The Burden

Angela shrugged her shoulders.

‘Bachelors know everything,’ she murmured ironically. ‘And isn’t that equally true of Number Three and Number Four and all the rest of them?’

‘Not quite. I’ve noticed that there’s usually a gap before Number Three. Number Three is often produced because the other two are getting independent, and it would be “nice to have a baby in the nursery again”. Curious taste; revolting little creatures, but biologically a sound instinct, I suppose. And so they go on, some nice and some nasty, and some bright and some dull, but they pair off and pal up more or less, and finally comes the afterthought which like the firstborn gets an undue share of attention.’

‘And it’s all very unfair, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Exactly. That’s the whole point about life, it is unfair!’

‘And what can one do about it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then really, Baldy, I don’t see what you’re talking about.’

‘I told Arthur the other day. I’m a soft-hearted chap. I like to see people being happy. I like to make up to people a bit for what they haven’t got and can’t have. It evens things up a bit. Besides, if you don’t—’ he paused a moment—‘it can be dangerous …’

‘I do think Baldy talks a lot of nonsense,’ said Angela pensively to her husband when their guest had departed.

‘John Baldock is one of the foremost scholars in this country,’ said Arthur Franklin with a slight twinkle.

‘Oh, I know that.’ Angela was faintly scornful. ‘I’d be willing to sit in meek adoration if he was laying down the law on Greeks and Romans, or obscure Elizabethan poets. But what can he know about children?’

‘Absolutely nothing, I should imagine,’ said her husband. ‘By the way, he suggested the other day that we should give Laura a dog.’

‘A dog? But she’s got a kitten.’

‘According to him, that’s not the same thing.’

‘How very odd … I remember him saying once that he disliked dogs.’

‘I believe he does.’

Angela said thoughtfully: ‘Now Charles, perhaps, ought to have a dog … He looked quite scared the other day when those puppies at the Vicarage rushed at him. I hate to see a boy afraid of dogs. If he had one of his own, it would accustom him to it. He ought to learn to ride, too. I wish he could have a pony of his own. If only we had a paddock!’

‘A pony’s out of the question, I’m afraid,’ said Franklin.

In the kitchen, the parlourmaid, Ethel, said to the cook:

‘That old Baldock, he’s noticed it too.’

‘Noticed what?’

‘Miss Laura. That she isn’t long for this world. Asking Nurse about it, they were. Ah, she’s got the look, sure enough, no mischief in her, not like Master Charles. You mark my words, she won’t live to grow up.’

But it was Charles who died.

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_d84610c9-b5ac-54fa-aa10-524c751c0aba)

Charles died of infantile paralysis. He died at school; two other boys had the disease but recovered.

To Angela Franklin, herself now in a delicate state of health, the blow was so great as to crush her completely. Charles, her beloved, her darling, her handsome merry high-spirited boy.

She lay in her darkened bedroom, staring at the ceiling, unable to weep. And her husband and Laura and the servants crept about the muted house. In the end the doctor advised Arthur Franklin to take his wife abroad.

‘Complete change of air and scene. She must be roused. Somewhere with good air—mountain air. Switzerland, perhaps.’

So the Franklins went off, and Laura remained under the care of Nannie, with daily visits from Miss Weekes, an amiable but uninspiring governess.

To Laura, her parents’ absence was a period of pleasure. Technically, she was the mistress of the house! Every morning she ‘saw the cook’ and ordered meals for the day. Mrs Brunton, the cook, was fat and good-natured. She curbed the wilder of Laura’s suggestions and managed it so that the actual menu was exactly as she herself had planned it. But Laura’s sense of importance was not impaired. She missed her parents the less because she was building in her own mind a fantasy for their return.

It was terrible that Charles was dead. Naturally they had loved Charles best—she did not dispute the justice of that, but now—now—it was she who would enter into Charles’s kingdom. It was Laura now who was their only child, the child in whom all their hopes lay and to whom would flow all their affection. She built up scenes in her mind of the day of their return. Her mother’s open arms …

‘Laura, my darling. You’re all I have in the world now!’

Affecting scenes, emotional scenes. Scenes that in actual fact were wildly unlike anything Angela or Arthur Franklin were likely to do or say. But to Laura, they were warming and rich in drama, and by slow degrees she began to believe in them so much that they might almost already have happened.

Walking down the lane to the village, she rehearsed conversations: raising her eyebrows, shaking her head, murmuring words and phrases under her breath.

So absorbed was she in this rich feast of emotional imagination, that she failed to observe Mr Baldock, who was coming towards her from the direction of the village, pushing in front of him a gardening basket on wheels, in which he brought home his purchases.

‘Hallo, young Laura.’

Laura, rudely jostled out of an affecting drama where her mother had gone blind and she, Laura, had just refused an offer of marriage from a viscount (‘I shall never marry. My mother means everything to me’), started and blushed.

‘Father and mother still away, eh?’

‘Yes, they won’t be coming back for ten days more.’

‘I see. Like to come to tea with me tomorrow?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Laura was elated and excited. Mr Baldock, who had a Chair at the University fourteen miles away, had a small cottage in the village where he spent the vacations and occasional weekends. He declined to behave in a social manner, and affronted Bellbury by refusing, usually impolitely, their many invitations. Arthur Franklin was his only friend—it was a friendship of many years’ standing. John Baldock was not a friendly man. He treated his pupils with such ruthlessness and irony that the best of them were goaded into distinguishing themselves, and the rest perished by the wayside. He had written several large and abstruse volumes on obscure phases of history, written in such a way that very few people could understand what he was driving at. Mild appeals from his publishers to write in a more readable fashion were turned down with a savage glee, Mr Baldock pointing out that the people who could appreciate his books were the only readers of them who were worth while! He was particularly rude to women, which enchanted many of them so much that they were always coming back for more. A man of savage prejudices, and over-riding arrogance, he had an unexpectedly kindly heart which was always betraying his principles.

Laura knew that to be asked to tea with Mr Baldock was an honour, and preened herself accordingly. She turned up neatly dressed, brushed, and washed, but nevertheless with an underlying apprehension, for Mr Baldock was an alarming man.

Mr Baldock’s housekeeper showed her into the library, where Mr Baldock raised his head, and stared at her.

‘Hallo,’ said Mr Baldock. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘You asked me to tea,’ said Laura.

Mr Baldock looked at her in a considering manner. Laura looked back at him. It was a grave, polite look that successfully concealed her inner uncertainty.

‘So I did,’ said Mr Baldock, rubbing his nose. ‘Hm … yes, so I did. Can’t think why. Well, you’d better sit down.’

‘Where?’ said Laura.