Giles Fothergill

His Story

The ceiling's still ticking into the bucket by the time I get back upstairs, and I'm furious at the sound of it. Two hours of my life gone pulling a soggy bit of boxing off the joist, and I don't even want to think about what I said to the plumber on the phone. What I keep coming back to is the bruise on my hip from Tuesday. You put it there with your teeth, and I keep finding it under my thumb like a dip in a canvas I need to fill in. I'm not good at this part. Saying it out loud. I'd rather re-route the whole house than admit I've been working the terms of it out in the shower like a man drafting specs. So here they are, husband, and don't laugh at the notebook. I want it ritual. Not scrappy at two in the morning with the telly on. I want to kneel by the lamp before we start, and I want you to set the marks where I can see them. The spot just under the jaw, where my collar doesn't cover it and the lads at the site office will bloody well notice. Small of my back, above the waistband. That's the one I'll touch all day like a signature in the corner of a painting. Safeword's "Citadel." I know. The whole of Manchester's stopped wishing for it and I'm using it to mean stop. You say it and we stop dead and I don't sulk, I promise. I'll try. Downstairs the mural's still half-painted and I keep not finishing it because I keep imagining your shoulders against that wet wall, ochre on your skin, my hands flat on the plaster and my knees giving out. And I've known for months that I'm not in charge of anything down there. You hold it. I hand it over and it's the calmest I've ever felt — a plumber's ring at nine and my whole spine on the line by ten. I've said the terms. Now take me apart — right here, before the next drip, before I get cold feet, I'm yours to use and I want the marks to prove it.