The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew. Cristina Odone

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СКАЧАТЬ is right, and the time has come for Guy to compromise. To my husband this will sound like blasphemy – but blasphemy is preferable to bankruptcy.

      ‘I’m whacked.’ Guy hangs up the tea towel. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

      He looks so worn out and disappointed, my frustration melts and I suddenly feel a twinge of love and compassion. ‘Darling,’ I begin. But before I can reach out to stroke his head, Guy is walking up the stairs.

      On the landing I pick up a fat brown teddy and a sock with a hole (Alex’s? No, there’s no name tape: must be Tom’s). I tiptoe into Maisie’s room and place the teddy on her chest of drawers. Rufus lies asleep on her feet. I shoo him off. The children are forever sneaking him into their bedroom, but he knows he’s to sleep in his basket in the kitchen. Maisie stirs, stretches her arms out on the pillow above her head. I kiss her hot sweaty forehead.

      In the boys’ room, chaos reigns. The DVDs of Lord of the Rings lie on a pile of dirty clothes and Alex’s books for next term teeter, like the tower of Pisa, in a corner. Alex, sleeping without his pyjama top and wrapped in a faint haze of Lynx ‘Africa’, lies sprawled on the top bunk. Beneath him, Tom lies curled up under his Tintin duvet, his face, uncluttered by spectacles, suddenly perfect.

      By the time I have wiped off my make-up and brushed my teeth, Guy is snoring in our bed. I undress in the dark, slip on my nightgown and crawl in next to my husband.

      ‘Side,’ I tell him firmly. He rolls over obediently, and the snoring stops. I fit snugly against him – the only way for me to keep warm. And I fall asleep.

      Three hours later I wake with a jerk to find Guy alert beside me. ‘I’ve been thinking …’ He stares up at the ceiling, one arm behind his head: what was once his favourite post-coital position is now a sign of money worries. ‘We could move to the suburbs. It would solve a lot of problems.’

      ‘And create new ones,’ I reply, full of visions of Norwood and Nunhead.

      ‘Cheap housing, great state schools, too, if it comes to the crunch,’ Guy continues. ‘And it’s a good time to sell here: house prices in Central London have gone through the roof. We could get half a million for this.’

      ‘I don’t think we could get anything like that,’ I resist. ‘There are only forty years left on the lease.’ Not to mention a series of ominous leaks and cracks.

      ‘There’s so little on the market right now, people are desperate.’ Guy has sat up.

      ‘They’re not blind.’

      ‘The thing is, even if I do accept Oliver’s offer, it’s going to be difficult to make up the rest of the school fees. I doubt he pays on delivery.’ He tugs at his chin pensively. ‘I suppose I could approach Dad.’

      Guy and I long ago decided that begging money from his parents, who, though generous, are not well off, should be left for those exceptional circumstances when really nothing else was possible. But perhaps this is what we are up against now.

      ‘Is it that bad?’ I hardly dare ask.

      ‘Well … we could consider the country. Anywhere with grammar schools: Kent or Buckinghamshire. There’s a brilliant one in Devon.’

      ‘Oh, goody: we could live with my mum in Tonbridge.’

      ‘Wellies …’ Guy is lying back again, ‘cow pats, mud and lots of wife-swapping. That’s country life for you. We’d fit right in.’ He rolls over and pulls me towards him. ‘Except for the last, of course. Wouldn’t swap you for anyone.’

      He pecks my hair. We are about to have a ‘marital moment’. We haven’t made love for over three weeks now. It’s probably my fault: I’ve started taking off my make-up in front of him, and my underwear, in Ilona’s not-so-tender care, has gone grey. I cast off my nightgown.

      ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ A little figure, teddy trailing, pushes open our door.

      ‘That’s it!’ Guy snaps crossly as I make room for Maisie on my side of the bed.

      ‘Forget suburbia, I want all three at boarding school asaP!’

      3

      ‘In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine,’ Guy sings as we cycle across the common: first Guy, then Alex, then me. Alex refuses to join in his father’s warbling. It’s bad enough to arrive at the Griffin on a bicycle as opposed to in a Merc or a BMW, but to be caught singing in chorus with one’s parents is social suicide. My son is also, though he’d never admit it, slightly nervous. It’s only his second year at the Griffin, and it is more than twice the size of St Christopher’s, the C of E state primary school where he went and where Tom still goes. It is also twice as competitive. The competition is over school work, athletic prowess and parents’ wealth. Alex excels in the first two, to my deep and bursting pride, but when it comes to the third, Guy and I let the side down. There are Griffin parents who think nothing of taking over a river-boat for their son’s thirteenth birthday party, hiring a band and a caterer too. We take Alex and his friends bowling or ice skating and offer them Marmite sandwiches, crisps and Coke in a two-litre bottle. Most Griffin parents buy two or three brand-new sets of uniform jackets, trousers, shirts and socks, as well as regulation tracksuits and trainers, for their son. We buy the uniforms at the school second-hand shop, and count ourselves lucky if we find jackets that, more or less, reach Alex’s wrists, or trousers that more or less cover his ankles. Most Griffin families, the directory shows, live in Belgravia, Notting Hill and Chelsea – while we make do with an address on the unfashionable north side of Clapham.

      But I feel for my eldest – especially today, as the Rolls and the Mercs and the BMWs roll slowly past our bikes as they make their way down the tree-lined avenue to the towering wrought-iron gates of the Griffin. We’ll arrive red-faced and slightly out of breath, Guy with his corduroys stuffed into his socks, me with my skirt wrinkled and my hair flattened by the bicycle helmet, and all of us mud-splattered because it rained this morning.

      ‘Couldn’t we hold on to the Merc, Mummy?’ Alex was pleading non-stop yesterday. ‘Couldn’t I do the first day of term in style?’

      But Guy refused to keep the hired car. ‘At forty pounds a day? Ludicrous! We’ll begin as we intend to go on.’

      The Merc was rather poorly repaired, in the end, by Pete’s chum Mike, for an astronomical £230 – ‘It’s Sunday, ain’t it?’ We had to forego our outing to Richmond Park, and Guy left it at the car-hire place yesterday at seven p.m. ‘The lighting in their car park is appalling, they won’t notice the paint job,’ he muttered hopefully, but every time the phone rings he jumps a mile, terrified that we’ve been found out.

      * * *

      The Griffin has occupied, for the past 130 years, ten acres of prime real estate in Wandsworth. The school’s three-storey red-brick building is surrounded by a trim green lawn, with tennis courts, rugby pitches, and two cricket fields within a ball’s throw. Once you have driven or, in our case, cycled, through the school gates, you find yourself in a pre-war world of calm, blazers, brogues, perfect manners and received pronunciation. There is no doubt, as you step into this quiet, regimented space, that the Griffin will offer its students some enlightenment; aspirations will be nurtured and ambition rewarded. By the time they leave its hallowed corridors, the young Griffin boys will exude the self-confidence of those who know their place in the world – and like it.

      For СКАЧАТЬ