About this time last year, a French friend of ours suddenly died. Another friend, called Ros, was talking to her on the telephone when Elizabeth excused herself, emitted what sounded like a stomach rumble-and the line went silent. Ros rang the police, then remembered that we lived nearby in north London, and called to tell us what had happened. My wife, who happened to have a key, set off at once, arrived at the same time as the police, and let them in. Elizabeth lay slumped in a chair, clearly dead; the computer still on, a cigarette warm in the ashtray.
Ros and I turned up soon afterwards. The police were very kind (it was the young female officer's first corpse and she was almost as upset as we were), but having made sure we were all right they asked if they could leave us to it. Fortunately, Elizabeth's affairs were in good order. We telephoned her doctor, her landlord in Belgium and her family in France. We changed the message on the answerphone, sent out e-mails to all her main clients (she was a translator), and looked for bank and credit card statements. We were glad to keep busy, to escape the oppressive presence of death in a small living room, but we were also able to get a lot of things done. The point is: we were allowed to; nobody stopped us. It was only when B-a friend of Elizabeth's who used to work at the French embassy in London-got involved that we became aware of the cultural gulf we had discovered.
B and Elizabeth's family were astounded by how things are done in Britain. Their assumption, based on experience of a similar recent bereavement in France, was that the flat would be sealed off, everybody would be kept out and the police would maintain a presence by the corpse until the undertaker arrived. Above all, they were sure that no one would be left alone with Elizabeth and her property. In the abstract, this sounds like a rational and effective system. Family, friends and passing strangers can and do steal rings off the fingers of the dead, or walk off with valuables. But there is also a real disadvantage to this caution. Most people die with few assets, and most of us do not pinch things from the bedside table of a defunct relative or friend. In this case, we would have been most distressed to be shut out from the scene of death, and treated as potential thieves, when there were things to be done which we were well qualified to do.
In the event, the police were quite happy to leave us with the dead body. A hyperactive GP and a hatchet-faced undertaker eventually came to do what was required, but we had no sense of a "death bureaucracy" taking over. Put it down to British pragmatism, inefficiency, or sheer lack of resources. Talk about French central planning or administrative rationalism. Blame Descartes or Napoleon. The plain fact remains: the British and the French states impinge on our deaths, as on our lives, in very different ways.
The medical side was equally casual in Britain. Elizabeth was only 52, but overweight and in poor health; she was without dependants and seems to have made a conscious decision to enjoy life to the full-to indulge in food, drink and cigarettes as long as she could. However shocking, her death was not unexpected. The GP, who had seen her a few weeks before, simply assumed that she had died from a recurrence of earlier problems and conducted the most cursory examination. There was no need for an autopsy, he assured the coroner. This amounts to guessing, rather than determining, the cause of death, and is, in a sense, amateurish. In France, the process would be much more systematic and professional. One can indeed see the disadvantages of the way Elizabeth's death was dealt with: if foul play had been involved it would certainly have gone undetected. Yet it also speeded things up and avoided unnecessary upset.
a couple of Elizabeth's relatives arrived in Britain the day after her death. They behaved appallingly. It soon became evident that her brothers and sisters had long ago written her off as the "dud" sibling, the silly, overweight spinster in a family of high achievers. They had never come to visit her and seemed amazed by the respect and affection she enjoyed among her friends and fellow translators. They came for a couple of days, treated us very high-handedly, and left, leaving us to clear out the flat and find a removal company. Several of us ended up spending a week sorting out the paperwork and finding suitable "homes" for Elizabeth's valuable reference material.
The landlord had been sympathetic about giving us time to sort things out-but then on impulse cut off the telephone line. Elizabeth's family summoned us to come and fix it. Because it was my birthday and we had planned an evening out, we refused to do so. But it did occur to me that it was going to be difficult for them to arrange repatriation of the body in a foreign language from a public telephone box. So I called BT and explained the situation. Either I was wonderfully persuasive or I happened upon someone particularly sensitive or sensible. The line was restored. Not for the first time, I thanked God for the pragmatic "inefficiency" of British bureaucracy.
Throughout, the French contingent was wide-eyed with wonder at the casual simplicity of the systems they had to deal with. Elizabeth died intestate, with few possessions and some minor credit card and tax debts outstanding. From her earlier experiences in France, B assumed that we would have to make an inventory of every napkin and ensure that money was rapidly transferred from France to keep the Inland Revenue at bay. She was amazed to discover that it could all be dealt with in a few straightforward letters, that the debts would be wiped out, that no one would need more than a copy of the death certificate, and that the possessions would not be impounded but could simply be distributed among family and friends.
But it was the morgue which really startled me. Elizabeth's visiting relatives wanted to view the corpse and say goodbye. B asked me to check up on opening times. Then she said the most extraordinary thing: "They've all remembered to bring several pieces of identification." The implicit fear was-what? That they might set out for Northwick Park, arrive at the morgue, ask to see their sister's body-and then be turned away because they didn't have the right paperwork? That there might be public servants who would take bureaucratic punctiliousness to such surreal extremes had simply not occurred to me.
I draw no general anti-French or Eurosceptic conclusion from all this, although I think it does reveal a kind of shambolic, perhaps even accidental, decency as a broadly positive element of British life. B's husband put it best. Completing a tour of duty at the embassy, he has now moved on-with some strong and often justified criticisms of this country. Still, he conceded: "England may be a rotten place to live, but there can't be a better place to die."
