Emma. Alexander Smith McCall

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СКАЧАТЬ was not married to their father – who had no interest in any relationship with her other than as an appreciative employer and, in a sense, friend. Without those complications, a fully blown psychopathology could hardly get started, and there was nothing to mar the reasonable, loving relationship that the two girls enjoyed with their governess. It was to Miss Taylor that they turned for advice; it was she who comforted them when they encountered the torments that beset any adolescence; it was she who looked after them and gave them the love that their own mother would have given them had she survived.

      Shortly after her seventeenth birthday, it was decided that Isabella should not remain at school any longer. Most of her contemporaries were to spend a further year at Gresham’s, but in Isabella’s case it was felt that there was no point in persuading her to study for examinations that she had no desire to sit and that she would evidently not pass. She wanted to go to live in London and find work there. She had met somebody on a train who said that she could find her a job with a firm of fine-art auctioneers that specialised in providing employment for the daughters of county families. She would not be paid very much, she was warned, but that was not the point; she had a regular income from her mother’s estate that would be more than enough to pay the rent and ordinary living expenses, and her father, she felt, would provide for any luxuries. London, with its plays and its parties, beckoned; it was as if its lights, bright and seductive, penetrated into the country even as far as Hartfield itself, lighting the winding way to the distant city.

      Mr Woodhouse, of course, felt that London was highly dangerous.

      ‘I cannot understand,’ he said to his daughters when Isabella first mentioned her desire to go there. ‘I just cannot understand how anybody would wish to live in London. I can see why people might wish to go in for the day – to see what’s on at the Royal Academy or the Science Museum or whatever. Perhaps even to do a bit of shopping. But to live there?’ He shook his head in disbelief at the inexplicable nature of such a choice.

      ‘But …’ began Isabella.

      She did not get far. ‘The very air is sixth-hand,’ continued Mr Woodhouse. ‘Just think of it: when you breathe in places like London you’re taking in air that has already been in and out of goodness knows how many lungs.’

      ‘Twelve,’ said Emma. ‘Strictly speaking – if each person has two lungs and the air is sixth-hand.’

      ‘Well, there you are,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘Twelve lungs. Imagine the microbial load, and the viruses …’

      ‘But viruses are everywhere, Father,’ said Isabella. ‘We learned that in biology at school. Miss Parkinson – you should have seen her.’

      Emma giggled. ‘Old bag.’

      ‘A very good teacher, I believe,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘And obviously aware of viruses – which is a good thing.’

      Isabella smiled. ‘She said that we need to be exposed to a few viruses in order to build up our immune system. She said that the rise in the number of people with allergies is partly to do with the fact that everybody is eating over-purified food.’

      ‘Should we eat dirty things?’ asked Emma. ‘Should we wash the crockery maybe only once or twice a week?’

      Mr Woodhouse tried to smile at this suggestion, but he found the whole discussion acutely painful: one should not talk about microbes lightly, he felt; it was an invitation to disaster. Of course microbes could not hear what they were saying, but it seemed somehow foolish to talk about them as if they were not there.

      ‘There may be a smidgeon of truth in what Miss Parkinson says,’ he conceded. ‘You do need to be exposed to a certain level of microbial activity, but London goes way, way beyond that.’ He paused. ‘No, I cannot see living in London as anything but foolhardy. Theatres and museums are all very well …’

      ‘And parties,’ added Isabella.

      Mr Woodhouse glanced at her, but ignored the provocation. ‘These things may be all very well, but what if you’re in such a wretched condition that you can’t enjoy them? What then?’

      ‘They look fine to me,’ said Isabella. ‘There are loads of people at Gresham’s whose parents live in London – or work there – and they seem fine to me.’

      Mr Woodhouse shook his head. ‘The air is far healthier out here,’ he said. ‘And if you lived in London, young lady, you’d know all about it. You’d have a streaming cold 24/7, as you people like to say. And you’d be running the risk of much worse, believe me. If the water’s been through however many sets of kidneys … No, don’t make that face, this is science I’m talking about. If London water has been through all those systems …’

      ‘Through boys’ systems too,’ contributed Emma.

      Isabella smiled. She did not object to that.

      ‘If London water has had that experience,’ continued Mr Woodhouse, ‘then what’s the chance of at least some viruses escaping the attention of the chlorine, and, I believe, ammonia they dose the stuff with? What about hepatitis? That’s water-borne, as I think I’ve told you in the past.’

      ‘Hepatitis turns you yellow,’ said Emma.

      ‘Yes,’ said Mr Woodhouse, glancing at Isabella. She did not take these things seriously enough, he felt, and shock tactics were sometimes necessary to emphasise a point. ‘A fact worth remembering.’

      There were several such conversations about the dangers of London, but it seemed that none of them had much impact on Isabella’s desire to move there as soon as possible. Mr Woodhouse agonised over this in private, but also raised the subject with Miss Taylor.

      ‘She seems dead set on going off to London,’ he said as they walked together one evening in the shrubbery. ‘I’ve talked to her about it, but it seems to go in one ear and out the other with that girl. In fact, I’m not sure that it even goes in one ear at all. I think that a lot of what I say is completely ignored. Emma’s quite different, of course – she listens to what I have to say, but her sister …’

      ‘Her sister is a very different girl,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘We all know that.’

      ‘I can’t understand it,’ said Mr Woodhouse, shaking his head with exasperation. ‘They have the same DNA.’

      ‘Not quite the same,’ corrected Miss Taylor. ‘They share some DNA but they have their own genes. They’re not identical twins.’

      ‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘But they come from the same background and at least they have the same broad genetic inheritance, and yet …’

      Miss Taylor reached out and placed a calming hand on his arm. ‘Isabella is more physical,’ she said. ‘It’s as simple as that. In fact, I’m sorry to have to say this, but there’s only one thought in her head at the moment: the opposite sex.’

      The words the opposite sex were carefully enunciated – as if she were speaking with gloves on – and uttered in a slightly disapproving Scottish accent. The effect was electric.

      ‘Boys?’

      Miss Taylor nodded. ‘Isabella is interested in boys. They are all she thinks about. They, I’m afraid to say, are her destiny.’

      He fell silent. He did not like to think about the СКАЧАТЬ