The Burden BY AGATHA CHRISTIE

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.

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