‘Why absurd?’ he asked blandly.

Britannia settled down comfortably in her seat. ‘Well,’ she explained carefully, ‘we’re in—incompatible, aren’t we? Different backgrounds and interests and…and…’

‘Ages?’ he queried.

‘Lord, no—what has age got to do with it? That was a very pretty girl in church with you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she live close by, too?’

‘Yes.’

Britannia turned to look at him. ‘I wonder why you offered me a lift? Certainly not for the conversation.’

He said blandly: ‘I thought I had explained about the fresh air and exercise…’

‘Oh, pooh. I shall hold my tongue, since you like it that way.’

He ignored this. ‘When you get to the hospital you will be put in the care of a surgical Sister who speaks excellent English. She will take you to any wards you wish to see. I shall be a couple of hours—you will be warned when I am ready to leave.’

‘Who looks after you?’ asked Britannia.

‘I have an excellent housekeeper.’

‘She must be a devoted one too if you fire orders at her in the same way as you’re firing them at me. You know, I don’t think I want to go to Arnhem after all. Would you stop, please? I’ll go for a walk instead.’

He laughed aloud. ‘We have come almost six miles and this isn’t a main road, nor are there any villages—you may have noticed that we are passing the Air Force field. You could walk back the way we have come or continue on to Arnhem. It will be a long…’ He broke off and slowed the car’s quiet rush. There was a woman standing in the middle of the road, waving her arms and shouting. As the professor brought the car to a halt she ran towards it, still shouting and crying too, and he got out without more ado to catch her by the shoulders and say something firmly to her. Britannia had got out as well, for plainly there was something very wrong. The woman was pointing now, towards a very small, rather tumbledown cottage half hidden in the trees, and the professor started towards it, the woman tugging at his sleeve. ‘A child taken ill,’ he said briefly, and Britannia went too; after all, she was a nurse and there might be something she could do.

The child was on the floor of the small room, crowded with furniture, into which they went. A little girl, whose small face was already blue and who had no trace of breath. The professor went down on his knees, asking brief, curt questions of the hysterical mother, then turned to Britannia.

‘Sit down,’ he commanded her. ‘Take the child on your knees and flex her head. There’s a pebble impacted in her larynx, so her mother says.’

He waited a few seconds while Britannia did as she was bid and then swept an exploratory finger into the child’s mouth. ‘Have you a Biro pen with you?’ he asked, and took a penknife from his pocket.

She didn’t say more than she had to, for talk at that time was wasting precious seconds. ‘My bag—outside pocket.’

She watched while he found the pen, pulled it apart and handed her the plastic casing; a makeshift trachy tube indeed, but better than nothing.

‘Hold the child’s head back, give me the tube when I say so,’ said the professor, and opened his knife. ‘This may just work,’ he observed. It took seconds and with the improvised tube in place the little girl’s face began to take on a faint pink as air reached her lungs once more. But the professor wasted no time in contemplating his handiwork. ‘Get into the car,’ he said, and took the child from Britannia’s knee and followed her as she ran back to the Rolls. ‘Hold her steady on your knee and hold the tube exactly as it is now. I’m going to drive to the hospital.’

Britannia paled a little, but her ‘yes,’ was said in a steady enough voice and the professor, acknowledging it with a grunt, went back for the mother, and when she was in the car, still crying and hysterical, picked up the telephone she had noticed beside his seat. He spoke briefly, bent over the child for a moment, got into his seat and drove off smoothly. He drove very fast too; Britannia, her hand locked on the frail plastic tube, sent up a stream of incoherent prayers, mingled with heartfelt thanks that Arnhem couldn’t be very far away now. And at the professor’s speed, it wasn’t. The city’s pleasant outskirts enclosed them, gave way to busy streets and in no time at all, the forecourt of a hospital.

His few terse words into the telephone had borne fruit. Two white-coated young doctors, a rather fierce-looking Sister and her attendant satellite were waiting for them. In no time at all the professor was out of the car, round its elegant bonnet and bending over the child through Britannia’s open door, with the two young men squeezed in on her other side and the Sister right behind the professor, a covered tray in her hands. He used the instruments on it with lightning speed; the plastic Biro case was eased out and a tracheotomy tube inserted and its tapes neatly tied. The professor muttered and the two doctors immediately started the sucker they had brought with them; after a few moments the child’s face began to look almost normal again while the trachy tube made reassuring whistling noises with each breath. The professor spoke again and lifted the child off Britannia’s knee; seconds later she was alone, stretching her cramped back and legs and watching the small urgent procession of trolley, professor and his assistants disappearing into the hospital.

It was almost an hour before anyone came—a porter, who eyed her with some surprise as he got into the driver’s seat beside her. She bade him a quite inadequate hullo and hoped that he could speak English. He could after a fashion, but his ‘In garage’ hardly reassured her.

With the British belief that if she spoke enough he would understand her, Britannia asked: ‘Will the professor be long?’ and then when she saw how hopeless it was, managed a: ‘De Professor komt?’

He shook his head, thought deeply and came out with: ‘Long time.’

He had forgotten her, of course. She smiled at the man, got out of the car and watched it being driven away, round to the back of the hospital. She could go and enquire, she supposed; ask someone where the professor was and how long he would be, but she fancied that he wouldn’t take kindly to being disturbed at his work. She walked slowly out of the hospital gates and started towards the main streets of the town they had gone through. Sooner or later she would see a policeman who would tell her where she could get a bus.

It took a little while, for the streets confused her and there seemed to be no policemen at all, but she found one at last, got him to understand what she wanted and set off once more, her head whirling with lengthy instructions as to how and where to get a bus for Hoenderloo, so it was some time later when she boarded the vehicle and wedged herself thankfully between a stout woman and a very thin old man. There would be a mile or so to walk from the bus stop and the afternoon was closing in rapidly, reminding her that she had had no lunch, but she cheered herself up with the thought of the cosy sitting room at the villa and the plentiful dinner Mevrouw Veske set before her guests each evening.

The bus made slow progress, stopping apparently wherever it was most convenient for its passengers to alight, but it reached her stop at last, and she got out quickly, the only passenger to do so, anxious to get back to the villa. She had taken a bare half dozen steps when she saw the professor looming at the side of the road just ahead of her, the Rolls behind him. He took her arm without a word and marched her to the car, declaring coldly: ‘You tiresome girl, as though I don’t have enough to do without traipsing round the country looking for you!’

She couldn’t see his face very clearly in the early dusk. ‘I’m quite able to look after myself,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘I didn’t know what to do when the porter came to take the car away; he said you would be a long time and I thought that perhaps you intended remaining at the hospital. Is the child all right?’