‘We’ve got trouble on our hands.’ Anjie holds up an official-looking letter. ‘Social Services want to know why we refused to take on Jesus Jones again. Wasn’t he the thug from Camden?’
‘He was …’ And I start cataloguing young Jesus’s sins on my fingers: ‘He spat at the counsellor, he punched one of the boys on the holiday, seduced one of the girls and tried to set fire to the barn at Hadley House. Hardly an HAC success story, I’d say …’
‘And they called a demon child like that Jesus – heavens!’ Anjie, a born-again Christian, is incensed.
‘Yes. Parents with a sense of irony but no notion of discipline. I’ll write to Social Services today.’
I check my emails. A City banker I’d approached for a corporate donation asks for yet another meeting. An advertising big shot turns down the chance to sponsor our annual fund-raiser: ‘Your celebrity-punch is good, but not great: you can’t deliver Jeremy Clarkson, Rory Bremner or Ian Hislop. These are the names you need to get people like me on board.’
A local printer refuses to charge ‘your excellent charity’ for his work on our forthcoming brochure – yikes! I remember that I am supposed to be finalizing said brochure this week with Mary Jane. And a handful of retired professionals, prepared to put up with Child Protection checks and foulmouthed disadvantaged youngsters giving them lip, volunteer to help us staff the holiday projects, which consist of a week in our homes in Devon and Suffolk.
I steal a look at the big planning diary on my desk, and the red circled dates stand out like chicken pox spots: they warn me when the Griffin school fees are due. The thirtieth, only a week away. Can we make it? Guy’s chum Ken Wright needs a speech-writer for his forthcoming presentation to a leisure firm: that should bring in a fair amount, and Ken is usually quick to pay. The bursar was quite clear that, if we missed the deadline, he would need to bring the matter up with Merritt, the headmaster – and, who knows, maybe the Board of Governors? The thought of those Griffin parents, well-off and smugly confident that their children have the best of everything, makes my heart sink. I’d rather spend every weekend stacking shelves at ASDA than face their pity.
Indeed, I wonder whether shelf-stacking might not be better paid than working for a small charity. I had never dreamed of becoming a Lady Bountiful. I had met a few among my mother’s friends, and they struck me as middle-class, middle-aged women who liked the sound of their own voice. They welcomed the opportunity to do good, but above all to organize other people’s lives – or at least coffee mornings and bingo evenings, raffle sales and the collection of second-hand books.
I was determined to work in an art gallery and maybe one day organize exhibits of contemporary figurative painters.
Before Alex was born, I’d managed to find a job at a small gallery in South Kensington. But Alex’s arrival swamped me: I found I had no strength and no wish to leave my home. The gallery owner found someone else to help out, and I get a pang of dissatisfaction every time I find myself in a certain corner of South Kensington.
When I heard about HAC from a mother at St Christopher’s two years ago, I was only half interested in the charity that gave disadvantaged children a holiday. The main attraction was the schedule: ‘Three days a week with potential to increase to full time.’
But soon I found myself engaging with the work. There is the challenge of ensuring that the professional ‘facilitators’ and their three supervisors manage a week’s break for a dozen children without them running amok or wreaking devastation on our houses; making sure that the GP or social worker is promoting the right child for the experience, rather than fobbing off on us countless Jesus Jones types who turn a holiday into hell; finding generous sponsors who will keep us going. And there is the reward of receiving postcards and letters, in childish scrawl, from the children. Many of them have never had a holiday in their life, and pack their toothbrush, spare pants and T-shirt in a bin liner because they don’t have a case. Their gratitude repays every effort we make.
Still, in between the holidays themselves, routine work at HAC can be dull, and Mary Jane Thompson’s presence overbearing. All too often, I find her straying into my territory.
‘I think when it comes to the bigger sponsors, Harriet,’ she repeats to me, as she returns from yet another expensive lunch, ‘you should leave it to me: I have a way with rich men who need to be parted from their money.’
Then I find myself looking on this job as purely a way to make ends meet, even though the salary is only £15,000; and I think wistfully of the exhibitions I would have loved to curate, and the art gallery I would have loved to run.
The phone rings.‘’Arriet?’
It’s Ilona, and I immediately expect the worst: Maisie’s hurt, Maisie’s got a roaring temperature, Maisie bit another child at nursery. Then Ilona remembers what I taught her about telephone communication and pre-empting maternal fears: ‘Maisie is OK.’ Ahhhh, I sigh, and then instantly am besieged by another set of images: Ilona wants to leave us for one of her Internet beaux, Ilona is being stalked by one of the same, Pete is offering to make an honest woman of her …
‘Someone wants to speak with her mamma,’ Ilona says, before handing over the telephone to Maisie.
‘Mummy!’ My baby is tearful down the phone, and I feel ready to bolt back home, take her in my arms and snuggle up with our worn copy of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. ‘I want youuuuuuuu,’ she wails, and I can tell Ilona is having to pull the receiver from her hand.
For the umpteenth time I decide to postpone asking Mary Jane for a full-time position. I’m pretty sure five days a week would bring in £25,000, but does the difference in salary really make up for the time missed with my children? Motherhood – and this is an admission, like fancying my cousin Will when I was fourteen, or being disappointed about not getting into Oxford, that I will make only to myself – has put an end to my modest professional ambition. It hasn’t just poured water on the flames; it has sprayed fire-extinguishing foam on them, then beaten the embers with a spade for good measure.
‘Why do we always have to be the ones to compromise?’ Charlotte sighs every time I mention working at HAC. I ask myself what kind of compromise my best friend thinks she’s been forced into: she has a devoted and wealthy husband who keeps her in a style far grander than anything she and I grew up with; three perfect children and a nanny to keep them in line; and no call on her time between nine thirty and four. That’s the kind of ‘compromise’ I could live with.
‘You were brilliant at that gallery – you always had an eye for good paintings … And here you are, trying to shoehorn feral children into a holiday environment.’ Charlotte snorts.
‘They’re not feral, they’re damaged.’ I always jump to my charges’ defence. ‘They’ve had the worst possible start in life.’
‘And you’ll come to the worst possible end, if you don’t watch out. Those kids give me the heebie-jeebies.’ Charlotte’s brown eyes widen in dramatic fear. ‘I hope Guy appreciates what you’ve taken on so that he can try his hand at travel books!’
In Charlotte’s eyes, Guy staying at home to write somehow doesn’t count as a proper job. ‘Be honest, Harry, how many copies does he sell? I bet it’s not enough to keep the kids in school uniforms, let alone in school.’
‘He has his fans, you know,’ I reply defensively. ‘And one of them is a telly producer who thinks Lonely Hunter would make a fabulous documentary series.’
Strange but true. Last weekend we went to Waterstone’s to look for a book that Maisie could take to Theo Wallace’s