The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

2

‘It was a disaster.’ Guy shakes his head as he lovingly dries one of the crystal tumblers that he inherited from his aunt Amelia. I’m standing at the sink, hands in foamy water, wondering, once again, what is the point of owning a dishwasher when half your crockery is so fragile that it has to be washed by hand?

‘It went well.’ I rinse the third tumbler. ‘Oliver made you an offer.’

‘Not the one I wanted,’ replies Guy bitterly. ‘In fact, it sounds daft.’

‘Nothing to be sniffy about.’ I remain stubbornly upbeat. ‘And despite the shock announcement, it was quite a success.’

‘Hmmm …’ Guy examines a tumbler against the light: mercifully, no chips.

‘“Hmmm” nothing,’ I snap, exasperated. ‘A job offer doesn’t happen every day. You didn’t even try to look interested.’

‘I’ll ring him, I promise.’ Guy sounds despondent. ‘And the pork belly was delicious, darling.’

Not just the pork, I think: the Merlot was excellent and for once I didn’t have to whisper ‘FHB’ (Family: Hold Back) to Guy in the kitchen. And the peculiar sea-buckthorn juice which he had brought back from his trip to Lithuania gave my trifle an almighty kick. In fact, Guy should be grateful because, once again, we have managed to pass off our threadbare household as a proper, middle-class one.

‘I don’t know …’ Guy sets down the tumbler on the tray with the rest. ‘Maybe it was the news that Pete’s not insured and that ours kicks in only for damage above £600. We don’t need another expense.’

‘We certainly don’t,’ I agree.

Five hours earlier, at eight o’clock, I find my one remaining pair of tights without a run hanging in the children’s bathroom. I sniff a strong, familiar scent: the Lynx ‘Africa’ antiperspirant which Alex insisted on buying during our last shopping expedition.

‘Alex?! Why are you putting on antiperspirant at night?’

My eldest pops his head through the door. ‘I never remember to put it on in the morning.’ He wolf-whistles as I wrench on my tights.

I rush back to our bedroom to get dressed, wondering if my thirteen-year-old is now too old to see his mother only partially clothed.

The doorbell goes.

‘Whaaaaat?’ I ask, disbelieving.

‘No … it can’t be …’ Guy is outraged. ‘Who shows up on the dot at eight when dinner is eight for eight thirty?!’

I sneak a peep from our bedroom window: the Mallards are at our front door. ‘Your guest of honour, that’s who.’

‘Harriet!’ Guy panics. ‘Get dressed!’ Still trying to fix his cufflinks, he rushes downstairs, three steps at a time.

Quickly, I zip up my navy-blue Paddy Campbell dress, a £14 find from the Sue Ryder shop on Clapham High Street last summer, and put on some mascara. I’m nervous: by the time the pork belly is crispy, we will have spent almost ninety minutes in one another’s company – and how can I be entertaining for that length of time? Guy manages these occasions as if they were a school play and he the enterprising and determined Head of Drama who knows how to get the best out of little Joey as Bugsy Malone. All those Carew clan gatherings, school debating societies and Cambridge sherry parties, all those trips to Uganda, Uruguay and Uzbekistan have prepped him to win over an audience – from the cantankerous old cow to the acid-tongued megalomaniac.

I, on the other hand, feel like the tone-deaf girl in the school choir: caught between faking it and hitting a false note. God, let the pork be ready before anyone finds out I don’t know the name of the dictator in Belarus, or what’s on at Tate Modern, and before I’m outed as the one who prefers to talk to her children rather than to a well-known entrepreneur.

I draw a deep breath and walk downstairs.

Our dinner parties, Guy always says, are more about trompe-l’œil than truffle oil: a candlestick hides the mend in the linen tablecloth; Guy and I have the sagging chintz-covered chairs; a drape covers the split sofa cushion. But in the candlelight, the drawing room, as Guy grandly calls our living room, looks inviting. The carpet, from a long-ago visit of Guy’s to Tehran, has withstood admirably the pitter-patter of tiny feet and paws; and the portrait of Great-Grandfather Hector in his major’s uniform smiles protectively upon the room. Even the Carews’ mahogany monstrosities, an over-sized dining table, a matching sideboard, and a chaise longue that cannot be sat on without first undergoing a medical check-up, gleam elegantly. Perhaps Guy’s vigorous weekly polishing, which he insists on carrying out with beeswax, makes a difference after all.

Once upon a time, I dreamt of a home with sleek and contemporary furniture, neutral walls and pale wood floors. It would be a mixture of Scandinavian and Conran, and bear witness to the smooth, serene family life unfolding within its neat confines. What I live with today is an inherited jumble of battered antiques and flowery fabrics, a mix of High Victorian pieces and low-cost foreign finds, a home that bears the brunt of three children, one dog, ever-changing au pairs, and a husband caught between copy deadlines and school fees. I sometimes feel there is too little of me in these rooms – a few photos, my silver christening cup, a painting by a friend who went to the Slade and then disappeared from sight. The rest is all Carew. Then the boys burst in, or I find Maisie cuddling Rufus on the chaise longue, and I realize they bear my imprint, even if the interiors don’t.

‘In the Carpathians, I came across a mother wolf looking for food for her cubs …’ Guy is entertaining the Mallards. ‘She was medium size, with a dark longish pelt. We looked each other in the eye … I tried to explain that I was a parent too.’ Oliver, a big bear of a man, chortles appreciatively. He’s brought us a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and stands by the fireplace, champagne flute in hand, eyes taking in everything from the push-button television to the overdue bills glaring red on my desk by the window. Everything has confirmed Oliver’s image of his Cambridge friend being in need of his largesse, and he beams kindly in our direction.

Oliver’s wife Belinda, decked out in enough Dolce & Gabbana to start her own boutique, is something glamorous in PR. Before I can find out what, she has dismissed my fund-raising for HAC with ‘You are good’, which means frumpy and worthy. I can tell that she finds me unsettling: what she sees as my do-gooding, as well as my part-timer status and unfashionable clothes, make her as self-conscious as if I’d announced that I would be kicking off the dinner party with a Latin grace.

I nervously check the grandfather clock in the corner: it’s only eight thirty. Another hour to go. Belinda’s PR skills fail to conceal her dissatisfaction with the situation. Guy has dragged Oliver into the study for a viewing of the ancestral medals and I am scrabbling for a topic of conversation. I remember vaguely Guy warning me not to raise the subject of children with the Mallards – a terrible accident? A bitter custody battle? Belinda doesn’t look the gardening sort, or the country type. I can’t remember what’s on in the West End. What about books? I belong to a book club, after all.

‘Have you read …?’ I venture.

‘Oh, I haven’t read a book in ages. Simply don’t have the time!’ Belinda looks through me. Then, searching for a crumb of praise to cast my way: ‘Very nice glasses.’ She holds up one of Aunt Amelia’s crystal tumblers, half full of her G and T.

‘Yes … from one of Guy’s aunts …’ And I find myself babbling about Amelia Carew and life in Delhi during the last days of the Raj.

I realize how little I’ve engaged Belinda when she suddenly squeals, ‘There you are!’ and rushes up to the two men, who’ve surfaced from the study.

The doorbell goes: Hallelujah! Charlotte and Jack bounce in, looking lively and in a good mood. My friend’s haircut, manicure, and Marni jacket reassure Belinda that here at least is someone who understands.

Guy pulled a face when I suggested Jack and Charlotte be included. He is fond of Charlotte, but Jack makes him wince. ‘Sorry, HarrietnGuy, I know it’s rude,’ Jack will mutter as he dives for his ever-throbbing BlackBerry, ‘but this is a big one …’ And then, after a few minutes, he’ll explode: ‘Ben, boy! You’ve got yourself a deal!’ But we have to invite the Collinses because, as I reminded Guy, we owe them. They invited us to La Traviata at Glyndebourne last summer, which would have been a truly wonderful treat, had it not been that we had to buy them programmes at £20 each and champagne at £10 per glass. Guy and I had to pretend we were on a mid-summer detox and made do with tap water.

Jack is one of our few friends wealthy enough to impress Oliver: his bonus last year was five times our combined incomes. Despite the personal trainer Charlotte has signed him up with, who takes Jack out on the common twice a week like a well-trained dog, Jack remains stubbornly portly. Although Charlotte tries valiantly to derail his train of boasts tonight, within minutes he manages to work into the conversation the new Porsche and the Tuscan villa they rented for a fortnight last month.

‘Back in your box, Jack!’ Charlotte wags her finger as her husband is about to launch into the price of villa rentals in the Tuscan-Umbrian region.

‘Yes, love.’ Jack nods and bites his tongue.

Guy, I can see, breathes easier. Oliver, who had been asking a lot of questions about real estate near Florence, looks disappointed.

‘Now, tell me about your company – sounds so high-powered …’ Charlotte turns her large, awe-struck eyes on Belinda. A successful career woman is calculated to fill my best friend simultaneously with fear and fascination. We both left university with only the vaguest idea of what we’d like to do professionally: something in the arts – which translated into both of us waiting on tables at the Chelsea Arts Club for that first summer. The minute Charlotte married Jack and it became clear she wouldn’t have to work, she luxuriated in her status of stay-at-home wife as if it were a bath full of Aveda essential oils. But every now and then, when confronted with a tough-talking, high-gloss success story in heels, Charlotte feels a pang of dissatisfaction. These women talk knowledgeably about profit margins and annual returns on investments, but they also have two storybook children, can wear a sleeveless dress without fear, their YSL Rouge Velours is without chips, and they have read the latest bestselling biography of Stalin’s chef. Scaaaaareeeee, as Charlotte would say. Happily for her, Jack constantly reminds his wife that, in his book, career women are ball-breakers, and mums who work child-wreckers. He likes her, he assures her, just the way she is. And he shows his appreciation with countless expensive gifts, weekends away, and ‘second honeymoons’. Charlotte basks in these attentions, while I resent them as reminders that the last time Guy organized a weekend away, we ended up camping with the children in a muddy Devon field; and the last gift he gave me was a clumsily mounted and rather smelly wolf ’s head from Moldova.

The conversation proceeds like a school run: everyone sets off confidently if carefully, certain of where they want to get to and by what route. But little by little we are held up by other people’s dithering, or inconvenienced by their selfishness, and all propriety is ditched as we grow irritable, fearful, and aggressive.

The first to grow irritable is me.

‘HarrietnGuy, this will come as a bit of a surprise to you two,’ Jack practically does a little jig of delight as he tells us, ‘but we’re moving to Chelsea.’

‘Chelsea?!’ I gasp.

‘Chelsea,’ Charlotte confirms. She doesn’t meet my eye – she knows this is darkest treachery. We’ve always lived in Clapham, we’ve always joked about being a short bicycle ride from one another’s kitchen … and now … The clock’s brassy gong calls me to the pork belly.

‘Nothing like a man who wears his wealth lightly,’ Guy mutters as he brings a tray of dirty glasses to the kitchen. ‘A four-bedroom house in Chelsea!’

‘Chelsea is so yesterday,’ I whisper, trying to cheer him up. But in fact I am just as put out: Charlotte and Jack moving north of the river means they’re really out of our league. And to spring it on us – on me – as a surprise!

Guy is doing mental arithmetic: ‘That’ll be … oh, at least £1.5 million. Like putting five children through ten years of boarding school.’

Back at the table, Jack is beaming. ‘Never thought we could afford Chelsea … Pimlico, yes, just about …’

He drones on, and I find myself almost nostalgic for the Carew conversational code: no talk of money, religion, or women.

‘This pork is delicious, Harry.’ Charlotte is trying to steer Jack’s enthusiastic talk away from the move. ‘Organic?’

I know Charlotte too well to fall into her trap. ‘Of course.’ It’s an outright lie, but I have no remorse. Charlotte’s newfound zeal for the ‘natural way’ goes to such ridiculous ends that I have to ignore her diktats.

‘We’ve become Freegans –’ Guy gives ‘Manic Organic’, as he calls Charlotte, a wicked look ‘– we only eat food that’s free. Berries, mushrooms, a quick scour of the dustbins at the back of Safeway and Tesco’s, and’ – he prods the pork with his fork ‘– road-kill.’

Charlotte shudders in distaste: she never knows how to react to Guy’s teasing.

But I’m on Guy’s side. Charlotte drives half an hour in her Chelsea tractor to get to the Nature and Nurture Centre that sells wheatgrass at £35 a bundle, and buys faded, dimpled, wrinkly little fruit and veg at three times the price of their non-organic equivalents. This, despite her regular botox injections, eyelash tinting, and enthusiasm for very unnatural slimming powders.

‘Isn’t your son at Millfield?’ I turn to Oliver Mallard – and realize too late that this was out of bounds.

‘Don’t get me started,’ Oliver sighs, and shrinks into himself like a concertina.

‘Francis is having a rather mixed time,’ chips in Belinda warningly.

But Oliver cannot be stopped. Francis, he explains, is a ‘late developer’. Late developer is the ambitious parent’s favourite euphemism. Poor marks, insufferable behaviour, detentions, suspensions and expulsions: everything can be blamed on their offspring’s late development rather than sheer ineptitude. In Francis’s case, development is so late in coming that the school has told the Mallards that there is no point in his applying to Cambridge, even for Land Economy.

‘Never gave us a clue until now. Always led us to believe he was on track for Oxbridge …’ Oliver shakes his head, inconsolable. I can see he is still grappling with the shock that none of his brilliance has rubbed off on his only son, and none of his money can shoehorn the boy into Papa’s footsteps.

‘Shocking, the way the school handled it!’ Belinda barks indignantly. ‘And now, what are we supposed to do? Look at an ex-poly somewhere?’

You would have thought Francis faced a career as a plumber’s mate.

Guy doesn’t make matters any better by referring cheerfully to his cousin Bertie, who, having failed Oxbridge, went to a red-brick and is now a dope-smoking carpenter somewhere in Devon.

‘Exeter’s better than Oxbridge in some subjects, you know,’ Jack bursts out at one point, defending his alma mater.

Oliver doesn’t listen and goes on grumbling. Why is he paying £24,000-plus a year for a school that can’t deliver a place at Oxbridge? Why are the terms so short, and the breaks so frequent? ‘We end up seeing our children almost as much as their teachers do. It’s outrageous.’

As there is nothing like the failure of someone else’s child to reassure a proud but poor parent that their sacrifice is worthwhile, Guy is all sympathy and solicitude, eyes practically tearful as he asks Belinda if they’ve tried private tutoring.

The sympathy dries up instantly when she lets slip that her suntan, and Oliver’s, are due to a month in St Tropez. This turns the debate back into us-against-them. For some parents, school fees, like the St Tropez holiday, are just another expense; others are forced to live on what’s left.

But in Guy’s eyes there is no other option. Sending the children to private school allows him to hold his head high under the disapproving gaze of those ancestors on his study walls. Military and colonial to their bones, they would otherwise sneer at an heir who scribbles travel books for a living. And so Guy and I divide our lives into school terms: pre-paid, paid in part, paid in full. We earmark our work in terms of what it covers of the children’s schooling: Guy’s regular editing of manuscripts for his friend Percy’s publishing house pays for almost a full year at the Griffin; his article on Marrakesh for an in-flight mag paid for Alex’s and Tom’s second-hand uniforms; my three days at HAC cover – well, not even enough to contribute to the school fund, actually.

While Guy repeats the mantra, ‘Nothing is more important than the best possible education’, I’m often filled with doubts. Do I really believe that we should bankrupt ourselves and worry frantically before every deadline for paying school fees, in order for our children to study Greek and Latin among a host of Hugos and Isabellas? Do I really believe that their intelligence, confidence, health and moral compass will be compromised unless they attend the same establishment their Carew forefathers thoroughly loathed so many years ago?

Guy remains immovable: tradition is sacred, and good schooling a pillar of Carew faith. He really believes that a stint in a particular red-brick building will make all the difference in life, and that a dribbling old wreck called Podge Fitch, who taught Greek and Latin to Guy’s youngest uncle and Guy himself, will prove the ‘most important figure in Alex and Tom’s lives’.

‘They think you’ve married up,’ my mother likes to remind me. ‘They’, in our conversations, are always the Carews. ‘That means you have to take Podge Fitch with the Chippendale sideboard.’

No, I want to report: I’m stuck with Podge Fitch’s boring anecdotes about bygone boys and no Chippendale.

‘I think Oliver would be easy to work for.’ The guests have left, and we are clearing up.

‘A few blurbs on cultural tours.’ Guy stacks up the place-mats. ‘I thought I’d make a great editor for his mag, and he thought I’d make a passable writer of brochures.’

‘Never mind.’ My voice is resolutely cheerful. ‘Oliver said the brochures would be really well paid.’

‘Well, we certainly need it. I’ve only got half the school fees to hand over on Monday.’ Guy looks as crumpled as the tea towel in his hand. ‘But it means I have to take time away from Rajput, which I hate to do, because it pushes publication back again.’

‘Rajput can wait,’ I snap. I’m not letting Guy postpone indefinitely Oliver’s generous offer. As it is, I could see that Oliver was surprised that Guy didn’t jump at it. Was he in fact hinting at something, when he talked about ‘alternative employment’ for talented writers? Oliver described at length how some well-known authors wrote brochures for travel agents and tourist authorities, ‘humbled themselves and wrote for retail mags and hotel chains … Flexible, that’s what you need to be these days.’

Guy had hardly seemed to take this in, but I listened attentively. Since Guy’s last (or, more accurately, only) success, we have lived on promises. Or to be specific, we have lived off a modest legacy he had from the sale of an elderly cousin’s estate. We decided to invest it in buying time, so that Guy could work un-distracted on delivering another bestseller to a grateful public. Yet when, every two years or so, Guy does publish a new tome, the drum rolls, applause and cheers are conspicuously missing. He sometimes gets a good review, sometimes gets invited to sign copies at a local bookshop, and twice has been asked to speak at a women’s book club. But success, thus far, has proved elusive. Guy’s freelancing brings in dwindling amounts. The legacy is long gone and I had to go back to work far earlier than I wanted.

Oliver is right, and the time has come for Guy to compromise. To my husband this will sound like blasphemy – but blasphemy is preferable to bankruptcy.

‘I’m whacked.’ Guy hangs up the tea towel. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

He looks so worn out and disappointed, my frustration melts and I suddenly feel a twinge of love and compassion. ‘Darling,’ I begin. But before I can reach out to stroke his head, Guy is walking up the stairs.

On the landing I pick up a fat brown teddy and a sock with a hole (Alex’s? No, there’s no name tape: must be Tom’s). I tiptoe into Maisie’s room and place the teddy on her chest of drawers. Rufus lies asleep on her feet. I shoo him off. The children are forever sneaking him into their bedroom, but he knows he’s to sleep in his basket in the kitchen. Maisie stirs, stretches her arms out on the pillow above her head. I kiss her hot sweaty forehead.

In the boys’ room, chaos reigns. The DVDs of Lord of the Rings lie on a pile of dirty clothes and Alex’s books for next term teeter, like the tower of Pisa, in a corner. Alex, sleeping without his pyjama top and wrapped in a faint haze of Lynx ‘Africa’, lies sprawled on the top bunk. Beneath him, Tom lies curled up under his Tintin duvet, his face, uncluttered by spectacles, suddenly perfect.

By the time I have wiped off my make-up and brushed my teeth, Guy is snoring in our bed. I undress in the dark, slip on my nightgown and crawl in next to my husband.

‘Side,’ I tell him firmly. He rolls over obediently, and the snoring stops. I fit snugly against him – the only way for me to keep warm. And I fall asleep.

Three hours later I wake with a jerk to find Guy alert beside me. ‘I’ve been thinking …’ He stares up at the ceiling, one arm behind his head: what was once his favourite post-coital position is now a sign of money worries. ‘We could move to the suburbs. It would solve a lot of problems.’

‘And create new ones,’ I reply, full of visions of Norwood and Nunhead.

‘Cheap housing, great state schools, too, if it comes to the crunch,’ Guy continues. ‘And it’s a good time to sell here: house prices in Central London have gone through the roof. We could get half a million for this.’