Emma: A Modern Retelling

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Such generosity may be unappreciated, as people often resent those who help them. This was not so here: everybody in Highbury liked George and passed on news of how he had helped this young couple or that; everybody knew that if a local cause needed help, then he was the first port of call, even if he was not always in a position to give a major donation.

  The fact that he was a bachelor was regarded by many local women as a tragedy. ‘How can such a nice man still be single?’ people asked. ‘Why?’

  There was a simple answer to this, although not many in the locality knew it. George might at this stage have been by himself, but this was not always so: for four years he had been closely involved with a woman a few years older than he was, Caroline Throke, a potter who lived in King’s Lynn. Caroline was an attractive redhead whom George had met when he was at university in Exeter, and with whom he had fallen in love. This had been reciprocated, and they had enjoyed four years together, although living separately. George spent weekends with her in King’s Lynn, and she came, although less frequently, to spend time with him in Donwell Abbey. They regularly went off on holiday to France or Italy and they had also spent two months travelling in India and Sri Lanka. They were ideally suited, their friends said, and nobody ever imagined that Caroline would suddenly fall for the young installer who came to fit the solar panels on her roof.

  This solar-panel installer was called Ronnie, and he was good at his job. He had two main interests in life: solar energy and football. He was a supporter of Norwich United football team and prided himself on attending every game Norwich played, whether at home or away. He had a yellow scarf and a yellow sweater that he wore in honour of his team, which was known for its yellow colours. He also had a canary called Robert that he had bought in honour of the football team, which was fondly known as the Canaries. Ronnie still lived with his parents, and Robert filled their house with song from morning until evening, at which point a towel was draped over his cage to keep him quiet.

  Caroline had made Ronnie a cup of tea when he first came to install the panels, and she had clumsily spilled some of this tea on his forearm. He had winced from the scalding, but had quickly recovered his composure and told her that it had not hurt at all and that he was always spilling tea over himself anyway. This reaction struck her as charming, and she had watched him thoughtfully as he climbed up his ladder and began to put the panel fixings on her tiled roof. By the time he came down from the roof two hours later, she realised that she was destined to become Ronnie’s lover. She knew nothing about him, but was drawn towards him by a curious force that made her feel like a swimmer in a powerful current. She could not struggle against it; she simply had to remain afloat while the current took her away. It was entirely physical.

  Ronnie felt this too. He had lived with his parents long enough and wanted to have his own place. Here was an apparently unencumbered woman who was also attractive and friendly. He had noticed her watching him, and had correctly interpreted her gaze. He understood such looks, as he was undeniably attractive himself, and knew what it meant when people said something to you and then let their eyes linger on yours before they slipped down, as if drawn by some internal bodily gravity, to the chest. He knew what that meant.

  Caroline was dismayed to discover that she felt so little for George as to be able to abandon him for a solar-panel installer whom she had just met. She did not deceive him, though, and she told him immediately.

  ‘I’m very sorry, George,’ she said. ‘I never thought this would happen, but it has. I’ve fallen for somebody else. I didn’t set out to; he came to me. It just happened, and rather than hurt you in any way by prolonging things, I’ve decided that we should each go our separate ways. I’m so sorry, George, because you’re the kindest, nicest man in Norfolk and I would never, never, do anything to cause you pain.’

  Except leave me for a solar-panel installer, thought George, but did not say it, of course. Others were more direct. ‘She obviously wants a bit of rough,’ said one friend, adding, ‘Stupid girl.’ Another simply said, ‘D. H. Lawrence,’ and sighed.

  George was resilient, and hid his sense of betrayal, but he had become wary, as people who are hurt by others may do. To some of his friends he now seemed to be slightly distant, to have become more of an observer than a participant; it was as if he was standing on the sidelines, watching, while others got on with the business of life – and of love. In many circumstances, when others might have commented on something, or joined in the cut and thrust of an argument or debate, George would hold back; he would smile in a slightly wry way and keep his views to himself. ‘Come on, George,’ they encouraged. ‘Tell us what you think. You must think something.’ He would not rise to the bait. ‘Of course I think something,’ he might say. ‘Who doesn’t think something?’

  The truth of that observation was undeniable. We all think something, all the time – the human brain being so constructed – even if it is not necessarily of great consequence. This does not deter many of us, though, from sharing those thoughts – even those of decidedly little consequence.

  There was one exception to this reticence, and that was in George’s relations with Mr Woodhouse, Miss Taylor, and with Emma herself. When he came to Hartfield, he appeared ready to relax and open up. Not only did he have wide-ranging conversations with Mr Woodhouse, but he also spoke freely to Miss Taylor and Emma, with whom he had developed a more relaxed relationship in recent years. Certainly, the distance that had existed between them during her childhood had faded, and they had become used to having fairly lengthy – and frank – chats during his Hartfield visits. So the exchange that took place between them on that Saturday, after George had said goodbye to Mr Woodhouse in his library and was making his way to the front door, was not atypical, even if the intensity with which views were expressed was rather unusual.

  It started innocuously. Emma had been playing the piano. When, on leaving the music room, she bumped into George coming down the corridor, neither was surprised; she knew that he had been drinking tea and chatting with her father in the library, and he had heard her practising the piano when he arrived in the house.

  ‘I see that Emma’s playing Erik Satie,’ he said to Mr Woodhouse. ‘That’s one of the Gymnopédies, isn’t it?’

  ‘I believe it is,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘I don’t care for it very much. In fact, it gives me the creeps. It’s the sort of thing a spider would play if spiders played the piano.’

  This amused George. ‘I suppose the intervals are a bit … how would one put it? Elongated? Yes. It’s meant to stretch the hands. And it’s languid – it’s certainly languid. It makes me think of Paris on a wet afternoon in a quiet time of the year. Drops of raining falling on the Seine. Cobbled stones. The streets quite empty, and faintly, drifting down from one of those mansard windows, the sound of somebody playing Satie.’

  Mr Woodhouse’s eyes widened. ‘Spiders?’ he repeated, a note of concern on his voice. ‘I suppose that a piano is an ideal place for a spider to make a nest. All those nooks and crannies between the keys: a spider could well find it a very attractive place to be.’

  George made a dismissive gesture. ‘Oh, surely not. What if the spider went for a walk about the sounding board and somebody started to play? He could be hit by the hammers coming down on the strings, couldn’t he? No, a piano would be a lethal place for a spider – let me assure you of that.’ He was aware of his friend’s tendency to anxiety, and sought to change the subject by asking about the long-range weather forecast that he knew Mr Woodhouse followed with some interest.

  ‘Not good,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘There are signs that a storm is building up out in the Atlantic and will be heading our way. There are bound to be people washed off beaches down in Cornwall. Why do they go there? Don’t they know it’s dangerous to stand within reach of waves when the sea is so rough? Why won’t people stay inside, George? Can you explain that to me? Why do they have to go and court danger?

  The conversation had impro
ved, of course, as it usually did after any initial issues had been disposed of, and after half an hour of talk about government policy on agricultural subsidies – a matter that had some effect on the finances of both friends – George said goodbye, insisting on showing himself out.

  ‘I know the way,’ he said. ‘And there’s nothing much that can happen to me in the corridor.

  For a second or two a shadow passed over Mr Woodhouse’s face. But he said nothing, and George closed the library door behind him and began to make his way down the corridor. It was then that he heard the piano stop, Satie having been replaced by Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’, not particularly well played. He hesitated, and then Emma appeared.

  ‘George,’ Emma exclaimed. ‘I have had an audience, it seems. And I thought that this was a purely private performance.’

  George laughed. ‘I like your Satie. Your dad doesn’t, but I do.’

  ‘He has very conventional tastes, I’m afraid. Poor old Pops. He doesn’t really like anything twentieth century. It’s the same with opera. He goes for Mozart and so on. Not that he ever gets to see an opera these days.’

  ‘Maybe we could take him to one,’ said George. ‘We could go to Covent Garden. Perhaps even Glyndebourne, if we were feeling adventurous.’

  ‘It’s impossible to get tickets for Glyndebourne,’ said Emma. ‘You have to put yourself down years in advance. Do you know there are children of five on the waiting lists? Parents put them down for seats for when they’re eighteen. Can you believe it?’

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I can’t imagine thinking that far in advance,’ said Emma. ‘It’s like planting an oak tree. You know that you’re not going to be around to enjoy it, but you still do it.’

  ‘And just as well that people take that view,’ said George. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have …’ He waved a hand in the direction of Ely. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have cathedrals.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Emma. ‘Perhaps you’re right. But I still find it hard to worry about things that are going to happen after I’m gone. Global warming, for instance.’

  ‘That’s happening right now,’ said George. ‘That’s not the future – that’s the present.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Emma. ‘Did Pops offer you any cake? Mrs Firhill’s been baking and we have cake coming out of our ears.’

  ‘He did, thanks very much. I had two slices.’

  They walked together towards the front door. In the hall, standing beneath the large Venetian canal scene – ‘our non-Canaletto’ as Mr Woodhouse called it – George remarked that he had seen Harriet Smith in the village with a group of English Language students from Mrs Goddard’s.

  ‘She’ll have been showing them the way to the railway station,’ said Emma.

  George frowned. ‘Railway station?’

  ‘A metaphor,’ said Emma lightly. ‘There are real railway stations, of which we have none in the village, and metaphorical railway stations, of which we have as many as anybody else – perhaps more.’

  George smiled. ‘Emma, you’re very opaque sometimes.’

  ‘At least I’m not transparent,’ said Emma. ‘I should hate to be seen through.’ She paused. ‘So you saw Harriet Smith?’

  ‘Yes. And then, when I went into that new coffee place, she was there – by herself now.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I had coffee with her. We had an interesting chat.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes. She has an interesting story, that girl.’

  Emma was intrigued. She had been hoping to get Harriet’s story out of her, but no opportunity to do that had presented itself so far. Could George tell her?

  ‘I didn’t hear it from her,’ he said. ‘I heard it from Mrs Goddard. She and I are on the Lifeboats Committee – we raise money for them, you know. Anyway, she told me a bit about her.’

  ‘Is she a sort of orphan?’ asked Emma. ‘Or not quite an orphan, but heading towards being an orphan?’

  George smiled. ‘You could put it that way. Mind you, you could say that about everybody, couldn’t you? All of us are either orphans already or destined to become orphans.’

  ‘But what about Harriet?’ pressed Emma.

  ‘It’s a very strange story. Her mother, apparently, had a dance studio in Chichester: the sort of place where little girls go to ballet lessons, with floors covered in French chalk – that sort of thing. Anyway, she was unmarried and there was no prospect of anybody turning up. But she wanted a child – pretty desperately, apparently. That’s understandable, of course. And so she looked for a man who would oblige.’

  Emma smiled. ‘There are such men,’ she said, adding, ‘So I’m told.’

  ‘Not in the usual way,’ George went on. ‘This was a case of home-based artificial insemination.’

  Emma drew in her breath: Harriet had been an AID child. She knew, of course, that such people existed, but she had never met one.

  George continued with his story. ‘This fellow, apparently, did the decent thing, and the result was Harriet. But there was a firm agreement in place, as I believe there often is in these cases, that his identity would be kept secret. And you can understand that.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Emma.

  ‘Because if you didn’t have that, then you wouldn’t get donors to donate, would you? A man could find himself faced with quite a few children if he’d been helpful more than once.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Emma. ‘But then what happened next?’

  ‘Just a couple of years ago, when Harriet was eighteen, her mother died and she found herself …’

  ‘… alone in the world,’ supplied Emma.

  George ignored the provocation. He had been about to say exactly that, and he saw nothing wrong with the expression. ‘Yes,’ he said, and thought: And you could find yourself alone in the world too, Emma. ‘The dance studio was sold and raised a bit of money, but that wasn’t really enough to keep Harriet. Mrs Goddard came to the rescue. She and Harriet’s mother had been penfriends when they were children, and had kept up with each other. She effectively took Harriet in.’

  ‘Poor Harriet,’ she said.

  ‘Well, at least she had somewhere to live,’ said George. ‘And then came the big surprise. Harriet was contacted by a lawyer in London, who said he was acting on behalf of a client who did not want his identity revealed. He was, the lawyer explained, the man who had helped Harriet’s mother to become pregnant. He was the father.’

  Emma listened enrapt as George continued.

  ‘All that the lawyer would reveal was that this man was a teacher. He did not have a great deal of money but he wanted to make a contribution to his daughter’s expenses until she was in a full-time job. He said that he would pay a small sum into her bank account each month. He wished he could give more, but he couldn’t.’

  Emma let out her breath. ‘Astonishing,’ she said.

  George agreed. ‘So there are least some decent people left,’ he said.

  ‘Does she know?’ Emma asked. ‘Does she know that the person sending her money is her father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But does she know that he’s only her father in a biological sense?’

  He shrugged. ‘What does it matter? The biology’s much the same whether it’s a natural or assisted conception.’

  ‘So she doesn’t know how she was conceived?’

  ‘Apparently not. She thinks that her mother had an affair with the man who was her father.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Emma. ‘It must be difficult to accept something like that about yourself.’

  He did not agree. ‘I don’t see it that way,’ he said. ‘I really don’t see that it matters a damn how one comes into existence.’

  George now made for the door. ‘You won’t tell her, will you?’

  Emma promised him that she would not say a word to Harriet.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘She’s a nice girl and I wouldn’t like to think of her being distressed
. I suspect her life is hard enough as it is. Mind you …’

  Emma waited.

  ‘Mind you, she’s having a bit of romance, at least. There’s that boy from the little hotel outside the village.’

  ‘B&B,’ said Emma quickly. ‘Actually, it’s a B&B.’

  ‘Well, it’s him, anyway: Robert Martin. His father happens to rent one of my fields. They have a couple of Jacob’s sheep they keep there. He said to me – the father, that is – that his son was cock-a-hoop because he was going to have dinner with Harriet in a Chinese restaurant. Apparently the father had never seen his boy so happy.’

  A trace of a smile appeared on Emma’s face. ‘No, he’s not,’ she said.

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘If he thinks he’s having dinner with Harriet Smith, he’s got another thing coming,’ she said. ‘She’s going to cry off.’

  George seemed to be intent on examining the non-Canaletto. ‘Oh yes?’ he muttered. ‘She’s told you that, I suppose.’

  ‘She has,’ said Emma. ‘She’s already texted him to let him know. No Chinese restaurant. No date. That’s it.’

  George turned round gradually. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And you had nothing to do with that, Emma?’

  Emma’s eyes were wide with innocence. ‘Me? I’m not the one he invited.’

  ‘That’s not the question I asked. I asked you whether you had anything to do with Harriet’s refusal of his invitation?’ He was staring directly at her now, and she flinched. ‘Did you?’

  Her reaction had given him his answer. ‘Emma, you disappoint me,’ he said.