I didn't mean to. Honest. French etiquette still confuses me and leads me to do ridiculous things on occasion. I was so ashamed that I didn't tell the Good Wife for a whole fortnight – and she's a therapist, so she can help with such matters. I finally blurted it out over breakfast one morning. She almost sprayed her coffee all over the floor. It wasn't quite as bad, I suggested, as my brother tipping his dentist during his callow youth, flush with cash from his job as a waiter.
How did it happen? I was on duty at our little local cinema in Vayrac, run by volunteers. It was my first evening on Caisse#2: the auxiliary who helps the more experienced Caisse#1 by tearing the ticket in half, handing one half back to the cashier and wishing the holder of the other half a cheery bonne séance. It's theoretically a little less taxing than my tour of duty at the local mairie, helping out at some European election.
Just as I was getting into the swing of things, I was confronted by a face that I knew vaguely. He looked at me and I looked at him in uncertain recognition. It was my dentist. Last time I'd seen him, in fact every time I'd seen him, he was in his surgical gear and masked up to the eyebrows. So it was a surprise to see him in civvies. We sort of shuffled slightly towards each other and maybe our right arms twitched in expectation of a handshake. But then I kind of panicked and proffered not my hand but my face in that gesture of familiarity or affection that French males go in for, one that I've never really been comfortable with. Familiarity is the operative word here. Does one ever know one's dentist well? Should one? I suppose it's quite an intimate business, prodding about in someone's mouth with a pick and a mirror, but then again one should probably respect and retain a certain professional distance. In any case, reader I kissed him – and as soon as I'd done so, I felt a complete Charlie. I also felt like apologising, but that would only have ramped up the degree of awkwardness. So I simply tore his ticket, wished him a bonne séance and then squirmed in my seat throughout the film that I struggled to follow. Mumbled French dialogue like French etiquette still defeats me.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... this kind of thing is so much easier on the other side of the pond. I recently returned from a week in the old country (which, according to Mrs. Angry in the seat behind me when the guard announced, very politely, that we would be 20 minutes late into Waterloo due to an earlier points failure near Basingstoke, is 'going to the dogs'. Hardly surprising, I guess, after umpteen years of conservative misrule). Back home, you simply embrace family and dearest friends and shake hands with the rest. Easy-peasy.
I was there to help my sisters with the onerous task of sorting out my father's stuff. No easy matter, since he was a hoarder par excellence (from whom I inherited the squirrel gene). After a very congenial evening in London with Tilley the Kid and her three female flatmates, I arrived at my dad's flat to find my sister Jo going through our paternal grandmother's collection of pewter, while sister Gina was examining with eyeglass and phone our maternal grandmother's collection of silver cutlery for anything genuine as opposed to electro-plated. My role, which I'd chosen to accept, was to sort out my father's music in its many guises – from cassette tapes to mouldy 78s – and the books that survived the sisters' cull after my mother died seven years before. The Brother was in Finland, taking delivery of a house by a lake that he and his partner (with the Finnish connection) have just bought for a song. So he couldn't be there for the other reason for my visit: to lay the urn containing our father's ashes next to those of our mother.
The two sisters have been hard at it for over a month. It has helped them to fill the big hole created by our father's sudden departure. Jo would visit him every day for a chat and a drink, hot or alcoholic. Gina would drop by every day except her three work-days. The task has brought them close together and helped to alleviate their grief. It isn't a big flat, but they have unearthed new treasures from deep in cupboards and inside cracked leather suitcases stored under the paternal bed: forgotten photo albums and paintings by our mother and paternal grandmother that didn't make it onto his walls. Next stop, our father's clothes. Jo feels awkward about something quite so personal, but I'm rather less sentimental about it. Not really believing in any kind of afterlife nor reincarnation, I feel that once you've gone, that's it: you've gone. Might as well give it all to people who want or need it.
In any case, his girth was a little more substantial than mine, and he was of a different generation for all his laudable desire to stay smart and trendy. As it was, I took back a few of his CDs, DVDs, records and books to add to the piles here, but most of it went in bag after heavy bag to the many charity shops of Romsey. Some were glad of them, some not quite so glad. Stuff is a many splendoured thing, but one can have too much of it.
Back on French soil, I do worry about the day when my poor
daughter has to deal with my stuff. Corgi toys, plastic Cowboys & Injuns, books,
records, CDs, tapes, DVDs and a collection of underused tools. Virtually no one
wants that kind of stuff now; they can have it virtually. Maybe even tools one day.
Oh well, she's a big girl now. Once, when she was very, very small, I took her to the école maternelle in Espagnac, a village near our former hamlet of Courbiat in deepest Corrèze. Our friend and near neighbour Corinne, her institutrice, was there at the gate to welcome her charges into the playground. I kissed her on both cheeks as was our custom. Then I noticed the gaggle of young mums hanging about after delivering their own infants, and I thought that I couldn't kiss Corinne and ignore all of them. So, driven by panic and a warped sense of etiquette, I went around the group methodically giving them a double-peck on both cheeks. I didn't know any of them from Eve. They looked a little startled and I felt more than a little gauche.
Back then, I had an excuse. I was new to the game. I really had little excuse for kissing my dentist. When my wife had recovered her equilibrium post-confession, she told me her rule of thumb post-Covid. Don't shake hands and certainly don't kiss unless you're absolutely sure that it will be welcome. I guess that makes things a lot easier, but it's a slight shame. I'm all for traditions if they don't involve blood. French etiquette may be mystifying to outsiders, yet there's something quite charming about it.
