Was love out of the question?

Charity thought she had it all—marriage to respected consultant Tyco van der Brons and being a mother to his two children. So why did her heart yearn for his love, too? She had known from the start that theirs was a marriage of convenience—so it would be foolish to wish for anything more…wouldn’t it?

“Charity, I very much hope that you are going to tell me that you will marry me. I am a little out of practice with pretty speeches.

“I can but reiterate what I have already told you—that I think we could build a happy home life for the children together. To say more—to promise more—would be wrong….”

Charity sat very still; she had gone rather pale, but she looked at him calmly. She believed him, but before she could answer there were one or two points to settle. “If I marry you, you will believe me when I say that although I dare say it will be very nice to live here in comfort and have the children to love and look after and have pretty clothes, I wouldn’t be doing it for any of those things…. I—I like you and I think we could be content together. Only, I don’t love you, you know.…” She paused. “I’m making a muddle of it, but do you understand?”

He was smiling a little. “Oh, yes, and I think we might leave the romantic side of it for the time being, don’t you?”

Romance readers around the world were sad to note the passing of Betty Neels in June 2001. Her career spanned thirty years, and she continued to write into her ninetieth year. To her millions of fans, Betty epitomized the romance writer, and yet she began writing almost by accident. She had retired from nursing, but her inquiring mind still sought stimulation. Her new career was born when she heard a lady in her local library bemoaning the lack of good romance novels. Betty’s first book, Sister Peters in Amsterdam, was published in 1969, and she eventually completed 134 books. Her novels offer a reassuring warmth that was very much a part of her own personality, and her spirit and genuine talent live on in all her stories.

The Final Touch

Betty Neels

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

THE vast entrance hall of one of Amsterdam’s oldest and largest hospitals was very nearly empty. At eight o’clock in the evening, visitors had gone home and the chilly dark of a November evening had kept those of the hospital staff who were free indoors. There were, however, four people there: the porter in his kiosk, a telephonist manning a switchboard tucked away at the back of the hall and two men standing near the entrance, deep in talk—an elderly man with white hair and a flowing moustache and beard, not much above middle height and pretty portly, and his companion, strongly built and towering above him, his handsome head bent as he listened, the dim light above them turning his grizzled head to dull silver. The older man spoke at some length, pausing only when someone came in through the big swing doors. A girl, neatly dressed in a raincoat which had seen better days, a headscarf and sensible shoes. She took off the scarf as she crossed the hall, uncovering light brown hair pinned into a bun, and then ducked her head into the kiosk.

The two men watched her and the elder said softly, ‘The English nurse—you have not yet met her? She is good: capable and quick and does not fuss. She has no Dutch to speak of but she is learning fast.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘A rather plain girl and I think not happy.’

‘Homesick?’ The question was casually kind.

‘No, no. I believe she has no home. Young van Kamp met her when he was doing that course in London, took her here, there and everywhere and persuaded her to try for a job with us. Well, we all know van Kamp, don’t we? A great one for the girls, and that’s all right as long as they don’t take him seriously. Only it seems that she has taken him seriously. He has taken her out once or twice but I hear that he has his eye on that new young woman on Men’s Medical.’

They watched the girl leave the kiosk and disappear down one of the corridors leading from the hall.

‘You are very well informed,’ remarked the younger man.

‘Huib—’ Huib was his registrar ‘—hears all this from the junior housemen. He thinks it is a great shame; he wants to warn her, but, although she is well liked, there is no one close enough.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But there, she is a young woman of twenty-three and presumably doesn’t walk around with her head in a sack. Now, as to this patient…’

The girl, in the meanwhile, had made her way to the nurses’ home and gone to her room. Her head was by no means in a sack but for some months it had been in the clouds, kept there by daydreams of a happy future, but now, sitting on the side of her bed, still in her raincoat, she had to admit that the sooner she got her feet back on solid earth, the better. She had been a fool, but never again, she told herself fiercely. Sitting there, she went over the events of the last month or so and, being a girl of good sense, admitted that she had been blind and naïve; Cor van Kamp had swept her off her feet just at a time when she had been fighting discontent with her life. She was happy as a nurse and she had done well but her home-life was non-existent. Her mother had died when she was still at school and her father had remarried after a few years; a widow with a daughter a little older than she—company for each other, her father had declared happily, only it hadn’t worked out like that. Her stepsister Eunice had grown into a pretty girl, found herself a job as a fashion model and left home, and shortly after that her father had died and her stepmother had sold their home and gone to live in the South of France. Within a year she had lost all contact with her and she saw Eunice only in the pages of glossy magazines. The tentative advances she had made to meet, even to find a small flat and share it, had been rebuffed.

She had known at the time that it had been silly to suggest it; she had almost nothing in common with her stepsister and she was aware that her ordinary features, old-fashioned ideas and lack of clever conversation would have been a hindrance to Eunice. Besides, she wore all the wrong clothes… Cor van Kamp had changed all that for her; he had singled her out, talked to her, taken her to romantic little restaurants for dinner, walked with her in the parks of London, borrowed a car and taken her to Brighton for the day, to the theatre, to films… She had been infatuated, believing every word he told her—that she was the only girl for him and hinting at a marvellous future—unaware that he had been amusing himself. He had not wanted to go to London in the first place and he was bored, and then he had seen her and set himself the task of getting her to fall in love with him just for a joke. He had suggested that she might get a job at his own hospital in Amsterdam even though he hadn’t meant a word of it; indeed, he was getting bored with her too. She was a nice little thing, but he was clever enough to realise that she was a girl with decided ideas about brief love-affairs, and she was tiresomely serious about marriage. All the same, he had found it all a bit of a joke when she had left her job at the hospital and applied for and got the post of staff nurse on Women’s Surgical in Amsterdam.

That had been almost two months ago and during that time they had been out together only three times, brief meetings in cafés when he had talked easily and amusingly about the hospital and his work and never about their future together. He had kissed her carelessly and told her how much he missed her but that he had almost no free time. She had believed him, holding desperately on to the excuse that he worked even harder than she did, and on their last meeting she had tried hard not to notice that he was preoccupied, even impatient with her. All the same, she had told him that she would have a half-day at the weekend and could they meet, and everything had been all right again when he had said at once that there was nothing he’d rather do than be with her and told her to wait for him in the Rijksmuseum. ‘Sit in front of the Nachtwacht,’ he had told her. ‘I may get held up, but I’ll come.’

It had rained, but she hadn’t minded that. She had hurried off duty, eaten a hasty lunch and changed out of her uniform, boarded a tram and filed into the museum with a sprinkling of tourists and locals anxious to get out of the chilly November rain. The row of chairs before the famous painting was empty; she chose a seat in the centre and composed herself to wait. From time to time someone would come and sit down near her, the better to study the magnificent painting, but time wore on and Cor didn’t come. However, he had said wait, so she waited while the afternoon edged itself into dusk and one of the attendants came to tell her that the museum would be closing very shortly.

So she went back into the damp streets, uncertain what to do. She had no idea where he might be. The best thing to do would be to go back to the hospital and ask at the porter’s lodge; Cor might have left a message… The thought cheered her and she went into a coffee shop and had coffee and a spiced bun before getting on a tram once more. The tram was full of people in damp coats and she had to stand, her small slender person jammed between two stout matrons with laden shopping bags. The tram stopped close to the hospital but on the other side of the busy street and she had to wait for a gap in the traffic. Visitors were streaming out of the hospital forecourt and she glanced at her watch. It was just after half-past six, and if Cor was free there was still time for them to go out to dinner or to a film.

He was free—she saw him a moment later—but not for her. He had strolled on to the opposite pavement, his arm tucked into that of a girl—one of the staff nurses in Theatre whom she knew slightly. As she looked he bent his head and kissed her and they laughed together and went walking off, still laughing.

She watched them go and all the small doubts she had tried so hard to ignore during the last few weeks came crowding back, presenting her with a clear picture quite unlike her dreams. She turned on her heel and walked back towards the shopping streets, their windows still lighted, and went from shop to shop, gazing unseeingly at their displays, but it kept her from thinking. It was striking eight o’clock when she went through the doors into the entrance hall and asked in her quiet voice if there had been a message for her, knowing already that there hadn’t.

Now she sat on her bed, doing her best to think sensibly. She couldn’t pack her bags and go; she had a contract for six months and, besides, she had nowhere to go, and she had to see Cor; there might be some good reason…

She got up and studied her face in the looking-glass. It looked exactly the same as usual, a little pale perhaps, but her nice unremarkable face showed no sign of her troubled thoughts. She tidied her hair, used powder and lipstick, and went down to the canteen for her supper.

When her companions asked her if she had had a pleasant half-day, she replied serenely that she had enjoyed herself immensely. Only Zuster Smit, another of the staff nurses in Theatre, gave her a faintly surprised and thoughtful look; she went out occasionally with one of the house surgeons and had been told something of the reason why the English girl had come to the hospital. Charity Pearson was a nice girl and deserved better; besides, she was in a strange country. Zuster Smit finished her supper, wondering uneasily if she should do something about it. Warn Charity that van Kamp wasn’t serious and seemed unlikely to be in the foreseeable future? Mention casually that he was free for two or three evenings each week? And that he dated a different nurse each time?

She found herself unable to do any of these things. She could mention it to the houseman she was friendly with, and ask him to talk to van Kamp. That wouldn’t do either. She leaned across the table and invited Charity to have a mug of coffee in her room with half a dozen other nurses; she hadn’t eaten her supper and she was pale and quieter than ever.

It was Theatre day on Women’s Surgical the next morning, something Charity welcomed for she was kept too busy to think about anything but her work. The routine was familiar by now and very similar to that of the London hospital where she had trained, and she had acquired a basic Dutch so that she could answer the patients’ needs; she went to and fro with the cases for Theatre, saw to drips, inspected dressings and, under the Hoofdzuster’s sharp eye, gave necessary injections. She was off duty at five o’clock but it was nearer six by the time she left the ward and began the lengthy walk through the hospital to the nurses’ home. The surgical wing was new, built on to the original main hospital, and the women’s ward was on the third floor. She went slowly down the wide staircase to the floor below—the floor where Cor worked, although on the other side of the main building, where the medical wards were housed. Tired though she was, she allowed her feet to carry her along the wide corridor at the back of the old hospital—there was just the chance that she might meet Cor. She had never gone to that wing deliberately before but now it seemed to her urgent to see him. She was halfway along it when he came out of the swing doors of the children’s ward, saw her, hesitated, and then came towards her.

‘Darling…’ he was smiling at her ‘…I’ve been trying to see you all day—but I’m up to my eyes and still hard at it. I’m so sorry about yesterday—an emergency—didn’t have time to leave a message for you; actually I was in Theatre until after midnight, giving anaesthetics.’

Charity looked at him without smiling, willing him to tell the truth and beg her to forgive him, but he stood there, smiling still.

After a silence which went on far too long she said in her quiet voice, ‘No, you weren’t, Cor. I saw you yesterday evening with that pretty staff nurse from Theatre. You were on the pavement outside the hospital.’ She went on steadily, ‘Oh, it’s quite all right—it’s me that’s been silly—I thought… Well, never mind what I thought, but you didn’t need to lie.’

He blustered a bit then. ‘I don’t know what you mean—there’s no harm in a man’s taking a girl out.’

‘None at all, only you weren’t very fair, were you? I sat in the Rijksmuseum for hours. Did you forget?’

‘No, no, of course not; I thought you’d have the sense not to wait for more than half an hour or so.’ He smiled again—he smiled too easily, she thought. ‘Anyway, no harm done. We had fun together while it lasted, darling, and you’ve got a good job here.’

‘Yes, I have.’ Her voice was suddenly sharp. ‘And don’t ever call me darling again.’

His smile became a sneer. ‘Oh, be your age, for heaven’s sake—good lord, you would think I had intended marrying you.’

When she stayed silent he said, ‘My God, you did… You must have been out of your mind.’

She said, her voice quite quiet once more, ‘Yes, I think I was, but I’m sane now.’ And, suddenly impatient, she added, ‘Oh, go away, do.’

He turned on his heel and went without a backward glance, leaving her standing there, watched with calm interest by the man who had come from the children’s ward. Only when he saw her take out a handkerchief and blow her small nose with unwonted vigour did he put out a hand behind him, push the door soundlessly open and then allow it to swing back with some force so that she was aware of someone there. She didn’t turn round. He hadn’t expected her to; he walked past her rigid back without haste on his way to the medical wing and he was very nearly at the end of the corridor when he heard her muffled sobs.

He walked back to where she was standing. ‘Staff Nurse Pearson, is it not?’ He had only the faintest of accents and his voice was quiet. ‘Perhaps I can help?’

She hadn’t turned round and her sniffs were prodigious but she answered him at once. ‘Thank you—but not really, please don’t bother.’

He said easily, ‘You haven’t been here long, have you? I expect you are feeling homesick, are you not? I was just going out for a breath of air and a cup of coffee. Why not come with me? And do turn round; there is nothing to be ashamed of in tears, you know.’

He had a compelling voice, she turned round obediently and lifted her face, rendered plain by tears and a pink nose, to his. She hadn’t seen him before; she was sure that she would have remembered him if she had. He was quite overpoweringly tall and massively built and good-looking into the bargain. ‘Are you a visitor?’ she asked.

‘Er—no, I work here.’

‘A doctor?’

‘A surgeon.’ He smiled down at her very kindly. ‘Van der Brons.’ He put out a large firm hand and engulfed one of hers. ‘Go and put on a coat; I’ll be in the entrance hall in ten minutes.’

He saw her hesitate and added gently, ‘And wear something on your head—it’s a chilly evening.’

His prosaic remark was somehow reassuring.

He was in the entrance hall when she got there ten minutes later, looking larger than ever in a thick jacket, his silvery head uncovered. The jacket looked expensive and she wondered uneasily just who he was but his friendly, ‘Ah, there you are,’ dispelled any vague doubts and they went out into the courtyard together and thence into the busy street. It was a chilly damp evening and the streets around the hospital were narrow with ancient houses brooding over them. He took her arm and led her through the narrow alley which brought them out into a better-lit street.

‘Coffee first?’ he asked, and didn’t wait for an answer but steered her into a half-empty café and sat her down at a small table. It was very warm there, and he took her raincoat and tossed his jacket over the back of his chair, revealing a beautifully tailored suit, immaculate linen and gold cufflinks. Her uneasy thoughts returned but were swept away by his easy, ‘Toasted sandwiches? And uitsmijter? Soup?’

She chose sandwiches, he gave the order and they drank their coffee while they waited. However upset she felt, she was given no chance to brood, for he kept up a steady flow of small talk about nothing in particular.

The sandwiches were delicious and the coffee hot and comforting; Charity’s pale face resumed its normal healthy colour and, led on in a gentle way by her companion, she began to talk, not noticing that his casual questions were encouraging her to tell him something of herself.

He fetched more coffee from the crowded counter and asked carelessly, ‘Do you intend to stay in Holland for a time or is this just a few months’ visit to see if you like us?’

She didn’t answer at once. She had a sudden wish to spill her bewilderment and misery and loneliness all over this large placid man, but of course that was an idiotic idea; she didn’t even know who he was, only his name and the fact that he was a surgeon at the hospital. She blushed scarlet, remembering that she and Cor had met in a similar fashion. Perhaps this man had picked her up on the spur of the moment, and how willingly she had agreed to go with him!

Mr van der Brons, watching her, guessed unerringly what was in her head. ‘I have a sister about your age,’ he said in a soothing voice. ‘She’s in Edinburgh on a six-month course; she qualified here, now she wants to spread her wings—just as you. She is the youngest—I have two other sisters and two brothers. Have you any brothers and sisters?’

Somehow he had conveyed the impression that he was her elder brother too, so she said readily, ‘No, at least—I have a stepsister. She’s a model and lives in London. She’s very pretty…’

‘Your parents?’ The question was so softly put that she hardly noticed it.

‘My mother died when I was still a small girl, and my father married again—my stepmother was a widow and had a little girl too. He died just after I started my training and my stepmother has gone to live in the South of France.’

Before she could regret her chattiness he began to talk about his own family, vague remarks which in truth told her nothing about him or them but allayed her shyness and doubts.

‘Do you care for a brisk walk? It will have to be up one street and down another but some of the buildings are charming and the canals are always interesting.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Are you on duty in the morning?’ And when she nodded, ‘Then we have time to walk for half an hour before you need to be back.’

They went out into the dark evening and he took her arm to cross the street. ‘Do you find the duty hours easier here?’

‘Well, seven o’clock is earlier then I was used to in London.’ She had to skip a bit to keep up with him and he slowed his steps. ‘On the other hand, it is nice to be off duty earlier; I mean, half-past three is very handy if one wants to go shopping.’

He agreed gravely as they started to walk alongside a canal, along a cobbled street lined with gabled houses, their windows lighted, the curtains undrawn. He pointed out the variety of gables to her, described their interiors, remarking that for the most part their owners took great pride in keeping them in good order.

‘They look delightful from outside,’ said Charity, ‘I hope I get the chance to see inside one before I go back to England.’

‘Well, there’s time enough for that, is there not? Do you have a six-month contract?’

‘Yes.’ His remark reminded her of her talk with Cor and a very sharp wave of unhappiness washed over her so that she was quite unable to say anything more; just for a little while this nice quiet man had pushed away a future she didn’t want to think about but now it was back again. She drew a troubled breath and made a great point of examining the contents of a small antiques shop they were passing, doing her best to regain her usual good sense.

‘You’re unhappy,’ he stated in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘and I find it difficult to believe that you are homesick since you have no home, but I dare say you don’t want to talk about it, not just now.’

He turned her round and began to walk back the way they had come. When they were within sight of the hospital she asked, ‘Why did you ask me to come out with you?’

‘I told you that I have a sister about your age; I would like to think that if she were unhappy and alone in Edinburgh there would be someone to keep her company for an hour or two, since I couldn’t do that myself.’

‘Oh—oh, I see. Well, thank you very much—you’ve been very kind. I feel quite all right again. I’m not usually so silly…’

He pushed open the big door and held it for her to go through. ‘There is nothing silly about admitting one’s feelings.’ He smiled very kindly at her upturned face. ‘Now go to bed and sleep well.’

‘You too, Mr van der Brons.’

He waited near the door until she had disappeared from the hall and then turned and went out again to where a dark grey Rolls-Royce was parked, got in and drove away.

Charity hadn’t expected to sleep, but she did, only to wake very early to face a day she would have to get through somehow. She supposed that in a little while she would feel happy again but on this dark cold morning the future seemed a hopeless blank. In vain she told herself that Cor wasn’t worth another thought, that she was well out of it. She would forget him in time, and when her contract was up she would go back to England and get a good post in one of the teaching hospitals and carve a career for herself. The thought depressed her but at least it was something to think about.

She joined her fellow nurses at breakfast, outwardly her usual quiet self, answering their good-natured remarks in her peculiar Dutch and then hurrying through the hospital to her ward.

Ladies who had been operated on the previous day were feeling, naturally enough, low-spirited and the Hoofdzuster, a rather peevish woman at the best of times, had started a cold so that her peevishness was even worse than usual. Charity, doing her best, was glad that she was off duty at half-past three. If she were quick, there would be time to go to the book shop on the Singel and choose a paperback. Books were expensive in Holland, she had discovered, but they were her only extravagance.

When her father had died the allowance he had given her had been stopped by her stepmother, who had pointed out that now that she was nursing she earned enough to be independent. She had added, ‘I know that in his will your father arranged for me to continue your allowance but of course when he went to make it you were still at school. I don’t believe in young people living on money they haven’t earned. You are not like Eunice, who will probably marry well; you need to work hard and make a career for yourself.’ She had left for France shortly after that, taking every penny with her.

There was nothing to be done about that; Charity, never an extravagant girl, learned to buy the sort of clothes which didn’t date and made them last and, since although she was well liked at the hospital she was seldom asked out, that didn’t matter too much. If sometimes she envied her friends’ new outfits and sighed over the glamorous photos of Eunice in the glossy magazines she never mentioned it.

Now, hurrying towards the shops in the Kalverstraat and Leidsestraat, she decided that the time had come to buy something new and for once fashionable. She had saved for a rainy day and this seemed to be it. She chose a book and then turned her attention to the dress shops. They were all too expensive; C & A and Vroom and Dressman would suit her pocket better. It was a pity that there wasn’t time to buy anything before they closed but she studied their windows so that on her next free day she would have some idea of what she wanted. Her winter coat was good for another year; it had been bought in a sale, a serviceable brown wool bearing a quality label. She had a couple of skirts too and jumpers and sweaters enough even if she was heartily sick of them. A really smart dress, she mused, some pretty shoes and, if there was enough money, a pair of soft leather boots. She walked back to the hospital, keeping her mind on new clothes and off Cor, who most tiresomely lurked at the back of her head however she tried to forget him; it was a pity that she should walk into him as she reached the hospital forecourt. He stopped in front of her and started to speak, but she brushed past him, her chin in the air, and Mr van der Brons, standing at the ward window high above her, nodded his head in approval.

Charity plunged wholeheartedly into her work; it wasn’t too bad on the ward for her head was occupied with the different jobs she was doing and struggling to speak a coherent Dutch which the patients could understand. They were all very good to her, making her repeat a new word until she had it right so that she began to achieve quite a vocabulary, albeit with a marked Amsterdam accent. She got on well with the other nurses too and once or twice went out to the cinema with them or to a café for a cheap meal, but even so there were still times when she was alone and unable to do anything but think of Cor. It should have helped her to forget him when snippets of gossip reached her ears, dropped by kindly nurses who had put two and two together about her and Cor and considered that he had treated her badly, but none of the tales of the light-hearted affairs with first one nurse and then another had eased her feelings. It was the first time she had fallen in love so wholeheartedly and she was incapable of knowing the difference between that and infatuation. However, she was sensible enough to know that she couldn’t sit around and mope. She began to make a systematic round of the city’s museums and botanical gardens; quite a few of them were free and in others the charges were small. She tried Madame Tussaud’s wax models of the Dutch through the ages and balanced that visit, which was expensive, by spending half a day at the Museum Architectuur, which was free, and of course she went again to the Rijksmuseum, for as well as the paintings there, the displays of silver and glass and furniture were enormous; it would probably take her until the end of her stay to see it all.

Once or twice she thought about Mr van der Brons; she had never seen him again and she began to wonder if he had been a visitor, enjoying a joke at her expense, but even if that were the case she thought of him with pleasure and a little wistfully, for he had proved a friend in need without offering tiresome advice or being too sympathetic.

It would have surprised her to know that he was aware of her comings and goings.

He was in Brussels when she was moved to Men’s Medical, which meant that she saw Cor each and every day, not always to speak to, of course, but, all the same, even if he were at the other end of the ward, she was unhappily aware of him and it took all her self-control to attend him while he examined a patient. As for Cor, he found the situation amusing and took every opportunity to speak to her, putting a hand on her shoulder for good measure as he passed her, giving her speaking glances, exchanging knowing looks with the patients. She had to put up with it, for she had no reason other than to get away from him with which to plead to the directrice to have her moved to another ward. The Hoofdzuster had given her a good report after her first week and she enjoyed her work there. It seemed as though she would have to bear with his unwelcome attentions. For they were unwelcome, despite the fact that she still thought of him with longing, for every time he came on to the ward—and that was often enough—the sight of him set her heart beating and brought the pretty colour into her cheeks. Just the same she began to look plain and pale; there were shadows under her eyes and her slim person became thin.

This was something which Mr van der Brons noticed at once when he came on to the ward to give his opinion on a patient needing plastic surgery. He was accompanied by his registrar, a posse of housemen and the medical consultant of the ward, and met at the door by the Hoofdzuster with suitable pomp. Charity, busy getting old Mijnheer Prins back into his bed, looked up as the party proceeded down the ward, her firm little chin dropping with utter surprise, remembering just in time to uphold the tottering Mijnheer Prins before his old legs gave out, while a nice warm feeling crept around her insides. Rather like seeing a comfy chair by a bright fire on a cold day, she thought confusedly, or finding the right path when you thought you were lost.

Mr van der Brons came unhurriedly down the ward, his head bent to catch whatever it was his colleague was saying, but he glanced up and smiled very faintly at her as the entourage swept past. She didn’t smile back at him; it might not do. She beamed at her patient instead as she heaved him carefully between the sheets.

Mr van der Brons, back in his consulting-room on the ground floor of the hospital, made no effort to do any work but sat deep in thought until it was time for him to go to his own operating theatre and deal with a particularly nasty case of burns needing skin grafts. Scrubbing presently with his registrar at the next basin, he remarked casually, ‘I saw that man on Medical this morning; we had better fit him in next week. He’s well enough, I think. I see the English nurse is working there…’

‘Yes—van Kamp was talking about that the other day, so one of the housemen told me. Everyone knows how shabbily he has behaved and it is a shame; she’s a nice girl too and has never uttered a word against him. More than he deserves. He should keep to his own sort. I’m told he needles her when he’s on the ward.’

Mr van der Brons, standing obediently while a nurse fastened his gown about his vast frame, merely grunted.

Two days later, Charity was told that she had been posted to the burns unit. ‘You’re a lucky girl,’ observed the Hoofdzuster, who was sorry to see her go. ‘Mr van der Brons is highly thought of. The burns unit is quite a large one and always very busy. I hope you will be happy there, Zuster Pearson.’

Charity had absolutely no doubt about that; she was free of Cor and with a chance of forgetting him and working for a man she had instantly liked.

CHAPTER TWO

THE burns unit was modern, built on to the original hospital, equipped with the most up-to-date beds, operating theatres and recovery-rooms. It could house twenty patients and was always full for hospitals from the surrounding countryside sent their patients there to be treated and, later, to have skin grafts. Charity, presenting herself for duty on a Monday morning, marvelled at the wealth of apparatus as she found her way to Sister’s office. Hoofdzuster Kingsma was sitting at her desk, a splendid figure of a young woman with regular features, very blue eyes and pale hair. She looked up as Charity tapped on the door and went in and said pleasantly in heavily accented English, ‘Ah, the new member of our team. It is nice to meet you, Zuster Pearson. Sit, please, and I will tell you of our unit and your duties and then we will go together and see all of it.’

So Charity sat and listened carefully; she wouldn’t be able to remember it all at once but she stored the information away, especially the last bit of her companion’s briefing. ‘You will expect, you understand, to work hard,’ she observed cheerfully. ‘The professor will have only the best; he does not look at the clock and he would not expect any of us to do so either. If we are off duty and he is still working, then we stay on duty. You understand? He is a hard taskmaster but he is also a very good man and most kind.’

Charity nodded her tidy head under its little white cap. She wondered who the professor might be. Perhaps Mr van der Brons was his registrar. She would have to find out…

She found out within seconds of the thought. Mr van der Brons came into the office and Zuster Kingsma rustled to her feet and said, ‘Goeden morgen, Professor.’ Charity, on her feet as well, murmured, ‘Good morning,’ with suitable politeness.

Quite wasted on him, for he clapped Hoofdzuster Kingsma on the shoulder with a friendly, ‘Dag, Els,’ and asked Charity if she was pleased to be working on the burns unit. ‘Hard, very hard work, Charity,’ he added ‘but I dare say you will enjoy it.’

‘I am just about to take Zuster Pearson round the department,’ said Hoofdzuster Kingsma, ‘but perhaps you wish to see a patient?’

The pair of them switched to speaking in Dutch then, which gave Charity time to look at him properly, something she had never quite achieved. She had, she remembered been too upset about Cor…

He was older than she had first thought, nearer forty than thirty, and undeniably good-looking… He turned his head suddenly and gave her a kind smile; his eyes were very blue, even more so than Hoofdzuster’s, half hidden under heavy lids. He said in English, ‘Sister will report on you in a week’s time. If you are not happy with us, don’t be afraid to say so, but I see no reason why you shouldn’t settle in nicely.’

He nodded in an absent-minded way and went off, leaving Hoofdzuster Kingsma to guide her round the department. It took quite a time, what with being introduced to the other nurses—and there was no lack of staff—and meeting the patients. There was a small ward for children, all four cots occupied; three of them had been scalded. ‘Hot coffee,’ explained Sister, ‘boiling water from the cooking-stove, and this one climbed into a bath—her mother had filled it with scalding water and gone to answer the telephone—and this one…’ she paused by a little boy of seven or eight years ‘…is to have a skin graft. He was here for four months last year; now the professor is going to repair the damage. His back is a mass of scar tissue—he will need several grafts over the next few years.’

She led the way to a large airy room where four women sat in comfortable chairs, knitting and sewing. ‘All for grafts,’ said Sister. ‘Do you know anything about grafting?’

‘Not very much, Sister. There’s the Thiersch method, isn’t there? Small pieces of skin bound on to the raw area? And Reverdin’s method—I’ve not seen that one—strips of skin taken from an arm or a thigh…’

‘That is right, we see both those here, and also the professor works a great deal with pedicles—he has had some splendid results.’

There was a men’s ward with six beds and another ward with women patients and two six-wards, both occupied. There was a splendidly equipped intensive care unit too. Charity followed the Hoofdzuster back to her office, reflecting that while she was on duty she was unlikely to have a moment in which to allow her thoughts to wander, and when she did get off duty she would probably be too tired to do more than climb into her bed. She found that she welcomed the thought; she would have no chance to mope over Cor and since the burns unit was in a separate wing of the hospital she wasn’t likely to meet him either.

She sat down in front of Hoofdzuster Kingsma’s desk and paid strict attention to what she was saying. ‘Now, as for the patients who come to us with burns, there is much to be done for them, and on admission the professor or his registrar will be present. There is shock and much pain and loss of fluid, of that you will already know—yes? And its treatment? Good. Morphia is given intravenously—the professor himself orders exactly what he wishes done.’

Charity spent the next few days getting to know her way around. She saw little or nothing of Mr van der Brons for the simple reason that she worked only on the wards where patients were either waiting for skin grafts or were being treated for comparatively minor burns. True, he came on to these wards, but most of his day was spent in Theatre or doing the dressings of his most badly injured patients, for these he liked to attend to himself.

It was at the end of her first week, with the prospect of a free day ahead of her, that she came face to face with him on her way off duty. He stood in front of her with the air of a man who had all day at his disposal. ‘Ah, going off duty? Do you like your work here?’

‘Yes. Oh, yes, very much—it’s different…’

‘Indeed it is. Have you done any Theatre work?’

‘Not very much. Only three months’ staffing. I enjoyed it.’

‘Then very soon you shall come into Theatre. Are you off duty now?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. We will spend the evening together and you shall tell me what you think of the unit.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Twenty minutes? I’ll be in the forecourt.’

Charity grabbed at common sense as the prospect of an evening spent in his company threatened to swamp it. ‘That’s very kind of you, sir, but I’m not sure…’

‘Why not? I don’t bite. There is no time to discuss things while we are both working. We can do so at our leisure.’

Put like that it sounded completely sensible; moreover, she could think of no reasonable excuse.

She said in her quiet way, ‘Well, thank you. I’ll—I’ll go and change.’

She went past him and then stopped. ‘Nowhere too grand,’ she begged him. ‘I haven’t the right clothes.’

He assured her in a placid manner that the restaurant he had in mind required no dressing up.

She showered and changed into a soft grey jersey dress which, while well cut and in the best of taste, did nothing for her, topped it with her winter coat, dug her feet into her best shoes—quite unsuitable for the Dutch winter weather—found gloves and handbag, and went down to the entrance, telling herself as she went that she must have lost her good sense. Mr van der Brons could have found out all he wanted to know about her reactions to working at the hospital without the bother of taking her out for the evening. She made her way to the entrance, worrying as to whether she was wearing the right clothes. Cor had never happened to take her anywhere where clothes mattered, but she had the strong feeling that the professor was an entirely different kettle of fish.

She had worried unnecessarily; she was stuffed neatly into the Rolls and driven through the city to the Bodega Keijzer, opposite the Concertgebow, for the professor had a very shrewd idea of what she was thinking about behind her quiet face. The food there was excellent and the atmosphere was pleasantly warm and friendly, just the thing to put her at her ease, and the grey dress was exactly right… Charity relaxed, which was what he had intended, drank the sherry he ordered for her and conned the menu.

‘I’m famished,’ observed Mr van der Brons. ‘The groentensoup is delicious; shall we have that to start with? And the fish here is good—I can recommend the zeetong—sole…’

Charity, disarmed by the friendly informal atmosphere, agreed happily and applied herself to her soup and the easygoing conversation of her companion. They had eaten their soup and sole and she was halfway through a towering ice-cream swathed in whipped cream before Mr van der Brons asked her if she was happy.

She paused in conveying a spoonful of ice to her mouth. ‘Me? Yes, thank you. I do like the burns unit; it’s—it’s worthwhile, if you see what I mean.’

The professor, whose life work it was, saw what she meant. ‘Not working you too hard?’ he wanted to know pleasantly.

‘No. It’s nice to be so busy that there’s no time to think about anything else.’

She blushed a little, for she hadn’t meant to say that; it was a relief when he took no notice. He would have forgotten about Cor by now.

She swallowed the next spoonful of ice-cream very suddenly when he asked. ‘And young van Kamp?’

He expected an answer, she could see that. ‘I never see him,’ she told him, but she couldn’t quite keep the regret out of her voice.

He said kindly, ‘You have only to ask me if you should at any time wish to be transferred back to a medical ward.’

She said hastily, ‘No, that would be a mistake—he might think that I was… He’s taking out that very pretty nurse from the general theatre.’

‘Ah, yes. She is a charmer, isn’t she? Will you have another ice? No? Coffee, then… Do you hear from your stepsister?’

‘I had a card from Portugal, she’s modelling there for Harper’s and Queen magazine.’

‘It is to be hoped that she will get an assignment to Amsterdam, then you would be able to spend some time with her.’

‘It would be nice to see her.’ She looked down at her plate. ‘But I bore her and I can quite see why. She is really beautiful.’ She sighed unconsciously. ‘And she wears the loveliest clothes.’

She didn’t enlarge upon that; somehow she felt that her companion didn’t mind about clothes, though without saying a word he had given her the impression that he had found the grey dress quite acceptable.

She gave another little sigh, this time of pure pleasure; Mr van der Brons was an undemanding and restful companion. With Cor she had had to exert herself to be lively and appreciative of his remarks; with her companion there was no need to be either. Indeed, their small talk was easy and their silences were comfortable and there was no need to break them; she was quite at ease with him.

They sat over their meal for a long time until she glanced at her watch and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour.

‘You have a day off tomorrow,’ he pointed out. When she nodded without speaking, he asked, ‘What do you intend to do with it? A week tomorrow I’m going to Leiden…’

He was sitting back in his chair, a cup of coffee before him. ‘I am lecturing there. I’ll give you a lift there, only you will have to be outside by half-past eight.’ He smiled suddenly so that she found herself smiling back, when in actual fact she had intended refusing coldly, for he had sounded arbitrary.

She said hesitantly, ‘Well…’ Of course he would be used to his sisters; she imagined that an elder brother might adopt a tone of voice like that when addressing them; perhaps he thought of her in the same category. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said in a little rush.

He took her back to the hospital presently, bade her a pleasant goodnight at the entrance and waited until she had disappeared down the corridor on her way to the nurses’ residence before getting back into his car and driving himself home.

He was letting himself into one of the beautiful seventeenth-century red brick town houses overlooking the Herengracht when he was met in his hall by a small neat man of middle years who addressed him with the civil familiarity of an old servant and a decided cockney accent.

‘Evening, Jolly,’ said the professor.

‘Good evening to you, sir—me and Mrs J. were getting that worried. As nice a dinner as I ever seen all ready to serve and you not ’ome.’

He took his master’s coat and laid it carefully over an arm. ‘Rang the ’ospital, I did, and they said as you ’ad gone hours earlier.’

‘On a friendly impulse I took someone out to dinner, Jolly. I had no intention of doing so, but she looked very lonely. English, Jolly.’

‘Ah, a tourist, sir?’

‘No, a nurse at the hospital. So I will come to the kitchen and apologise to Mrs Jolly and beg you to eat the dinner she had so kindly cooked for me.’

‘Well, as to that, sir…’ Jolly bustled ahead and opened the narrow door at the back of the hall and they descended a few steps to the kitchen, an extremely cosy place even if semi-basement; warm and well lit with a vast Aga along one wall and an open dresser filled with china along another. There were Windsor chairs on either side of the Aga, each occupied by a cat, and sprawled before the fire was a large shaggy dog who heaved himself up and pranced to meet the professor. He stayed quietly by him while he made his excuses to his housekeeper, speaking Dutch this time to the plump little woman before going back to the hall and into his study, the dog close on his heels. Here he sat down at his desk and, despite the papers waiting for his attention, did nothing at all for quite a while but sat deep in thought.

Presently he stirred. ‘I am almost forty years old,’ he addressed the dog, who looked intelligent and wagged his tail. ‘Would you consider, Samson, that I am middle-aged? Past the first flush of youth? Becoming set in my ways?’

Samson rumbled gently in a negative fashion and the professor said, ‘Oh, good, I value your opinion, Samson.’ He pulled the papers towards him and applied himself to them. ‘She has a day off tomorrow,’ he went on, ‘but I shall see her after that…’

He saw her the next day under rather trying circumstances.

Charity had gone out early; it was a cold clear day, frosty, with a blue sky and a hint of snow to come. Since she wasn’t going to Leiden until next week she had her day planned; she intended to follow the Singel Gracht, the outermost gracht of the inner city, from one end to the other, and when she had done that she would spend an hour or two in a museum and treat herself to a meal in a coffee shop. She had planned to buy some new clothes but somehow she felt restless and a day spent walking and getting to know Amsterdam suited her mood.

She kept to the Singel for some time and then just past the Leidse Plein she crossed over to the Lijnbaans Gracht; she was approaching the Jordaan now, its streets named after flowers and plants, for Jordaan was a corruption of Jardin. Presently she wandered down one of them to become happily lost in a maze of narrow streets lined with small old houses, threaded with narrow canals. She was almost at the end of one such street when she saw smoke billowing from the upper window of a gabled house, bent with age, seemingly held upright by its neighbours. There was no one about, since it was that time in the morning when even the most hardworking of housewives stopped for her cup of coffee. Charity raced down the street and banged on the house door, yelling, ‘Fire,’ at the top of her voice. No one appeared to hear, understandably, for somewhere close by there was a radio blaring pop music.

No one came to the door; she thumped again, still shouting, and then tried the handle. The door opened and she plunged inside. The smoke was rolling down the narrow ladder-like staircase leading from the tiny hall but there were no flames yet. She looked into the room downstairs, cast an urgent eye into the tiny kitchen behind it, tore a towel from a hook on the wall, splashed water over it, and, holding it to her face, began to climb the stairs.

They led to one room under the roof, with a small window at each end, furnished with a large bed, a chest of drawers, a chair or two and a cot under the back window, all of them shrouded in thick smoke. There was a baby in the cot and, lying by an overturned oil stove, there was a toddler, clothes alight, screaming in terror and pain. Charity snatched a blanket off the bed, flung it over the child and rolled it away from the stove, which was now beginning to blaze fiercely. Very soon the whole place would be in flames and already the smoke was beginning to choke her. She hardly noticed the pain as she slapped out the flames on the child’s clothing; even through her thick gloves she felt the sting of fire. She picked the child up, laid it gently in the cot and went to the window and took a deep breath. This time her screams for help were heard; kindly people from the surrounding houses came running into the street and moments later feet pounded up the stairs and two young men came blundering through the smoke.

Charity wasted no time in talk; she thrust the child into a pair of arms, snatched the baby from the cot and gave it to his companion. ‘Quick,’ she shouted at them, quite forgetting that she wasn’t speaking their language, ‘get out…’

It was a situation where words were unnecessary; they disappeared down the stairs and she tumbled down after them, her teeth chattering with fright. Outside a small crowd had gathered. ‘Ambulance,’ said Charity, and then began desperate attempts at Dutch. ‘Ziekenwagen,’ she said urgently. ‘Doctor, Ziekenhuis,’ and, stumped for the words, ‘Fire Brigade.’ While she shouted all this she was taking a look at the children. The baby was a nasty bluish white but untouched by the fire. Charity gave it to a competent motherly-looking woman standing by. It was alive but it would need urgent treatment. As for the toddler, a little girl, she was severely burned but mercifully unconscious. Someone spoke to her but she couldn’t understand a word, all she could do was repeat ‘Ziekenhuis’ loudly and then, hopefully, ’Politie.’

They arrived just as she was repeating another despairing cry for speedy help. A small car with two thickset, reassuringly calm policemen inside. Everyone spoke at once, but, calmly, Charity, terrified that the children would die unless they were helped quickly, cut through the din.

‘The hospital,’ she bawled at them, ‘and do be quick, for heaven’s sake.’

‘English?’ asked one of the policemen. ‘The ambulance comes, also the fire engine…’ As he spoke the ambulance arrived and, hard on its heels, the fire engine. The house was well alight by now but Charity could think only of the small creatures being loaded carefully into the ambulance. It drove away quickly and one of the policemen went around telling everyone in the small crowd to move along please—in Dutch, of course, but there was no mistaking it. She stood, rather at a loss, feeling a bit sick from the smoke and her fright and was rather surprised when the two men who had carried the children to safety, and had been talking to the policemen, came and shook her hand. The Dutch, she discovered, liked to shake hands a lot. She smiled and winced as hers were gripped and the scorched flesh under her gloves throbbed. Nothing much, she told herself, just the backs of her hands—not even her fingers—as one of the policemen came over to her.

‘You will tell me, please, how this happened?’

It was a relief that he spoke English and understood it too. She gave him a businesslike account. ‘And these two young men were so quick,’ she finished. ‘I hope that someone thanks them.’

‘They will be thanked, miss. And you? You are OK? You were also quick. I wish for your name, please. You are a tourist?’

‘No, I work here…’ She told him of her job at the hospital. ‘It’s my day off.’

‘You wish to go there now?’ He smiled in a fatherly fashion. ‘You are dirty from the smoke and your coat is a little burnt.’

It seemed the sensible thing to do. ‘Well, yes, I expect I’d better.’

Then he said, ‘We will take you. It is possible that we shall wish to see you—perhaps tomorrow? At the hospital?’

She nodded. ‘I work in the burns unit…’

They ushered her with clumsy care into the car as though she might fall apart at any moment, and they had good reason; her face was chalk-white, covered in greasy, sooty smoke, her coat was peppered by small burn marks where hot sparks had fallen upon it, and her hands were shaking so much that she had clutched them together, aware that they were painful but unable to do anything about it.

There was still a good deal of confusion; the firemen were getting the fire under control, the small crowd had rearranged itself, melting away when told to move on and then edging forward again.

‘The parents?’ asked Charity. ‘Where are they?’

One of the constables spoke soothingly. ‘They will be found, miss—we have information from the neighbours.’

‘And the two men? Were they burnt?’

‘No, no—just the smoke and that not much. They go also to the hospital.’ He turned in his seat to smile at her. ‘All is well, miss.’

She nodded, struggling with the urge to burst into tears, and minutes later they were at the hospital.

‘Eerstehulp—we take you there…’

‘Oh, please, no, If you would stop here I can go to the nurses’ home…’

‘There is someone to attend to you?’

‘Yes, oh, yes. Thank you both so very much. I’ll be here if you want me, tomorrow.’

The fatherly constable got out of the car and walked with her to the entrance, where he opened the door for her, patted her 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, only it’s so sad,’

‘It could have been even sadder.’

He went away presently, bidding her eat her late lunch like a good girl and take a nap afterwards.

She ate the lunch Zuster Hengstma brought to her but she had no intention of going to sleep. Lying in bed on her day off was a complete waste of time; she would go along to the nurses sitting-room and see what was on TV. She pushed the tray to one side and lay thinking about the rest of her day. When the warden slipped into the room ten minutes or so later Charity was asleep.

She was still asleep when the professor came to take another look at her. He nodded his satisfaction, handed the flowers he had brought to Zuster Hengstma and left a pile of magazines and books on the bedside table.

‘Just keep her in bed for breakfast,’ he suggested. ‘She can get up and dress during the morning. I’ll be along to see her about noon.’

The directrice had accompanied him this time, a stern-visaged lady with a heart of gold which was never allowed to show. She stood looking down at Charity, lying there with her hair all over the pillow, her mouth slightly open, her poor scorched hands lying neatly on the coverlet.

‘We must let her see that we appreciate her bravery, Professor.’

‘Indeed we must. If she is fit tomorrow I shall take her out to lunch.’ He ignored her sharp look. ‘And is there any way in which her clothes can be replaced? Could you suggest that she is covered by insurance or something similar?’

The directrice’s stern mouth twitched. ‘I’m sure that I can think of something, Mr van der Brons.’

They went away together and when Charity awoke it was to see Zuster Hengstma standing by the bed with the tea tray.

‘The professor came again,’ explained that lady. ‘He has brought you flowers and books and after tea you may have visitors.’

The flowers were beautiful and the books would keep her happy for hours. And visitors… She wondered just for a moment if Cor would come and see her and then dismissed the thought.

Of course he didn’t, but several of the nurses came, eager to hear all about the fire and her part in it, being friendly and kind and talking a lot so that by the time she had had her supper she was ready for bed again. She lay back against the extra pillows the warden had brought for her, dipping into the books and glancing every now and then at the vase of lilac, carnations, roses and freesias on the dressing table. Mr van der Brons was really very kind, she thought sleepily: he didn’t say much but somehow he didn’t need to; he was the kind of person one could confide in without feeling a fool. She began to wonder what kind of life he led away from the hospital. It would be interesting to know, but she thought it unlikely that she ever would; he wasn’t a talkative man and to try to find out about him from other people seemed sneaky.

She put down the books and turned off the bedside light. When she saw him again on duty she must thank him for his kindness. He must have been thinking of his sister in Edinburgh, she thought sleepily, a little muddled in the head, but knowing exactly what she meant.

She closed her eyes and thought about the next day; she had been told to stay in bed for breakfast but after that she would go out and buy a new coat. Grey or brown, she debated, useful colours which would go with everything she had; she would have to spend the money she had earmarked for a dress and boots. It was her last waking, regretful thought.

CHAPTER THREE

EXCEPT for the backs of her hands, Charity felt quite herself when she woke up the following morning. Having breakfast brought to her in her bed seemed quite unnecessary, but a treat she had seldom enjoyed. Zuster Hengstma fussed around her, chattering away in Dutch just as though Charity understood every word, and, since she was a kind-hearted woman, Charity made no bones about trying out her own version of the Dutch language.

Zuster Hengstma patted her shoulder. ‘Your Dutch is good,’ she said not quite truthfully, ‘and it will be better. Now you may get up if you wish. The directrice will come and see you later.’

So Charity dressed herself and settled down to read one of the books. When the directrice had been she would take herself off for the rest of the day, somewhere quiet; the Amsterdam Historic Museum would do nicely and one of the nurses had told her that there was a restaurant there—she could have a snack lunch before going in search of a new coat. Having decided what to do with the rest of her day, she opened the copy of Jane Eyre which Mr van der Brons had sent, reflecting that it was a happy surprise that the books were all very much to her taste.

The directrice came shortly after eleven o’clock, accompanied by Mr van der Brons, who wished her a civil good morning, hoped that she had slept well, gave her hands a quick look and then stood by the window, staring out at the wintry day, which gave the directrice an opportunity to enquire in her turn as to Charity’s health.

‘I am delighted that you were not more seriously hurt,’ she told her, ‘and I must commend you upon your courage and quick thinking. You have ruined your coat, I am told. Perhaps you do not know that our nurses are insured against mishap of any sort, so that within a short time you will receive a sum sufficient to replace what you have lost. In the meantime, if you present yourself at the secretary’s office today or tomorrow an advance payment will be made so that you may purchase a coat without any delay.’

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