Read Half Broken Things for Free Online Page B

perhaps, she thought, with a nip of elation that the prospect of new clothes had not induced in her for three decades, perhaps only too young and daringly coloured for her current view of herself, which now seemed, suddenly, unduly and unnecessarily depressed. The dark figure she had seen reflected in the long mirror was already an embarrassment, a mystifying guest who had turned up uninvited and looking all wrong. As she sifted along the rails she began to see that really, the clothes were actually already hers and always had been; it was only she who had strayed from herself. These clothes would restore her to her proper self—the version of herself that she and other people had mislaid so long ago that everyone had ceased to notice that the dark, muddy Jean who had been going about in her place was the wrong one. The real, elegant, cared-for Jean had been found, and now she was burning to get out of the wrong clothes and prepare herself for the right ones. Turning carefully away from the reflection she undressed and slipped on a long dressing gown of cream alpaca.
    In the large bathroom next to the dressing room she ran a deep bath, poured in two or three scented oils, and stepped in through the steam that had formed in the cool air. She lay back and waited. She would not wash away her old self. The violence of rubbing at her own skin would be almost crude and impatient, and she felt only the magnanimity of a person who is content to wait for her true status to be recognised. She lay in the lapping heat until, as she knew she would, the old Jean simply detached herself, rose up and disappeared into the steam, like a person dissolving into fog. Jean lifted a hand and stirred the water almost in a gesture of farewell, and sighed, looking down the length of her own body. She found she quite liked it, and was finding also that she had all at once become a person who knew that little sensory pleasures were not proscribed; that taking a slow bath in the afternoon was not merely permitted, but smiled upon. What else but approval could be meant by the sight of her own limbs and stomach, the reward of the slippery hot water, such sweet-smelling steam and soap, the thick towels?
    After her bath she dried and scented herself, and spent the next hour in a thrill of experiment, trying on her new clothes. The underwear was no good, made for somebody whose bosom and backside were larger than hers. The shoes were a little too wide, but not bad if she could find some insoles. Most of the clothes were comfortable and also rather too big, so that they bestowed upon Jean the extra little compliment of making her feel dainty. The sight of herself in them was so gratifying it was as if the mirror were a new and encouraging friend. Wearing a deep raspberry-coloured cashmere skirt and sweater, Jean rearranged the wardrobe, pushing the few things that did not suit or fit her to one end. She then brought her own few bits of underwear from the tiny back bedroom and moved them in. She binned the toothbrushes in the bathroom and placed her own by the basin. In the bedroom she unlocked the dressing table and set out on its polished top the hairbrushes, scent and jewellery she found in the drawers. Before gathering up her key collection and leaving the room, she turned on the radiators, closed the curtains, switched on the bedside lights and turned back the bedclothes.
    Bringing her new warm scent with her back onto the long landing, Jean opened the third locked room, which, when she entered it, seemed to have been longer uninhabited than the other two. Silence and stillness were more deeply in possession; the baby’s cot and shelves of toys seemed never to have moved or had a moving thing come near them. The rocking chair stood balanced and fixed in its immobility. A touch of Jean’s hand sent a wooden mobile of woolly sheep, hanging frozen over the Moses basket, into a reluctant spin. At least three dozen pairs of eyes watched her from the