By Their Shoes Shall Ye Know Them

When we first met, my French husband Maxime had doubts. But luckily they were only about my shoes. He is always looking at people’s attire and making judgements thereupon. He's unimpressed with us Aussies - the fact that we are prepared to visit our parliament house in shorts, that we don't wear ties on Christmas Day and he's horrified by hoodies. Once on a trip to Tasmania, we came across Senator Bob Brown on the street being interviewed by the media. I tried to listen to what he was saying, but Maxime appeared to be concentrating very hard on the pavement.

‘Uh, Maxime, what are you doing?’ I whispered.

‘His shoes!’ exclaimed Maxime. ‘How can you be a leading politician with such awful shoes?’

It’s clear from French expressions that shoes are important to them. In French, to be beside yourself is to be beside your shoes. You are so upset you are not even wearing shoes. To be out of sorts is to be out of your plate. No shoes, no dinner? No Maxime!

Early on in our relationship, when we were living in France, Maxime announced that we’d be attending a dinner of the Shoe Appreciation Society, of which he was a founding member.

‘That’s nice,’ I said.

‘That means we really need to take action.’

‘Do we?’

‘Yes. I can’t see your shoes anymore.’

‘Yes you can, they’re on my feet.’

‘No I mean I don’t like to see them. They’re random and fluffy.’

I was mystified. And not just by Maxime’s choice of adjectives.

We went to Strasbourg on the Saturday of the party to rectify the problem. After a few minutes in a shoe shop, I saw that, although when I buy shoes, it involves a lot of looking, when Maxime buys them, it involves a lot of talking. There was much serious discussion and in depth questioning, with Maxime and the shop people talking about ‘her shoes’ and ‘her feet’, as though I wasn’t there. As time limped by, I began to wish I’d brought a book. One about the length of ‘War and Peace’.

In fact, I’ve spent large swathes of my life waiting for Maxime. I’ve spent mornings staring into space or picking fluff out of my belly button while the sartorial one attended to his toilette. It is weird being with a man who spends more time on his appearance than you do. In the early days in France, we shared a lift to work, and some days, we would be late because of a crisis involving finding the right jacket to match the trousers. On these occasions, I tried really hard to act like I cared, but Maxime always saw right through me and was hurt that I would let him leave the house with a hair out of place. But we both knew no one would notice except him anyway. Then one morning we had a real crisis:

‘My shoelace broke!’ Maxime cried, crouched down at the front door.

‘Well, put on different shoes, then,’ I suggested.

Unhappiness at the thought of ruining the ensemble. He trudged off.

'Mais, putain! Bordel de merde!'

(He made various indecorous comments in French about brothels and prostitutes).

‘Oh, what now?’ I said, frustration starting to build.

‘I broke another shoelace!’

After the third lace I suspected it was just a very creative way to seek attention. OK, we all have many excuses for being late to work – the vacuum ate my homework, et cetera – but.

‘Look, Maxime, even you must see that I can’t be late to work because of a shoelace.’

He didn’t.

And Maxime’s concern naturally extended to my shoelaces as well. One day, on my way to meet him for lunch, I discovered I’d somehow lost a shoelace. Normally this is mildly annoying but not a great cause for concern, except if you’re going to meet Maxime. Maybe he won’t notice? I thought hopefully. I saw him approach, smiling, and then he stopped dead in his tracks.

‘Look at your shoe!’ he cried.

‘I know.’

‘How can you be walking around without a shoelace?’

‘One foot after the other usually does the trick, I find.’

‘Here,’ Maxime said gravely, sidestepping my sarcasm. One doesn’t joke about shoelaces. To my amazement, he fished out a spare lace from his breast pocket. ‘Only you could walk around with a shoelace missing!’ he laughed.

‘Hey!’ I said indignantly, ‘I’m not the weird one here – what sort of person walks around with supplies of spare shoelaces?’

A French one, of course.