Emma: A Modern Retelling

by Alexander McCall Smith

  ‘There’s a magazine,’ she said. ‘It’s called The Lady, and it’s – how shall we put it? – a bit old-fashioned, in a very nice sort of way. It’s the place where housekeepers and nannies advertise for jobs. There are always plenty of them. You’ll find somebody.’

  He took her advice, and ordered a copy of The Lady. And just as he had been told, at the back of the magazine there were several pages of advertisements placed by domestic staff seeking vacancies. Discreet butlers disclosed that they were available, together with full references and criminal-record checks; trained nannies offered to care for children of all ages; and understanding companions promised to keep loneliness at bay in return for self-contained accommodation and all the usual perks.

  He wondered who would still possibly require, or afford, a butler, but the fact that butlers appeared to exist suggested that there was still a need for them somewhere. It was easier to imagine the role played by ‘an energetic, middle-aged couple, with clean driving licences and an interest in cooking’; they would have no difficulty in finding something, he thought, as would the ‘young man prepared to do a bit of gardening and house maintenance in return for accommodation while at agricultural college’. And then, at the foot of the second page of these advertisements, there was a ‘well-educated young woman (26) wishing to find a suitable situation looking after children. Prepared to travel. Non-smoker. Vegetarian.’

  It was the last of these qualifications that attracted his attention. He thought it hardly necessary these days to mention that one was a non-smoker; it would be assumed that any smoking would be done discreetly and away from others, it now being such a furtive pastime. Far more significant was the vegetarianism, which indicated, in Mr Woodhouse’s view, a sensible interest in nutrition. And as his eye returned to the text of the advertisement he saw that even if it was included in a column in which it was the sole entry, that column was headed ‘Governesses’.

  Governesses, he thought, were perhaps on the same list of endangered species as butlers. He did not know anybody who had had a governess, although he had recently read that in Korea and Japan, where ambitious families took the education of their children in such deadly earnest, the practice of hiring resident tutors to give young children a competitive edge in examinations was widespread. These people, if female, could be called governesses, and were probably no different from the governesses that British families used to inflict on their children in the past. Of course the word had a distinctly archaic ring to it, being redolent of strictness and severity, but that need not necessarily be the case. He recalled that Maria von Trapp, after all, was a governess – as well as being a former nun – and she had been anything but severe. Would this well-educated young woman (26) possibly have a guitar – just as Maria von Trapp had? He smiled at the thought. He did not think he would make a very convincing Captain von Trapp.

  The advertisement referred to a box number at the offices of The Lady and he wrote that afternoon asking the advertiser to contact him by telephone. Two days later, she called and introduced herself. He noticed, with pleasure, her slight Scottish accent: a Scottish governess, like a Scottish doctor, inspired confidence.

  ‘My name is Anne Taylor,’ she said. ‘You asked me to phone about the position of governess.’

  They arranged an interview. Miss Taylor was available to travel to Norfolk at any time that was convenient to him. ‘I am not currently in a situation,’ she said. ‘I am therefore very flexible. There are plenty of trains from Edinburgh.’

  He thought for a moment before replying, reflecting on the rather formal expression not currently in a situation. There were plenty of people not currently in a situation, and he himself was one of them. Some were in this position because they had tried, but failed, to get a situation, and others because they had a situation but had lost it because … There were any number of reasons, he imagined, for losing one’s situation, ranging from blameless misfortune to gross misconduct. There were even those who lost their situation because the police had caught up with them and unmasked them as fugitives on the run, as confidence tricksters, even as murderers. Murderers. He imagined that there were non-smoking, vegetarian murderers, just as there were nicotine-addicted carnivorous murders, although he assumed that as a general rule murderers were not regular readers of The Lady magazine. Murderers probably read one of the lower tabloids – if they read a newspaper at all. The lower tabloids liked to report murders and murder trials, and that, for murderers, would have been light entertainment, rather like the social columns for the rest of us.

  Miss Taylor noticed the slight hesitation. She was not to know, of course, of his tendency to anxiety and the way in which this operated to set him off on a trail of worries about remote and unlikely possibilities, worrying about murderers advertising in The Lady being a typical example.

  ‘Mr Woodhouse?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here. Sorry, I was thinking.’

  ‘I could come at any time. Just tell me when would suit you, and I shall be there.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘I shall be there,’ she said, ‘once you have told me where there is.’

  There was a delightful exactitude about the way in which she spoke, and he suspected, at that moment, that he and his daughters had found their governess.

  2

  It did not take Mr Woodhouse long to confirm his earlier suspicion that Anne Taylor would be exactly the right person for the job.

  ‘You seem to be entirely suitable,’ he said, a bare hour after her arrival for the interview. ‘All we need to do, I suppose, is to sort out when exactly you can start and, of course, the terms. I doubt if any of that will be problematic.’

  Miss Taylor stared at him. She seemed surprised by what he had said, and for a moment Mr Woodhouse wondered whether he had unwittingly committed some solecism. He had been careful to call her Miss Taylor rather than Anne, even if that sounded rather formal – so it could not be that. Had he said anything else, then, to which she might have taken exception?

  ‘I have yet to indicate whether I shall accept,’ Miss Taylor said quietly. ‘One does not assume, surely, that the person whom one is interviewing wants the position until one’s asked her.’

  ‘But my dear Miss Taylor,’ exclaimed Mr Woodhouse, ‘how crassly insensitive of me. I was about to raise that very issue with you and—’

  ‘There is no need to resort to spin, Mr Woodhouse,’ interrupted Miss Taylor. ‘When one has said the wrong thing, I find that the best policy – beyond all doubt – is not to make things worse by claiming to be doing something one was not going to do.’ She paused. ‘Don’t you think?’

  He was momentarily speechless. He had not imagined that the person he had invited for interview would end up lecturing him on how to behave, and for a moment he toyed with the idea of ending their meeting then and there. He might say: ‘Well, if that’s the sort of household you think you’re coming to …’ or, ‘My idea was that I should be employing somebody to teach the girls, not me.’ Or, simply, ‘If that’s the way you feel, then shall I run you back to the railway station?’

  But he said none of this. The reality of the situation was that he had two young daughters to look after and he needed help. He could easily get some young woman from the village to take the job, but she would almost certainly feed them pizza out of a box and allow them to watch Australian soap operas on afternoon television. He knew that would happen, because that was what girls from the village did; he had seen it, or if he had not exactly seen it, Mrs Firhill had told him all about it. And even she was not above eating an occasional piece of pizza from a box; he had found an empty box a few weeks previously and it could only have come from her. This young woman, by contrast, was a graduate of the University of St Andrews, spoke French – as any self-respecting governess surely should do – and had a calm, self-assured manner that inspired utter confidence. He had to get her; he simply had to. So, after a minute or so of silence during whi
ch she continued to look at him unflinchingly, he mumbled an apology. ‘You’re right. Of course you’re right …’

  To which she had replied, ‘Yes, I know.’

  He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him short. ‘As it happens, I think this job would suit me very well. What I suggest is a three-month trial period during which you can decide whether you can bear me.’ And here she smiled; and he did too, nervously. ‘And whether I can bear you. Once that hurdle has been surmounted, we could take it from there.’ She paused. ‘I do like the girls, by the way.’

  He showed his relief with a broad smile. ‘I’m sure that’s reciprocated,’ he said.

  Mrs Firhill had been on hand to help with the encounter and had shepherded the girls into the playroom while this discussion with Miss Taylor took place. Mr Woodhouse could tell from his housekeeper’s demeanour that she approved of Miss Taylor, and in his mind that provided the final, clinching endorsement of the arrangement. Accepting Miss Taylor’s suggestion, he called the girls back into the room and explained to them, in Miss Taylor’s presence, that she would be coming to stay with them and that he was sure that they would all be very happy.

  ‘But we’re happy already,’ said Isabella, giving Miss Taylor a sideways glance.

  ‘Then you’ll be even happier,’ said Mr Woodhouse quickly. ‘But now, Miss Taylor, we must all have a cup of tea. I prefer camomile myself, but we can offer you ordinary tea if you prefer.’

  ‘Camomile has some very beneficial properties,’ said Miss Taylor.

  Mr Woodhouse beamed with pleasure.

  The briskness with which Miss Taylor moved into Hartfield surprised Mr Woodhouse – she arrived, with several suitcases of possessions, within a week of her interview – but it was as nothing to the speed with which she reorganised the lives of the two girls. In spite of her earlier enthusiasm for the appointment, Mrs Firhill took the view that she was moving too quickly: ‘Children don’t like change. They want things to remain the same – everybody knows that, except this woman, or so it seems.’ These were dark notes of caution, uttered with a toss of the head in the direction of the attic bedroom that Miss Taylor now occupied, but the housekeeper, too, was in for a surprise; neither Isabella nor Emma resisted Miss Taylor, and from the very beginning embraced the ways of their governess with enthusiasm. The new regime involved new and exotic academic subjects – French and handwriting were Miss Taylor’s intellectual priorities – as well as a programme of physical exercise and, most importantly, riotous, vaguely anarchic fun. A bolster bar was erected in the nursery, under which soft cushions were arranged. The girls were then invited to sit astride each end of this bar, armed with down-stuffed pillows. The game was to hit each other with these pillows until one of them was dislodged and fell on to a cushion or occasionally the bare floor below. In order to level the playing field that age tilted in Isabella’s favour, Emma was allowed to use two hands, while her sister was required to keep one behind her back. White feathers flew everywhere like snowflakes in a storm, and the shrieks of laughter penetrated even Mr Woodhouse’s study, where he sat engrossed in the latest crop of scientific papers in the dietary and nutritional journals to which he subscribed.

  He was bemused by the changes that he saw about him, by the constant activity, by the new enthusiasms. He watched as scrapbooks filled with cuttings from magazines and papers; as cut-out dolls found their way on to every table; as rescued animals and birds took up residence in shoe-boxes lined up at the base of the warmth-dispensing Aga; as the current of life, which had grown so sluggish after the death of his wife, now began to course once more through the house. He welcomed all of this, even if it failed to relieve his own anxiety. It was all very well to be cheerful and optimistic when one was the girls’ age, but what if you were getting to the age – as he was – when life for the immune system became much more challenging? There were dangers all about, not least those identified by the medical statisticians, whose grim work it was to reveal just how likely it was that something could go wrong. And every time he contemplated the results of new research, there was the task of adjusting his regime to increase his level of exercise – or reduce it, depending on the balance of benefit between coronary health and wear and tear on the joints; to increase the number of supplements – or decrease it, depending on whether a novel product, attractive in itself, was likely to react badly with something that he was already taking. Such balancing was an almost full-time job, and left little time for other pursuits, such as the assessment of engineering risk – a task that he was well qualified to carry out but that could be inordinately demanding if one took it seriously, as Mr Woodhouse certainly did.

  The purchase of a new lawnmower was an example of just how complicated this could be. Hartfield was surrounded by extensive lawns that gave way, to the east, to a large shrubbery, much loved by the girls for games of hide-and-seek. Those games themselves had been the cause of some anxiety, as it was always possible that hiding under a rhododendron bush might bring one into contact with spiders, for whom the shade and dryness of the sub-rhododendron environment might be irresistible. Spiders had to live somewhere, and under rhododendron bushes could be just the place for them.

  Mr Woodhouse had heard people saying that there were no poisonous spiders in England. He knew this to be untrue, and had once or twice corrected those who made this false assertion. On one occasion he had gone to the length of ringing up during a local radio phone-in programme when a gardening expert had reassured a caller that there were no spiders to worry about in English gardens.

  ‘That’s unfortunately untrue,’ said Mr Woodhouse to the show’s host. ‘There are several species of spider in England that have a very painful bite. The raft spider, for instance, or the yard spider can both administer a toxic bite that will leave you in no doubt about having encountered something nasty.’

  The host had listened with interest and then asked whether Mr Woodhouse had ever been bitten himself.

  ‘Not personally,’ came the answer.

  ‘Or known anybody who’s been bitten?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Well then,’ said the host, ‘I don’t think we need worry the listeners too much about what they might bump into in their gardens, do you?’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘A false sense of security is a very dangerous thing, let me assure you.’

  His concern over spiders was fuelled by the information the Sydney funnel-web spider, known to be one of the most dangerous spiders in the world, had taken up residence in the London Docks and was apparently thriving in its new habitat. That did not surprise Mr Woodhouse at all, who had long thought that the ease with which goods and people could now be transported about the world was an invitation to every dangerous species to take up residence in places where they had previously been unknown. It was inevitable, he thought, that at least some travellers from Australia would bring in their luggage spiders that had taken refuge there while their suitcases were being packed. If bedbugs could do it – and they did – then why should spiders resist the temptation? He shook his head sadly; the green and pleasant land of Blake’s imagining would not be green and pleasant for long at that rate. And if spiders could do it, what about sharks, who had to swim no more than a few extra nautical miles to arrive at British beaches? Or snakes, who had only to slither into a bunch of bananas in Central America to arrive within days on the tables of people thousands of miles away? And what if they met, en route, an attractive snake of the opposite sex? Before you knew it you would have a deadly fer-de-lance population comfortably established in Norfolk. That would give those complacent gardening experts on the radio something to think about.

  ‘Nonsense,’ snapped Miss Taylor when he raised the issue of spiders under rhododendron bushes and queried whether the girls might not be banned from going into the shrubbery to play their games. ‘We cannot wrap ourselves in cotton wool; just imagine what we would look like. Moreover, girls and spiders have co-existed for thousands of
years, as is established, I would have thought, by the continued survival of the two species: the British girl and the British spider. Cadit quaestio.’

  The expression, cadit quaestio – the question falls away – was one that Miss Taylor often used when she wished to put an end to a discussion. It was virtually unanswerable, as it is difficult to persist with a question that has been declared no longer to exist – anybody doing so seems so unreasonable – and it was now being used by the girls themselves, even by Emma. She had difficulty getting her tongue round the Latin but had nonetheless recently answered ‘cadit quaestio’ when he had asked her whether she had taken her daily fish-oil supplement.

  The size of the lawns around Hartfield meant that a mechanical lawnmower was required. For years Sid, who helped with the farm and with some of the tasks associated with the garden, had used an ancient petrol-driven lawnmower that he pushed before him on creaky and increasingly dangerous handles. Mr Woodhouse had decided to replace this, and had looked into the possibility of a small tractor under which was fitted a powerful rotary blade. This would enable Sid to sit on a well-sprung seat as he drove the lawnmower up and down the lawn, leaving behind him neat stripes of barbered grass.

  The tractor brochure portrayed this scene as a rural idyll. A contented middle-aged man sat on his small tractor, a vast swathe of well-cut grass behind him. The sky above was blue and cloudless; in the distance, on the veranda of a summer house, an attractive wife – at least ten years younger than the man on the lawnmower – waited to dispense glasses of lemonade to her hard-working husband. But Mr Woodhouse was not so easily fooled. What if you put your foot just a few inches under the cover of the blade? What if you fell off the tractor because the ground was uneven – not everyone had even lawns – and your fingers, or even your whole hand, were to get in the way of the tractor and its vicious blade? Or what if a dog bounded up to greet its owner on the tractor and had its tail cut off? The woman dispensing lemonade so reassuringly would shriek and run out, only to slip under the lawnmower and be sliced like a salami in a delicatessen. It was all very well, he told himself, trying to avoid these possibilities and pretending that nothing like that would happen, but somebody had to think about them.