I was in the fish shop yesterday when Jean looked up from wrapping a haddock and said, quite casually, “France has gone off again.”
Nobody asked what she meant. This is because France has a reputation.
If somebody announced that Norway had gone off, you would immediately require details. Norway seems a dependable sort of country. Denmark going off would be concerning. Switzerland would presumably circulate a notice six weeks beforehand explaining exactly when it intended to go off, why this was necessary, which canton was responsible and where residents could download the appropriate form.
France, however, is allowed simply to go off.
The French have always possessed a more expressive relationship with government than we do. We become furious, complain to our husbands, write something quite severe on Facebook and then continue paying whatever has enraged us. The French have a tendency to put on their coats and leave the house.
Sometimes they take a placard. Sometimes they take a tractor. Occasionally they take several tonnes of manure.
This is not an exaggeration. French farmers have genuinely delivered manure to government buildings when ordinary correspondence has apparently failed to communicate the depth of their dissatisfaction. A load was once deposited outside the National Assembly itself. Farmers have also dumped it outside politicians’ offices and, more recently, used manure and agricultural waste during demonstrations over fuel costs and farming incomes.
I have always thought this demonstrated admirable clarity of communication. There are circumstances in which a letter beginning “Dear Sir or Madam” simply cannot compete with reversing a muck spreader towards a public building.
Jean finished folding the paper around the haddock.
“What do you think is actually going on?” Margaret asked.
This was a much better question than asking what had happened, because the women in the fish shop were perfectly aware of what had happened. France was experiencing serious unrest.
What interested the ladies was why.
Jean thought it was money.
“Everything eventually becomes about money,” she said, putting three fillets of haddock into a bag. “Even things people insist are not about money.”
Margaret disagreed. “It’s not the money. It’s what people think they’re getting for it.”
Mrs MacLeod, who had been standing beside the freezer pretending not to listen, turned around.
“That is money.”
“No,” said Margaret. “There’s a difference. You can charge people a fortune if they think the trains arrive, the schools work and somebody answers the telephone when they ring an office. It’s when you charge them a fortune and then tell them the thing they’ve paid for is temporarily unavailable that they become difficult.”
We considered this.
France has very high public spending, substantial taxation and serious government debt. Its finances have become part of the wider argument because governments can make promises more easily when money is cheap than when borrowing becomes expensive. None of us was foolish enough to imagine that there was one simple explanation for millions of people becoming dissatisfied with the same country at the same time.
Mrs MacLeod thought the problem was more complex.
“People will put up with nearly anything if they think it’s temporary,” she said. “The problem starts when they realise temporary has become how things are.”
There was a small silence after this because it was rather better than anything any of us had heard from the television commentators, and Mrs MacLeod knew it.
She examined a packet of fishcakes with considerable dignity.
Margaret thought France had another difficulty.
“They expect their government to do things,” she said.
This produced a discussion about whether this was unreasonable. I said nothing because I do not discuss politics.
I merely stood there holding a cod loin while the constitutional, economic and social future of the French Republic was settled between the smoked haddock and the freezer containing the peas.
In Scotland, we approach dissatisfaction differently. We prefer intelligence gathering.
This became apparent when Margaret, having finished explaining the probable fiscal causes of French social unrest, lowered her voice and said, “Speaking of things not being quite right, has anybody noticed the blue van outside the Campbell’s?”
The speed with which France disappeared from the conversation was extraordinary.
Jean continued wrapping my fish.
“What blue van?” she said.
This was a lie. We all knew the blue van.
It had been outside the Campbell’s house on Monday evening, Tuesday morning and, according to information I had not deliberately acquired, Thursday of the previous week.
I am not a gossip. I should make that absolutely clear.
There is an enormous difference between gossip and maintaining a reasonable awareness of developments within one’s immediate community. If a strange vehicle appears repeatedly outside the house of a woman you have known for twenty-three years, refusing to notice it would be unnatural. Possibly irresponsible.
There could be a gas leak.
Jean said she had not particularly noticed the van either.
She then described it as a blue Vauxhall with a dent above the passenger-side wheel arch.
This is how things operate in a small village. Everybody knows everything, but civilisation depends upon everybody pretending to know almost nothing.
You must never simply ask.
That is gossip.
You must come upon information naturally.
For example, you cannot telephone a woman and say, “Is your daughter leaving her husband?”
You telephone and say, “I was thinking about you.”
This may produce nothing. You then enquire after her mother. If that fails, you mention the weather.
A skilled practitioner can reach a separation, a new flat in Inverness and an argument involving a caravan without asking a single improper question.
The important thing is to sound surprised at every stage.
“Oh, I had no idea.”
You absolutely had an idea.
Everybody had an idea.
There had been a mattress tied to the roof of a Ford Focus on Wednesday.
But standards must be maintained.
There are women who ask outright questions. Nobody trusts them.
A respectable woman gathers information accidentally, preferably while purchasing potatoes.
There are recognised techniques.
You may say, “I haven’t seen Anne lately. I hope she’s all right.”
This is socially acceptable.
You may not say, “Is Anne getting divorced?”
The remarkable thing is that both sentences mean exactly the same thing.
Another acceptable method is concern. Concern can take you almost anywhere.
“I do hope everything is all right at number fourteen.”
Then stop talking.
Nature abhors a vacuum, but not nearly as much as a Scottish woman does.
Somebody will fill it.
The highest level of village intelligence work involves pretending that you have already heard something.
“I suppose you know about David.”
This is dangerous and should only be attempted by experienced operators.
If the other person says yes, you have learned nothing. If she says no, you must immediately invent a harmless David-related event.
His boiler.
His dog.
A minor issue with the shed.
The expression “I probably shouldn’t say anything” is also widely used, although I have never known it to be followed by anybody not saying anything.
Then there is the apparently unnecessary shopping trip.
Every village has a shop that serves two purposes. One is selling food. The other is providing situational awareness.
A woman may enter for milk despite having half a bottle at home. She may require bread although there is bread in the freezer. She may suddenly develop a powerful need for kitchen roll at four o’clock in the afternoon.
She is not gossiping.
She is shopping.
If information happens to be exchanged beside the biscuits, that is simply commerce.
There are also accidental walks. A woman who has never shown the slightest interest in cardiovascular health will suddenly walk three times around the village because somebody at the far end has had scaffolding put up.
“I’m trying to get my steps in,” she will say.
She is trying to find out whether the roof has gone.
Bin night is useful. So is putting washing on the line.
The postman is potentially valuable but must be handled carefully because postmen have professional standards and usually know far more than they are prepared to tell you.
Tradesmen are better.
A plumber knows things.
An electrician knows more.
A carpet fitter may know everything.
The difficulty is maintaining moral superiority while extracting the information.
This requires practice.
You must never appear eager. Eagerness is the mark of the gossip.
You must receive each new fact reluctantly, as though somebody has burdened you with knowledge you would much rather not possess.
“Oh dear,” you say.
Pause.
“I suppose there must have been problems for some time.”
Another pause.
“Was it him or her?”
That last question should be asked very quietly.
I have occasionally wondered whether villages invented this etiquette because complete privacy is impossible when everybody recognises your car.
A city gives anonymity.
A village gives witnesses.
If you go somewhere unusual in Glasgow, perhaps nobody notices. If you turn left instead of right after leaving the chemist here, somebody may ask whether everything is all right at your sister’s.
The kindness and the intrusion are often made of exactly the same material.
The people who know you have not opened your curtains by ten in the morning are also the people who will knock on the door.
The woman who knows your son has lost his job before you have told anybody may be irritating, but she is also very likely to appear with soup.
So we maintain the fiction.
We do not gossip. We observe.
We do not pry. We express concern.
We do not spread stories. We merely make certain that everybody who already knows has the correct version.
By the time my haddock was wrapped, France remained in considerable difficulty and the five of us had reached no firm conclusion about what would happen there next.
But we had established that the blue van belonged to Mrs Campbell’s cousin’s son, who was fitting new shelves in her spare bedroom.
Nothing improper had occurred.
Margaret looked almost disappointed.
I certainly was not.
I am not that sort of woman.
I paid for my fish and went home.
I still do not know what France is going to do.
But Morag’s getting fitted wardrobes.
So at least something in the world is becoming clearer.
