The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew. Cristina Odone

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ