Madge left the Birchington maternity home soon after the start of the National Health Service in July 1948 and worked in the commercial world until the arrival of Carolyn, her firstborn, in 1951. Angela followed in 1953. It was only after a plea in 1958 from a close friend to help in an area branch of the National Health Service in Woking that Madge agreed to return to work – ‘but just for a few months’. In a remarkable coincidence the office to which she reported was actually in the six-bedroomed home in Horsell that Basil’s mother and father had sold when they downsized after their family of six children had grown up and flown the nest.
Madge was hard at work one morning when a secretary asked if she had a moment to step into what had been the lounge of the Lambert home. Workmen had been removing the fireplace when one had found an old Christmas card that had fallen behind the back of the mantelpiece. It was a card to Basil, Brian and Bob from a lady who had been their nanny in the late 1920s!
The ‘couple of months’ Madge promised to work for the NHS soon stretched to years and she became a key figure in organising school vaccinations and inoculations. She eventually retired from the NHS on 24 July 1988.
Basil joined Provincial (now United) Newspapers in 1948 and then in 1951, during the Cold War with Russia, he enlisted in the Army Emergency Reserve with the Royal Engineers, based at Longmoor Camp in Hampshire. He continued his annual camps until retirement in 1970 with the rank of major. His military awards include: the 1939–45 Star, the Burma Star, the Defence Medal, the 1939–45 War Medal, SE Asia 1945–46 and the Army Emergency Reserve Decoration 1951–70 with two Long Service Clasps.
In 1985, after thirty-five years during which time he became an executive on the management side, he took early retirement from United Newspapers. The next decade of Basil’s business life was spent with Network Security, who dealt in corporate fraud, and whose retirement gift was slightly different from most. It was a round-the-world trip for two which enabled Madge and Basil to undertake a three-month journey down memory lane, to retrace the steps of a love story that had survived a war of unspeakable brutality. For both, the first port of call on their original journey had been Bombay, which had a population approaching 1.7 million. When they returned in 1994, Greater Bombay had grown to almost 13 million.
From Bombay they flew to Calcutta, where once again they made a point of seeing the good and the not-so-good. First, they were taken on a conducted tour of the poorer areas, which Madge found to be every bit as sad as it had been fifty years earlier. The hustle and bustle, kindness and courtesy hadn’t changed, but there was one major disappointment. Firpo’s was no longer a fashionable restaurant but had become a goods storage centre! The Grand Hotel was now the Oberoi Grand, but was still a haven of perfection. Last but not least, there was the wonderful sight of the Victoria Memorial, restored to its Taj Mahal-style white marble. At dinner the night before they left Calcutta Basil asked the pianist if he would be so kind as to play Madge’s long-time favourite ‘I’ll Be Seeing You (in all the old familiar places)’.
There was certainly nowhere more familiar than Chittagong, the next stop on their journey. Madge and Basil found the small town they had left at the end of the Second World War was unrecognisable. From being an area of enormous natural beauty with lush green forests and white sandy beaches Chittagong District had grown into a city with a population of more than 5.5 million. The one or two cafes on the main shopping street where Madge and Basil had spent those tender and precious hours had long since been blown away on the winds of change.
One thing which hadn’t changed in the half century since they had left was the natural courtesy and kindness which they remembered with great affection. When the manager of their hotel said it would be safer if he drove them in a conducted tour the offer was gratefully accepted. When they eventually got to the grounds of the old Governor General’s residence there was a major surprise. The big house had been turned into a museum but it was closed on the day of their visit so they never did see inside. The grounds which had contained the basha hospital complex had been turned into playing fields and Madge said she was certain that every patient who had passed through the hospital would have approved.
Burma was renamed Myanmar and Rangoon became Yangon in 1989, but even after years in the international wilderness the sweeping elegance of the city’s tree-lined boulevards and the colonial splendour of the dignified Victorian buildings were an eye-opener for both of them. The city was spacious and very impressive, and not at all what they had expected. Intense pressure during Basil’s posting in Rangoon had meant there was no time for leisure visits to monuments like the Shwedagon Pagoda and gold-plated Chaukhtatgyi Buddha, which made seeing them during this trip all the more special.
The pair visited Ho Chi Minh City (once called Saigon) in Vietnam and had a personal look into the Cho Chi tunnels. There was a stopover in Australia, where they visited Basil’s youngest brother Bob and his wife Esther. Then it was across the Pacific to places like Fiji, Hawaii and Los Angeles. Next they visited Vancouver, Memphis and Washington DC before spending ten days in Barbados, where Basil had arranged for their daughters and their husbands to be flown to the Caribbean paradise for a family holiday. It was a
