Read Half Broken Things for Free Online Page A

take a proper look. Before she left the room she checked that the computer and fax were indeed unplugged, but noted reproachfully that the old electric typewriter on the oak desk by the window was not. She left it as it was.
    She tried another of the large keys in the carved door at the end of the main landing. It turned. The door opened with a sigh of its hinges, and showed to Jean—as if a curtain had been raised on a scene from a glamorous play—a room so light, pristine and pale that she felt immediately dirty and unworthy. She hesitated, finding it necessary to gaze from the doorway as if to check that the room was indeed empty; for something inside, something surely alive though not human, was beckoning to her. She stepped out of her shoes and walked in, where the perfection of the room expanded and grew inclusive. As she moved, she stirred the trapped smells of dry grass, clean cotton and lemon oil, which now began to animate and scent the air she breathed. With every step across the white carpet she summoned magic; she was rousing spells long asleep in the stillness. Moving from window to window she looked out at the dank gardens and then back, trying to accustom herself to the changed picture that she must make, framed by the room. Slowly she grew used to the thought that now she was in the room she was also
of
it, transformed from the sneaking outsider on the threshold into the perfect room’s perfect occupant. She looked round at the pattern of faded flowers on the thick curtains, the soft carpet and green rugs, the bleached stone fireplace and the silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece. They seemed to be congratulating her on her safe arrival; they breathed their acceptance and conferred their brightness upon her. Jean sat down on the edge of the large bed, then slid into the centre of it and stretched out. The room was cold, and at once the goose-down quilt beneath her grew warm and nest-like. She lay and allowed something that felt very like happiness to lap through her, wondering if this feeling might be the live thing that she had sensed in the room as she had stood on the threshold. But then, had she not herself brought the feeling with her into the room? She lay smiling, pleasantly unsure whether she were the giver or recipient.
    Later, she wandered into the dressing room, where she found that the wardrobes, which lined three walls, still had keys in their doors. Opening one, Jean was dismayed that the full-length mirror on the inside should so nearly spoil things. It showed her that she did not, after all, quite perfectly belong; in her heavy skirt and cardigan she was the only dark thing in the room and was not merely dark, but a muddy, lilac dark. But that she should now be shown this was a kindness, really, in the manner of the room’s many kindnesses, because the door’s swinging open like that and offering Jean her own reflection was revealing also the most obvious and natural solution. The wardrobe was full of women’s clothes, most of them hanging from silk padded hangers. Jean counted eight cashmere twin sets and perhaps ten skirts, several blouses of white and cream silk and linen, at least a dozen striped and plain cotton shirts. The drawers alongside held trousers, heavy sweaters, belts, scarves, underwear. Behind the next door hung suits and dresses. For many years Jean had bought clothes of the better sort second-hand, from discreet little places invariably called ‘dress agencies’. She had almost developed the necessary blindness to evidence of previous ownership that was betrayed by a slightly bagging skirt, an armpit crease, a curl in a lapel. But nearly all of the clothes in these wardrobes had been so little worn that it was like staring at shop rails. They had the pleasantly impersonal, un-owned look of clothes in the classic English style—yet they might be, Jean thought, biting her lip, just slightly too young and daringly coloured for her. Or