Madge suddenly remembered the fifteen-hour train journey from London to Gourock and laughed out loud at the first-class railway travel clause before putting the contract back in her cabin case.
Phyl, who had been suffering from a headache, was perking up a bit so Madge went with her and Sally up on deck where they joined a game of cards and a sing-song, before heading off to dinner. When it was time to make her way back down to the cabin, the sea had become so rough that she had to take a firm grip on the rails to steady herself. She was used to the fresh sea air that blew into Dover from the English Channel, but the warm afternoon sunshine, the heavy swell and a strong evening wind buffeting the Strathnaver worked like a sleeping pill and she fell asleep the moment she closed her eyes.
That night, Madge dreamed she was in the air-raid shelter at the bottom of Auntie Beatrice’s garden in Dover sheltering while the Luftwaffe dropped bombs, but the sound of the explosion wasn’t quite right. Her sleep became more and more shallow, but the explosions continued.
Madge suddenly sat up straight in the darkness. Maybe it’s another of those doodlebugs like there was in London, she thought, but the sound it made was different. It was more of a dull thump.
‘What’s that, do you think?’ Phyl whispered from the bottom bunk.
‘Well, I thought it might be a bomb, but I’m not sure it can be out this far from land.’
Thump. Another went off to make Madge realise this wasn’t a bad dream. She was now wide awake. Then there was another. She knew it wasn’t one of the high-explosive bombs the Germans dropped on London. That noise was deafening. And surely they must be beyond the range of doodlebugs? It had to be the depth charges that they had been told about in the briefing the day after they boarded the troopship. Another dull crump, rather than an explosion, confirmed her initial suspicion and Madge just drifted back to sleep when things quietened down.
The atmosphere at breakfast the following morning was subdued. The girl sitting next to Madge told her that apparently one of the destroyer escorts had been sunk during the night. The thought that so many sailors may have given their lives to protect the convoy had many of the nurses in tears.
The week that followed was a quiet one as a throat infection broke out. Madge got rid of her sore throat by doing exactly what Mum had taught her as a child, which was to put two big teaspoons of salt into a glass of warm water and then gargle until it was all gone. Finally, Sunday dawned bright and beautiful as the turbulent seas of the Bay of Biscay began to calm. The enthusiasm of the young padre who led the Sunday service raised the spirits of everyone on board as he spoke about his hopes for a kinder world for all.
The choice of the hymns during the service didn’t go unnoticed at a time when the threat of German U-boat attacks was at its highest. Madge loved hymns but struggled to stop herself from smiling at the sheer irony when two particular lines of an English classic were sung with great enthusiasm:
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril on the sea!
Madge spent that afternoon basking in the warmth of the sun and stayed to watch it set on the horizon. She looked over the side of the boat to see blue-green phosphorus glowing in the water alongside the Strathnaver. It was unlike anything Madge had ever seen but she couldn’t help but be distracted by thoughts of home. The following day would be her twenty-first birthday, and the first she had spent without her family. She couldn’t bear to think about what the family was doing and whether they were all safe and sound, so she went straight to bed without dinner.
‘Happy birthday to you!’ a not altogether unpleasant chorus of voices sang, waking her in the morning. Lined up in the narrow cabin, Phyl, Vera and Sally sang to her. They looked like schoolgirls and Madge laughed. It wasn’t Dad on the piano or Mum, Doris and Doreen but she started the morning with a smile. The girls let Madge use the bathroom first even though it wasn’t her turn.
Behind the door, she heard Vera whisper, ‘One way or another we’ll make sure that Monday the twenty-fourth of July 1944 is a day she will remember . . . Well, after boat drill, of course,’ and Madge wondered what on earth they could have planned.
The girls spent drill giggling and were told off for being so distracted. Alcohol was strictly forbidden so a glass of champagne for the birthday girl and her lunchtime companions was out of the question, but that didn’t stop Vera telling everybody she came across that it was Madge’s twenty-first. An older VAD performed a funny little Charleston-style dance as she walked past smiling and sang, ‘Twenty-one today, twenty-one today, she’s got the key of the door, never been twenty-one before.’ As she turned back to wish Madge lots of luck she said, ‘I read somewhere that you had to be twenty-one before you could even apply to join the service. So you must be the youngest girl on the boat, eh?’
No sooner had lunch finished than afternoon tea began. Vera, the centre of attention as usual, pretended to be a magician and pulled a heavily starched serviette off the top of a beautifully decorated birthday cake.
‘All the way from Sunderland,’ she said in her broad Geordie accent.
Madge was stunned. ‘Vera, how did you wangle this?’ she said, as she stared at the giant Victoria sponge. How Vera had managed to carry the cake
