The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

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.

I was determined to work in an art gallery and maybe one day organize exhibits of contemporary figurative painters.

Before Alex was born, I’d managed to find a job at a small gallery in South Kensington. But Alex’s arrival swamped me: I found I had no strength and no wish to leave my home. The gallery owner found someone else to help out, and I get a pang of dissatisfaction every time I find myself in a certain corner of South Kensington.

When I heard about HAC from a mother at St Christopher’s two years ago, I was only half interested in the charity that gave disadvantaged children a holiday. The main attraction was the schedule: ‘Three days a week with potential to increase to full time.’

But soon I found myself engaging with the work. There is the challenge of ensuring that the professional ‘facilitators’ and their three supervisors manage a week’s break for a dozen children without them running amok or wreaking devastation on our houses; making sure that the GP or social worker is promoting the right child for the experience, rather than fobbing off on us countless Jesus Jones types who turn a holiday into hell; finding generous sponsors who will keep us going. And there is the reward of receiving postcards and letters, in childish scrawl, from the children. Many of them have never had a holiday in their life, and pack their toothbrush, spare pants and T-shirt in a bin liner because they don’t have a case. Their gratitude repays every effort we make.

Still, in between the holidays themselves, routine work at HAC can be dull, and Mary Jane Thompson’s presence overbearing. All too often, I find her straying into my territory.

‘I think when it comes to the bigger sponsors, Harriet,’ she repeats to me, as she returns from yet another expensive lunch, ‘you should leave it to me: I have a way with rich men who need to be parted from their money.’

Then I find myself looking on this job as purely a way to make ends meet, even though the salary is only £15,000; and I think wistfully of the exhibitions I would have loved to curate, and the art gallery I would have loved to run.

The phone rings.‘’Arriet?’

It’s Ilona, and I immediately expect the worst: Maisie’s hurt, Maisie’s got a roaring temperature, Maisie bit another child at nursery. Then Ilona remembers what I taught her about telephone communication and pre-empting maternal fears: ‘Maisie is OK.’ Ahhhh, I sigh, and then instantly am besieged by another set of images: Ilona wants to leave us for one of her Internet beaux, Ilona is being stalked by one of the same, Pete is offering to make an honest woman of her …

‘Someone wants to speak with her mamma,’ Ilona says, before handing over the telephone to Maisie.

‘Mummy!’ My baby is tearful down the phone, and I feel ready to bolt back home, take her in my arms and snuggle up with our worn copy of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. ‘I want youuuuuuuu,’ she wails, and I can tell Ilona is having to pull the receiver from her hand.

For the umpteenth time I decide to postpone asking Mary Jane for a full-time position. I’m pretty sure five days a week would bring in £25,000, but does the difference in salary really make up for the time missed with my children? Motherhood – and this is an admission, like fancying my cousin Will when I was fourteen, or being disappointed about not getting into Oxford, that I will make only to myself – has put an end to my modest professional ambition. It hasn’t just poured water on the flames; it has sprayed fire-extinguishing foam on them, then beaten the embers with a spade for good measure.

‘Why do we always have to be the ones to compromise?’ Charlotte sighs every time I mention working at HAC. I ask myself what kind of compromise my best friend thinks she’s been forced into: she has a devoted and wealthy husband who keeps her in a style far grander than anything she and I grew up with; three perfect children and a nanny to keep them in line; and no call on her time between nine thirty and four. That’s the kind of ‘compromise’ I could live with.

‘You were brilliant at that gallery – you always had an eye for good paintings … And here you are, trying to shoehorn feral children into a holiday environment.’ Charlotte snorts.

‘They’re not feral, they’re damaged.’ I always jump to my charges’ defence. ‘They’ve had the worst possible start in life.’

‘And you’ll come to the worst possible end, if you don’t watch out. Those kids give me the heebie-jeebies.’ Charlotte’s brown eyes widen in dramatic fear. ‘I hope Guy appreciates what you’ve taken on so that he can try his hand at travel books!’

In Charlotte’s eyes, Guy staying at home to write somehow doesn’t count as a proper job. ‘Be honest, Harry, how many copies does he sell? I bet it’s not enough to keep the kids in school uniforms, let alone in school.’

‘He has his fans, you know,’ I reply defensively. ‘And one of them is a telly producer who thinks Lonely Hunter would make a fabulous documentary series.’

Strange but true. Last weekend we went to Waterstone’s to look for a book that Maisie could take to Theo Wallace’s birthday party. As usual, Guy was scouring the Travel section for copies of his books. ‘They’ve got only one copy of Lonely Hunter and none of White Nights. And a whole row of Crispin Kerr. Preposterous! I’m going to complain …’ He was about to make off in the direction of the bespectacled boy at the till when the pretty redhead leafing through the volumes on the table turned to him. ‘Lonely Hunter? It’s great, isn’t it!’

‘Er …’ Guy puffed up with obvious pride. ‘I wrote it.’

‘You wrote it? You’re Guy Carew?’ Wide eyes and a wider smile turned on Guy with undisguised admiration.

Guy nodded. ‘Er … yes.’ He studied his fan with something like suspicion: this had not happened in a long, long time.

‘But your books are brilliant! I loved the campfire scene in Desert Flower!’ Guy began to melt in the heat of her admiration. ‘I came to that lecture you gave at Essex University last year: fascinating!’

For the next ten minutes, Maisie, the boys and I were ignored as the stuffy library air of the bookshop resounded with ‘Kalahari!’ ‘Masai!’ ‘Nairobi!’ and peals of laughter.

‘Her name is Zoë Jenning and she’s a producer for Rainbow Productions, some independent TV company.’ Guy could hardly contain his excitement as we pushed the buggy and the boys out of the shop. ‘She thinks Lonely Hunter would make great telly!’

‘Daddy’s gonna be on telly! Daddy’s gonna be on telly!’ Alex and Tom chanted down the pavement.

‘Don’t hold your breath’ Charlotte warns me: ‘Most of these independent television companies are dodgy cowboy outfits. They milk you for information by promising you a series of your own, and then they drop the show but steal your idea.’

‘He’s very excited.’

It’s an understatement: Guy has been waiting for Zoë’s phone call ever since, and will not listen to caution. ‘You’ll see, Harriet; a whole new career beckons!’

I sigh. The ‘old’ career was bad enough. It consisted of long sessions at the computer in his study alternating with even longer sessions daydreaming about the future success of the project at hand. Guy believes wholly, and without reservation, that he will write a great bestseller, a Richard and Judy selection that will also appeal to the intellectual elite; a magnum opus that will secure his place among literary giants. And despite the obvious scepticism of his agent, Simon, who grows ever more distant, and of friends like Charlotte and Jack; despite the countless times I have voiced our financial worries; and despite the prospect of spiralling school fees for three children, Guy won’t be deflected.

He scours the book pages of the Telegraph and the TLS, studying the reviews, latest publications and bestseller lists, and scoffs at ‘the competition’. ‘I don’t believe it, Harriet! Look here – Francis Bolton has managed to get something published. A biography of Diane de Poitiers … I mean, who’s going to buy that? She’s French, for a start; and she didn’t do anything, really, apart from having an affair with a man half her age who happened to be King of France.’ Such acerbic observations will be followed, a few weeks later, with outrage: ‘Can you believe it, Harry – that silly book by Bolton is number two on the bestseller list. I swear to you, that man is incapable of doing proper research – it’ll be just a cut-and-paste job. What is the world coming to?’

Guy’s most vicious attacks are reserved for the authors who dare stray into the rather far-flung area he considers his patch: ‘What?! That idiot Crispin Kerr – the one who looks like a shampoo advert with all that blond hair – he’s got a book out on the Gobi Desert. What does that ignoramus know about the Gobi? Nothing, nada, niente! How could anyone be fooled by that man!’ And, ‘Ha! Did you see what’s happened to Seb Colley? That pathetic TV series of his on the last maharajahs has bombed. That brilliant TV critic, the one on the Sunday Tribune, L. L. Munro, he’s really put the boot in. Calls it “Curry kitsch” and a “sorry sari saga”.’

I admire my husband’s single-minded pursuit of his objective – but I sometimes yearn to remind him that the ‘idiot’ Crispin Kerr’s books and documentaries and Francis Bolton’s ‘silly’ biography must be nice little earners.

It’s almost lunch time. ‘Does she have a lunch today?’ I ask Anjie hopefully. Most days, Mary Jane takes out, or is taken out by, some bigwig, allowing us a breathing space that I usually fill with running errands and Anjie with catching up on the stars in her secret stash of Grazia and Heat.

‘Yup.’ Anjie gives me a happy wink.

‘Good.’ I have been meaning to check out the hospice shop for a winter coat. My old black one from Hobbs, which has stood by me as long as Guy has, is embarrassingly threadbare.

Mary Jane emerges from her office, visitor in her wake. As usual, her expression is impenetrable, and it’s impossible to gauge whether HAC has just received a donation of a quarter of a million pounds or a ticking off for a poor performance.

‘It was a pleasure, thank you ever so much.’ Mary Jane puts on the gracious hostess act. ‘Would you like Anjie to order a minicab for you?’

But the moment the City man disappears, shocking Mary Jane by preferring tube to taxi, our boss reverts to type:

‘I’ve got a lunch.’ She stands by Anjie’s desk and looks down her nose at her. ‘I’m expecting a couple of important calls. I hope it’s not too much to ask that you put the answering machine on when you go for lunch.’

‘Will do,’ Anjie answers breezily, looking up from her screen for a nanosecond.

Mary Jane turns to me with an appraising look. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet. He’s a big potential donor. A property developer who’s ruffled a few feathers, so he’s trying to win brownie points by helping local charities … We’ll check dates when I come back.’ With that, she’s off.

Out comes Grazia: ‘Oh dear, I think Liz is getting too thin,’ Anjie worries over a photo of Liz Hurley looking gaunt.

‘I’m off to the hospice shop. See you in about an hour.’

‘Don’t rush back, girl. I’m meeting my William for a sandwich,’ Anjie answers, immersed in Brangelina’s latest exploits.

* * *

The hospice shop is on the High Street, a few minutes’ walk from HAC. I enter, and find myself surrounded by rows of sagging paperbacks, with Polo next to Crime and Punishment next to Forever Amber; musty fox collars; and chipped, incomplete china sets. A tiny, bent woman, laden with carrier bags, is scouring the shelves. Unkempt grey curls escape her rain hat and mumbled words escape her lips.

I toy with the thought of buying the ancient porcelain doll that sits, staring in blue-eyed surprise, above a dented Lego box and a plastic Christmas tree. Maisie, for Christmas? But then remember my mission and set it down again on its ledge.

I pick my way past the counter that displays gaudy paste jewellery and silver cigarette lighters and christening cups, and make for the rack of second-hand clothes.

Guy calls the hospice shop the ‘bankrupts’ boutique’. Bankrupt is right. Alex came rushing in after school yesterday with the joyous news that he has been chosen for the First XV. Guy and I delighted in his achievement – until he explained he would now need a First XV blazer that costs £79.99, a tie for £12.99, and rugby shirt at £19.99, not to mention new boots and a proper kitbag with school logo.

‘A kitbag?’ Guy can’t hide our mounting despair. ‘Is that strictly necessary?’

‘Da-aaaaaaad! I don’t want to be left out when the others all have one.’ Alex throws us a look of such wretchedness I swallow my reservations and hear Guy do the same. ‘OK, OK, we’ll see what we can find at the second-hand shop.’

Alex smiles and then stuns us with: ‘And guess what? Mr Farrell says we’re going on tour to South Africa at Christmas!’ Alex punches the air. ‘Cape Town here we come!’

The trip to Cape Town, coupled with the discovery that the Griffin’s second-hand shop doesn’t have a blazer that fits our son, means I have no choice but to get myself a coat here. I had hoped to buy the charcoal wool one I had seen in Debenham’s pre-season sale, but that would mean condemning Alex to a hopelessly short-armed rugby blazer.

At Bristol as an undergraduate I bought all my clothes at the Oxfam shop. As did Charlotte: we had a spectacular array of flapper dresses for our evening wear, and some very pretty cropped beaded cardigans and flouncy skirts for everyday. My Oxfam bargains amused James, my then boyfriend: ‘Ooooooh, a bit unconventional, isn’t it, to wear someone’s granny’s cardigan?’ But as I was doing English, with lots of Keats and Coleridge and the Gothic novel, and Charlotte, Art History, our romantic taste in clothing matched our subjects.

‘Who wants to be like those dreary Sloanes?’ Charlotte would pout prettily as she donned an Oxfam cardy and gypsy skirt. ‘All those silly Laura Ashley pastels and bright-coloured cords?’

Never in a million years did I suspect that I would continue shopping at Oxfam. It was fine for a cash-strapped eighteenyear-old, but the sight of shabby elderly women browsing among the bric-a-brac nowadays sends a little shiver of anxiety down my spine. Will I be the same in my sunset years? Badly dressed, hunched under the weight of debts and family burdens, myopically searching for something ‘nice’ to cheer up the house, or the grandchildren. Penury in my thirties is one thing, but I really don’t want to be still hand-to-mouth when I’m in my sixties.

Guy refuses to address the issue of our retirement. I’ve told him how Charlotte and Jack plan to buy a farmhouse in France when Jack retires, because the living is cheaper and the French state health-care better than the NHS; and how my mother’s neighbours have moved to Spain because of the sun and the fact that they can live in a villa by the sea for the price of their little house in Tonbridge.

But Guy infuriates me by refusing to even consider making plans. ‘Oh, Harriet, you needn’t worry: things are going to get better. Just you wait: I have a very good feeling about Rajput – it’s like Bollywood meets Dad’s Army.’

I, however, am not convinced that those bickering maharajahs are going to be our meal ticket.

I resign myself to the prospect of being a regular client of this hospice shop for many years to come. Apparently, this is not as shaming in Guy’s circles as it is in mine: Guy’s mother was very open about buying her tweed suits at the charity shops in Gosport. I had assumed the Carews would consider buying second-hand clothes as demeaning as buying their own furniture. Instead: ‘Spending money on frocks is such a waste.’ Cecily Carew eyes me up and down as if I were a clothes-horse. ‘School fees and the house: those are our family’s priorities.’

For my part, I don’t want to be caught scouring the racks of clean if slightly musty clothes that someone better-off has set aside for the ‘less fortunate’, so I plan each foray to the hospice shop with precision. A) Fold one of my oldest skirts into a carrier bag. B) Step into the shop with said carrier bag. C) Look around: if I see someone I know, I smile, hand in the cast-off, and retreat. D) If the coast is clear, I pick what I want and slip behind the curtain to try it on. Then I buy it and sneak out of the shop.

In this fashion I have bought a Donna Karan skirt (£8) a MaxMara jacket (£18) and a Whistles linen dress (£12).

From the cash register, a middle-aged woman, head nodding out of time with the Classic FM on the radio beside her, smiles at me: she recognizes me from previous visits. Depressing or what?

I stop the self-pity when I spot two coats in sizes 12 and 14. As I step into the makeshift dressing room, I ask myself who else knows about my struggle to keep up with my middle-class friends on half their salary? I look in the mirror. Well, does it matter if I can’t keep up the appearance of being self-confident and solvent?

It matters rather less, I decide, than the fact that the size-12 coat, a camel-haired and deliciously cosy number from Ronit Zilkha, is definitely too tight. I’m going to have to start the Modified Atkins that I read about in Vogue at the dentist’s last spring. Why did my mother have to burden me with her classic English pear shape? The coat fits my top but hugs my hips and bottom too snugly. Regretfully, I slip it off and try on the size 14, a navy-blue Jaeger in plain wool: it’s a perfect fit and at £24 it is a steal.

I walk my bargain to the cash register, and as the cashier gives me a complicit smile, I suddenly see, standing ram-rod straight in a boxy designer-looking twill suit, Mary Jane Thompson. She sees me too – and the coat.

‘Harriet! Find anything nice?’ My boss smiles condescendingly. ‘I’m just dropping off two jackets from last winter, a bit worn around the cuffs.’

Shame contracts my throat. Then inspiration strikes: ‘It’s for Alex. They’re doing Bugsy Malone.’ I beam. ‘The drama head at the Griffin couldn’t find anything that fit him.’ I wave. ‘See you in a tick.’

I step outside. Social humiliation avoided – just.

5

‘Oh, what do you care?’ Charlotte giggles when I tell her of the encounter. ‘Maybe if she thinks you’re really hard-up, she’ll give you a rise!’

We’re sitting in my kitchen, a teapot and two mugs on the table between us.

‘Ha! Mary Jane’s idea of compassion is to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on you when you sneeze and offer you a hanky when you choke.’

Our eleven o’clock coffee has given way to a pot of organic tea. Manic Organic prefers very expensive organic green tea which she buys for me at Nature and Nurture and assures me will make me live longer.