End of the half term, hurrah! it is always so exciting. As it happened Lucy’s school was hosting a Very Important Meeting for parents of girls about to start GCSEs, which went on all day: and Oliver needed collecting at lunchtime so we had to split up and I had to do Lucy whilst Mark went off for Oliver: which was disappointing, because it is splendid to collect them and I felt indignantly cheated at having to miss half of the experience. Mark had a nice time, though, Oliver dragged him into school and showed him his Warhammer figures (this is a new interest courtesy of school) and his Silver Award Certificate, and the dreadfully long list on the war memorial in the chapel, showing names of brave Old Boys killed in World War One, which features an Ibbetson. He is very proud indeed of this.
Lucy’s school was also busy showing things off. Schools do this, so that you can see that the price of a house in Mayfair that you have to shell out in fees during their school career is being well spent. So we were entertained by a tiny Chinese girl playing perfect Debussy; and someone plunking cheerfully away at jazz on a double bass considerably bigger than herself; and a tall girl who played a lovely warbling flute solo: and then there was a completely ace lunch of gorgeous flaky baked salmon and Duchesse potatoes and piping-hot buttery French beans, followed up with a sort of creamy raspberry mousse concoction, and washed down with some very nice Chilean Merlot red.
(For the purists among you: I am perfectly well aware that you shouldn’t drink this with salmon, thank you. It was there and it is one of my favourites, and I really don’t care, and anyway I thought the combination tasted absolutely fine.)
It is hard work eating at school. I had to set off practically before dawn to get there, and of course can never face breakfast at that sort of time. By the time it got to lunchtime I was absolutely starving and had to exercise lots of self-control to set my knife and fork down politely in between mouthfuls and dab my lips with a napkin, and not just wolf it down gratefully with my elbows on the table. We all had coffee milling about together: the schools try very hard to get us to socialise with each other, and this is my favourite bit: I am not at all interested in talking about polo or skiing or hunting, but I really like to try and find a quiet corner where I can sit quietly and watch and listen to it all.
It is fascinating. They are an incredible crowd. Men wear the off duty uniform of tweed-jacket-and-corduroys, wives are tall and elegant and polished to a beautiful sheen, discreetly bejewelled and made up, all dressed in lovely understated soft clothes. Several of them made a huge effort and came across to talk to me in case I was lonely, which I thought was outstandingly kindly although a bit of an interruption: whilst you are being talked to you can only pay attention to one person instead of drinking in the whole very nice event: but they are all terribly well-mannered and used to being hostesses, so I had to smile and make small talk quite a lot.
The girls arrived then, bounding in to the dignified gathering like over-excited golden Labrador puppies, and once the school had made sure everybody had been well fed and fortified with drink they allowed us all to go and see the staff: working on what I am very sure is the correct principle that it is really hard to be grumpy with your child’s teacher when you are full of salmon and raspberries and a bit squiffy.
Not that I wanted to be grumpy anyway, because they are doing a marvellous job. Lucy is keen and eager about all of it: and – to my astonished disbelief – suffering agonies because she will have to leave some subjects behind next year and can hardly bear to make the terrible decision about Which Must Go.
Of course this GCSE business is terribly serious. We were given a long lecture about the importance of picking the right subjects (tailored to our daughters’ many delightful talents and undoubted promise, but also to meet with the approval of the Russell Group): and that Grades Are Everything and anything less than an A might as well be a U: and their word (because of the house in Mayfair) that our girls would Want For Nothing in the school’s quest to rise up the Independent School League Table. I am all up for this. You see, one colossally huge bonus of a boarding school and one for which I am forever and overwhelmingly grateful, is that it is all Somebody Else’s Problem.
The bit about making sure they have a quiet place to do their homework and use the internet for their research was completely missing. The nagging about how you have to impress the importance upon them, how you have to circumscribe their television and remove their iPad: you must help them organise their time, show them how to look things up, and above all insist upon early nights…all this entered into the lecture not at all.
You can have no idea how much of a relief that is. I am hopeless at academic supervision and it is absolutely glorious to think that whoever is tearing out their hair over my child’s dawdling about uselessly at the back of the class chewing her pencil and staring out of the window bringing down the grade averages: it will not be me.
I never, ever need to know or even give a moment’s thought to this sort of stuff. All I have got to do is simply sweep up the drive at the end of term, glug back the wine, smile sociably at everybody and pretend to know about chukkas, scoop up my child and vanish.
That and keep paying the fees.
