For others, though – and this included her teachers at Gresham’s – Bath somehow seemed a natural place for Emma to choose, although it would be difficult to say exactly why this was so. ‘She’s that sort of girl,’ said the English teacher enigmatically. ‘She’ll fit.’ And then, as an afterthought, expressed as if only to herself, ‘Perhaps she has Bathos.’ This reference eluded the chemistry teacher, who simply remarked, regretfully, ‘She never grasped chemistry. I tried, you know, but she never grasped it.’

The course was certainly ideal: Emma had long been interested in patterns, whether in wallpaper, carpets, or in clothing. For her fourteenth birthday she had been given a book on the work of Edward Bawden, and had responded immediately and instinctively to his pictures of the English countryside – all plough horses and wayside pubs with suspended board signs; all fields of wheat and old-fashioned tractors; all open skies and wispy clouds. She tried to imitate his style, and that of Ravilious and the Nashes, succeeding sufficiently to be encouraged by her art teacher to persist; but what she really liked were Bawdenesque fabrics and wallpapers. She could gaze at these for hours, luxuriating in triangles and trompe l’oeil.

She had not given much thought to the need to work – Mr Woodhouse had never mentioned the subject to his daughters – but Emma was far from lazy and she felt that if she had a destiny it was in working with designs like these. She could start off as an interior decorator and progress to designing her own curtains and wallpaper; she would create fabrics for sofas and bedspreads. It was ambitious, but clear enough, at least, for her to find a course that would equip her to do just this. Her friends agreed. ‘Emma Woodhouse Designs,’ said one. ‘Brilliant. The name works, Emma – it really does.’

Now that Emma was away at university, the question of Miss Taylor’s continuing employment at Hartfield could hardly be avoided. Miss Taylor herself had tried to raise the subject several times even before Emma left, but had been fobbed off by Mr Woodhouse, who either quickly changed the subject or, when more deliberately cornered by the governess, put it off until later that day. Then, of course, he failed to return to it or managed to ensure that he was not around at a time when it could be discussed. It was obvious that he was reluctant for her to leave, and that he simply wanted the normal routine of the house to continue as it always had, even if there was nothing for her to do. There was no reason why he should not continue to pay her – he hardly noticed her salary going out of his account each month, and, anyway, there was not very much for him to spend his money on, given that he rarely, if ever, left the house.

Disinclination to discuss a subject that needs to be discussed is never a solution: the topic merely assumes increasing prominence the longer it remains untouched. Every conversation that is then embarked upon, even if on a totally unrelated subject, will be conducted in the fear that it might suddenly be interrupted by the forbidden issue; every pause might be read as a sign that what has been unsaid so far might now suddenly be said. Eventually, of course, the strain tells, and the matter can be put off no more.

‘My position,’ blurted out Miss Taylor one morning as she sat at the breakfast table with Mr Woodhouse.

‘On what?’ he replied. ‘Your position on what?’ It was a desperate, last-ditch attempt to evade the issue.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You know what I’m talking about: my position here at Hartfield. You may have observed that Emma is no longer here.’

There were untapped wells of denial. ‘But she is!’ he exclaimed. ‘She’s away at university during the term, and then she comes back. How can she be said to be away when she always comes back? If I go to London for a day or two and then return, I can hardly be said to be no longer here.’

It was an improbable example. Mr Woodhouse had not been to London for eight years, and showed no signs of changing his views on the undesirability of ever doing so.

‘She is effectively now in Bath for more weeks of the year than she is here,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘In my view that means that she now lives in Bath. And anyway, she’s eighteen, and an eighteen-year-old does not need a governess.’

He looked at her with dismay. ‘But eighteen is so young,’ he said. ‘Remember what we were like at eighteen? We knew so little.’

Miss Taylor shook her head. ‘That’s not the way eighteen-year-olds look at it. When you’re eighteen you imagine you know everything. An eighteen-year-old will not accept guidance, I can assure you.’

‘But Emma doesn’t have a mother,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘You’re the closest thing she’s had to a mother since my wife died. If you were to leave …’ He left the sentence unfinished; even this hypothetical talk of departure made him feel bereft.

‘But I can’t sit here and pretend to be a governess when both my charges have grown up,’ she said. ‘It just doesn’t make sense.’

‘It’s your Presbyterian background,’ muttered Mr Woodhouse.

She stared at him. ‘What has the Church of Scotland got to do with it? I frankly do not see the connection.’

‘If you were a Catholic,’ said Mr Woodhouse, ‘you would have no difficulty with the idea of sitting around and doing nothing. That has never been a problem for Catholicism; it is only the Protestant outlook that makes us feel guilty about not being busy.’

‘Oh, really,’ she began, ‘this is nothing to do with John Knox, or Calvin for that matter.’

‘I beg you to stay,’ he continued, ‘I beg you, Miss Taylor. If you were to leave, then Emma would feel that a vital part of her home life was lost to her. I know that sounds extreme, but it really is true. You represent stability to her. You represent home.’

She stared down at the floor, avoiding his anguished gaze. It would be easier to stay than to leave; she would not have all the bother of looking for a new job – who wanted governesses these days? – and she had to concede that Hartfield was extremely comfortable. The salary was generous, too, and since she did not have to pay for her board – or for anything else for that matter – it would enable her to continue to build up her savings, now standing at a total of eighty-seven thousand pounds. Reading that figure, recorded on her quarterly statements of account, filled her with pleasure: a governess had to look after herself and to ensure that she did not find herself, at sixty, penniless and homeless. And that meant saving, and not indulging oneself in non-essentials, unless, of course, a husband should materialise and bring with him financial security. But husbands, she reflected, did not appear that easily; there were plenty of women who lived in hope that a husband might suddenly descend; that they might draw back the curtains one morning and see, standing outside their window, a husband; or that they might take a seat on the train to work and find themselves sitting next to … a husband. That happened, of course, for some, but for others it did not, no matter how hard they wished, and no matter how much they deserved a husband.

Mr Woodhouse suddenly brightened. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve always thought I needed a secretary.’ He looked at Miss Taylor with the air of one about to make an important announcement. ‘You could be my secretary – the pay and conditions would be exactly the same, but the job description would be different. You would not have to worry about being governess to a young woman who was away much of the time.’ He made a gesture of supplication. ‘Please say yes, Anne.’

She had been about to concede, with a suitable show of reluctance, that she should continue as governess, but this new secretarial post – which she knew was almost certainly a sinecure – would do as well.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I accept.’ She paused. ‘What will the duties be?’

For a few moments he looked blank, but then he smiled and said, ‘Secretarial.’

She nodded. There was no need to discuss the matter further, as everything, she imagined, would be exactly the same as it always had been. And that, of course, was what Mr Woodhouse wished for above all else, and what Miss Taylor, for want of anything better, was prepared to accept.

6

It made no difference to Emma, of course: when she came back during university breaks Miss Taylor was there, as she always been. And this continued throughout the four years of her degree course, which passed, she thought, as if the whole experience were some sort of pleasant dream. Norfolk, Bath; Bath, Norfolk; Bath again, and then Norfolk. There were saliences, of course: Paris for two months one summer, attending a course on the history of French décor during la belle époque, but then back to Norfolk, and then Bath; Edinburgh, another summer for a month, accompanied by Miss Taylor, for an internship with an interior-decoration firm, and then a blissful three weeks working with two university friends as a chalet girl in Morzine; then Bath once more and, before she was ready for them, her final examinations, and Norfolk again.

She did not stop to consider the curious role Miss Taylor occupied. Of course she was no longer her governess, being her father’s secretary, but she realised that he still expected Miss Taylor to accompany her when she went off anywhere. In fact, he had even suggested once that Miss Taylor should go with her to Bath and take up residence there during university terms, ‘Just in case you need her, Emma; it could be useful, don’t you think?’

She had scotched that quickly. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Daddy! I’m an adult now and just imagine going to university with a keeper! I’d be the laughing stock. I’m not six any more.’

She knew, though, that the suggestion came not from any distrust he had for her, but from his constant anxiety over her welfare. She knew that he worried about her and that Miss Taylor was meant to keep her safe from whatever it was that he dreaded. She allowed him this; he was her father, and she loved him; it was not his fault that he worried so much. Some people were just worriers, and there were worse things for a parent to be. The father of one of her university friends was a psychopath, she believed; he was a successful politician, but a psychopath nonetheless. If one had to choose between a worrier and a psychopath, she was in no doubt as to which she would choose. And indeed if one had to choose between a worrier and a politician, the same choice might be made. At least my father, for all his peculiar ways, is harmless, she thought. That is all one can hope for in life: that one’s parents are harmless. She was rather proud of that aphorism, and dropped it into a conversation with friends. They looked at her admiringly. ‘You are très clever,’ said one.

After her finals, she returned to Hartfield.

‘The end of Bath,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘And now?’

‘I was thinking of finding another internship with a decorator,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some names. But there’s nothing doing, apparently, until the autumn. I have the whole summer. I’ll spend it here, I think. I’ve got tons of reading I want to do.’

‘And then you’ll start your own practice?’

‘That’s the general idea.’

Miss Taylor looked thoughtful. ‘Where? London?’

Emma shrugged. ‘You don’t have to go to London. There’s bags of work outside town.’

‘Your father would be pleased if you didn’t go to London.’

‘I know. But it’s not because of him – it’s because I think that I can do just as well working in the country. Where do all the people with houses up here go for advice? They don’t want to have to go to London.’

Miss Taylor said nothing more, and they lapsed into silence. Their relationship was as easy as it always had been, and there were times when they could be together quite comfortably for hours on end without either saying anything to the other.

‘What was that you said?’ Emma once asked after they had been sitting together for almost an entire afternoon.

‘I don’t think I said anything,’ answered Miss Taylor, looking up from her book. ‘Or at least since about three o’clock which is …’ She consulted her watch. ‘Which is about two hours ago.’

‘That’s what I meant,’ said Emma. ‘What did you say? I don’t think I replied.’

‘I can’t recall,’ said Miss Taylor. ‘Was it something about … No, I can’t remember, I’m afraid.’

‘I thought I had views on whatever it was,’ said Emma. ‘But since you can’t remember, then I can’t really give my views.’