The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew. Cristina Odone

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СКАЧАТЬ at the table, Jack is beaming. ‘Never thought we could afford Chelsea … Pimlico, yes, just about …’

      He drones on, and I find myself almost nostalgic for the Carew conversational code: no talk of money, religion, or women.

      ‘This pork is delicious, Harry.’ Charlotte is trying to steer Jack’s enthusiastic talk away from the move. ‘Organic?’

      I know Charlotte too well to fall into her trap. ‘Of course.’ It’s an outright lie, but I have no remorse. Charlotte’s newfound zeal for the ‘natural way’ goes to such ridiculous ends that I have to ignore her diktats.

      ‘We’ve become Freegans –’ Guy gives ‘Manic Organic’, as he calls Charlotte, a wicked look ‘– we only eat food that’s free. Berries, mushrooms, a quick scour of the dustbins at the back of Safeway and Tesco’s, and’ – he prods the pork with his fork ‘– road-kill.’

      Charlotte shudders in distaste: she never knows how to react to Guy’s teasing.

      But I’m on Guy’s side. Charlotte drives half an hour in her Chelsea tractor to get to the Nature and Nurture Centre that sells wheatgrass at £35 a bundle, and buys faded, dimpled, wrinkly little fruit and veg at three times the price of their non-organic equivalents. This, despite her regular botox injections, eyelash tinting, and enthusiasm for very unnatural slimming powders.

      ‘Isn’t your son at Millfield?’ I turn to Oliver Mallard – and realize too late that this was out of bounds.

      ‘Don’t get me started,’ Oliver sighs, and shrinks into himself like a concertina.

      ‘Francis is having a rather mixed time,’ chips in Belinda warningly.

      But Oliver cannot be stopped. Francis, he explains, is a ‘late developer’. Late developer is the ambitious parent’s favourite euphemism. Poor marks, insufferable behaviour, detentions, suspensions and expulsions: everything can be blamed on their offspring’s late development rather than sheer ineptitude. In Francis’s case, development is so late in coming that the school has told the Mallards that there is no point in his applying to Cambridge, even for Land Economy.

      ‘Never gave us a clue until now. Always led us to believe he was on track for Oxbridge …’ Oliver shakes his head, inconsolable. I can see he is still grappling with the shock that none of his brilliance has rubbed off on his only son, and none of his money can shoehorn the boy into Papa’s footsteps.

      ‘Shocking, the way the school handled it!’ Belinda barks indignantly. ‘And now, what are we supposed to do? Look at an ex-poly somewhere?’

      You would have thought Francis faced a career as a plumber’s mate.

      Guy doesn’t make matters any better by referring cheerfully to his cousin Bertie, who, having failed Oxbridge, went to a red-brick and is now a dope-smoking carpenter somewhere in Devon.

      ‘Exeter’s better than Oxbridge in some subjects, you know,’ Jack bursts out at one point, defending his alma mater.

      Oliver doesn’t listen and goes on grumbling. Why is he paying £24,000-plus a year for a school that can’t deliver a place at Oxbridge? Why are the terms so short, and the breaks so frequent? ‘We end up seeing our children almost as much as their teachers do. It’s outrageous.’

      As there is nothing like the failure of someone else’s child to reassure a proud but poor parent that their sacrifice is worthwhile, Guy is all sympathy and solicitude, eyes practically tearful as he asks Belinda if they’ve tried private tutoring.

      The sympathy dries up instantly when she lets slip that her suntan, and Oliver’s, are due to a month in St Tropez. This turns the debate back into us-against-them. For some parents, school fees, like the St Tropez holiday, are just another expense; others are forced to live on what’s left.

      But in Guy’s eyes there is no other option. Sending the children to private school allows him to hold his head high under the disapproving gaze of those ancestors on his study walls. Military and colonial to their bones, they would otherwise sneer at an heir who scribbles travel books for a living. And so Guy and I divide our lives into school terms: pre-paid, paid in part, paid in full. We earmark our work in terms of what it covers of the children’s schooling: Guy’s regular editing of manuscripts for his friend Percy’s publishing house pays for almost a full year at the Griffin; his article on Marrakesh for an in-flight mag paid for Alex’s and Tom’s second-hand uniforms; my three days at HAC cover – well, not even enough to contribute to the school fund, actually.

      While Guy repeats the mantra, ‘Nothing is more important than the best possible education’, I’m often filled with doubts. Do I really believe that we should bankrupt ourselves and worry frantically before every deadline for paying school fees, in order for our children to study Greek and Latin among a host of Hugos and Isabellas? Do I really believe that their intelligence, confidence, health and moral compass will be compromised unless they attend the same establishment their Carew forefathers thoroughly loathed so many years ago?

      Guy remains immovable: tradition is sacred, and good schooling a pillar of Carew faith. He really believes that a stint in a particular red-brick building will make all the difference in life, and that a dribbling old wreck called Podge Fitch, who taught Greek and Latin to Guy’s youngest uncle and Guy himself, will prove the ‘most important figure in Alex and Tom’s lives’.

      ‘They think you’ve married up,’ my mother likes to remind me. ‘They’, in our conversations, are always the Carews. ‘That means you have to take Podge Fitch with the Chippendale sideboard.’

      No, I want to report: I’m stuck with Podge Fitch’s boring anecdotes about bygone boys and no Chippendale.

      ‘I think Oliver would be easy to work for.’ The guests have left, and we are clearing up.

      ‘A few blurbs on cultural tours.’ Guy stacks up the place-mats. ‘I thought I’d make a great editor for his mag, and he thought I’d make a passable writer of brochures.’

      ‘Never mind.’ My voice is resolutely cheerful. ‘Oliver said the brochures would be really well paid.’

      ‘Well, we certainly need it. I’ve only got half the school fees to hand over on Monday.’ Guy looks as crumpled as the tea towel in his hand. ‘But it means I have to take time away from Rajput, which I hate to do, because it pushes publication back again.’

      ‘Rajput can wait,’ I snap. I’m not letting Guy postpone indefinitely Oliver’s generous offer. As it is, I could see that Oliver was surprised that Guy didn’t jump at it. Was he in fact hinting at something, when he talked about ‘alternative employment’ for talented writers? Oliver described at length how some well-known authors wrote brochures for travel agents and tourist authorities, ‘humbled themselves and wrote for retail mags and hotel chains … Flexible, that’s what you need to be these days.’

      Guy had hardly seemed to take this in, but I listened attentively. Since Guy’s last (or, more accurately, only) success, we have lived on promises. Or to be specific, we have lived off a modest legacy he had from the sale of an elderly cousin’s estate. We decided to invest it in buying time, so that Guy could work un-distracted on delivering another bestseller to a grateful public. Yet when, every two years or so, Guy does publish a new tome, the drum rolls, applause and cheers are conspicuously missing. He sometimes gets a good review, sometimes gets invited to sign copies at a local bookshop, and twice has been asked to speak at a women’s book club. But СКАЧАТЬ