Emma: A Modern Retelling

4

It was a matter, they said, of submitting a good photograph to the editor of Country Life and asking him to consider featuring one’s daughter in a future issue. Success was by no means guaranteed, even for the highly photogenic: there were many girls in many counties, all most eager to appear, or at least all having parents who were eager on their behalf. And parental support in this was crucial; self-nomination was unheard of, as the very act of putting oneself forward would be incontrovertible proof that one was not suitable.

The photograph had to be reasonably interesting. Country Life girls did not simply sit for the camera against some featureless backdrop but were pictured striking a pose in surroundings that gave an indication of their normal social milieu or talents. The daughters of major gentry – those with stately homes – might be photographed leaning against a stone pillar, the clear inference being that this was just one of the many stone pillars owned by her father; those who had no stone pillars but who had, say, a small ornamental lake, would be photographed standing in front of this. Those who worked with horses – and this was large group – might have a hunter in the background, or at least a saddle. Dogs were a popular accoutrement, usually Labradors, who would be at the young woman’s side, ready to retrieve or flush birds, enthusiasts all, and given the same appraising scrutiny by the readers, in many cases, as the young woman herself.

Not everybody, of course, lived in the country, although most of those who were urbanites had at least some country connection. Parents might be described as being of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea and East Woods Manor, Chipping Norton, or whatever it was that provided the country bolthole for those who lived in town. And of course in any such juxtaposition it was Chipping Norton rather than London that counted: anybody could live in London, but not everybody could live in Chipping Norton.

The accompanying text also revealed the subject’s plans. Many young women were studying something at university – particularly at Durham, Edinburgh or Bristol. Many were planning to work in public relations or in a gallery; one or two – the lucky ones – had already opened their own interior-decoration business. Some were planning to get married in the near future, and the month of the wedding was given so that the readers might know whether they had been invited or passed over. If the wedding was to be the following month and no invitation had yet been received, then the conclusion was inescapable that one was not going. If, however, the marriage was to take place next September or October, and it was only May, then an invitation was still a possibility.

Mr Woodhouse had never paid much attention to any of this, which he regarded as the sort of thing that appealed to women but not to men. The wording of any caption to Isabella’s photograph could be worked out later – his immediate task was to find a photographer. This sent him off to the Yellow Pages, but he had not even begun to page through these when he remembered that he knew of a photographer who was right on their doorstep, or whose brother was.

George Knightley was the owner of one of the largest houses in the area, Donwell Abbey (twenty-four bedrooms). At the time at which Mr Woodhouse was thinking of publishing his daughter’s photograph, George was just twenty-five and had owned Donwell for four years. He had inherited not only a house, but looks too, his father having been described in a magazine article as one of the ten most handsome men in England. Knightley père had also been one of the most modest, as he never made any reference to this, or any other accolade that came his way. He had that endangered and most attractive quality: an old-fashioned Englishness, in appearance, garb, and manner, and a generosity of spirit that made him extremely popular in the neighbourhood. This ensured a sympathetic reception for his son when he took over the property. ‘Thank heavens,’ said people. ‘Think of what we might have had, with all these …’ Typically there then followed a listing of those who might have bought Donwell Abbey had it been put on the open market: hedge-fund people, dot-com people, Russian oligarchs, celebrities of various stripes – the list was a long one and generally concluded with a sigh of relief that the Knightleys remained exactly where they had been for centuries.

His parents were divorced when he was barely seven. It was not an acrimonious parting: both parties had gradually grown away from each other and recognised that they were, quite simply, bored with the other’s company and that this boredom was beginning to turn to irritation. They understood that when another’s mannerisms begin to grate, it is probably too late to retrieve the situation, even if a relationship might be patched up with a lot of effort and forbearance. He went off to live in Vancouver; she stayed at Donwell, which had now been given to her as part of a generous divorce settlement. The boys stayed with her and, for reasons of geography, saw their father only intermittently. He lost touch with England and, to an extent, with his sons, although he had never intended to desert them. For her part, she developed a close friendship with a man she met at a bridge club, and ended up travelling with him to competitions all over the world. It was on one of these trips, a visit to an international bridge tournament in Kerala, that she was hit by a car – an old Hindustan Ambassador with minimal brakes – and died. Her last memories were of the sun above her – so brilliant, so unrelenting – and concerned faces looking down on her: a boy wearing a blue shirt, a man in a khaki uniform who was shouting at the others; and then the sun again, and darkness.

Under the terms of her will, George inherited Donwell and the estate surrounding it, while his brother, John, was given such investments as his mother had. It was a roughly equitable division and it suited both of them. George had a sense of duty that his brother lacked; he also rather liked the challenge of restoring the Donwell farm to profitability. For John, his inheritance of easily realisable assets would enable him to indulge his taste for expensive cameras, forget the house that he had always found hopelessly uncomfortable and dull, and buy a flat in a fashionable part of London.

The young George Knightley’s commitment to Donwell was no passing fancy. Aided by his astute farm manager, he made sure that fields were used in such a way as to ensure maximum European Union grants. Old farm machinery was replaced with brand-new equipment, and diversification – the saviour of many a farmer who had found it impossible to make a living growing crops – was pursued with single-minded enthusiasm. This meant that several farm cottages that had been lying empty were made suitable for holiday lets; that beehives were introduced and a centrifuge bought for the extraction of honey from the comb; that a large flock of rare-breed sheep was established, as well as a farm shop selling home-cured bacon, jerseys and mittens made from the wool of the rare-breed sheep; in short, that every way of making a farm pay was examined, tried, and, if successful, implemented.

The proximity of Donwell Abbey to Hartfield meant that the Woodhouses and Knightleys saw a fair amount of each other. George Knightley had always been aware of the Woodhouse girls, of course, but they were, in his eyes, no more than two rather attractive teenage girls who had always been about the place and with whom he occasionally chatted. Isabella, of course, had always appreciated his looks, but the age gap between them made any thought of romance impossible. When she was sixteen, and beginning to take a strong interest in boys, he was twenty-four, and therefore impossibly old by teenage standards.

‘Life after twenty?’ Isabella said to a friend. ‘I don’t think so!’

‘Well, you’re hardly dead when you’re twenty-something,’ said the friend. ‘Maybe a bit past it, but not actually finished.’

‘That comes later.’

‘Yes, forty.’

They had laughed, but they actually meant it.

George thought nothing of age gaps. He might be older than Isabella, but he was nonetheless amused by her. He compared her with some of the girls he had met at university: in a few years she would be exactly like them, he thought – a county girl itching to find the right husband from the ranks of those young men who would make up her social circle. It was a harmless enough fate, even if a rather predictable one.

He was not so sure about Emma. She was a good dozen years younger than he was, and so when he returned to Donwell at the age of twenty-one she was only nine – a mere child. Over the years that followed, though, he saw the uncoordinated adolescent grow into a self-assured and rather beautiful young woman. He often saw her when he went to visit Mr Woodhouse, but it seemed to him that he was largely invisible to her. That, of course, was because he was a friend of her father and therefore of no interest to her other than as a vaguely avuncular figure. In spite of her indifference to him, he found himself appreciating her rather intriguing manner, her frequently unexpected, not to say mischievous observations, and her independent, insouciant manner. Emma, he thought, was growing up interesting.

Now Mr Woodhouse remembered what it was that George Knightley had said to him. He had told him that his brother had become something of a success as a photographer and had actually won a national competition a year or two earlier. ‘John has a bit of an eye,’ he said. ‘He always has had one. Odd, really, given that I can’t take a snap myself.’

Mr Woodhouse had not paid much attention at the time, but now it came back to him and he thought that the simple solution to his quest would be to invite John Knightley to take the picture.

He asked George for his brother’s number in London. Then, when he made the call, the telephone was answered after only one or two rings – always a good sign, thought Mr Woodhouse – and John Knightley came on the line.

‘We haven’t seen one another for some time,’ said Mr Woodhouse, trying to remember when it was that he had last seen John and wondering whether he still had an unhealthy complexion and rather lank hair.

‘Ages,’ said John. ‘Yonks.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘I see your brother quite a bit, of course. He often comes round here.’

‘He hasn’t got much to do,’ said John.

Mr Woodhouse sounded peeved. ‘He keeps busy enough, I’d say. He runs the farm rather well.’

‘With a manager, yes,’ said John, and then added, ‘Good old George.’

Mr Woodhouse ignored this remark. ‘You still taking photographs, John?’

‘Yes, Mr Woodhouse. That’s my job. I’m a fashion photographer in London. Vogue. Vanity Fair. Tatler. That’s me.’ He paused. ‘You won’t have seen my work, of course.’

Mr Woodhouse cleared his throat. This was a very irritating young man – very different from his equable and well-mannered brother. ‘I need a photograph of my daughter.’

‘Which one? The tall sexy one?’

Again Mr Woodhouse bit his tongue. ‘Isabella. She’s seventeen.’

‘Great age,’ said John. ‘You want me to do it?’

‘Yes. Can you?’

‘Do dogs bark?’ replied John. ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’

Mr Woodhouse frowned. ‘What?’

‘The answer’s yes. Happy to oblige, old son.’

The tone now became formal. Mr Woodhouse would expect John the following Saturday for the taking of a couple of portrait shots in the house and gardens. This was agreed and the conversation came to an end.

Mr Woodhouse sat and reflected. It was all most unsettling: John came from a good county family, and had he not gone off to London might well have ended up helping his brother run their small estate. He had had a perfectly good education, too; like his brother George he had gone to Marlborough, yet here he was using the language of a cockney barrow boy – if barrow boys still existed – and if cockneys still existed too. Old son! Is the Pope a Catholic? What had the Pope got to do with it? Mr Woodhouse asked himself. And of course dogs barked; did they not understand that in London?

Isabella required no persuasion to have her photograph taken. ‘In a mag?’ she shrieked. ‘He’ll put me in one of his actual mags? Are you serious?’

Mr Woodhouse realised that they were probably thinking of different magazines. He knew that Isabella liked to read glossy magazines full of ephemeral news about celebrities and their doings; he had come across these magazines left lying about the house and occasionally sneaked a look at their contents. They were absurd, of course, and the people they featured were without any interest at all – highly made-up, unhealthy-looking specimens who appeared to have no other purpose in life than to evade the paparazzi who pursued them. But occasionally the very same hounded celebrities opened their doors to admit the photographers to their homes, and the resultant features, plastered with high-definition pictures of white sofas and opulent swimming pools, gave an indication of just how little taste these people had. And yet there was a certain fascination in seeing them in their natural habitat and he had occasionally had to drop a magazine hurriedly and guiltily as a daughter came into the room. ‘Tidying,’ he would say quickly. ‘Why do you girls insist on leaving all these ridiculous magazines about the place?’

Isabella was rarely fooled. ‘What do you think of that photo of her?’ she might ask. ‘Can you believe that he actually bit her? Did you see the love-bite – it’s on her left shoulder – you can just make it out?’

‘Most unhygienic,’ he muttered. ‘A human bite can be a very toxic thing. There are numerous germs on people’s teeth.’

‘Not celebs,’ retorted Isabella. ‘A bite from a celeb is different.’

Now he was faced with something of a moral dilemma. Should he tell Isabella that the destination for her photograph was not to be some glossy gossip magazine, but Country Life, where photographs of humans are often outnumbered by photographs of horses and dogs, or sometimes of old houses?

He decided to be honest – or at least a bit honest. ‘It won’t be one of your glossy mags,’ he said. ‘It’s another magazine altogether. A bit more sedate, but still.’

He need not have worried. ‘I don’t care where it goes,’ she said. ‘It’s enough to have your photo in anything. Think what they’ll say when they see it at school. They’re all still sitting in the classroom and I’m posing! That’s seriously cool.’

‘I’m glad that you’re pleased,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘The photographer will be coming tomorrow. He’s George Knightley’s brother. You’ll remember him. He went off to London for some reason best known to himself.’

Isabella looked thoughtful. She did remember John Knightley. She remembered thinking that he was rather good-looking and had long hair when everybody else around him seemed to have his hair cut short. And he had gone to London, she thought. A London photographer is coming to do a shoot with me. With me.

While most people drove sedately up the drive that led through the parkland to Hartfield, enjoying the trees and the view of the shrubbery in the distance, John Knightley arrived at speed on a 1982 Ducati motorcycle, a throaty roar announcing him well before anybody saw the handsome Italian bike and its equally handsome rider. Mr Woodhouse went out to meet him and shook hands with the leather-clad brother of his neighbour.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ said John. ‘There was a pile-up on the motorway and I had to stop and get a few shots of it. Not my usual stuff, of course, but in my business you’re always looking for things you can sell to the red tops. They love a bit of gore, those editors.’

Mr Woodhouse struggled to keep his composure. ‘An accident? You took photos of an accident?’

John took off his helmet. ‘Yup. I don’t go in for anything too gory – not like some. There’s a chap I know in London who does the really bad scenes – you know, hands and stuff lying about. Not for me.’

‘I should hope not,’ said Mr Woodhouse.

‘You’re looking at respectability,’ said John, smiling. ‘You’re looking at the upper echelons of the profession.’

Mr Woodhouse availed himself of the invitation to examine John Knightley. He was a very striking-looking young man – tall, as he had remembered him, but with a bit more weight than he recalled him having. The face, though, was by no means chubby, but had a sparse, sculpted look to it, and the head was topped by a mane of flowing dark hair. John Knightley, he decided, looked rather like a lion; an absurd idea, he told himself, and then went on to think: Long hair requires frequent washing if it is not to become a sanctuary for microbial life. His gaze descended to the leather jacket and tight-fitting trousers and then to the boots with metal attachments on the heel – spurs? he wondered; surely not. How quickly, he thought, could one effect a transition from one world to another; from the world of George Knightley, with his faultless taste, his life of understatement and simple English decency, to this world of leather jackets and … He had noticed the tattoo; he had missed it at first because it was so discreet, but now, as the sleeve of the leather jacket inched up following a movement of John’s arm, he saw the small picture of an angel, or what looked like an angel, on his visitor’s wrist and underneath it a few tiny words, illegible at that distance. He caught his breath; the social descent seemed to him to be complete, and terrible. Tattoos were unacceptable; they just were. People could argue as much as they liked that conventions had changed and a tattoo now meant nothing; that they said nothing about you; but tattoos, in Mr Woodhouse’s mind, constituted a line in the sand that one simply did not cross. John Knightley had stepped across that line.

‘I think Isabella’s in the morning room,’ Mr Woodhouse said. ‘Would you care to come with me? We’ll see her there.’

John nodded. ‘I remember this place. We came here to a party once – my brother and I – when we were kids. He was sick in the conservatory, as I remember, and I tried to clear it up before anybody noticed.’

‘You’re a loyal brother,’ said Mr Woodhouse.

‘Poor George.’

‘It sounds as if you feel sorry for him,’ said Mr Woodhouse.

‘Yes, I do. Being stuck out here in that great barn of a house and the tedium … My God, how does he manage it: having to put up with the same old people year in, year out?’

Such as me, thought Mr Woodhouse.

‘Mind you,’ said John. ‘I can’t picture him in London, can you?’

Mr Woodhouse felt that he must defend his friend. ‘I can’t see myself in London either,’ he said.

John threw him a sideways glance. ‘No, possibly not.’

They reached the morning room, a large rectangular room with French doors giving out on to a terrace beyond. It was a favourite room of the girls, and Isabella was waiting, nonchalantly pretending to read a magazine.

For all his preoccupations Mr Woodhouse was not an unobservant man, and he noticed immediately the spark of response in Isabella’s expression. As he did so, his spirits sank; it had been a mistake to invite John Knightley to take Isabella’s photograph, and even as he made this admission to himself he came to the further realisation that the consequences of this introduction could be serious, and long-lasting.

‘I’ll start in here,’ said John. ‘I’ve got my gear in my backpack.’ He turned to Mr Woodhouse. ‘OK. Thanks a lot. I’ll see you before I go.’

It was clear to Mr Woodhouse that he was being dismissed, and it was equally clear to him that Isabella was anxious that he should not linger.

‘Can’t I help you in some way?’ he asked. ‘Hold a light, or something?’

John shook his head. ‘It’s easier if just two people are present at the shoot,’ he said, and then added, ‘Chemistry, you know. Energy flows. More intimate.’

Isabella smiled. ‘See you later, Pops.’

Mr Woodhouse resisted the temptation to lurk in a corridor or peer out of a window when the shoot moved outside. Burying himself in his library, he spent the next half-hour paging through an issue of Scientific American but retaining very little of what he was reading. He was convinced that John Knightley would take completely unsuitable photographs of Isabella, and that all that he would receive from Country Life would be a polite note about their inability to feature many young women who clearly would merit inclusion if only there were more room. The photographs would be gimmicky, he feared, with Isabella being draped seductively over the bonnet of a car or sprawled out wantonly on a pile of leaves; they would completely fail to embody the qualities of demure Englishness – mixed with an appealing and modest confidence – that could attract the right sort of husband.

He sighed, and laid Scientific American aside. It was important to have an understanding of particle physics – he had been reading about the Higgs boson – but the intellectual challenge of Scientific American was definitely secondary to a father’s duty to protect his daughter. Rising to his feet, he retraced his steps into the morning room. This was deserted; Isabella and John had presumably left for the formal garden and the outside shoot. But when he looked out of the window he saw that they were not there, and nor was there any sign of them in the shrubbery, of which the morning room had an equally commanding view.

The unease he had felt up to this point was now replaced by real concern. Leaving the morning room by a French window, he made his way quickly round the outside of the house, scanning neighbouring fields for any sign of the young people. There was none; the ripening barley, swaying in the breeze, showed no signs of intrusion; sheep grazed in a neighbouring paddock undisturbed by human presence; it was a landscape quite without figures. It was only when he turned the corner of the house and reached the broad turning circle at the head of the drive that he spotted them.

They were standing by the shining red Ducati. John Knightley, having packed away his photographic equipment, was now busy extracting a helmet from a large metal pannier behind the motorcycle’s seat. Mr Woodhouse breathed a sigh of relief at the realisation that the photographer would be leaving, but then he noticed that there were two helmets: the one being taken from the pannier and the one that John was already wearing, the unfastened strap dangling casually under his chin. He watched as the photographer handed the spare helmet to Isabella, who took it, and laughed as he showed her how to secure the strap.

He called out, and she looked up sharply.

‘Daddy,’ she shouted, as he approached. ‘Look at me. John’s going to take me for a ride on his Duc … Duc …’

‘Ducati,’ prompted John. ‘Just as far as Cambridge. We’ll be back by eight tonight.’

‘But …’ protested Mr Woodhouse. He felt a sudden tightening of his chest, a symptom, he knew, of extreme panic. It was now, he thought, that he should have a stroke; at such a time as this, when fear sent the blood through his veins under such pressure that somewhere, in some obscure corner of the brain’s plumbing, a tiny vessel might rupture and fell him just as surely as would a great blade. It was every bit as bad – worse indeed – as he had feared. ‘But you can’t, Isabella. These things …’ He gestured helplessly at the motorcycle; in his distress, words seemed to fail him. ‘These things … these things are Italian.’

She burst out laughing. ‘What? Italian?’

He corrected himself, ashamed because John was smirking. ‘Lethal. I meant to say: these things are lethal.’

He wanted to weep. He was convinced that as he watched her go down the drive it would be his last glimpse of his beloved daughter. He should do something to stop her: throw himself in front of the machine; or seize the key – if these things had keys – from John and run off with it, back to the house, ignoring his shouts. The most outrageous act on his part – even fetching his shotgun, his father’s old engraved Purdey – and pointing it at John would be justified in order to save Isabella from this dreadful folly.

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ said John. ‘I’m a pretty careful rider, Mr Woodhouse. Your daughter will be quite safe with me.’

‘See?’ said Isabella. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Daddy.’

‘You mustn’t, my darling. Please, please, I beg of you: you mustn’t.’

He did not think she heard him, as the flaps at the side of the helmet had now been fixed in position. She mouthed the word Goodbye. If only she hadn’t done that, he thought. If only she hadn’t tempted Nemesis to oblige and make it a real and final goodbye.

In slow motion – or so it seemed to the agonised Mr Woodhouse – he watched Isabella mount the pillion seat. It was so prolonged, so deliberate – just as some article on human perception in Scientific American had explained it would be, because our minds register an event like that with heightened clarity, and that makes it seem to happen slowly.

‘Isabella!’ he called out. But his voice was drowned by the roar of the Ducati and the crunching sound of its wheels on the gravel, and she did not hear him. She waved, though, and waved again when they rode past him in a spray of tiny stones.