Years ago, I worked for a summer as a plongeur in a hotel in south-western France. Nah, not a diver, mind you, but a humble dishwasher. Diving into those piles of dirty dishes, I presume.
The owner of the hotel was a former paratrooper. After service in Algeria, he came home and married the rich, but ugly, daughter of a hotel owner. Everybody assumed (or knew) that he was tromping sa femme. Having a little side dish, so to speak. He was in his mid-fifties, not unattractive, but rather frail, having already had the first of the series of heart attacks that would eventually kill him off. It was rather entertaining to see him around the voluptuous 16-year old maid – eyeballing her derriere, discreetly opening a button or two of his shirt to reveal a little of the greying, but impressive, mat of chest hair when he was talking to her.
He had been the mayor of the little township a number of times, running first for the Gaullistes, then for the Socialistes, and finally for himself, on an independent platform. Now, this little town was split into two parts by a canal. On one side, you had the town centre, with shops and restaurants. On the other side, the residential area with expensive villas and hotels. The bridge across the canal was one-way, meaning that while going in one direction was easy, going the other involved a lengthy detour.
Everybody could figure out that if a supermarket were ever allowed to establish itself on the residential side of the canal, the shops in the little downtown area would be dead meat. But everybody also agreed that it never be, that the zoning once established would never be changed.
But in his last term as mayor, my old friend brokered a shady deal, allowing a supermarket to be build on the other side. And why do you think that we got all our supplies for the hotel from the chain that was allowed to build the supermarket? At very good prices?
Everybody knew. Everybody said so. But no one objected, really, because, after all, what do you expect? They would gladly have elected him again.
Next picture. My old friend back from Denmark hooked himself up with a local girl. Nice family, well-educated, and so forth. One day, she proclaimed that she did not like “darkies”. I asked her why not, and she said that I, foreigner that I was and am, would never understand the problems that all those “darkies” created in France. Not one to give up easily, I pressed her more on the issue, and specifically asked what problems she, personally, herself, had experienced (knowing that in this rural part of the country, meeting one of those “darkies” was rare indeed.) In the end, she explained that a friend of hers had a cousin, who once had been on a train, and some African guy had been eyeballing her. Nothing more, nothing less. She never liked Africans after that episode.
Final picture: I saw a show on TV after the right-wing victory in the municipal election in Marseille a few years back. They interviewed a woman who spoke French with a heavy Italian brogue. She fully understood the allure of the Front National and the need to give the immigrants the boot. She, herself, would vote Front National as soon as she got her citizenship.