Ignorance Read Online Free Page B

the other he used in winter. The small white room held a wardrobe taking up nearly all the space. Beside the black-draped bed in the big bedroom stood an ebony cot. That’s where children sleep, when they come to stay. I love children. They love playing with me. Sometimes we play hide and seek. Do you two like playing games?
    He escorted us back out on to the landing. His eyes burned blue. You can go anywhere you like, hide anywhere you like, but not to the top of the house. That’s my studio, where I work, it’s not a place for children. Understood?
    He covered his eyes with his narrow, long-fingered hands. I’ll count up to a hundred. Then I’ll come and find you! Off you go!
    Marie-Angèle jerked her head at me. I nodded. Our felt indoor slippers made no noise. So he couldn’t hear us slide past him on the landing, holding our breath, and tiptoe upstairs.
    Just a game. We wanted him to find us and we wanted him to play. He found us. In he stormed. Then he played with us.
    Afterwards, when I tried to remember, the games came back to me in bits. The last one first. Marie-Angèle saying: my turn. My turn.
    She arranged herself on the pink divan under the skylight. Hands clasped behind her head, knees up and apart, face turned, unsmiling, towards him. Her grey pinafore made her look young but her face looked old. A dip in the material between her legs. The feather rested in it. She brought down one hand and twitched her hem higher up, just above the edge of her bloomers. She picked up the feather and flicked it over the strip of white flesh showing between her black stocking-top and her creased-up overall.
    Who am I being now? Guess.
    Bluebeard’s wife, of course. He frowned, looking at her, and stood still. He was stupid not to know, when Marie-Angèle was such a good actress.
    I was wandering about, glancing at them from time to time, leaving them to get on with their new game. I preferred looking at the canvases propped against the walls. Shapes of colour that might be women or might not, which grabbed your insides and whirled them about as though you were cartwheeling. What seemed the same dark-eyed woman in a red frock over and over again. In the bottom right-hand corner of each painting he’d put a thick black squiggle: Jacquotet.
    He’d found us easily. Crouching next to Marie-Angèle behind a big propped canvas, in the tent of dark air between its wooden stretcher and the wall, I’d willed him to make haste. End it. Too childish. I wanted to explore his room, see what he’d got. He’d stomped up the stairs, growling an ogre song fee fi fo fum. We heard him through the door. He drummed with his hands on the door and it flew open. We waited patiently. My thighs ached from crouching. Come on, hurry up. As he got closer we jumped up and ran out, squealing. Exaggerating a bit. A show we put on. Bad girls! I forbade you to come in here. What shall I do with you, bad girls? He swayed back and forth in front of the door so that we couldn’t pass him and get out.
    A forfeit, he announced. Now, what shall it be?
    Was he pretending or wasn’t he? We hovered. Marie-Angèle cocked an eyebrow, sizing him up. She wore a look I recognised: shifty, caught out, wanting to wriggle away from punishment, not sure how, putting on a pout. Not a look that worked with Mother Lucie, who knew her too well, you and your tricks, miss, tell me the truth now. It worked better with the curé, bored with testing us on our catechism, those Sunday afternoon sessions in the cold classroom, the three of us huddled against the lukewarm stove, desperate for a bit of warmth. He’d pat our heads, then his black soutane, thrust his hand through the slit in the side, searching for the bump that meant a bag of sweets, his pocket full of caramels: never mind, you’ll learn the answer for next week, won’t you? Have a caramel, my dears.
    Marie-Angèle curtsied to the Hermit. You’ve won. We are your prisoners.
    The Hermit beamed, bowed, handed her