The photograph had to be reasonably interesting. Country Life girls did not simply sit for the camera against some featureless backdrop but were pictured striking a pose in surroundings that gave an indication of their normal social milieu or talents. The daughters of major gentry – those with stately homes – might be photographed leaning against a stone pillar, the clear inference being that this was just one of the many stone pillars owned by her father; those who had no stone pillars but who had, say, a small ornamental lake, would be photographed standing in front of this. Those who worked with horses – and this was large group – might have a hunter in the background, or at least a saddle. Dogs were a popular accoutrement, usually Labradors, who would be at the young woman’s side, ready to retrieve or flush birds, enthusiasts all, and given the same appraising scrutiny by the readers, in many cases, as the young woman herself.
Not everybody, of course, lived in the country, although most of those who were urbanites had at least some country connection. Parents might be described as being of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea and East Woods Manor, Chipping Norton, or whatever it was that provided the country bolthole for those who lived in town. And of course in any such juxtaposition it was Chipping Norton rather than London that counted: anybody could live in London, but not everybody could live in Chipping Norton.
The accompanying text also revealed the subject’s plans. Many young women were studying something at university – particularly at Durham, Edinburgh or Bristol. Many were planning to work in public relations or in a gallery; one or two – the lucky ones – had already opened their own interior-decoration business. Some were planning to get married in the near future, and the month of the wedding was given so that the readers might know whether they had been invited or passed over. If the wedding was to be the following month and no invitation had yet been received, then the conclusion was inescapable that one was not going. If, however, the marriage was to take place next September or October, and it was only May, then an invitation was still a possibility.
Mr Woodhouse had never paid much attention to any of this, which he regarded as the sort of thing that appealed to women but not to men. The wording of any caption to Isabella’s photograph could be worked out later – his immediate task was to find a photographer. This sent him off to the Yellow Pages, but he had not even begun to page through these when he remembered that he knew of a photographer who was right on their doorstep, or whose brother was.
George Knightley was the owner of one of the largest houses in the area, Donwell Abbey (twenty-four bedrooms). At the time at which Mr Woodhouse was thinking of publishing his daughter’s photograph, George was just twenty-five and had owned Donwell for four years. He had inherited not only a house, but looks too, his father having been described in a magazine article as one of the ten most handsome men in England. Knightley père had also been one of the most modest, as he never made any reference to this, or any other accolade that came his way. He had that endangered and most attractive quality: an old-fashioned Englishness, in appearance, garb, and manner, and a generosity of spirit that made him extremely popular in the neighbourhood. This ensured a sympathetic reception for his son when he took over the property. ‘Thank heavens,’ said people. ‘Think of what we might have had, with all these …’ Typically there then followed a listing of those who might have bought Donwell Abbey had it been put on the open market: hedge-fund people, dot-com people, Russian oligarchs, celebrities of various stripes – the list was a long one and generally concluded with a sigh of relief that the Knightleys remained exactly where they had been for centuries.
His parents were divorced when he was barely seven. It was not an acrimonious parting: both parties had gradually grown away from each other and recognised that they were, quite simply, bored with the other’s company and that this boredom was beginning to turn to irritation. They understood that when another’s mannerisms begin to grate, it is probably too late to retrieve the situation, even if a relationship might be patched up with a lot of effort and forbearance. He went off to live in Vancouver; she stayed at Donwell, which had now been given to her as part of a generous divorce settlement. The boys stayed with her and, for reasons of geography, saw their father only intermittently. He lost touch with England and, to an extent, with his sons, although he had never intended to desert them. For her part, she developed a close friendship with a man she met at a bridge club, and ended up travelling with him to competitions all over the world. It was on one of these trips, a visit to an international bridge tournament in Kerala, that she was hit by a car – an old Hindustan Ambassador with minimal brakes – and died. Her last memories were of the sun above her – so brilliant, so unrelenting – and concerned faces looking down on her: a boy wearing a blue shirt, a man in a khaki uniform who was shouting at the others; and then the sun again, and darkness.
Under the terms of her will, George inherited Donwell and the estate surrounding it, while his brother, John, was given such investments as his mother had. It was a roughly equitable division and it suited both of them. George had a sense of duty that his brother lacked; he also rather liked the challenge of restoring the Donwell farm to profitability. For John, his inheritance of easily realisable assets would enable him to indulge his taste for expensive cameras, forget the house that he had always found hopelessly uncomfortable and dull, and buy a flat in a fashionable part of London.
The young George Knightley’s commitment to Donwell was no passing fancy. Aided by his astute farm manager, he made sure that fields were used in such a way as to ensure maximum European Union grants. Old farm machinery was replaced with brand-new equipment, and diversification – the saviour of many a farmer who had found it impossible to make a living growing crops – was pursued with single-minded enthusiasm. This meant that several farm cottages that had been lying empty were made suitable for holiday lets; that beehives were introduced and a centrifuge bought for the extraction of honey from the comb; that a large flock of rare-breed sheep was established, as well as a farm shop selling home-cured bacon, jerseys and mittens made from the wool of the rare-breed sheep; in short, that every way of making a farm pay was examined, tried, and, if successful, implemented.
The proximity of Donwell Abbey to Hartfield meant that the Woodhouses and Knightleys saw a fair amount of each other. George Knightley had always been aware of the Woodhouse girls, of course, but they were, in his eyes, no more than two rather attractive teenage girls who had always been about the place and with whom he occasionally chatted. Isabella, of course, had always appreciated his looks, but the age gap between them made any thought of romance impossible. When she was sixteen, and beginning to take a strong interest in boys, he was twenty-four, and therefore impossibly old by teenage standards.
‘Life after twenty?’ Isabella said to a friend. ‘I don’t think so!’
‘Well, you’re hardly dead when you’re twenty-something,’ said the friend. ‘Maybe a bit past it, but not actually finished.’
‘That comes later.’
‘Yes, forty.’
They had laughed, but they actually meant it.
George thought nothing of age gaps. He might be older than Isabella, but he was nonetheless amused by her. He compared her with some of the girls he had met at university: in a few years she would be exactly like them, he thought – a county girl itching to find the right husband from the ranks of those young men who would make up her social circle. It was a harmless enough fate, even if a rather predictable one.