Emma. Alexander McCall Smith
she may well have changed her views,’ retorted Miss Taylor. ‘Had she lived, that is; I was not suggesting that views can change after one has crossed over, so to speak. Things have changed since … since her day. And both of them are perfectly happy where they are. Why send them off to some wretched boarding school, some Dotheboys Hall? What’s the point of having children if you then just send them away?’
Mr Woodhouse looked out of the window. It was all very well for Miss Taylor to barge in and give her opinions on this tricky issue, but she was Scottish and did not understand the nuances of English life. Highbury, their village, was the embodiment of England; and there was a social order, complete with nuanced expectations, that she could not be presumed to understand. The local primary school was perfectly adequate for young children – and Miss Taylor was right to say that the girls were happy there – but now that they were getting older, there arose the highly charged question of boys. If they went to the local high school, then they would simply become pregnant; Mr Woodhouse was sure of that. That was what happened at the local high school. They would meet the wrong sort of boy whose sole ambition would be to make any girl whom he met pregnant.
He wondered if he could explain his fear to the governess, who was staring at him intently, as if trying to fathom the nature of his unsettling suggestion that the girls might be sent away.
Miss Taylor now spoke. ‘How long have I been here now? Almost three years, have I not?’
He nodded. She had become a fixture in their lives, and it seemed as if she had been there for much longer than that. And he hoped, quite fervently, that she would be there for much longer – indefinitely, really, as it was hard to imagine Hartfield without her now.
‘Well,’ continued Miss Taylor, ‘it would be a pity if I were to drop out of their lives after all that time, simply because they’ve been sent off to boarding school.’
Mr Woodhouse gasped. ‘But there would be no need for that,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t need to leave.’
‘I don’t see what the point of my remaining would be,’ said Miss Taylor coolly. ‘My role here is as governess. As governess, I must emphasise. I would have nothing to do were the place to be devoid of children.’
‘But there’d be the holidays,’ objected Mr Woodhouse. ‘They would need supervision during the holidays.’
‘Mr Woodhouse,’ said Miss Taylor reprovingly, ‘surely you wouldn’t expect me to sit about for months on end with nothing to do.’
He was about to say, ‘But that’s exactly what I do myself …’ but he stopped. He could not contemplate her leaving, and it had now occurred to him that there was a way in which this could be avoided.
‘May I suggest a compromise?’
‘I don’t see what compromise there can possibly be,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘Either they go to boarding school, or they do not. You weren’t going to suggest that I accompany them? I’m not sure that that would be viewed with favour by the school concerned.’
Mr Woodhouse laughed. ‘You going off with them and sleeping in the dorm with the rest of the girls? Eating your meals in the school refectory? Playing hockey? Hah!’
She looked at him with disdain. ‘Very droll,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what this compromise is.’
‘There’s a school in Holt,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘That’s not far, as you know. You will have seen it. Gresham’s.’
‘I could hardly miss it,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘I do not go about with my eyes closed, Mr Woodhouse.’
‘They take day pupils,’ he continued. ‘I could drive them there in the morning, and then you could pick them up late afternoon.’
Miss Taylor looked thoughtful. ‘It has a very good academic reputation, I believe.’
‘Exceptional. And some very distinguished people went there. Benjamin Britten, the composer, for example.’
‘My tastes are a bit more robust,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘That’s a personal view, of course. There are those who like Britten, but what he has to say about Venice would hardly encourage one to visit the place …’
‘And then there was Donald Maclean,’ mused Mr Woodhouse. ‘He was at Gresham’s too, and became a very well-known spy.’
‘I see. Neither of those would have made very good husbands, I think …’ She gave him a wry glance. ‘One would not want one’s husband to defect to the other side, would one?’
Mr Woodhouse looked puzzled. He thought that there might be something subtly humorous about her remark, but he was not quite sure what it was. The other side? Moscow? That was a bit obvious. ‘Well, it’s all different now,’ he said. ‘We would not be sending them there to find a husband. There’ll be plenty of time for that, later on.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘There are those who believe that is what universities are for.’
She rose to leave. She was not one to prolong a conversation once a decision had been made. ‘I’m not at all sure that Emma will be the sort to want a husband,’ she said quietly. ‘Isabella, yes. She definitely will. And sooner rather than later, I think. She’s probably thinking of boyfriends more or less now. I know I’m talking about a twelve-year-old girl here, but character, Mr Woodhouse, is formed at a very early stage in our lives, and there are some girls who, even though only just twelve, give very clear indications of what lies ahead in the amorous department. I have seen it, Mr Woodhouse. I have seen it all before.’
Mr Woodhouse seemed lost in thought and did not pursue with her what she had said. This suited Miss Taylor, as she was not very sure herself what she would say if he were to press her on her judgement of his daughters’ characters. She was sure enough of her assessment of Isabella, but when it came to Emma she was a good deal less confident. There was something very unusual about Emma, who was, she felt, considerably more complex and therefore more interesting than Isabella. That was not to be dismissive of the older sister; Isabella was a pleasant enough girl and Miss Taylor was sure that she would be a social success, particularly with boys. It was much more difficult to make such a prediction in Emma’s case. She was a pretty child and that would guarantee the attention of friends – the beautiful, Miss Taylor had noticed, are seldom lonely, unless they choose to be. But it seemed to her that Emma had depths that might well be lacking in Isabella and girls like Isabella. There was something about her …
An aesthetic awareness? Was that it? Shortly after she had first arrived at Hartfield, Miss Taylor had become aware of Emma’s interest in how things looked. There had been a curious incident in which Emma had ventured into her governess’s room and started to rearrange the toiletry items set out on the dressing table. These included two silver-backed brushes – one a clothes brush and the other a hairbrush – that had been given to Miss Taylor by her aunt in Aberdeen. ‘Scottish silver,’ the aunt had said. ‘The very best silver there is.’ Miss Taylor had wondered about that: how could Scottish silver possibly differ from all other sorts of silver? Silver, surely, was silver, wherever it came from. But that was not the point: the real point was the large ornate letter T engraved on the backs of the brushes.
Now these brushes sat alongside an eau-de-cologne dispenser in the form of a squat bottle of thick-cut glass, a tortoiseshell comb, a bottle of nail-varnish remover, and a small Wemyss Ware bowl containing cotton-wool buds. For the average young child, such a collection would have been a positive invitation to fiddle, to take tops off, to press and spray things. The eau-de-cologne dispenser would have been the greatest temptation, closely followed by the cotton-wool buds. But this was not what happened with Emma, who spent ten concentrated minutes moving the items about the dressing table until they were placed in a position that appeared to satisfy her.
‘You’re very busy,’ said Miss Taylor as she observed what was happening.
‘They must be beautiful,’ said Emma.
‘What must be beautiful,