Cristina Odone - The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

‘Only a hired car, Ilona.’

‘Ah …’ Ilona’s sighs are always eloquent.

I rub salt into the pork and then put it in the oven. I turn my attention to the children’s supper.

‘Pete, he have Corvette.’ Her boyfriend of the moment, a tattooed butcher’s assistant from Essex, has a ten-year-old red Corvette that Guy calls the pimpmobile. They met through Blinddate.com – which has Ilona pinned to the computer for hours on end. ‘He coming for me now. We go to Empire Leicester Square.’ The charming thing about Ilona is she never asks anything of us but simply informs us of her plans.

Guy surfaces once more.

‘Is the Mercedes the most expensive car of all, Daddy?’ Tom’s face is still glued to the window.

Guy does mental arithmetic: ‘A car like this would be … more than two years’ school fees.’

The mere prospect is enough to crumple Guy, and he sits down with a sigh. Shirt collar frayed, shoes scuffed, he looks worn out by the effort to live up to his forebears, do the best for his offspring and keep up with his peers.

‘If only …’ he begins. The boys and I ignore him. We’ve already heard every possible dream that Guy could unfurl before us, and know that he will finish that sentence with one of the following: they make a film of Lonely Hunter (an option on the book did pay for our boiler last year, but we haven’t heard anything since); the Carew parents’ family home in Somerset is suddenly valued at ten times last year’s modest estimate; Rajput proves a sensation and sells millions.

There are unspoken hopes too. Aunt Sybil dies: ruthless, I know, but Guy’s widowed great aunt is apparently worth a fortune and allegedly considers him her favourite relative. So far, though, she has come to stay on countless occasions but has never so much as hinted at a legacy. Or that Guy’s agent, Simon, reverts to treating Guy as a great writer with a great future. He doesn’t need to take him out to the Ivy every week, which is how he courted him in the days when Lonely Hunter was a bestseller, but he could show more interest than the annual Happy Winter (‘Best Eid, Hanukkah, and Christmas wishes to all of you’) card.

CRASH! We all jump. The kitchen window rattles as if we’ve survived an earthquake. Before the boys can run to the kitchen door, Ilona walks in, her tattooed boyfriend and a string of expletives in her wake.

‘Some idiot has parked his Mercedes next to your house!’ Pete swaggers, vest tight over his chest. ‘He’ll have a right shock – nasty scratch all down the side. Cost him a pretty penny, that will, cheeky bugger. We’d better be off before he notices, Ilona …’

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.