The Burden

by Agatha Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott

  ‘If she could go away somewhere … On a cruise or to Switzerland – but everything’s so difficult now since the war.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Mr Baldock, ‘it’s never any good trying to stop people marrying each other. Mind you, I’d have a try if there were some serious reason; if he had a wife and five children, or epileptic fits, or was wanted for embezzlement. But shall I tell you exactly what would happen if you did succeed in separating them and sending Shirley off on a cruise or to Switzerland or to a South Sea island?’

  ‘Well?’

  Mr Baldock wagged an emphatic forefinger at her.

  ‘She’d come back having teamed up with another young man of exactly the same kind. People know what they want. Shirley wants Henry, and if she can’t get Henry, she’ll look around until she finds a young man as like Henry as possible. I’ve seen it happen again and again. My very best friend was married to a woman who made his life hell on earth, nagged at him, bullied him, ordered him around, never a moment’s peace, everybody wondering why he didn’t take a hatchet to her. Then he had a bit of luck! She got double pneumonia and died! Six months later, he was looking like a new man. Several really nice women taking an interest in him. Eighteen months later, what has he done? Married a woman who was even a worse bitch than the first one. Human nature’s a mystery.’

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘So stop walking up and down looking like a tragedy queen, Laura. I’ve told you already you take life too seriously. You can’t run other people’s lives for them. Young Shirley has got her own row to hoe. And if you ask me, she can take care of herself a good deal better than you can. It’s you I’m worried about, Laura. I always have been …’

  Chapter Four

  1

  Henry surrendered as charmingly as he did everything else. ‘All right, Laura. If it must be a year’s engagement … We’re in your hands. I daresay it would be very hard on you to part with Shirley without having time to get used to the idea.’

  ‘It isn’t that –’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ His eyebrows rose, his smile was faintly ironical. ‘Shirley’s your ewe lamb, isn’t she?’

  His words left Laura with an uneasy sensation.

  The days after Henry had left were not easy to get through.

  Shirley was not hostile, but aloof. She was moody, unsettled, and though not openly resentful, a faint air of reproach hung about her. She lived for the arrival of the post, but the post, when it did come, proved unsatisfactory.

  Henry was not a letter-writer. His letters were brief scrawls.

  ‘Darling, how’s everything? I miss you a lot. I rode in a point-to-point yesterday. Didn’t do any good. How’s the dragon? Yours always, Henry.’

  Sometimes a whole week passed without a letter.

  Once Shirley went up to London and they had a short and unsatisfactory meeting.

  He refused the invitation she brought him from Laura.

  ‘I don’t want to come down and stay for the weekend! I want to marry you, and have you to myself for always, not come down and “walk out” with you under Laura’s censorious eye. Don’t forget, Laura will turn you against me if she possibly can.’

  ‘Oh, Henry, she’d never do anything like that. Never – she hardly ever mentions you.’

  ‘Hopes you’ll forget about me, I expect.’

  ‘As if I should!?’

  ‘Jealous old cat.’

  ‘Oh, Henry, Laura’s a darling.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  Shirley went back home unhappy and restless.

  In spite of herself, Laura began to feel worn down.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Henry down for a week-end?’

  Shirley said sullenly:

  ‘He doesn’t want to come.’

  ‘Not want to come? How extraordinary.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s so extraordinary. He knows you don’t like him.’

  ‘I do like him.’ Laura tried to make her voice convincing.

  ‘Oh, Laura, you don’t!’

  ‘I think Henry’s a very attractive person.’

  ‘But you don’t want me to marry him.’

  ‘Shirley – that isn’t true. I only want you to be quite, quite sure.’

  ‘I am sure.’

  Laura cried desperately:

  ‘It’s only because I love you so much. I don’t want you to make any mistake.’

  ‘Well, don’t love me so much. I don’t want to be eternally loved!’ She added: ‘The truth is, you’re jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Jealous of Henry. You don’t want me to love anyone but you.’

  ‘Shirley!’

  Laura turned away, her face white.

  ‘You’ll never want me to marry anyone.’

  Then, as Laura moved away, walking stiffly, Shirley rushed after her in warm-hearted apology.

  ‘Darling, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it. I’m a beast. But you always seem so against – Henry.’

  ‘It’s because I feel he’s selfish.’ Laura repeated the words she had used to Mr Baldock. ‘He isn’t – he isn’t – kind. I can’t help feeling that in some ways he could be – ruthless.’

  ‘Ruthless,’ Shirley repeated the word thoughtfully without any symptom of distress. ‘Yes, Laura, in a way you’re right. Henry could be ruthless.’

  She added: ‘It’s one of those things that attracts me in him.’

  ‘But think – if you were ill – in trouble – would he look after you?’

  ‘I don’t know that I’m so keen on being looked after. I can look after myself. And don’t worry about Henry. He loves me.’

  ‘Love?’ thought Laura. ‘What is love? A young man’s thoughtless greedy passion? Is Henry’s love for her anything more than that? Or is it true, and am I jealous?’

  She disengaged herself gently from Shirley’s clinging arms and walked away deeply disturbed.

  ‘Is it true that I don’t want her to marry anybody? Not just Henry? Anybody? I don’t think so now, but that’s because there is no one else she wants to marry. If someone else were to come along, should I feel the same way as I do now, saying to myself: Not him – not him? Is it true that I love her too much? Baldy warned me … I love her too much, and so I don’t want her to marry – I don’t want her to go away – I want to keep her – never to let her go. What have I got against Henry really? Nothing. I don’t know him, I’ve never known him. He’s what he was at first – a stranger. All I do know is that he doesn’t like me. And perhaps he’s right not to like me.’

  On the following day, Laura met young Robin Grant coming out of the vicarage. He took his pipe out of his mouth, greeted her, and strolled beside her into the village. After mentioning that he had just come down from London, he remarked casually:

  ‘Saw Henry last night. Having supper with a glamorous blonde. Very attentive. Mustn’t tell Shirley.’

  He gave a whinny of laughter.

  Although Laura recognized the information for exactly what it was, a piece of spite on Robin’s part, since he himself had been deeply attracted to Shirley, yet it gave her a qualm.

  Henry, she thought, was not a faithful type. She suspected that he and Shirley had come very near to a quarrel on the occasion when they had recently met. Supposing that Henry was becoming friendly with another girl? Supposing that Henry should break off the engagement …?

  ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ said the sneering voice of her thoughts. ‘You don’t want her to marry him. That’s the real reason you insisted on a long engagement, isn’t it? Come now!’

  But she wouldn’t really be pleased if Henry broke with Shirley. Shirley loved him. Shirley would suffer. If only she herself was sure, quite sure, that it was for Shirley’s good –

  ‘What you mean,’ said the sneering voice, ‘is for your own good. You want to keep Shirley …’

  But she didn’t want to keep Shirley that way – not a heart-broken Shirley, not a Shirley unhappy and longing for her l
over. Who was she to know what was best, or not best for Shirley?

  When she got home, Laura sat down and wrote a letter to Henry:

  ‘Dear Henry,’ she wrote, ‘I have been thinking things over. If you and Shirley really want to marry, I don’t feel I ought to stand in your way …’

  A month later Shirley, in white satin and lace, was married to Henry in Bellbury parish church by the vicar (with a cold in his head) and given away by Mr Baldock in a morning coat very much too tight for him. A radiant bride hugged Laura goodbye, and Laura said fiercely to Henry:

  ‘Be good to her, Henry. You will be good to her?’

  Henry, light-hearted as ever, said: ‘Darling Laura, what do you think?’

  Chapter Five

  1

  ‘Do you really think it’s nice, Laura?’

  Shirley, now a wife of three months’ standing, asked the question eagerly.

  Laura, completing her tour of the flat (two rooms, kitchen, and bath), expressed warm approval.

  ‘I think you’ve made it lovely.’

  ‘It was awful when we moved in. The dirt! We’ve done most of it ourselves – not the ceilings, of course. It’s been such fun. Do you like the red bathroom? It’s supposed to be constant hot water, but it isn’t usually hot. Henry thought the redness would make it seem hotter – like hell!’

  Laura laughed.

  ‘What fun you seem to have had.’

  ‘We’re frightfully lucky to have found a flat at all. Actually some people Henry knew had it, and they passed it on to us. The only awkward thing is that they don’t seem to have paid any bills while they were here. Irate milkmen and furious grocers turn up all the time, but of course it’s nothing to do with us. It’s rather mean to bilk tradesmen, I think – especially small tradesmen. Henry doesn’t think it matters.’

  ‘It may make it more difficult for you to get things on credit,’ said Laura.

  ‘I pay our bills every week,’ said Shirley virtuously.

  ‘Are you all right for money, darling? The garden’s been doing very well lately. If you want an extra hundred.’

  ‘What a pet you are, Laura! No, we’re all right. Keep it in case there’s an emergency – I might have a really serious illness.’

  ‘Looking at you, that seems an absurd idea.’

  Shirley laughed gaily.

  ‘Laura, I’m terribly happy.’

  ‘Bless you!’

  ‘Hallo, here’s Henry.’

  Turning the latch-key, Henry entered, and greeted Laura with his usual happy air.

  ‘Hallo, Laura.’

  ‘Hallo, Henry. I think the flat’s lovely.’

  ‘Henry, what’s the new job like?’

  ‘New job?’ asked Laura.

  ‘Yes. He chucked the other one. It was awfully stuffy. Nothing but sticking on stamps and going to the post.’

  ‘I’m willing to start at the bottom,’ said Henry, ‘but not in the basement.’

  ‘What’s this like?’ Shirley repeated impatiently.

  ‘Promising, I think,’ said Henry. ‘Of course it’s early days to say.’

  He smiled charmingly at Laura and told her how very pleased they were to see her.

  Her visit went off very well, and she returned to Bellbury feeling that her fears and hesitations had been ridiculous.

  2

  ‘But Henry, how can we owe so much?’

  Shirley spoke in a tone of distress. She and Henry had been married just over a year.

  ‘I know,’ Henry agreed, ‘that’s what I always feel! That one can’t owe all that. Unfortunately,’ he added sadly, ‘one always does.’

  ‘But how are we going to be able to pay?’

  ‘Oh, one can always stave things off,’ said Henry vaguely.

  ‘It’s a good thing I got that job at the flower place.’

  ‘Yes, it is, as it turns out. Not that I want you ever to feel you’ve got to work. Only if you like it.’

  ‘Well, I do like it. I’d be bored to death doing nothing all day. All that happens is that one goes out and buys things.’

  ‘I must say,’ said Henry, picking up a sheaf of accounts rendered, ‘this sort of thing is very depressing. I do hate Lady Day. One’s hardly got over Christmas, and income tax, and all that.’ He looked down at the topmost bill in his hand. ‘This man, the one who did the bookcases, is asking for his money in a very rude sort of way. I shall put him straight into the waste-paper basket.’ He suited the action to the word, and went on to the next one. ‘ “Dear sir, we must respectfully draw your attention – ” Now that’s a nice polite way of putting it.’

  ‘So you’ll pay that one?’

  ‘I shan’t exactly pay it,’ said Henry, ‘but I shall file it, ready to pay.’

  Shirley laughed –

  ‘Henry, I do adore you. But what are we really going to do?’

  ‘We needn’t worry tonight. Let’s go out to dinner somewhere really expensive.’

  Shirley made a face at him.

  ‘Will that help?’

  ‘It won’t help our financial position,’ Henry admitted. ‘On the contrary! But it will cheer us up.’

  3

  Dear Laura,

  Could you possibly lend us a hundred pounds? We’re in a bit of a jam. I’ve been out of a job for two months now, as you probably know (Laura didn’t know), but I’m on the verge of landing something really good. In the meantime we’ve taken to sneaking out by the service lift to avoid the duns. Really very sorry to sponge like this, but I thought I’d better do the dirty work as Shirley mightn’t like to.

  Yours ever,

  Henry.

  4

  ‘I didn’t know you’d borrowed money from Laura!’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Henry turned his head lazily.

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ Shirley spoke grimly.

  ‘All right, darling, don’t bite my head off. Did Laura tell you?’

  ‘No, she didn’t. I saw it in the pass-book.’

  ‘Good old Laura, she stumped up without any fuss at all.’

  ‘Henry, why did you borrow money from her? I wish you hadn’t. Anyway, you oughtn’t to have done it without telling me about it first.’

  Henry grinned.

  ‘You wouldn’t have let me do it.’

  ‘You’re quite right. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘The truth is, Shirley, the position was rather desperate. I got fifty out of old Muriel. And I made sure that I’d get at least a hundred out of Big Bertha – that’s my godmother. Unfortunately, she turned me down flat. Feeling her surtax, I gather. Nothing but a lecture. I tried one or two other sources, no good. In the end, it boiled down to Laura.’

  Shirley looked at him reflectively.

  ‘I’ve been married two years,’ she thought. ‘I see now just what Henry’s like. He’ll never keep a job very long, and he spends money like water …’

  She still found it delightful to be married to Henry, but she perceived that it had its disadvantages. Henry had by now had four different jobs. It never seemed difficult for him to get a job – he had a large circle of wealthy friends – but it seemed quite impossible for him to keep a job. Either he got tired of it and chucked it, or it chucked him. Also, Henry spent money like water, and never seemed to have any difficulty in getting credit. His idea of settling his affairs was by borrowing. Henry did not mind borrowing. Shirley did.

  She sighed:

  ‘Do you think I’ll ever be able to change you, Henry?’ she asked.

  ‘Change me?’ said Henry, astonished. ‘Why?’

  5

  ‘Hallo, Baldy.’

  ‘Why, it’s young Shirley.’ Mr Baldock blinked at her from the depths of his large shabby arm-chair. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he added aggressively.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Shirley tactfully.

  ‘Long time since we’ve seen you down here,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘Thought you’d forgotten us.’

  ‘I never forget you!’

  ‘Got
your husband with you?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘I see.’ He studied her. ‘Looking rather thin and pale, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been dieting.’

  ‘You women!’ He snorted. ‘In a spot of trouble?’ he inquired.

  Shirley flared out at him.

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘All right, all right. I just wanted to know. Nobody ever tells me anything nowadays. And I’m getting deaf. Can’t overhear as much as I used to. It makes life very dull.’

  ‘Poor Baldy.’

  ‘And the doctor says I mustn’t do any more gardening – no stooping over flower-beds – blood rushes to my head or something. Damned fool – croak, croak, croak! That’s all they do, these doctors!’

  ‘I am sorry, Baldy.’

  ‘So you see,’ said Mr Baldock wistfully, ‘if you did want to tell me anything – well – it wouldn’t go any further. We needn’t tell Laura.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘In a way,’ said Shirley, ‘I did come to tell you something.’

  ‘Thought you did,’ said Mr Baldock.

  ‘I thought you might give me – some advice.’

  ‘Shan’t do that. Much too dangerous.’

  Shirley paid no attention.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to Laura. She doesn’t really like Henry. But you like Henry, don’t you?’

  ‘I like Henry all right,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘He’s a most entertaining fellow to talk to, and he’s a nice sympathetic way of listening to an old man blowing off steam. Another thing that I like about him is that he never worries.’

  Shirley smiled.

  ‘He certainly never worries.’

  ‘Very rare in the world nowadays. Everybody I meet has nervous dyspepsia from worrying. Yes, Henry’s a pleasant fellow. I don’t concern myself about his moral worth as Laura would.’

  Then he said gently:

  ‘What’s he been up to?’

  ‘Do you think I’m a fool, Baldy, to sell out my capital?’

  ‘Is that what you have been doing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, when you married, the control of it passed to you. It’s yours to do what you like with.’