The Keys of My Prison by Frances Shelley Wees

Author:Frances Shelley Wees
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Véhicule Press

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was midnight. Julie sat curled in the wide soft, blue chair in her bedroom alcove, trying to read a book she had brought home today from the library, trying to read it and understand it. There were three others from the same library shelf piled on the table under the reading lamp. She had come upstairs and seen to the baby, taken him up, cuddled him, changed his diaper, and tucked him in again; then she had taken a bath and got into a ruffled white nylon nightgown and the full, soft, nylon robe, heavy with lace, that matched. The house was warm.

She rubbed her forehead. She read, “Memory, of course, enters as an intrinsic element in these manifestations just as it is an intrinsic element in all thought. The automatic script that describes the memories of a long-forgotten childhood experience may at the same time reason, indulge in jests, rhyme, express cogitation and understanding of questions—indeed (if put to the test) might not only pass a Binet-Simon examination for intelligence, but take a high rank in a Civil Service examination. In these more elaborate exhibitions of subconscious intelligence it is obvious that there is an exuberant efflorescence of the residua deposited in many unconscious fields by life’s experiences, and synthesized into a subconscious functioning system.”

She took a long breath and shut her eyes, untangling her thinking.

At the other end of her bedroom, the door opened. It was an abrupt opening. She looked up, startled. It was Rafe who stood there in the oblong of hall light. He was wearing his plaid wool dressing gown. His hair was smooth, as always. Julie’s eyes fixed themselves on him. She felt herself stiffening in her chair.

He shut the door, quietly enough, and came forward to her over the white carpet. He stood in the alcove archway, at the edge of the heavy white-and-blue patterned portiere, and looked down at her. His hands were thrust into his dressing-gown pockets.

“I saw the light under your door.” He turned and glanced around him, at the wide bed, turned open on one side, the pillows white under the bed lamp; at the whole big room with its bleached mahogany chests, its comfortable chairs, at the doors of the bathroom and dressing room beyond. “I used to live here?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

He took a step forward into the alcove. His eyes on her face were sardonic. “You needn’t be afraid of me,” he assured her. “I haven’t got any notions I shouldn’t have.” He surveyed the small room. The window was directly ahead of him. On his right, behind Julie, the wall was lined to the ceiling with books. On his left there were similar shelves, and in front of them another easy chair, bigger than Julie’s, a footstool before it, another reading lamp and a table with a silver dish. He reached down and took the cover off the dish. It held his favourite mints. He put the cover back. He sat down in the chair.

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