reassuringly on the back with a great hand like a ham, and waited until she had skimmed across the hall and disappeared down the corridor.
In the car again he said, ‘We had better go and see how the little ones are.’ When they had driven the short distance to the other department of the hospital, he spoke briefly on the car phone and then got out with his companion.
The baby had been borne away to the resuscitation room, and Professor van der Brons, called from his ward round, was bending over the toddler, not pausing in his careful examination when he was told that the police were there.
He questioned them closely without pausing in his work. ‘She pulled the oil stove over,’ he observed, ‘poor little one. She is severely burned; did you get her out?’
The fatherly constable explained. ‘This English girl was passing, went inside and put out the flames—two boys heard her screams and went to help her…’
‘An English girl? Was she injured?’
‘She said not, though her clothes were ruined. We took her back to the nurses’ home a few minutes ago…’
The professor was gently lifting shreds of the child’s clothing away from the burns with fine forceps. ‘Zuster here will give you all the details you will want; we must get this child to the burns unit without delay.’
The toddler remained unconscious so that he could work on the small thin body without hindrance. They were very severe burns and even if she recovered the scars would be deep; she would need to come back time after time for skin grafts. He continued his painstaking work while his registrar attended to the plasma drip, making an occasional remark from time to time, his face calm and unworried, not allowing his thoughts to stray for one moment from the desperately ill child. At length he straightened up. ‘Good, let us get her up to Theatre. Get this cleaned up and dressed before she rouses. We will keep her sedated but I want her specialled for the next forty-eight hours.’ He glanced at his registrar. ‘See to that, will you, Wim?’
He turned away while a nurse took his gown. ‘Get another plasma up before we start, please. I’ll want the theatre in fifteen minutes.’
He walked away, taking the phone from inside his pocket as he did so. By the time he reached the nurses’ home, the warden was waiting for him.
He greeted her in his usual calm way. ‘Zuster Charity Pearson—she has just returned here; she has been involved in a fire in the Jordaan. If you will come with me? She works on the burns unit and I wish to make sure that she is unhurt, Zuster Hengstma.’
The warden was a homely body, rather stout and inclined to gossip, but she was a motherly soul. ‘The poor child. I’ve not seen her, Professor, or, depend upon it, I would have made sure…’
‘Of course you would.’ He smiled down at her. ‘But I think we had better take a look, don’t you?’
They went up in the lift to the third floor where Charity had a room, the warden looking worried, the professor his usual bland self.
Charity, having gained her room without being seen, had sat down on her bed and hadn’t moved since. She still wore the coat, which smelled of burnt cloth and oil, and she hadn’t taken off her gloves. She realised that she was in a mild state of shock, for her teeth chattered still and she couldn’t stop shivering. She sat there, telling herself to get out of her clothes, have a warm bath, make a cup of tea and then get into bed and have a nap, all sensible things to do, and later, her old self again, she would go along to the warden and beg some mild treatment for her scorched hands. However, her body refused to obey her; she just went on sitting there with no interest in what should happen next.
She didn’t hear the warden’s gentle tap on her door; it wasn’t until it was opened and the warden entered, with Mr van der Brons looming behind her, that she looked up. The sight of his vast reassuring figure was too much for Charity; she burst into tears.
Zuster Hengstma trotted to her, making soothing clucking sounds and put her arms about her. Her English, always fragmental, gave way to a flood of Dutch, but what she was saying would have sounded kind in any language. Charity buried her face into the kind soul’s ample bosom and sobbed.
Mr van der Brons said nothing at all, only sat himself down on the rather flimsy seat and waited patiently. Presently Charity’s sobs became watery snorts and sniffs and he got up then, handed her a large, snowy handkerchief and sat down on the other side of her.
‘We will have that coat off for a start,’ he suggested mildly, ‘and the gloves.’ He viewed the ruin of her woolly cap atop the chaos of her hair. ‘And the cap.’
She gave a prodigious sniff. ‘So sorry,’ she muttered. ‘So silly of me to sit here like this. I’m quite all right, you know, just dirty.’
He didn’t answer but smiled and nodded at the warden, who removed the cap and began to unbutton the coat, while he picked up first one hand and then the other and very gently drew off the gloves. She had been lucky; save for first-degree burns on the backs of her hands, she had escaped unhurt, although they were painful. He examined them carefully and put them back in her lap. ‘We won’t bother you with a lot of questions now,’ he told her, with an impersonal kindness which she found soothing. ‘Zuster Hengstma is going to help you to undress and have a bath and get you into bed and I will return and see to your hands. Not badly damaged, I’m glad to say, but they must be treated and you must have something for the pain.’
‘I’m on duty in the morning…’
‘No. You will have a day off. If you feel all right you may return on the following day, but only to light duties.’ As she opened her mouth to protest, he said, ‘No, no arguing.’
He got off the bed and went to the door and had a low-voiced conversation with the warden, then turned round to say, ‘You are a very brave girl, Charity; we are all proud of you.’
Which for some reason started off the tears again.
An hour later she was sitting up in bed; Zuster Hengstma had bathed her despite her protests, washed her hair and anointed her face liberally with a nourishing cream. Mr van der Brons, ushered in with the deference due to a senior consultant, reflected that a shiny face and still damp brown hair were hardly aids to female beauty, and yet Charity managed to look decidedly—not pretty, he conceded, more like a child who had just been got ready for bed. He dismissed the thought as nonsense and listened composedly to Zuster Hengstma’s recital of Charity’s injuries.
She had got off lightly, he told her her; her scorched hands would heal in no time at all, and the scratches and bruises she had sustained would disappear within a few days.
‘The baby?’ she wanted to know. ‘And the little girl? Are they going to be all right?’
‘The baby is in the paediatric unit; it’s early days yet…and the little girl is with us; early days for her too, but children are very resilient. I think that she has a very good chance—thanks to you—and she will of course have to come back from time to time for skin grafts.’
‘Their mother and father…’
‘The father was at work; the mother had gone down the street to get food.’ He saw the look on her face and went on kindly, ‘Don’t condemn her, Charity. Will she not have to live with it for the rest of her life?’
‘No no, I won’t,
