On Monday morning he met Théo outside school. His friend had done some research over the weekend; he had plans he was keen to tell Mathis about.
When Mr Châle collected the money that the parents were supposed to send for the evening at the Opéra Garnier, Théo said that his mother didn’t want him to go because of the terrorist attacks. Mr Châle hesitated for a moment and was about to ask some more questions, but then thought better of it.
Mathis knows this isn’t true. It’s not because of his mother. Théo isn’t going because he doesn’t have the money. And it’s not the first time.
HÉLÈNE
I realised that we didn’t have the father’s address, which is normally on the forms the students fill in at the start of the year. We didn’t even have his phone number to contact him in case of an emergency. I decided to ask to see the mother without any particular motive. I didn’t go through Théo or the school’s website. I sent a brief note in the mail with my telephone number, asking her to contact me as soon as possible. She rang me the same day, her voice betraying her worry. Théo hadn’t given her the nurse’s message, that’s why she hadn’t replied. I don’t know why, but I really didn’t warm to her right from the start. She said that Théo was at his father’s till Friday and she could come in one evening that suited me after 6 p.m. I arranged to see her the next day.
In the distance I saw a fragile figure walking quickly across the playground. She was in a belted beige raincoat. She wasn’t wearing a scarf or jewellery. The colour of her clothes, the way she moved and held her bag all indicated how much she wanted to live up to expectations, to strike the right note. I went out to meet her and we went upstairs to the science lab. She wasn’t at all like the woman I had imagined.
I began talking about Théo. I said I thought he looked tired, exhausted. That he had increasing difficulty following the lesson. He’d been to the nurse several times and hadn’t answered any of the questions in the last test. At first she appeared not to understand; her son’s results were good, she didn’t see what the problem was.
I said, ‘The problem is that there’s something the matter with your son. I am not questioning his ability. I’m talking about him, about his increasing difficulty with concentrating.’
She looked at me for several seconds. I’m certain she was trying to gauge my power to cause trouble; she was calculating the risk of telling me to get lost there and then: What business is it of yours?
She adopted a soft but firm tone that must make quite an impression in a professional situation.
‘My son is absolutely fine. He’s an adolescent who has trouble getting to sleep and who probably spends too much time staring at a screen like all young people of his age.’
I’m not the sort to let things drop that easily.
‘He’s a bit young at twelve.’
‘He’ll be thirteen in a few days.’
‘Do you have any idea what kind of life he leads when he’s at his father’s? Does he have a regular timetable?’
She took a breath before replying.
‘My husband left me six years ago and we no longer have any contact.’
‘Even about Théo?’
‘No. He’s not a child. We have joint custody.’
‘Does that work for him?’
‘My ex-husband insisted on it to reduce his maintenance payments. Which he doesn’t pay anyway.’
I could feel a blind rage against this woman building in me, something dark and fierce flooding into me, which I couldn’t contain. I sensed the steeliness beneath her fragile appearance; I wanted to see her retreat into her protection zone, to feel her fold.
‘You refuse to let Théo go on school trips. That’s a pity, because trips are an important time for class bonding.’
Her surprise was not the sort that can easily be faked.
‘You mean he doesn’t take part in trips?’
‘No, not a single one.’
I wanted to go further. I wanted to throw her off balance.
‘If it’s a question of money, you could ask for help from the office . . .’
She raised her voice to interrupt. ‘It’s not about money, Ms Destrée. But when he’s at his father’s, his father is the one who ought to pay.’
I let the words hang for a few moments.
‘The Head is also surprised that you never come to parents’ evenings.’
‘I don’t come because I can’t risk bumping into my ex-husband . . . I . . . I’d find that hard to bear.’
‘We have never seen your ex-husband either, and I’m not sure that he has been informed about these evenings. Since you haven’t seen fit to give us his details.’
She paused. She was trying to understand.
‘It was Théo who filled in the forms. At the start of the year when he got me to sign them, I noticed he hadn’t put down his father’s address, you’re right, but he told me he’d add it later.’
I could sense she was faltering. A doubt had fractured her defence system.
I wanted to hurt her. Hurtful words and sarcastic remarks came to my mind that I had difficulty holding back. I hadn’t felt that for years.
This woman wasn’t protecting her child and that made me furious.
‘Was your ex-husband violent?’
‘No, not at all. Why are you asking that?’
I had crossed a red line. The red line was far behind me.
‘You know, by the time children are found in a pit or at the end of a rope, it’s too late.’
She looked at me as though I were possessed. She looked around for a witness or some support. But we were alone in the science lab, white and tiled, surrounded by lab benches and microscopes, a smell of disinfectant in the air reminiscent of a hospital. At the back of the class, a tap was dripping as regularly as a metronome.
Then, without warning, she covered her face with her hands and began to cry. Taken aback, I clumsily attempted to backpedal.
‘Listen, a few of us have noticed something wrong with Théo. He’s withdrawn. There’s a risk he’ll switch off.’
She kept crying while hunting for something in her bag. She kept saying, ‘I don’t understand.’ There was no arrogance left in her, no posturing. I noticed traces of foundation on her neck that she hadn’t blended in properly and blotches that her make-up didn’t conceal. The collar of her blouse was a little frayed and her hands looked very worn for her age. She was a woman whom life had treated harshly. A woman whose dream had been crushed and who was trying to put a brave face on it.
I suddenly felt ashamed of having made her come in and subjecting her to this. With no valid reason.
I had to bring the meeting to a close, calm things down, restore some semblance of normality. I eventually handed her a Kleenex.
‘I think you ought to take Théo to the doctor. Check he’s OK, that he doesn’t have . . . deficiencies . . . The extent of his tiredness worries us. That’s the nurse’s opinion too.’
She pulled herself together as quickly as she had fallen apart. She said she’d make an appointment the following day and told me she’d ask Théo about school trips.
We parted at the bottom of the stairs.
I watched her go off across the playground. She looked back at me one last time before she went through the gate, as though she was checking I wasn’t following her.
I took my phone from my bag and called Frédéric.
He picked up after the first ring and I said, ‘I’ve screwed up. Big time.’
THÉO
He was last to come into the gym. The students were sitting in a circle on the mats. Mrs Berthelot was standing near the door, waiting for any stragglers for her usual sports-kit check.
By ‘sports kit’ Mrs Berthelot meant the full thing: tracksuit top and bottoms, and real sports shoes, none of those space shoes or other flashy designs.
A few weeks ago Théo received a punishment: he had to copy out fifty times: ‘I must bring my kit for PE class on Tuesday at 2 p.m.’
‘Don’t you have your tracksuit?’
He explained that he was at his dad’s this week and that before he left his mum’s he’d looked everywhere for it but couldn’t find it.
‘Don’t you have a tracksuit at your father’s?’
He shook his head, but she’d decided not to let it drop.
‘Can’t your father buy you a tracksuit?’
No, his father couldn’t buy him one. His father no longer qualified for benefits, no longer left home, and shuffled around like a zombie.
He could have spilled out the whole story, there and then, and he would have had the fleeting impression that he’d scored a point. But he knows she’s stubborn and likes to have the last word. And anyway, she wouldn’t have been able to take him seriously.
She’s still complaining. She’s had enough, really e-nough, of students who think they can do what they like and turn up in their street clothes as though this was a game of dominoes in their living room. Who do they think they are?
She’s still standing in his way. The sentence eventually comes: ‘Take some bottoms from the lost property box and go and change.’
This is an order, but Théo doesn’t move.
‘Off you go!’
She knows full well there is just one pair of tracksuit bottoms in the box, where they’ve been mouldering for the past ten years. What’s more, they’ve pink and tiny.
Théo makes a final protest and then takes out the jogging bottoms and shows them to her, so that she realises. He holds them with his fingertips, hoping she’ll recoil.
‘Put them on and do four circuits of the gym.’
Théo mutters that the tracksuit bottoms smell.
‘That will teach you not to always forget your things.’
She has no intention of giving in. It’s out of the question that she’ll start the lesson until he has changed and done his four laps.
Théo goes to the changing rooms and comes back a few minutes later. The pink jogging bottoms come up to his mid-calf. He’s expecting to be greeted with sniggers and taunts, but no one laughs. Mathis keeps saying, ‘It’s not fair, Miss.’ Mrs Berthelot tells him to be quiet or he will be punished too.
The class has stopped talking. The gym has never been so quiet.
Théo starts to move. Slowly, with short strides, he does the four circuits he’s been told to in deathly silence.
He feels a wave of heat come to his cheeks. He can’t remember ever feeling such shame.
From where they are, can the others see that the cuffs on the jogging bottoms have an embossed Barbie logo?
When he’s done his four laps, there’s no laughter, no comments.
He stops in front of her and she waves him towards the others sitting cross-legged on the mats.
She says, ‘Good.’
Théo sits beside Mathis. When Mathis raises his head to smile at him, he sees Théo’s nose is bleeding, a gush that soon stains his T-shirt, jogging bottoms and the floor mat. The girls shriek. Théo doesn’t move. Mathis offers to take him to the nurse, but Mrs Berthelot picks Rose to go with him.
Amid shocked glances, Théo leaves the gym, head back with a Kleenex held to his nose.
After they’ve gone, Mrs Berthelot spends ten minutes cleaning up the blood.
That evening when Théo gets home, his father is sitting in the kitchen. He’s got the crispbreads and jam out, poured milk into a pan and put chocolate powder into their bowls.
For a man in his state this represents considerable extra effort, the scale of which Théo appreciates. A desire to hold back from the brink of disaster, which he has observed several times in his father, a sort of last line of defence, or invisible net, which he grabs hold of and which so far has saved them from the worst.
Théo has sat down on the opposite side of the table from him. He still has the little wad of cotton wool in one nostril, a little white roll that the nurse changed just before he left school. His father seems not to have noticed.
As silence descends, Théo mentions that he spent part of the afternoon in the sickbay. A moment later, in the absence of any kind of reaction, he adds that he was punished because he didn’t have any tracksuit bottoms. He describes the pink jogging bottoms and the four circuits with everyone watching.
His father’s eyes start to glisten, little red spots appear on his neck and forehead and his lips tremble slightly.
Théo wants his father to stand up and bang his fist on the table. To knock things over and shout, ‘I’m going to get that bitch.’ To grab his parka and slam the door as he leaves the apartment.
Instead, tears start to roll down his cheeks and his hands remain on his knees.
Théo hates it when his father cries.
It’s as though the noise in his head is suddenly amplified and reaches a deadly frequency. And then that makes him want to tell him he’s gross and dirty and be mean to him.
Théo closes his eyes and fills his lungs with air to clear his throat – a technique he has perfected to stop himself sobbing – then hands his father a piece of kitchen roll that was lying on the table.
‘It doesn’t matter, Dad. Don’t worry.’
HÉLÈNE
On Tuesday afternoon I passed some Year 8 girls in the corridor. They had that serious look they get when some drama’s going on. They were whispering conspiratorially, but they couldn’t keep the emotion they felt down to a whisper for long. Among the snippets I caught, I heard Théo’s name several times. I went towards them. They fell silent as I reached them. Emma and Soline turned to Rose Jacquin, their ringleader. She’d be the one who’d reveal what they were so preoccupied with; the story would come from her if it came from anyone.
I asked where they were going. It wasn’t the cleverest lead-in, but it was the best I could come up with.
They had just had PE and were supposed to be going to Frédéric’s class.
I walked alongside them towards B wing. I tried to think of a way to restart the conversation, but I didn’t have to; their sense of indignation was too strong to be held in check. Rose first announced to me somewhat boldly that Théo Lubin was in the sick bay.
‘Something happened in PE,’ she added softly.
She waited a moment, enjoying the impression she’d made, before she went on.
‘He had to run by himself in front of everyone and then he had a nosebleed. A really bad one. It went everywhere, Miss.’
I didn’t wait to hear the rest. I thanked her and left. I made an effort not to run, but as soon as I was out of their sight, I quickened my pace.
I knocked before going in. The curtains were drawn and the room was in semi-darkness.
I saw Théo lying on one of the beds for students. He looked asleep.
The nurse pulled the screen and indicated I should follow her into her office, a little adjoining room whose door was open. We whispered throughout our conversation. She explained that she’d had trouble staunching the bleeding and had even considered contacting the mother. No, he hadn’t had a fall or made a sudden movement. Just before it started, he’d been jogging round the gymnasium. At a moderate pace, apparently, nothing too energetic. That was all he’d said. His blood pressure was low. She thought he seemed tired. She had good reason to re-examine him and so she had done so. She had looked, but there was nothing. No sign of injury. He had, though, lost weight since last time.
I asked if I could see him. She let me go over to the bed where he was lying. When he sensed my presence, he opened his eyes. His face gave nothing away.
I asked how he felt. He said he was feeling better. I asked if he wanted his parents to be contacted, and he sat up and said there was no need: his mother would get worried for no reason, the afternoon was almost over, he’d missed music, but it was the last lesson of the day. At the end of the period, he’d go home and rest.
I stayed beside him in silence. He hadn’t gone under the sheets. He’d stayed on top, as
though he didn’t want to dirty anything, disturb anything. His T-shirt was slightly raised and I could see his skin at the top of his hip: the white skin of a child, a little boy, fragile skin, heartbreaking, so fine it seemed transparent. That was when I noticed he was wearing those horrible Barbie jogging bottoms, stained with blood.
‘Are those yours?’
‘No, they’re from the gym. I forgot mine.’
A few minutes earlier I’d managed to catch his eye, but that was over. He pulled the sheet up over his legs.
‘Was it Mrs Berthelot who told you to put on those bottoms?’
He hesitated, then nodded.
‘Did she ask you to run in front of the others?’
He didn’t respond.
‘On your own?’
He made a silent, pained face, then closed his eyes.
I thanked the nurse and left her office.
Break was over and I was supposed to do my last lesson of the day with Year 9, who had probably already been waiting for me for several minutes in my classroom.
Without stopping to think, I headed for the gym, where Éliane Berthelot should still be.
Her students were divided into little groups around various pieces of apparatus. She was standing near the asymmetric bars, miming an exercise with her arms to explain a leg movement, which from a distance struck me as quite ridiculous.
I walked quickly up to her. I had scarcely got to her when I began shouting like a real fury, words flying from my lips in shrill bursts. I couldn’t have cared less about her stunned expression and her quivering lip. I didn’t give a damn about the group that soon gathered around us. Nothing else mattered, nothing could stop me (in the hours that followed it was impossible to remember what I’d said. Nothing came back to my memory apart from the sound of my anger. But since yesterday words and images have been catching up with me, as has a sense of shame). I think I came out with every insult I know, exhaustively and without omitting a single one. I’m not short of vocabulary. Éliane Berthelot eventually slapped me. Then I heard, ‘They’re going to fight,’ and saw how keen the students were for the unprecedented spectacle we were about to offer them. The excitement was rising and some of them had already gone to the changing room to fetch their mobiles.
Loyalties Page 5