Cambridge Tales 8: ‘Black Tie’

                                                                                                                     For Julian Bates

Some Ph.D. theses start from a highly specific topic and finish (are completed) with it, others start from a rather broad theme which narrows with time until it is specific. Jonathan Palmer’s thesis was of the latter type; which tend to be longer in the completion. He had begun research three years ago with the theme ‘Culture and Communication in Dante’s Commedia’. By the end of his second year, this had settled to ‘The Significance of Forms of Address in Dante’s Purgatorio’. However, the narrowing of his thesis topic had necessitated acquainting himself with swathes of linguistics, semiotics, structuralism, and even anthropology. Whereas he should have been writing up his thesis in the third and final year of his grant, he was doing that only now, in his fourth year, when the money was running out…

His income came from occasional translations and regular teaching for all the colleges. His own college had helped him by giving him free accommodation in one of its houses in return for being the ‘M.A. in Residence’ there. This brought no formal duties, it simply meant keeping an eye on the six undergraduates who lived there, in particular watching out for drug-taking and any mental problems. On the other hand, living with undergraduates had its strains. If a party raged in one of the rooms beyond midnight, it was tricky bringing it to an end single-handed. Three young women also came and went from the house. On one occasion Palmer had walked into the bathroom to have a shave, looked in the mirror as he lathered up, and beheld a pair of naked lovers in the bath behind him.

This morning, which was a dull damp one in February, he went to the kitchen to make his breakfast only to discover that the enormous communal table had been stolen. An amused undergraduate told him that it was on the roof of a nearby college hostel. He then had to deal with the bedder, who regarded him as her ally and insisted on keeping him au courant with her family matters. Today her son was ‘in the thrones’ of moving. After that, and after the five medics had left for lectures, he was able to get on with writing at his huge College desk in an alcove looking onto the garden. Then there was a quiet knock on his door.

He set down his pen, strode over to the door, threw it open, and stood rooted.

It was Peter Cathercole, the only arts student in the house. He was short, whiskery, with a thinning crown and large vivid nose. He looked at Palmer but did not speak. Palmer knew Cathercole smoked pot, and put his unusually blotchy complexion and watery blue eyes, which shifted quasi-humorously, down to that. But Cathercole said:

‘Hi. I’m sorry to bother you. Really. Last night I heard that my brother died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage. He worked at the station. They knew I’m at the College, so they contacted my tutor, and he told me after Hall – ’

For a second, Palmer was lost for words. He just managed to say:

‘That’s terrible… I’m sorry – ’

‘Yes, there was no warning…no-one suspected. The people he worked with say that one minute he had a headache, the next he collapsed unconscious and died… My tutor rang my parents, then I talked to them, and I got back late…’

‘I see…how awful…I’m glad you were with your tutor. I’m shocked…’

‘The thing is,’ continued Cathercole, and again his eyes watered and shifted almost humorously, ‘my parents are arriving today and I wondered if they could stay the night here, in the front room.’

‘Of course, of course… It’s empty, but I think it’s pretty clean.’

‘They say they will bring sleeping bags.’

‘Are you sure? We could get mattresses, and sheets…’

‘No no, it’ll be fine. My mother will organise it all. They might need to stay tomorrow night as well?’

‘No problem – as long as they’re happy sleeping there…’

‘Thanks. Thanks. I really appreciate it.’

‘I’m shocked, and really sorry…’

‘I still can’t believe it’s happened of course. It makes no sense…’

Palmer returned to his desk and looked out at the wintery garden. Cathercole’s parents must live a long way away. How come his brother was in Cambridge too? How come he worked on the railway? Had anyone known that before? Perhaps Peter and his brother were very close…

Just before one, Palmer heard Cathercole go out. Then a car arrived late afternoon with him and his parents. Before formal Hall, Palmer emerged holding his gown and met them. The father was erect, wore a pale grey suit, tie and glasses, and seemed constantly on the verge of saying something, but did not. Mrs Cathercole was short, bustling, and red-faced. Palmer expressed his condolences to them and apologised for the lack of a table to eat at.

The kitchen table materialised during the night. At breakfast, all the medical students were subdued, moved quietly about the kitchen, and promptly left for lectures. The Cathercoles breakfasted in their room.

They must have had a lot to do. They appeared in the kitchen around tea-time, when some of the medics had got in from rowing and were ravenously consuming toast and jam. It was awkward. Mrs Cathercole smiled amiably at them – to her, perhaps, they were just ‘boys’ – and Mr Cathercole hung back silently in his suit. They were in their own world. They took their son out for supper, but Palmer could hear them still coming and going from the front room when he turned his light off.

At lunchtime the following day Peter Cathercole called to say that his parents had left, having arranged the funeral, and were very grateful to him for allowing them to stay in the college house. The funeral was in three days time. Palmer decided he should go.

Although nearly twenty-eight, Jonathan Palmer had never been to a funeral before and did not possess a black tie. It was only the day before the funeral that he realised he should wear one. He did not want to shell out for one, as he could not envisage wearing it again for years. He hit on the idea of going to see Joe, the Kitchen Manager, and asking him if he could borrow one of the black ties that the white-jacketed College waiters wore. To his surprise, the request was met with gravity by Joe and the senior waiters whom he happened to be briefing for a private dinner. It was an expensive-looking woollen tie, and had to be returned immediately.

The funeral was at three o’clock. Palmer, Peter Cathercole and three of the medics gathered in the hall just after two. The three students wore ordinary ties. There was a very good sense of supporting Peter. At 2.15 a hearse glided past the end of the hedge-lined drive and a limousine stopped in the gap. Mr Cathercole appeared. Peter sighed, and with a droll twinkle said:

‘Well, this is it… I suppose I’d better go.’

Ten minutes later, a taxi came to the front door for the others.

They arrived at the Victorian chapel of the City cemetery just as the coffin was being taken from the back of the hearse. ‘Hold onto the pram!’ one of the undertakers barked at a gangly chinless youth, presumably their apprentice. They then rolled it with a rumble onto the concertina contraption whose handle the youth was gripping.

There were about twenty-five mourners, of whom eight were the dead man’s workmates from British Rail, wearing uniform. The family included two sisters. There was no sign of Peter’s tutor, so it occurred to Palmer that he was representing the College. The three students were very quiet.

The service was the most basic Prayer Book one possible, with no tributes and only a concluding hymn. It occurred to Palmer that the reason was that the Cathercole family couldn’t ‘take’ more. Within fifteen minutes they were all following the coffin out for the committal.

And this is when it hit him. They trundled the ‘pram’ between rows of tombstones over grass that had patches of wet earth between. They had fifty yards to go, the ramshackle thing bumped and pitched, the chinless youth brought up the rear, and he was hanging his head right down on his chest whilst trying to control compulsive laughter about something. Palmer noticed that the idiot’s white shirt collar was frayed and his suit greasy. Peter’s mother was beside herself with weeping and his father was holding her up. When they reached the open grave, it was surrounded by slithery peelings of brown mud. The word ‘excremental’ sprang to Palmer’s mind. The hole was like a drop. Suddenly he thought that the students, being medics, must have seen plenty of dead bodies; but their faces were pale and sombre. Then the priest started to intone and it was blatantly obvious that he said it with no feeling, that it was all cold and mechanical on account of this being the sixth time he’d taken the service that day, for someone he had never known, could feel nothing for, did not personally care anything about…and wonderfully, weirdly, outrageously, at that very moment a plane started droning overhead, climbing above the airport, and its droning merged perfectly with the priest’s droning.

Palmer was appalled. The disrespect of the chinless youth made him want to clout him. The resemblance of the mud to faeces turned his stomach. He could not bear Mrs Cathercole’s loud sobbing. The unfeelingness of the priest enraged him. He had never met Richard Cathercole, he did not know what he looked like, he wouldn’t have known who he was if he had clipped his ticket at the station, but wasn’t he worth more than this? As so often, Palmer involuntarily thought of Dante; in this case his piety, the sublimity of his religion, his art… These white shirts and black ties, the chief undertaker’s top hat and tails, the fat brass handles on the coffin and the priest’s unironed surplice were so tawdry, cheap, phoney, Victorian… It was as horrible and absurd as Richard Cathercole’s death itself.

Fuming, Palmer collected himself and walked back with the others to the chapel forecourt, where the return taxi was to meet them. Peter Cathercole came over and told them that there was going to be a ‘wake’ at the University Arms Hotel, to which they were all invited. They thanked him. The taxi arrived. The Cathercoles were shaking the hands of their son’s workmates in turn, and there were evidently some relations or friends of theirs who hadn’t seen each other for a long time. Palmer did not want to keep the taxi driver waiting, nor did he want to be the first to arrive at the wake, so after a decent pause he and the others piled into the taxi and he told the driver to drop them at the marketplace, from where each could make his way to the University Arms when he liked.

As the taxi bowled along, he furiously debated his position. There was no denying, it would be polite to go to the wake. But he wouldn’t actually ‘know’ anyone there, and no-one would know who he ‘was’. Might it not look as though he and the others were there just for the food? He recalled a wedding reception in a court of the College, where the students invited had disgraced themselves by falling on the food before ‘family’. He winced. God no… But to attend the wake was an accepted mark of respect. Might his presence, representing the College, even bring a crumb of comfort to Mrs Cathercole? He would be pleased to talk to her. But would she regard him as incidental, even superfluous, and not want to talk to him? And he just hadn’t known her son, he hadn’t known him; so would his respect seem empty, forced, completely bogus? Just how many of these funeral formalities was one obliged to observe? The funeral itself was ghastly – wasn’t that enough? Yet he knew only too well that all cultures require a wake, some ‘epulary act’ to round off the funeral rites, to bring closure… Hadn’t Bakhtin written that the banquet following Hector’s cremation was ‘the true completion’ of The Iliad, because eating was ‘the triumph of life over death’? Ah, but this wasn’t going to be some Rabelaisian feast, for goodness’ sake, it would probably be egg sandwiches and cups of tea… With waiters. Yes, there would be hotel waiters in white jackets and black ties… He remembered the source of his own black tie and shuddered. The tie was culinary, not funerary. It was a badge of servility. If he wasn’t actually mistaken for a waiter, wearing this tie at Richard Cathercole’s wake would make him feel like one.

The taxi drew up in the market rank. Palmer paid and tipped the driver, as he had before, they all got out, and the medics dispersed. He took off the tie, folded it, and returned it to the College kitchens. He did not go to the University Arms.

© Patrick Miles, 2020

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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.