The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

‘Oh, look at that – Molly Boyntree!’ Julian’s mother points, excited, at a tall brunette in a boxy trouser suit. ‘She writes for the Sentinel, doesn’t she? We never get it at home because Ollie says it’s too lefty, but I’ve seen her on the telly.’

‘Oh yes, I recognize her.’ I turn to take in the well-known journalist. ‘She was on Question Time last Thursday.’

Laura Semley snorts her derision. ‘She earns a hundred grand a year attacking the establishment and then sends her children here; the oldest is at Eton. The hypocrisy!’

‘Arabella?!’ Julian’s mother peers at an Amazonian blonde nearby. I recognize Leo Beaton-Wallace’s mum, the one who had me down as a tiger. I roar, silently, at her.

Laura Semley raises an eyebrow. ‘What are you doing, Harriet?’

‘Nothing,’ I whisper back.

‘Arabella Roslyn! My goodness, I think I’ve just seen someone I was at Heathfield with!’ Julian’s mum rushes off, and I watch as the two women hug enthusiastically.

‘It’s extraordinary, really, how many of us discover connections with this school.’ Laura Semley beams benevolently at the reunion. ‘Either I was at school with someone’s mum, or my husband works with the dad, or we’re neighbours in the country, or our families were. It really is a small world.’

I say nothing, but hear a scream of laughter as the Heathfield old girls obviously share some fond memory: caught smoking on the roof? Carpeted for staying out too late with an Etonian boyfriend? I try to imagine what boarding school life was like among girls of this kind.

‘Don’t you think?’ Laura is asking me. I don’t know if she’s still referring to the cosy little circle of Griffin parents, but I do know I want to escape.

‘Ah, Guy has found Mr Cullen. Better go. Bye bye!’ I make my way quickly towards Guy. He is standing in one of the building’s side entrances, talking under an ivy-covered archway with the bursar.

Unfortunately, the conversation I join is even more awkward than the one I’ve left behind.

‘Well, it’s simply that …’ Guy looks flustered beneath the bespectacled gaze of Mr Cullen. ‘I don’t think we … will be able to pay the full amount at this point …’ Guy shifts his weight from foot to foot while Mr Cullen fixes him with a glacial stare; he has spotted the torn trouser leg, and his eyes sweep from my husband’s face to his knees and back again. ‘I’m expecting to come up with the whole lot by the end of this month.’

‘I’m afraid I shall have to apply the penalty charge, Mr Carew.’ Cullen shakes his head slowly and I can almost hear the mournful sound of a bell tolling a funeral. ‘I can’t extend the deadlines at whim, you will appreciate. Some parents make the most extraordinary efforts to pay on time, and it wouldn’t be fair on them.’

‘Of course, of course … It will be in by the end of the month,’ Guy stutters. ‘Alex is in the scholarship set; we’re very very keen for him to stay on and do well.’

We certainly are; if he passes his scholarship exam this summer, the otherwise unaffordable fees at Wolsingham shrink by a quarter.

I feel torn: my sympathy is with Guy because poker-faced Mr Cullen seems to be enjoying the humiliation of a hard-up parent; yet surely we aren’t the only family to find it difficult to pay £15,000 a year for our son’s education? I know that on our way home Guy will spend the entire time working out what commission, ghost-writing or speech-writing he can embark on between now and the end of the month. On the other hand, Guy’s difficulty is self-inflicted: the Griffin is important to him; I don’t have a tradition to keep up, only three children to educate as best we can.

‘Mum! Dad!’ Alex bounds across to us. He recognizes Mr Cullen, and, guessing that money talk is taking place, falters momentarily. Then he quickly bounces back. ‘I wanted to show you my new classroom.’

Even Mr Cullen melts a little at the sight of such boyish excitement. ‘Well, you’d better go with your son,’ he tells Guy. ‘I shall have a word with the Head. But the end of the month please – no later.’ Mr Cullen disappears through the archway into an inner courtyard, and Guy blows out a huge sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath all this time.

We follow Alex out of the main school building. I marvel as ever at the polished brass, the cupboards packed with silver cups, the shiny black-and-white tiles, the portraits of solemn men who look down on this budding grove of academe: yesterday’s life of learning, at today’s mad prices.

Alex shows us his classroom. Large, sun-filled, and with twenty battered iron-framed oak desks, their flip-tops etched with the names of past generations of Griffins. Guy scoots around, turning off the radiators and shutting the windows, muttering savagely, ‘Talk about burning money!’ At home he won’t let me turn on the heating until the end of October.

‘Well, that’s that, then.’ Guy squeezes my hand as we descend the stairs. I hug Alex. ‘Good luck, my darling.’ Guy does the same. After seeing Guy hug and kiss his eldest goodbye, Grandpa Carew once muttered, ‘Must you slobber over the boy?’ I watch the two of them smile bravely at one another: the son fears the school year ahead, the father, the bills in its wake. I am struck once again by how similar they are, with their dark floppy hair, lanky frame and eyes shiny with curiosity. My heart fills with tenderness. Then, in a flash, Alex is out of his father’s embrace and running back to his classroom where the first registration of the school year is already taking place.

Guy and I make our way back to our bicycles through the straggling parents still chatting or waving goodbye on the tarmac. Slowly, I put on my helmet and mount my bicycle. I look back at the gracious façade: is this really what is best for my children?

‘I’m going to ring Percy and see if I can edit a couple of extra manuscripts,’ Guy says as he tightens the strap of his helmet under his chin. ‘If he can pay me up front, then we’ll have the money by the end of the month.’

My husband has no doubts: we must do everything we can to ensure our children a place in this world.

‘Ye-es,’ I say automatically. And then I wonder if I shouldn’t be thinking of asking Mary Jane Thompson for five days instead of three at HAC. I’d sworn to myself that I would get the balance right between work and home, that I would hold down a satisfying job but somehow manage to be on hand with a tissue or a plaster, ready to help out with schoolwork or a misunderstanding among friends. How realistic is it now, when soon we’ll have two sons at an unaffordably priced school?

‘Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda,’ Guy intones as he pedals.

‘Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?’ I sing along, trying to still my doubts.

4

‘This is Harriet, our fund-raiser and fixer, and this is our receptionist, Anjie.’ Mary Jane Thompson, Secretary of HAC (South London branch), introduces us to a potential donor. The pin-stripe suit, clean-shaved face and confident expression suggest a City man. Mary Jane’s syrupy tone confirms his net worth to be in the six-figure range; she doesn’t do niceynice unless at the prospect of a big reward.

‘Oh, hullo.’ City man bestows a benevolent smile at us underlings before following the boss into her office.

Mary Jane calls her tiny office the ‘inner sanctum’. We call it Fortress Thompson, as she could barricade herself inside and survive for days, lobbing deadly questions and put-downs all the while in our direction. Inside, she keeps a personal kettle because she complains that the one Anjie and I share constantly needs descaling; a small fridge to keep the Cokes cold for her contacts; and a digital radio tuned to Radio 4 at all times. She has Tippexed ‘MJT’s chair’ to mark her ownership

of the only decent chair in the office.

Mary Jane doesn’t talk; she dictates memos.

As in, ‘Team spirit can only thrive when negativity is replaced by positive feedback.’ In other words, any criticism of the way Mary Jane does things is not welcome. And, ‘Privacy is key to creating the mood of trust and competence necessary to secure a big donation.’ Which means, leave me to deal with the rich, important men over lunch or behind closed doors.

Before she shuts the door behind her latest visitor, we hear her opening gambit – the one we have come to know wordfor-word: ‘Ah that?’ she exclaims, as if surprised that the visitor has spotted the one and only photograph hanging on her wall. ‘It’s me and Gordon on the steps of Number 11 – back in 1998, when they chose me as one of the ten recipients of the Inner-City Community Workers’ Achievement Award. I was really very chuffed, though of course I’d never expected to be honoured in any way … I like to get things done and … well, I think I can honestly say I do get them done …’ She issues a self-deprecating chortle. ‘Well, as Gordon said to me as he handed over my award …’ Here, as always, she shuts the door – so that Anjie and I have never heard the memorable exchange between Gordon Brown and our boss.

Anjie begins to sort the post, I check my emails.

Anjie is a beautiful, voluptuous Jamaican, with two perfect children who smile on her desk, photographed in their St Peter’s C of E Secondary School uniform. Anjie’s husband, whom she calls ‘his nibs’, works as a builder. ‘His nibs got so much cash out of those sheds he built, he’s been showering me and the children with presents.’ Anjie rolls her eyes. ‘Girl, he’s given me a bottle of scent and a hat – have you ever seen me wear a hat?! And Paula got a new dress and Luke got a scooter … I say to him, “Why don’t you save, William Jones, why don’t you put some money aside for the rainy days ahead?”’ She sighs, takes up a paper knife to slit open an envelope. ‘Does he think money grows on trees, I want to know.’ And then her usual refrain: ‘If I’d known then what I know now …’

But I know she doesn’t mean it. William, a slim, sleek man with a beaming white smile, drives his wife home from the office every evening – and just before five thirty Anjie takes over the teeny bathroom we share, applying another coat of lipstick and mascara.

The South London branch of HAC has its office on the second floor of a shabby Victorian building, above an Indian take-away. By mid-morning, a pungent curry smell fills our two rooms, and we can hear the owner yelling in Bengali at his cooks. We are on Clapham High Street, and from our windows we can see brand-new banks and fast-food chains, old unkempt houses and cafés, shops and a criss-crossing of buses, cars, pushchairs and passers-by.

I sit under the poster Mary Jane brought in last summer: a bespectacled bumble bee at her computer. The caption underneath reads, Worker bee. ‘Isn’t it fun?!’ Mary Jane had squealed with delight at her purchase. ‘Though, in your case,’ she had added archly, ‘it should say “part-time worker bee”.’

Mary Jane cannot forgive me for being here only three days a week. To her, part time means half-hearted. ‘I suppose the brood is baying for its tea?’ she’ll ask sarcastically when I start clearing my desk and showing signs of an imminent departure. Or, ‘Trouble at the homestead?’ when I am on the telephone trying surreptitiously to ascertain that Guy and Ilona have tea, schoolwork or Calpol dosage under control. For Mary Jane, a divorcée with no children, my priorities are all wrong. ‘Work gives you back what you put into it. Families wring you out like a tea towel,’ she likes to warn, ‘and then drop you when they realize they’ve got something they’d rather do.’ We gather from this that Mr Thompson left his wife for someone else. But Mary Jane does not confide in us, and Anjie and I have no wish to press her.

‘We’ve got trouble on our hands.’ Anjie holds up an official-looking letter. ‘Social Services want to know why we refused to take on Jesus Jones again. Wasn’t he the thug from Camden?’

‘He was …’ And I start cataloguing young Jesus’s sins on my fingers: ‘He spat at the counsellor, he punched one of the boys on the holiday, seduced one of the girls and tried to set fire to the barn at Hadley House. Hardly an HAC success story, I’d say …’

‘And they called a demon child like that Jesus – heavens!’ Anjie, a born-again Christian, is incensed.

‘Yes. Parents with a sense of irony but no notion of discipline. I’ll write to Social Services today.’

I check my emails. A City banker I’d approached for a corporate donation asks for yet another meeting. An advertising big shot turns down the chance to sponsor our annual fund-raiser: ‘Your celebrity-punch is good, but not great: you can’t deliver Jeremy Clarkson, Rory Bremner or Ian Hislop. These are the names you need to get people like me on board.’

A local printer refuses to charge ‘your excellent charity’ for his work on our forthcoming brochure – yikes! I remember that I am supposed to be finalizing said brochure this week with Mary Jane. And a handful of retired professionals, prepared to put up with Child Protection checks and foulmouthed disadvantaged youngsters giving them lip, volunteer to help us staff the holiday projects, which consist of a week in our homes in Devon and Suffolk.

I steal a look at the big planning diary on my desk, and the red circled dates stand out like chicken pox spots: they warn me when the Griffin school fees are due. The thirtieth, only a week away. Can we make it? Guy’s chum Ken Wright needs a speech-writer for his forthcoming presentation to a leisure firm: that should bring in a fair amount, and Ken is usually quick to pay. The bursar was quite clear that, if we missed the deadline, he would need to bring the matter up with Merritt, the headmaster – and, who knows, maybe the Board of Governors? The thought of those Griffin parents, well-off and smugly confident that their children have the best of everything, makes my heart sink. I’d rather spend every weekend stacking shelves at ASDA than face their pity.

Indeed, I wonder whether shelf-stacking might not be better paid than working for a small charity. I had never dreamed of becoming a Lady Bountiful. I had met a few among my mother’s friends, and they struck me as middle-class, middle-aged women who liked the sound of their own voice. They welcomed the opportunity to do good, but above all to organize other people’s lives – or at least coffee mornings and bingo evenings, raffle sales and the collection of second-hand books.