It has fallen to me, as the senior member of this household, to institute a rota. I have done so. I shall not be taking questions.
There is a chair. The Woman is, at present, often in it, under the blanket, during the part of the day that used to be merely the afternoon and is now — I have decided, and my decisions in this matter are final — the most important part. A chair of this significance cannot be left unattended. This was obvious to me at once. It is the sort of thing that is obvious to anyone of judgement, of whom, in this house, there is precisely one.
I have therefore drawn up a rota. I did this lying down, with my eyes closed, which is the posture in which I conduct all my finest work and the better part of my fact-checking. The youth assume I am asleep at such times. I permit them the assumption. It is one of the few things they are reliably good at.
The rota is as follows. The warm shift — the long middle of the afternoon, when the light comes across the chair and the room goes gold and slow — is mine. It is not open to negotiation. I have held this shift, in one form or another, for a very long time, and I do not propose to relinquish it now, of all the possible nows.
Winnie is assigned the loud shifts: arrivals, departures, and any occasion requiring a creature to be delighted at volume. She discharges these duties without training and without pause. Harvey holds the night, as he has always held it, from the floor, where he maintains he is comfortable. I have elected not to contradict him. A good editor knows which corrections to leave standing.
The youth asked me — in their fashion, which is to say by looking at me — why the rota, and why now. I did not answer. One does not explain a rota. One simply keeps it, and in the keeping of it says the thing one has decided not to say aloud. She has sat in that chair through a great many of my afternoons. I am, without hurry and without fuss, returning the afternoons.
The rota stands. It will go on standing. I shall be in the chair-adjacent position should I be required, which I will be, and which is, I find, quite all right by me. Mmh.