‘Tom, avez-vous terminé?’
‘Oui, Mademoiselle.’
‘Apportez-le ici.’
Tom gathered his book and pencil and, looking as though the weight of the world were on his shoulders, loped towards her desk. Erin quickly marked his work, keeping one eye on the classroom, particularly Darragh and Tristan, who looked as if they were up to no good.
‘Super, Tom, c’est très bien.’ He blushed at her praise. She hoped Madame Gallas would see how well he responded to positive feedback. Maybe she should leave notes on each child, a document outlining their strengths and weaknesses and how to get the best out of them. Would Madame Gallas be affronted by such a document? Surely she would take it in the spirit in which it was intended.
Madame Gallas – a native of France – had lived in Ireland for more than twenty years, but acted as though she had only just arrived. She had excellent linguistic skills along with a dogged determination to turn the flat Dublin accent of the students into a beautiful French accent like her own, but her rather irritable disposition and poor opinion of the students got in the way of her success. ‘The pupils, they speak out of turn and in rude tones of voice! They have zero respect. Irish children need lessons in good manners much more than lessons in French.’
Her nickname – Grouchy Gallas – was rather deserved, in Erin’s opinion, not that she would ever let on to the students that she agreed with them on this matter.
‘Lisha, venez ici!’
Lisha pushed back her seat. She came forward, her body strangely still even in movement, her eyes fixed ahead, no sideways glances at would-be friends, no smothered giggles at being singled out like this.
Erin smiled as she took the exercise book from Lisha’s outstretched hand.
‘Merci, Lisha.’
Lisha returned her smile with a slight upward movement of her lips. Of all the children in the class, Erin hated leaving her the most.
‘That’s a reflexive verb, Lisha,’ she said, making a small correction.
Lisha nodded gravely, and returned to her desk in the same autonomous manner in which she had left it. Erin watched, a lump in her throat. She’d been on the outer at school too, and even as an adult – a teacher, no less – her chronically awkward schoolgirl self was never far beneath the surface. Lisha had an obvious air of displacement which Erin recognised and worried about. She hoped that Madame Gallas would go out of her way to make Lisha feel included, and that she wouldn’t mistake Lisha’s reticence for the rudeness she so abhorred.
‘Aargh. Did you see that, Miss?’
‘Mademoiselle!’
‘Mademoiselle. I’m being bullied, Mademoiselle.’
‘Well, you might as well learn how to say it in French, Darragh. Il m’embête!’
‘Il m’embête!’
‘Excellent. Now, Tristan, pick up the paper you threw at Darragh, please.’
The next class was her fifth years, then first years, then lunch, and then sixth years. She’d had the sixth years all the way through their secondary education. She’d seen them morph from children to teenagers to young adults. They were confident, her sixth year students, confident in a way she’d never been. And polished, so polished and accomplished in how they spoke and dressed and carried themselves. Poised on the precipice of their adult lives, anything was possible and they knew it. She was tempted, very tempted, to take them aside and whisper a word of advice in their ears: ‘Jump at every opportunity that comes your way, travel as far and for as long as you possibly can, and don’t ever make the mistake of thinking your dreams will keep until later.’ Her confident, accomplished sixth year students would think she were a nutcase if she did such a thing, though. She’d been doing this job for too long, almost twelve years, and to be honest, she was a little crazy from it. How many students had she seen through? She was too exhausted to count. Physically, mentally, spiritually exhausted.
‘Clodagh, the classroom is not the place to be changing your hairstyle! Now leave your hair alone and collect the rest of the finished assignments for me, s’il vous plaît.’
‘No, Nicole, you cannot go to the toilet. You can hold on for the ten minutes that are left of class.’
‘Courtney, please don’t sneeze all over Caroline. You know where the tissues are …’
‘Tristan, this is your last warning! You will be laughing on the other side of your face if you have to spend your lunch break doing lines. Vous comprenez?’
Yes, she was exhausted from them. From the sheer effort it took to control them in class, in transit in the corridors, in the playground at lunchtime, not to mention the school tour to Paris last year. This job, this environment, was a bad place to be if one wasn’t feeling strong. The noise, the constant demands, the relentless visibility, the perceptiveness of the students and their ability to sense weakness and vulnerability from a mile away.
She wasn’t being fair. Yes, she was tired and weary beyond description, but that was as much due to things happening outside the classroom as to things happening within. There had been many good times, times when she’d laughed until tears ran down her face, times when she’d thought she’d burst with pride, and those precious moments when she could tell that she’d made a difference, a lasting impact on a student’s life. The time Darragh back-answered her in French, making her want to congratulate rather than scold him. The time Tristan used his initiative to learn as many French swear words as humanly possible. Courtney, Caroline and Nicole, inseparable at school and even more so on the school tour, exclaiming over the fashion in Paris and how ‘chic’ everything was! The sixth years learning a rap version of the French National Anthem for the Christmas concert last year. Yes, there had been many good times. To be honest, the problem wasn’t the students, the school, or even the job. The problem was her.
‘Okay, everyone, take out your homework books, please.’
‘Lisha, can you please hand out these audio discs? Merci.’
‘Nicole, don’t you have a homework book today?’
‘Attention tout le monde! Is everyone paying attention? Your homework is to listen to the disc and answer the related questions on page trente-deux.’
Erin tuned out from the groans and sighs and exaggerated dismay. How would they react if they knew that this was the last homework they would receive from her? She had already decided that next week would be homework free – to soften the news of her departure. She could hardly believe that she was going, finally going. For so long she’d been stagnant, trapped and unable to move. Leaving still wasn’t easy – in fact, it was extremely complicated – but she had everyone’s blessing and that had been the tipping point: that and the mini-crisis she’d had last year.
‘Mademoiselle, why are you choosing to go so far away?’
Erin