Work Text:
“Fuck the French!” A pencil went hurtling across the room and struck the opposite wall, drawing Phryne’s attention away from her newspaper. She lowered the page she had been scrutinizing with her magnifier and looked around. The offending writing utensil had snapped in half when it hit the doorframe, and through the passage, she could just see a snippet of Jane’s shoulders and plait, slumped and shaking, either in sadness or frustration. Given the current outburst, Phryne bet on frustration.
“Any particular reason?” she asked lightly, rising from her chair. The only answer was a foot kicking heartily at the heavy oaken leg of the breakfast table and the crumpling of paper. Phryne moved closer.
Jane was muttering under her breath, head buried in folded arms - a long string of semi-sensical curses, interspersed with clenching and unclenching hands. “Stupid-ass stupid stupid calico jam and numpty frog muffin garbage hate you stupid bloody horrible FUCKING FRENCH!” Phryne waited until the outburst finished, then gently laid a hand on the papers.
“May I see?”
“Miss Phryne, I give UP,” Jane groaned. She lifted her head and the tear tracks were visible on her face, shining on top of the rage. “The spelling makes no sense, I’m no good at grammar in English anyway, I can’t pronounce a bloody thing and all these stupid French fashions and French art and UGH!” She bit down on another sob and swore again.
Miss Fisher nodded and looked over the crumpled homework lesson. Jane had been trying to copy out a passage and translate it, but clearly been stumped more than once. The page below was floral with corrections and expurgations from the teacher’s marks on her previous attempt. “This seems a bit excessive,” she commented. Phryne knew her own French to be fluent, if perhaps a bit on the rough side, but it had served her well enough. And the red ink was glowing over every backwards accent and misplaced comma, not just the truly confusing errors that Jane had made.
“Noooooo,” Jane groaned again. “Miss Phryne… maybe I should just take something else. Maybe… maybe it’s not worth it.” She began slamming the books closed, and Phryne looked at her in surprise.
“I’ve never known you to turn down a challenge before,” she said.
“This is different,” Jane scowled. “I’m not fancy, or fashionable, or anything refined that would need to speak French. Miss Phryne, I’m a dirty guttersnipe jewel thief with a mother who mixes up sugar and salt and thinks it’s because she’s been poisoned.” The tears were hovering, but Jane’s voice had gone cold. She was reciting immutable facts about herself, with teenage certainty and wounded-child bravado. “Not like Madame Céline, who’s wafty and French and FUCKING PERFECT.” She snarled then, shoving another book off the table. It hit the floor with a loud bash and lay there in a dramatic pile of crushed pages.
Phryne watched for a long moment, holding herself still while Jane’s rage passed around her and dissipated. Then, a small smile crossed her face, and she laid a hand on Jane’s shoulder. “Wait here,” she said softly. Jane heaved a long, teary, defeated sigh, but waited.
When Miss Fisher returned, she had a book in her hand. “Do you really think the French are that different from you and I?” she said, and laid the book in front of Jane. It was a neat volume, bound in lavender half-cloth, the title scripted in black ink. The front illustration was a girl in an absurdly ruffled dress, doing a deep curtsey.
“Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l'usage des maisons d'éducation,” Jane sighed. “An etiquette volume? ‘Book of manners for little girls to use in educational houses?”
Without a word, Phryne opened the book, dragged a finger along the numbered pieces of advice, and stopped. “Tell me,” she said conversationally, “does this sound particularly refined to you?”
Jane looked down at the book, her lips moving as she read the French written there, then began to translate in her head. “Never forget to say ‘please’ when asking…for a- a prick?” She blinked, then read it again. “Or ‘thank you’ when getting one…?”
Phryne persisted. “And the next line.”
“When you are… before… no, standing before a gentleman with…” Jane’s eyes when she turned them to Phryne were the size of the teacups in the china cabinet, and there was a red blush percolating on her cheeks. “Does that say ‘hard-on’?”
Miss Fisher’s face was the picture of innocence. “Yes, it does. It’s a very useful book, though the Glossary is a bit thin.”
“But… but… it’s French! It’s in pretty paper and pressed and… and…”
“Jane,” she said. “Refinement is not bestowed by language, no matter what your instructress might tell you. Every culture, people, and country has both pinnacles and troughs in the societies within it. Far more important, in my view, is being able to move amongst others without making them feel as if they are lesser than you. A view which your Madame Céline apparently does not share.”
Jane was stuck on another point. “Does this have ALL the rude words in it?” She riffled through the pages, her face still more pink than she probably realized, eyes narrowing with mischief.
“Most of them,” Phryne smiled. “But! It is staying on the shelf unless you are willing to stick with learning the polite parts of French as well as well.”
“But Miss Phryne!”
“I’m sorry Jane,” she said, drawing herself up with finishing school flair. “This is to be a reward for a job well-done. And your job is not done yet.” She gestured with the book spine. “Sit.”
Jane sat. She rumpled her forehead, then stood again to retrieve her pencil from where it had landed. As she re-sharpened it, Phryne stepped into the kitchen to have a word with Mr. Butler. When she returned, Jane was retrieving her dictionary from under the table. Phryne drew a second chair close, and for the next hour, they worked on the passage from the textbook together. Occasionally, Miss Phryne dubbed Madame Céline an idiot, which helped a lot.
A chime from the clock indicating 3pm rang, just as Mr. Butler came in with a tray. “I heard,” he said in his affable way, “that some pastry might be in order, and the shop boy just came by.” Jane gasped. Arrayed on the silver etchwork was a rough stack of napoleons, cream and raspberries bursting out of the sides, and dusted with powdered sugar that had mixed with the crumbly edges of the pastry flakes to make a sort of delicious confetti.
“I don’t think that’s possible to eat in a sophisticated way, do you think?” Phryne arched one eyebrow at Jane. “Not with those open layers and all that custard and the juicy berries.”
“I’m not sure, Miss Phryne. I’ll have to eat several to test that theory.” Jane plucked up a treat with the helpfully-provided tongs, and offered it to Mr. Butler on a napkin. “Mr. B, would you help too? And ask Dot when she gets back? I need lots of data.” Mr. B nodded and retreated with a chuckle. Napoleons were some of his favorite as well, and between the six of them (when Bert and Cec turned up), they determined that it was absolutely impossible to be refined while eating one, and that Jane was perfectly suited to being as French as she pleased anyway.
---
When the B+ was handed down on Jane’s revised paper, she wrote ‘manger un godmiché’ all over it in her own red ink, and requested that Miss Phryne let her go to Paris for her next term. She even promised to bring back some books.