the first gooseberries, and the professor was there too, although long before Gemma had finished her tea he had strolled away. To collect Mandy, Cousin Maud explained with a smile, so that Gemma, on the point of asking her advice about the professor’s request, thought better of it. She wasn’t really interested in going to Holland, she told herself, she wasn’t interested, for that matter, in seeing him again. She could not in fact care less. She looked so cross that her companion wanted to know if she had a headache.
Gemma was upstairs when the professor returned with Mandy. He didn’t stay long, though, and she didn’t go downstairs until she had seen him get back into his car and shoot out of their gate and into Doctor Gibbons’ drive. She could see him clearly from her bedroom window; indeed, she was hanging out of it, watching him saunter into the house next door, when he turned round suddenly and looked at her. She withdrew her head so smartly that she banged it on the low ceiling.
For the time being, she didn’t want to see him. Let him come again and ask her if he was so keen for her to nurse his sister, and it was really rather absurd that she should leave her old ladies just to satisfy his whim. She tidied her already tidy hair and sighed deeply. Probably she would be at Millbury House for ever and ever—well, not quite that, but certainly for years. She went slowly downstairs, the rest of the evening hers in which to do whatever she wished, and she was free until noon the next day, too. She wouldn’t see her old ladies until then.
She saw them a good deal sooner than that, though. Several hours later she was wakened by the insistent ringing of the telephone. She had been the last to go to bed and had only been asleep for a short time, and it was only a little after midnight. The house was quiet as she trod silently across the landing and down the stairs, not waiting to put on dressing gown or slippers. Doctor Gibbons’ voice sounded loud in her ear because of the stillness around her. ‘Gemma? Good. There’s a fire at Millbury House—they’ve just telephoned. Matron’s pretty frantic because the fire brigade’s out at another fire and they’ll have to come from further afield. Can you be ready in five minutes? Wait at your gate.’
He hung up before she could so much as draw breath.
She was at the gate, in slacks and a sweater pulled over her nightie and good stout shoes on her feet, with a minute to spare. The house behind her was quite still and the village street was dark with not a glimmer of light to be seen excepting in the doctor’s house, and that went out as she looked. Seconds later she heard the soft purr of the Aston Martin as it was backing out of the drive and halted by her. The professor was at the wheel; he didn’t speak at all but held the door open just long enough for her to get in before he shot away. It was left to Doctor Gibbons, sitting beside him, to tell her: ‘The fire’s in the main building, the first floor day room. It’ll be a question of getting everyone out before it spreads to one or either wing.’ He turned to look at her in the dark of the car. ‘The fire people will be along, of course, but if all the patients have to be got out…’ He paused significantly and Gemma said at once: ‘There’s Night Sister, and a staff nurse on each ward and three nursing aides between them—and Matron, of course, as well as the kitchen staff, but I don’t think they all sleep in.’ She drew a sharp breath and said: ‘Oh, lord, look at it!’
The night sky glowed ahead of them, faded a little and glowed again, and now, as the professor took the right-hand turn into the drive without decreasing his speed at all, they could hear the fire as well as see it and smell it. They could hear other sounds too, urgent voices and elderly cries.
The professor had barely stopped the car at a safe distance from the burning building than Gemma was out of it. ‘It’s my ward,’ she cried, ‘the wind’s blowing that way. Oh, my dear old ladies!’ She leapt forward and was brought up short by a large hand catching at the back of her sweater.
‘Before you rush in and get yourself fried to a crisp, tell me where the fire escape is?’
Gemma wriggled in a fury of impatience, but he merely gathered more sweater into his hand. As Doctor Gibbons joined them, she said urgently: ‘At the back, where my wing joins the extension behind—there’s a side door with a small staircase which leads to the landing outside my ward…’
‘The way we came the other day, from the centre door—that will be impossible now; the wind’s blowing strongly from the centre towards your wing… Is there a fire chute?’
‘Yes—I know where it’s kept.’
‘Good.’ He turned to Doctor Gibbons. ‘Shall we try the side door, get into the ward and get the chute going from a window at this end? The fire escape is a good way away, I doubt if they can move the old ladies fast enough—if the dividing wall should go…’
They were already running towards the house. In a moment they were inside, to find the staircase intact. ‘Get between us,’ said the professor shortly, and took the stairs two at a time, with Gemma hard on his heels and Doctor Gibbons keeping up gamely. The landing, when they reached it, was full of smoke, but although the fire could be heard crackling and roaring close by, the thick wall was still holding it back. The professor opened the ward door on to pandemonium; Gemma had a quick glimpse of the night staff nurse tearing down the ward propelling a wheelchair with old Mrs Draper wedged into it; it looked for all the world like a macabre parody of an Easter pram race. There wasn’t much smoke; just a few lazy puffs curling round the door frame.
Gemma didn’t wait to see more but turned and ran upstairs to the next floor where the escape chute was, stored in one of the poky, disused attics which in former days would have been used by some over-worked servant. The door was locked—she should have thought of that. She raced downstairs again, took the key from her office and tore back. The chute was heavy and cumbersome, but she managed to drag it out of the room and push and pull it along the passage to the head of the stairs where she gave it a shove strong enough to send it lumbering down to the landing below. But now she would need help; she ran to the ward door and opened it cautiously. The professor was quite near, lifting Mrs Thomas out of her bed and settling her in the wheelchair a nursing aide was holding steady. He glanced up, said something to the nurse, who sped away towards the distant fire escape, and came to the door.
‘I can’t manage the chute,’ said Gemma urgently. ‘It’s on the landing.’
He nodded, swept her on one side and went past her, shutting the door, leaving her in the ward. The beds, she noticed, had been pulled away from the inner wall and ranged close to the windows, and there were only six patients left. She sighed with relief as the professor came back with the chute and she went to give him a helping hand.
There was still only a little smoke in the ward, although the roar of the fire sounded frighteningly near. Gemma shut her mind to the sound and began the difficult task of getting Miss Bird, hopelessly crippled with arthritis, out of her bed, wrapped and tied into a blanket ready to go down the chute. The nursing aide had come back; she could hear the professor telling her to go down first so that she could catch the patients as they arrived at the bottom. The nurse gave him a scared look.
‘I’ve never done it before,’ she told him in a small scared voice.
The professor eyed her sturdy figure. ‘Then have a go,’ he said persuasively, and actually laughed. ‘I’ve thrown a mattress down. Don’t try to catch the ladies, just ease them out and get help, any help, if you can. And be quick, my dear, for the inner wall isn’t going to hold out much longer.’
Gemma glanced over her shoulder. He was right; the smoke was thickening with every moment and there was a nasty crackling sound. She left Miss Bird to be picked up by the professor and hurried to the next bed—Mrs Trump, fragile, heaven knew, but very clear in the head, which helped a lot. She saw Nurse Drew plunge down the chute out of the corner of her eye, and a minute later, Miss Bird, protesting
