My parents are buried in the Henley Road cemetery, about a mile from my house. Compared with Italian, French and Greek cemeteries, British graveyards are boring and drab resting places. The wonderful cemeteries I have seen in Paris, Milan and Athens are full of remarkable family vaults, some like small chapels, plus elaborate headstones and statues galore.You get occasional disappointments. Francois Truffaut's grave in Montmartre cemetery is
marked by a flat black slab, overhung by branches. It is a surprisingly low key memorial for one of the brightest lights of the French New Wave of filmmakers. There was little sign that anyone had visited it recently; I had considerable trouble finding it despite the helpful cemetery plan given out at Montmartre's entrance. I remember Steven Spielberg's heartfelt tribute to Truffaut at the 1985 Oscars after the French master's tragically early death. In the same cemetery, the composers Offenbach and Berlioz have far more impressive tombs.But Henley Road cemetery has its points of interest. On its north side it is dominated by t
he BBC's monitoring centre with its huge satellite dishes. This records TV and radio programmes from all over the world. Thus it was the first place outside Germany to learn of the surrender in 1945 and the first place outside Russia to learn of the coup against Gorbachev in 1991. Bizzarrely, Gorbachev explained afterwards that, while he and his family were locked up after the coup, he kept in touch with what was happening in Russia by listening to the BBC Russian service.....
Most of the graves in Henley Road are more like Truffaut's grave than that of Berlioz. This is especially obvious on the newest section on the east side where the graves are packed in very tightly between narrow paved paths. At least my parents' grave is more widely spaced from its neighbours and covered in grass. I usually visit an old friend's grave in this cramped section. He died in October 2002. But it was not until January 2003 that we finally had his funeral. He died in the Royal Berkshire Hospital and there was no known relative to claim his body and arrange a funeral. Thus he fell into the care of a specialist worker at the hospital who looks after such bodies. At any one time there are around twelve bodies in the cold store awaiting a relative to be traced. Some may have a name; some may be completely unidentified.Sooner or later an unidentified body has to formally disposed of and the social worker at the RBH would visit the local Registrar of Births and Deaths to sort out the paperwork. Brian was fortunate in having friends to take an interest in him and push for a decent funeral. We did not know where any of his family, even his ex-wife, might be living or how to trace them.
It was not just the social worker at the hospital who took an official interest in Brian. To our surprise, he had several thousand pounds in various savings accounts, even after the funeral expenses. Thus, the "Bona Vacantia" department got involved. This is one of the oldest Government departments anywhere in the world. The Latin title means literally "empty goods" and it looks after the affairs of anyone who dies without leaving a will and without known relatives. I had a brief correspondence with them, listing the friends with an interest in Brian and suggesting destinations for his money - such as charities I knew that he was interested in. They replied courteously, explaining that, unless there was a will legally recording Brian's wishes, they could not accept our suggestions. Any surplus funds from Brian's estate would go to the State, though if relatives turned up years later the money would be distributed to them.But Bona Vacantia were legally able to fund a headstone and so we chose a beautiful blue granite slab with gold lettering : "Brian Brewer: A good and kind man". That wording was chosen by a genuine friend and neighbour who looked after Brian in his last years as he was sinking into early senility and took him a meal each day. It summed up our happy memories of him. But compared to the surrounding headstones talking about a much-loved grandfather, mother, sister, etc, it seems a very bare memorial to his 60+ years on earth.
But Brian's end was not without humour. He worked in the motor trade for years and was very patriotic. I remember another friend on the funeral day declaring how outraged Brian would have been to be transported on his final journey in a stretch Volvo (and a metallic silver one to boot!) rather than a good traditional British hearse... By the time Bona Vacantia had approved the release of funds and we had chosen a headstone, it was going into 2005. Not surprisingly, the engravers put the wrong date of death on the headstone - October 2004 rather than 2002. They had probably just been doing loads of "2004" engravings. It was a serious blunder, as they should have sent us a proof-reading copy of the proposed text before putting drill to granite. But we were sure that Brian would have been amused; a friend declared that he was given two years off Purgatory, courtesy of the bungling Co-op Funeral Service. So the headstone will bear the wrong date in perpetuity.
I heard some time ago that the London police typically have 800 unidentified and unburied bodies on their hands at any one time. This sounded incredible, until you realise that London has about thirty times the population of Reading. Thirty times twelve makes 360. Then add in the fact that London is going to be a magnet for the homeless, vagrant, drifter and refugee from all over the world and 800 does not seem so high. It is part of the squalid underside of any prosperous city or town which no one wants to think about.
A local voluntary worker with the homeless ran a soup kitchen and drop in centre and was regularly summoned by the police to identify bodies. Typically it was an old alcoholic who had fallen in the river or been found dead from exposure after a winter's night outside. Usually the conversation would go: "Yes, that's old Tom. He was a regular for the last six months at the centre. No, sorry, he never gave his surname. I think he had a sister in Glasgow....sorry, I don't know her name...".
Without a name or date of birth or any official documents such as a bank card or National Insurance (Social Security) Number, the police are totally stuck. The body will eventually be laid to rest in a pauper's grave at public expense.
About twenty years ago, workers demolishing an old house about half a mile east of St James found skeletal remains in the attic. There was an empty cider bottle nearby, but no other clue to the identity or lifestyle of the deceased. I remember our parish priest at the time praying for the repose of this unnamed soul and felt some inadequate consolation that someone cared about him for a few seconds.
The wonderful words of "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" always come to mind in a graveyard:
Time like an ever flowing stream
Bears all her sons away.
They fly, forgotten as a dream,
Dies at the waking day.
Most of the people in the fancy tombs in Paris are forgotten, apart from a few big names like Berlioz, Jean-Paul Satre, Chopin, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett. And, to judge from the size of the memorials, they were all people of serious substance and fame while they were alive. The BBC site seems a fitting neighbour for Henley Road; one full of forgotten news which seemed so important at the time, one full of forgotten people.
