Class (8 page)

Harry Stow-Crat doesn’t believe in wives working, or husbands for that matter. It would interfere with shooting and fishing.

The upper classes have nurseries upstairs. The upper-middles call them ‘playrooms’ and tend to have them downstairs so the children won’t miss any cultural pearls dropped by their parents. In the kitchen a cork board groans with Zacharias’s first drawings. Jen Teale, who is determined that little Wayne shall get on in life, has the nursery in the lounge with model soldiers on the mantelpiece and children’s posters on the wall. The garden will be filled with Wendy huts and social climbing frames.

Dive Definitely-Disgusting has no room set aside for him and often sleeps in the same room, or even bed, as his brothers and sisters. The reason they go to bed so late is because Mrs Definitely-Disgusting has to ensure that one child is soundly asleep before she can put the next one to bed, and so on. The cot is often bought with Embassy coupons.

The upper classes send their children to bed at six-thirty so that they’ll be out of the way before their father comes back from shooting or the city. The role-reversed upper-middles who believe that contact with the father is essential, tend to keep them up slightly later so they’ll have half an hour with Daddy before going to sleep. Gideon Upward, knackered after a hard day, is corrected by little Zacharias every time he tries to skip a page of Paddington Bear and longs for a bit of upper-class peace downstairs with a large gin and tonic.

Sleeping alone, the middle-class child is often frightened of the dark, but his parents can afford to leave a light on all night outside his room.

The middle classes have always given a lot of parental authority to the father. The upper and working classes tend to leave discipline to the mother, nanny or grandmother. But, with shorter working hours and less shift work, the working-class father is tending to be at home more, take more interest in his children and no longer be ashamed to be seen pushing the pram.

‘Vic takes baby up the park on the weekend, while I get the dinner on,’ is a typical working-class remark.

Equally, as the upper classes get poorer and can’t afford servants, the fathers are forced to pay more attention to the children.

‘I used to shove the baby into his arms,’ said one monthly nurse, ‘and walk out of the room. He’d hold it like a rattlesnake; but by the time I left he was pushing the pram and changing nappies.’ One upper-class husband, she said, refused to push the pram, but would walk behind his wife when she was pushing it, pushing her.

By the time the middle-class child is a year old, say the statisticians, he will be less likely to have a tantrum than the working-class child, will have had a much better diet and be off the bottle (as though he’d been on an alcoholic binge for the first twelve months). Harry Stow-Crat will have had a grille put in the back of the estate car to stop Georgie bothering Snipe. Georgie will have had his first party, which he won’t remember, but which was a great show-off occasion for his nanny. Jen Teale’s child will now be referred to as a ‘toddler’ or a ‘tiny tot’. Samantha will be out on the culture beat hawking little Zacharias round museums and art galleries to stop herself becoming a cabbage. The Hayward Gallery won’t allow prams inside but provides baby slings to help Mummy appreciate Dada.

CHILDREN’S CLOTHES

Little Georgie Stow-Crat will be out of long dresses now and into romper suits with Peter Pan collars, or short trousers which he will wear until he’s half-way through prep school. Occasionally in Hyde Park on cold days one sees the camp sight of little upper-class boys wearing tights under their shorts. He might occasionally be allowed to wear jeans like the middle classes, but never ones that fit, in case their tightness stops him carrying on the line. Upper-class little girls are smock-marked.

The middle classes dress their children like small adults in the hope that they’ll grow brighter and more adult earlier. In the same way that the upper classes force boy babies into little dresses, the middle classes force little girls into jeans. Jen Teale’s daughter, Christine, wears her dresses slightly too short, to display hen’s bum knickers.

Tracey-Diane Nouveau-Richards in casual clothes

All little girls, in fact, are lower-middle by inclination. If allowed, they would always dress like Christine in peasant blouses with elasticated waists and sleeves, their hair in bunches, sticking out above the ears; or like Tracey-Diane Nouveau-Richards in earrings, with painted toenails, huge nylon bows in the hair, pink plastic butterfly slides and white slingback or even high-heeled shoes. The Teales and the Nouveau-Richards encourage such prissiness by saying, ‘Always try to be a little lady’, or ‘Isn’t Tracey-Diane a little flirt?’ Mrs Nouveau-Richards, who believes in getting her pound of flesh from the nanny, insists that all Tracey’s clothes are ‘hand’ washed as she calls it. Mrs Definitely-Disgusting dresses her children in brightly coloured polyester and acrylic—shocking pink, mauve, royal blue and turquoise being the most popular. They also wear very shiny T-shirts with ‘Ars-nel’ on them and mock suede coats with nylon fur collars. The upper classes only used to allow their children to wear anoraks on the ski slopes, but have now given in.

Hair is also a class indicator. Upper-class little boys have their curls brushed flat and cut in the shape of a pudding basin. The middle classes have their hair tapered like Cliff Richard. Upper-class little girls either wear their fringe on the eyebrows like Shetland ponies or drawn off their foreheads (pronounced ‘for-rids’) with a small velvet bow at the side or the crown of the head. They sometimes wear Alice bands, but sewn and with proper velvet, not made out of stretch material. Jen Teale cuts Christine’s fringe half-way down the forehead, so there is no danger she won’t be able to see out. She cuts Wayne’s hair short at the back so that half an inch or two of neck shows. The working classes no longer Brylcreem their kiddies’ hair into tight curls—too much like the ‘darkies’—but they do brush Baby’s hair upwards like a Sioux Indian’s.

Until recently it was much easier to tell a child’s background from its clothes than its mother’s. But since the entire nation’s youth is now clad in spin-offs from whatever film is fashionable and since Mary Quant (who staged the great ‘sixties revolution, making duchesses interchangeable with shop girls) has gone into children’s clothes, all children will soon look alike.

THE RÉGIME

Upper-class mothers believe in fresh air and walks to feed the ducks in the afternoon. They’re very park conscious. Ducks in Kensington Gardens ought to be members of Weight Watchers, so stuffed are they with bread (but never sliced, because the upper classes think its common.) Ducks that live near the Round Pond in Hampstead get whole-wheat crusts. As soon as Georgie Stow-Crat can walk he is put on a pony. From Monday to Friday upper-class London children have to make do with the rocking horse at Harrods.

Conventional upper-class children have cake, sandwiches and perhaps as a treat an ice at four o’clock, what the working classes describe as ‘afternoon tea’. Middle-class children have high tea at about six consisting of baked beans, beef-burgers or fish fingers and yoghurt. The working classes tend to have the same, but if any of the food is cooked the meal is called ‘a dinner’: ‘Karen has a dinner at lunchtime and a dinner in the evening’. The working classes might also say, ‘I gave Baby juice and cereal at three’. The upper classes would specify ‘orange juice’, and ‘cornflakes’ or ‘Weetabix’. The lower you get down the social scale the more likely people are to use convenience words, like ‘teacher’ for ‘schoolmaster’ or ‘mistress’. The lower-working classes eat chip butties and sweets all day—they don’t have meals.

Upper-class children tend to have other children over to tea at four as a social occasion. Middle-class children come over to play at any time. When the middle classes send their children to state schools the children ask their working-class schoolmates to tea, then feel hurt because they never get asked back. It never occurs to Zacharias Upward that Dive Definitely-Disgusting might feel ashamed of the smallness of his house and the fact that he doesn’t have a bedroom to himself.

The working classes tend to cram their children with sweets, cheap placebos like ‘Molteasers’, ‘Croonchy’ and ‘Cadbury’s Fruit and Not’. Samantha Upward, having read about nutrition, tends to restrict Zacharias’s sweet-eating, although career mums, conscious of being away too much, bombard their children with guilt presents every time they’re late home. Little Zacharias, who is only allowed two sweets after lunch and is fed up with museums, wishes Samantha would get a part-time job, so he could get guilt presents too.

Upper-class children are taught nursery rhymes by their nannies and know them all by the time they’re eighteen months, giving them a vocabulary of about 500 words. Traditionally a lot of nursery rhymes chronicle the activities of their forbears anyway. Little Jack Horner pulling out a plum, for instance, refers to the fat pickings culled by the Horner family during the dissolution of the monasteries.

Sharon Definitely-Disgusting only knows television jingles. In a recent quiz at a state school none of the eleven-year-olds could say what Little Miss Muffet sat on.

STAYING WITH GRANNY

Working-class children, as has been said before, often live with or near their grandmother, so the working-class Nan is much the best with children because she’s had the most practice. Georgie Stow-Crat’s grandparents live in the country, have lots of room and servants to take the children off their hands. Zacharias Upward’s grandparents live on their nerves and an ever-dwindling fixed income. They move into smaller and smaller houses but hang on to all the ornaments, which are double-parked on every piece of furniture, so that the place looks like an antique shop. All the china is moved up a shelf when the grandchildren come to stay, but eventually they break the place up because they’re fed up with not being allowed to touch anything and with playing the same old brought-out game of bagatelle. A terrible family row develops because one ball-bearing disappears. Both daughters and daughters-in-law feel on trial all the time and the tension is transmitted to the children. If they’re let out into the garden, footballs snap the regalia lilies. Mealtimes are a nightmare because the middle classes are obsessively hot on table manners.

‘Why do all my grandchildren eat as though they’re gardening?’ is a typical upper-middle-class granny remark.

Children invariably let the side down by saying, ‘Why can’t we have baked beans in front of the telly like we do at home?’

Upper-middle-class grannies invariably had nannies to bring up their own children and cannot understand why their grandchildren should be so exhausting, or so much more badly behaved than their own children were. They forget that they only saw them when they were presented, newly washed, for an hour after tea.

Samantha Upward drives her mother-in-law crackers. Every time Zacharias interrupts, she stops whatever adult conversation she is having to answer his question.

The middle classes tend to reason.

The working classes tend to clout.

The working classes have dummies. Middle-class children are more likely to suck their thumbs.

GROWING UP

Sexual modesty is also a good index of social class. The majority of the working classes never see their parents naked, which must be quite an achievement as they often sleep in the same room—rather like undressing on the beach.

Social class 1 (which according to the Census, includes scientists, doctors and structural engineers) are much more likely to let their children see them with no clothes on. Pretty horrifying really, and enough to put one off sex for life, having a hairy scientist streaking round the house.

The upper-middle classes are less likely to worry about masturbation and more likely to tell their children the facts of life. They are aided in this by Althea, of Dinosaur Books fame, who has written a very explicit children’s book about having a baby. Known locally as the ‘rude’ book, it is a great favourite to read aloud when Granny comes to stay.

To Jen Teale the word ‘rude’ means ‘slightly smutty’, to the upper class it means ‘impertinent’. Similarly the uppers use ‘cheeky’ to mean impertinent whereas to Jen Teale it means a bit risque or near the knuckle.

The working classes have difficulty explaining things so you get their children coming into the public library and saying,

‘I want a book about life.’

‘Whose life?’ asks the librarian. ‘Biographies are over there.’

‘Facts of life, Miss.’

Georgie Stow-Crat doesn’t need to be told about sex because he’s seen plenty of farm animals copulating. As a result upper-class men often take their wives from behind.