The Burden

by Agatha Christie

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

  Part 2. 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 S.O.A.S. 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 at attractive young man, with an engaging smile, who played tennis extremely well.

  Shirley liked the cool way in which, when Mary 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 to-day, 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 herself. '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 knowWould 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 hone. 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. "Hullo, 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 to-day. 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 P.G.-with Cousin Angels, perhaps-"

  "Not Cousin Angela. Have a heart, Laura."

  "Not Angela then, but with some family or other. Or there are hostels, I be
lieve. 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 s 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 to-morrow'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 normally 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.

  But Laura had no doubts about Miss Weekes-it would not be Miss Weekes who would run things. Miss Weekes was a woman of intellect, with an enthusiasm that ran to passion for mathematics. Domestic administration would not interest her. The plan had worked well. Laura was splendidly educated, Miss Weekes had an ease of living formerly denied to her, Laura saw to it that no clashes occurred between Mr. Baldock and Miss Weekes. The choice of new servants if needed, the decision for Shirley to attend, erst a kindergarten school, later a convent in a near-by town, though apparently all originated by Miss Weekes, were in reality Laura's suggestions. The household was a harmonious one. Later Shirley was sent to a famous boarding-school. Laura was then twenty-two.

  A year after that, the war broke out, and altered the pattern of existence. Shirley's school was transferred to new premises in Wales. Miss Weekes went to London and obtained a post in a Ministry. The house was requisitioned by the Air Ministry to house officers; Laura transferred herself to the gardener's cottage, and worked as a land-girl on an adjacent farm, managing at the same time to cultivate vegetables in her own big walled garden.

  And now, a year ago, the war with Germany had ended. The house had been de-requisitioned with startling abruptness. Laura had to attempt the re-establishment of it as something faintly like a home. Shirley had come home from school for good, declining emphatically to continue her studies by going to a university.

  She was not, she said, the brainy kind! Her headmistress in a letter to Laura confirmed this statement in slightly different terms:

  "I really do not feel that Shirley is the type to benefit by a university education. She is a dear girl, and very intelligent, but definitely not the academic type."

  So Shirley had come home, and that old stand-by, Ethel, who had been working in a factory which was now abandoning war work, gave up her job and arrived back, not as the correct house-parlourmaid she had once been, but as a general factotum and friend. Laura continued and elaborated her plans for
vegetable and flower production. Incomes were not what they had been with present taxation. If she and Shirley were to keep their home, the garden must be made to pay for itself and, it was to be hoped, show a profit.

  That was the picture of the past that Laura saw in her mind, as she unfastened her apron and went into the house to wash. All through the years, the central figure of the pattern had been Shirley.

  A baby Shirley, staggering about, telling Laura in stuttering unintelligible language what her dolls were doing. An older Shirley, coming back from kindergarten, pouring out confused descriptions of Miss Duckworth, of Tommy this and Mary that, of the naughty things Robin had done, and what Peter had drawn in his reading-book, and what Miss Duck had said about it.

  An older Shirley had come back from boarding-school, brimming over with information: the girls she liked, the girls she hated, the angelic disposition of Miss Geoffrey, the English mistress, the despicable meannesses of Miss Andrews, the mathematics mistress, the indignities practised by all on the French mistress. Shirley had always chatted easily and unself-consciously to Laura. Their relationship was in a way a curious one-not quite that of sisters, since the gap in years separated them, yet not removed by a generation, as a parent and child would be. There had never been any need for Laura to ask questions. Shirley would be bubbling over-"Oh, Laura, I've got such lots to tell you!" And Laura would listen, laugh, comment, disagree, approve, as the case might be.

  Now that Shirley had come home for good, it had seemed to Laura that everything was exactly the same. Every day saw an interchange of comment on any separate activities they had pursued. Shirley talked unconcernedly of Robin Grant, of Edward Westbury; she had a frank affectionate nature, and it was natural to her, or so it had seemed, to comment daily on what happened.

  But yesterday she had come back from tennis at the Hargreaves and had been oddly monosyllabic in her replies to Laura's questions.

  Laura wondered why. Of course, Shirley was growing up. She would have her own thoughts, her own life. That was only natural and right. What Laura had to decide was how best that could be accomplished. Laura sighed, looked at her watch again, and decided to go and see Mr. Baldock.