‘Coo, she don’t half look miserable – not a bit like them other two.’
‘Don’t you talk to me about them other two, they fair make me sick.
I’m fed up with them, anyone’d think they was husband and wife.
Every blooming day, I see them from here and every blooming day it’s the same thing. They starts kissing like anything, then they shuts the window and you can’t see nothing more.
Don’t you so much as mention ’em again!
Oh, I grant you the little one’s a nice juicy piece, but I’m through, I tell you.
And that other master who’s going to marry her!
That chap must have his eyes stuck together with mud to do such a bloody silly thing!’
I was enjoying myself hugely, but, as the bell was ringing for school, I only had just time to climb down on the inside (there were ladders all over the place), and I arrived, white with plaster and mortar.
I was lucky to get off with a sharp:
‘Where have you sprung from?
If you get yourself so dirty, you won’t be allowed to help with moving the furniture again.’
I was jubilant at having heard the builders talk about those two women with so much good sense.
Reading out loud.
Selected passages.
Both!
To distract myself, I unfolded on my lap a copy of the Echo de Paris, brought in case of boring lessons: I was enjoying Lucien Muhlfeld’s thrilling Mauvais Desir, when Mademoiselle Sergent called upon me:
‘Claudine, read on from there.’
I hadn’t the faintest idea where we had got to, but I hurriedly stood up, determined to ‘do something desperate’ rather than let my paper be pinched.
At the very moment I was thinking of upsetting an ink-pot, tearing a page out of my book or shouting
‘Long live Anarchy!’, someone knocked at the door … Mademoiselle Lanthenay rose, opened the door and stood aside, and Dutertre appeared.
Had that doctor buried all his patients then, that he had so much spare time?
Mademoiselle Sergent ran to meet him; he shook hands with her, glancing meanwhile at little Aimee, who had turned bright pink and was laughing in an embarrassed way.
But why?
She wasn’t as shy as all that!
All those people were beginning to wear me out by forcing me to be incessantly trying to find out what they were thinking or doing …
Dutertre had obviously seen me, since I was standing up, but he contented himself with smiling at me from a distance and remained close to those two females. All three of them were chatting together in an undertone: I sat down demurely and watched.
Suddenly, Mademoiselle Sergent – who had not left off lovingly contemplating the handsome District Superintendent – raised her voice and said:
‘You can go and see for yourself now, Monsieur; I’ll go on with the children’s lesson and Mademoiselle Lanthenay will show you the way.
You’ll easily identify the crack I was telling you about.
It runs from top to bottom of the new wall, on the left of the bed.
It’s decidedly worrying in a new house and I can’t sleep with an easy mind.’
Mademoiselle Aimee did not answer and made a slight gesture of objecting. Then she changed her mind and disappeared, ahead of Dutertre who held out his hand to the Headmistress and shook hers vigorously, as if to thank her.
I certainly did not regret not having been expelled, but, however used I was to their astonishing behaviour and their peculiar morals, this dumbfounded me.
I asked myself what she hoped to gain by sending this chaser of skirts and this young girl off together to her room to examine a crack which, I was ready to swear, was non-existent.
‘There’s a cracked story for you!’ I whispered this observation into the ear of the gawky Anais. She gripped her knees together and chewed india-rubber frantically to show her delight in these dubious happenings.
Fired by her example, I pulled a packet of cigarette-papers out of my pocket (I only eat the kind called Nil) and chewed enthusiastically.
‘I say, old thing,’ said Anais, ‘I’ve discovered something gorgeous to eat.’
‘What?
Old newspapers?’
‘No – the lead in these pencils that are red one end and blue the other – you know the kind.
The blue end is slightly better.
I’ve already pinched five from the stationery cupboard.
It’s delicious!’
‘Give me a bit to try … No, not up to much.
I’ll stick to my Nil.’
‘Idiot, you don’t know what’s good!’
While we were talking in whispers, Mademoiselle Sergent was making little Luce read aloud. But she was too preoccupied to listen to her.
I had an idea!
What excuse could I invent to get that child put beside me in class?