We buzzed, we stood up, we gathered up papers, we took out the sweets hidden in our desks, for this venerable Blanchot, the Inspector, has eyes that squint but that poke into everything.
Mademoiselle Lanthenay, in her classroom, was hustling the little girls, tidying her desk, shouting and flapping about.
And now, from the Third room, there appeared the wretched Griset, in great dismay, demanding help and protection.
‘Mademoiselle Sergent, will the Inspector ask to see the little ones’ exercise-books?
They’re dreadfully dirty … the smallest ones can only do pothooks …’ The malicious Aimee laughed in her face; the Headmistress replied with a shrug:
‘You’ll show him whatever he asks to see, but if you think he’ll bother with your urchins’ copy books!’
And the pathetic, dazed creature returned to her classroom where her little beasts were making an appalling din, for she hadn’t a ha’porth of authority.
We were ready, or as near as maybe.
Mademoiselle Sergent exclaimed:
‘Quick, get out your selected pieces.
Anais, spit it out at once, that slate-pencil you have in your mouth!
On my word of honour, I’ll turn you out in front of Monsieur Blanchot if you go on eating those revolting things!
Claudine, couldn’t you stop pinching Luce Lanthenay for one single instant!
Marie Belhomme, take those off at once, those three scarves you have on your head and round your neck. And also take that stupid expression of your face.
You’re worse than the little ones in the Third Class and not one of you is worth the rope to hang you with!’
She simply had to discharge her nervous irritation.
The Inspector’s visits always upset her and because Blanchot was on good terms with the Deputy who detested his possible successor Dutertre, who was Mademoiselle Sergent’s protege, like poison. (Heavens, how complicated life is!) At last everything was more or less in order; the lanky Anais stood up, looking quite alarmingly tall, her mouth still dirty from the grey pencil she had been nibbling, and began The Dress by that maudlin poet Manuel:
In the wretched garret where daylight scarce could pierce Wife and husband argued in a quarrel fierce …
Only just in time!
A tall shadow passed across the panes giving on to the corridor; the entire class shuddered and rose to its feet – out of respect – at the moment when the door opened to admit old Blanchot.
He had a solemn face framed in large pepper-and-salt whiskers and a formidable Franche-Comte accent.
He pontificated, he chewed his words enthusiastically like Anais chewing india-rubber, he was always dressed with a stiff, old-fashioned correctness; what an old bore!
Now we were in for a whole hour of him!
He would be sure to ask us idiotic questions and prove to us that we ought all to ‘embrace the career of teaching’. I’d rather do even that than embrace him!
‘Your ladies! … Sit down, my children.’
‘His children’ sat down, modest and mild.
I wished to goodness I could get away.
Mademoiselle Sergent danced attendance on him with an expression at once respectful and malevolent, while her assistant, the virtuous Lanthenay, shut herself up in her own classroom.
Monsieur Blanchot placed his silver-headed cane in a corner and promptly began to exasperate the Headmistress (well done!) by drawing her over to the window to talk about Certificate syllabuses, zeal, assiduity and all that sort of thing!
She listened, she replied: ‘Yes, Inspector.’ Her eyes had retreated under her brows; she was obviously longing to hit him.
He had finished boring her; now it was our turn.
‘What was the girl reading when I came in?’
Anais, the ‘girl’ in question, hid the pink blotting-paper she was chewing and broke off the narrative, obviously a scandalous one, she was pouring into the ears of Marie Belhomme. The latter, shocked and crimson but attentive, rolled her birdlike eyes with a modest dismay.
Smutty Anais!
What could those stories possibly be?
‘Come, my child, tell me what you are reading.’
‘The Dress, Sir.’
‘Kindly continue.’
She began again, with an air of mock intimidation, while Blanchot examined us with his dirty-green eyes.
He was severe on any hint of coquetry and he frowned when he saw a black velvet ribbon on a white neck or curly tendrils escaping over forehead and temples.
He always scolded me every time he visited us about my hair, which was always loose and curly, and also about the big white pleated collars I wore on my dark dresses.
Although these had the simplicity I like, they were attractive enough for him to find my clothes appallingly reprehensible.
The lanky Anais had finished The Dress and he was making her logically analyse (oh, my goodness!) five or six lines of it.
Then he asked her:
‘My child, why have you tied that black velvet about your neck?’
Now we were in for it!
What did I tell you?
Anais, flummoxed, answered idiotically that it was ‘to keep her warm’.
Cowardly fat-head!
‘To keep you warm, you say?