I titivated up my final version, developing the things that pleased them and displeased me.
Ouf!
Finished!
I could have a look at what the others were doing …
Anais was working without raising her head, sly and secretive, her left arm curved over her paper to prevent her neighbour from copying.
Roubaud had finished his sketch and it was getting late, though the sun was almost as high as ever.
I was exhausted: tonight I would go to bed virtuously with the others, with no music.
I went on observing the classroom; a whole regiment of tables in four ranks, extending right down to the end; the bent black figures of little girls of whom all one could see were smooth chignons or hanging plaits, tight as ropes; very few light dresses, only those of elementary schools like ours; the green ribbons at the necks of the boarders from Villeneuve made a splash of colour.
There was a great hush, disturbed only by the faint rustle of paper being turned over or by a sigh of weariness … At last, Roubaud folded up the Fresnois Monitor, over which he had dozed a little, and took out his watch:
‘Time is up, young ladies. I will collect your papers!’
A few faint groans were heard; the little things who hadn’t finished took fright and asked for five minutes’ grace which was granted them; then the examiners collected up the fair copies and left us.
We all stood up, yawning and stretching, and, before we had reached the bottom of the staircase, the groups had re-formed.
Anais rushed up to me:
‘What did you put?
How did you begin?’
‘You bore me stiff … You don’t imagine I learnt all that stuff by heart?’
‘But your rough?’
‘I didn’t do one – only a few sentences that I licked into shape before I wrote them down.’
‘My dear, you’ll get a terrific scolding!
I’ve brought my rough out to show to Mademoiselle.’
Marie Belhomme had also brought her rough out, so had all the others, including all the girls from other schools; it was always done.
In the playground, still warm from the sun that had now withdrawn from it, Mademoiselle Sergent was sitting on a little low wall, reading a novel:
‘Ah! Here you are at last!
Your roughs, quick … let me see that you haven’t made too many howlers.’
She read them and pronounced on them: Anais’s, it seemed, was ‘not devoid of merit’; Luce’s ‘had good ideas’ (mine, to be exact) ‘not sufficiently developed’; Marie’s was ‘full of padding, as usual’; the Jauberts’ essays were ‘very presentable’.
‘Your rough, Claudine?’
‘I didn’t do one.’
‘My dear child, you must be mad!
No rough on an examination day!
I give up all hope of ever getting any rational behaviour out of you … Well, was your essay bad?’
‘Oh no, Mademoiselle, I don’t think it was bad.’
‘It’s worth what?
Seventeen?’
‘Seventeen?
Oh, Mademoiselle, modesty forbids me … seventeen, that’s a lot … After all, they ought to give me at least eighteen!’
My companions stared at me with envious spite.
‘That Claudine, she isn’t half lucky to be able to foretell what marks she’ll get!
Let’s hasten to add that it’s no merit to her, she’s naturally good at it and that’s that; she does French essays as easily as anyone else fries eggs’ … and so on and on!
All about us, candidates were chattering in a shrill key, showing their roughs to their teachers, exclaiming, giving ‘Ahs’ of regret at having missed out an idea … twittering like little birds in an aviary.
That night, instead of escaping into the town, I lay in bed, side by side with Marie Belhomme, discussing this great day with her.
‘The girl on my right,’ Marie told me, ‘comes from a convent school. Just imagine, Claudine, this morning, when they were giving out the papers before Dictation, she brought a rosary out of her pocket and was saying it under the table.
Yes, my dear, a rosary with huge round beads, something like a pocket abacus.
It was to bring her luck.’
‘Pooh!
If that doesn’t do any good, it doesn’t do any harm either … What’s that I hear?’
What I heard, or thought I heard, was a tremendous row in the room opposite ours, the one where Luce and Anais slept.
The door opened violently and Luce, in a brief chemise, flung herself into the room, distracted:
‘Please, please … protect me … Anais is being so horrid …’
‘What’s she been doing to you?’
‘First she poured water in my boots, and then, in bed, she kicked me and she pinched my thighs, and, when I complained she told me I could sleep on the bedside mat if I wasn’t satisfied!’