‘Of course I do,’ said Emma, with some irritation. Did Harriet really imagine that she might not know her own neighbours?

‘Well, when we saw that, Mrs God said, “Of course, of course! It’s Frank Churchill.” ’

‘Frank Churchill,’ muttered Emma. ‘So he’s arrived at last.’

‘Do you know him?’ asked Harriet.

Emma thought very quickly. The interest that Harriet was taking in Frank Churchill unsettled her. Emma had not yet had the chance to look at Frank Churchill on this visit, and she did not like the idea of Harriet suddenly falling for him. That was not in the script.

‘I’ve met him on previous visits,’ she said. ‘He’s James Weston’s son, you see. He was sent off to Australia when his mother died – some relatives called Churchill took him. They’ve got pots of money.’

Harriet listened intently. ‘He looks so cute,’ she said. ‘He’s got this really nice face, you see – very regular features – and his shoulders …’

‘Too bad,’ muttered Emma.

Harriet looked puzzled. ‘No, there was nothing wrong his shoulders – in fact—’

She did not finish. ‘Harriet,’ said Emma, ‘sorry to have to tell you this, but I don’t think Frank Churchill’s going to be interested.’

Harriet stared at her. ‘You mean …’

Emma waited for her to finish her sentence, but she did not. She inclined her head slightly; that was all – just a slight lowering of the head. She was not going to tell any lies; Frank Churchill may or may not be interested in Harriet – who could tell? All she was doing was expressing her own opinion as to whether or not he would notice her. There was nothing wrong with that. She would not tell Harriet that he was gay, but if that was the way she chose to interpret what she had said, then was she under any obligation to correct her? She could not be a nursemaid to Harriet, responsible for protecting her from every misunderstanding.

And yet conscience pricked her. ‘All I meant,’ she said, ‘was that I thought he might not be interested. That’s all.’

Harriet groaned. ‘It’s so unfair.’

‘What’s unfair?’

‘These nice men – all these really nice men are … aren’t interested.’

‘I’m sure he’s perfectly happy with himself,’ said Emma.

For the rest of the sitting, she sketched in silence. An hour later, the portrait was finished, and she stood back to admire it. It was good, she thought; not just adequate, but good.

She showed it to Harriet, who said that she was pleased. ‘I love a pastel drawing,’ she said. ‘And this one makes me look so …’

‘So intriguing,’ suggested Emma.

‘Yes, maybe. Goodness, I’m not that clever and yet here I look as if I’m thinking very hard!’

Emma started to remove the portrait from the sketchbook so that she could frame it. She was glad that it was finished, as she was beginning to feel bored with Harriet’s company. There were so many more interesting things to think about, she felt; poor Harriet was so superficial. Her destiny was to be handed over to Philip as soon as possible and to go off on a well-funded gap year. That was what was contemplated for her. And as for her own life, Emma thought that there were numerous possibilities. There was Mr Frank Churchill to start with: something might well come of him. And there would be no difficulty in seeing him, as she and her father could easily invite James and Miss Taylor over for dinner and then add, ‘And do bring anybody staying with you’. She was not sure about inviting Harriet, as the last thing she would want would be for Frank Churchill’s head to be turned by Harriet’s looks. That would not do at all. But she could hardly not invite her, she decided, as she was bound to hear of the dinner party and wonder why she had not been included. She had so much in this life, and Harriet had so little; it would be a kindness on her part to include her. So Harriet would get an invitation, but would not be seated anywhere near Frank Churchill.

Later, after Harriet had left, Emma sat in her study and thought. Why, she wondered, had Frank gone to see Miss Bates? It seemed so odd; unless, of course, he was paying a dutiful call on an old friend of his father. That was entirely possible: Miss Bates and James had known each other for years and Frank might just have been calling in to find out how Miss Bates was, not having seen her for so long. That was the most likely explanation; she was sure of it, and saw no reason to think about it any more. Cadit quaestio, one might say.

16

The guest list for the dinner party ran to more names than Emma had originally envisaged, including Mrs Goddard, who had not been on Emma’s initial list, but who had been invited by Mr Woodhouse. ‘I’ve added somebody to our dinner party,’ he announced. ‘Floss Goddard. I bumped into her in the village and asked her. I hadn’t seen her for a long time.’

‘The English as a foreign language woman?’ asked Emma.

‘That’s her.’

Emma bit her lip. ‘I wish you hadn’t. This dinner party is getting larger and larger by the minute. Have you invited anybody else?’

‘Miss Bates,’ he said.

‘That’ll be fun.’ The sarcasm behind the remark was not concealed.

‘She’s a nice woman, Emma. And her niece too.’

Emma sighed, although she was secretly pleased that Jane Fairfax would be there. Jane would be no threat to Frank Churchill’s attention, as long as they could make sure that she did not play the piano; some men admired talent, although most of them, she thought, were far too unsubtle to do that. She would make sure that Jane was seated near her, as there was still a lot she wanted to find out about her.

Mr Woodhouse, though, should not be let off that easily. ‘You may as well invite the whole village.’ She paused. ‘How do you know Mrs Goddard, anyway?’

‘We go back a bit,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘When she bought the old airfield I was on the Parish Council and she submitted her plans to us. I got to know her then. That was about fifteen years ago.’

‘Well, I suppose you’ve gone and done it. We can’t uninvite people, Pops. Mrs Firhill is going to have to make double quantities of everything, since we’re feeding the entire community, more or less.’

‘Oh, and I invited Philip Elton,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘I forgot about him.’

Emma did not mind about that. She had been at the vicarage the previous day – Philip had been out at the time – and she had posted her sketch of Harriet through the letter box as he had said that he knew a good framer and could get it framed at an attractive price. She wanted to hear his views of the sketch, and this would provide an opportunity to do so, even if it meant putting up with his company for the evening.

‘And George Knightley?’ asked Emma.

‘Of course.’

Mr Woodhouse now became silent. He frowned, and then looked out of the window, as if whatever was worrying him was outside.

‘Something wrong?’ asked Emma.

He hesitated briefly before replying. ‘All these guests,’ he said. ‘I enjoy these occasions, as you well know, Emma. But a thought has suddenly occurred. Do you think that all these people have …’ He broke off, looking slightly embarrassed.

‘What? Have what?’

‘Have all their immunisations up to date? Do you think we could ask them?’

Emma looked at him with frank disbelief. ‘Oh really, Daddy!’ The Pops disappeared at moments of stress and her earlier, more authentic way of addressing her father returned. ‘Really!’

‘You may laugh,’ he said, ‘but it’s a thought. You know that you can catch whooping cough as an adult. It’s very unpleasant. It lasts for months.’

Emma knew that nothing she could say would reassure him, but she tried. ‘You can use sanitizer after you’ve shaken hands with them,’ she said. ‘Discreetly, of course.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Woodhouse. He was not entirely convinced, though, as he had read the small print on the labels of those sanitizers. ‘Kills 99.9% of known germs’, they claimed. And what about the remaining 0.1 per cent, he asked himself. What about them? Ninety-nine point nine per cent of household germs were probably quite harmless anyway; 0.1 per cent, however, were not. And then there were the unknown germs; nothing was said of them, and, as everybody knew, what manufacturers and advertisers did not say was often much more important than what they did say.

On the day of the dinner party, Emma was ready well in advance. She herself had not helped with any of the preparations, having left these to Mrs Firhill, who had in due course invoked the help of both her husband and Mrs Sid. To Bert Firhill was delegated the task of laying the table and polishing the glasses before setting them alongside each place. Mr Woodhouse was fussy about clean glass; ‘There is nothing – nothing – worse than a glass that has fingerprints or smudges on it,’ he said, which was not true, of course, even as an account of his own views, as there were many things that he thought considerably worse than the minor health hazard posed by dirty glass. But wine hygiene had become a concern of his since he had read in The Economist of a restaurant in which the dregs of wine left over in customers’ glasses was decanted into empty bottles and then re-corked for subsequent service. He had been haunted by this information, and had resolved never to drink wine in a restaurant again; which made little difference to his life, as he never went out for dinner anyway – other than to Randalls, and occasionally to Donwell Abbey. He was sure that James Weston would never stoop to such practices, although there remained a niggling doubt in his mind that Miss Taylor, being Scottish, might object to any wastage and, were the idea to be planted in her mind, might do just that. He knew that she was canny, and remembered her telling, with some pride in her voice, of an elderly uncle of hers, an Aberdonian and therefore particularly imbued with habits of Scottish frugality, who had used a bicycle-tube repair outfit to patch up his hot-water bottle after eighteen years of use. Coming from such a background, Miss Taylor might just be tempted to drain used wine glasses and recycle the wine; he would have to watch very carefully, he decided, to see whether the tops of the wine bottles were properly sealed when they were opened. But what if the bottles were broached in the kitchen prior to being brought into the dining room? This unresolved question had worried him and would continue to do so. Perhaps it would be best to have it out with James and ask him outright whether his bottles had had old wine poured into them. But could one ever ask such a question? Would offence he taken, even by an old friend? These questions added to his discomfort.

Bert was used to Mr Woodhouse’s oddities, and did not object to the request that he wear white butler’s gloves while polishing the wine glasses.

‘Good idea, Mr Woodhouse,’ he suggested. ‘You never know where hands have been. Or you do, perhaps.’

Mr Woodhouse frowned. What could this remark possibly mean?

‘Only joking,’ said Bert cheerfully. ‘My hands are pure as the driven snow. Carbolic soap – my old dad used it to get the grime off when he finished a day’s work and I’ve done the same, man and boy.’

This reassured Mr Woodhouse. ‘That’s very good, Mr Firhill. But please use a fresh cloth. There are plenty of those blue things in the pantry, near the rubbish sacks.’

Bert set to work. As he was polishing, Mrs Sid came in with a stack of plates. ‘You’ll observe that herself is not helping much,’ she said. ‘It’s her own party and yet who’s not in evidence to lend a hand? The hostess, that’s who.’

‘She’s a spoiled little baggage,’ muttered Bert. ‘Too much money. Too much time on her hands. And attitude too.’

Mrs Sid agreed. ‘Sid’s too soft on her. He says that she’s not too bad compared with some he’s come across in his time.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Bert, picking up a heavy Stuart crystal glass on which he had located an errant fingerprint. ‘Well, Sid hasn’t seen what I seen. Naked cavorting with …’ He stopped himself, but it was too late. He had not actually seen it – not with his own eyes – but his wife had seen it and he felt that this was as good as his having seen it himself. For the most part, they saw the same things anyway; so what difference did it make?

‘What?’ asked Mrs Sid, her voice lowered to conspiratorial levels.

‘Nothing,’ said Bert.

‘Come on, Bert. You may not have meant to say anything, but you can’t put a burp back in the stomach, as they say. Naked what? Cavorting?’