Agatha Christie: The Burden

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, and 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.

"Hullo, Laura," she said. "Are you talking to baby?"

She bent over the pram. "Hullo, 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."

"That's no guarantee of truth."

"Anyway, I shall get some netting, and I must tell Nannie to look out of the window from time to time and see that she's all right. Oh dear, I wish our own nanny hadn't had to go to her dying sister. This new young nanny-I don't really feel happy about her."

"Why not? She seems a nice enough girl. Devoted to baby and good references and all that."

"Oh yes, I know. She seems all right. But there's something… There's that gap of a year and a half in her references."

"She went home to nurse her mother."

"That's what they always say! And it's the sort of thing you can't check. It might have been for some reason she doesn't want us to know about."

"Got into trouble, you mean?"

Angela threw him a warning glance, indicating Laura.

"Do be careful, Arthur. No, I don't mean that. I mean-"

"What do you mean, darling?"

"I don't really know," said Angela slowly. "It's just-sometimes when I'm talking to her I feel that there's something she's anxious we shouldn't find out."

"Wanted by the police?"

"Arthur! That's a very silly joke."

Laura walked gently away. She was an intelligent child and she perceived quite plainly that they, her father and mother, would like to talk about Nannie unhampered by her presence. She herself was not interested in the new nanny; a pale, dark-haired, soft-spoken girl, who showed herself kindly to Laura, though plainly quite uninterested by her.

Laura was thinking of the Lady with the Blue Cloak.

"Come on, Josephine," said Laura crossly.

Josephine, late Jehoshaphat, though not actively resisting, was displaying all the signs of passive resistance. Disturbed in a delicious sleep against the side of the greenhouse, she had been half dragged, half carried by Laura, out of the kitchen-garden and round the house to the terrace.

"There!" Laura plopped Josephine down. A few feet away, the baby's pram stood on the gravel.

Laura walked slowly away across the lawn. As she reached the big lime tree, she turned her head.

Josephine, her tail lashing from time to time, in indignant memory, began to wash her stomach, sticking out what seemed a disproportionately long hind leg. That part of her toilet completed, she yawned and looked round her at her surroundings. Then she began half-heartedly to wash behind the ears, thought better of it, yawned again, and finally got up and walked slowly and meditatively away, and round the corner of the house.

Laura followed her, picked her up determinedly, and lugged her back again. Josephine gave Laura s look and sat there lashing her tail. As soon as Laura had got back to the tree, Josephine once more got up, yawned, stretched, and walked off. Laura brought her back again, remonstrating as she did so.

"It's sunny here, Josephine. It's nice!"

Nothing could be clearer than that Josephine disagreed with this statement. She was now in a very bad temper indeed, lashing her tail, and flattening back her ears.

"Hullo, young Laura."

Laura started and turned. Mr. Baldock stood behind her. She had not heard or noticed his slow progress across the lawn. Josephine, profiting by Laura's momentary inattention, darted to a tree and ran up it, pausing on a branch to look down on them with an air of malicious satisfaction.

"That's where cats have the advantage over human beings," said Mr. Baldock. "When they want to get away from people they can climb a tree. The nearest we can get to that is to shut ourselves in the lavatory."

Laura looked slightly shocked. Lavatories came into the category of things which Nannie (the late Nannie) had said 'little ladies don't talk about.' "But one has to come out," said Mr. Baldock, "if for no other reason than because other people want to come in. Now that cat of yours will probably stay up that tree for a couple of hours."

Immediately Josephine demonstrated the general unpredictability of cats by coming down with a rush, crossing towards them, and proceeding to rub herself to and fro against Mr. Baldock's trousers, purring loudly.

"Here," she seemed to say, "is exactly what I have been waiting for."

"Hullo, Baldy." Angela came out of the window. "Are you paying your respects to the latest arrival? Oh dear, these cats. Laura dear, do take Josephine away. Put her in the kitchen. I haven't got that netting yet. Arthur laughs at me, but cats do jump up and sleep on babies' chests and smother them. I don't want the cats to get the habit of coming round to the terrace."

As Laura went off carrying Josephine, Mr. Baldock sent a considering gaze after her.

After lunch, Arthur Franklin drew his friend into the study.

"There's an article here-" he began.

Mr. Baldock interrupted him, without ceremony and forthrightly, as was his custom.

"Just a minute. I've got something I want to say. Why don't you send that child to school?"

"Laura? That is the idea-after Christmas, I believe. When she's eleven."

"Don't wait for that. Do it now."

"It would be mid-term. And, anyway, Miss Weekes is quite-"