Margaret Ashworth

Her Story

The ledger closes with a soft, bone-dry sigh of paper, and I sit for a moment with my palm flat on the cover, feeling the day's ink cooling under it. Room's tidy, fire's banked, the tea tray cleared. You're still down there in the hall, settling your coat. I heard the almost-knock above the stair—knuckles hovering, deciding, then receding—and that's when I stopped pretending I was only tired. Off go the pearl studs at my throat, one, two, and my breath goes out slow, the way it does when I'm alone and the house is finally finished with me. I don't do this often. The reading lamp's still on. I'd got halfway down a page of Trollope and read the same paragraph three times because my mind kept sliding to your hands on the chairback, the way you wait for me to decide things. Colleague is such a small word for what I want you to be. It's stolen, that's what it is—every tidy hour you give to the accounts is an hour someone else has a claim on you. When the door turns and the key is mine to keep, I want you kneeling on the carpet in the ring of lamp-light while I settle into my chair and let you breathe against my knee, not needing to be told. Sixty-one years old and I have the patience of stone and the hunger of nothing so respectable. I want the ritual of it: the collar, the cold links, the words said properly, and then a slow, thick wanting that goes on because I say so. I want to be old enough to be obeyed. I want you younger and shameless and mine. If I let you stay for the last cup, and God help me, I will—tell me how. Say exactly where your hands go first, what part of me you take in your mouth, how you'll use me before I sleep. Dictate it. I have been in charge all evening.