The Burden

She was busy formulating a question:

‘May I ask you something, Mr Baldock?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is it wrong to pray for anyone to die?’

Mr Baldock gave her a swift sideways look.

‘In my view,’ he said, ‘it would be unpardonable interference.’

‘Interference?’

‘Well, the Almighty is running the show, isn’t He? What do you want to stick your fingers into the machinery for? What business is it of yours?’

‘I don’t see that it would matter to God very much. When a baby has been christened and everything, it goes to Heaven, doesn’t it?’

‘Don’t see where else it could go,’ admitted Mr Baldock.

‘And God is fond of children. The Bible says so. So He’d be pleased to see it.’

Mr Baldock took a short turn up and down the room. He was seriously upset, and didn’t want to show it.

‘Look here, Laura,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve got—you’ve simply got to mind your own business.’

‘But perhaps it is my business.’

‘No, it isn’t. Nothing’s your business but yourself. Pray what you like about yourself. Ask for blue ears, or a diamond tiara, or to grow up and win a beauty competition. The worst that can happen to you is that the answer to your prayer might be “Yes”.’

Laura looked at him uncomprehendingly.

‘I mean it,’ said Mr Baldock.

Laura thanked him politely, and said she must be going home now.

When she had gone, Mr Baldock rubbed his chin, scratched his head, picked his nose, and absentmindedly wrote a review of a mortal enemy’s book simply dripping with milk and honey.

Laura walked back home, thinking deeply.

As she passed the small Roman Catholic church, she hesitated. A daily woman who came in to help in the kitchen was a Catholic, and stray scraps of her conversation came back to Laura, who had listened to them with the fascination accorded to something rare and strange, and also forbidden. For Nannie, a staunch chapel-goer, held very strong views about what she referred to as the Scarlet Woman. Who or what the Scarlet Woman was, Laura had no idea, except that she had some undefined connection with Babylon.

But what came to her mind now was Molly’s chat of praying for her Intention—a candle had entered into it in some way. Laura hesitated a little longer, drew a deep breath, looked up and down the road, and slipped into the porch.

The church was small and rather dark, and did not smell at all like the parish church where Laura went every Sunday. There was no sign of the Scarlet Woman, but there was a plaster figure of a lady in a blue cloak, with a tray in front of her, and wire loops in which candles were burning. Nearby was a supply of fresh candles, and a box with a slot for money.

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, the 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.

‘Hallo, Laura,’ she said. ‘Are you talking to baby?’

She bent over the pram. ‘Hallo, 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.’