The Burden (5 page)

‘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 halfheartedly 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 a 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.

‘Hallo, 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.'

‘Hallo, 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 –'

Mr Baldock said what he thought of Miss Weekes with relish.

‘Laura doesn't want instruction from a desiccated blue-stocking, however bulging with brains,' he said. ‘She wants distraction, other girls, a different set of troubles if you like. Otherwise, for all you know, you may have a tragedy.'

‘A tragedy? What sort of tragedy?'

‘A couple of nice little boys the other day took their baby sister out of the pram and threw her in the river. The baby made too much work for Mummy, they said. They had quite genuinely made themselves believe it, I imagine.'

Arthur Franklin stared at him.

‘Jealousy, you mean?'

‘Jealousy.'

‘My dear Baldy, Laura's not a jealous child. Never has been.'

‘How do you know? Jealousy eats inward.'

‘She's never shown any sign of it. She's a very sweet, gentle child, but without any very strong feelings, I should say.'

‘
You'd
say!' Mr Baldock snorted. ‘If you ask me, you and Angela don't know the first thing about your own child.'

Arthur Franklin smiled good-temperedly. He was used to Baldy.

‘We'll keep an eye on the baby,' he said, ‘if that's what's worrying you. I'll give Angela a hint to be careful. Tell her not to make too much fuss of the newcomer, and a bit more of Laura. That ought to meet the case.' He added with a hint of curiosity: ‘I've always wondered just what it is you see in Laura. She –'

‘There's promise there of a very rare and unusual spirit,' said Mr Baldock. ‘At least so I think.'

‘Well – I'll speak to Angela – but she'll only laugh.'

But Angela, rather to her husband's surprise, did not laugh.

‘There's something in what he says, you know. Child psychologists all agree that jealousy over a new baby is natural and almost inevitable. Though frankly
I
haven't seen any signs of it in Laura. She's a placid child, and it isn't as though she were wildly attached to
me
or anything like that. I must try and show her that I depend upon her.'

And so, when about a week later, she and her husband were going for a week-end visit to some old friends, Angela talked to Laura.

‘You'll take good care of baby, won't you, Laura, while we're away? It's nice to feel I'm leaving you here to keep an eye on everything. Nannie hasn't been here very long, you see.'

Her mother's words pleased Laura. They made her feel old and important. Her small pale face brightened.

Unfortunately, the good effect was destroyed almost immediately by a conversation between Nannie and Ethel in the nursery, which she happened to overhear.

‘Lovely baby, isn't she?' said Ethel, poking the infant with a crudely affectionate finger. ‘There's a little ducksie-wucksie. Seems funny Miss Laura's always been such a plain little thing. Don't wonder her pa and ma never took to her, as they took to Master Charles and this one. Miss Laura's a nice little thing, but you can't say more than that.'

That evening Laura knelt by her bed and prayed.

The Lady with the Blue Cloak had taken no notice of her Intention. Laura was going to headquarters.

‘
Please, God
,' she prayed, ‘
let baby die and go to Heaven soon. Very soon
.'

She got into bed and lay down. Her heart beat, and she felt guilty and wicked. She had done what Mr Baldock had told her not to do, and Mr Baldock was a very wise man. She had had no feeling of guilt about her candle to the Lady in the Blue Cloak – possibly because she had never really had much hope of any result. And she could see no harm in just bringing Josephine on to the terrace. She wouldn't have put Josephine actually on to the pram. That, she knew,
would
have been wicked. But if Josephine, of her own accord …?

Tonight, however, she had crossed the Rubicon. God was all-powerful …

Shivering a little, Laura fell asleep.

Angela and Arthur Franklin drove away in the car.

Up in the nursery, the new nanny, Gwyneth Jones, was putting the baby to bed.

She was uneasy tonight. There had been certain feelings, portents, lately, and tonight –

‘I'm just imagining it,' she said to herself. ‘Fancy! That's all it is.'

Hadn't the doctor told her that it was quite possible she might never have another fit?

She'd had them as a child, and then never a sign of anything of the kind until that terrible day …

Teething convulsions, her aunt had called those childhood seizures. But the doctor had used another name, had said plainly and without subterfuge what the malady was. And he had said, quite definitely: ‘You mustn't take a place with a baby or children. It wouldn't be safe.'

But she'd paid for that expensive training. It was her trade – what she knew how to do – certificates and all – well paid – and she loved looking after babies. A year had gone by, and there had been no recurrence of trouble. It was all nonsense, the doctor frightening her like that.

So she'd written to the bureau – a different bureau, and she'd soon got a place, and she was happy here, and the baby was a little love.

She put the baby into her cot and went downstairs for her supper. She awoke in the night with a sense of uneasiness, almost terror. She thought:

‘I'll make myself a drop of hot milk. It will calm me down.'

She lit the spirit lamp and carried it to the table near the window.

There was no final warning. She went down like a stone, lying there on the floor, jerking and twisting. The spirit lamp fell to the floor, and the flame from it ran across the carpet and reached the end of the muslin curtains.

Laura woke up suddenly.

She had been dreaming – a bad dream – though she couldn't remember the details of it. Something chasing her, something – but she was safe now, in her own bed, at home.

She felt for the lamp by her bedside, and turned it on, and looked at her own little clock. Twelve o'clock. Midnight.

She sat up in bed, feeling a curious reluctance to turn out the light again.

She listened. What a queer creaking noise … ‘Burglars perhaps,' thought Laura, who like most children was perpetually suspecting burglars. She got out of bed and went to the door, opened it a little way, and peered cautiously out. Everything was dark and quiet.

But there was a smell, a funny smoky smell. Laura sniffed experimentally. She went across the landing and opened the door that led to the servants' quarters. Nothing.

She crossed to the other side of the landing, where a door shut off a short passage leading to the nursery and the nursery bathroom.

Then she shrank back, appalled. Great wreaths of smoke came curling towards her.

‘It's on fire. The house is on fire!'

Laura screamed, rushed to the servants' wing, and called:

‘Fire! The house is on fire!'

She could never remember clearly what came after. Cook and Ethel – Ethel running downstairs to telephone, Cook opening that door across the landing and being driven back by the smoke, Cook soothing her with: ‘It'll be all right.' Incoherent murmurs: ‘The engine will come – they'll get them out through the window – don't you worry, my dear.'

But it would not be all right. Laura knew.

She was shattered by the knowledge that her prayer had been answered. God had acted – acted with promptitude and with indescribable terror. This was His way, His terrible way, of taking baby to Heaven.

Cook pulled Laura down the front stairs with her.

‘Come on now, Miss Laura – don't wait about – we must all get outside the house.'

But Nannie and baby could not get outside the house. They were up there, in the nursery, trapped!

Cook plunged heavily down the stairs, pulling Laura after her. But as they passed out through the front door to join Ethel on the lawn, and Cook's grip relaxed, Laura turned back and ran up the stairs again.

Once more she opened the landing door. From somewhere through the smoke she heard a far-off fretful whimpering cry.

And suddenly, something in Laura came alive – warmth, passionate endeavour, that curious incalculable emotion, love.

Her mind was sober and clear. She had read or been told that to rescue people in a fire you dipped a towel in water and put it round your mouth. She ran into her room, soaked the bath towel in the jug, rolled it round her, and crossing the landing plunged into the smoke. There was flame now across the passage, and the timbers were falling. Where an adult would have estimated danger and chances, Laura went bull-headed with the unknowing courage of a child. She
must
get to baby, she must save baby. Otherwise baby would burn to death. She stumbled over the unconscious body of Gwyneth, not knowing what it was. Choking, gasping, she found her way to the crib; the screen round it had protected it from the worst of the smoke.