Class (46 page)
With the floral tributes the working classes really come into their own. Once again, because of their inability to express themselves verbally, they spell it out with flowers. On the hearse are likely to be cushions and pillows with ‘Mum’ written across, empty chairs saying ‘We’ll Never Forget You, Dad’, teddy bears or favourite dogs for the death of a child, bleeding hearts, harps with a broken string, all made entirely of flowers. Around the Elephant and Castle people often pay tribute to a man’s profession. One East-Ender had a whole market stall full of fruit and vegetables, with all the price tickets, made entirely of different-coloured carnations, which took six men to lift onto the hearse. A landlord is often given a glass of foaming beer made entirely of white and brown chrysanthemums, while a bookie might have a floral winning post. One East-End boxer had his last fight almost to scale, with a ring, a referee and two boxers—all made of daisies. A florist told me the working classes would consider it insulting to give someone a small posy of spring flowers. If an old age pensioner comes into the shop and you steer her towards something that looks within her price range, she still insists on buying long-stemmed chrysanthemums at £1 a flower.
The party afterwards will be a terrific booze-up with crates and crates of beer and masses of stodgy food. One scrap-metal merchant even put up a marquee in his garden. Everyone gets plastered and then does song and dance acts. David Storey told me how he once went to a friend’s funeral in Yorkshire. Not knowing the dead man’s family, it was only after freezing beside the grave for twenty minutes that he discovered, on asking one of the mourners, that he was at the wrong funeral.
‘Never mind, lad,’ comforted the mourner, ‘they’ll all be meeting up at the Black Bull same as us afterwards’.
After the funeral Sharon and Dive would club together to buy Mr D-D a headstone, perhaps inscribed with the words ‘Have a Good Sleep, Dad’. They would also put another entry in the local paper thanking everyone for their condolences and floral tributes. A year later, it would be considered very remiss if an
In Memoriam
notice didn’t appear in the same paper:
God took Dad home.
It was his will.
But why that way
We wonder still.
Always in our thoughts, fondest love,
Doris, Dive, Sharon, Auntie Edna and little Terry.
Quite often there will be additional notices from several other members of the family. Because the working classes tend not to take part in local affairs, birth, marriage and death, or when they get caught nicking a telly, are the only times they get their names in the paper. Howard Weybridge might put an
In Memoriam
to Eileen in the
Daily Telegraph
, or even one to his elder brother who was killed at Anzio.
Finally our heroes reach the Other Side. How will they fare in the after-life? Harry Stow-Crat is thoroughly enjoying himself. He is just expressing delight at seeing Snipe and Nanny again when suddenly a beautiful angel flaps past and Harry can’t decide whether to take a pot at her or ask her out to lunch. Jen Teale is speechless with admiration at the whiteness of the angels’ robes and wonders whether they use a bio-wash. Mr Nouveau-Richards, having examined the burglar alarm on the Pearly Gates, is boasting to God how much better his own gates on earth were wired up against intruders, and how none of the pearls are as big as the ones he gave Mrs N-R for their silver wedding. Jison is just about to ask Jesus for an in-depth interview. Howard Weybridge is having a round of golf with the Holy Ghost, and Mr Definitely-Disgusting is having a lovely time playing golden oldies on the harp and filling in his football coupon for the match against Limbo in the afternoon.
Only Samantha Upward looked perturbed. Who would have thought, she keeps murmuring to herself disconsolately, that God would say, ‘Pleased to meet you’, when we arrived?
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