‘Work out the problem.’
Anais ‘worked it out’ and explained it.
I took advantage of this to study the Headmistress at my leisure: her eyes glittered, her red hair blazed … If only I could have seen Aimee Lanthenay before class!
The problem was finished at last, thank goodness.
Anais breathed again and returned to her place.
‘Claudine, come to the blackboard.
Write down the fractions 3325/5712, 806/925, 14/56, 302/1052 (Lord preserve me from fractions divisible by 7 and 11, also from those divisible by 5, by 9 and by 4 and 6, and by 1.127) and find their highest common factor.’
That was what I had been dreading.
I began dismally and I made some idiotic blunders because my mind wasn’t on what I was doing.
How swiftly they were reprimanded by a sharp movement of the hand or a frown, those small lapses I permitted myself!
At last I got through it and returned to my place, followed by a
‘No witticisms here please!’ because I’d replied to her observation
‘You’re forgetting to wipe out the numbers’ with:
‘Numbers must always be wiped out – they deserve to be.’
After me, Marie Belhomme went up to the blackboard and produced howler after howler with the utmost good faith. As usual, she was voluble and completely self-confident when wildly out of her depth; flushed and undecided when she remembered the previous lesson.
The door of the small classroom opened and Mademoiselle Lanthenay entered.
I stared at her avidly. Oh, those poor golden eyes had been crying and their lids were swollen! Those dear eyes shot one scared look at me and were then hurriedly averted.
I was left in utter consternation; heavens, whatever could She have been doing to her?
I turned red with rage, so much so that Anais noticed and gave a low, sneering laugh.
The sorrowful Aimee asked Mademoiselle Sergent for a book and the latter gave it to her with marked alacrity, her cheeks turning a deeper crimson as she did so.
What could all that mean?
When I thought that the English lesson did not take place till tomorrow, I was more tormented by anxiety than ever. But what was the good?
There was absolutely nothing I could do.
Mademoiselle Lanthenay returned to her own classroom. *
‘Girls!’ announced the wicked Redhead. ‘Get out your school-books and your exercise-books. We are going to be forced to take refuge for the time being in the Infants’ School.’
Promptly all the girls began to bustle about with as much frenzied energy as if their stockings were on fire. People shoved each other and pinched each other, benches were pushed askew, books clattered to the floor and we scooped them up in heaps into our big aprons.
That gawk Anais watched me pile up my load, carrying her own luggage in her arms; then she deftly tweaked the corner of my apron and the whole lot collapsed.
She preserved her expression of complete detachment and earnestly contemplated three builders who were throwing tiles at each other in the playground.
I was scolded for my clumsiness and, two minutes later, that pest Anais tried the same experiment on Marie Belhomme. Marie screamed so loud that she got some pages of Ancient History to copy out.
At last our chattering, trampling horde crossed the playground and went into the Infants’ School.
I wrinkled my nose: it was dirty. Hastily cleaned up for us, it still smelt of ill-kept children.
Let’s hope the ‘time being’ isn’t going to last too long!
Anais put down her books and promptly verified the fact that the windows looked out on the Headmaster’s garden.
As for me, I’d no time to waste in contemplating the assistant-masters; I was too anxious about the troubles I foreboded.
We returned to the old classroom with as much noise as a herd of escaped bullocks and we transported the tables. They were so old and so heavy that we bumped and banged them about as much as possible in the hope that one of them at least would completely come to bits and collapse in worm-eaten fragments.
Vain hope!
They all arrived whole. This was not our fault.
We didn’t do much work that morning, which was one good thing.
At eleven, when we went home, I prowled about trying to catch a glimpse of Mademoiselle Lanthenay, but without success.
Had She put her under lock and key then?
I went off to lunch so seething with suppressed rage that even Papa noticed it and asked me if I had a temperature … Then I returned to school very early, at quarter past twelve, and hung about, bored, among the few children who were there; country girls who were lunching at school off hard-boiled eggs, bacon, bread-and-treacle, and fruit.
And I waited vainly, torturing myself with anxiety!
Antonin Rabastens came in (at least this made a diversion) and bowed to me with all the grace of a dancing bear.
‘A thousand pardons, Mademoiselle. By the way, haven’t the lady teacherrs come down yet?’
‘No, Sir, I’m waiting for them.
I hope they won’t be long for “absence is the greatest of all ills!”’ I had already expatiated half a dozen times on this aphorism of La Fontaine’s in French essays which had been highly commended.
I spoke with a sweet seriousness. The handsome Marseillais listened, with an uneasy look on his kindly face. (He’ll begin to think I’m a bit crazy, too.) He changed the subject.
‘Mademoiselle, I’ve been told that you read a great deal.
Does your father possess a large library?’
‘Yes, Sir, two thousand, three hundred and seven volumes precisely.’