Should I lie to her?
No, I disdained her own usual methods.
Raising my head, I signalled an imperceptible ‘Yes’ and, calmly, she made the correction.
‘You have five minutes for revision,’ announced the voice of Roubaud; ‘the handwriting test will follow.’
A second and larger ball of paper arrived.
I looked about me: it came from Luce whose anxious eyes were seeking mine.
But … but she was asking for four words!
If I sent back the ball, I was sure it would get pinched.
I had an inspiration, a really brilliant one: I took the black leather satchel containing pencils and charcoal (the candidates had to provide everything themselves) and, using a bit of plaster torn off the wall as chalk, I wrote down the four words that were worrying Luce. Then I suddenly lifted the satchel above my head, with its virgin side turned towards the examiners who, in any case, weren’t paying much attention to us.
Luce’s face lit up; she made some hurried corrections: my neighbour, the girl in mourning, who had observed the scene, spoke to me:
‘I say, you, aren’t you frightened?’
‘Not much, as you see.
Got to help one another a bit.’
‘Yes … of course.
Still, I wouldn’t dare.
You’re called Claudine, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.
How did you know?’
‘Oh, you’ve been “talked of” for quite a time.
I’m from the school at Villeneuve; our mistresses used to say about you:
“She’s an intelligent girl but as impudent as a cock-sparrow and her tomboyishness and the way she does her hair set a very bad example.
All the same, if she chooses to take the trouble to exert herself, she’ll be a redoubtable competitor in the exam.”
You’re known at Bellevue too; they say you’re a bit crazy and more than a bit eccentric.’
‘Charming women, your teachers!
But they’re more interested in me than I am in them.
So tell them they’re only a pack of old maids who are furious because they’re running to seed. Tell them that from me, will you?’
Scandalized, she said no more.
Besides, Roubaud was promenading his plump little pot-belly between the tables and gathering up our papers which he carried up to the others of his species.
Then he distributed other sheets of paper to us for the handwriting test and went off to inscribe four lines on the blackboard in a ‘beautiful hand’.
Tu t’en souviens, Cinna, tant d’heur et tant de gloire, etc., etc….
‘Young ladies, you are asked to execute a line of thick cursive, one of medium cursive, one of fine cursive, one of thick round-hand, one of medium round-hand, one of fine round-hand, one of thick slanting-hand midway between round and cursive, one of medium, and one of fine.
You have one hour.’
It was an hour of rest, that hour.
The exercise was not tiring and they were not very exacting about handwriting.
The round-hand and the slanting suited me all right because they almost amounted to drawing; my cursive is vile; my looped letters and my capitals have considerable difficulty in keeping the prescribed number of ‘bodies’ and ‘half-bodies’.
Never mind!
I was feeling hungry when we got to the end of the period.
We fairly flew out of that depressing, musty room into the playground to rejoin our anxious teachers who were clustered in the shade that was not even cool.
Promptly there was a torrential outburst of words and questions and laments:
‘Did it go well?
What was the subject for dictation?
Did you remember the difficult phrases?’
‘It was this – that – I put indication in the singular – I put it in the plural – the participle was invariable, wasn’t it, Mademoiselle?
I wanted to correct it, and then, after all, I left it – such a difficult dictation! …’
It was past twelve and the hotel was so far away …
I was yawning from starvation.
Mademoiselle Sergent took us to a nearby restaurant, as our hotel was too far away to walk back there in this oppressive heat.
Marie Belhomme wept and wouldn’t eat, disheartened by three mistakes she had made (and every mistake took off two marks!).
I told the Headmistress – who seemed to have forgotten all about my escapade of last night – our methods of communicating; she laughed over them, delighted, and merely cautioned us not to do too many rash things.
During examinations, she egged us on to the worst kinds of cheating; all for the honour of the school.