Emma. Alexander McCall Smith
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once – my brother and I – when we were kids. He was sick in the conservatory, as I remember, and I tried to clear it up before anybody noticed.’
‘You’re a loyal brother,’ said Mr Woodhouse.
‘Poor George.’
‘It sounds as if you feel sorry for him,’ said Mr Woodhouse.
‘Yes, I do. Being stuck out here in that great barn of a house and the tedium … My God, how does he manage it: having to put up with the same old people year in, year out?’
Such as me, thought Mr Woodhouse.
‘Mind you,’ said John. ‘I can’t picture him in London, can you?’
Mr Woodhouse felt that he must defend his friend. ‘I can’t see myself in London either,’ he said.
John threw him a sideways glance. ‘No, possibly not.’
They reached the morning room, a large rectangular room with French doors giving out on to a terrace beyond. It was a favourite room of the girls, and Isabella was waiting, nonchalantly pretending to read a magazine.
For all his preoccupations Mr Woodhouse was not an unobservant man, and he noticed immediately the spark of response in Isabella’s expression. As he did so, his spirits sank; it had been a mistake to invite John Knightley to take Isabella’s photograph, and even as he made this admission to himself he came to the further realisation that the consequences of this introduction could be serious, and long-lasting.
‘I’ll start in here,’ said John. ‘I’ve got my gear in my backpack.’ He turned to Mr Woodhouse. ‘OK. Thanks a lot. I’ll see you before I go.’
It was clear to Mr Woodhouse that he was being dismissed, and it was equally clear to him that Isabella was anxious that he should not linger.
‘Can’t I help you in some way?’ he asked. ‘Hold a light, or something?’
John shook his head. ‘It’s easier if just two people are present at the shoot,’ he said, and then added, ‘Chemistry, you know. Energy flows. More intimate.’
Isabella smiled. ‘See you later, Pops.’
Mr Woodhouse resisted the temptation to lurk in a corridor or peer out of a window when the shoot moved outside. Burying himself in his library, he spent the next half-hour paging through an issue of Scientific American but retaining very little of what he was reading. He was convinced that John Knightley would take completely unsuitable photographs of Isabella, and that all that he would receive from Country Life would be a polite note about their inability to feature many young women who clearly would merit inclusion if only there were more room. The photographs would be gimmicky, he feared, with Isabella being draped seductively over the bonnet of a car or sprawled out wantonly on a pile of leaves; they would completely fail to embody the qualities of demure Englishness – mixed with an appealing and modest confidence – that could attract the right sort of husband.
He sighed, and laid Scientific American aside. It was important to have an understanding of particle physics – he had been reading about the Higgs boson – but the intellectual challenge of Scientific American was definitely secondary to a father’s duty to protect his daughter. Rising to his feet, he retraced his steps into the morning room. This was deserted; Isabella and John had presumably left for the formal garden and the outside shoot. But when he looked out of the window he saw that they were not there, and nor was there any sign of them in the shrubbery, of which the morning room had an equally commanding view.
The unease he had felt up to this point was now replaced by real concern. Leaving the morning room by a French window, he made his way quickly round the outside of the house, scanning neighbouring fields for any sign of the young people. There was none; the ripening barley, swaying in the breeze, showed no signs of intrusion; sheep grazed in a neighbouring paddock undisturbed by human presence; it was a landscape quite without figures. It was only when he turned the corner of the house and reached the broad turning circle at the head of the drive that he spotted them.
They were standing by the shining red Ducati. John Knightley, having packed away his photographic equipment, was now busy extracting a helmet from a large metal pannier behind the motorcycle’s seat. Mr Woodhouse breathed a sigh of relief at the realisation that the photographer would be leaving, but then he noticed that there were two helmets: the one being taken from the pannier and the one that John was already wearing, the unfastened strap dangling casually under his chin. He watched as the photographer handed the spare helmet to Isabella, who took it, and laughed as he showed her how to secure the strap.
He called out, and she looked up sharply.
‘Daddy,’ she shouted, as he approached. ‘Look at me. John’s going to take me for a ride on his Duc … Duc …’
‘Ducati,’ prompted John. ‘Just as far as Cambridge. We’ll be back by eight tonight.’
‘But …’ protested Mr Woodhouse. He felt a sudden tightening of his chest, a symptom, he knew, of extreme panic. It was now, he thought, that he should have a stroke; at such a time as this, when fear sent the blood through his veins under such pressure that somewhere, in some obscure corner of the brain’s plumbing, a tiny vessel might rupture and fell him just as surely as would a great blade. It was every bit as bad – worse indeed – as he had feared. ‘But you can’t, Isabella. These things …’ He gestured helplessly at the motorcycle; in his distress, words seemed to fail him. ‘These things … these things are Italian.’
She burst out laughing. ‘What? Italian?’
He corrected himself, ashamed because John was smirking. ‘Lethal. I meant to say: these things are lethal.’
He wanted to weep. He was convinced that as he watched her go down the drive it would be his last glimpse of his beloved daughter. He should do something to stop her: throw himself in front of the machine; or seize the key – if these things had keys – from John and run off with it, back to the house, ignoring his shouts. The most outrageous act on his part – even fetching his shotgun, his father’s old engraved Purdey – and pointing it at John would be justified in order to save Isabella from this dreadful folly.
‘It’s perfectly safe,’ said John. ‘I’m a pretty careful rider, Mr Woodhouse. Your daughter will be quite safe with me.’
‘See?’ said Isabella. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Daddy.’
‘You mustn’t, my darling. Please, please, I beg of you: you mustn’t.’
He did not think she heard him, as the flaps at the side of the helmet had now been fixed in position. She mouthed the word Goodbye. If only she hadn’t done that, he thought. If only she hadn’t tempted Nemesis to oblige and make it a real and final goodbye.
In slow motion – or so it seemed to the agonised Mr Woodhouse – he watched Isabella mount the pillion seat. It was so prolonged, so deliberate – just as some article on human perception in Scientific American had explained it would be, because our minds register an event like that with heightened clarity, and that makes it seem to happen slowly.
‘Isabella!’ he called out. But his voice was drowned by the roar of the Ducati and the crunching sound of its wheels on the gravel, and she did not hear him. She waved, though, and waved again when they rode past him in a spray of tiny stones.
‘Dearly beloved,’ began the vicar. ‘We are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this congregation …’ The echoing opening of the Wedding Service, couched in the Cranmerian prose of the Book of Common Prayer, could not but move every one of the one hundred guests attending the wedding of Isabella Woodhouse to John Knightley. Emma listened to each word, and was impressed by the sheer solemnity of what she heard: ‘… which is an honourable estate … and first miracle he wrought, in Cana of Galilee … and