Emma: A Modern Retelling

14

Over the days that followed, Emma thought a great deal about Jane Fairfax. She was impatient to see her again, which rather surprised her, as she had been irritated by Jane’s guarded manner and barely concealed disinclination to open up to her. Every time she had asked her something – and she did not think that her questions about the piano had been too probing – she had been greeted with an evasive or enigmatic reply. The conversation about Cambridge had been typical of that: she had had to prise out of Jane the fact that she had been at St John’s. She wondered why this should be so; was it modesty on Jane’s part? It might have been that she did not wish to draw attention to the fact that she had been at Cambridge, believing – although there was no justification for such a belief – that anybody who had been at Bath would feel envious of those who had gone to Cambridge. If that were so, then her reticence could be construed as consideration, and she deserved credit for it. It was equally possible, though, that Jane had simply not wanted to engage in conversation with somebody whom she considered to be beneath her. That was clearly a less charitable explanation, but could very well be true: some people simply could not be bothered to engage with people with whom they felt they had nothing in common. Perhaps Jane thought that of her; had written her off as a typical county girl who was going to end up decorating people’s drawing rooms with chintz until she married some rather dim young man, a land agent or surveyor perhaps, and who would then have three children and a couple of Labradors. The mere thought of this possibility angered her. How dare she; how dare she imagine that she, somebody who came from … from nothing could condescend to her, to Emma Woodhouse of Hartfield. It takes my breath away, she thought, just to think she considers me to be of no consequence.

Yet any affront she suffered was more than outweighed by the interest that she felt in Jane. She found herself thinking of the other young woman’s piano-playing, and of how confident it had been. She found herself thinking again of the white linen blouse and wondering whether she might not buy one herself. Perhaps she could also look for some of the Indian bangles that had looked so good on Jane’s wrist. She conjured up a mental picture of Jane’s boyish figure and wondered whether she had to follow a diet in order to get that effect or whether it came naturally. Some people could get away with eating anything because their systems burned up the calories before they could get stored as fat. Was Jane like that, she wondered – did she have an efficient metabolism? She could always ask her, of course, and see what her reaction was. ‘Do you have an efficient metabolism, Jane?’ She smiled at the thought. There would be an evasive answer to that, she imagined.

There were other people to think about, though, and these gradually began to replace thoughts of Jane Fairfax. The first of these was Harriet, whom Emma had rather neglected after Jane’s arrival; and the second was Frank Churchill. It was the first who told Emma of the imminent arrival of the second.

Emma had not invited Harriet to Hartfield that day, and was mildly surprised when she spotted her friend talking to Sid near the entrance to the vegetable garden. Seeing her from the staircase window, Emma quickly slipped out of her inside shoes and put on a pair of green waterproof boots.

Harriet saw her as she approached from the side of the house. ‘I just popped in,’ she said. ‘Mrs God was going into London and I decided to take the opportunity of coming with her. She left her car at the railway station.’

‘She must know the way there by now,’ said Emma.

Harriet looked puzzled. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Nothing,’ said Emma. ‘What I meant to say is that I’m really pleased to see you.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Harriet. ‘I normally don’t like dropping in on people without any warning. I’m always worried that they might be in the loo, or something like that.’

Emma laughed at the odd, almost juvenile remark. ‘I don’t think that people are too embarrassed about that,’ she said.

Sid was standing by. He was grinning. ‘I used to work for a fellow – he was a pukka earl and all – and he used to telephone people from the loo. They had no idea that he was there, of course, and they had a perfectly normal conversation.’

‘I don’t see why one wouldn’t,’ said Emma. ‘Didn’t kings conduct their court business from the bath?’

‘Yes,’ said Sid. ‘So I believe. There was a programme on the box about it some time ago. They showed how one of those kings, see, would run everything from his bedroom.’

They went inside. ‘I’m glad that you came,’ said Emma. ‘I wanted to find out when you might be free to come to lunch. I thought I’d invite Philip Elton as well. Just the three of us.’ She glanced at Harriet.

‘Oh, but he’s already invited me,’ said Harriet. ‘Or rather, us. He’s invited both of us to have lunch with him at the pub. He asked me to find out when would suit you.’

Emma was momentarily nonplussed. She could understand Philip’s inviting Harriet to the pub, but why would he invite her as well? Her puzzlement, though, was brief. She only had to think about it for a few moments before an obvious answer suggested itself: Philip, for all his good looks and eloquence, may have felt anxious about asking somebody out on what was obviously a date; men like that often suffered from a lack of confidence. Asking both of them was a way of paving the way for the next invitation, which she imagined would be extended only to Harriet.

‘That’s really good news, Harriet,’ said Emma. ‘I could tell he liked you, you know. It was perfectly obvious – right from the beginning.’ She grinned at her friend. ‘Men are so transparent. You can read them like a book.’

‘He’s very kind,’ said Harriet.

Emma would not have chosen that description for Philip, but she was content to let it pass. She thought that he was probably somewhat selfish, but that this defect could be ignored as long as he treated Harriet considerately, which he probably would. What man would not be delighted to have the attention of such an astonishingly beautiful young woman, and what man, in his delight, would not be careful to indulge her financially? This was never going to be a permanent arrangement, and the whole point of it was that Harriet should get her gap year, with a little bit of spoiling thrown in. He was certainly kind enough to provide that, she thought, even if ultimately he was not a person she would saddle anybody with on a permanent basis.

‘How about next Tuesday?’ asked Emma.

Harriet was free, and she thought it would suit Philip too. ‘He said that he had nothing on all next week,’ she said.

Emma made a mental note. Philip had told her father on more than one occasion that he was overworked; the truth, it seemed, was rather different. She had noticed that people often claimed to be busier than they really were; there had been a lecturer at Bath, the aptly named Dr Snail, who had very little, if not nothing, to do and yet who always claimed to be overworked. It was guilt, she thought, that made them protest their busyness.

Emma led Harriet into the kitchen, where she made tea for them. ‘Are you an Earl Grey person?’ she asked, opening the cupboard in which the tea caddies were kept; with her delicate features, Harriet could well have been a drinker of Earl Grey tea.

‘Not really,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m not all that keen on Early Grey. I know that sounds frightfully unsophisticated, but I just go for …’

‘Builders’ tea,’ prompted Emma. Early Grey, she thought: was the curious name a mistake or another example of Harriet’s childishness? Early Grey … Mrs God … Wetness, thought Emma. Poor Harriet is simply wet. Dripping.

‘Yes. But why do they call it builders’ tea? Do builders really drink it?’

Emma shrugged. ‘I suspect they do. I don’t know many builders, but when we had one here repairing the conservatory he drank lots of Indian tea. He liked it dark and with three spoons of sugar.’

Harriet made a face. ‘Three!’

‘It must have tasted disgusting,’ said Emma. ‘But he liked it. He was a rather nice man. He had an Alsatian dog that stayed in his van all day, except when he took him out for a walk at lunchtime. He was careful to keep him on a lead because he said his dog was dangerous. He said it was wanted by the police for biting somebody.’

They took their tea through to Emma’s sitting room.

‘You haven’t forgotten, have you?’ said Emma as they sat together on the sofa near the window.

‘What?’ asked Harriet. ‘Forgotten what?’

‘That shows you have forgotten,’ Emma chided her. ‘Your portrait.’

She noticed that Harriet blushed.

‘I hadn’t. I was going to ask you …’

‘When I was going to do it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ said Emma. ‘We could start right now. Or not right at this very moment – after we’ve finished our tea.’

Harriet did not object.

‘It needn’t be a long sitting,’ Emma continued. ‘Half an hour maybe – this time. Something like that.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Harriet. ‘I’ve got nothing to do all day. The students are having a holiday. We call it a study day. Study days happen when Mrs God wants to go to London.’

Emma smiled. People suited themselves; more and more that was the lesson she was learning. ‘Do you have any preferences?’ she asked.

‘For?’

‘For how you’d like to sit?’

Harriet thought for a moment. ‘I don’t want it to be too formal,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Emma. ‘A formal portrait usually says very little about the sitter. The more informal the better, I think.’ She paused. ‘You said the other day au naturel.’

‘Did I?’

Emma struggled to keep a straight face. She nodded.

‘Well, maybe I did.’

‘That means starkers,’ said Emma.

Harriet appeared not to understand. She must know the word, thought Emma; perhaps she was just pretending.

‘Starkers,’ repeated Emma. ‘Nothing on. A nude study.’

Harriet’s mouth opened in surprise. ‘But I didn’t …’

Emma cut her short. ‘I’ve been to life-drawing classes,’ she said. ‘I’ve worked with models. It’s nothing unusual.’

Harriet looked about her. ‘In here?’

‘Yes. This is as good a place as any. Unless you wanted to do it in the bathroom. Do you know those pictures Bonnard did of his lover in the bath?’

Harriet put down her teacup. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before,’ she said.

‘Most people haven’t,’ said Emma. ‘It’s nothing unusual. What normally happened with the models at my life classes was that they wore a dressing gown to begin with. Then they took it off for the actual pose.’

Harriet looked about her again. ‘Were they just women?’ she asked. ‘Or were they men too?’

‘Both,’ said Emma.

Harriet looked thoughtful. ‘Oh,’ she said.

Emma grinned. ‘It was all very straightforward,’ she said. ‘Nobody batted an eyelid.’

‘I wouldn’t know where to look,’ said Harriet, and giggled.

‘You look at what you’re doing. You just get on with the drawing.’

‘You’re more experienced than I am,’ said Harriet.

Emma was not sure now to take this. Was there a barb to it? She gave Harriet a searching look, but decided that, as usual, there was neither irony nor sarcasm in what she said. It was rather like talking to a child, Emma decided.

Emma returned to the models. ‘We never knew which model we would be drawing. It could be a man or a woman. They just turned up. They were very ordinary.’

Harriet frowned. ‘In what way?’

‘What they looked like. They were all ages. Some of them were fat and some were thin. There was one male model who was a body-builder and had all sorts of muscles one wouldn’t have known existed, and then there was one who was really weedy. I remember his knees. They were really bony. I think he didn’t get enough to eat.’

‘Have you got a dressing gown?’ asked Harriet nervously.

‘I’ll fetch you one,’ said Emma, getting up to leave the room. As she went into her room to fetch her Japanese bathrobe, she stopped and thought about the enormity of what she was about to do. There was nothing inherently wrong about doing a nude study – artists did such things all the time, and she was, in a sense, an artist. No, more than that: she had every right to consider herself an artist; she had studied life drawing and she was a graduate of an arts-based programme; she was not just some untutored amateur. But even if all of that were true – which it was – she was still asking somebody she knew socially to take her clothes off; moreover she was asking this of somebody over whom she seemed to have a measure of influence. There was no reason why Harriet should feel either beholden to her or in her power, but it was obvious that she looked up to Emma. And here she was using that influence to persuade her to sit for a nude portrait. She saw herself in the mirror. Emma Woodhouse: is this sexual? The question, brutal in its directness, seemed to come from nowhere. She had posed it, of course, but she had done so without intending it.

No, it’s not, she said to herself. I am not interested in girls. I’m just not. Nonsense, of course you are. Everybody is interested in beauty – and Harriet is beautiful. These conflicting answers came from somewhere within her, from some hidden centre of self-knowledge.

She reached out to take the Japanese bathrobe from its peg. It was too late to change her mind, and she did not want to do so anyway.

Back in her sitting room, she handed Harriet the robe. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back in a few minutes.’

‘You don’t have to go,’ said Harriet. ‘I don’t mind.’

She did not watch Harriet undress, though. She stood by the window and looked out, only turning round when Harriet told her that she was ready.

‘That Japanese motif suits you,’ Emma said. ‘Mind you, you could wear anything, I think. You’re very lucky.’ She pointed to a small sofa on the other side of the room. ‘You could sit there. Just sit normally.’

‘Without the gown?’

Emma hesitated. It was not too late to go back. But then she said, ‘Yes.’

Emma opened her sketchbook. Yes, she thought. Harriet Smith is entirely beautiful. She had taken a stick of pastel in her hand, but she noticed that she was holding it so tightly that she caused it to fragment. ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s fine. Just like that.’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Harriet.

Emma took command of herself once more. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t think models think very much.’

Mrs Firhill said to her husband that night, ‘I certainly wasn’t imagining it, Bert. You know me: do I imagine things? I wasn’t imagining it because I had no reason to imagine it in the first place, if you see what I mean.’

Bert Firhill was not sure that he did. ‘You say that you saw them …’ He lowered his voice. ‘Larking about unclothed.’

‘No. Just one of them. That Harriet Smith girl. I didn’t see Emma – I was in the corridor, you see, and you get a view into the room through a side window; it’s difficult to explain. I couldn’t see it all.’

‘So they were up to something.’

She shrugged. ‘There was nudity – that’s all I’m saying. And call me old-fashioned if you will, but I don’t expect to see nudity at eleven-thirty in the morning, do you?’

Bert did not. ‘Are you going to tell Mr Woodhouse?’

His wife did not hesitate. ‘No. It’s nobody’s business but theirs.’

‘You’re right.’

‘Anything goes these days, as you know. But it still makes one think, doesn’t it? That girl is a troublemaker. I’ve always said that. Bert, haven’t I? She’s trouble.’

Bert nodded. He agreed that Emma was trouble, but he rather liked the idea of young women larking about, as he put it, in a state of undress. It enlivened things, he thought. But of course he could not say that; there were many things that Bert Firhill thought but could not say, and this was one of them.