‘None of that, Phyl! I’ve already got one man in my life and that’s more than enough.’
Unfortunately, Madge discovered the Windamere was booked until November. It took some time for things to fall into place, but once flights to Calcutta, courtesy of the Royal Air Force, were confirmed, Madge and Grace had a week’s holiday to look forward to.
Madge was kept busy in the weeks leading up to the holiday. One day, during her rotation on the British Other Ranks ward, she walked in to a heated discussion to learn that an election had actually taken place in the UK earlier in July. Two or three of the boys were kicking up merry hell as they had missed the opportunity to vote.
‘Did Winston Churchill win?’ asked Madge.
‘Who cares?’ said one of the soldiers. ‘It’s all a shambles anyway when they don’t even take into consideration the opinions of the people out here fighting to serve our country.’
‘That just about sums up the way the 14th Army has been treated throughout,’ said an irate lance corporal, who had been brought in with a bullet wound in the buttock. ‘It’s a disgrace that the powers-that-be expect the military to lay lives on the line, but not to vote. It’s bad enough being shot in the backside without getting a kick in the rump as well,’ he added.
An RAF technician, who had a nasty bout of dysentery, said his squadron had heard about the election and there was a rumour that you could authorise a person back in the UK to vote on your behalf. ‘But that disappeared up the Swannee, didn’t it?’
However, later that week, with her twenty-second birthday just days away, Madge could barely raise a smile as she sat with shoulders hunched over a slice of toast that had long gone cold and a cup of tea in which she had not even bothered to put her usual splash of milk.
‘Cheer up, Miss Misery,’ said the ever tactful Vera, who stood and did an entertaining little dance as she sang, utterly tunelessly of course, ‘The sun has got his hat on, hip, hip, hip hooray, the sun has got his hat on and he’s coming out today.’
Even that little bit of nonsense failed to lift Madge’s spirits and it was clear from the faraway look in her hazel eyes that she was longing to be with a certain somebody. The rest of breakfast was spent in virtual silence with Madge polite as ever but far from her normal happy, joyful self.
They were seated at the end of the mess that was farthest from the office, where a phone could be heard ringing for an unusually long time. Finally Sister Blossom stepped in from the veranda and literally ran across to answer it. She reappeared looking breathless and shouted, ‘Has anybody seen Madge?’
‘She’s over there,’ one of the nurses replied, looking on in astonishment as Sister Blossom once again broke into a run, shouting, ‘It’s for you. It’s for you.’
‘Calm down, Blossom, old girl,’ laughed the girls on the nearest table. ‘And come on, tell us who the caller is.’
‘It’s Basil. He wants to speak to Madge. Is she still here?’
A mini whirlwind in a blue uniform and white apron swept past Matron as the mess ground to a halt. Half the girls were on their feet clapping and cheering as Madge raced into the office and slammed the door shut!
Basil had worked a minor miracle, thanks to his friends in the local Royal Signals unit who had navigated their way through the system between Rangoon and Chittagong, via Imphal – roughly 1,000 miles – and had actually managed to get a telephone call through to the main switchboard at the hospital. They, in turn, had patched him through to the mess where he had guessed, correctly, Madge would be having breakfast.
‘Happy Birthday to you . . .’ he gently crooned down the phone as soon as he heard Madge’s breathless hello.
The conversation turned very quickly to the election and Basil said he knew nothing about it either, but while armed forces were fighting for their country overseas they certainly should have been given the opportunity to vote.
‘It’s a real shame,’ he said, ‘because we’re both over twenty-one so it would have been our first chance to vote in an election, but because of the fighting still going on in the Far East, and the distance from the UK, it seems to have made the whole idea an impossibility. Still, I suppose there’ll be plenty of opportunities for us to vote together in the future,’ he added.
‘Please repeat that as many times as you wish, especially the bit about the future,’ laughed Madge.
‘Enough of that,’ he said, ‘I’m ringing to wish you a very happy birthday and I’m sorry I can’t be with you on the trip to Darjeeling because—’
The line suddenly went dead, but Madge was still full of smiles as she returned to her breakfast and couldn’t help but laugh when Vera asked how many times Basil had said he loved her.
‘You’ll be surprised to hear for the umpteenth time, Miss Nosy, that it is none of your business,’ said Madge, who was glowing with happiness.
On the morning of Madge’s twenty-second birthday Sister Blossom performed another of her magic tricks at an early breakfast and produced letters from Mum and the girls from home, two from Basil, and one from cousin Ruby with the news that she was thinking seriously of emigrating to Australia ‘now the war in Europe is over’. The ever kind and thoughtful Phyl told Madge to close her eyes and then produced an elegant royal blue silk headscarf that was a perfect accessory to the piqué dress Madge had purchased in Poona. ‘It will be ideal for Darjeeling because the temperature can be quite chilly at that altitude once the sun goes down,’ said Phyl.
After her birthday breakfast, Madge headed to Patanga airport with Grace for the flight to
