The Burden

by Agatha Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott

  Laura said conscientiously:

  ‘Not very much. I’ve been very busy. But I’ve made you a raffia mat.’

  Swiftly there swept over Angela’s mind a sudden remembrance of Charles – of the way he would tear across the grass, flinging himself upon her, hugging her. ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’

  How horribly it hurt – remembering.

  She pushed aside memories, smiled at Laura and said:

  ‘A raffia mat? How nice, darling.’

  Arthur Franklin tweaked his daughter’s hair.

  ‘I believe you’ve grown, Puss.’

  They all went into the house.

  What it was Laura had expected, she did not know. Here were Mummy and Daddy home, and pleased to see her, making a fuss of her, asking her questions. It wasn’t they who were wrong, it was herself. She wasn’t – she wasn’t – what wasn’t she?

  She herself hadn’t said the things or looked or even felt as she had thought she would.

  It wasn’t the way she had planned it. She hadn’t – really – taken Charles’s place. There was something missing with her, Laura. But it would be different tomorrow, she told herself, or if not tomorrow, then the next day, or the day after. The heart of the house, Laura said to herself, suddenly recalling a phrase that had taken her fancy from an old-fashioned children’s book she had come across in the attic.

  That was what she was now, surely, the heart of the house.

  Unfortunate that she should feel herself, with a deep inner misgiving, to be just Laura as usual.

  Just Laura …

  2

  ‘Baldy seems to have taken quite a fancy to Laura,’ said Angela. ‘Fancy, he asked her to tea with him while we were away.’

  Arthur said he’d like very much to know what they had talked about.

  ‘I think,’ said Angela after a moment or two, ‘that we ought to tell Laura. I mean, if we don’t, she’ll hear something – the servants or someone. After all, she’s too old for gooseberry bushes and all that kind of thing.’

  She was lying in a long basket chair under the cedar tree. She turned her head now towards her husband in his deck chair.

  The lines of suffering still showed in her face. The life she was carrying had not yet succeeded in blurring the sense of loss.

  ‘It’s going to be a boy,’ said Arthur Franklin. ‘I know it’s going to be a boy.’

  Angela smiled, and shook her head.

  ‘No use building on it,’ she said.

  ‘I tell you, Angela, I know.’

  He was positive – quite positive.

  A boy like Charles, another Charles, laughing, blue-eyed, mischievous, affectionate.

  Angela thought: ‘It may be another boy – but it won’t be Charles.’

  ‘I expect we shall be just as pleased with a girl, however,’ said Arthur, not very convincingly.

  ‘Arthur, you know you want a son!’

  ‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I’d like a son.’

  A man wanted a son – needed a son. Daughters – it wasn’t the same thing.

  Obscurely moved by some consciousness of guilt, he said:

  ‘Laura’s really a dear little thing.’

  Angela agreed sincerely.

  ‘I know. So good and quiet and helpful. We shall miss her when she goes to school.’

  She added: ‘That’s partly why I hope it won’t be a girl. Laura might be a teeny bit jealous of a baby sister – not that she’d have any need to be.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But children are sometimes – it’s quite natural; that’s why I think we ought to tell her, prepare her.’

  And so it was that Angela Franklin said to her daughter:

  ‘How would you like a little baby brother?

  ‘Or sister?’ she added rather belatedly.

  Laura stared at her. The words did not seem to make sense. She was puzzled. She did not understand.

  Angela said gently: ‘You see, darling, I’m going to have a baby … next September. It will be nice, won’t it?’

  She was a little disturbed when Laura, murmuring something incoherent, backed away, her face crimsoning with an emotion that her mother did not understand.

  Angela Franklin felt worried.

  ‘I wonder,’ she said to her husband. ‘Perhaps we’ve been wrong? I’ve never actually told her anything – about – about things, I mean. Perhaps she hadn’t any idea …’

  Arthur Franklin said that considering that the production of kittens that went on in the house was something astronomical, it was hardly likely that Laura was completely unacquainted with the facts of life.

  ‘Yes, but perhaps she thinks people are different. It may have been a shock to her.’

  It had been a shock to Laura, though not in any biological sense. It was simply that the idea that her mother would have another child had never occurred to Laura. She had seen the whole pattern as simple and straightforward. Charles was dead, and she was her parents’ only child. She was, as she had phrased it to herself, ‘all they had in the world’.

  And now – now – there was to be another Charles.

  She never doubted, any more than Arthur and Angela secretly doubted, that the baby would be a boy.

  Desolation struck through to her.

  For a long time Laura sat huddled upon the edge of a cucumber frame, while she wrestled with disaster.

  Then she made up her mind. She got up, walked down the drive and along the road to Mr Baldock’s house.

  Mr Baldock, grinding his teeth and snorting with venom, was penning a really vitriolic review for a learned journal of a fellow historian’s life work.

  He turned a ferocious face to the door, as Mrs Rouse, giving a perfunctory knock and pushing it open, announced:

  ‘Here’s little Miss Laura for you.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Baldock, checked on the verge of a tremendous flood of invective. ‘So it’s you.’

  He was disconcerted. A fine thing it would be if the child was going to trot along here at any odd moment. He hadn’t bargained for that. Drat all children! Give them an inch and they took an ell. He didn’t like children, anyway. He never had.

  His disconcerted gaze met Laura’s. There was no apology in Laura’s look. It was grave, deeply troubled, but quite confident in a divine right to be where she was. She made no polite remarks of an introductory nature.

  ‘I thought I’d come and tell you,’ she said, ‘that I’m going to have a baby brother.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Baldock, taken aback.

  ‘We-ell …’ he said, playing for time. Laura’s face was white and expressionless. ‘That’s news, isn’t it?’ He paused. ‘Are you pleased?’

  ‘No,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t think I am.’

  ‘Beastly things, babies,’ agreed Mr Baldock sympathetically. ‘No teeth and no hair, and yell their heads off. Their mothers like them, of course, have to – or the poor little brutes would never get looked after, or grow up. But you won’t find it so bad when it’s three or four,’ he added encouragingly. ‘Almost as good as a kitten or a puppy by then.’

  ‘Charles died,’ said Laura. ‘Do you think it’s likely that my new baby brother may die too?’

  He shot her a keen glance, then said firmly:

  ‘Shouldn’t think so for a moment,’ and added: ‘Lightning never strikes twice.’

  ‘Cook says that,’ said Laura. ‘It means the same thing doesn’t happen twice?’

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘Charles –’ began Laura, and stopped.

  Again Mr Baldock’s glance swept over her quickly.

  ‘No reason it should be a baby brother,’ he said. ‘Just as likely to be a baby sister.’

  ‘Mummy seems to think it will be a brother.’

  ‘Shouldn’t go by that if I were you. She wouldn’t be the first woman to think wrong.’

  Laura’s face brightened suddenly.

  ‘There was Jehoshaphat,’ she said. ‘Dulcibella’s last kitten. He’s turne
d out to be a girl after all. Cook calls him Josephine now,’ she added.

  ‘There you are,’ said Mr Baldock encouragingly. ‘I’m not a betting man, but I’d put my money on its being a girl myself.’

  ‘Would you?’ said Laura fervently.

  She smiled at him, a grateful and unexpectedly lovely smile that gave Mr Baldock quite a shock.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll go now.’ She added politely: ‘I hope I haven’t interrupted your work?’

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘I’m always glad to see you if it’s about something important. I know you wouldn’t barge in here just to chatter.’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ said Laura earnestly.

  She withdrew, closing the door carefully behind her.

  The conversation had cheered her considerably. Mr Baldock, she knew, was a very clever man.

  ‘He’s much more likely to be right than Mummy,’ she thought to herself.

  A baby sister? Yes, she could face the thought of a sister. A sister would only be another Laura – an inferior Laura. A Laura lacking teeth and hair, and any kind of sense.

  3

  As she emerged from the kindly haze of the anaesthetic, Angela’s cornflower-blue eyes asked the eager question that her lips were almost afraid to form.

  ‘Is it – all right – is it –?’

  The nurse spoke glibly and briskly after the manner of nurses.

  ‘You’ve got a lovely daughter, Mrs Franklin.’

  ‘A daughter – a daughter …’ The blue eyes closed again.

  Disappointment surged through her. She had been so sure – so sure … Only a second Laura …

  The old tearing pain of her loss reawakened. Charles, her handsome laughing Charles. Her boy, her son …

  Downstairs, Cook was saying briskly:

  ‘Well, Miss Laura. You’ve got a little sister, what do you think of that?’

  Laura replied sedately to Cook:

  ‘I knew I’d have a sister. Mr Baldock said so.’

  ‘An old bachelor like him, what should he know?’

  ‘He’s a very clever man,’ said Laura.

  Angela was rather slow to regain her full strength. Arthur Franklin was worried about his wife. The baby was a month old when he spoke to Angela rather hesitatingly.

  ‘Does it matter so much? That it’s a girl, I mean, and not a boy?’

  ‘No, of course not. Not really. Only – I’d felt so sure.’

  ‘Even if it had been a boy, it wouldn’t have been Charles, you know?’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’

  The nurse entered the room, carrying the baby.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Such a lovely girl now. Going to your Mumsie-wumsie, aren’t you?’

  Angela held the baby slackly and eyed the nurse with dislike as the latter went out of the room.

  ‘What idiotic things these women say,’ she muttered crossly.

  Arthur laughed.

  ‘Laura darling, get me that cushion,’ said Angela.

  Laura brought it to her, and stood by as Angela arranged the baby more comfortably. Laura felt comfortably mature and important. The baby was only a silly little thing. It was she, Laura, on whom her mother relied.

  It was chilly this evening. The fire that burned in the grate was pleasant. The baby crowed and gurgled happily.

  Angela looked down into the dark blue eyes, and a mouth that seemed already to be able to smile. She looked down, with sudden shock, into Charles’s eyes. Charles as a baby. She had almost forgotten him at that age.

  Love rushed blindingly through her veins. Her baby, her darling. How could she have been so cold, so unloving to this adorable creature? How could she have been so blind? A gay beautiful child, like Charles.

  ‘My sweet,’ she murmured. ‘My precious, my darling.’

  She bent over the child in an abandonment of love. She was oblivious of Laura standing watching her. She did not notice as Laura crept quietly out of the room.

  But perhaps a vague uneasiness made her say to Arthur:

  ‘Mary Wells can’t be here for the christening. Shall we let Laura be proxy godmother? It would please her, I think.’

  Chapter Four

  1

  ‘Enjoy the christening?’ asked Mr Baldock.

  ‘No,’ said Laura.

  ‘Cold in that church, I expect,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘Nice font though,’ he added. ‘Norman – black Tournai marble.’

  Laura was unmoved by the information.

  She was busy formulating a question:

  ‘May I ask you something, Mr Baldock?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is it wrong to pray for anyone to die?’

  Mr Baldock gave her a swift sideways look.

  ‘In my view,’ he said, ‘it would be unpardonable interference.’

  ‘Interference?’

  ‘Well, the Almighty is running the show, isn’t He? What do you want to stick your fingers into the machinery for? What business is it of yours?’

  ‘I don’t see that it would matter to God very much. When a baby has been christened and everything, it goes to Heaven, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t see where else it could go,’ admitted Mr Baldock.

  ‘And God is fond of children. The Bible says so. So He’d be pleased to see it.’

  Mr Baldock took a short turn up and down the room. He was seriously upset, and didn’t want to show it.

  ‘Look here, Laura,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve got – you’ve simply got to mind your own business.’

  ‘But perhaps it is my business.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Nothing’s your business but yourself. Pray what you like about yourself. Ask for blue ears, or a diamond tiara, or to grow up and win a beauty competition. The worst that can happen to you is that the answer to your prayer might be “Yes”.’

  Laura looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  ‘I mean it,’ said Mr Baldock.

  Laura thanked him politely, and said she must be going home now.

  When she had gone, Mr Baldock rubbed his chin, scratched his head, picked his nose, and absentmindedly wrote a review of a mortal enemy’s book simply dripping with milk and honey.

  Laura walked back home, thinking deeply.

  As she passed the small Roman Catholic church, she hesitated. A daily woman who came in to help in the kitchen was a Catholic, and stray scraps of her conversation came back to Laura, who had listened to them with the fascination accorded to something rare and strange, and also forbidden. For Nannie, a staunch chapel-goer, held very strong views about what she referred to as the Scarlet Woman. Who or what the Scarlet Woman was, Laura had no idea, except that she had some undefined connection with Babylon.

  But what came to her mind now was Molly’s chat of praying for her Intention – a candle had entered into it in some way. Laura hesitated a little longer, drew a deep breath, looked up and down the road, and slipped into the porch.

  The church was small and rather dark, and did not smell at all like the parish church where Laura went every Sunday. There was no sign of the Scarlet Woman, but there was a plaster figure of a lady in a blue cloak, with a tray in front of her, and wire loops in which candles were burning. Nearby was a supply of fresh candles, and a box with a slot for money.

  Laura hesitated for some time. Her theological ideas were confused and limited. God she knew, God who was committed to loving her by the fact that He was God. There was also the Devil, with horns and a tail, and a specialist in temptation. But the Scarlet Woman appeared to occupy an in-between status. The Lady in the Blue Cloak looked beneficent, and as though she might deal with Intentions in a favourable manner.

  Laura drew a deep sigh and fumbled in her pocket where reposed, as yet untouched, her weekly sixpence of pocket money.

  She pushed it into the slit and heard it drop with a slight pang. Gone irrevocably! Then she took a candle, lit it, and put it into the wire holder. She spoke in a low polite voice
.

  ‘This is my Intention. Please let baby go to Heaven.’ She added:

  ‘As soon as you possibly can, please.’

  She stood there for a moment. The candles burned, the Lady in the Blue Cloak continued to look beneficent. Laura had for a moment or two a feeling of emptiness. Then, frowning a little, she left the church and walked home.

  On the terrace was the baby’s pram. Laura came up to it and stood beside it, looking down on the sleeping infant.

  As she looked, the fair downy head stirred, the eyelids opened, the blue eyes looked up at Laura with a wide unfocused stare.

  ‘You’re going to Heaven soon,’ Laura told her sister. ‘It’s lovely in Heaven,’ she added coaxingly. ‘All golden and precious stones.’

  ‘And harps,’ she added, after a minute. ‘And lots of angels with real feathery wings. It’s much nicer than here.’

  She thought of something else.

  ‘You’ll see Charles,’ she said. ‘Think of that! You’ll see Charles.’

  Angela Franklin came out of the drawing-room window.

  ‘Hallo, Laura,’ she said. ‘Are you talking to baby?’

  She bent over the pram. ‘Hallo, my sweetie. Was it awake, then?’

  Arthur Franklin, following his wife out on to the terrace, said:

  ‘Why do women have to talk such nonsense to babies? Eh, Laura? Don’t you think it’s odd?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s nonsense,’ said Laura.

  ‘Don’t you? What do you think it is, then?’ He smiled at her teasingly.

  ‘I think it’s love,’ said Laura.

  He was a little taken aback.

  Laura, he thought, was an odd kid. Difficult to know what went on behind that straight, unemotional gaze.

  ‘I must get a piece of netting, muslin or something,’ said Angela. ‘To put over the pram when it’s out here. I’m always so afraid of a cat jumping up and lying on her face and suffocating her. We’ve got too many cats about the place.’

  ‘Bah,’ said her husband. ‘That’s one of those old wives’ tales. I don’t believe a cat has ever suffocated a baby.’

  ‘Oh, they have, Arthur. You read about it quite often in the paper.’