Cristina Odone - The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew

‘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.