‘Madge, this is Basil Lambert, 10th Baluch Regiment; Basil, this is Madge, a nurse at the hospital.’
‘Hello there,’ said Madge, feeling slightly shy all of a sudden.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Basil replied with a brief smile, before turning back to his papers. The sleeves of his khaki shirt were rolled up to the elbows and even though it was late on what had been a sticky, humid day he still looked neat and tidy with barely a hair out of place. Madge also noticed a natty, Clark Gable-style moustache. All very impressive, in fact, except for one thing.
He didn’t even rise to greet me, the cheeky so-and-so, Madge thought. She collected her stamp, declined Mac’s offer of a drink once again and hurried off to post her letter.
Madge was so busy that she barely thought anything of the encounter until a week later when she went to collect her mail and discovered a letter without a stamp. What on earth is this? she wondered.
Captain Lambert had written a charming apology and invited her to join him for dinner. Madge considered it. He was incredibly rude when we met, but then he wasn’t bad looking, and I don’t have anything better to do so I might as well.
She wrote a short note accepting his invitation and asked Ahmed, her bearer, if he would be so kind as to deliver it to the small brick hut which Captain Lambert shared with Mac. There was also a letter for Mac, thanking him for being such a gentleman. Not only had he refused to accept any payment for the stamp, but because it was such a dark night he had also insisted on escorting her back to the hospital.
Vera once laughingly told Madge that she had broken hearts from the moment she boarded the Strathnaver on the Forth of Clyde to the time she arrived in Chittagong. Along the way, in the mad social whirl that was Poona, she had been invited virtually every day to the grandest afternoon teas, sophisticated cocktail parties and glamorous, moonlit dinners. There were dates by the dozen, but the flirtations, however enjoyable, had been entirely fleeting.
The upcoming date with Captain Lambert, however, was different. The coconut oil was left on for an inordinate length of time when she washed her hair the night before. The piqué dress from Poona was taken from the wardrobe and checked time and again and Ahmed was asked to make sure her favourite shoes were free of creepy crawlies and the mould that gathered with such monotonous regularity in the humidity of Chittagong. She was even tempted to borrow some of Vera’s bright red Coty lipstick, then remembered the advice from that splendid old lady at the Governor General’s Welcome Ball about not wearing too much make-up in this heat.
The growl of an approaching jeep alerted Madge to Basil’s arrival as she waited just inside the hospital gates and within seconds he stood alongside her looking rather handsome in his neatly pressed khaki trousers and long-sleeved shirt, his short light-brown hair swept to the side.
He had previously warned her that, weather permitting, they would be dining on the veranda of a little cafe in Chittagong so long sleeves were important in keeping the mosquitos at bay.
‘Good evening, madam,’ he said with a bow that instantly made her laugh. ‘My name is Lambert. Basil Lambert,’ he continued, a cheeky grin lighting up his face. ‘Please step this way.’
He helped her into the jeep and within minutes they were sitting in a secluded little cafe off the main road in Chittagong having drinks.
‘I’m so sorry about the other night,’ he said, ‘but by the time I got to my feet it seemed you were walking out of the door.’
Madge realised very quickly that this was not just another moonlit date because within minutes they were chatting away like old friends. Even though they wanted to know about each other, it was their first date and both had been repeatedly warned about the infinite importance of security, so it simply wasn’t the time or place to ask how long they had each been in India, where their next postings would be and which units they were with.
She decided to steer clear of anything on the military side and told him a little bit about her life at home instead.
‘So, I was brought up in Dover but after Dad died and war broke out I moved with my mum and my two younger sisters to High Wycombe, and that’s when I decided to become a VAD. With Christmas on the way I really miss Mum and the girls,’ she said. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘How did you come to be here?’
‘Well, in July 1941 my brother Brian and I got the train from our home in Woking to Surbiton, where we went to the local recruitment office and volunteered for active service. I signed up and was earmarked for the Middlesex Regiment, but Brian was rejected because he was only just seventeen.’
‘So what did you do then?’ asked Madge, who was full of admiration for the patriotism of a boy who had tried to join up straight from school.
She was told that the brothers immediately took a bus to nearby Richmond where there was another recruiting centre.
‘Brian told them he had celebrated his eighteenth birthday in April and he was asked to sign on the dotted line straight away,’ said Basil.
There were dozens of questions that could have been asked by a young couple under normal circumstances. However, with Burma some fifty miles away and vicious hand-to-hand combat taking place across the border the circumstances were far from normal.
There was even a problem arranging a second liaison because Madge was due to start another spell of night duty and Basil, who told her he was in Troop Movements, was endlessly busy throughout the
