Class (45 page)

The Definitely-Disgustings have a real blow-out. They’ve contributed 50p a week all year to the Christmas Club and this year Mr Definitely-Disgusting is personally going to see that the treasurer doesn’t abscond with the lot on the 22nd of December. Sharon Definitely-Disgusting trails round Woolworths with a list saying:

The whole family is glued to I.T.V. over the holiday, although Mr D-D, after a surfeit of turkey and all the trimmings, snores his way like a good patriot through the Queen’s speech. Spotty, having demolished the bumper Xmas Choc Drops, the Catnip mouse and a stolen turkey bone, is sick.

23   DEATH

O happy release, where is thy sting?

At last we come to Death the Leveller who lays his icy hand on Stow-Crats and Definitely-Disgustings alike. Poets over the ages have been haunted by the theme. Shakespeare wrote of golden lads and girls mingling in the dust with chimney-sweepers. Hardy described the yokels William Dewy and Tranter Reuben lying in Mellstock churchyard beside the Squire and Lady Susan. But even if we are all equal in the moment of death, the living see that our departure is celebrated in very different ways.

Once upon a time funerals were occasions for great pomp—with a long procession of carriages drawn by horses wearing floor-length black velvet, with everyone including the children in deepest black, men and boys doffing their hats along the route, and close relations going into mourning for several months. An outward and lavish display was regarded as a measure of the family’s affection for the dead. But, like most fashions, it filtered down the classes, withering at the top, until today only among the working classes, who are usually much closer to their families and like any excuse for a party, does the tradition of the splendid funeral linger on.

Attitudes have changed too. In Victorian times everyone accepted and talked naturally about death. Given the rate of infant mortality, it would have been impossible even for a child to be shielded from the subject. Sex was the great taboo, with copulation never mentioned, and babies being born under gooseberry bushes. Today everyone talks about sex and birth quite naturally, it is death that has become taboo. Perhaps it is because most people no longer believe in an after-life that they cannot face up to the horror of death and so sweep everything under the carpet. In the old days a man died surrounded by his family; the Victorian deathbed was one of the great set pieces. Today, according to Geoffrey Gorer’s excellent book,
Death, Grief and Mourning
, in the upper-middle and professional classes it is rare for a bereaved person to be present at death (less than one in eight).

The undertaker would pick up the body from the hospital, and none of the family would pay respects to it. In the same way, Samantha Upward or Jen Teale, even if their mother died at three o’clock in the morning, would be on to the undertaker in a flash to get the body out of the house. The Definitely-Disgustings, however, would be much more likely to be present at the death, and to visit the body if they were not. When I worked on a local paper, whenever a working-class person died I was always invited in for a cup of tea to admire the corpse lying in his coffin in the sitting room. As cremation gets more and more popular, too, the ashes tend to be left with the undertaker, and even a grave to mourn at is disappearing. According to our local undertaker, the middle classes often prefer not to watch that poignant final moment when the coffin disappears through the doors. They specify beforehand that they don’t want the coffin to move, and troop out while it’s still on its platform.

Fear of expressing unhappiness is also a characteristic of the upper middles—the stiff upper-middle lip again. Geoffrey Gorer said his own sister-in-law didn’t even go to her husband’s funeral, she was so terrified of breaking down in front of all her friends and relations and, wishing to spare the children such a depressing experience, took them for a picnic. Yet as a bereaved person, she found herself shunned like a leper. Only if she acted as though nothing of consequence had happened was she again socially acceptable. Thus, not only death but overt suffering is taboo. Perhaps this explains the plethora of euphemisms surrounding the subject. Howard Weybridge never ‘dies’, he ‘passes away’, or ‘passes on’, or ‘passes over’, or ‘goes to God’ or ‘to his rest’. Death is even described as ‘falling asleep’. ‘Flowers’ become ‘floral tributes’; even the undertaker prefers to call himself a ‘funeral director’, and describes a burial as an ‘interment’.

Harry Stow-Crat’s father, Lord Egliston, would have had a nice end to his life. He had made everything over to Harry to avoid estate duty, and all the family have been frantically cosseting him to keep him alive the required five years. ‘My father’s great dread was going senile,’ said one aristocrat, apologising for his father who was happily exposing himself in the orangery. ‘But now he has, he’s enjoying himself enormously.’ Since his father’s death would be noticed on the obituary page, Harry might not bother to pay for an insertion in the deaths column. If he did, it would be simple, saying where his father had died, and where and at what time the funeral would be held. Gideon Upward would also put his mother’s death in
The Times
, and he might add her age (Samantha certainly would, out of spite) and the fact that she was the widow of Colonel Upward. Howard Weybridge would use the
Telegraph
. Jen Teale would use the local paper and add a sentence about ‘passing peacefully away’, and being the ‘loving mother of Bryan and devoted granny of Wayne and Christine. The Definitely-Disgustings would probably throw in ‘a happy release’, and ‘a special auntie to Charlene and little Terry’, and a ‘thank you’ to the nurses, doctors and district nurses concerned.

When a peer, a peeress in her own right or a baronet dies it is customary for letters written to members of his or her family to be addressed to them by the titles by which they were previously known until after the funeral. Consequently if a friend wrote to Harry saying how sorry he was about the death of Lord Egliston, he would address the letter to the Hon. Harry Stow-Crat, and if
The Times
reported the funeral they would describe him in the same way. At the memorial service a fortnight later he would be called Lord Egliston.

Old Lord Egliston’s funeral would be simple. Harry would wear a dark suit and a black tie, Caroline would dress soberly but not in black. Relations and friends might have to walk across the fields while the coffin was carried to the family church, which means Gucci shoes sinking into the cowpats. Although it is more upper class to be buried than cremated it is frightfully smart to
have
to be cremated because your family tomb is so full of your ancestors going back to the year dot that there is no room for you. Lord Egliston might just squeeze into the family grave. The headstone, when it was up, would bear a simple inscription: ‘Henry George De Vere Stow-Crat, 5th Baron Egliston, born 12 April 1905, Died 23 April 1979’. People would send flowers picked from their own gardens with plain cards saying ‘With Love’ or ‘In Loving Memory’ in their own hand-writing. Being old-fashioned like the working classes, they might also send wreaths. Afterwards, everyone would go back to lunch or tea, where, depending on the stuffiness of the family or on the intensity of the grief, a certain amount of drink would be consumed.

When very important men die, what diplomats describe as a ‘working funeral’ takes place, which means that heads of state from all over the world meet on neutral ground and, while pretending to admire the wreaths, the Chinese and American foreign secretaries can discuss matters of moment out of the corners of their mouths without appearing to fraternize.

The upper-middles would probably drink themselves silly at the funeral, although a few years ago this would have been frowned on. When my husband, in the early ‘sixties, announced that he intended to leave £200 in his will for a booze-up for his friends, his lawyer talked him out of it, saying it was in bad taste and would upset people. The same year his grandmother died, and after the funeral, recovering from the innate vulgarity of the cremation service when the gramophone record stuck on ‘Abi-abi-abi-abi-de with me’, the whole family trooped home and discovered some crates of Australian burgundy under the stairs. A rip-roaring party ensued, whereupon a lower-middle busybody who lived next door came bustling over to see if anything was wrong. My father-in-law, seeing her coming up the path, uttered the immortal line:

‘Who is this intruding on our grief?’

Today, however, anything goes. Samantha Upward would probably get drunk out of guilt when her mother died. She had taken her mother in when she was widowed and bedridden, but it hadn’t been a success. Having lived apart for so long, it was a terrible shock when they had to live together. The upper-middles have little respect for the wisdom of age, and Samantha got very irritated when her mother gave her advice about the children or running the house, and Samantha’s mother missed her friends in Bournemouth terribly. Our local undertaker also said that the better educated people are, the more matter-of-fact they are about death. They treat the undertaker like a professional and let him get on with it, not quibbling about the price. Usually only the family send flowers; everyone else is asked to send the money to charity instead. A month later everyone gets smashed out of their minds once again at the memorial service.

When Mr Nouveau-Richards dies of a heart attack, Mrs Nouveau-Richards is worried about how she should arrange things. They don’t report smart funerals in
The Tatler
for her to copy. She turns up at the church in deepest black with a huge picture hat and lots of make-up. All Jison’s telly-stocracy friends turn up and keep a weather eye out for photographers and television cameras. The men wear light-coloured suits and cry a lot. The girls also wear deepest black and picture hats, but cry less in case their mascara runs. All Mr Nouveau-Richard’s business colleagues send wreaths with black-edged funeral cards with ‘Deepest Sympathy’ printed on them. Mrs Nouveau-Richards insists on the undertakers wearing the full regalia of top hats, pinstripe trousers, and umbrellas.

After he was buried in the cemetery (Caroline Stow-Crat calls it a ‘graveyard’) Mrs N-R would have a splendid tomb built in strawberry roan marble, and engraved with ornate sentiments about Mr N-R ‘crossing the bar to his eternal rest’, and being ‘the beloved father of Jason and Tracey-Diane’.

The Teale’s would be very stingy and question the price of everything. Jen thinks death is ‘not very naice’, and would expect the undertaker to do everything. She wouldn’t want the hearse outside the house. She and Bryan would drive the Volkswagen to the funeral. After all there’s nothing to get upset about: Bryan’s mother was ‘very elderly’ and had been a ‘senior citizen’ for a long time. There would be no ‘sobbing’ at the funeral; that’s what the Definitely-Disgustings do. Bryan’s mother would probably be cremated as it’s cheaper, although if she did have a grave, Jen wouldn’t want the bother of tending it, so, instead of grass, the flat bit would be sprinkled with emerald green chips which serve the same function as plastic grass. Floral tributes would be particularly tasteful, and Bryan would probably wear a black armband on his sleeve for a few weeks afterwards.

The Definitely-Disgustings really push the boat out. ‘I’m going to Florrie’s funeral tomorrow,’ I heard one working-class Yorkshire woman saying. ‘It should be a good do,’ a sentiment that would never be expressed by the middle classes.

Mr Definitely-Disgusting even insured for the purpose of being buried right, but, alas, with the cost of living the policy seldom comes anywhere near covering the cost of the funeral, which means Mrs D-D is likely to be left penniless and in debt. The problem, said our local undertaker, is to stop people overspending in a fit of emotionalism. Often they get quite annoyed.

‘Are you trying to tell me my missus doesn’t deserve the best?’ said one man.

One train driver’s widow, who could ill afford it, forked out for six cars and a very expensive panelled coffin. Afterwards she came and thanked the undertaker, adding that it was worth it, ‘Even if I have to go out scrubbing for the rest of my life to pay for it.’

In the old days the streets used to be sanded to deaden the sound of the horses’ hooves. And even today whole streets in the North and in Wales will show solidarity by drawing every curtain from the moment the hearse leaves the house until the funeral party returns.

The working classes still send funeral cards with poems inside and pictures of lilies and purple prayer-books on the front, which are displayed on the window sill outside drawn curtains. Often the men go out specially to buy a black suit, and often as many as six cars filled with tearful relations follow the hearse. Frightful rows ensue, too, because someone who thinks he’s important enough to travel in the second car only gets a seat in the third car. Invariably, according again to our local undertaker, its the 42nd cousin once removed who screams and cries the loudest because he’s been on the booze since dawn.

At the funeral of a cockney gypsy who had married again after his first wife died, the first wife’s family were lined up on one side of the grave, the second wife and her family on the other, each glaring across at the other. As the coffin was lowered the first wife’s son shook his fist at the second wife, hissing, ‘He’s gone to lie with a good woman now’. Whereupon the son of the second wife nipped round the back, pushed the first wife’s son into the grave and jumped on top of him. A glorious free-for-all resulted, which was only stopped by the arrival of the police.