The Final Touch

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.

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