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.

15

Miss Taylor had been at Randalls for a short time when the news came through that Mr Frank Churchill was definitely coming to spend a few weeks – possibly more – with his father, James Weston. This information was disclosed one Friday morning by an excited James, who had just received an email from his son himself. The message said:

Hey, Dad, definitely coming this time. You know how difficult it is with … well, it’s just difficult. However, the Cs have said that London is on and so there’s no stopping me now. They are going to be staying in some club in London and then renting a house in Cheltenham for a couple of months – there are Churchill cousins down there, and one of them isn’t too well. I’ll come straight to you at Highbury. Put the beer on ice!

Love, Frank (Churchill but really Weston!)

Miss Taylor readily shared in her fiancé’s pleasure; she knew how much he had been longing to see his son again, and she had felt vaguely aggrieved that Frank had already called off promised visits more than once. She had imagined at first that this displayed thoughtlessness on the young man’s part, and had been prepared to feel cross with him over what she saw as cavalier cancellations. When she found out the full facts, though, she changed her mind, and realised that if there was to be any blame for these aborted visits, then it rested fairly at the door of Mrs Churchill.

Mrs Churchill was not popular in Highbury, even if there were few people who had actually met her; those who had, spoke of her high-handed manner; those who had not, talked of how other people spoke of her haughtiness and sheer bossiness. There was nobody who was prepared to say a good word about her.

Miss Taylor, who was aware of Mrs Churchill’s reputation, thought this unfair. Although not one to overlook the failings of others – she was no Pollyanna – she nonetheless felt that Mrs Churchill must have at least some good points, even if these generally went unremarked. After all, she and her husband had provided a home for Frank, and even if self-interest were involved in that, taking on the child of another was surely an act of extreme generosity. And if she had proved to be a possessive stepmother, then that was more likely to be caused by insecurity than by selfishness. Miss Taylor’s Scottish upbringing had taught her that blame requires free will and the making of choices; we answer for what we choose to do, a simple enough concept to grasp. Weaknesses of character or personality issues – such as insecurity – are hardly a matter of choice. So if Mrs Churchill’s undue possessiveness had its source in insecurity, and if this insecurity were not something Mrs Churchill had chosen for herself, then her possessiveness was not a failing for which she could be blamed. That was what Miss Taylor thought. Everybody else, however, thought differently.

Frank Churchill arrived shortly before noon on the day on which his flight from Perth touched down at Heathrow. Leaving the Churchills to make their own way into London, Frank picked up the German sports car that he had reserved – at considerable expense – and left for Highbury.

Mrs Churchill had expressed misgivings. ‘I don’t know why you need a car like that, Frank,’ she said. ‘You can’t drive fast on these English roads, you know.’

‘You can’t drive fast anywhere,’ said Frank. ‘Oz is just as bad. All those traffic cops.’

‘Speed is not essential,’ said Mrs Churchill. ‘Anyway, when are we going to see you? When will you be coming into London?’

Frank was non-committal. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult to find parking in London, I think. You just go ahead and make your plans yourselves, Ma. Don’t worry about me.’