The Dilemmas of Harriet Carew. Cristina Odone
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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 Guy, this is familiar territory, a variation on the theme of public schools. He was at a very similar one in Somerset until he was thirteen and slipped seamlessly, with top marks in his Common Entrance, into Wolsingham – the school that generations of male Carews have attended. He has been brought up with similarly self-confident children, ancient buildings, sentimental school songs and extensive grounds.
For me, this world is as unreal as South Hams, where we holidayed when I was young: you left your front door unlocked, the car keys in the ignition, valuables on the beach as you swam, all in the confidence that you could trust everyone around you. Stepping into real life was a difficult transition.
It was all rather different at Bruton Grammar School, a squat modern building in Kent. We were the clever daughters of respectable doctors, accountants and lawyers – as well as bricklayers, plumbers and greengrocers. We all worked hard and the girls from Lady Chesham, the local private girls’ school, called us ‘swots’. It was true. They had horses and nannies, ‘places’ in France or Italy, and, later, their boyfriends had cars. Even their uniform was not the dull grey and navy we were stuck with, but a dashing turquoise. We were very conscious, as we prepared for our A-levels – in my case Macbeth and the Romantic poets, the English Civil War, and the art of Renaissance Italy – that we were the ones who got the most places at university, and the most girls into Oxbridge.
Still, the Lady Chesham girls continued to haunt me, even at my first meeting with Guy’s parents.
‘Where did you go to school? Tonbridge? It must have been Lady Chesham – did you know the Lanchester girls?’
‘Actually, I wasn’t at Lady Chesham,’ I correct her. ‘I went to the Grammar School.’
‘Ah,’ said Cecily, after a pause. ‘How clever of you.’
‘Drove she ducklings to the water,’ yodels Guy.
‘Dad, pleeeeeeeeease!’ Alex hisses furiously. But what with the pedals pumping and the wheels whirring and other people’s cars rolling past us, Guy can’t hear his anguished plea.
‘Every morning just at nine!’ ‘Stop it, Dad!’ Alex shouts loudly.
Alarmed, Guy jams the brakes on, skids and hits the kerb. He falls. Alex and I stop on our bicycles immediately, and turn to watch as he slowly picks himself up: mud cakes his hands and a rip gapes at his knee.
‘Oh, darling,’ I moan – the ‘darling’ is for Alex, who looks devastated at the sight of his dad.
‘Nothing to fuss about,’ Guy calls out cheerfully, mistaking the object of my concern. He dusts himself off and mounts once again on his steed of steel. A huge silver Jaguar whooshes past us.
As we approach the school building, I see the same picture replicated all over the car park: large, imposing cars, perfectly coiffed and groomed women, sleek men in expensive suits, and uniformed boys in all shapes and sizes, standing around or running about.
‘We’d better clean off some of that.’ I search my handbag, which I’ve stuffed in the cycle basket, and hand Guy one of those wet-wipes I always keep on hand for Maisie. I remove my helmet and rake my fingers through my hair, trying to fluff it up. I’m about to be inspected, and I doubt I’ll pass muster as a Griffin mum.
We lock up our cycles not far from where a chauffeur leans against a Bentley. Guy unrolls his trouser legs, Alex checks his.
‘Hey, Alex!’ A blond boy waves our son over to his family’s Land Rover. Alex runs off without a glance in our direction. Guy and I slowly follow him up the path to the school; on the front steps, we are surrounded by boys sporting glowing tans who dart in and out of the door, talking loudly about their holidays in Panarea or Provence.
‘Ben: great hair cut – NOT!’
‘Theo, you’ve shrunk!’
‘Whoa! Alex, have you seen Johnny’s scar?!’
We pile into the school hall, a cavernous, gloomy, oak-panelled room, for a bracing service of hymns and pep-talk. Alex easily takes his place among his friends, and I see his dark head bob among a large group until he eventually becomes indistinguishable,