PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller (6 page)

“Thank
you,” he says, and turns to leave the room.  I am not sure what he is thanking
me for.  “Take a shower.  The first guests will be arriving shortly.”  For a
while his form blocks the door frame, his size filling the void between drawing
room and hallway.  He turns towards the direction of the stairs, and behind him
I see Ishiko standing there, this time her head upright staring straight back at
me.  I don’t know if she has been there all along but all thoughts of my own
arousal are cast aside as I am aware of my exposure and I pull at my blouse
gulping like a teenager caught by her parents.  As I cover myself she turns to
walk away.  She is following him.  For a few moments I sit in shock, aroused
and angry and full of blood.  I take a gulp of brandy, the cheap stuff, and sit
for a few moments more.  Several uncertain minutes pass.  I drink the other
brandy too.  It’s nicer.  I stand to find that Ishiko is no longer in the
hallway.  I glance into the dining room and see that she has laid the table for
our guests.  Simple white plates, unsuitable for venison or pheasant, or for
whatever the fuck Gregory has decided upon.  I climb the stairs, my breath
creeping in and out in short pulsations of Morse code.  The light isn’t on in
my bedroom and the door sits ajar.  I walk past.  The floorboards creak.  I
push the handle of the guest bedroom where Gregory assures me that he is half
living only for my convenience, and not because he is a cheating fucker of a
husband who I sometimes think about gutting in the night with the knife set
that he bought for me but cannot because he has since locked it away.  I can
hear the spray of the shower hitting the glass cubicle.  The steam is rising
out from behind the inner door which has been left open.  I push the door quietly
and see Gregory standing there, head down, arm against the wall with water
cascading over him and spraying off in all directions.  His other arm is moving
frantically and he is grunting like an animal.  Like a pig or a boar.  I stand
dumbfounded in the doorway, watching, half in the light, half in the dark.  I
am distracted only by Ishiko as she walks in behind me.  I turn to look at her,
my first instinct to shout, to arouse Gregory to the intruder and betrayal of
his privacy, but as I open my mouth no sound comes out.  She stares at me as my
mouth hangs open like a ventriloquist’s dummy whose puppeteer is lost.  I look
back at Gregory, unaware and lost to a place built of his own virility.  I turn
back to Ishiko but she is no longer staring at me.  Instead she stares past me,
tilting her head to the side as if I am no more than an apparition in the steam,
an inconsequential element of the scene.  She places clean towels on the bed
without taking her eyes off him, regarding his body as if it were a statue on
display to be admired. 

“You
cannot be here,” I whisper as I pull the door to the bathroom closed but
without shutting it, sealing Gregory from view, and leaving Ishiko and I in the
near darkness of the bedroom.  Her eyes glisten back at me as they catch the
reflection of the small amount of light sneaking out from the bathroom.  I can
still hear him grunting, and it is intensifying. 

“I
have brought fresh towels, as Mr. Astor told me to.”

“But
he is in the shower.  You saw him in the shower.”  I do not feel the need to
add any other details about what she has seen or what we can both hear.

“But
you opened the bathroom door.  If you were not here, the door would have been
closed, and I wouldn’t have seen,” she pauses before adding, “anything.”  The
noises have stopped. 

I
wanted to tell her that what she saw was not for her eyes.  It wasn’t for her
eyes, because it wasn’t even for mine.  But I can’t because I know he had been
waiting for her.  I wonder if she had been in here before like this.  I
wondered if before it had been her hand on his body, or his on her.  I wondered
if this is how it started, a casual and supposed accidental meeting as she
brought in towels.  I got another urge to smash her pretty face against
something, the bed frame or the nearest cabinet.  I thought for a moment how I
would enjoy seeing her blood spray onto the sheets, but I was interrupted by
the bathroom door opening.  I hadn’t realised the water had stopped running
during the moments lost to my own fantasy.

“What
are you both doing here?”  His words were stern, that of a father, and me the
child.  He referred to us both, but it was me who he looked to for answers. 

“I
came to ask you something, and she brought you towels.”   I stuttered my words
and knew that they sounded unconvincing, abashed.  He was covered by a towel
already, his selfish seed spilling penis covered from view, his oversized body
underworked and underdeveloped.  Where his pectoral muscles should be hung
lumps of skin, and his stomach was protruding over the towel as it cut through
his flab.  I hated him for making me feel this way, and I hated her even more
for not feeling the same. 

“Well
if you wouldn’t mind.”  He ushered us both to the door, irritation and no hint
of shame in his voice as he flicked on the light.  “Ishiko, organise the food,
and you,” he said, looking at me, “organise yourself.  Your cheeks are all
flushed and your hair is a mess.  We are expecting guests, remember.”  He had
managed to get us both out of the door as if I had no right to be there whilst
he was naked.  I wanted to scream back at him that I saw what he did, that it
was too late for privacy, but he closed the door, shutting us out.  So instead
I gripped Ishiko by the arm, firmly to the point I could feel her blood pooling
in her hands and pulsating back at me trying to push me off.  She pulled her arm
away but I held it tight, my fingers locked in a grip. 

I
said, “You are not to go in there again.  Do you hear me?”  I was whispering
but spitting at the same time and I saw a few drops land on her face.  I think
one hit her eye because it flickered shut.

She
nodded without saying anything and wiped her face.  She walked down the stairs
without looking back to me at all.  I walked across the creaking floorboards to
what was once our bedroom and slammed the door shut behind me.  I pulled of my
blouse and my bra which was still displaced with my left breast hanging free. 
I threw them on the bed and then kicked off my trousers, leaving them in an
inside out pile half in the bedroom and half in the bathroom.  I washed my
hands quickly, rubbing the soap up and down my arms, the water gushing from the
tap so forcefully that it sprayed back out over my stomach and the drips
trickled across my skin.  Using my nails to grate at my flesh I worked the soap
into a lather and then rinsed it away with handfuls of water.  I did the whole
process again, and again, and again, and again, and...

...stood
in the shower, still wearing my pants so that I didn’t have to think about the
blood still pooled in my groin and my arms gripped tightly around my waist over
the tiny swelling and I am crying and my eyes are blinking out tears and my
throat is swollen from my desperation not to cry aloud and I think of him
downstairs wondering where his brandy had gone and Ishiko finishing the venison
or pheasant and the guests who would be wrapping their expensive birthday gifts
and putting on their pearls and suits and ensuring that they had good wine and
cigars to bring to the host and that they had read up on the daily news so that
they had a good conversation in them even once they were drunk and of Ishiko
downstairs and Gregory downstairs and of him in the guest bedroom pulling at
himself and her lying there whilst he sits over her fucking her and then afterwards
in the face and them downstairs together and I am hitting my head with my
knuckles of the right hand and the left is picking at the scar and there is blood
and it is flowing and I wince as I pull the loosened tag of skin as good flesh
rips and more blood pours and then I can see it on my shoulder and the knuckle
hitting has stopped and I have turned the water off and before long I am lying
on my bed in a towel feeling better and I know that...

I
polished my face with a hint of make-up, a spread of foundation, mascara,
lipstick, and a dot of blush because it’s the evening and the lighting permits
it.  I dressed in the black dress that is suitable for a wedding or a funeral, or
for tonight a dinner party that should feel more like the former but in reality
would feel like the latter.  As I went downstairs the first of the guests had
already arrived, and they were milling around the drawing room laughing at Gregory’s
jokes which to me just sounded like mumbles.  My hair was swept to the side to
hide the scar and the headache that had threatened at the hospital was still
there.  The Sedgwicks were sipping an aperitif, and then I noticed Mr. Wexley
and Marianne, canoodling in the corner until they saw me at the door.  He made
some grand gestures with his arms out wide and she slapped him playfully
because she is like a teenager in love and I smiled as expected in return and
looked happy. 

“So
before he could offer his apologies for being so rude, the young woman says to
him, ‘I'll do anything you want me to do, no matter how kinky, for one hundred
pounds.'" They all start laughing with him, knowing something funny is
building, even though the women are trying not to.  “‘With one condition,’ she
says.  Oh darling, you have arrived.”  Gregory spots me at the entrance to the
drawing room.  He is in full swing for his role of Entertainer.  He extends an
arm and smiling, I fall into it, safe and happy in my darling husband’s
embrace.  He kisses my cheek.  Happy fucking birthday.  “So, where was I?” he
continues.

“One
condition,” Wexley says from across the room whilst Marianne is clearly paying
more attention to his ear, nibbling up to it like a feeding kitten.  I look at
the stool where I was sat earlier.  It is no longer by the chair.  Somebody
moved it.  Ishiko hands me a glass of champagne and I sip it pathetically.

“Oh,
right.  Yes, so one condition.”

“Get
on with it,” Somebody shouts.  I think it was Sedgwick.  I want desperately for
him to just get on with it so I can laugh and it can all just be over and done
with and the facade which is beginning to hurt my cheeks can end.

“‘You
have to tell me what you want me to do in just three words.  Just three, she
says to him."  Gregory is starting back up with his joke. 

“Suck
my.....”

“John!”
Marianne shouts at him as she slaps his arm and looks at the rest of us to
apologise on his behalf.  I notice that her wrist is adorned with a new pearl
bracelet.  She has a mock horrified look on her face, her mouth hanging open
and her shoulders hunched but she doesn’t seem genuinely offended and so I
assume she will do exactly as his three worded request suggests later on when
they get home as long as he isn’t too drunk.  Which he will be.  We all laugh,
me included, although I am privately disgusted.

“Paint
my house!” says Gregory.  Almost doubling over in laughter, slapping his hand
against his thigh, pulling me over with him.  He is looking to me and his face
looks like he wants to say
yeah, I’m good at this. 
“Can you believe
it!” he says to them all.  
“Paint my house!”
  They are all laughing and Gregory
is congratulating himself on playing the perfect host, laughing so heartily at
his ridiculous joke that the vein that runs down his right temple is swollen
and blue.  He is stroking my arm with the offending hand and I think how he
smells like sex and his own genitals.  "I've got another one.  Sam and
Sarah are identical twins." 

There
is still much laughter, but Mr. Wexley says, "No more jokes.  I can't take
another.  Especially about twins."  He knocks back his champagne and the
laughter subsides.  There is a moment of uneasiness as The Entertainer is
prevented from telling his second joke, but it is soon forgotten when I hear the
doorbell ringing and the shuffle of feet in the hallway over the din of the diminishing
laughter.  Ishiko opens the door and I hear the Calthorpes and the Lovells
arrive. 

After
we finished with the champagne and congratulations for Gregory’s
hilarious
wit
, Ishiko served a round of gin and tonic and everybody commented on how
lucky we were to have such a marvellous housemaid.  They spoke about her as if
she were not in the room with us, perhaps a presumption that she couldn’t
understand based on her eastern appearance even though they all know perfectly
well that the bitch speaks English.  She remained unaffected by their
compliments and continued with her tasks in a delightful fashion as Gregory
described it, and as Wexley and Jemima Calthorpe agreed but for entirely
different reasons.  Jemima seemed especially impressed and asked me if perhaps
I might lend her to her, as if she were an object or commodity to be shared
around and enjoyed.  She would be satisfied with the odd afternoon here and
there, and of course she would pay her.  I would gladly give her away as I
would much prefer her to be fucking Gordon Calthorpe, although as predicted,
Gregory wasn’t supportive of this sort this arrangement.  He scoffed and joked
about how I would need her even more now, and I thought for a moment he was
going to tell them about the baby, but instead he broke the good news, that I
was leaving my job and finally giving in.  He had broken me down, as he put it
and I found his comment strangely accurate.  He laughed along with the rest of
them, celebrating and cheering at his conquest.  The ladies congratulated me
and the men congratulated Gregory.  I could imagine them later, sat in the
drawing room with the brandy and cigars like gentlemen of yesteryear.  I am
sure they would all chose to live the lives of their fathers if they could,
when ladies knew their places and women like me towed the line and didn’t need
breaking down.