After all, it may well be that she’s only jealous of women.
To clear my mind, I organized a big game of ‘he’ with my classmates and the ‘country bumpkins’ of the second division who were becoming sufficiently grown-up to be allowed to play with us.
I drew two lines about three yards apart, stationed myself in the middle as ‘he’ and the game began, punctuated by shrill cries and by a certain number of falls for which I was responsible.
The bell rang and we went in for the deadly boring needlework lesson. I took up my tapestry with disgust.
After ten minutes, Mademoiselle Sergent left us, on the pretext of having to give out some material to the ‘little class’ which, homeless once again, was temporarily (of course!) installed in an empty room near us in the Infants’ School.
I was quite ready to bet that, in point of fact, the Redhead was going to spend more time on her little Aimee than on handing out supplies.
After I’d done about twenty stitches in my tapestry, I was seized with a sudden access of stupidity which prevented me from knowing whether I should change the shade to fill in an oak-leaf or whether I should keep the same wool with which I had just finished a willow leaf.
So I went out, work in hand, to ask advice from the omniscient Headmistress.
I crossed the corridor and went into the little classroom. The fifty small girls shut up in there were squealing, pulling each other’s hair, laughing, dancing about and drawing funny men on the blackboard. And not a sign of Mademoiselle Sergent, not a sign of Mademoiselle Lanthenay!
This was becoming very queer!
I went out again and pushed open the door of the staircase: no one on the stairs!
Suppose I went up?
Yes, but whatever could I say if I were found there?
Pooh! I would say that I was coming to look for Mademoiselle Sergent because I’d heard her old peasant of a mother calling her.
Ssh! I went upstairs in my gym shoes, very quietly, leaving my sabots below.
Nothing at the top of the stairs.
But the door of one room stood slightly ajar and, promptly, my one thought was to look through the opening.
Mademoiselle Sergent, sitting in her big armchair, luckily had her back to me. She was holding her assistant on her lap, like a baby. Aimee was sighing softly and fervently kissing the Redhead who was clasping her tight.
Well done!
No one could say this Headmistress bullied her subordinates!
I could not see their faces because the back of the chair was too high, but I didn’t need to see them.
My heart pounded in my ears and, suddenly, I dashed down the staircase in my silent rubber shoes.
Three seconds later, I was back in my place next to the lanky Anais who was busy reading the Supplement and looking at the picture with much delectation.
So that she shouldn’t notice I was upset, I asked to look too, as if I were really interested!
There was a seductive story by Catulle Mendes which I should have enjoyed, but my mind was not much on what I was reading; it was still far too full of what I had spied on up there!
I had got more than I asked for and I certainly had not believed their caresses were as ardent as that …
Anais showed me a drawing by Gil Baeer of a slim young man, without a moustache, who looked like a woman in disguise.
Carried away by reading the Carnet de Lyonette and some amorous pieces by Armand Sylvestre, she said, with troubled eyes:
‘I’ve got a cousin who looks like that. His name’s Raoul. He’s at college and I go and see him in the holidays every summer.’
This revelation explained her relatively virtuous behaviour recently; she hardly ever wrote to boys nowadays.
The sisters Jaubert were putting up a great show of being scandalized on account of this naughty magazine while Marie Belhomme overturned her ink-pot to come and have a look.
When she had looked at the pictures and read a little, she fled, flinging up her long hands and crying:
‘It’s disgusting!
I don’t want to read the rest before recreation!’
She had hardly sat down again and begun to mop up her spilt ink than Mademoiselle Sergent returned, grave but with rapt, sparkling eyes.
I stared at that Redhead as if I were not sure she was the same person I had seen kissing upstairs.
‘Marie, you will write me a composition on the subject of clumsiness and bring it to me at five o’clock this afternoon.
Girls, tomorrow a new assistant-mistress, Mademoiselle Griset, will be arriving. You won’t have anything to do with her; she will only be taking the lower class.’
I was on the point of asking:
‘And Mademoiselle Aimee – is she leaving then?’
But the answer came of its own accord.
‘Mademoiselle Lanthenay is wasting her intelligence in the second class. Henceforward, she will give you history lessons, also drawing and needlework, in here, under my supervision.’
I looked at her and smiled, nodding my head as if to congratulate her on this decidedly satisfactory arrangement.
This roused her temper at once and she said, frowning:
‘Claudine, how much have you done to your tapestry?
All that?
You certainly haven’t exhausted yourself!’
I put on my most idiotic expression as I replied:
‘But, Mademoiselle, I went to the second class just now to ask if I was to use Number 2 green for the oak-leaf and there wasn’t anyone there.
I called up the staircase to you but there wasn’t anyone there either.’