers and according to one of the receipts in a different pile on December 17th I purchased a loaf of bread a carton of orange juice and a box of matches a box of Paracetamol and a packet of marshmallows at 9:57 PM and I position the pile of baby blue jumpers so that the things behind them are not visible and I pull the sheets from my bed and heap them up on the floor on the landing and stop to wash my hands because the ink from the newspapers is different to the receipts and so I have contaminated them so I consider throwing them away but I cannot do it even after standing with them in my hand for three minutes so I step on the floorboards to determine which one creaks and one near the top of the stairs and another one close to the guest bedroom door and Ishiko appears puzzled by my actions but I knew it to be nothing but a theatrical performance on her part and I quickly ordered her back down the stairs but not before.....
“Ishiko, take these with you.” I point to my sheets in a heap at my feet and wonder if it was me who put them there and if she could smell me on them. I watch as she bundles them up. From her inferior position of four steps down I have a great view of the back of her head, her neat hair scraped into a pony tail, her fringe sashaying left and right occasionally revealing bits of skin and eye like a peep show. Besides the fact that I feel the need to mutilate her in some malignant way, she was intriguing to me. She didn’t flinch yesterday when she peered through to the bathroom to look at Gregory pleasuring himself. She looked past me and at my husband as if I wasn’t even there. She didn’t seem embarrassed in the slightest which made me uncomfortable. She had watched as Gregory kissed me and groped at my chest. Stared as he left me panting like a flustered dog. It was me who was ashamed. Of being touched by my own husband.
Once I was certain she was gone I slipped into the guest bedroom avoiding the creaky floorboard. I closed the door behind me and turned the key. The sheets were crimpled, the sign of a disturbed sleep or the joining of bodies. One of the two but I cannot tell which. I looked around the room. It was lifeless. Dust motes floated through the air and I could feel them in my throat and it made me cough. I coughed so much that I began to struggle for breath and so I went into the bathroom only moments from panic and coughed up what I could into a tissue before I choked on it. It was mainly froth from the back of my throat, but I am certain I saw the grey specks of dust. I composed myself with a few deep breaths the way Dr. Abrams had shown me and counted until I felt better. This time I stopped at one hundred and twenty three. I put the tissue in the pocket of my chinos.
The weak light from outside was ideal, enough to fumble my way around, yet my actions felt unreal in the semi-darkness. I moved to the bed and stared at the sheets. I looked for marks, the sign of fluids split. There was nothing evident. I smelt the pillow nearest to me and it smelt of hair, grease of man. It smelt like a body that had been wrapped up overnight, leaking its scent and marking its territory. His smell was all over the sheets, and so I got into them, breathing him in, which seemed to stir a distant memory of something better. The other side of the bed was crumpled. Less so, but nevertheless it was disturbed. I placed my nose on the sheet like a cat, my palms flat and elbows sticking out behind me. It smelt cleaner, less used. It smelt of lavender. Womanly. I slid over to her side and rested my head on the pillow, nose down breathing deeply. I pulled the duvet up over me, and lulled like a baby by the scent, I closed my eyes. I thought about a faceless girl who might have sold me the sheets in Collings and Rawlings and realised that I had no memory of it but I am sure that’s where they are from because he told me that’s where I liked to shop. On the radio this morning one of the local schools was said to be closed because a man had been seen hanging around outside the gate. He had tried to snatch one of the girls who was no older than ten but the news report didn’t say how old exactly so she could have been only six. It’s a Tuesday today so the local swimming baths will be closed but I find it disgusting to be in there anyway, submerged in the dirt of another person for a kind of morose pleasure. I think of other things too whilst I am here. Lots of things.
I had never thought Marianne a whore, but the more I give her and her situation consideration, the more she seems to fit that label. She arrives when he tells her too, she is provided for during her stay, she receives beautiful gifts, such as the new pearl bracelet, and is gone in time for the return of the wife. She hijacks the life of the wife Monday to Friday. Marianne is an imposter, a lookalike, not deemed good enough to be a permanent fixture. She is an understudy, waiting to replace the other woman. I am watching Ishiko cleaning the mantelpiece, because I have now gone downstairs to observe her, because I realise that she too is playing the same role in my house. She is waiting for me to break a leg, wishing me luck and kissing my cheek, and secretly hoping that something bad would happen so that she can step into my shoes and tread these family built boards as her own.
“What time are you cooking lunch?” I ask her. For once it is an actual question and I wait for my response. I am sat in Gregory’s green Queen Anne chair and the lake is drifting in and out of view as the mist creeps back and forth, teasing me.
“Mr. Astor likes to eat at two o’clock.” The radio is playing in the background, a classical song I don’t recognise which would irritate Gregory if he was here because he would realise that I don’t know it.
“It is twelve twenty now,” I said looking at the watch that I inherited from Gregory’s mother after she had passed, an old Rolex which Gregory told me is worth a sizeable amount of money. He told me this only two months ago, right before we stopped talking to each other in any reasonable or friendly way. He told me with a look on his face that suggested I should be grateful, as if the value of the watch was bargaining power. Sort of how do you not love me anymore, this watch alone is worth almost fifteen thousand pounds. Look at the life I have given you and this is how you thank me. How dare I be depressed or crazy? He can feel it just like I can that the love, whatever it was that was here and that kept us together has disappeared. I don’t remember if it was me that killed it, but I think that in perhaps trying to kill myself, the only thing that I was really successful in doing was killing us. I am amazed at how quickly time has passed watching her work through the room cleaning. I realise that I have been sitting here for an hour. “You better get organized, hadn’t you?”
“There is some soup ready for heating up and some bread, Mrs. Astor.” She doesn’t turn to look at me as she speaks. Her work is completed with such delicacy and precision, that everything is done at a constant rate but without appearing tardy. I wonder if she feels close to him in here, breathing in him, sucking up the dust that he has created. Perhaps she feels his presence, his smell, like I could on the sheets. I haven’t thought about killing her once in the whole time I have been sat here. I am hungry. It’s the boredom.
“Ishiko, put that down and look at me.” She places a small crystal dish back onto the table and with her dust rag clutched at her side like a security blanket she turns to face me. It could just be fantasy, but she looks a little nervous, I think. I smile to myself as I sit here on the Green Queen Anne chair which we both know is his. “I do not want soup for lunch. We will have lamb chops. You will go out to the butchers. Go on,” I said shooing her away. She looks bemused with the new routine, like a dog suddenly pushed out in the cold, wondering what it had done wrong. “Off you go.”
I follow her through to the hallway where I watch as she dresses in a thick woollen hat and red duffle coat. She wraps her scarf around her neck and I think how she looks like an overgrown school girl. A dangerous overgrown school girl like the red berry of the Yew tree.
I watch from the landing window as she paces down the private road. The guest sheets remain on the floor of the guest bedroom, and I make a note not to tell her about them. I wait until she turns the corner, and then through the bare branches of the furthest tr
ees I see her red coat disappear into the distance. I consider at first if her room might be locked, but as I twist the handle I find that it is not. It opens without effort, the door swinging into the room, almost as if it is inviting me in.
It is a mixture of familiar and alien, the past and present. The room is decorated with wallpaper, perfect stripes split through the middle with an Aztec style border in baby blue. The single bed divides the room in two, with two small cupboards either side. The wardrobes form a corridor towards the bathroom, and I can see a selection of toiletries lined up next to the sink through the open door. The familiarity ends. I sit on the side of the bed, made to perfection with hospital style corners underneath the duvet, and finger my way through the items on the nightstand. There is a magazine that looks like a juvenile version of something like Cosmo, covered in so many colours and pictures that it looks like a collage. Next to the bed there is a pile of the same magazines, back issues all looking like different versions of the first. On the front of each one is a girl, pretty, young, big heavy fringe, pigtails, and black eyes. None of them have black hair, rather orangey brown, but other than this they could all be Ishiko. There are so many items on the nightstand it is impossible to focus on them all. There are bracelets, hair bands, creams with symbolized writing which I do not understand. There are several CD’s, one of which depicts a levitating man who appears on the cusp of death, screaming into the air above him. Another, a woman hanging out babies to dry amidst a stormy sky. Megadeth. Feeling an instant attraction to the cover, I pick up the first box with the near dead man on the front. There is no CD in it so I look around and find the CD player. I turn it on and push play and within a few seconds there is a drum roll followed by some angry sounding guitars which is very different to the string music that I am used to. The singing, if you can call it that, mumbles on for a while but he or she - I’m not certain - is singing something about slit wrists and a hit and run. I don’t dislike the music and so I leave it on while I look around. Make up, eye liner, blusher, lipstick. I try to think of a time when I have seen her wearing make-up but cannot. There is a bra hanging off the handle of the wardrobes and a pair of knickers on the floor in the corner and I feel a sudden urge to GET OUT NOW but I force myself to stay, calmed somewhat by the music which is a surprise because it doesn’t seem that relaxing on first impression. The chorus has broken in. No escaping pain, you belong to me, the he/she sings. Above the bed there are photographs. Clinging onto life by the skin of my teeth, I hear. An undecipherable second verse follows. Ishiko looks younger in the photographs on the wall, her face chubbier and more like mine, pushed up against other girls who look similar to her. All Japanese, I guess. There are older people in the photographs too, her parents and grandparents perhaps, pictures taken before she came here. A goodbye party? I pull a photograph out from the elasticated holder that grips everything in place and study her. The room smells of lavender. She is alone in this photograph. Her hands are outstretched, jazz hands, her mouth wide. She is in front of some sort of temple, a building that looks cobbled together with different layers lodged on top of each other. The song ends. Another one starts and for a second I think a choir is about to break into a choral chant, but the guitars take over again. I have decided the singer must be a man based on the CD case. I like this song less and fast forward until I come across a song I like, presented by four long haired men who Gregory would definitely disapprove of. The lead singer continues to mumble but the chorus is clear and interspersed by what I assess to be extremely talented guitar playing and he is singing, There is something wrong with me, There is nothing left of us, Lying on your bed, examining my head. I lie down, certain that the lyrics are an instruction to me, clutching both the CD case and the photograph. A connection to the music sends me into a trance and for a moment I cannot think again. I hold the photograph up in front of me. I look at her gaping mouth and imagine Gregory standing before her, him grunting and her kneeling. This is the part of me that hates! he sings and screams. I stare at the photograph until I close my eyes. I open them when the music stops and stand up. I put the photograph into my pocket, take the CD and put it in its case and take it with me. I close the door behind me.
I am in the kitchen when she arrives. I can feel her face burning into my hip, her outstretched fingers tickling at my skin from inside my pocket. I wonder if I smell of lavender now that I have been in her bed. She places her coat, hat and scarf into the cloakroom, and joins me.
“Mrs. Astor, would you like something to drink? Tea?” She looks freezing, her cheeks pink like an Aunt Sally doll, perfect symmetrical rosy circles.
“Yes please, Ishiko, that would be wonderful.” I already know that I won’t drink it. She appears as surprised at my tone as I am. It’s remarkable how disturbing friendliness can seem when it is not the norm. It is much more comforting for an enemy to remain an enemy, than to appear something else without explanation or cause. She places the lamb chops on the side and fills the kettle with water. Before she came home I had walked out into the far side of the garden where our gardener places the cuttings and rubbish. It remains as a pile of mulch and mud, even when it hasn’t rained. I had put on my hiking boots and I trampled through it after first kicking off a crusty top layer of frost to reveal the wet stuff which smelt bad like a rotten tooth. I then proceeded through the house, walking my boots through the utility room and television room leaving a trail of dirt and tiny pieces of rotten vegetable skin.
“I think you will find that somebody has trailed mud through the rooms at the back of the house. It looks somewhat fresh. We really have to ensure that when we go outside, Ishiko, that we remove our muddy boots before relaxing in the television room with our feet up. Especially if we have jobs to do. You better clean it up before preparing our lunch, before it dries.” She huffed a sharp little breath in and out as she placed my tea down on the table, only a little of which was spilt into the saucer. I leave the cup on the table and with a smile that I think looked genuine I left the room. For the first time in a long time that smile lingered with me without any conscious effort as I walked through the house to the dining room. I took a seat in the chair next to the bay window, still smiling as I watched the private road where nothing was happening. I looked at the house next door and continued to smile. I smiled, and smiled, and smiled until the next idea came to me, and it was such a good one that I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought about it before.
Chapter eight
I watched Marianne close the door of her baby blue Volvo and walk towards the Wexley’s house. She smiled and waved as I walked out to greet her, wrapping my arms around my waist to seal my long woollen coat that is not only practical and stylish, according to Gregory, but also one of my personal favourites which I know I don’t like. The temperature has dropped because of the fog that returned throughout the morning, and so the frost from the night before has lingered like the memory of a beautiful dream. I couldn’t even see Mrs. Sedgwick’s house at the bottom of the driveway, and the tress that I had watched Ishiko disappear behind were shrouded into invisibility.
“Marianne,” I called, breaking into a jog to catch her before she closed the door. She looked surprised by my friendliness, but I can’t ever recall being unpleasant to her. Perhaps she felt uncomfortable without Mr. Wexley at her side, her ticket to the good life that she is currently enjoying. Monday to Friday. At the expense of his wife.
“Hello. How are you?” she asked.
“I’m good, very well, thank you.” I wish at this moment I had opened the presents from last night so that I had something polite to say, a thank you for a gift, but I didn’t and so I don't. I look at her coat and her hair and wonder if I can find something positive, but I can’t.
“Good, I was worried about you this morning, you know,” as she points the key and clicks her car locked. “You seemed in another world.” I consider answering but I’m not sure what to say. Tell her that I vomited on myself? Tell her I wouldn’t touch my own face bec
ause I had been forced to touch a wall in the event of vomiting? I am not unaware of the unusual nature of some of my behaviour, and so I choose instead to ignore what she said and press on regardless.
“I was wondering if you would like to get a coffee together later on. I am after all, a lady of leisure now. Like you.” I wink my left eye in a way that suggests we might be sharing a joke. She checks her watch and looks down the street into the fog and to where you should be able to see the road. She doesn't seem excited by my suggestion. There is no smile to reflect my own.
“Well I have a doctor’s appointment soon, but perhaps a little bit later. This afternoon?”
“Perfect.” I knew where she was going. Those stitches wouldn’t remove themselves. I had to admit that the new breasts looked good and realise only now that there was something nice I could have said after all. I paid attention last night because she was wearing a style of dress that she probably couldn’t have got away with without the new additions to hold the shape together. “Shall we say four o’clock? Lakeside Café?” She didn’t seem to find it a good idea, and the keys jangled as she fiddled with them in her fingers, turning them around and around, perhaps considering a possible escape as she looked left and right. I found it very distracting to the point that my mind wandered away from the conversation and back to the mud that Ishiko cleaned up earlier. She should be cooking the lamb chops now. I like them with mint which I have no idea if we have or not, but it doesn’t matter because I won’t be eating them anyway.
“Charlotte? Charlotte, did you hear me?” I realise that time has passed of which I have not been party to.
“Sorry, Marianne. I got distracted.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?” She looks concerned now. She placed the keys in her pocket and she is moving closer to me to get a good look at me as if my problems might be visible, something you can route through like old records until you find one that you want. I take a step back and look lively.
PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller Page 7