Emma. Alexander Smith McCall

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.’

      It was not this issue, though, that occasioned the intense debate that evening, rather it was one of the photographs that accompanied the article in The Scots Magazine. Miss Taylor had been so struck by this photograph that she had shown it to both Emma and her father. The picture was of one of the high stone columns that rose out of the sea around the main island. Here and there along the side of the column were patches of grass clinging to the rock at an angle of forty five degrees – as hostile and impossible an environment as could be imagined, but home, it seemed, to a hardy breed of sheep that had lived there untended by any shepherd since the islanders left.

      ‘Poor creatures,’ said Emma. ‘Imagine living at that angle, hundreds of feet above the sea. It’s cruel.’

      ‘Very uncomfortable,’ said Mr Woodhouse. ‘Of course they’ll eventually have legs of different lengths, to cope with the angle, but that would take thousands of years, I imagine. Evolution doesn’t happen overnight. Poor things.’

      ‘Poor things?’ echoed Miss Taylor. ‘Those sheep, I imagine, are perfectly happy.’

      ‘They can’t be,’ protested Emma. ‘Would you be happy living at that angle on a tiny patches of grass? With gales? With everything tasting of salt?’

      ‘They may not be ideal surroundings,’ Miss Taylor conceded. ‘But they don’t know any better, do they? They have no idea of gentle meadows in which sheep may safely graze, as Bach would have us believe.’

      ‘Bach?’ asked Mr Woodhouse. ‘What’s Bach got to do with it?’

      Miss Taylor looked at him. This was the reason, she thought, why I could never marry him, even if he were to ask me. It would be like marrying somebody who spoke an entirely different language. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘The point I was making is this: if you know no better, then you are happy with what you have. Those sheep have no idea that life may be any different from what they experience. Therefore they are happy or unhappy to the same degree as any sheep are, whatever their circumstances. I cannot imagine that the Duke of Northumberland’s sheep are any happier than those St Kilda sheep.’

      Mr Woodhouse looked puzzled. ‘The Duke of Northumberland?’ It was a most irritating habit of hers, he thought: bringing into a discussion people who had no business in it – Bach and the Duke of Northumberland: what light could they possibly throw on the issue of these unfortunate sheep?

      Miss Taylor smiled. ‘I mention the Duke of Northumberland as an example of somebody whom one might imagine has contented and well-looked-after sheep. I do not know if that is the case; I simply assume it.’ She paused. ‘I believe that those St Kildan sheep are not unhappy for the same reason that I am not unhappy with my lot.’

      Emma frowned. ‘But in your case you know that you could be happier than you are.’

      Miss Taylor turned to her. ‘Do I? Do you really think so?’

      Emma did not reply for a moment. But then she realised that she knew the answer to this; she felt it. ‘Everybody can be happier than they are,’ she said. ‘They may not know it – yes, I accept that – but that doesn’t mean to say that they can’t be made happier. Other people can make them happier; other people can arrange happiness for them.’

      She was sure that she was right. She had not given the question much thought before this, but this discussion – this rather ridiculous discussion about sheep – had brought the matter into sharp focus for her. And just as she worked out what she thought about this, she realised, too, that this was something she could do with her life. She could make people happier by helping them to find happiness. It was very simple, really; all that was required was a willingness to take the initiative and show people where they should look. And as for those poor sheep on their cruel Hebridean columns, if only she had a boat she would take them away to some flat part of Scotland, some level lowland where they might live without fear of falling into the sea; where there was lush