Emma: A Modern Retelling

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Love, Frank (Churchill but really Weston!)

  Miss Taylor readily shared in her fiancé’s pleasure; she knew how much he had been longing to see his son again, and she had felt vaguely aggrieved that Frank had already called off promised visits more than once. She had imagined at first that this displayed thoughtlessness on the young man’s part, and had been prepared to feel cross with him over what she saw as cavalier cancellations. When she found out the full facts, though, she changed her mind, and realised that if there was to be any blame for these aborted visits, then it rested fairly at the door of Mrs Churchill.

  Mrs Churchill was not popular in Highbury, even if there were few people who had actually met her; those who had, spoke of her high-handed manner; those who had not, talked of how other people spoke of her haughtiness and sheer bossiness. There was nobody who was prepared to say a good word about her.

  Miss Taylor, who was aware of Mrs Churchill’s reputation, thought this unfair. Although not one to overlook the failings of others – she was no Pollyanna – she nonetheless felt that Mrs Churchill must have at least some good points, even if these generally went unremarked. After all, she and her husband had provided a home for Frank, and even if self-interest were involved in that, taking on the child of another was surely an act of extreme generosity. And if she had proved to be a possessive stepmother, then that was more likely to be caused by insecurity than by selfishness. Miss Taylor’s Scottish upbringing had taught her that blame requires free will and the making of choices; we answer for what we choose to do, a simple enough concept to grasp. Weaknesses of character or personality issues – such as insecurity – are hardly a matter of choice. So if Mrs Churchill’s undue possessiveness had its source in insecurity, and if this insecurity were not something Mrs Churchill had chosen for herself, then her possessiveness was not a failing for which she could be blamed. That was what Miss Taylor thought. Everybody else, however, thought differently.

  Frank Churchill arrived shortly before noon on the day on which his flight from Perth touched down at Heathrow. Leaving the Churchills to make their own way into London, Frank picked up the German sports car that he had reserved – at considerable expense – and left for Highbury.

  Mrs Churchill had expressed misgivings. ‘I don’t know why you need a car like that, Frank,’ she said. ‘You can’t drive fast on these English roads, you know.’

  ‘You can’t drive fast anywhere,’ said Frank. ‘Oz is just as bad. All those traffic cops.’

  ‘Speed is not essential,’ said Mrs Churchill. ‘Anyway, when are we going to see you? When will you be coming into London?’

  Frank was non-committal. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult to find parking in London, I think. You just go ahead and make your plans yourselves, Ma. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘It’s not a question of worrying about you,’ said Mrs Churchill. ‘It’s just that … well, we thought it would be nice if we could do a few things together.’

  Mr Churchill had intervened. ‘Let Frank do his own thing, Enid,’ he said. ‘He’s a big boy now.’

  Mrs Churchill shot her husband a glance. This would be discussed later on. ‘Will you phone?’ she said to Frank. ‘I’ll keep my phone switched on.’

  Frank nodded. He looked at his watch. ‘You mustn’t miss your train,’ he said. ‘The Heathrow Express doesn’t sound like a train that hangs about.’

  They parted, and Frank, relieved to be the master of his own destiny, even if only for a short time, loaded his luggage on to the minuscule back seat of the high-performance sports car. Then he set off for Highbury, where his father, anxiously looking at the clock, willing its hands round the dial, awaited him.

  When it took place, their reunion, although emotional, was a matter of few words.

  ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ said James, struggling to control the tears he knew were just beneath the surface.

  ‘And I’m so glad I’m here,’ said Frank. ‘You know that I wanted to come long ago? You know I wanted to come before this?’

  James nodded, but did not say anything. He knew whose fault it was that Frank’s previous plans to visit England had been suddenly dropped. Frank had not spelled it out, but it was obvious to everybody that the sudden bouts of illness Mrs Churchill had experienced just before Frank’s departure were as dubious as they were convenient. Only George Knightley had suggested that it might be Frank himself who simply could not be bothered to come.

  ‘I fail to see why somebody of twenty-whatever-he-is should be incapable of telling her that it’s his life,’ he said to Mr Woodhouse. ‘No, her illness might just be an excuse he’s come up with for his selfishness.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Mr Woodhouse. ‘Why would Frank Churchill not want to see his father?’

  ‘He’s probably too busy socially,’ said George. ‘Better things to do. That’s the usual reason why people don’t make time for their parents.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll never know,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘But we should, perhaps, bear the background in mind. Perhaps young Frank Churchill is punishing his father. After all, he did hand him over to the Churchills. Maybe Frank resents that.’

  ‘But he’s had a much better life in Australia,’ said George. ‘I gather that place of theirs is one of the best wine estates in Western Australia. He’d have nothing like that in this country.’

  Mr Woodhouse considered this. He was not always one to understand matters from the point of view of the other, but on this occasion he did. ‘But people may not judge things purely on the basis of material advantage,’ he said. ‘It’s rather like this foreign-adoption issue they’ve been talking about in The Economist.’

  George did not read The Economist. This sometimes put him at a disadvantage when talking with Mr Woodhouse, who read it religiously, and who liked nothing more than to air some item of recondite knowledge gleaned from its columns. ‘I may have seen something about it in The Times,’ he said.

  Mr Woodhouse did not believe this. Nobody seemed to read The Economist – except him – and it did not become people to claim to have read things in other papers or magazines when it was clearly the sort of thing that one would only read about in The Economist. ‘What all that’s about is this,’ he explained. ‘There are some countries that are saying they won’t allow foreigners to adopt their babies any more. Russia’s starting to make those noises, apparently. And some other places too. They say the child is deprived of its cultural birthright if it’s taken to another country – even if conditions are much better there.’

  ‘So they would prefer a child to be an orphan at home rather than have parents abroad?’

  Mr Woodhouse made a gesture that indicated his tolerance of Russian stubbornness. ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  George looked thoughtful. He was thinking of what it would be like to be an orphan. It would be lonely, he imagined – unless one had brothers and sisters one knew about, which might not be the case. He at least had his brother John, even if their relationship had never been particularly close. John occasionally telephoned him from London, but would never have bothered to come back to Highbury had it not been for Isabella, who liked the children to see Mr Woodhouse. He could envisage losing contact with John eventually, or seeing him only once or twice a year, unless he made an effort to keep in touch.

  He felt lonely. John would never be a soulmate, and he could not think of any of his friends who were obvious candidates for that role. There were one or two men he had got to know at the pub, but they had young families and demanding careers and had little time for the sort of conversation that he wanted to have. He could talk to Mr Woodhouse, of course, and they did in fact spend hours in wide-ranging discussions of all sorts of topics, but these discussions would often go off at a tangent, with Mr Woodhouse bringing up some issue of viruses or food safety, or some obscure point about scientific method. Then there was Emma …

  In recent months he had found himself looking forward more and more to their cha
ts. He had been surprised to find how much he wanted to share his thoughts with her; if he heard a piece of music that appealed to him or read something that made him think, he would say to himself, What would Emma make of that? And then, if he drew it to her attention, he found that she always raised some interesting perspective on the matter and would make some amusing comment. She made him want to laugh, with her dry humour and her mischievous remarks. Sometimes too mischievous, of course; if only she could learn to be more charitable and to let people get on with their lives without giving the impression that she would like to interfere.

  He was unsure why she did that. He had thought about it a great deal, and was coming round to the view that she did it because she had nothing better to do. If she had a proper job then her energy could be channelled into that and she would not feel the need to interfere. He thought of Harriet Smith. He had seen them together and it was clear to him that she was fascinated by Harriet. Why? Because Harriet was the next best thing to having a doll, whose life could be organised, who could be dressed up and made to do things to enliven an otherwise uneventful life?

  There was so much to think about once one started to think about Emma, but now, he thought, was not the time. Mr Woodhouse had started talking about Russian adoption, and so he should respond.

  ‘One can understand this Russian reluctance to allow foreign adoption – to an extent. If you think it’s a good thing to be Russian, that is.’

  Mr Woodhouse frowned. ‘And is it?’

  George had views. ‘It depends, I suppose, on what sort of life you have. If your life is intolerable, then you no doubt think that it would be better to be something else. And it may also depend on how you feel about your fellow citizens. If they’re behaving badly, then you probably wish that you were something else – perhaps to avoid guilt by association.’

  Mr Woodhouse reverted to the subject of Frank Churchill. ‘I suspect that he’s rather pleased that he’s Australian rather than British. You carry less history when you’re Australian.’ George shook his head in an animated fashion. ‘Everyone has some history to bear, and to feel sorry about. Mind you, the Australians do seem to have apologised to some of their people for treating them badly.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps we should do a bit more of that ourselves.’

  George looked anxious. ‘Apologise for what?’ he asked.

  Mr Knightley sighed. ‘Take your pick. Slavery, perhaps. We might start there.’

  ‘But that was a long time ago.’

  ‘Not all that long, actually. And the social consequences of it are still being felt in the West Indies. Ask them – they’ll tell you that. We created a society in which family life was pretty much impossible. The society at the receiving end of that was irretrievably wounded while we grew rich on the proceeds. Sugar fortunes came from all that, remember.’

  ‘But that’s ages ago. It’s got nothing to do with us.’

  ‘We’ve still got the capital that we built up through slavery. It’s still there.’

  They lapsed into silence, as if both cowed by the sheer weight of post-imperial guilt. For a brief moment, Mr Woodhouse closed his eyes and saw, rather vividly, an image of distant plantations, of Spanish ships sunk, of a viceroy riding an elephant in a durbar, of a lifeless tiger being carried upside down on a litter of bamboo poles. And he thought: If we can’t find it within ourselves to apologise to the descendants of our victims, then our hands will remain forever dirty. He looked at his own hands, and there came into his mind the troubling question: what does historical guilt look like on the skin?

  No such reflections accompanied the discussion of Frank Churchill that took place between Emma and Harriet Smith. This conversation occurred after Harriet Smith came for the second, and final, sitting for her sketched portrait. Emma had undergone a change of heart since the first sitting, and had decided to draw Harriet wearing the Japanese dressing gown rather than in the nude. Harriet seemed relieved about this; how could the portrait have been shown to anybody, she pointed out, if it portrayed her naked? ‘It would have to be kept secret – locked up like one of those stolen paintings that unscrupulous collectors stash away. And that would be such a pity, Emma, when it’s bound to be so good.’

  Emma agreed. ‘Philip Elton wanted to see it,’ she pointed out. ‘And perhaps it would have been a bit embarrassing for both of you.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t have borne that,’ said Harriet. ‘I would not wish Philip to see me in the nude.’ She blushed. ‘I mean, to see a picture of me in the nude.’

  Emma smiled. ‘No. So why don’t I do you in the Japanese dressing gown? You looked so good in it.’

  Now, with Harriet adopting once more her position on the sofa, Emma began to add the dressing gown by the simple expedient of sketching over the original with more pastel. It was not too taxing, and rather reminded her of how, as a very young girl, she had dressed her cut-out dolls with paper cut-out clothes. And Harriet, after all, had precisely the pertness, the neatness, that those dolls possessed.

  ‘You won’t believe what I saw,’ remarked Harriet as she settled into her pose.

  ‘Try me,’ said Emma.

  The pastel moved across the page; light, shade, smudging.

  ‘I was in Highbury with Mrs God, I mean Goddard—’

  ‘No, Mrs God,’ Emma interjected. ‘It seems to suit her.’

  ‘We were going to buy gin,’ Harriet continued. ‘Mrs God loves her gin.’

  ‘I’m beginning to like her more than ever,’ said Emma. ‘And?’

  ‘And we saw a really smart car drive down the High Street. It was a silver sports car of some sort – it was German.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It stopped outside Miss Bates’s cottage.’

  Emma paid more attention now. ‘Really? Why would anybody in a silver German car want to stop there?’ She paused. ‘Unless by accident, of course. I suppose one might very easily break down in front of Miss Bates’s cottage. Not that German cars break down.’

  ‘This guy got out,’ said Harriet. ‘A young guy.’

  ‘How young?’

  ‘Our age,’ said Harriet. ‘Maybe a year or two older.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He was to die for.’

  Emma put down her pastel and stared at Harriet. To die for … Nobody said to die for any more. ‘Good-looking?’ she said.

  ‘To die for,’ replied Harriet.

  ‘And then what happened?’

  Harriet paused before delivering the next instalment of her story. ‘He rang the bell, and then went inside. We went off to do our shopping and we weren’t back for at least half an hour. The car was still there. I’d thought that maybe he’d stopped to ask directions, but it must have been a social visit. Anyway, there we were and he came out and I said to Mrs God, “You see that guy? Could we just watch where he goes?” And Mrs God said to me, “You mean, follow him?” She liked the idea. She watches those police series on television, you see, and she rather liked the thought of following a German sports car in her Fiat 500. So we did.’

  Emma put down her pastel; really, this was too ridiculous for words. ‘So you gave chase?’

  Harriet nodded. ‘He drove off to Randalls. You know that house just off the Holt road? Quite close to you. It belongs to James Weston.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Emma, with some irritation. Did Harriet really imagine that she might not know her own neighbours?

  ‘Well, when we saw that, Mrs God said, “Of course, of course! It’s Frank Churchill.” ’

  ‘Frank Churchill,’ muttered Emma. ‘So he’s arrived at last.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ asked Harriet.

  Emma thought very quickly. The interest that Harriet was taking in Frank Churchill unsettled her. Emma had not yet had the chance to look at Frank Churchill on this visit, and she did not like the idea of Harriet suddenly falling for him. That was not in the script.

  ‘I’ve met him on previous visits,’ she said. ‘He’s James Weston’s son, you see. He was sent off to Australia when
his mother died – some relatives called Churchill took him. They’ve got pots of money.’

  Harriet listened intently. ‘He looks so cute,’ she said. ‘He’s got this really nice face, you see – very regular features – and his shoulders …’

  ‘Too bad,’ muttered Emma.

  Harriet looked puzzled. ‘No, there was nothing wrong his shoulders – in fact—’

  She did not finish. ‘Harriet,’ said Emma, ‘sorry to have to tell you this, but I don’t think Frank Churchill’s going to be interested.’

  Harriet stared at her. ‘You mean …’

  Emma waited for her to finish her sentence, but she did not. She inclined her head slightly; that was all – just a slight lowering of the head. She was not going to tell any lies; Frank Churchill may or may not be interested in Harriet – who could tell? All she was doing was expressing her own opinion as to whether or not he would notice her. There was nothing wrong with that. She would not tell Harriet that he was gay, but if that was the way she chose to interpret what she had said, then was she under any obligation to correct her? She could not be a nursemaid to Harriet, responsible for protecting her from every misunderstanding.

  And yet conscience pricked her. ‘All I meant,’ she said, ‘was that I thought he might not be interested. That’s all.’

  Harriet groaned. ‘It’s so unfair.’

  ‘What’s unfair?’

  ‘These nice men – all these really nice men are … aren’t interested.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s perfectly happy with himself,’ said Emma.

  For the rest of the sitting, she sketched in silence. An hour later, the portrait was finished, and she stood back to admire it. It was good, she thought; not just adequate, but good.

  She showed it to Harriet, who said that she was pleased. ‘I love a pastel drawing,’ she said. ‘And this one makes me look so …’

  ‘So intriguing,’ suggested Emma.

  ‘Yes, maybe. Goodness, I’m not that clever and yet here I look as if I’m thinking very hard!’