“Gregory,” I whisper, in a way that could or could not be a question depending on if he says anything. He is still mumbling. It sounds like the same words over and over, and he has worked one hand out from under me and he is stroking me again, the face, the breasts, the arms. Anywhere he makes contact. I say it again. “Gregory?”
“How could you, Charlotte? How could you?” His words flutter out attached to his breaths, barely audible, but I hear them. “How could you? How?” I have no answer. Any answer I have may hurt him. I cannot say anything. I cannot tell him that it felt good, that I liked it, or that I crave the same feeling again. I cannot tell him that even though today I have tried to be positive, I cannot guarantee that I will wake up the same tomorrow. I cannot tell him that the tablets are lined up in my bedside table ready to feed to Marianne, or perhaps Ishiko, who I am now struggling, I think, to tell apart. Or perhaps they are for me. I cannot tell him anything because I have no answers. I cannot explain why I feel that the lake speaks to me in the voice of my father, whispering its terrible commands, that I am his, that I belong, that it is my destiny. I cannot tell him that on my walks I go there and put my feet in the edge of the water, even when it is icy and makes my toes hurt. I cannot tell him that at this time I feel like I am home more than I do when I am here in this house. I cannot tell him. I have no explanation.
So I just hold him in my arms. Eventually he pulls me down to the floor and curls up alongside me. I hear from his breathing that he is soon asleep, nuzzled up at the back of my neck, his sadness giving way to rest. I close my eyes and try to sleep, knowing I have no idea if this is real or if I am imagining it, and just hope that tomorrow when I wake up we are still here together so that I might know that tonight was not just a dream. So that I might know there is at least still part of me that is attached to reality, and to him.
Chapter nineteen
I wake up to the smell of lavender. It is bright around me, unnaturally so and my neck hurts. It doesn’t take long for me to realise I am on the floor underneath the office desk, and the smell is coming from Ishiko, a visual and olfactory reminder of her continued presence in my house. She is peering down at me as a doctor might inspect a wound.
“Mrs. Astor?” She prods my arm to see if I am still alive. “Mrs. Astor? Are you alright?” My pyjama top is still open like a theatre curtain at the start of a show, and I look dishevelled much in the same way as I might if I had been attacked. My waking is sent into overdrive once she grabs my arm and begins to shake me, and I see that Ishiko is whiter than a sheet, her eyes even wider than normal. I am certain that she thinks I have died. Or at least tried to.
“I am fine, Ishiko,” I say, as I pull my clothes across me and sit up, dazed but awake. She backs off, relieved. I find myself looking around for Gregory who is nowhere to be found, but the belt from his robe has been left, discarded on the floor next to me, and so I know at least he was here. It was real. I reach out for it and hold it in my hands tightly, as if it is actually him and through it he will feel my touch. “Please take this to Mr. Astor,” I say and hand her the belt. “He left it here last night.” There is a mixture of confusion and surprise crossing her face like the meeting of two angry rivers as she takes the belt in her hand. He has some explaining to do, it would seem. She nods and moves out of the room faster than I have ever seen her graceful legs carry her. I couldn’t help but let her know what had happened here last night, and seeing her scurry off, cheeks tinged pink and eyes squinting, felt good.
Gregory is still sleeping. He is in the guest bedroom. In my bathroom I discard my pyjamas on the floor in the corner of the room. I collect the tape measure from behind the drawer in my bedside table where I have stored it in a Ziploc plastic bag. I feel an urge to fondle the bracelet and photograph, but I shut it out for now, and focus on my task.
After rinsing my mouth and washing my sore hands I take a series of measurements, following the black lines as if they were walking trails on a map. There is no change at the hips, but I notice an extra millimetre in both circumference and length of my stomach. Growth. I take a shower whilst trying to avoid the lines but it becomes a near impossible task that very nearly moves me to tears as I watch the black fade to grey until in places it disappears altogether. It doesn’t matter how much I concentrate the soap in a particular area, the black lines of growth are inevitably disturbed. Once I am dry I retrace them with my black marker pen so that my future measurements are accurate. I sit on the edge of the bed and count to three hundred and twelve before I am able to dress because the fear that I have not redrawn them as they were is overwhelming. The backs of my hands resemble dried cranberries at Christmas and they itch worse than nettle rash. I thumb at the sore area trying to soothe the discomfort. The area which looked particularly fragile last night has become a crack, right on the edge as if my thumb got bent back and the skin tore open like tissue paper. It is bleeding and it stirs an idea. I look for a plaster in the bathroom cabinet but there are none there. They are in the guest bathroom. I look at the clock. It is 6:30 AM. Gregory will still be asleep.
I cross the landing, avoiding the creaky floorboard. With as much care as I have within me I turn the door knob and let myself in. The guest bedroom is dark, no light coming from outside which is still in the depths of night. I close the door behind me and creep towards the bathroom door. I push it open and the small light that he always leaves on illuminates my path. I push the mirrored cabinet above the sink and it pops open, inviting me to search inside. I find the idea of a stranger’s bathroom cabinet enticing because it is a forbidden place, highly personal, and this is a little bit like how I feel now. I don’t know what to expect in here, and it makes him feel even more like a stranger, irrespective of what we did last night. His personal items are no longer muddled together with mine. We have segregated parts of our life.
There is deodorant, shower gel, facial soap. A razor, foam, and scissors. There is a bottle of fungal nail treatment gel, and I wonder if his infected toenail has returned and I find myself hoping that this is the case. I locate the plasters and take one from its wrapper. Before I can stick it down I realise that Gregory has woken up. I can hear movement and breathing.
“Is that you?” he says.
“It’s me, Charlotte,” I reply, aware that he may have had other expectations. If he had, he didn’t let on.
“Good morning,” he says as he sits up in bed, beckoning me over. I do as he asks, walking over to the bed where he looks just like a shadow. He lifts the covers and I slip in beside him. He wraps his arms around me and like a foot into a favourite slipper, my head rests somewhere between his face and elbow, and I see that parts of us still fit together well. There is a warmth in knowing that my body still responds automatically to his, knowing the positions of comfort, safety, and perhaps at some point if I allow myself to dream, pleasure. I feel cradled. He drapes a leg over mine and it pulls me in closer. His body is hot and in my clothes I feel too warm but I accept the discomfort of the impending nausea and instead relish the fact that he has invited me here. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke.”
“It’s OK. Ishiko woke me.” There is a microsecond of concern as I speak her name, but he controls it and carries on.
“You are already dressed.”
“I showered too.” The lines across my body pulsate and I want so much to show him so that he can share in the joy of my growth. I want him to take photos of me every week like the woman on the Internet last night. Screw it, every day. That’s what I want. But I stifle the words and shut myself up about the baby. I fear his lack of understanding because I know we teeter on a razor thin line of unity. I try to be grateful that somehow he has remembered that he is supposed to love me.
“Shhhhhsh,” he interrupts. “Don’t say anything. Let’s pretend for this morning that there are no problems. Let’s pretend that we are fine. Let’s pretend that you love me, that I love you, and that in our world everything is alright.” He plants a kiss on my forehe
ad and snuggles me in closer. “Right now it’s just you and me, the way it is supposed to be. Can we do that?”
“Last night, you said.......”
“I know, I know,” he interrupts again. He doesn’t want me to speak and ruin it. “But last night made me feel you. I remembered who you are. It made me want you, in spite of everything that has happened.”
“I want you too," I say. "I want you to want me.”
He kissed me. It felt like a new mouth, a new kiss. He pulled the sheets over us, cocooned us is what he said, and he whispered just you and me, Charlotte. After a while I must have fallen asleep because I woke up as he was dressing. He told me to stay in bed whilst he ate breakfast, and that I didn’t have to get up. I stayed in our cocoon, the one that he had created for us tucked beneath the sheets and I watched him go downstairs. I heard him speak to Ishiko, his voice angry and gruff. I heard her answer him in a way that I had never heard before and she seemed angry too. The words were muffled but I could imagine them. He was telling her that it was over, that he loved me again, that I was his reality and that we would be having a child. That she was nothing to him. Nothing but a mistake. Not even that. Just nothing.
After a while I went downstairs and waited in the conservatory. Ishiko brought in a tray with tea, milk, bread, and bacon. There was a boiled egg on it too. The care that she had shown me in the study had evaporated and had left room for something else. She was jittery, her actions quick and unconsidered as she dropped the contents of the tray onto the table without care, almost throwing each item down. She wants to get away from me. She is scared I know. She should be.
“Ishiko, are you alright?” The answer is obviously no, but I ask it anyway because I am feeling brave and untouchable. I have been wanted by Gregory since she slept last night.
“Yes, Mrs. Astor.” She is already leaving, but I call out for her to return with fresh juice, and she does so. Somebody has lit a fire and I can hear it crackling in the drawing room, and the smell of burnt wood makes me think of Christmas. I try to remember last Christmas, but it seems I cannot.
“Ishiko, please sit down.” She doesn’t want to sit. Her mind is telling her no, but she knows she has little choice. She protests a bit and mutters something about the kitchen. “Ishiko, sit down. We are going to have this talk, whether you want it or not.” I wave my hand to encourage her to sit. She gulps down hard. She sits, her head bowed, arms crossed then uncrossed and then crossed again. I tell myself it’s because she is ashamed. “Ishiko, there are some things that must change in our house. I believe that you know what they are.” She gulps again but still refuses to look at me. “When you live here with us it is very easy to forget your place. You do so much for us that you may feel more important than you really are. You may think that because I was ill for a while, that your role in the house changed, that you became something different. Something better. Do you think that this is the case, Ishiko?” Silence. I take a sip of the juice. “Well?”
“No, Mrs. Astor.”
“Good, Ishiko. Then we have an understanding.” I am feeling brave with the heart of a lion, the blood of a warrior running through me. It is like a symphony has risen within me and I am at the point of crescendo, the zenith of my progress when I am completely out of reach, nothing higher, nothing greater, nothing more powerful. I feel so alive. But she trying to speak, dragging me back down, her words demanding that I listen. “What did you say, Ishiko?”
“I told you that I know my place in this house. I asked you if you know.” She raised her head to look at me. Her question surprised me, and I cannot deny, threw me off track somewhat. I didn’t expect it.
“Ishiko, I can assure you that I know my place in this house very well.” The words were a bit jumbled at the start, but by the end of the sentence I think I was once again composed, shield and stake at the ready for battle.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I wait a moment, chewing her words, tasting their flavour. Bitter. “What did you mean?” Silence, but her stare is heavy. Thousands of words could have passed between us in that moment when nothing was said. “Tell me what you mean.”
“I wondered if you know my place in the house as well as you think you do.”
“Of course I know your place,” I say.
“If you did, we would not be having this conversation.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I am no longer thinking clearly, otherwise I would have seen how quickly the questions have been turned around on me. Once again I think about the other night when I was drugged and she was rattling off ideas about frogs and wells that I cannot remember but feel it is necessary that I do. Something about an ocean that I didn’t know.
“Mrs. Astor, you forget a lot. There are many things you forget. I watch you Mrs. Astor. I watch you every day. I have watched you every day since you got home, but you do not realise. I know you well. Better than you think.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you don’t take your tablets. I know you stand at the lake, watching it with your feet in the water. I know people call this house to find out if you are still alive. I know the photographs in the drawing room don’t move anymore.” My strength is wavering and so I have to be quick. I have to say what I wanted to say before my strength is lost.
“Ishiko, know this. Your place is below me. What you have been doing, it stops. OK? Things are going to get back to normal.” I reach up to my chest, my neck tight, my Triquetra necklace ice cold against my skin. I swallow hard.
“What is normal in this house, Mrs. Astor? Is normal how you were behaving six months ago? Two months ago? Is normal you on a boat on the lake? Is normal the depression that nearly killed you, and him,” she accuses, “before you nearly killed yourself?” She paused and looked at me for a moment, a pitying look as she watched the colour drain from me.
“You leave him alone,” I say. She stands up from her seat, tucks it back underneath the table with care and attention, not rushing at all.
“I cannot destroy what you have already destroyed yourself. You think my being here is ruining your future, but you have already squandered it.”
“I am pregnant, Ishiko. You know this. Leave him alone!” Somehow I have managed to fill up with tears and my courage and heroism from only moments before has been washed away in a giant and unexpected tsunami. The earth beneath me has fallen away and I am floating freely in the debris strewn current. I am weak, left clinging to the nearest rock, trying hard not to be swept away by the swell.
“I know you are pregnant.” She picks up my juice, drinks it all. “Gregory thinks the truth will destroy you, but it won’t. It will help you realise. It will set you free.”
“What?” She appears to not even hear me speak. She is twiddling a bracelet in her fingers.
“They still call, you know. People. Asking. Why didn’t you go to your office? Stephen Jones. You remember him? He still thinks you work there.” She has manoeuvred herself behind me and I can feel her fingers on my shoulder. She traces the length of my collar bone, her bony fingers ending up on my necklace before she rests her hands on my shoulders and leans into my ear. “Do you? Do you even remember him?”
“What?”
“You don’t remember anything, do you?” She stands up, walks in front of me and sits on the edge of the table, her bottom disturbing my plate. She takes my hands in hers, and they remain limp because by this point I am as malleable as wet clay. She shakes her head and rubs her thumbs across the backs of my hands which are so dry you could light matches on them. Then she strokes my hair away from my wet eyes and I let her do it. “Don’t hate me. It was me that nursed you. I washed you, I dressed you, I loved you when nobody else could bring themselves to do it. I filled the void in your life when they abandoned you, just like I filled the one that you left behind when you abandoned them.”
“Gregory didn’t abandon me.” I manage to say the words, but in this exact moment I’m not sure if I beli
eve it or not.
“Not at first. But I know that you are not so sure about that anymore. Think about what I said. I don’t want to hurt you.” She pulls my chin up towards her, but her image is blurring. I feel like I am five years old again sat on a bench shivering from the cold, my eyes full of tears. It almost looks like Ishiko in front of me and the thing that holds me has her face. But the voice sounds deranged, synthesized, almost as if she is being electrocuted. I am sure that for a moment I can hear my father telling me that everything will be OK. He is saying I will make it up to you. I am in his arms and we are running, and there is a red haired woman behind us who is calling out for him to stop, right before there is silence and I sit watching him float away, face down in the water and bobbing along like a piece of old wood. My feet are blanketed by the lapping waves as they break on the shore, the water so cold that I can no longer feel my toes as it seeps into my shoes. I feel the fingers on my face tighten and I realise that my father's face and voice have disappeared, and that it is Ishiko who is still holding me. She pulls my face towards her, forcing me to look in her lightening infused eyes. “If I were you,” she says, “I would try to remember.”
PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller Page 20