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.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Miss Taylor; and then added, ‘Pity.’
Over dinner, the conversation would naturally include Mr Woodhouse, who never seemed happier than when he had the company of both Emma and Miss Taylor at the same time. These exchanges over the dining-room table often dwelled on obscure and sometimes very technical issues arising from whatever it was that Mr Woodhouse had been reading that day. On days when Scientific American was delivered to Hartfield, this might result in debates about immunology or astronomy; The Economist could lead to discussions of the rights and wrongs of liberal capitalism (Mr Woodhouse was an opponent of the greed that free markets encouraged) or to discussions of energy policy. Emma was not greatly interested in such topics, but was prepared to listen to her father, sometimes chiding him for some factual error or misjudged conclusion, while Miss Taylor, who knew about a surprising range of subjects, was more willing to engage.
Occasionally their dinner conversation was prompted by something that Miss Taylor had read or heard on the radio. At the beginning of that summer, shortly after Emma had returned from Bath, an article in The Scots Magazine about the remote St Kilda Islands had triggered one such discussion. Mr Woodhouse was interested in the evacuation of the few remaining islanders in the late 1930s, and said that he had always believed that this had been inevitable given the number and variety of germs that would have thrived on islands that were so heavily populated by flocks of seabirds. ‘I gather that infant mortality was a problem for them,’ he said. ‘And frankly I’m not surprised.’