I know one of these voices. One is Gregory. His voice is firm, and certain. The other is the hushed screamer. The other is the one who is losing control. I believe that it is Ishiko, but I have never heard her like this. It sounds like a crescendo, a steadily rising orchestral composition of angst and fear. Eventually the door slams shut, and from the vantage point that I have secured on the landing at the top of the stairs I see the front door closing. Gregory has left, walking towards his car as I watch him from behind the curtain.
I return to my bedroom and remove my nightshirt. I take the measuring tape from behind the drawer next to my bed, along with the chart that I drew. I take the measurements of my stomach, hips, and under my ribs to my pubic bone and jot them down. I count an extra millimetre from the ribs to pubic bone, and two extra in circumference. It is quite unbelievable that in only one day this has happened, and so I am forced to consider the possibility that the measurements are inaccurate. I turn around so that I can inspect the dotted lines. It looks like Morse code, dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. There are plenty of opportunities for mistakes and I am disappointed by my failure to get this right, something that is so important. I tear up the chart into jagged shards but it does nothing to calm me like the tearing of Ishiko’s photograph yesterday. Feeling determined, I walk, no, I march down the stairs whilst I cling onto the banister. I pick up the telephone and call Dr. Abrams but he is still not answering so I slam the receiver down and enter the kitchen. I stand there, still like an ice sculpture but my chest is heaving in and out. Ishiko turns to face me, her cheeks as pink as mine.
“I need a knife,” I say.
“Mrs. Astor, you.....”
“Don’t you Mrs. Astor me you fucking dog whore,” I scream at her, realising the absurdity of my insult. “Where are they?” I say as I tear open the drawer nearest to me. I rifle through the contents but find papers upon papers upon receipts upon pencils and so open the next and do the same until an elastic band fires up at me and nearly hits me in the eye but I avoid it before grabbing another drawer that rattles because it is full of plastic utensils and then the next which has tea towels in it and smells of old meat and vegetables and then I see that Ishiko is holding out a knife for me with fear on her face and I take it from her hand which is shaking and shaking and she is absolutely as terrified as I am angry and I see that it is a normal dining knife from a cutlery set so I throw the knife on the floor and it narrowly misses her foot and she jumps up like somebody fired a bullet at her and I laugh out loud for just a split second before I control myself and reach for the next drawer which I pull but it won’t open but I keep pulling and I can hear metal striking against metal as the drawer shifts and suddenly I realise that I am screaming chanting, open it open it open it over and over again but she is shaking her head so I grab the nearest thing to hand which happens to be a soup ladle and I strike at the drawer and I notice now how it has a small padlock on it and that somebody has locked it shut so I start hitting at the lock for how long I am not sure but eventually I am disturbed from my focus by Ishiko who is holding a set of keys and pleading with me but I don’t hear what she says once the drawer is open because it is full of blades from which I pick a small but useful knife that is continuous with its handle and is quite a work of art, I notice. I take it and the buzzing in my ears stops and I hear Ishiko speak to me and although I don’t know what she said I still find myself answering and I say, “why would I do anything stupid,” which doesn’t feel like a question and I realise now as I am walking back up the stairs that she thinks I am going to kill myself with this beautiful knife. I drop the ladle and hear it clatter back down the stairs, one by one.
It takes a lot of courage and a lot of wincing because I have told you before that I am no cutter, and that one time when I was fourteen was just a mistake but eventually I manage to engrave two complete lines, one around my waist which joins up on itself and one from my ribs to my pubic bone. I wash the knife and put it with the torn up measurement chart into the space behind the drawer with the CD, ripped photograph, tablets, five apple cores which I have recently decided to start keeping because I want to monitor my fruit intake because I am pregnant and my doctor said it was important, a pile of receipts, and various other items that I find useful and do not wish to list. After showering, hand washing, mouth rinsing, and putting a small plaster on my hand to cover the wound, I perform a substantial clean up from the mess that Gregory left behind, an activity made tolerable by the distraction of pain from the newly made measurement marks which are throbbing in a way I hadn't anticipated. He has left everything out and there are discarded clothes on the floor. He has forgotten the difficulties of living with me in such close quarters. I am very pleased that I haven’t felt sick all morning, except for a brief moment during the longest single cut which was from the edge of my ribs to my pubic bone and probably wasn't a direct result of morning sickness. I realise that it is days since I have felt the urge to vomit in the morning and I smile to myself because my body is fighting to achieve, to stay well. What is happening is a true miracle.
When I arrive in the conservatory Ishiko is nowhere to be seen. There is a boiled egg on the table, a glass of juice and a pot of tea. I pick at the edge of some toast triangles and they are cold and cardboard like. When I peer out of the window into the back garden I still cannot see her. I move through to the drawing room and see through the front windows that she is kneeling on the ground as if it were spring. I scan around and see that there is a ground frost and I have no idea what she is trying to achieve. She is wearing a gardening belt, full of tools for pruning and tinkering. Secateurs, a trowel, bin bags, garden wire. At her side she is carrying a basket. After watching her for a while I see her snip off a rose head, not low down as if she was planning to bring them inside for display. High up, right underneath the beautiful bud.
“Ishiko! What are you doing?” I call out, pushing the window out as far as it will go. The latex gloves that I am wearing do little to prevent the cold attacking my fingertips and the surge of adrenaline sends a rush of blood towards the wound on my head. “Ishiko!” I see her flinch but she pretends that she doesn’t see me. At first. Then she looks up, takes her secateurs, stares me off square in the eye before making another cut. She throws the flower in the basket. “Ishiko, stop that!” She stands up after trimming the tops off another four buds. Four beautiful blood red roses beheaded like medieval murderers. I am out of the front door before I know it. “Ishiko, what are you doing?”
“Gregory asked me to cut them.” She didn’t make eye contact as she said the words, as she rolled my husband’s name around on her tongue. No doubt like everything else of his that she has rolled her tongue over. Who did she think she was using his name so casually like that? I image that it took me quite some time to feel relaxed about him like this, that I might just drop the name out to anybody who fancied hearing it.
“Mr. Astor would never ask you to behead the roses like this. He loves these roses.”
“He has chosen to make an exception.” With that, she stands up and starts walking back to the house whilst keeping as much distance from me as the pathway would allow.
“Ishiko, I am talking to you,” I say, grabbing her arm as my fingers seize up from the cold. She flinches. She is scared. I see the wire in the basket that swings my way as her body jolts. The edge of the wire is poking up, pointing at me as if it is accusing me, peeping out through the rose heads. It is as if it is saying, they are mine, now. They belong to me. I think about snatching it up, silencing it, but my next thought is of it in my hands and I am wrapping it around Ishiko’s skinny little neck like a member of the Mafia might do to a police informant. I let go of her arm, dropping her like hot coal.
“Charlotte,” I hear a man’s voice. Ishiko smiles at me as if she has been saved, and also like she is in on a secret that I have no idea about. I’m getting used to this feeling.
“Sorry,” she says, a sly grin extending over the left half of her
face. “I must have forgotten to tell you that Stephen Jones said he was coming today. Perhaps he wants to discuss why you haven’t been at work. What will you tell him? I’d beware of the truth if I were you, that’s if you can remember it yet.” And she is gone.
Within ten minutes he has managed to get himself inside, sat in Gregory’s chair in the conservatory. We have exchanged pleasantries regarding the harshness of the weather and the incredible fog that has been clouding our lives and has only just begun to lift. He tells me that pending the survey, which should take another few weeks, the sale of the final house that I showed, which turned out to be to my obstetrician, Dr. Jenkinson, is almost complete. The owner has welcomed them on a number of occasions to measure up for new curtains and perhaps a new carpet in the main lounge. Blue isn’t his colour, apparently. He is a doctor, Stephen tells me.
Besides talking to Ishiko and asking her to prepare a fresh pot of tea, I have barely said a word. Stephen is a talker. It stirs a memory of him regularly holding court at the office, chatting to potential clients about any subject that came up. He always seemed to be an expert. In fact, I realise that in all the time I have been sitting here he has not stopped talking once, and that in all honesty I have little clue about whatever it might be that he is saying. I have been nodding along positively whilst all the while my mind was somewhere else entirely. It seems that I can remember quite a lot about him, including the tactics of how to zone out and simultaneously remain in the conversation. I guess the strong characters leave an impression on a mind. Even mine.
I switch back on when I realise that he is asking me a question. I check the clock and eleven minutes have passed.
“What has been the problem?” he says.
We are talking about a problem. Has to be mine. “Sorry, what? Problem?”
“Yes,” he chuckles. “We have missed you in the office.” I was hardly ever at the office and when I was there I was in no way the glue of the group. I was the one they would talk to at the kettle to hurry along unavoidable moments. They would ask about the house, the hotel, the weather. Nothing about me. Nothing personal. Too risky. I was the one that they would check to see if I had overheard when they were organising a night out to establish if an invitation was necessary. I was an outsider. But yet here he is, talking me up like they sit around drinking tea wondering where I am. He is such a salesman, always regurgitating the same thing, whatever somebody might need to hear to seal the deal.
“I am sure you haven’t.” I play along. I am giggling like a schoolgirl, affectionately batting away his crazy ideas! HAHAHA! I bite my finger so hard that the dry fragile skin breaks and I suck in the taste of blood, my latex gloves discarded under the table. The powder does not taste good. Ishiko places the tea on the table. She is smiling at me in a way that I don’t like. It says, suck it up, bitch.
“Well, we are just a bit surprised not to have seen you at all, and after the incident at The Sailing Club,” he trails off, not wanting to add in the details, “I.....I was worried.”
“Here, take some tea,” I suggest, forcing a cup on him. In the background I can hear the crunch of gravel on the Wexley’s driveway. Surely Wexley isn’t back already? Here to pick up stuff? Here to make amends? If only it was that easy to make up for.....mistakes.
“Thanks,” he says taking the cup. “Well, I have to admit, you look well.” Not what he was expecting. Perhaps he expected restraints, a straightjacket, a doctor at the bedside sedating me, or a priest attempting an exorcism.
“Thank you. I am well.”
“I am pleased about that. I really am, but,” he pauses again, looks in his tea cup for a way out of broaching the obvious subject but he finds no distraction there because after a moment he says, “it leads me to the question of why exactly it is that we haven’t seen you. Why didn’t you call me?”
“Well, it took me a few days to get over it. Fainting really takes it out of you.” I can’t believe that I have said this, but he nods along with me. He is very agreeable. He brings his tea up to his lips and sips at it. He has great big hands, like a giant, and the small pink cup that he is drinking from appears quite ridiculous nestled between his fingers. There is nothing delicate about them. In fact there is nothing delicate about this man at all. Everything about him is oversized. Oversized hands, jaw, head, and shoulders. He is a man in supersize, and I like it. I think his hands would feel heavy on my skin. He couldn’t tend my wounds, or lightly dab at Ishiko’s cuts, but he could hold me and make me feel safe. The only thing about him that is soft is his voice. It is rich and warm, like hot coffee cream. He is looking out at the garden dressed in its winter clothes. He gazes out at the plants and trees which have taken on a dazzling brilliance against the backdrop of an almost transparent blue sky, so much so that I wonder if I might be able to see the beginnings of heaven beyond.
“I am just glad that you are alright. Honestly, that’s all I want for you.”
“Well,” I say smiling, presenting myself to him, “as you can see I am fine.” We sit in silence for a few minutes, maybe more, looking out to the garden.
“So, Charlotte, tell me. Honestly. Are we going to see you again at work, or is this it?”
“What do you mean?” I am just trying to buy time here. I know there is only one answer, but my reaction is instinctive, my last attempt to hang on to my life, the one that I had created, in which I think at one point I might have been happy. In which I was me. The real one. No drugs or falsehood. At least I think.
“Charlotte,” he smiles, laughing in a way that makes me feel sorry for both him and me as he looks down at his cup. “We both know what I mean. Gregory called me. Told me to stop bothering you. Told me you had resigned.” I feel like a child with her hand in the cookie jar. “I can’t say it wasn’t a surprise when he called me, I’ll tell you that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say, so quiet it is almost a whisper.
“It’s alright. I think I already knew. Just had to hear it for myself. To know that it was what you wanted. It is what you want isn’t it, Charlotte?” he says as he turns to look at me, the corners of his eyes turning down like almonds.
“Yes,” I say, not really knowing if either of us is convinced. He nods his head and his shoulders drop. Breath rushing out of him as if he might actually deflate. There is no weight lifted with my answer. He didn’t come here to learn the truth, he already knew it. He came here to accept it. I shift about in my seat looking for a more comfortable position but I don’t find it. With each shift in my position I can feel the fresh wounds opening up, and the bits that had sucked the fabric of my clothes into the healing process snapped at me as the material tore away. I can feel myself wincing and the cushion begins to feel like a rock with sharp edges, and eventually I am forced to pull it out from underneath me.
“It’s very beautiful here, you know?” he says. He gets up and peers outside for a better look. “Without having seen upstairs, I bet this place would go for well over a million. Maybe a million two?” I am very grateful to him because I know that he has shifted the conversation on purpose. I might teeter on the edge of insanity in his eyes, but he still believes I feel the same things that he does, like shame and regret. He still believes I feel.
“At least.” I surprise myself by fitting back into the inane chatter about house prices with ease. He is standing at the door, facing the garden. It is as if he has never seen something of such beauty before in his life. Like a man on death row looking at the natural world for the last time, eyes pressed up against a tiny window that doesn’t open, drinking in the view as if he could smell the damp of the early morning dew only meters away. Right before I slipped from the boat, I took no such memory. I made no attempt to remember the world that had betrayed me, sent me away, shut me out. I didn’t want memories of something I had never been a part of.
Without looking back to me, Stephen says, “I am not surprised you never wanted to leave this place, Charlotte.”
“Why wo
uld she ever want to leave?” I hadn't heard Gregory arrive behind me. He joins me at the table, his fingers tickling at my shoulder like a bug that I would normally bat away, just like I had tried to do with Stephen’s questions. His fingers fidget, rather than touch. His fingers are embarrassed to touch and instead apologetically wriggle across whatever surface they contact. I hear Ishiko behind us and remember how he held her that night in her bedroom. He didn’t fidget then. I remember him in the shower when he touched himself. No delicacy there. Just me then. I warrant it. I am breakable.
“You have a wonderful home, Gregory," Stephen says. "You should look after it.”
“I have Ishiko for that.” His smile is more a leer as I look up at his face. I can sense in his tone that he wants to belittle Stephen, make him seem poorer, make him not fit into this life. His way of being important. He looks down at me. “Oh Charlotte, you are bleeding.” My eyes dart across my body as I wonder where from, excited for a second that the blood might be seeping through my clothes. They settle on my hand as Gregory picks it up and fusses over it, pulling the small plaster away that has failed in its duty to stem the flow of blood. “She has eczema.” He says, looking at Stephen. “Terrible infliction. Always breaking and cracking, especially in this weather.”
PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller Page 22
