Emma: A Modern Retelling

by Alexander McCall Smith

  People were aware at the time of the handing over of the young Frank to the Churchills, but nobody disapproved, or, if they did, nobody voiced any criticism of the sorrowing widower. It was a tragedy, people felt, that the young and popular Mrs Weston should die so suddenly, and how could her husband – how could any man – cope with a two-year-old, particularly a two-year-old who was sickly with some food issue? It made complete sense, everyone agreed, for the late wife’s sister-in-law to step in and take over, particularly since the Churchills were known to be so wealthy. In the country one of the most important measures of worth is simple acreage, uncomplicated by any other issue, and even if their land was in distant Yorkshire, they were said to possess over seven hundred acres of good arable fields and two thousand of grazing. For a young boy to be taken in by such a family was, in country eyes, good fortune on a major scale, and for a father to allow such a thing was not an indication of lack of care for a child but indeed the complete opposite.

  It was not that James Weston was penniless, but at that time there was not a great deal of spare cash. His own father had been an army officer who had purchased one of the village houses when he left his regiment, the Royal Signals, extended it by the addition of a large conservatory, and had then led a reasonably comfortable life on a combination of his army pension and a small income from the sale of a family catering concern in Norwich. James had been something of an afterthought in that marriage – there were three much older brothers – and he had lost both parents by the time he was nineteen. His older brothers were by that time working in London, and doing rather well in a distribution business they had set up together. They put James through the remainder of his university course in business studies, and made him their junior partner when he was ready to join them a few years later. They were enthusiastic in support of his rugby career, giving him plenty of time off for training and touring and always attending any game in which he played. They were generous, too, in making over to him the house in Highbury – he was the only one keen to keep links with the village; when he went there for weekends, as he often did, none of them ever joined him. After his marriage, James took up permanent residence in the Highbury house, commuting to London during the week for work – a lengthy journey that he was prepared to undertake in order to allow his wife and, in due course, young son to live a more comfortable country existence.

  The death of his wife ended this rural idyll, and although he kept the house in the village after Frank had gone to the Churchills, he now moved to London, to a small flat in Maida Vale. In his misery, he threw himself into his work, and into the task of coaching a boys’ rugby team in Wimbledon. He emerged from his grief, of course, but loss had left its mark and it was more than five years before he felt capable of entering into a new relationship. This was with a woman who worked for a medium-sized London legal firm. She was an expert in bankruptcy law and had just become a partner. They began to live together in her flat, and were happy enough for ten years before she suddenly disclosed to him that she wanted to live by herself again. He suspected initially that there was somebody else involved – a fact that she vigorously denied, and truthfully, as it turned out; she had simply fallen out of love with him.

  James reverted to his bachelor existence. He was now a senior figure in rugby-training circles, and this took up much of his spare time. He was generous, too, with his donations to a training programme he had set up to foster interest in the sport among young offenders. As one of his brothers later remarked, ‘OK, some of them played a bit too rough, but he saved goodness knows how many boys from prison. Ten? Twenty? Who knows? Better to assault somebody on the rugby field than on the street. Far better.’

  At the age of forty-seven, James was able to achieve an ambition that he had nursed for over ten years. Randalls, a small estate – not much more than two hundred acres – had come on the market after its owner, a successful commodities trader, had lost interest in it. The trader had bought it to impress his friends, but had discovered that he had the wrong sort of friends for this purpose. To begin with, they had been happy to leave London for the weekends and enjoy his hospitality, but he found that after one visit they did not accept further invitations. ‘Very quiet,’ one of them had said. ‘And very flat.’ The remark about flatness was passed without irony, and without any nod in the direction of Noel Coward; it summed up, though, the view in those particular circles that there was not much to be seen in that part of the country – the flatness of the topography saw to that – and certainly not much to do.

  Randalls came on to the market at exactly the right time for James. The distribution firm that he owned with brothers was facing take-over by a rival, and they had received a remarkably large offer for a controlling share in the company. They hesitated, but only for a short time: the offer allowed them all to remain active in the firm for five years, although none of them would need to do so. With his share of the sale, James could purchase Randalls, spend as much as he needed to improve the house and outbuildings, and have enough to live on very comfortably for the rest of his life.

  The purchase made, he withdrew from the firm altogether and returned to Highbury. He was not one to retire early, and Randalls kept him busy. The previous owner had neglected the land, and it was not in good condition. James went on a fencing course and began to tackle the task of replacing the fences. Once the paddocks were secure, he purchased a flock of Suffolk sheep and a small number of cattle. He used help from the village, taking on a man called Sid, who was in due course also to work for Mr Woodhouse, dividing his time between the two places. They got on well together and gradually began to get Randalls back into shape. ‘You can’t ignore the land,’ said Sid, reflecting on the commodity trader’s bad husbandry. ‘You ignore the land and you know what happens? The land ignores you. That’s what it does, I tell you.’

  ‘You know something?’ said Sid to his wife. ‘You know that James Weston has a son? Did you ever hear that?’

  ‘I heard something,’ she replied. ‘They say that when his wife died he went to pieces. Couldn’t do anything, and couldn’t look after the baby. Who can blame him? Poor man.’

  ‘Well, that baby was a boy,’ said Sid. ‘He went off up Yorkshire way somewhere and then off to Australia. He came back when he was sixteen – visited his father, but went back to Australia.’

  ‘Where did you hear all that, Sid? Gossip down at the pub?’

  Sid shook his head. ‘He told me himself. We were sitting in the Land Rover – finished some fencing and having a spot of lunch. He had a couple of Melton Mowbray pies – delicious they were – and he started talking about this son of his, Frank. He said that he’s twenty-four now and that he thought he might be coming over to see him again. Then he went all quiet for a while. He sat there. So I just ate my Melton Mowbray pie and let him get on with his thinking.’

  ‘Guilt, maybe.’

  ‘Odd, that’s exactly what he said. He said to me, “Sid, I feel bad that I let that boy go.” I said to him, “But, Mr Weston, you couldn’t have brought him up, you being by yourself. Far better for a boy to have a stepmother.” He listened to me all right, and I think he was pleased that I said that, but then he said, “I feel that I let him down. When I saw him after he went up to Yorkshire he seemed so settled and content that I didn’t have the heart to take him away from them. But I think maybe I should have.” ’

  Sid’s words to James were comforting; the reassurance of those around us that we have done the right thing almost always helps, although it may not, as in this case, remove the underlying anxiety that we have acted selfishly or foolishly, or even perversely. It was not the first time that James had discussed his feelings for having abandoned – the word that kept cropping up in his mind – his infant son. Shortly after the Churchills had left for Australia, his brother, Edward, had come across him at his desk in their London office, sitting staring into the distance as if he were a man in a trance. Edward had assumed that it was daydreaming, and had smiled at
the thought that his younger brother was mentally re-enacting some triumph on the rugby field. But when he looked more closely, he noticed the tears in James’s eyes. Pride, he thought, or perhaps regret at a missed try – so much could be invested in that heroic sprint towards the touchline, and yet it could all go wrong as a last-ditch tackle brought one to the ground in an undignified heap of limbs and torsos.

  He had approached him, and that was when he realised that expression on his brother’s face was one of sorrow; that the tears were ones of pain rather than of pride. In the ensuing conversation there came to the surface emotions that had been concealed for too long. Edward was understanding, and at the end had suggested his brother see somebody who had helped him with a flying phobia that had made business trips a nightmare.

  ‘She’s a psychotherapist,’ he said. ‘Not a psychiatrist. I’m not saying you need a shrink. She sits and listens and then she explains it all.’ He paused. ‘I’ll take you. It’s sometimes hard to go on your own. I’ll do it.’

  Edward had accompanied his brother to make the introduction. Then he had left him, and James found himself seated on the other side of the psychotherapist’s desk, embarrassed at where he was, unable to bring himself to speak.

  Gently she coaxed it out of him. ‘I stopped myself thinking about it,’ he said. ‘Every time it came into my mind, I said, It didn’t happen. But it would always come back to me, this thought: I gave away my son. I gave him away.’

  ‘And your dreams?’

  He had not mentioned those – not to Edward, nor to her.

  ‘Yes, I dreamed about playing with him. I dreamed that he was there in the flat. I dreamed that I was taking him to school.’

  ‘Of course you would.’

  She told him something that she knew every patient liked to hear – that he was not alone, that there were others. ‘I have somebody who comes to see me because she gave her baby away in adoption,’ she said. ‘Now she wants her back, but, as you know, you can’t do that. And there are others. I’ve had people coming in here – not just women, men too – who have felt guilty about abortions, about the fact that they disposed of something they now feel was the beginnings of a baby. Not an easy subject, and not one we like to talk about. But some of these people feel regret, and it can haunt them. What you’re experiencing is not all that different from what they feel.’

  James listened, but did not say anything.

  ‘Every case is different, though,’ she continued. ‘Some people act selfishly. They give a child up for adoption because they can’t be bothered with it. By no means everyone is like that, but some are. You didn’t do that, did you? From what you tell me, you gave Frank up because you couldn’t cope. You were bereaved – it was entirely understandable. And then, later on, when you could have taken him back, you realised that he had a much better life with your wife’s relatives. That wasn’t a selfish decision – it was quite the opposite, in fact.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, I do – and I think most people would look at it that way. Most of us are quite selfish when it comes to our children, you know. We want things from them: love, the satisfaction of seeing them do well, and so on. Plenty of parents don’t think just of their child’s best interest. Oh, they may pay lip service to it, but they really think of themselves, of what they get from parenting.’

  She saw him several times, and it helped. The dreams of Frank seemed to stop, or changed in such a way that he no longer remembered them. He found himself thinking of the boy less frequently, and, when he did come to mind, his thoughts of him were free of remorse. He wrote to the Churchills and expressed his pleasure that Frank was so happy in Australia. He wrote in such a way that he made them think that their move to the wine estate had been entirely motivated by concern for Frank’s future. He said that he hoped that Frank might be able to come and see him for a brief holiday some time; he made sure to stress that it would be brief, as he did not want the Churchills to read into his invitation any suggestion that this would be the beginning of an effort to get Frank back.

  The Churchills returned to England on visits three times during Frank’s childhood – when he was ten, when he was twelve, and then shortly after his sixteenth birthday. On each occasion they offered James as much time with the boy as he wished, and the offer was readily accepted. The first visit was not a particularly long one, but the second was for an entire month, and James took Frank for a full two weeks. They went to Ireland together, and camped for several days on the Dingle Peninsula, enduring rain and flooded fields. Frank was appreciative of everything that his father did, and thanked him profusely, with a formality that James found strangely old-fashioned. The manners came from the school he attended – he had spent his first year at a weekly boarding school in Perth, where such things were still stressed and over-familiarity with adults was as yet unknown.

  The trip to Ireland gave him an opportunity to talk to his son about what had happened. They lay in the darkness, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof of their tent; somewhere, in the distance, were waves crashing against rocks.

  ‘You may wonder why you went to live your uncle and aunt,’ he said. ‘You must have thought it a bit strange.’

  ‘No,’ said the boy. ‘I didn’t think about it because I don’t really remember anything.’

  ‘It was because your mother died, you see.’

  ‘I know,’ said the boy. ‘That’s why.’

  The conversation faltered at that point, and did not resume. What is the expression? James silently asked himself. What is the expression that pop psychologists use? Or problem-page people? It came to him. Unfinished business. Exactly.

  By the time that Frank visited at sixteen, it was too late to talk. The cautious, rather reserved little boy had become something quite different: a gregarious, confident teenager, endowed with blossoming good looks and conscious of his power to charm. A young Adonis, he turned the heads of almost all those who even had so much as a glimpse of him. His wide smile exposed a line of white that contrasted strongly with the olive of his sun tan; a head of blond curls, like that of a Renaissance angel, topped shoulders that were broad for a boy and that gave him an air of strength and firmness. The Churchills paraded him with pride; James stared at him with unconcealed wonder, verging on disbelief. Was this what Australia did?

  ‘Frank wants to be a geologist,’ Mr Churchill said to James. ‘Is that OK with you?’

  ‘Of course,’ said James. They consulted him from time to time on matters pertaining to Frank’s education, but he had never sought to interfere.

  ‘There are plenty of opportunities for geologists in Western Australia,’ continued Mr Churchill. ‘And he could help to run the vineyard too. He’s good at that now. He helped a lot with the last harvest.’

  James nodded. Frank’s life lay elsewhere – in the things that sixteen-year-old Australian boys liked to do; in a world of surfboards and freedom. There was no future for him in England, even now that he had Randalls. What were a few acres in Norfolk, bound by hedgerows and lanes, to the trackless ranges of Western Australia; what were his copses to their jarrah forests; Norfolk’s chilly beaches to their sun-drenched coasts? The psychotherapist had suggested all those years ago that he should do two things: one was to enjoy Frank’s good fortune – thereby validating his own, earlier choice – and the other was to envisage a sense of a future for himself. He would do both.

  He followed her advice. He found Randalls and began to work on rescuing it from near-ruin. And once he had made progress with that, he started to consider his situation. He had a house; he had a farm; he had a comfortable income. What was lacking? A wife, perhaps? A lover? He had seen the bankruptcy lawyer at a party recently. She had been with her new partner, a man with horn-rimmed spectacles and a rather prominent nose. He had watched her from across the room before she noticed that he was there. He felt nothing; there was no pang, not the slightest one, and that confirmed his feeling that he was ready to find so
mebody who would not think him unexciting, as she clearly had.

  They had talked, struggling to make each other heard in the crowded room.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. And you?’

  She did not hesitate. ‘Yes. I’m busy.’

  ‘All that bankruptcy?’

  ‘Yes. It never ends.’ She looked at him enquiringly. ‘And are you …’

  He knew what the unfinished question was. ‘I’m by myself,’ he said. ‘But I’m seeing someone.’

  It was a lie, and he never normally lied. He did not know why he should wish to mislead her; it was something to do with pride, he thought. He did not want her pity.

  ‘I hope she’s right for you,’ she said.

  He hesitated. ‘I think she is.’

  His hesitation was not caused by doubt, but by the sudden realisation that he knew exactly who it was who was just right for him; it had suddenly occurred to him. Of course she was. Of course.

  8

  ‘There’s nobody of your own age,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘And yet you’ve put all this effort into this. It really is impressive.’

  Emma had certainly worked hard, but there was somebody of her own age, as she reminded him. ‘Harriet Smith is coming. Remember? She’s my age.’

  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten about her.’

  ‘And then there’s George Knightley,’ said Emma.

  Mr Woodhouse nodded. ‘Of course, but then he’s my friend, isn’t he? I don’t really think of him as your friend too … and yet, I suppose he could be.’ He directed an enquiring glance towards his daughter. ‘You do like him, don’t you? I’ve never asked you.’