Cristina Odone - The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

‘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.

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.