Emma: A Modern Retelling

19

Isabella and John Knightley stayed on at Hartfield for several days after the picnic. The suggestion that they should prolong their stay came from Mr Woodhouse, who pointed out that a few more days in the country would help the children to clear their lungs after uninterrupted months in London. ‘They might also rediscover the existence of the letter h,’ he muttered, a remark which, fortunately, was not picked up by John Knightley. He had always scoffed at the countyish ways of both his father-in-law and his brother, and had succeeded in assuming the linguistic cover of an accent described as Chelsea Cockney. This had been achieved with the aid of a voice coach, an expert on the mastering of the glottal stop. For hours John had been coached in the proper pronunciation of the word butter, managing at last to pronounce it as bu-er, skilfully eliding the double-t in the middle. His children, he was pleased to note, did not require to be taught to get rid of these otiose t’s, and said bu-er naturally and unselfconsciously.

While his brother and his family were staying at Hartfield, George was invited to have every meal there, with the exception of breakfast. George was particularly good with his nephews and nieces. With that innate ability that children have to detect an adult who treats them as an equal, the young Knightleys were all over their uncle, climbing up his legs, pulling his hair, ambushing him in corridors, and setting traps for him on the garden path. He took all of this in good part and gave them uninterrupted hours of his time, reading them Winnie-the-Pooh and Orlando, the Marmalade Cat without complaint.

The ease with which George fitted into the expanded household at Hartfield could not disguise the fact that between him and Emma there was, after the debacle of the picnic, an atmosphere of tension that came to a head when Emma made a remark at the lunch table in the course of a discussion of islands. This discussion was triggered by a report in that day’s Times of the identification of a hitherto unknown lizard on a remote South Sea Island. This discovery had interested the children, who speculated at length as to whether the lizard could climb trees, eat snakes, and be susceptible to domestication.

Emma had at this point said, ‘It must be strange living on some remote island in the Pacific – Tristan da Cunha, for example – even if you’re not a lizard.’

‘Please pass the bu-er,’ said one of the children.

‘Tristan da Cunha is actually in the Atlantic,’ George pointed out dryly. ‘Or it was, when I last looked at the map.’

Emma shot him a glance, and avoided him for the rest of the day. Nor did they speak to each other over the dinner table, at which they had been joined – at Mr Woodhouse’s invitation – by Mr Perry, who spoke for some time about the properties of echinacea, Philip, who had eyes only for Hazel, and by Mrs Goddard and Harriet Smith. After dinner, though, when everybody was having coffee in the library, George drew Emma out into the corridor.

‘I’m sorry, Emma,’ he said. ‘I spoke rudely at lunch, and I shouldn’t have done so. I didn’t mean to show you up in front of the children.’

She looked away.

In spite of her hostility, he continued, ‘It’s just that Tristan da Cunha is in the Atlantic.’

She turned to face him. ‘Do you think I care about Tristan da Cunha? Do you think I care whether it’s in the Pacific or the Atlantic? It makes absolutely no difference.’

‘But it would,’ protested George. ‘It would make a great deal of difference if you lived there.’

‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous!’ snapped Emma. ‘You’re such a … such a pedant.’

George caught his breath. ‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. You’re always going on about where things are.’

It was an absurd accusation; she knew it and he resented it. ‘You’re the one who’s being ridiculous,’ he said. ‘And as far as I’m aware, I don’t always go on about where things are. In fact, I can’t recall a single instance in which we’ve talked about the location of anything at all, let alone an Atlantic island. Can you?’

She looked at her watch. ‘It’s very late. I need to go to bed.’

He caught her wrist. He did it gently, but he held it when she tried to pull away. ‘You can’t run away from things indefinitely, Emma.’

‘Let go of me.’

He let go.

‘I have to talk to you about the picnic,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t want to, but we can’t let the issue sit there, festering.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

‘You know very well,’ he returned. ‘You know very well that you behaved appallingly.’

She stood quite still.

‘Yes, you do know that, don’t you?’ George went on. ‘You know full well that you gratuitously and cruelly humiliated Miss Bates. You didn’t have to do it, you know. You didn’t have to insult a poor, rather vulnerable woman who’s seen her whole world collapse about her ears, who’s got to cope with a mother who’s virtually catatonic, and who depends on benefits to get by each week. And you, with everything that you have – this house, your money, your looks, your coruscating wit – you still think that you have to put that poor woman down. Everyone knows that at times she can bore the pants off all of us, but the point is that she is our neighbour, Emma, our neighbour in more senses than one.’ He paused. Emma was staring at the floor. He lowered his voice. ‘That was badly done, Emma. That was badly done.’

She did not reply. She let him finish what he had to say, and she walked off, not turning back to say goodnight, not wanting her tears to be seen. She had always liked George, even admired him, and now she had offended him, goaded him into this denunciation of her. She had no idea why she had mocked Miss Bates. George was quite right: it had been ungenerous and unkind. Was that the sort of person she was? She had never asked herself that question – that uniquely unsettling question – but now she did: What sort of person am I?

She went up to her room and flung herself down on her bed. She did not turn on the light, but lay there, fully clothed, immobile in her wretchedness. His words sank in; they sank in. It can happen; in the lives of all of us there are points, sometimes unexpected and barely salient, when somebody says something that may change us – and our lives – to an extent that is truly surprising. This was such a moment for Emma Woodhouse.

The following morning Emma drove briefly into Holt before going on to Highbury. Parking the Mini Cooper outside the Bateses’ cottage, she made her way up the front path with its cracked and broken paving stones. She looked at the house with new eyes; where once she had failed to see the paint peeling off the windowsills, now she saw it; where once she could not have noticed the crumbling mortar protruding from between the bricks, now she wondered how she could possibly have missed it. She pressed the bell and then looked down at the doormat of worn brown bristle; previously she would have sneered at its message: Welcome to our Home, now she felt instead its poignancy. She was puzzled, and vaguely ashamed. She had known that Miss Bates was hard up, but had not really thought about what that meant. Something within her was telling her to look at things in a very different way.

There was a scuffling noise within, followed by the sound of a chain being taken off. And then the door opened, and Miss Bates, wearing a grey woollen skirt and a thin, faded linen blouse, stood before her. The blouse had pictures of swallows in flight, and in the background a line of hills could still be made out, but only just; the material was well worn.

Miss Bates’s face lit up. ‘Emma! What a pleasure. Please … please come in.’

Emma felt herself blushing; the back of her neck was warm. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t phone to warn you about dropping in. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘But why should I mind?’ said Miss Bates. ‘We’re always delighted to have visitors. Sometimes we just sit here, you know, and wish for visitors. And then, as often as not, a visitor arrives, as if sent by Providence, which is perhaps the case.’

She ushered Emma into the cramped hall off which rose the staircase to the upper floor. Emma noticed that one of the bannisters had been broken and had been inexpertly repaired with green string. On the way in she saw on the wall a picture of a characteristic Edward Lear illustration: that lonely figure, the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò, traced in ink by the poet, taken, she imagined, from some old book and then mounted in a somewhat battered frame. She stopped in front of the picture. ‘That’s Lear, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Bates. ‘Mother was always very fond of him. She doesn’t read him any more. She doesn’t read anything, I’m afraid.’

Emma peered more closely at the drawing. Miss Taylor had read the poem to her as a child; it was one of her earliest memories of her governess. She heard her again, reciting in her clear Edinburgh tones, ‘On the coast of Coromandel …’ She looked at Miss Bates. ‘You know the poem, do you? The Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò?’

Miss Bates reached out to touch the glass in front of the picture, with reverence, almost as a believer might touch a reliquary. ‘On the Coast of Coromandel,’ she began:

‘Where the early pumpkins blow,

In the middle of the woods,

Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.’

Emma took up the recital.

‘Two old chairs, and half a candle,

One old jug without a handle,

These were all his worldly goods,

In the middle of the woods …’

‘It’s very sad, isn’t it?’ said Miss Bates. ‘The Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò falls in love with Lady Jingly Jones, who can’t marry him because she has pledged herself to the man who gives her Dorking hens. It’s so sad. She sends him away, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ said Emma.

‘Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle,

Where the early pumpkins blow,

To the calm and silent sea

Fled the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò,

There, beyond the bay of Gurtle,

Lay a large and lively Turtle.

“You’re the Cove,” he said, “for me.

On your back beyond the sea,

Turtle, you shall carry me!”

Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò,

Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.’

‘I think I used to cry when I read that,’ said Miss Bates. ‘Lear was very funny, but also very sad. He was a very lonely man, I believe.’

They both stared at the picture of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò, a small, spherical figure with a tiny hat perched on his outsize head. He was astride the turtle that would carry him across the sea to his exile.

‘We should go and sit down,’ said Miss Bates. ‘Jane is out, I’m afraid.’

‘But I came to see you,’ said Emma.

Miss Bates seemed surprised. ‘To see me?’

Emma had a bag with her, a linen tote bag with a picture of Covent Garden market printed on both sides. ‘I have a present for you.’

Miss Bates looked at the bag in astonishment. ‘But why, Emma? I’ve done nothing to deserve a present.’

Emma reached into the bag and took out the four large boxes of violet creams that she’d bought earlier that morning.

‘I remembered that you liked these,’ she said, passing the gift to Miss Bates. ‘You do like violet creams, don’t you?’

Miss Bates made a slight, fluttering sound. ‘But I adore violet creams. I love violet creams more than virtually anything else. They are my favourite.’

‘Then these will keep you going for a bit,’ said Emma. ‘I hope you enjoy them.’

Miss Bates indicated the door behind her. ‘We can go into the little parlour. You’ll be more comfortable there.’

They entered the room. It was very small, and was just capable of accommodating the two chairs and low table it contained. Emma thought of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò; in just such a parlour might he have spent his time on the coast of Coromandel, spurned and lonely. ‘Two old chairs, and half a candle …’

They sat down, and Emma launched into her apology. ‘I’ve come to say sorry for my stupid rudeness at the picnic,’ she began. ‘I said something very silly, and I wouldn’t want you to think that I meant it.’

Miss Bates looked down at her folded hands. ‘I did not think it was silly. It was a reminder to me not to get carried away.’ She paused. ‘You see, I have so much to say – or I think I have so much to say. It’s not that I want to impress anybody, or anything like that. It’s just that I find I want to share my thoughts with others. I get excited about that, and I’m afraid it shows. I have learned my lesson.’

Emma wanted to protest. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who’s learned a lesson. I have.’

‘I don’t think you had any lessons to learn,’ said Miss Bates. ‘Nobody thinks you speak too much.’

‘It’s not that at all.’

‘Well, whatever it is, you don’t have to apologise to me, Emma. I am happy enough to have your friendship – if I don’t presume too much in saying that.’

‘No,’ said Emma. ‘You don’t presume in the least, Miss Bates. I am really happy that you consider me a friend.’ She paused, staring hard at her hostess. ‘Then you accept my apology?’

Miss Bates raised her hands as if fending off something unwanted. ‘Of course I do. But, as I said, I don’t think it needed to be made. So let’s draw a line under the whole matter and begin with what? A cup of tea? I believe that we might have a bit of coffee, too, as Jane brought some with her. I could make you a cup of coffee, if you were to prefer it. And … and, yes, I believe we still have a couple of cheese scones, unless Mother …’

‘A cup of tea and a cheese scone would be perfect,’ said Emma.

Miss Bates went out of the room and returned a few minutes later with a tea tray on which there was a plate with a single scone. She poured Emma a cup of tea and they drank it in near silence. Emma made various attempts to start a conversation, but Miss Bates seemed unwilling to say very much. She smiled a great deal, though, and nodded in agreement with what Emma said, but the usual stream-of-consciousness commentary was absent. Miss Bates, it seems, was making every effort not to do what Emma had implicitly accused her of doing: talking too much. When, after fifteen minutes, Emma stood up to go, she thought: I have extinguished something. I have dampened another’s spirits.

As she left Miss Bates and made her way back down the garden path, Emma noticed that there was a familiar Land Rover parked immediately behind her Mini Cooper. The figure in the driving seat was equally familiar. It was George.

She stopped in her tracks. She was still smarting with shame over what he had said to her the previous evening, and had remembered every word of his criticism. She felt disinclined to face her accuser just yet, but she could hardly turn and go back into the cottage. Nor could she simply get into her car and pretend that she had not seen him.

She decided to continue towards her car and see what he did. It was possible that he was parked in the street for some reason other than to confront her – the post office was not far away – and if he was, then she could simply wave to him and drive off. But, as she approached the car, the door of the Land Rover opened and George stepped out.

‘Emma,’ he called. ‘May I have a word with you?’

She nodded.

‘I was in the shop in Holt,’ he said. ‘I was speaking to Mrs Edwards, and she said that you had been in and bought up their entire supply of violet creams.’

Emma shrugged. ‘So?’

‘I know why you did that,’ he said. ‘I’m right in thinking they were for Miss Bates?’

‘Maybe.’ She wanted to say, What’s it got to do with you?

‘Then I want you to know how much I admire that. It’s a kind thing you’ve just done.’

He looked at her expectantly, but she did not know what to say.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve interfered, but I must say how proud I am of you.’

She frowned. How can he be proud of me? she wondered. What am I to him?

He answered the question she had not openly asked. ‘I feel entitled to be proud of you because I count you as one of my closest friends. We go back quite a long time, Emma, and that means something to me. I don’t know if you know that, but it does.’

She was uncertain what to say. A few days ago she might have made some witty remark about going back with people – reactionary friendships? – but this was not the moment for that sort of clever levity. Now she felt something quite different: a fondness for her old friend, which was combined with something altogether new – a sense of George as a person with an existence that was quite independent of hers. And this made her realise that if she were to be written out of this world today, it would still go on with its essential concerns and objectives; she was nothing really. She had no job; she had nobody who depended on her; she did little to make the world easier for those she knew, other than, perhaps, to hand out boxes of violet creams.

George was going back to his Land Rover. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Don’t fight it, Emma.’

She opened the door of the Mini Cooper and had already started the engine when she thought of his words. Don’t fight it. What precisely was it? Her better nature? Did she have one?

Her route home from the village took her past the turning for Randalls, and it was there, at the intersection of the two lanes, that she saw Jane Fairfax walking across a field at the edge the road. Emma saw Jane before Jane saw her; she stopped the car and waited until Jane climbed over a rickety old stile at the field’s edge. She called out, and Jane looked up in surprise.

‘Are you going back to the village?’ Emma shouted through her car window.

Jane looked momentarily confused. Then, smoothing her hair, which had been ruffled by the breeze, she came over to speak to Emma. ‘Yes, I am. I’ve just been …’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve just been for a walk. Over there.’ She pointed vaguely behind her.

‘A nice day for it,’ said Emma.

‘It looks as if it’s going to rain, though,’ said Jane. She spoke rather formally, as if she were keeping her distance from Emma.

Emma noticed it. ‘Please let me give you a lift into the village.’

Jane shook her head. ‘You’re going in the opposite direction.’ Then she added, almost grudgingly, ‘Thank you, anyway.’

‘But you said it’s going to rain,’ said Emma.

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘I can’t leave you to get soaked.’

‘I said: I’ll be all right.’

Emma would not give up. ‘Come on. I don’t mind going back. I’ve got nothing to do. Please.’

Jane sighed, and silently crossed to the other side of the car. Emma leaned over and opened the door for her. ‘There’s not much room, I’m afraid. You can move the seat back.’

Jane said nothing, but strapped herself in. Emma switched off the engine; she had pulled in off the road and she could move if anything came. ‘I need to say something to you,’ she began. ‘I’ve just been to see your aunt. I went there to apologise.’

Jane looked straight ahead.

‘I know what you probably feel about it,’ Emma continued. ‘It was stupid of me – and really unkind. I don’t know why I said it.’ She paused. Perhaps Miss Bates had not told her niece about the incident; not everybody had heard what had happened. But if she had not, then why was Jane’s manner so hostile? She decided that must have told her.

‘I’ve obviously offended your whole family,’ said Emma. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to.’

Jane suddenly spoke. ‘You need to watch what you say.’

‘I know,’ said Emma. ‘That’s why I’m saying sorry.’

‘Anyway, it’s not that. It’s nothing to do with my aunt.’

Emma thought quickly. ‘Did I say something to you? If I did, I can’t remember.’

‘It’s the way you flirt,’ said Jane quietly. ‘You flirted with Frank at that dinner. I saw you. You can’t seem to leave men alone.’

Emma froze. That was it. Competition: of course Jane Fairfax would have had her eyes on Frank Churchill – what young woman would not? She turned to face Jane. ‘Listen, Jane. I wasn’t really flirting with Frank Churchill. We were just pretending – that’s all.’

‘Oh, yes?’ said Jane sarcastically. ‘An act.’

Emma now began to feel irritated. She was being honest with Jane Fairfax and she was being mocked for it. ‘Yes,’ she said, her tone becoming sharper. ‘That’s exactly what it was.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Jane.

Emma was not accustomed to being disbelieved. It rankled. ‘But it was,’ she protested. ‘It was an act on Frank’s part.’

‘And why would Frank act?’

She hesitated. She did not want to tell Jane what Frank had said to her, but now that she was being falsely accused of flirting with him she would have no alternative. ‘Because he’s not interested in girls. He told me. But he doesn’t want people to know.’

Jane Fairfax gasped. ‘He said that?’ she stuttered. ‘He told you …’ She could not complete her sentence.

‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘He wanted to confide in me.’

‘What exactly did he say?’ asked Jane, her voice strained.

Emma shrugged. ‘He told me he had a boyfriend he was going to go travelling with. He didn’t tell me who it was – somebody he met at school, I think. He said they went back a long way. It’s not a big thing. It’s no big deal: lots of people are that way. Who cares?’

‘I do,’ muttered Jane.

‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ said Emma. ‘It’s an entirely private matter. Nobody’s uptight about people’s sexuality any more. Why should they be?’

The rain had come on. Gently, it had crept up on them, and fell now in tiny drops across the windscreen of the Mini Cooper.

‘Please take me home,’ said Jane. ‘Please just take me home.’