Emma. Alexander Smith McCall

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with a heavy cold. In a corner of the room was the girls’ doll’s house – an ancient construction that had been discovered, dusty and discoloured, in the attic. Now with its walls repainted and repapered, the house was once again in use, filled with tiny furniture and a family of dolls that the girls shared between them. Long hours were spent attending to this house and in moving the dolls from one room to another in accordance with the tides of doll private life that no adult could fathom.

      Unseen by Emma, Mrs Firhill watched for a few minutes while Emma addressed her dolls and tidied their rooms.

      ‘You are going to have stay in your room until further notice,’ she scolded one, a small boy doll clad in a Breton sailor’s blue-and-white jersey. ‘And you,’ she said to another one, a thin doll with arms out of which the stuffing had begun to leak, ‘you are never going to find a husband unless you do as I say.’

      Mrs Firhill drew in her breath. It would have been very easy to laugh at this tiny display of directing behaviour, but she felt somehow that it was not a laughing matter. What she was witnessing was a perfect revelation of a character trait: Emma must want to control people if this was the way she treated her dolls. Bossy little madam, thought Mrs Firhill. But then she added – to herself, of course – without a mother. And that, she realised, changed things.

       3

      ‘Boarding school?’ said Miss Taylor. ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary, do you? Not for your girls.’

      Mr Woodhouse shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The conversation he was having with the governess was taking place in his study – his territory – and he would have imagined that he would have had the psychological advantage in such surroundings. It was a large room, furnished with a substantial desk, and to speak to somebody from behind such a desk surely must confer some degree of authority on one’s pronouncements. He had read somewhere that Mussolini had a very large desk indeed, placed at the end of an exceptionally long room. This meant that visitors had to walk for some distance before they even reached the dictator, by which time if they had not already been intimidated when they entered the room they certainly would be by the time they reached his desk. And it was not just dictators who were keen on such tactics: there were several democratically elected presidents who were known to use elevator shoes, to stand on strategically placed boxes to gain height, or to insist when group photographs were being taken on being placed next to those shorter than themselves. He generally needed none of this, being secure enough in his estimation of himself, but Miss Taylor had a knack of making him feel perhaps slightly less than authoritative, as she was doing now, even in his own study.

      ‘I think that their mother would have expected it,’ he said. It was sheltering behind his late wife – he knew that – but it would be hard for her to argue with a pious concern for the feelings of the girls’ mother.

      ‘But 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 СКАЧАТЬ