Emma: A Modern Retelling

by Alexander McCall Smith

‘Oh?’ said Emma.

  ‘There’s a boy who lives on the edge of the village,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s the same age as me – twenty.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Robert Martin? Do you know him? I expect you know everybody.’

  Emma frowned. Robert Martin?

  ‘His parents have that little hotel. The Oak Tree Inn.’

  It dawned on Emma whom Harriet was talking about. The Martin family had owned the hotel for over ten years, and yes, she knew Robert Martin very slightly – enough to exchange a few words if they met in the street, but not much more than that. ‘Actually,’ said Emma, ‘it’s more of a bed-and-breakfast place. It’s not a real hotel.’

  Harriet looked crestfallen. ‘It’s quite nice inside,’ she said. ‘They’ve got a bar and a television lounge.’

  Emma smiled. A television lounge! Could Harriet really be impressed by the thought of a television lounge, which would almost certainly have patterned carpets and smell vaguely of fried food and furniture polish? Surely not.

  ‘What about him?’ Emma asked. ‘What about this Robert Martin? Does he help with the B&B? Perhaps he makes the breakfasts. Fries the sausages and two rashers of bacon. Makes the cold toast.’ She wrinkled her nose, but the gesture was wasted in Harriet, who beamed though the uncomplimentary description of the breakfast.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Harriet. ‘His mother makes the breakfasts. Robert helps to take them through to the guests.’

  ‘So he’s a waiter,’ said Emma.

  ‘No,’ said Harriet. ‘He just helps his parents – that’s all.’

  Emma waited for Harriet to say something more; she did not like where this was leading.

  ‘He’s asked me out,’ said Harriet. ‘For dinner at the Chinese restaurant. The one on the Holt road. You must know it.’

  ‘I don’t really go for Chinese restaurants,’ said Emma. ‘But some people do, I suppose.’

  ‘Twenty per cent of the world’s population do,’ said Harriet, and then added the explanation, ‘That’s how many people are Chinese – one in five.’

  Emma shrugged. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, adding, ‘for them.’ She paused. ‘And are you going to go to this Chinese restaurant with him?’

  Harriet nodded. ‘I think so. I haven’t replied to him yet, but I think I will. I love the way they cook duck, you know. I love duck anyway, but the Chinese make it taste really delicious with that special sauce of theirs.’

  ‘Monosodium glutamate,’ said Emma.

  ‘They don’t always use that stuff,’ said Harriet, now slightly on the defensive.

  ‘But do you like him?’ asked Emma. ‘It’s all very well liking the way the Chinese cook duck, but do you like this Robert Martin?’

  ‘He’s rather sweet,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s got these big eyes, you see, and when he smiles there’s a dimple right there on his chin. It’s really sweet.’

  Emma frowned. She had thought Harriet was weak – just the sort of person to have her head turned by the first young man to show an interest in her – but she had not imagined that she would be quite this weak. To be struck by a dimple; could she really see no further than that? It occurred to her that she could not allow Harriet to be that easily conquered, and that she would have to act to prevent this. It was not selfishness or jealousy – nothing like that – it was a simple desire to get the best for her new friend. And Robert Martin, surely, was not the best she could do, whatever dimples he may have on his chin.

  ‘Oh, Harriet,’ said Emma, ‘you know you really mustn’t fall for such things. Dimples? What are dimples but indentations? Are you sure you’re prepared to judge somebody on their indentations?’

  Harriet looked confused. ‘He’s nice,’ she said. ‘Really sweet. I met him in the pub when I went with some students from the English course. He was kind to them: they asked him the way to the railway station and he was very—’

  ‘Oh, Harriet,’ repeated Emma, her voice rising with exasperation, ‘don’t be so gauche. Of course he’s going to be nice to your students – with you standing there. What do you expect? What he really wanted to say to them was “Get lost!” ’

  Harriet looked uncomprehending. ‘But why would he say that?’

  ‘Because that’s what people say if a bunch of ridiculous English Language students come up to them and ask them the way to the railway station.’

  Harriet shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘But of course you wouldn’t, but then that’s what you’re paid for. You’re meant to tell people the way to the railway station.’

  Harriet’s tone was meek. ‘They’re only practising.’

  ‘Of course they’re only practising,’ snapped Emma. ‘But the point is this: he was being nice to them in order to impress you. He’ll be interested in only one thing.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Emma’s exasperation now showed. She had hoped that she would be able to water down Harriet’s attention to Robert Martin without having to be too specific. But Harriet, it seemed, was not susceptible to subtlety. ‘Oh, really!’ she said, her voice rising in irritation. ‘Do I have to spell it out?’

  ‘Maybe you do.’

  ‘All right. S … E … X. There. Clear enough?’

  Harriet looked down at her faded pink trainers. Emma’s eyes followed her gaze. She noticed, now, that the thick white laces were frayed, and that one of them was about to give way.

  ‘Not all boys are like that. I don’t think that Robert is.’

  Emma gave a dismissive laugh. ‘All males are like that, Harriet, and I’m surprised you haven’t discovered that simple fact of existence. They’re all like that. Unless they’re not interested in us, in which case they’re like that to them.’

  She was sure of her ground here. There was absolutely no doubt about how men thought and about the designs they had on young women, particularly young women with Harriet’s looks and innocence. All she was doing, she told herself, was protecting a naïve young woman from a young man who would use her and then, without any shadow of a doubt, toss her aside. That’s what men did; it was just what they did.

  She wondered whether she sounded prudish, or, worse still, whether she was prudish. If Robert Martin wanted to have a relationship with Harriet, and if Harriet liked the idea, then what was wrong with that? People slept together, and was there any reason why Harriet shouldn’t sleep with this boy? What would she – Emma – feel if he were to come along and proposition her rather than Harriet? Would she respond? She shivered, and thought: Why do I shiver when I think of sex? Did everybody else shiver, or was it just her?

  Harriet was quiet. ‘I don’t know …’ She looked up at Emma, who realised, at that precise moment, that Harriet was clay in her hands.

  ‘I don’t think you should go out with Robert Martin,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re wasting yourself. It’s going to go nowhere, you know. It’s not the way to the railway station, so to speak.’

  ‘He’s—’

  Emma interrupted her. ‘He’s nothing, Harriet. He works in a B&B that masquerades as a hotel. You could aim much, much higher than that, you know. You owe it to yourself.’

  ‘To myself?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a question of what you could make of yourself. You told me that you don’t have parents.’ She hesitated, but decided to continue. ‘Or you said that you don’t really know your father. That’s a big disadvantage in life – not coming from somewhere.’

  ‘You’re very lucky,’ said Harriet. ‘You’ve got your dad and that house and your Mini Cooper.’

  Emma acknowledged her good fortune with a tilt of her head. ‘You could have all that. You could do something with your life – if you don’t go and jump into bed with the first random who comes along and asks you.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to leap into bed with him,’ protested Harriet. ‘I was going to go to a Chinese restaurant. There’s a difference, you know.’

  ‘So the second date would be a Chinese restaurant too?’ challenged Emma.
‘And then the third as well? Think of your monosodium glutamate levels, Harriet Smith!’ She laughed. ‘No, he’s got his head screwed on the right way, that Robert Martin. He knows how to get what he wants.’

  Harriet fell silent. Emma watched her carefully as she lifted her coffee cup and took another sip. She did not think that she had overstepped the mark, but she was not quite sure. She had been a bit extreme, she decided, but it was so clearly in Harriet’s best interests that a few possibly rather extreme things be said; of course it was.

  She need not have worried. Harriet put down her coffee, dabbed at her lips again, and looked earnestly at Emma. ‘You’re really kind,’ she said. ‘I’ve got nobody to tell me these things, I suppose. I just wouldn’t realise.’

  Emma stretched out a comforting hand. ‘I just didn’t want to see some very ordinary boy getting his grubby hands on you,’ she said. ‘Not when you could do so much better.’

  ‘But what should I do?’ asked Harriet. ‘I told him that I could probably go with him on the date. I said I just had to check.’ ‘Then there’s no problem,’ said Emma. ‘Do you have his number?’

  Harriet nodded. ‘It’s in my phone,’ she said.

  ‘Then text him,’ said Emma firmly. ‘Say I’m sorry but I can’t come out. Got to work. Sorry.’ She paused. Harriet had taken out her phone and was searching for Robert Martin’s number. ‘And then you could add something like See you sometime. That’s clear enough.’

  ‘But maybe I shouldn’t see him … You said …’

  Emma would have sighed had she not reminded herself that she did not want to turn into her father, with his frequent, eloquent sighs. ‘Saying to somebody that you’ll see them is utterly meaningless,’ she said. ‘See you, means, in fact, goodbye. Sometime means never. But if you want to be absolutely unambiguous, you could add the word not. That, though, would be cruel, and I wouldn’t do it.’

  She watched as Harriet sent the text. She had not imagined it would be so easy, and for a moment she felt a pang of guilt. That surprised her because guilt should not come into it: this was helping somebody who very obviously needed her help; it was not idle interference. She looked out of the window. There were people in the street, and one of them, getting out of a rather more expensive car than one would expect a clergyman to drive, was Philip Elton.

  She watched as the young vicar locked the car door behind him and made his way into the newsagent’s. He was wearing jeans, and they were well cut, and his shoulders, from behind at least, were quite broad for a clergyman’s shoulders. She wondered what age Philip Elton was. Vicars were usually ancient and wore baggy cardigans with buttons up the front. This one was very different. Late twenties? Twenty-eight maybe? Not much more. And he owned a large office block in Ipswich, they said, and somebody had said that there was a block of flats in Norwich too. Not a large block of flats, but if one thought of the rent for just a single flat these days and then multiplied it by the number of flats in the block – say ten, because most blocks of flats had at least ten flats in them – then that gave you at least seven thousand pounds a month, once one had allowed for maintenance costs and so on. If the flats were better, of course, or if there were more of them, then that figure would be even greater and would allow Philip Elton to have an even more expensive car, and a great deal more besides.

  She looked at Harriet. It was very unfair that there were so many people who were able to take gap years that they often did not really appreciate, and yet here was this vulnerable, rather sweet girl who was having to scrimp and save to have any prospect of affording even a modest gap year which would probably end up being somewhere cheap and utterly obscure, such as Malta, perhaps, where she would teach English to people who wished to be able to get to the railway station, or working in a chalet in a French mountain resort, trapped in the kitchen, washing up and making soup while well-heeled skiers enjoyed themselves in the snow outside, shooting down the black runs, drinking mulled wine and eating cheese fondues at high-altitude restaurants.

  She turned to look at Harriet once more. Of course, Philip Elton was the obvious candidate: single, well off, good-looking … The fact that he was a bore was neither here nor there – Emma did not think one actually had to listen to a man, and Harriet’s conversation was pretty frothy anyway. They might just hit it off, both talking but neither paying any attention to what the other was saying. The difference of a few years or so between Harriet and Philip was hardly significant, and anyway he would not be a permanent fixture. Harriet could continue to work at the school for a few more months and then he could relieve himself of his parish duties – he was after all, non-stipendiary and therefore could not be told what to do by his bishop – and then they could go off on the gap year together, staying in comfortable hotels and allowing Harriet to spend the whole year on a succession of beaches if she so desired. What was wrong with that? And then she could come back and she would have a bit more sophistication and worldly wisdom to her and she could apply to a university and get rid of Philip. She might even get a place, possibly at Oxford, where the C in drama might be perfectly adequate provided that Harriet could describe herself as sufficiently disadvantaged – and she did come from a disused airfield, after all; surely that would count for a lot. Or she could get a job in London and be launched. There would be numerous eligible young men after her by that stage and she would be able to pick and choose. There would be no more trainers; those would have long since been replaced by expensive designer shoes – in several colours. There would be no more cheap-looking clothes. There would be no more naïve remarks. Harriet would be transformed. Who said: ‘… changed, changed utterly’? Some poet they had studied at Gresham’s. Yeats or Keats: their names were so close that nobody could be blamed for mixing them up.

  11

  On that Saturday, a few days after Emma’s meeting with Harriet Smith in the Highbury coffee shop, George Knightley called at Hartfield, as he did once or twice a week. These meetings tended to be spontaneous, with George dropping in without prior notice; he knew that Mr Woodhouse never went anywhere, and that he would therefore always find him in. Both of them enjoyed these visits; in spite of the age gap between them they found they were able to converse with all the ease and intimacy of coevals. This was because both Mr Woodhouse and George had that relatively rare talent of dealing with other people equally, without regard to age. For his part, Mr Woodhouse could talk to a seven-year-old with the same seriousness and respect as he could talk to a seventy-year-old; it simply made no difference to him, and he always felt slightly taken aback when a young person addressed him with deference or held back in a conversation.

  ‘I don’t see why age should make the slightest difference between people,’ he once said to Miss Taylor. ‘I suppose that people who’ve been around a bit longer know a bit more …’

  ‘Not all of them,’ interjected Miss Taylor. ‘There are some people who start off knowing very little about the world and end up years later knowing even less. Never underestimate the capacity of the human mind for ignorance.’

  Mr Woodhouse found this very amusing. ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right. And, in addition to having a great capacity for ignorance, some people seem to enjoy concealing what they know. They act as if they are less intelligent and less well informed than they really are.’

  ‘Precisely,’ agreed Miss Taylor. ‘That particularly applies to politicians. Those people do not wish to appear elitist and seem to believe that to be well-informed and to speak correctly – that is, to use subjects, objects and verbs in their sentence, indeed to use sentences at all – is a sign of elitism and therefore to be avoided at all costs.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Mr Woodhouse.

  Miss Taylor smiled. ‘I shall assume that the verb in that sentence you’ve just uttered is implied, and that the phrase that you had in mind was That doesn’t include … which would, of course, justify the use of the accusative me, rather than the nominative I. I assume that.’

  ‘Splendid stuff,’
said Mr Woodhouse.

  Mr Woodhouse never had that sort of conversation with George Knightley, who was not really interested in the grammatical points from which Miss Taylor derived such enjoyment. He and George talked about just about everything else, though; George’s background was agricultural – he had a degree in land management from Exeter University – but he was interested in scientific matters too, and much appreciated the copies of Scientific American that Mr Woodhouse passed on to him after he had finished with them himself. They also talked about art, farming, national politics, and local affairs, although Mr Woodhouse knew relatively little about the last of these, as he never went out.

  Although George Knightley bore some resemblance to his brother, John, the London photographer, the two men were in many respects very different. George was courteous and considered; he was tactful in his dealings with people, and he occupied his position as a substantial landowner with an unassuming modesty and a strong sense of social responsibility. He encouraged people to picnic and ride on his land, and had gone so far as to create a cycle track through his woods to allow local children to race their bicycles through the mud and over small, artificial hillocks specially created for them. The children loved this, as did the horse-riders who galloped across his fields or the kite-fliers who launched their kites from the parkland surrounding George’s house, Donwell Abbey.

  Anglers were not forgotten. A good trout river ran through the land and fishing permits were granted on this to locals on the payment of two pounds – one pound in the case of boys and the retired. This liberality was appreciated even by the neighbourhood poachers, Ted and Morris Worsfold, who went so far as to report three outsiders who fished without first obtaining a permit. ‘There’s no excuse for poaching on that river,’ said Morris. ‘No excuse at all.’

  His generosity went even further. Donwell Abbey, a substantial Strawberry Gothic building, was an ideal setting for a wedding. There was a large hall in which the ceremony could be conducted, and the walled garden to the west of the house was perfect for receptions if the weather allowed. A money-conscious owner would have recognised this potential and made the house available for rent for such purposes, but not George Knightley. Rather than charge for the use of the house, he made it available free as long as the bride or groom lived in Highbury or in one of the five villages within the immediate vicinity. This meant that a young couple without much money could have a wedding that would normally have cost thousands of pounds, allowing them to keep such funds as they had for the deposit on a mortgage or the purchase of furniture for their new home.