Give me your hand: there, that’s what I do.’
I dug my nails into her hand; she did not squeal, only tightened her lips.
‘You didn’t yell, good.
I’ll put you through questioning at recreation.’ *
In the Second classroom, whose door had been left open, I had just witnessed the entrance of Mademoiselle Aimee. Fresh, curled, and rosy, she wore her coaxing, mischievous expression and her eyes were more velvety and golden than ever.
Little trollop!
She flashed a radiant smile at Mademoiselle Sergent who forgot herself for a moment in contemplating her, then came out of her ecstasy and addressed us sharply:
‘Your exercise-books.
History essay: The war of 1870.
Claudine,’ she added more gently, ‘can you do this essay in spite of not having followed the classes these last two months?’
‘I’m going to try, Mademoiselle: I’ll do the essay with less detailed development, that’s all.’
I did, in fact, dash off a little essay. It was excessively short and, when I got towards the end, I lingered over it and applied myself to it, spinning out the last fifteen lines so as to be able to spy and ferret out what was going on about me.
The Headmistress, the same as ever, preserved her expression of concentrated passion and jealous daring.
Her Aimee, who was carelessly dictating problems in the other classroom, wandered closer and closer while she read aloud.
All the same, last winter, she did not have that confident, coquettish walk – the walk of a spoilt pussy-cat!
Now she was the adored, cherished little animal that is developing into a tyrant, for I caught glances from Mademoiselle Sergent that implored her to find some pretext to bring her over to her, glances to which the scatterbrained creature replied with capricious shakes of her head and amused eyes that said No.
The Redhead, who had definitely become her slave, could bear it no longer and went across to her, asking very loud:
‘Mademoiselle Lanthenay, you haven’t got the Attendance Register in your room, have you?’
Good, she had gone; they were chattering in whispers.
I took advantage of this solitude in which we were left to put little Luce through a severe inquisition.
‘Ah, ah, let that exercise-book alone, will you and answer my questions.
Is there a dormitory upstairs?’
‘Oh yes. We sleep there now, the boarders and me.’
‘All right. You’re a dolt.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s none of your business.
Do you still have singing-lessons on Thursdays and Sundays?’
‘Oh, we tried to have one without you, Mademoiselle … Claudine, I mean, but it didn’t go a bit well.
Monsieur Rabastens doesn’t know how to teach us.’
‘Good.
Has the cuddler been here while I was ill?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Dutertre.’
‘I can’t remember … Oh yes, he did come once, but not into the classrooms. And he only stayed a few minutes talking to my sister and Mademoiselle Sergent in the playground.’
‘Is she nice to you, the Redhead?’
Her slanting eyes darkened.
‘No … she tells me I’ve no intelligence … that I’m lazy … that my sister must have taken all the intelligence in the family as she’s taken all the beauty … Anyway, it’s always the same story wherever I’ve been with Aimee: people only pay attention to her and I’m pushed into the background …’
Luce was on the verge of tears in her fury against this sister who was more ‘fetching’ as they say here and who thrust her aside and eclipsed her.
For all that, I didn’t think her any better than Aimee: only shyer and more timid because she was used to remaining lonely and silent.
‘Poor kid! You’ve left friends over there, where you used to be?’
‘No, I didn’t have any friends.
The girls were too rough and used to laugh at me.’
‘Too rough?
Then it upsets you when I beat you or push you about?’
She laughed, without raising her eyes:
‘No, because I realize that you … that you don’t do it cruelly, out of beastliness … well, that it’s a kind of joke and you don’t really mean it.
It’s like when you call me “dolt”, I know it’s only for fun.
In fact, I quite like feeling a bit frightened, when there isn’t the least danger.’
Tralala!
They’re both alike, these two little Lanthenays; cowardly, naturally perverse, egotistical and so devoid of all moral sense that it’s amusing to watch them.