The Burden

by Agatha Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott

  She turned her face to him, and Mr Baldock was startled. It was, he thought, like the breaking open of a cocoon. The child’s face was radiant with feeling. In spite of the grotesque absence of lashes and brows, the face had a quality of emotion that made it suddenly beautiful.

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘I see … And where shall we go from here, I wonder?’

  Laura looked at him, puzzled, and slightly apprehensive.

  ‘Isn’t it all right?’ she asked. ‘For me to love her, I mean?’

  Mr Baldock looked at her. His face was thoughtful.

  ‘It’s all right for you, young Laura,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, it’s all right for you …’

  He relapsed into abstraction, his hand tapping his chin.

  As a historian he had always mainly been concerned with the past, but there were moments when the fact that he could not foresee the future irritated him profoundly. This was one of them.

  He looked at Laura and the crowing Shirley, and his brow contracted angrily. ‘Where will they be,’ he thought, ‘in ten years’ time – in twenty years – in twenty-five? Where shall I be?’

  The answer to that last question came quickly.

  ‘Under the turf,’ said Mr Baldock to himself. ‘Under the turf.’

  He knew that, but he did not really believe it, any more than any other positive person full of the vitality of living really believes it.

  What a dark and mysterious entity the future was! In twenty-odd years what would have happened? Another war, perhaps? (Most unlikely!) New diseases? People fastening mechanical wings on themselves, perhaps, and floating about the streets like sacrilegious angels! Journeys to Mars? Sustaining oneself on horrid little tablets out of bottles, instead of on steaks and succulent green peas!

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Laura asked.

  ‘The future.’

  ‘Do you mean tomorrow?’

  ‘Further forward than that. I suppose you’re able to read, young Laura?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Laura, shocked. ‘I’ve read nearly all the Doctor Dolittles, and the books about Winnie-the-Pooh and –’

  ‘Spare me the horrid details,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘How do you read a book? Begin at the beginning and go right through?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘I take a look at the start, get some idea of what it’s all about, then I go on to the end and see where the fellow has got to, and what he’s been trying to prove. And then, then I go back and see how he’s got there and what’s made him land up where he did. Much more interesting.’

  Laura looked interested but disapproving.

  ‘I don’t think that’s the way the author meant his book to be read,’ she said.

  ‘Of course he didn’t.’

  ‘I think you should read the book the way the author meant.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘But you’re forgetting the party of the second part, as the blasted lawyers put it. There’s the reader. The reader’s got his rights, too. The author writes his book the way he likes. Has it all his own way. Messes up the punctuation and fools around with the sense any way he pleases. And the reader reads the book the way he wants to read it, and the author can’t stop him.’

  ‘You make it sound like a battle,’ said Laura.

  ‘I like battles,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘The truth is, we’re all slavishly obsessed by time. Chronological sequence has no significance whatever. If you consider Eternity, you can jump about in Time as you please. But no one does consider Eternity.’

  Laura had withdrawn her attention from him. She was not considering Eternity. She was considering Shirley.

  And watching that dedicated devoted look, Mr Baldock was again conscious of a vague feeling of apprehension.

  Part Two

  Shirley – 1946

  Chapter One

  1

  Shirley walked at a brisk pace along the lane. Her racket with the shoes attached was tucked under one arm. She was smiling to herself and was slightly out of breath.

  She must hurry, she would be late for supper. Really, she supposed, she ought not to have played that last set. It hadn’t been a good set, anyway. Pam was such a rabbit. Pam and Gordon had been no match at all for Shirley and – what was his name? Henry, anyway. Henry what, she wondered?

  Considering Henry, Shirley’s feet slowed up a little.

  Henry was something quite new in her experience. He wasn’t in the least like any of the local young men. She considered them impartially. Robin, the vicar’s son. Nice, and really very devoted, with rather a pleasant old-world chivalry about him. He was going in for Oriental Languages at the SOAS and was slightly highbrow. Then there was Peter – Peter was really terribly young and callow. And there was Edward Westbury, who was a good deal older, and worked in a bank, and was rather heavily political. They all belonged here in Bellbury. But Henry came from outside, and had been brought along as somebody’s nephew. With Henry had come a sense of liberty and detachment.

  Shirley savoured the last word appreciatively. It was a quality she admired.

  In Bellbury, there was no detachment, everybody was heavily involved with everybody else.

  There was altogether too much family solidarity in Bellbury. Everybody in Bellbury had roots. They belonged.

  Shirley was a little confused by these phrases, but they expressed, she thought, what she meant.

  Now Henry, definitely, didn’t belong. The nearest he would get to it, she thought, was being somebody’s nephew, and even then it would probably be an aunt by marriage – not a real aunt.

  ‘Ridiculous, of course,’ said Shirley to herself, ‘because after all, Henry must have a father and a mother, and a home like everybody else.’ But she decided that his parents had probably died in an obscure part of the world, rather young. Or possibly he had a mother who spent all her time on the Riviera, and had had a lot of husbands.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ said Shirley again to herself. ‘Actually you don’t know the first thing about Henry. You don’t even know what his surname is – or who brought him this afternoon.’

  But it was typical of Henry, she felt, that she should not know. Henry, she thought, would always appear like that – vague, with an insubstantial background – and then he would depart again, and still nobody would know what his name was, or whose nephew he had been. He was just an attractive young man, with an engaging smile, who played tennis extremely well.

  Shirley liked the cool way in which, when Pam Crofton had pondered: ‘Now how had we better play?’ Henry had immediately said:

  ‘I’ll play with Shirley against you two,’ and had thereupon spun a racket saying: ‘Rough or smooth?’

  Henry, she was quite sure, would always do exactly as he pleased.

  She had asked him: ‘Are you down here for long?’ and he had replied vaguely: ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so.’

  He hadn’t suggested their meeting again.

  A momentary frown passed over Shirley’s face. She wished he had done so …

  Again she glanced at her watch, and quickened her steps. She was really going to be very late. Not that Laura would mind. Laura never minded. Laura was an angel …

  The house was in sight now. Mellow in its early Georgian beauty, it had a slightly lop-sided effect, due, so she understood, to a fire which had consumed one wing of it, which had never been rebuilt.

  Irresistibly Shirley’s pace slackened. Somehow today, she didn’t want to get home. She didn’t want to go inside those kindly enclosing walls, the late sun streaming in through the west windows on to the gentle faded chintzes. The stillness there was so peaceful; there would be Laura with her warm welcoming face, her watchful protecting eyes, and Ethel stumping in with the supper dishes. Warmth, love, protection, home … All the things, surely, most valuable in life? And they were hers, without effort or desire on her part, surrounding her, pressing on her …

  ‘Now that’s a curious way of putting it,’ thought Shirley to herse
lf. ‘Pressing on me? What on earth do I mean by that?’

  But it was, exactly, what she was feeling. Pressure – definite, steady pressure. Like the weight of the knapsack she had carried once on a walking tour. Almost unnoticed at first, and then steadily making itself felt, bearing down, cutting into her shoulders, weighing down on her. A burden …

  ‘Really, the things I think of!’ said Shirley to herself, and running up to the open front door, she went in.

  The hall was in semi-twilight. From the floor above, Laura called down the well of the staircase in her soft, rather husky voice:

  ‘Is that you, Shirley?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I’m frightfully late, Laura.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter at all. It’s only macaroni – the au gratin kind. Ethel has got it in the oven.’

  Laura Franklin came round the bend of the staircase, a slim fragile creature, with an almost colourless face and deep brown eyes set at an unusual angle that made them, in some curious way, look tragic.

  She came down, smiling at Shirley.

  ‘Enjoy yourself?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Shirley.

  ‘Good tennis?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Anybody exciting? Or just Bellbury?’

  ‘Mostly Bellbury.’

  Funny how when people asked you questions, you didn’t want to answer them. And yet the answers were so harmless. Naturally Laura liked to know how she’d enjoyed herself.

  If people were fond of you, they always wanted to know –

  Would Henry’s people want to know? She tried to visualize Henry at home, but failed. It sounded ridiculous, but she couldn’t somehow see Henry in a home. And yet he must have one!

  A nebulous picture swam before her eyes. Henry strolling into a room where his mother, a platinum blonde just back from the South of France, was carefully painting her mouth a rather surprising colour. ‘Hallo, Mother, so you’re back?’ – ‘Yes, have you been playing tennis?’ – ‘Yes.’ There would be no curiosity, practically no interest. Henry and his mother would both be quite indifferent to what the other had been doing.

  Laura asked curiously:

  ‘What are you saying to yourself, Shirley? Your lips are moving, and your eyebrows are going up and down.’

  Shirley laughed:

  ‘Oh, just an imaginary conversation.’

  Laura raised delicate eyebrows.

  ‘It seemed to please you.’

  ‘It was quite ridiculous really.’

  The faithful Ethel put her head round the dining-room door and said:

  ‘Supper’s in.’

  Shirley cried: ‘I must wash,’ and ran upstairs.

  After supper, as they sat in the drawing-room, Laura said: ‘I got the prospectus from the St Katherine’s Secretarial College today. I gather it’s one of the best of its kind. What do you feel about it, Shirley?’

  A grimace marred the loveliness of Shirley’s young face.

  ‘Learn shorthand and typing and then go and take a job?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Shirley sighed, and then laughed.

  ‘Because I’m a lazy devil. I’d much rather stay at home and do nothing. Laura darling, I’ve been at school for years! Can’t I have a bit of a break?’

  ‘I wish there was something you really wished to train for, or were keen about.’ A frown showed itself for a moment on Laura’s forehead.

  ‘I’m a throw-back,’ said Shirley. ‘I just want to sit at home and dream of a big handsome husband, and plenty of family allowances for a growing family.’

  Laura did not respond. She was still looking worried.

  ‘If you do a course at St Katherine’s, it’s a question, really, of where you should live in London. Would you like to be a PG – with Cousin Angela, perhaps –’

  ‘Not Cousin Angela. Have a heart, Laura.’

  ‘Not Angela then, but with some family or other. Or there are hostels, I believe. Later, you could share a flat with another girl.’

  ‘Why can’t I share a flat with you?’ demanded Shirley.

  Laura shook her head.

  ‘I’d stay here.’

  ‘Stay here? Not come to London with me?’

  Shirley sounded indignant and incredulous.

  Laura said simply: ‘I don’t want to be bad for you, darling.’

  ‘Bad for me? How could you be?’

  ‘Well – possessive, you know.’

  ‘Like the kind of mother who eats her young? Laura, you’re never possessive.’

  Laura said dubiously: ‘I hope I’m not, but one never knows.’ She added with a frown: ‘One doesn’t know in the least what one is really like …’

  ‘Well, I really don’t think you need have qualms, Laura. You’re not in the least the domineering kind – at least not to me. You don’t boss or bully, or try to arrange my life for me.’

  ‘Well, actually, that is exactly what I am doing – arranging for you to take a secretarial course in London when you don’t in the least want to!’

  The sisters both laughed.

  2

  Laura straightened her back and stretched her arms.

  ‘Four dozen,’ she said.

  She had been bunching sweet-peas.

  ‘We ought to get a good price from Trendle’s,’ she said. ‘Long stalks, and four flowers on each stem. The sweet-peas have been a success this year, Horder.’

  Horder, who was a gnarled, dirty, and gloomy-looking old man, growled a qualified assent.

  ‘Not too bad this year, they ain’t,’ he said grudgingly.

  Horder was a man very sure of his position. An elderly, retired gardener, who really knew his trade, his price at the end of five years of war was above rubies. Everyone had competed for him. Laura by sheer force of personality had got him, though Mrs Kindle, whose husband was rumoured to have made a fortune out of munitions, had offered him much more money.

  But Horder had preferred to work for Miss Franklin. Known her father and mother, he had; proper folk, gentlefolk. He remembered Miss Laura as a little bit of a thing. These sentiments alone would not have retained his services. The truth was that he liked working for Miss Laura. Proper drove you, she did, not much chance for slackness. If she’d been out, she knew just how much you ought to have got on with. But then, too, she appreciated what you’d done. She was free with her praise and her admiration. Generous, too, in elevenses and frequent cups of hot, strong, sugary tea. Wasn’t everyone who was free with their tea and sugar nowadays, seeing it was rationed. And she was a fine quick worker herself, Miss Laura was, she could bunch quicker than he could – and that was saying something. And she’d got ideas – always looking towards the future – planning this and that – going in for new-fangled notions. Them cloches, for instance. Horder had taken a poor view of cloches. Laura admitted to him that of course she might be wrong … On this basis, Horder graciously consented to give the new-fangled things a trial. The tomatoes had achieved results that surprised him.

  ‘Five o’clock,’ said Laura, glancing at her watch. ‘We’ve got through very well.’

  She looked round her, at the metal vases and cans filled with tomorrow’s quota, to be taken into Milchester, where she supplied a florist and a greengrocer.

  ‘Wonderful price vedges fetch,’ old Horder remarked appreciatively. ‘Never wouldn’t have believed it.’

  ‘All the same, I’m sure we’re right to start switching over to cut flowers. People have been starved for them all through the war, and everybody’s growing vegetables now.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Horder, ‘things aren’t what they used to be. In your pa and ma’s time, growing things for the market wouldn’t have been thought of. I mind this place as it used to be – a picture! Mr Webster was in charge, he came just before the fire, he did. That fire! Lucky the whole house didn’t burn down.’

  Laura nodded, and slipped off the rubber apron she had been wearing. Horder’s words had taken her mind back many years. ‘Just before the fire –�
��

  The fire had been a kind of turning-point in her life. She saw herself dimly before it – an unhappy jealous child, longing for attention, for love.

  But on the night of the fire, a new Laura had come into existence – a Laura whose life had become suddenly and satisfyingly full. From the moment that she had struggled through smoke and flames with Shirley in her arms, her life had found its object and meaning – to care for Shirley.

  She had saved Shirley from death. Shirley was hers. All in a moment (so it seemed to her now) those two important figures, her father and mother, had receded into the middle distance. Her eager longing for their notice, for their need of her, had diminished and faded. Perhaps she had not so much loved them as craved for them to love her. Love was what she had felt so suddenly for that small entity of flesh named Shirley. Satisfying all cravings, fulfilling her vaguely understood need. It was no longer she, Laura, who mattered – it was Shirley …

  She would look after Shirley, see that no harm came to her, watch out for predatory cats, wake up at night and be sure that there was no second fire; fetch and carry for Shirley, bring her toys, play games with her when she was older, nurse her if she were ill …

  The child of eleven couldn’t, of course, foresee the future: the Franklins, taking a brief holiday together, flying to Le Touquet and the plane crashing on the return journey …

  Laura had been fourteen then, and Shirley three. There had been no near relatives; old Cousin Angela had been the nearest. It was Laura who had made her plans, weighing them carefully, trimming them to meet with approval, and then submitting them with all the force of indomitable decision. An elderly lawyer and Mr Baldock had been the executors and trustees. Laura proposed that she should leave school and live at home, an excellent nanny would continue to look after Shirley. Miss Weekes should give up her cottage and come to live in the house, educating Laura, and being nominally in charge of the household. It was an excellent suggestion, practical and easy to carry out, only feebly opposed by Mr Baldock on the grounds that he disliked Girton women, and that Miss Weekes would get ideas in her head, and turn Laura into a blue-stocking.