Why do we still struggle to say what we really mean? In an age when we’re all encouraged to overshare online, we can be remarkably evasive in real life. We’ve moved on a little from ‘he never married’ – but not much. Only last year, I went to a memorial service for a wonderful man who was so camp he made Liberace look like an SAS officer. He had had a lifetime subscription to Royalty Magazine, and a ferociously proud collection of china figurines. At the reception afterwards, a relation of his lamented how sad it was that ‘he just never found the right girl’. It wasn’t quite the time, but I wanted to reply that she’d have needed the ‘full meat and two veg’. See? Euphemism upon euphemism.
We’re particularly guilty of this linguistic coyness when it comes to matters close to our hearts. Much as I like them, I’ll never quite understand the British obsession with dogs. Eavesdropping on a group of old trouts playing bridge a few weeks ago, I heard one describe how ‘nervous’ Fido is around children. So ‘nervous’ in fact that he’d bitten one of her grandsons on the nose, leaving quite a scar. Rather than acknowledge that Fido was a savage beast who ought to be put down, her partners agreed that it was the boy’s own stupid fault for playing with the family pet, and to howls of agreement, one declared that ‘it’s the children that want training, not the dogs’.
But we’re pretty brazenly euphemistic when talking about our children too. My two-year-old nephew is seriously stubborn at the moment; so much so that his adoring childminder was moved to comment that ‘he knows his own mind’. This perverseness is understandable in a toddler, but as we indulge our little darlings into childhood, we remain reluctant to decry their behaviour. We say that the miniature miscreant is ‘lively’ or ‘a real character’ instead.
We then coach our children (and never admit to it) so that they get through the 11+ or Common Entrance or whatever fiercely competitive exam is required to get them into whichever seat of learning we want them to get into so they can eventually go to Oxford or become doctors. And when that doesn’t happen, when years of Kumon and coaching and cajoling don’t translate into a place at Westminster, we feign a sort of benign indifference. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard other mothers say, ‘I just want him to be happy’, and yearn to yell out ‘bullshit’. We don’t. Or rather, we won’t admit that other things matter too.
Worse, an acquaintance recently told me she was ‘relieved’ that her son had been rejected by Cambridge because ‘it just wouldn’t have been right for him’. So why has she talked about nothing else for years? What sort of societal conditioning has she undergone that has left her unable to admit that she’s gutted because he’s a lovely boy, who’s bright and who’s worked his socks off at his mediocre state school and would have thrived there?
An acquaintance recently told me she was ‘relieved’ that her son had been rejected by Cambridge
The educational competition in London is so relentless, and the lack of space so suffocating, that many of my friends have moved out. I miss them hugely, and even (occasionally) envy them, but a sort of collective class amnesia seems to settle for some of them who talk about ‘having moved to the country’ when all that’s happened is that they’ve moved to the Home Counties because any further out would make their commute impossible. They then talk about ‘the village school’ instead of ‘the local state primary’ which is somehow so much more palatable. Some who’ve moved out to the country proper also talk about keeping ‘a place in town’. The ‘place’ invariably being a studio flat with just about enough room to stand up, and the ‘town’ obviously London Zone 2, probably in ‘North Kensington’ and certainly not in Ladbroke Grove.
But what is it that prevents us from being more straightforward? Is it pride? Or simply the byproduct of generations of classic British understatement? As long as we all stick to these codes, then the shared understanding fosters a sort of camaraderie. And perhaps honesty and the accompanying outpouring of emotion would be far too direct for us to handle.
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