Emma: A Modern Retelling

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mr Woodhouse smiled. ‘Vicars are allowed to go on about the Holy Ghost,’ he said, and then added, ‘He’s actually called the Holy Spirit these days. Holy Ghost is very old hat.’

  Emma shrugged. ‘Same difference,’ she said. ‘And then we should invite James Weston. Obviously he has to come.’

  ‘An excellent list,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘Le tout Highbury.’

  Emma looked past her father, out through the window behind him. The names were so familiar to her and yet now, for the first time, she thought of them in an adult way; not just as parental friends and acquaintances, but as people open to her speculation and scrutiny. It was interesting.

  Her father had said something, but she had not taken it in because she was thinking again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said that there was a young woman Miss Bates was speaking about, a Harriet Smith, I believe. We might invite her in order to balance numbers a bit.’

  Emma smiled. ‘How quaint. Nobody balances numbers any more.’

  ‘Don’t condescend to me, Emma.’

  ‘Sorry, Daddy. Yes, by all means invite la Smith.’

  Miss Taylor pursed her lips. ‘To call somebody la Smith is similarly condescending. You don’t even know her, Emma.’

  Emma made an insouciant gesture. ‘I’m crushed,’ she said, adding extravagantly, ‘like a clove of garlic in a garlic press.’

  ‘There’s interesting new evidence about garlic,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘Apparently the active ingredient in garlic significantly reduces the risk of heart disease and dementia. We’ve always known that, of course, but there’s powerful new evidence pointing that way. Most encouraging.’

  ‘And vampires,’ said Emma. ‘It’s very effective against vampires, I believe.’

  Mr Woodhouse smiled. ‘If they existed, of course, I would have no doubt as to its efficacy in that regard. Their non-existence, perhaps, may be evidence of your proposition. Garlic has eradicated them.’ He laughed. ‘How about that, Emma? Would they appreciate that over in Bath?’

  ‘Extremely amusing,’ she said. ‘Très drôle, Daddy.’

  ‘Your dinner party,’ said Miss Taylor the following day. ‘Don’t forget to invite the guests. The most frequent cause of nonattendance at parties, I understand, is non-invitation.’

  ‘I can well imagine that,’ said Emma. ‘But yes, I’ll invite them today. I’ll start with Philip Elton, perhaps. He must sit in that vicarage of his and positively wait for invitations, but I can’t imagine anybody invites him to much.’

  ‘He’s a good-looking young man,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘I would have thought that his social life would be satisfactory enough.’

  ‘He’s pompous,’ retorted Emma. ‘He’s impressed with himself and he’s an intellectual show-off. As for that voice of his – people keep going on about it, but I think it’s fake. Nobody talks like that, other than people who’ve been to drama school and have cultivated low, dark tones – you know, that deliberately smooth way of speaking some people have.’

  ‘Don’t be too harsh, Emma. He does his best, no doubt.’

  Emma laughed. ‘But you could say that of anybody. We all do our best in one way or another.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked Miss Taylor.

  She waited for an answer, but Emma moved on to Miss Bates. ‘And then there’s Miss Bates,’ she said. ‘I’ll pop a note through her door. If I phone her, I’ll never get off the phone. You know how she goes on, and on, and on.’

  ‘Miss Bates is lonely,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘And she’s unsure of herself. She’s nervous.’

  ‘I don’t see what there is to be nervous about,’ said Emma. ‘Highbury is about as safe as anywhere in England, I would have thought.’

  ‘It’s not that sort of nervousness, Emma. It’s social nervousness. She feels that she has to talk all the time because she doesn’t know quite where she stands.’

  Emma looked disbelieving. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Yes, Emma. Remember that she’s pretty hard up. Many of the people round here are actually quite well off. You yourself are, as you no doubt know.’

  Emma made an impatient gesture with her hands. ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. Money means nothing.’

  Miss Taylor made an effort to control herself. ‘To you, maybe – because you’ve got it. If you haven’t, it means rather a lot.’ She paused. She did not like to lecture Emma – especially now that she was no longer her governess, but she could not let this particular piece of arrogance go unchallenged. ‘Money confers power on people. It is there in the relationship between those who have it and those who don’t. It is absolutely central to human relations and the way we judge one another, even if we like to think that it isn’t. It is utterly pervasive. Utterly.’

  Emma did not like the reference to judgement. ‘I don’t judge people on the basis of money,’ she said. ‘And none of my friends do.’

  Miss Taylor hesitated, unsure as to whether there was anything she could say to assail the confidence of youth. To be so certain – and so wrong. ‘Your friends,’ she began. ‘Are you sure that money doesn’t come into it?’

  ‘Into what? Our friendship?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Emma sounded even more certain now. ‘Of course it doesn’t. I’ve never chosen my friends on the grounds of what money they’ve got – or haven’t got. Never.’

  Miss Taylor spoke quietly: ‘Maybe not consciously.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I mean that I’m sure you didn’t sit down and say to yourself: I’m going to be friendly with this person because he – or she – has money. No, you wouldn’t have done that, I’m sure. But think of your friends … What are they doing? Your Bath friends – or your friends from Gresham’s, the ones you’re still in touch with; Betty Slazenger, for instance.’

  Emma did not hesitate. ‘She’s in New Zealand. I heard from her the other day. South Island.’

  ‘Oh yes? And it’s winter there now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. She’s skiing. She …’ Emma stopped herself.

  ‘Skiing in New Zealand?’

  ‘Yes. Betty’s always been a good skier. And Rosie too. They learned when they were very small. The Slazengers had a house near Zermatt. It gives you a head start.’

  Miss Taylor nodded. ‘Yes, it must do. But let me ask you this: of your immediate group at Bath, how many of them had the advantage of a gap year?’

  Emma thought for a moment. ‘Just about all of them, I think. More or less. But so what? What’s that got to do with what we were talking about?’

  ‘I would have thought it was obvious,’ said Miss Taylor evenly.

  ‘Well, I don’t think it is.’

  Miss Taylor did not want to engage further. ‘Let’s not argue,’ she said. ‘All I’m saying is that Miss Bates is not well off and must feel a little bit insecure.’

  ‘Which is no excuse for being a bore,’ said Emma quickly. ‘But don’t worry, I’d never say anything to her face. Please credit me with some tact.’

  ‘Then there’s this Harriet Smith,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘Should I pass the invitation on to her? She lives over at that English Language school – the one at the old airfield.’

  ‘Mrs Goddard’s place?’

  ‘Yes. “Mrs Goddard’s School of English”, I think it’s called.’

  Emma looked puzzled. ‘Is she a teacher? I gather that anybody can get one of those TEFL qualifications and then set themselves up as a teacher of English to innocent foreigners. Some of those diplomas take a week to get, you know – a full week.’

  Miss Taylor explained that Harriet Smith was not an employee – even if she helped Mrs Goddard from time to time – but was staying at the school as a guest. Emma found this strange: how long could one stay as a guest with somebody else? Was the limit not meant to be three days or so?

  ‘I believe that Mrs Goddard has been providing her with a home for some time,’ she said. ‘I think that somebody pays for it.’

  ‘So
mebody pays? Her parents?’

  Miss Taylor did not know.

  ‘Very strange,’ said Emma. ‘I look forward to meeting this Harriet Smith.’

  7

  James Weston toyed with the idea of turning down the invitation to dinner at Hartfield. It was for a Friday evening, and Friday was the night on which he regularly went to a nearby gym for a session with his personal trainer, Ken. Ken was highly sought-after as a personal trainer and had only taken James on as a favour for Mr Perry, who had helped him set up his practice by lending him the money for the hefty insurance premium he was obliged to pay. (‘You’d be surprised at what people can do to themselves on the rowing machines,’ Ken had said one day, shaking his head in disbelief.) So when Mr Perry put in a good word for James he could hardly refuse to fit him in.

  Ken, it transpired, was happy to reschedule their appointment.

  ‘Don’t let things slip, but,’ he said. He had a disconcerting habit of adding but to the end of each sentence; a linguistic quirk that betrayed his Northern Irish origins.

  ‘I’ll go on Saturday,’ promised James. ‘I’ll make up for it.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ken. ‘You can lose twelve per cent of your fitness in twenty-four hours, but.’

  James was in his mid-fifties, but still very fit, having been a distinguished rugby player in his earlier years, coming close one season to being selected to play for England against Wales. That selection did not materialise, and an injury to his knee brought his sporting career to an end, but he had maintained at least some of his training programme and had continued to go to the gym several times a week. His blood pressure was accordingly low – something that Mr Woodhouse had been very interested to hear about, and that he took pleasure in discussing with his friend whenever he saw him. Whereas most of us might make a general enquiry about the health of a friend when we met, Mr Woodhouse liked to hear precise details, rather to James’s embarrassment.

  ‘You’re extremely fortunate,’ Mr Woodhouse said when he came across his friend in the village on the day before the dinner party. ‘What’s your resting heart rate at the moment?’

  James Weston shrugged modestly. ‘It’s not too bad, I suppose.’

  ‘No, come on. What is it?’

  James realised that an answer was expected. ‘Forty-eight, as it happens,’ he said. ‘The gym, you see—’

  ‘Forty-eight!’ exclaimed Mr Woodhouse. ‘You know what mine is? Seventy-eight. Yes, I’m afraid that’s the case. Seventy-eight to your forty-eight.’ He paused, looking at James with undisguised admiration. ‘And your blood pressure?’

  James sighed. ‘It’s OK.’

  Mr Woodhouse was not to be fobbed off. ‘Go on. Let me hear the worst.’

  ‘One hundred and ten over sixty-five,’ muttered James.

  Mr Woodhouse was tight-lipped. Then he said, ‘I was one hundred and thirty-five over ninety this morning. I took it twice. Same result each time.’

  James was tactful. ‘Sometimes you need to recalibrate the sphygmomanometer,’ he said. ‘They can give very inaccurate readings if you don’t calibrate them correctly.’

  ‘But I have recalibrated it,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘Twice. I’m afraid it’s accurate.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said James, ‘you could perhaps do a bit more exercise – that helps to lower blood pressure. How about coming to the gym some day?’

  Mr Woodhouse did not respond.

  ‘You might find it enjoyable,’ went on James.

  Mr Woodhouse looked away. ‘I have so much to do,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where the time goes, but I doubt if I could find time to go to the gym.’

  ‘Then nobody’s forcing you,’ said James.

  Although they did not have much in common when it came to resting heart rate and blood pressure, Mr Woodhouse and James had something very much in common in that both had suffered the loss of their wives. In James’s case, his wife had died of a malignant tumour that had been diagnosed far too late for anything to be done about it. They had one child – a boy called Frank – who had been slightly over two when she died. James had taken his wife’s death very badly, and had struggled to look after Frank, who had a milk and egg allergy – later grown out of – and who had been obliged in his early years to eat a closely supervised diet. A relative who lived in Yorkshire came forward and offered to take Frank off his hands. In his grief and his helplessness, James accepted the offer, and so Frank went off to stay with Mr and Mrs Churchill, where he quickly settled in. James visited him from time to time, and on each of these occasions the Churchills were worried that he would reclaim his son. At the end of each visit, though, seeing Frank so happily settled, James forbore to take him home. Eventually it was agreed that Frank would stay with the Churchills and that they would give him their name. ‘He can always revert to being Frank Weston,’ they assured his father. ‘Let him choose what he wants to be later on. And names are not so very important, are they?’

  When Frank was eight, the Churchills left Yorkshire for Australia. The reason for their emigration was that Mr Churchill’s great-uncle had left him a wine estate in Margaret River, a choice wine-growing area in Western Australia. The estate was one of the earliest and best-established estates in the area, a much better proposition than the smaller, bijou wineries that were set up after the region became fashionable. This inheritance, fortunate as it might have appeared to those who were unaware of the Churchills’ circumstances, led to days of agonising indecision and heart-searching. The prospect of going to Western Australia, to live in one of the most attractive parts of the state, on an established and prize-winning wine estate, was almost irresistible to the oenophile Mr Churchill. He had sampled his great-uncle’s wine, several cases of which had been despatched to him with each harvest, and the thought of taking charge of an estate that produced such a fine product was an immensely attractive. He knew that there was a good wine-maker on the estate, and a manager who could run the place perfectly competently, but he feared that having a distant owner would inevitably lead to problems. If he lived there, he could take personal charge of the business, and could bring his own agricultural skills to bear on the enterprise. And at the time that the news came through of his inheritance, the skies over the Churchill farm near Ripon were particularly low and grey. Western Australia, which Mr Churchill had visited shortly after he had graduated from Cirencester, had wide, empty skies, filled with light and, as he remembered it, birdsong. The contrast was just too tempting; he had to go; he just had to.

  But if they went, what would become of Frank, to whom he and his wife had become as attached as if he were their own son? While James might be have been happy enough to allow Frank to stay with them in Yorkshire, would he agree to their removing him from the country altogether and taking him to Western Australia, which was about as far away from anywhere as one could get – far away, even, from Melbourne and Sydney, let alone England?

  For days the Churchills debated with themselves as to what they should do. Eventually they plucked up the courage to approach James, who listened gravely to their description of the estate and their enumeration of the attractions of Western Australia. Mr Churchill came to an end and glanced at his wife. Their fate, they knew, was in James’s hands. If he said no, and refused to allow Frank to go with them, they would probably stay in Ripon.

  ‘But of course you must go,’ said James. ‘Imagine how young Frank will love it. What a wonderful start for any boy.’

  They could hardly believe his generosity. ‘It’s an awful long way away,’ said Mr Churchill. ‘I can’t imagine that we shall be back in England every year.’

  ‘No, I doubt if you would,’ said James. ‘But then I might come out to see Frank one of these days – who knows? He’ll have the time of his life out there. The Australians are such a positive and cheerful people. He’ll become an Australian, no doubt, which is a fate that I would gladly wish on anyone.’

  ‘So we should go?’

  ‘Of course you should. Of course.’


  They left a few months later. Frank was brought to James to say goodbye, and they spent a long time talking about Western Australia and what the boy might expect there. Then, when it was time to go, James embraced his son briefly and stiffly. He was in tears, and did not wish the boy to see him cry. So he turned away, and the boy looked at him reproachfully, thinking that he was being rebuffed.

  ‘Your daddy is very sad,’ whispered Mr Churchill. ‘Australia is a long way away.’

  Although relatively few people in Highbury had actually seen the young Frank Churchill, this did not mean that people in the village and its surroundings did not know all about him. James Weston had spent his youth in Highbury and his later prowess on the rugby field had been a source of local pride. Nobody from the area had achieved prominence in anything very much – if one discounted Mr Woodhouse, of course, and his obscure invention – so to have somebody almost picked for the English rugby side was something of a distinction. James was popular, too, for his genial, friendly nature, and for the fact that he never appeared to make any uncharitable remarks. In the country, where memories of ancient insult can be long, this was something sufficiently unusual to be a matter of remark. ‘Dislikes nobody, he does,’ said one local, adding helpfully, ‘Nor he don’t.’ No disentanglement of double negatives was required to understand this sentiment: James’s amiable smile and courteous nod of the head to those he met in the street was enough to make that meaning quite clear.