Emma: A Modern Retelling

by Alexander McCall Smith

  18

  For Emma, the fine summer weather meant the opportunity for a picnic. She had raised this possibility with Mr Woodhouse, who had listened attentively to her suggestion before he asked, in a deliberate and considered way, ‘Why?’

  Emma’s reply was equally considered. ‘Because a picnic is what one has in fine weather. Ask anybody, “What do you do on a fine day?” and they will reply, “Why, we picnic, of course.” That’s why I suggested it.’

  The sarcasm with which Emma had clothed her response was lost on Mr Woodhouse. ‘But why, Emma? Why? It’s not enough, my dear, to say that’s what people do. People do all sorts of things. The real question is why do it? You can eat the same food – in fact, rather better food – in your own dining room. You don’t get ants in your own dining room. You aren’t subject to the vagaries of the weather.’

  ‘The weather is absolutely settled,’ interrupted Emma. ‘Look at the sky.’

  ‘The sky tells us very little, Emma. The isobaric charts reveal the real truth. And I can tell you that they show things brewing up over Iceland. They’ll be having no picnics over in Iceland, I can assure you.’

  Emma sighed. There was no point in arguing with her father, who would always produce some good reason not to do anything. The only way to proceed was to proceed.

  ‘Well, it’s a great pity,’ she said, ‘but I’ve already invited people. We’re committed.’

  It was not a lie in the true sense of the word. Emma had invited Harriet – that was true – but she had not invited anybody else. The issue then was whether having invited one person justified the claim to have invited ‘people’. Emma considered this, but only briefly, and only after she had made the statement. She decided that the grammatical distinction between the singular and the plural was now so weak – they being used as a third person singular pronoun, for instance – that it was quite acceptable to refer to a person as people. That disposed of that; what she had said was true.

  Mr Woodhouse looked peeved, but only momentarily. His anxieties could shift very quickly, and what had been an overwhelming problem could within minutes, indeed within seconds, become no more than the background to a greater, more pressing issue.

  ‘But what will we do about the sandwiches?’ he asked. ‘They become limp and soggy so quickly. Have you thought about that yet, Emma? Have you discussed it with Mrs Firhill?’

  ‘We don’t have to eat sandwiches, Pops,’ said Emma. ‘There are plenty of other things to eat on a picnic. There are those rather nice pork pies – Melton Mowbray pies. People love those on a picnic.’

  This had the desired effect, firmly shifting the conversation to dietary matters and away from picnic issues.

  Mr Woodhouse shook his head. ‘Those pies,’ he said gravely, ‘are full of salt. And pork.’

  ‘Well, they are pork pies …’

  ‘I know that you like bacon, Emma, but I wish you would eat less of it. I was reading the other day that each slice of bacon you eat takes several minutes off your life.’

  ‘And years off a pig’s life,’ interjected Emma.

  Mr Woodhouse frowned. ‘I don’t see what pigs’ lives have got to do with it.’

  Emma did not answer for a while. Then she said, ‘I shall make all the plans. You just attend – that’s all you have to do. You come along and be your usual, cheerful self. That’s what people will want.’

  ‘Who’s coming?’

  Emma composed a quick mental list. ‘The usual suspects,’ she said. ‘The Weston-Taylors, Frank Churchill, la veuve Bates, Miss Bates (yawn), Jane Fairfax (iceberg), George Knightley, Mr Perry (crank) – if you’d like him to come …’

  ‘Yes, we must invite him,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘He’s very good on wild plants. He knows all their healing properties and he can identify any mushrooms we find.’

  ‘That will be very useful,’ said Emma. ‘And then there’s Harriet Smith and Mrs Goddard.’

  She watched her father’s reaction. ‘Mrs Goddard?’ he said. ‘Do you think she’ll come?’

  ‘I think she enjoyed that dinner party, and I like her.’ She paused. ‘You like her too, don’t you?’

  He looked away. ‘Yes, I like her. She’s … she’s unusual, isn’t she? We don’t get many people like that around here.’

  Emma waited for more, but he fell silent. ‘Did you know her quite well?’ she asked.

  ‘Reasonably well.’

  The subject of Mrs Goddard, she judged, was now closed.

  Mr Woodhouse suddenly thought of somebody else. ‘What about Philip Elton?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. And anyway, I think he’s away.’

  Mr Woodhouse shook his head. ‘He was. He’s back now. And I would like to have him there, Emma – I’d like that very much.’

  Emma was thinking of the complications of having Philip: she did not want Harriet to be reminded of her attempt at matchmaking, and she did not want to run the risk that the true nature of affairs be revealed. She also felt something to which she was unaccustomed and that was largely unexpected: a niggling sense of guilt. She had given him those large gins and he had subsequently lost his licence and been publicly humiliated. Did he blame her for that?

  Mr Woodhouse now explained why he was so keen for Philip to be invited. ‘I feel sorry for that poor man,’ he said. ‘He may not be to everyone’s taste – I’ll admit that I find him a bit on the pompous side – but his heart’s surely in the right place. When Sid had his prostate operation he went to see him in the hospital and offered to pick him up when they discharged him. Sid said that the other patients in his ward didn’t receive any visits from their vicars. They were obviously quite indifferent to their poor parishioners’ prostates.’

  ‘That’s his job,’ said Emma.

  ‘Yes, it may be, but remember that he doesn’t get paid for it. He does it out of the goodness of his heart.’

  Emma said nothing.

  ‘And then we have to remember that on the evening in question – the evening when he went into the ditch – he had been at our house, Emma. He had been under our roof. I really don’t know how it happened, and yet poor Philip was quite a bit over the limit when they tested him. How can that be, I wonder?’

  Emma looked out of the window.

  ‘Did you notice what he had beforehand?’ asked Mr Woodhouse. ‘You gave him a drink when we were in the drawing room. What did he have?’

  ‘He had gin,’ muttered Emma.

  ‘Just one?’

  ‘One glass,’ said Emma. ‘I gave it to him. He didn’t get a refill.’

  Mr Woodhouse shook his head. ‘Most puzzling,’ he said. ‘But, be that as it may, there is a more important consideration here. The fact of the matter is that Philip has been publicly humiliated. He has been shamed. He owned up – he pled guilty, you know – and he was then punished. We must assume that he is contrite, and in those circumstances it is for us to show that he is not going to be ostracised.’

  Emma listened. ‘Maybe I …’ she began, but did not finish.

  ‘When somebody does wrong, Emma, we must remember that that person is still a human being like the rest of us. We must not rush to throw the first stone. We must remind ourselves that all of us do wrong from time to time, unless we’re saints, which we aren’t.’

  ‘And neither were half the saints themselves,’ interjected Emma.

  ‘Possibly. But we mustn’t join the mob of witch-hunters who love to expose and shame people. We mustn’t do that. We must show that Philip has paid for what he did and is not going to be spurned. We need to take the lead here.’

  He seemed to be waiting for a response. ‘All right,’ said Emma.

  ‘And I believe that he has a girlfriend in tow,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘Somebody he met in London. I’m sure she’s very nice. She should be invited too.’

  That was welcome news. That Philip had a new girlfriend meant he would not embarrass Emma with any further declarations. So Emma said, ‘Good. It’s really nice to he
ar that he’s found somebody – at last.’

  It was Mr Woodhouse’s picnic now. ‘And I think we should get in touch with Isabella and get her and John and all those children of hers along. It will be good for them to get out of London and get some country air. All those people in London breathing the air in and out; just think of it, Emma. Just think of all that breathing going on in London – it’s a wonder there’s any air left for the rest of us.’

  Nobody turned down the invitation. Some of those invited offered to help: Harriet said that she was happy to do anything that Emma felt needed to be done, and Mrs Goddard said that she would bring two, possibly three, cakes that she would bake specially for the occasion. This offer was made by Mrs Goddard directly to Mr Woodhouse, whom she telephoned after she had received the invitation, rather than through Harriet, who would have discouraged it. And it was accepted by Mr Woodhouse, rather than by Emma, who would have heeded Harriet’s warning and declined it.

  Miss Bates was particularly excited. ‘My goodness me,’ she enthused, ‘a picnic! You know, I was just thinking the other day: when did I last go on a picnic? And do you know, I couldn’t remember, although it came back to me a little bit later when I was listening to Jane playing an arrangement of Verdi. And I remembered that it was many years ago in Tuscany, when I went there with a friend who was recovering from an operation on her arm, I think it was – or it might have been her hand. I think she had carpal-tunnel syndrome and she had to have surgery more than once; once on the left hand and then again on the right hand, or perhaps it was twice on the left hand: you know, I really can’t for the life of me remember which it was. She obviously couldn’t carry the picnic basket and so I did that, and carried the rug too, and then I slipped – we were on a path that led down into a rather pleasant little gorge – and I tumbled over and over and ended up in an olive grove. I was quite unhurt but my friend was distraught. I remember that quite well now.’

  Even Mrs Bates, who had been included in the invitation, appeared to be excited about it: sufficiently so for her to say, ‘Picnic.’

  ‘There!’ said Miss Bates. ‘Mother’s thinking about picnics. That’s far better than sitting there brooding about Lloyd’s.’

  This was a mistake. At the mention of Lloyd’s, Mrs Bates’s brow furrowed and she retreated once again into silence.

  Isabella and John Knightley also responded warmly to the invitation, and arrived from London in their Volvo estate, accompanied by their four children, on the day before the picnic was due to take place. They were given the guest wing at Hartfield, where there were corridors down which the children could run without unduly disturbing Mr Woodhouse in his study or Mrs Firhill in her kitchen. The children had been told of the picnic, and had talked of little else since they left London. Would there be cake? Would there be somewhere to swim? What were the chances of meeting a bull while crossing a field, and would Daddy be prepared to draw the bull away with his coat while they climbed over a stile to safety?

  ‘Whatever you do,’ Isabella warned them, ‘do not mention bulls to your grandfather. Just don’t.’

  She was right about that. Although Mr Woodhouse had now become actively involved in the planning of the picnic and was keen for it to take place, his concern had grown over the risks that he felt were an inevitable concomitant of the entire adventure. Foremost among these was the possibility of rain.

  ‘If it rains,’ he said, ‘and I’m afraid we must accept this as a near certainty, then we shall have to have cover for everybody.’

  ‘We could always just go back to the cars and come home,’ suggested Emma. ‘That’s the obvious thing to do.’

  He shook his head. ‘And what about that journey from the picnic site to the cars? What about that, Emma? That could take a good fifteen minutes; I’ve measured it on the Ordnance Survey map. And during those fifteen minutes we could all get soaked to the skin.’

  ‘That won’t be the end of the world,’ said Emma. ‘It’s only rain, after all.’

  ‘Oh, Emma,’ he said, ‘you’re thinking of yourself. You and Isabella and Harriet and that Frank Churchill will all be fine because you’re young and healthy. But what about poor Mrs Bates? She’s in no position to survive a soaking and would be a candidate for pneumonia. And if she went down with pneumonia, we could well lose her, and what a tragedy that would be.’

  ‘Mrs Bates has to die sometime,’ said Emma. ‘I don’t want anybody to become ill, but surely some things are inevitable.’

  ‘You heartless girl!’ chided Mr Woodhouse.

  She tried to defend herself. ‘But I’m not being heartless. I’m merely saying that we can’t all live forever, and I, for one, don’t want to. Who wants to end up in a hospital bed, unable to do anything for yourself, and stuck full of tubes? What for? For more days and months of lying in bed, feeling miserable. Far better, surely, to go on a picnic and—’

  ‘Enough!’ shouted Mr Woodhouse.

  ‘I’m only trying to—’

  ‘No, I shall not hear any more of your cruel views. Enough! Your problem, Emma, is that you can’t see it from the point of view of those who are old and frightened and unable to speak because of what happened at Lloyd’s.’

  They left it at that, and Mr Woodhouse in due course placed a large order for plastic ponchos – one for each guest – that could easily be carried and unfolded in the event of rain. It was, he thought, his gesture against the whole pro-euthanasia movement that talked so glibly of choice without realising the fire with which one played when tinkering with fragile taboos against killing others. Yes, he thought, Mrs Bates’s life did not seem to amount to much, but to her it was all she had.

  The spot they had chosen for the picnic was no more than three miles from Hartfield, on land owned by George Knightley. Donwell Abbey had once been one of the largest estates in that part of England but had been considerably reduced by the enthusiasm of George’s great-grandfather for risky investments. Yet even after the sale of several parcels of land in the 1920s and again in the 1950s, the home farm remained, and this was by far the largest holding in the area. It was at one end of this, where a gentle meadow was bounded by slightly rising ground, that the picnic was to take place. This rising ground was wooded, largely with oak, and this would provide a place for Isabella’s four children to play games of concealment and pursuit, and for such adults as wished to do so to take a break from the main picnic site.

  Those who had cars offered lifts to those who had none, or whose licence had been suspended. Miss Bates and her mother travelled with George Knightley in his estate car, while Jane Fairfax, Philip, and his new girlfriend were driven by Sid in his old Land Rover. Emma had invited Harriet to accompany her in the Mini Cooper, while Mrs Goddard, along with James Weston and Miss Taylor, joined Mr Woodhouse in his ancient Lea-Francis, which he had taken out of its garage for the occasion. Frank Churchill, who said he was keen on getting some exercise, rode there by bicycle, and arrived several minutes before anybody else.

  Sid had been put in charge of spreading the picnic rugs on the ground and unpacking the hampers. By the time that everybody was assembled, a fine lunch had been laid out – enough to feed twice the numbers present, as Mrs Firhill always over-catered.

  ‘We shall never get through all of this,’ observed Emma. ‘Look at all those sausages and chicken drumsticks.’

  ‘You never can tell,’ said Harriet. ‘Men eat an awful lot, you know. They have such appetites.’

  Emma gritted her teeth. Harriet said such stupid things: Men eat an awful lot. Of course they did. Men did all sorts of … she searched around for a suitable adjective … such gross things. She looked up at the sky. She was not sure that she could face an entire afternoon of Harriet’s company, and she would have to make sure that she created a buffer zone between herself and her friend by placing Harriet firmly next to people who would keep her busy. Not Philip, of course, nor Frank Churchill. Perhaps Harriet could sit between James and Miss Taylor – a safe place to be where the co
nversation would move along nicely without ever leading to anything untoward.

  She clapped her hands to attract everybody’s attention. The buzz of conversation faded. ‘Everybody should sit down,’ she said. ‘Find a place and then we can start with smoked salmon. As you’ll see, there is bags and bags of it, so don’t hold back.’

  They sat down. Emma made sure that she had Frank Churchill on one side of her and Isabella on the other. If Frank chose to flirt with her again – as there was every chance he would do – then she would have the satisfaction of having her older sister witness her receiving the attentions of such a handsome young man. Isabella had always tended to condescend to her slightly, and it would do her good, thought Emma, to see that men like Frank thought her worth flirting with.

  She smiled at Frank, and she was encouraged when he returned the smile. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what have you been up to?’

  ‘Planning this,’ said Emma. ‘And you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Chilling,’ he said. ‘Talking to the old man. Nothing much.’

  She watched him as he spoke. She noticed something that she had not seen before: a small cleft in the middle of his chin, perfectly placed. Harriet had said something about that, she remembered, but she had ignored it because it was only something that Harriet said.