The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

3

‘In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine,’ Guy sings as we cycle across the common: first Guy, then Alex, then me. Alex refuses to join in his father’s warbling. It’s bad enough to arrive at the Griffin on a bicycle as opposed to in a Merc or a BMW, but to be caught singing in chorus with one’s parents is social suicide. My son is also, though he’d never admit it, slightly nervous. It’s only his second year at the Griffin, and it is more than twice the size of St Christopher’s, the C of E state primary school where he went and where Tom still goes. It is also twice as competitive. The competition is over school work, athletic prowess and parents’ wealth. Alex excels in the first two, to my deep and bursting pride, but when it comes to the third, Guy and I let the side down. There are Griffin parents who think nothing of taking over a river-boat for their son’s thirteenth birthday party, hiring a band and a caterer too. We take Alex and his friends bowling or ice skating and offer them Marmite sandwiches, crisps and Coke in a two-litre bottle. Most Griffin parents buy two or three brand-new sets of uniform jackets, trousers, shirts and socks, as well as regulation tracksuits and trainers, for their son. We buy the uniforms at the school second-hand shop, and count ourselves lucky if we find jackets that, more or less, reach Alex’s wrists, or trousers that more or less cover his ankles. Most Griffin families, the directory shows, live in Belgravia, Notting Hill and Chelsea – while we make do with an address on the unfashionable north side of Clapham.

But I feel for my eldest – especially today, as the Rolls and the Mercs and the BMWs roll slowly past our bikes as they make their way down the tree-lined avenue to the towering wrought-iron gates of the Griffin. We’ll arrive red-faced and slightly out of breath, Guy with his corduroys stuffed into his socks, me with my skirt wrinkled and my hair flattened by the bicycle helmet, and all of us mud-splattered because it rained this morning.

‘Couldn’t we hold on to the Merc, Mummy?’ Alex was pleading non-stop yesterday. ‘Couldn’t I do the first day of term in style?’

But Guy refused to keep the hired car. ‘At forty pounds a day? Ludicrous! We’ll begin as we intend to go on.’

The Merc was rather poorly repaired, in the end, by Pete’s chum Mike, for an astronomical £230 – ‘It’s Sunday, ain’t it?’ We had to forego our outing to Richmond Park, and Guy left it at the car-hire place yesterday at seven p.m. ‘The lighting in their car park is appalling, they won’t notice the paint job,’ he muttered hopefully, but every time the phone rings he jumps a mile, terrified that we’ve been found out.

* * *

The Griffin has occupied, for the past 130 years, ten acres of prime real estate in Wandsworth. The school’s three-storey red-brick building is surrounded by a trim green lawn, with tennis courts, rugby pitches, and two cricket fields within a ball’s throw. Once you have driven or, in our case, cycled, through the school gates, you find yourself in a pre-war world of calm, blazers, brogues, perfect manners and received pronunciation. There is no doubt, as you step into this quiet, regimented space, that the Griffin will offer its students some enlightenment; aspirations will be nurtured and ambition rewarded. By the time they leave its hallowed corridors, the young Griffin boys will exude the self-confidence of those who know their place in the world – and like it.

For Guy, this is familiar territory, a variation on the theme of public schools. He was at a very similar one in Somerset until he was thirteen and slipped seamlessly, with top marks in his Common Entrance, into Wolsingham – the school that generations of male Carews have attended. He has been brought up with similarly self-confident children, ancient buildings, sentimental school songs and extensive grounds.

For me, this world is as unreal as South Hams, where we holidayed when I was young: you left your front door unlocked, the car keys in the ignition, valuables on the beach as you swam, all in the confidence that you could trust everyone around you. Stepping into real life was a difficult transition.

It was all rather different at Bruton Grammar School, a squat modern building in Kent. We were the clever daughters of respectable doctors, accountants and lawyers – as well as bricklayers, plumbers and greengrocers. We all worked hard and the girls from Lady Chesham, the local private girls’ school, called us ‘swots’. It was true. They had horses and nannies, ‘places’ in France or Italy, and, later, their boyfriends had cars. Even their uniform was not the dull grey and navy we were stuck with, but a dashing turquoise. We were very conscious, as we prepared for our A-levels – in my case Macbeth and the Romantic poets, the English Civil War, and the art of Renaissance Italy – that we were the ones who got the most places at university, and the most girls into Oxbridge.

Still, the Lady Chesham girls continued to haunt me, even at my first meeting with Guy’s parents.

‘Where did you go to school? Tonbridge? It must have been Lady Chesham – did you know the Lanchester girls?’

‘Actually, I wasn’t at Lady Chesham,’ I correct her. ‘I went to the Grammar School.’

‘Ah,’ said Cecily, after a pause. ‘How clever of you.’

‘Drove she ducklings to the water,’ yodels Guy.

‘Dad, pleeeeeeeeease!’ Alex hisses furiously. But what with the pedals pumping and the wheels whirring and other people’s cars rolling past us, Guy can’t hear his anguished plea.

‘Every morning just at nine!’ ‘Stop it, Dad!’ Alex shouts loudly.

Alarmed, Guy jams the brakes on, skids and hits the kerb. He falls. Alex and I stop on our bicycles immediately, and turn to watch as he slowly picks himself up: mud cakes his hands and a rip gapes at his knee.

‘Oh, darling,’ I moan – the ‘darling’ is for Alex, who looks devastated at the sight of his dad.

‘Nothing to fuss about,’ Guy calls out cheerfully, mistaking the object of my concern. He dusts himself off and mounts once again on his steed of steel. A huge silver Jaguar whooshes past us.

As we approach the school building, I see the same picture replicated all over the car park: large, imposing cars, perfectly coiffed and groomed women, sleek men in expensive suits, and uniformed boys in all shapes and sizes, standing around or running about.

‘We’d better clean off some of that.’ I search my handbag, which I’ve stuffed in the cycle basket, and hand Guy one of those wet-wipes I always keep on hand for Maisie. I remove my helmet and rake my fingers through my hair, trying to fluff it up. I’m about to be inspected, and I doubt I’ll pass muster as a Griffin mum.

We lock up our cycles not far from where a chauffeur leans against a Bentley. Guy unrolls his trouser legs, Alex checks his.

‘Hey, Alex!’ A blond boy waves our son over to his family’s Land Rover. Alex runs off without a glance in our direction. Guy and I slowly follow him up the path to the school; on the front steps, we are surrounded by boys sporting glowing tans who dart in and out of the door, talking loudly about their holidays in Panarea or Provence.

‘Ben: great hair cut – NOT!’

‘Theo, you’ve shrunk!’

‘Whoa! Alex, have you seen Johnny’s scar?!’

We pile into the school hall, a cavernous, gloomy, oak-panelled room, for a bracing service of hymns and pep-talk. Alex easily takes his place among his friends, and I see his dark head bob among a large group until he eventually becomes indistinguishable, one among many jostling uniforms.

I swallow hard; the ritual has begun, once again. Five days a week, from eight to four o’clock, our son is learning at the feet of some of the best and brightest in the land; 24/7, we are tightening our belts to provide this opportunity for him.

‘Lord, Behold us in Thy presence once again assembled here …’ I look around the whitewashed hall, filled with boys, parents and teachers; this is what we have sacrificed so much for.

We file out of the hall, in a crush of expensive scents and clothing. ‘I’ll see if I can pre-empt the bursar …’ Guy says, looking uneasy. He leaves my side and I can see him trying to make his way to Mr Cullen.

I spot a forbidding clutch of Griffin mums. My stomach churns and my ears ring with the contemptuous comment about my roots that I overheard at Mario’s. As usual, my efforts to fit in with my new Whistles skirt, bought on sale last month for £25, have come to naught: cycling has wrinkled the skirt, and Rufus’s pleading pawing as I walked out of our front door has given my smart white cardigan two black smears, right under my breasts.

Real Griffin mums fall into two categories – and both are always sure of a soft landing. The McKinsey mums run hedge funds or a chain of glamorous florists, and look as if they can crush the life out of any difficulty. The Boden belles married money and look as if life gets no worse than a milk spill on their Cath Kidston tablecloth. Neither group has any experience of the unsettling sensation of sliding further and further down the property and career ladders, irrevocably pinned down by the combined forces of school fees, mortgage payments, taxes, credit-card demands and bills. They worry about whether their children will get into the right school. We worry about their getting there – and our having to pull them out because we can’t afford the fees.

Stage fright fills me as I approach the group of mothers. I feel as if I am back at school, a plump swot trying to fit in with the popular girls. But without a boyfriend, C-cup breasts, or expensive clothes, I didn’t stand a chance.

Now, some twenty years later, I make a vain effort to smooth out my skirt and shake my hair into place as I approach another terrifying clique.

‘Hullo, Alex’s mum!’ A pretty blonde waves to me. Perhaps I needn’t worry, this is one day when every woman is only someone’s mummy, after all. Alex’s popularity makes up for my unglamorous wardrobe and borderline size-14 figure. ‘Julian was so disappointed that Alex didn’t come and stay.’

I recognize her now: Julian Foster-Blunt is one of Alex’s best friends, and invited him to stay with his family in Sardinia. Only £59 return on Ryanair, but there were also water-skiing lessons: Julian had one every morning, he told Alex, at £80 a time. ‘Outrageous!’ Guy had exploded. ‘A day’s safari in Botswana costs less than that!’

‘Maybe next summer?’ Julian’s mum smiles benevolently at me. ‘Xan and the children love the villa so much, we’re buying it.’

Before I can reply, another mother, in a Chanel suit, has jumped in. ‘Thank God it’s all over! It’s been non-stop sea-sickness, sunburn, hay fever, and even the youngest knows how to text now. You should see the mobile phone bill I’ve been landed with!’ I identify the Chanel wearer as a McKinsey mum, and she immediately proves my hunch was correct. ‘That’s it, that’s all I’m going to get from Goldman’s for holidays this year.’

‘American banks don’t do vacations, do they?’ Laura Semley, school governor, steps in. Laura used to run her own PR company, but has given that up to run her sons’ school, in the same fashion. ‘Well, another year begins.’ Laura waves a regal hand to encompass the school, boys and teachers. ‘I just hope –’ she lowers her voice conspiratorially ‘– that Merritt is as good at running a prep school as old Jellicoe was.’

‘Oh, he seems steely enough.’ Julian’s mother looks relaxed. ‘And the teachers are fab. Worth every penny, really.’ I doubt, somehow, she counts her pennies; but there is something so sunny about her, with her golden highlights, carefully screened tan and tasteful chains, that it is difficult to resent her the good fortune she obviously enjoys.

‘Hmph!’ Laura Semley eyes up McKinsey Mum as a kindred spirit. ‘Actually, it’s been under-performing for five years now. The results look OK, but they are tweaking it. When you drill down, those scholarship figures include all sorts of bogus “all-rounder” awards at places like Wellington College.’ She sniffs in disgust. ‘We used always to have at least one Queen’s scholar at Westminster, plus two at Winchester, and one at the other top-notch schools. But they’ve got the scholarship set all wrong. They are confusing stocks and flows: the point is not to make the most of what they’ve got, but to constantly select the cleverest ones and ditch the under-performers. We’ve got a governing body academic sub-committee open meeting on this. Maybe you should sign up for it?’ She is addressing herself exclusively now to McKinsey Mum. She can tell that Julian’s mother and I wouldn’t know a balance sheet from a duvet, and couldn’t drill down through data if you put the apparatus into our trembling hands.

‘With boys like these, Common Entrance results should certainly be better too,’ chimes in McKinsey Mum. Her mobile interrupts her. ‘Yes? No. Of course I will. Absolutely. Just getting petrol now, will be there within the hour.’ She switches off and frowns. ‘Can’t afford to remind them that I’ve got children, let alone that I sometimes drop them off at school.’ She looks suddenly deflated: her shoulders stoop, her chin drops, even the pearl buttons on her blue Chanel suit seem to have lost their sheen. ‘I’d better go. Max! Max!’ she shouts, and waves at a boy running past us. She sets off after him.

‘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.