Ignorance Read Free Page A

inside the slammed covers of your book but at night the book jumped open and red fire swept out and consumed everything.
    Madame Baudry shook off her daughter’s hand and tweaked her blue woollen gloves. She said to Marie-Angèle: you know, becoming a boarder costs a lot. It means behaving. Mind what I say!
    Up until now Marie-Angèle had attended the state primary school, as I had. The nuns’ school was a private one. Madame Baudry’s pregnancy meant she became exhausted and could not cope, once my mother fell ill, and she had to do all her own washing as well as everything else. The nuns had agreed to take Marie-Angèle, like me, full-time for several weeks. Half rates for the Baudrys, because they were such good Catholics. I went free. Marie-Angèle had spelled it out: you’re a charity child, other people have to pay your fees. I retorted: but my father was an educated man. Unlike yours!
    The convent had sent over a lay sister to help the Baudrys. When she arrived they put her in Marie-Angèle’s room. Supposing Madame Baudry died like the Mad Hermit’s wife? Supposing Maman died too? I hadn’t said a proper goodbye to her this morning. I wanted to run back home, not start living among strangers. Stop crying, Madame Baudry said: don’t be so naughty. I cried louder. Her face reddened and she slapped me. Her woollen blow didn’t hurt, but the shock of it did. Hot tears burst from my eyes and I bawled.
    Marie-Angèle started crying too. It’s just as bad for me! That nun’s in my room! Madame Baudry cuffed her round the head. Stop this nonsense. You’ve got nothing to cry about. Jeanne lives in a hovel, her mother’s got to go to the paupers’ hospital. You should be setting a good example. I’m ashamed of you.
    She seized my shoulder and shook me. D’you want me to tell your mother how you’re behaving, when she’s so ill? Do you? Do you? She’ll feel so upset. After all I’ve done for her, too. I don’t know why I bothered with that photograph. You don’t deserve it.
    To mark the occasion of our becoming boarders, we had had our photograph taken outside the Baudrys’ shop. That’s nice for Jeanne, said Madame Baudry: people will see that someone cares about her. Monsieur Baudry took the picture. At nine years old, I was small and skinny, whereas Marie-Angèle was tall and well developed for her age.
    I didn’t smile for the picture. I refused. Once in their school I wouldn’t smile at the nuns, either. You’re hard-faced, Mother Lucie used to scold me. Dressed in our regulation pale grey pinafores, our hair combed back, posed side by side as friends, Marie-Angèle and I were supposed to look as though we came from the same sort of background. Alike as two dried peas. But underneath we were different, as the nuns recognised perfectly well. On their wooden board, with its list of weekly tasks painted in black italic lettering, our names, written on bits of white card, slotted into different places. On Saturday I had to mop the corridors whereas Marie-Angèle only had to dust the statues in our classroom. She didn’t dare go into the larder in the convent-school kitchen, forage for leftovers. Always hungry, I stole food as a matter of course. My punishment, each time Mother Lucie found me out, was to clean the privies. These always stank because so many of us had to use them, and in such a hurry that there wasn’t time for the cisterns to refill, and they often blocked because we put too much paper down, wanting to veil the yellow water bobbing with the previous user’s business.
    Sometimes I’d sit on the lavatory and read a square or two of newspaper before wiping myself with it. Marie-Angèle’s father handed on his newspapers to the nuns. Sitting on the wooden shelf, one hand hoisting up my overall, I learned new words. Words about Jews, which hopped across the pages like toads. I wanted to spring up and chase them away. In the school we had silver-fish in the lavatories, and woodlice, and