Here in the backwoods manners are all. You may not think so when you see the seemingly permanent scowl and grimace of those you pass in the street or those who stare at you from their gardens, and it’s true that for a newcomer it can be very off-putting in the early days as you meander through the village, a broad smile screaming "please like me" in place.
Indeed, you quickly feel as if the mark of Cain is branded on your forehead and these glowering people will never, ever accept you.
But, as you meet old hands, or find French acquaintances, you learn it’s not personal. It’s just the way it is. Always a pragmatic tribe, the French find little point in going around beaming unless there is something genuinely to smile about.
There's little point in giving a grin and a wave to some idiot in a car gesticulating madly as they pass. Once one understands that, all falls into place and there are no more hurt feelings or sense of rejection.
In fact, although the outward face presented to the world is harsh and suspicious, the inner soul is, in the main, kind and good.
Well, it is unless you transgress, and transgressing is easy here, where slights grow huge in the long dark nights and brooding and nit picking are winter sports.
On the first level is failing to say bonjour when entering anywhere while directing one’s glance to each and every person present in say, shop or doctor’s surgery.
That bonjour must also always be directed to the girl who checks your groceries but only the moment she starts the ringing-up process.
Too early is a no no and it’s bad form, having said it with no response, to say it again. Once you’ve said it, even if ignored, you then must say, "Re-bonjour." I know … le sigh.
Unused to such pleasantries in our own countries it’s hard for us blow-ins to remember such niceties; until we learn it’s a counterstrike against us.
Fortunately none of us moves to the other levels, which end in the deadliest of all – the feud.
The feud does not die with the offender/offended – it continues through the generations even though the original offence has long been forgotten.
I have mentioned before a nearby village where, divided by the one street, two families own most of the houses and live in deadly enmity. As far as I or they recall, it began with a drunken fight two generations ago in the salle de fetes. Although facing each other in cheek-by-jowl terraced houses they carry on their lives as if the others were invisible.
Well, not quite. They make it their business to keep tabs on all movements and take every opportunity to make life difficult for each other.
Other feuds, the dark ones, go back to the war years and who sided with who, whose family informed or aided. Those feuds are the ones nobody wants to talk about, even now.
Slights escalate very quickly here. And now there’s a new one brewing locally.
An English friend of mine goes to a gym with her (French) next-door neighbour. The other night they turned up to discover the daughter-in-law of their mayor had joined. As she arrived they both said: "Bonsoir, ca va?" She looked at them then turned away.
Oh, oh … bad, really bad.
Discussing it on the way home my friend suggested it might be because she was English; her furious and equally shocked neighbour thought it was because her husband’s brother was on the opposing list at the local elections.
Anyway, they agreed to try again next time.
Again she blanked them. On the way home the neighbour was so angry and yes, upset, that she wanted to leave the gym.
Said my friend: "She was shaking with rage and I discovered swear words I’d never heard before.
"To put this into context, this is one of the sweetest, gentlest women I know. But she’d been deeply offended. I was annoyed but not on that level.
"It was then I realised just how important, how major the pleasantries and the apparent snubs are to the locals."
My friend has persuaded her neighbour to return to the gym one more time and try again.
There seems to be no protocol for actually asking the other person what the problem is, no calming ground. That in itself I find fascinating. It goes from zero to 60 in seconds.
And one can see how, if snubbed again, this will move into the full-blown feud with both families turning firmly against each other. For ever more.
In a small village that is not something to be done lightly. Lives are tightly intertwined here; mischief can be, and is, made with the authorities; others are drawn in to take sides.
The other large family could sideline my friend by virtue of association.
She shrugs. "So be it," she says. "Do I really care? For her, yes. For me, no."
And that is the difference. We’ve learned in our city lives simply to walk away and give no further thought.
There is no walking away in rural France.
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