The Burden

by Agatha Christie

  He came in looking gay and light-hearted as usual. In his hand was an enormous bunch of long-stemmed yellow roses.

  "For you, darling. Nice?"

  "Lovely," said Shirley. "I've already had daffodils. Not so nice. Rather cheap and past their prime, as a matter of fact."

  "Oh, who sent you those?"

  "They weren't sent. They were brought. Susan Lonsdale brought them."

  "What cheek," said Henry indignantly.

  Shirley looked at him in faint surprise.

  "What did she come here for?" he asked.

  "Don't you know?"

  "I suppose I can guess. That girl's becoming a positive pest."

  "She came to tell me that you want a divorce."

  "That I want a divorce? From you?"

  "Yes. Don't you?"

  "Of course I don't," said Henry indignantly.

  "You don't want to marry Susan?"

  "I should hate to marry Susan."

  "She wants to marry you."

  "Yes, I'm afraid she does." Henry looked despondent. "She's always ringing me up and writing me letters. I don't know what to do about her."

  "Did you tell her you wanted to marry her?"

  "Oh, one says things," said Henry vaguely. "Or rather they say things and one agrees… One has to, more or less." He gave her an uneasy smile. "You wouldn't divorce me, would you, Shirley?"

  "I might," said Shirley.

  "Darling-"

  "I'm getting rather-tired, Henry."

  "I'm a brute. I've given you a rotten deal." He knelt down beside her. The old alluring smile flashed out. "But I do love you, Shirley. All this other silly nonsense doesn't count. It doesn't mean anything. I'd never want to be married to anyone but you. If you'll go on putting up with me?"

  "What did you really feel about Susan?"

  "Can't we forget about Susan? She's such a bore."

  "I'd just like to understand."

  "Well-" Henry considered. "For about a fortnight I was mad about her. Couldn't sleep. After that, I still thought she was rather wonderful. After that I thought she was beginning, perhaps, to be just the least bit of a bore. And then she quite definitely was a bore. And just lately she's been an absolute pest."

  "Poor Susan."

  "Don't worry about Susan. She's got no morals and she's a perfect bitch."

  "Sometimes, Henry, I think you're quite heartless."

  "I'm not heartless," said Henry indignantly. "I just don't see why people have to cling so. Things are fun if you don't take them seriously."

  "Selfish devil!"

  "Am I? I suppose I am. You don't really mind, do you, Shirley?"

  "I shan't leave you. But I'm rather fed up, all the same. You're not to be trusted over money, and you'll probably go on having these silly affairs with women."

  "Oh no, I won't. I swear I won't."

  "Oh, Henry, be honest."

  "Well, I'll try not to, but do try and understand, Shirley, that none of these affairs mean anything. There's only you."

  "I've a good mind to have an affair myself!" said Shirley.

  Henry said that he wouldn't be able to blame her if she did.

  He then suggested that they should go out somewhere amusing, and have dinner together.

  He was a delightful companion all the evening.

  Chapter Seven

  1

  Mona Adams was giving a cocktail-party. Mona Adams loved all cocktail-parties, and particularly her own. Her voice was hoarse, since she had had to scream a good deal to be heard above her guests. It was being a very successful cocktail-party.

  She screamed now as she greeted a late-comer.

  "Richard! How wonderful! Back from the Sahara-or is it the Gobi?"

  "Neither. Actually it's the Fezzan."

  "Never heard of it. But how good to see you! What a lovely tan. Now who do you want to talk to? Pam, Pam, let me introduce Sir Richard Wilding. You know, the traveller-camels and big game and deserts-those thrilling books. He's just come back from somewhere in-in-Tibet."

  She turned and screamed once more at another arrival.

  "Lydia! I'd no idea you were back from Paris. How wonderful!"

  Richard Wilding was listening to Pam, who was saying feverishly:

  "I saw you on television-only last night! How thrilling to meet you. Do tell me now-"

  But Richard Wilding had no time to tell her anything.

  Another acquaintance had borne down upon him.

  He fetched up at last, with his fourth drink in his hand, on a sofa beside the loveliest girl he had ever seen.

  Somebody had said:

  "Shirley, you must meet Richard Wilding."

  Richard had at once sat down beside her. He said:

  "How exhausting these affairs are! I'd forgotten. Won't you slip away with me, and have a quiet drink somewhere?"

  "I'd love to," said Shirley. "This place gets more like a menagerie every minute."

  With a pleasing sense of escape, they came out into the cool evening air.

  Wilding hailed a taxi.

  "It's a little late for a drink," he said, glancing at his watch, "and we've had a good many drinks, anyway. I think dinner is indicated."

  He gave the address of a small, but expensive restaurant off Jermyn Street.

  The meal ordered, he smiled across the table at his guest.

  "This is the nicest thing that's happened to me since I came back from the wilds. I'd forgotten how frightful London cocktail-parties were. Why do people go to them? Why did I? Why do you?"

  "Herd instinct, I suppose," said Shirley lightly.

  She had a sense of adventure that made her eyes bright. She looked across the table at the bronzed attractive man opposite her.

  She was faintly pleased with herself at having snatched away the lion of the party.

  "I know all about you," she said. "And I've read your books!"

  "I don't know anything about you-except that your Christian name is Shirley. What's the rest of it?"

  "Glyn-Edwards."

  "And you're married." His eyes rested on her ringed finger.

  "Yes. And I live in London and work in a flower-shop."

  "Do you like living in London, and working in a Sower-shop and going to cocktail-parties?"

  "Not very much."

  "What would you like to do-or be?"

  "Let me see." Shirley's eyes half closed. She spoke dreamily. "I'd like to live on an island-an island rather far away from anywhere. I'd like to live in a white house with green shutters and do absolutely nothing all day long. There would bc fruit on the island and great curtains of flowers, all in a tangle… colour and scent… and moonlight every night… and the sea would look dark purple in the evenings…"

  She sighed and opened her eyes.

  "Why does one always choose islands? I don't suppose a real island would be nice at all."

  Richard Wilding said softly: How odd that you should say what you did."

  "Why?"

  "I could give you your island."

  "Do you mean you own an island?"

  "A good part of one. And very much the kind of island you described. The sea is wine-dark there at night, and my villa is white with green shutters, and the flowers grow as you describe, in wild tangles of colour and scent, and nobody is ever in a hurry."

  "How lovely. It sounds like a dream island."

  "It's quite real."

  "How can you ever bear to come away?"

  "I'm restless. Some day I shall go back there and settle down and never leave it again."

  "I think you'd be quite right."

  The waiter came with the first course and broke the spell. They began talking lightly of everyday things.

  Afterwards Wilding drove Shirley home. She did not ask him to come in. He said: "I hope-we'll soon meet again?"

  He held her hand a fraction longer than necessary, and she flushed as she drew it away.

  That night she dreamed of an island.

  2

&n
bsp; "Shirley?"

  "Yes?"

  "You know, don't you, that I'm in love with you?"

  Slowly she nodded.

  She would have found it hard to describe the last three weeks. They had had a queer, unreal quality about them. She had walked through them in a kind of permanent abstraction.

  She knew that she had been very tired-and that she was still tired, but that out of her tiredness had come a delicious hazy feeling of not being really anywhere in particular.

  And in that state of haziness, her values had shifted and changed.

  It was as though Henry and everything that pertained to Henry had become dim and rather far away. Whereas Richard Wilding stood boldly in the foreground-a romantic figure rather larger than life.

  She looked at him now with grave considering eyes.

  He said:

  "Do you care for me at all?"

  "I don't know."

  What did she feel? She knew that every day this man came to occupy more and more of her thoughts. She knew that his proximity excited her. She recognised that what she was doing was dangerous, that she might be swept away on a sudden tide of passion. And she knew that, definitely, she didn't want to give up seeing him…

  Richard said:

  "You're very loyal, Shirley. You've never said anything to me about your husband."

  "Why should I?"

  "But I've heard a good deal."

  Shirley said:

  "People will say anything."

  "He's unfaithful to you and not, I think, very kind."

  "No, Henry's not a kind man."

  "He doesn't give you what you ought to have-love, care, tenderness."

  "Henry loves me-in his fashion."

  "Perhaps. But you want something more than that."

  "I used not to."

  "But you do now. You want-your island, Shirley."

  "Oh! the island. That was just a day-dream."

  "It's a dream that could come true."

  "Perhaps. I don't think so."

  "It could come true."

  A small chilly breeze came across the river to the terrace on which they were sitting.

  Shirley got up, pulling her coat tightly around her.

  "We mustn't talk like this any more," she said. "What we're doing is foolish, Richard, foolish and dangerous."

  "Perhaps. But you don't care for your husband, Shirley, you care for me."

  "I'm Henry's wife."

  "You care for me."

  She said again:

  "I'm Henry's wife."

  She repeated it like an article of faith.

  3

  When she got home, Henry was lying stretched out on the sofa. He was wearing white flannels.

  "I think I've strained a muscle." He made a faint grimace of pain.

  "What have you been doing?"

  "Played tennis at Roehampton."

  "You and Stephen? I thought you were going to play golf."

  "We changed our minds. Stephen brought Mary along, and Jessica Sandys made a fourth."

  "Jessica? Is that the dark girl we met at the Archers the other night?"

  "Er-yes-she is."

  "Is she your latest?"

  "Shirley! I told you, I promised you…"

  "I know, Henry, but what are promises? She is your latest-I can see it in your eye."

  Henry said sulkily:

  "Of course, if you're going to imagine things…"

  "If I'm going to imagine things," Shirley murmured, "I'd rather imagine an island."

  "Why an island?"

  Henry sat up on the sofa and said: "I really do feel stiff."

  "You'd better have a rest to-morrow. A quiet Sunday for a change."

  "Yes, that might be nice."

  But the following morning Henry declared that the stiffness was passing off.

  "As a matter of fact," he said, "we agreed to have a return."

  "You and Stephen and Mary-and Jessica?"

  "Yes."

  "Or just you and Jessica?"

  "Oh, all of us," he said easily.

  "What a liar you are, Henry."

  But she did not say it angrily. There was even a slight smile in her eyes. She was remembering the young man she had met at the tennis party four years ago, and how what had attracted her to him had been his detachment. He was still just as detached.

  The shy embarrassed young man who had come to call the following day, and who had sat doggedly talking to Laura until she herself returned, was the same young man who was now determinedly in pursuit of Jessica.

  'Henry,' she thought, 'has really not changed at all.'

  'He doesn't want to hurt me,' she thought, 'but he's just like that. He always has to do just what he wants to do.'

  She noticed that Henry was limping a little, and she said impulsively:

  "I really don't think you ought to go and play tennis-you must have strained yourself yesterday. Can't you leave it until next week-end?"

  But Henry wanted to go, and went.

  He came back about six o'clock and dropped down on his bed looking so ill that Shirley was alarmed. Notwithstanding Henry's protests, she went and rang up the doctor.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  As Laura rose from lunch the following afternoon the telephone rang.

  "Laura? It's me, Shirley."

  "Shirley? What's the matter? Your voice sounds queer."

  "It's Henry, Laura. He's in hospital. He's got polio." 'Like Charles,' thought Laura, her mind rushing back over the years. 'Like Charles…'

  The tragedy that she herself had been too young to understand acquired suddenly a new meaning.

  The anguish in Shirley's voice was the same anguish that her own mother had felt.

  Charles had died. Would Henry die?

  She wondered. Would Henry die?

  2

  "Infantile paralysis is the same as polio, isn't it?" she asked Mr. Baldock doubtfully.

  "Newer name for it, that's all-why?"

  "Henry has gone down with it."

  "Poor chap. And you're wondering if he's going to get over it?"

  "Well-yes."

  "And hoping he won't?"

  "Really, really. You make me out a monster."

  "Come now, young Laura-the thought was in your mind."

  "Horrible thoughts do pass through one's mind," said Laura. "But I wouldn't wish anyone dead-really I wouldn't."

  "No," said Mr. Baldock thoughtfully. "I don't believe you would-nowadays-"

  "What do you mean-nowadays? Oh, you don't mean that old business of the Scarlet Woman?" She couldn't help smiling at the remembrance. "What I came in to tell you was that I shan't be able to come in and see you every day for a bit. I'm going up to London by the afternoon train-to be with Shirley."

  "Does she want you?"

  "Of course she'll want me," said Laura indignantly. "Henry's in hospital. She's all alone. She needs someone with her."

  "Probably-yes, probably. Quite right. Proper thing to do. It doesn't matter about me."

  Mr. Baldock, as a semi-invalid, got a lot of pleasure out of an exaggerated self-pity.

  "Darling, I'm terribly sorry, but-"

  "But Shirley comes first! All right, all right… who am I? Only a tiresome old fellow of eighty, deaf, semi-blind-"

  "Baldy-"

  Mr. Baldock suddenly grinned and closed one eyelid.

  "Laura," he said, "you're a push-over for hard luck stories. Anyone who's sorry for himself doesn't need you to be sorry for him as well. Self-pity is practically a full-time occupation."

  3

  "Isn't it lucky I didn't sell the house?" said Laura.

  It was three months later. Henry had not died, but he had been very near death.

  "If he hadn't insisted upon going out and playing tennis after the first signs, it wouldn't have been so serious. As it is-"

  "It's bad-eh?"

  "It's fairly certain that he'll be a cripple far life."

  "Poor devil."
/>   "They haven't told him that, of course. And I suppose there's just a chance… but perhaps they only say that to cheer up Shirley. Anyway, as I said, it's lucky I haven't sold the house. It's queer-I had a feeling all along that I oughtn't to sell it. I kept saying to myself it was ridiculous, that it was far too big for me, that since Shirley hadn't any children they would never want a house in the country. And I was quite keen to take on this job, running the Children's Home in Milchester. But as it is, the sale hasn't gone through, and I can withdraw and the house will be there for Shirley to bring Henry to when he gets out of hospital. That won't be for some months, of course."

  "Does Shirley think that's a good plan?"

  Laura frowned.

  "No, for some reason she's most reluctant. I think I know why."

  She looked up sharply at Mr. Baldock.

  "I might as well know-Shirley may have told you what she wouldn't like to tell me. She's got practically none of her own money left, has she?"

  "She hasn't confided in me," said Mr. Baldock, "but no, I shouldn't think she had." He added: "I should imagine Henry's gone tbrough pretty well all he ever had, too."

  "I've heard a lot of things," said Laura. "From friends of theirs and other people. It's been a terribly unhappy marriage. He's gone through her money, he's neglected her, he's constantly had, affairs with other women. Even now, when he's so ill, I can't bring myself to forgive him. How could he treat Shirley like that? If anyone deserved to be happy, Shirley did. She was so full of life and eagerness and-and trust." She got up and walked restlessly about the room. She tried to steady her voice as she went on:

  "Why did I ever let her marry Henry? I could have stopped it, you know, or at any rate delayed it so that she would have had time to see what he was like. But she was fretting so-she wanted him. I wanted her to have what she wanted."

  "There, there, Laura"

  "And it's worse than that. I wanted to show that I wasn't possessive. Just to prove that to myself, I let Shirley in for a lifetime of unhappiness."

  "I've told you before, Laura, you worry too much about happiness and unhappiness."