I’m only telling you that much!
No danger of my letting the two others in on it!
An additional job has descended on us: the curl-papers!
You don’t know, you couldn’t be expected to know.
Learn then, that, at Montigny, a schoolgirl could not assist at a prizegiving, or at any solemnity, without being duly curled or waved.
Nothing strange in that, certainly, although those stiff corkscrews and excessive twistings make the hair resemble teasled brooms more than anything else.
But the Mammas of all these little girls, seamstresses, women market-gardeners, wives of labourers and shopkeepers have neither the time, nor the wish, nor the skill to put all those heads in curl-papers.
Guess to whom this work, sometimes far from appetizing, reverts?
To the teachers and to the pupils of the First Class!
Yes, it’s crazy, but you see it’s the custom and that word is the answer to everything.
A week before the prizegiving, juniors badger us and inscribe themselves on our lists.
Five or six for each of us, at least!
And for one clean head with pretty, supple hair, how many greasy manes – not to mention inhabited ones!
Today we began to put these creatures, ranging from eight to eleven years old, in curl-papers. Squatting on the ground, they abandoned their heads to us and, for curlers, we used pages from our old exercise-books.
This year, I was only willing to accept four victims and chosen, moreover, among the clean ones; each of the other big girls was being hairdresser to six little ones!
A far from easy job, since nearly all girls in the country round here possess great bushy manes.
At midday, we summoned our docile flock: I began with a fair-haired little thing with fluffy hair that curled softly by nature.
‘Why, whatever are you doing here?
With hair like that, you want me to frizz it in curl-papers?
It would be a massacre!’
‘Fancy! But of course I want it curled for me! Not curled, on a Prizeday, on a day a Minister’s coming!
Whoever heard of such a thing!’
‘You’ll be as ugly as the fourteen deadly sins!
You’ll have stiff hair, sticking out all round your head like a scarecrow …’
‘I don’t care. At least I’ll be curled.’
Since she insisted!
And to think that they all felt as she did; I was prepared to bet that Marie Belhomme herself …
‘I say, Marie, you who’ve got natural corkscrews, I’m sure you’ll stay as you are, won’t you?’
She screeched with indignation at the idea:
‘Me?
Stay as I am?
Don’t you think it!
I’d arrive at the prizegiving with a flat head!’
‘But I’m not going to frizz myself.’
‘My dear, you curl tight enough. And besides your hair goes into a “cloud” quite easily … and besides everyone knows your ideas are never the same as everyone else’s.’
As she spoke she was vivaciously – too vivaciously – rolling the long locks, the colour of ripe wheat, of the little girl who was sitting in front of her, buried in her hair – a bush from which there occasionally issued shrill squeaks.
Anais, not without deliberate malice, was maltreating her patient, who was howling.
‘Well, she’s got that much hair, this one,’ she said, by way of excuse. ‘When you think you’ve finished, you’re only halfway.
You wanted it – you’re here – try not to scream!’
We curled, we curled … the glass-paned corridor was filled with the rustle of the folded paper we twisted into the hair … Our work achieved, the juniors stood up with a sigh of relief and displayed heads bristling with wisps of paper on which one could still read:
‘Problems … morals … Duc de Richelieu …’ During the next four days they will go about the streets and the School, looking utter little frumps, without the least shame.
But it’s the custom and that’s that … Our life had become completely disorganized. We were always out of doors, trotting hither and thither, carrying home or bringing back roses, begging – we four, Anais, Marie, Luce and I – requisitioning flowers, real ones this time, to decorate the banqueting-hall.
Sent by Mademoiselle, who counted on our innocent young faces to disarm the conventional, we went into the houses of people we had never seen. It was thus we paid a visit to Paradis, the Registrar, because rumour accused him of being the possessor of dwarf rose-trees, little marvels.
All shyness gone, we burst into his peaceful office with:
‘Good morning, Monsieur!
We’ve been told you have some lovely rose-trees, it’s for the flower-stands in the banqueting-hall, you know, we’ve been sent by etc., etc.’
The poor man muttered something into his great beard and led us out, armed with a pair of secateurs.
We departed with our arms loaded with pots of flowers, laughing, chattering, cheekily answering back the people who, at the entrance to each street, were all busy erecting the framework of triumphal arches. They called out to us:
‘Hi! You nice little pieces, there!
Want someone to lend a hand? We’ll find you one, all right … Hoy! look out!