Stockings after his sharp remark

I was finishing a report at the kitchen table, in my pyjamas, and dinner had been going cold on the stove for twenty minutes. He had set the table at seven, as he should, sat down opposite me and waited. At a quarter to eight he got up, moved the pan off the ring onto a trivet, and said without looking at me:

“How much longer are you going to faff about? It’s all cold.”

Not the words. The tone. That is how he spoke to me ten years ago, when there was no key yet.

I closed the laptop. He understood at once and glanced at the hook by the door where the belt hangs. So did I. Then I got up and went to the bedroom.

In the top drawer of my dresser there are stockings I don’t wear: sheer, black, with a plain lace top. Next to them a thong, also black, no bows. I came back and put them on the table beside his plate.

“Put these on. Under your trousers. Until morning.”

“Vera…”

“Ten minutes. Then dinner. And you don’t use that voice with me again.”

He picked the stockings up with two fingers, like something that wasn’t his, and left. I reheated dinner myself, the first thing he lost that evening. No sound came from the bedroom for longer than it takes to put on two stockings.

I didn’t go and look. It was better for him to do it alone: gather the stocking, ease it over his foot, smooth it up the shin the way he does for me, only on his own leg. The lace of the thong over the cage took him longest, I think. Listening to the silence was enough for me.

At the table

He came back in the same shirt and the same trousers. From the outside nothing had changed. His walk had: shorter steps, as if he were testing the floor. He sat down carefully, on the edge of the chair first, then shifted back. I knew what was under the trousers: stockings to mid-thigh, the tops biting into the skin at every bend, and the lace of the thong stretched over the cage so the steel sat tighter than usual.

We ate. He talked about work, about the car needing to go in on Friday. Every two minutes his hand went under the table and tugged at a trouser leg. I didn’t pretend not to notice.

“Hands on the table.”

He put them there. A minute later he reached down again, a stocking top must have slipped, and stopped his own hand halfway.

“Salt.”

He passed it and said “please”. A word you couldn’t have dragged out of him an hour earlier. I nodded and said nothing.

The belt works fast. Ten strokes, he wipes his face, I hang it back on the hook, and an hour later we have both forgotten. By morning there is a stripe on his skin and nothing else. Nylon doesn’t get forgotten. It pulls at every step, whispers under the trousers when he crosses his legs, and reminds him who put it on him even while I am not thinking about him at all.

And one more thing. The belt he takes facing me, the man’s way: clench your teeth and get through it. With stockings there is nothing to get through. You just sit, eat and talk about the garage, knowing that under the table you are wearing my underwear.

At the sink

After dinner he washed up and I sat with my tea and watched his back. He does the dishes every evening, and usually his back is easy. That evening the shoulders were drawn in, and he kept shifting from foot to foot because the stocking tops rubbed. He turned round three times to check whether I was watching. I was. Each time his eyes went back to the sink.

I wasn’t sure this would work. With the belt everything is clear: pain, tears, “I’m sorry”. Here I sat with no idea what was in his head while he dried the pan. So I got up and went over.

“Turn round. Undo your belt.”

He dried his hands and undid it. I pulled his trousers down to his knees right there at the sink, with the wet pan on the rack. The stockings had held, the left one had slipped a little. The thong was tight, the lace stretched over the cage, and the cage was very full; you could see that without touching. I ran a finger under the stocking top on his thigh, straightened it, pulled the lace out at his hip and let it snap back. He breathed in and didn’t breathe out. I left my hand on his thigh, where the skin above the stocking was hotter than under it. He stared at the wall above the tap.

“Is the lace chafing?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Good. Do yourself up. Finish the dishes.”

He fastened his trousers and turned back to the sink. I sat down again. I didn’t go near him again that evening, and he didn’t need me to.

Around eleven he came to me himself and stopped in the kitchen doorway, where I had the laptop open again:

“Do you need anything else?”

His voice half a tone lower. I asked for tea, he brought it. Then he asked whether he could go to bed, and I noted that “could” as well.

“Take the stockings off. The thong stays till morning.”

He lay down, turned to face me and stayed like that until I switched off the light. He never falls asleep first, but that night he was breathing evenly within minutes. I lay there thinking that I hadn’t raised my voice once, and he had said “may I” and “please” more in one evening than in the whole week before. The belt never left the hook.

Morning

I woke to the smell of coffee, not the alarm. He was standing at the stove in an old T-shirt and yesterday’s thong: the lace at the front pushed out by the steel, the string at the back running between his buttocks. He heard me and turned round.

“Eggs or toast?”

“Toast. We’re out of milk.”

“I’ll get some on the way.”

Usually I am the one who goes for milk. He put a cup in front of me, sat down and ate in silence, without fidgeting: overnight the skin had got used to it. I watched him cut the bread and saw, above the thong’s waistband, a red line the lace had left. It would fade by lunchtime. What was under it would last longer.

I had said “until morning”. Morning came, and he didn’t ask whether he could take it off. He put his jeans on over it. I didn’t prompt him. At the door, already in his jacket, he tugged his jeans straight at the hip, a small movement he didn’t notice, and went out.

I finished my coffee and looked at the hook. The belt ends when I hang it back. The stockings end when I say so, and I hadn’t said so yet.

• Choose plain underwear: black stockings and a thong with no bows. Anything pretty he will start wearing for pleasure.
• Set the term straight away: until bedtime, until morning. Without a term he will start bargaining at dinner.
• Don’t discuss how he looks. Watch his tone and his hands under the table.
• Check once during the evening, silently and with your hands. He needs to know you remember what he has on.
• If he asks for it again, it has become a reward. Take a break and pick something else next time.