Some Sunny Day

by Madge Lambert

  Meal times were probably the most relaxing because the patients were too busy eating to continue their meditation, which often included endless chanting. Normally they fell asleep quite quickly after being fed, especially after dinner. It was the noise late at night that was the problem. At first it was entertaining with some chanting away at the top of their voices, and others happily talking to themselves and humming. In the small hours, however, it could be a worry, especially when the noisy ones were told to be quiet by patients desperate for sleep.

  In the main, problems on the ward were few and far between, until patients began to complain to nurses and doctors that they were not being given enough to eat. There were even claims that on some nights they were given nothing at all. When the complaints began to increase Madge went to Matron Ferguson to first inform her of the situation and then ask for advice.

  ‘It’s not simply a case of “please, sir, can I have some more”,’ said Madge. ‘From what these patients are saying there are some nights when they are given nothing at all for dinner.’

  Matron said how much she appreciated Madge’s good sense in bringing the matter into the open, and because it was an unusually quiet day invited her to be her guest for afternoon tea. She explained that the province of Bengal had not long recovered from the effects of a famine ‘of Biblical proportions’ and food was still a very touchy subject indeed.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting there’s a famine,’ said Madge, and Matron nodded.

  ‘Depending on which set of figures you believe, an estimated three million people died from starvation and disease after the winter rice crop of 1942 yielded way below what it normally does,’ Matron sighed. ‘And then the Japanese invaded Malaya before taking control of Burma, and, quite frankly, things just went from bad to worse.’

  Between the end of the Great War and the outbreak of war in 1939, she explained, Burma had been one of the biggest exporters of rice in the world and huge amounts went to Bengal and other parts of India. Once Japan controlled Burma it meant exports to India were stopped instantly. Then a cyclone, followed by tidal waves, endless rain and floods damaged more than three thousand square miles of land and harvestable crops.

  What started out as food shortages quickly turned into a truly dreadful famine which, in the view of many Indians, was caused by the British, and there was still lingering resentment. Whilst this was just ‘a minor hiccup’ the last thing needed at 56 IGH were rumours over new food shortages. ‘Let’s nip this in the bud, Nurse Graves.’

  The solution to the potentially tricky little problem virtually fell into Madge’s lap when she went for a stroll outside the basha wards just before dinner that evening in the brilliant sunshine. Half a dozen ward-boys had carried canisters of curry and rice from the kitchen and thought they were hidden from view on the unobserved side of the bashas. Instead of ladling the curry and rice onto plates they were happily scoffing handfuls as fast as they could. Madge had caught them literally red-handed, but rather than create a scene she just walked over, nodded and pointed to the wards. They stopped eating and started carrying the food canisters towards the wards as she stood there trying not to laugh at the sight of the boys’ right hands covered in bright red curry sauce. Little did she realise, however, that while a potentially troublesome little problem had been laid to rest she had made a mistake that had put everything else in the shade.

  Much as she liked the cheery ward-boys Madge had little sympathy over the pilfered food because the soldiers in the DI ward were in need of nutrition to help them recover. She went to bed that night more than a little pleased at sorting things out and looked forward to telling Olive Ferguson all about it.

  Madge didn’t have long to wait the following morning because rather than starting her shift there was an instruction to report to the Matron’s office, where she got a slap on the wrist rather than a pat on the back. She was confronted by a different Miss Ferguson to the woman who had invited her for afternoon tea and talked about the Bengal famine.

  ‘Thank you for solving the mystery of the missing food,’ Matron said, but then shook her head. ‘How is it that what was a minor problem has now been turned into a far more serious one? What do you have to say for yourself, Graves?’

  A somewhat bemused Madge replied that she had caught the ward-boys helping themselves to the rice and curry and indicated that she wanted the food taken straight to the wards, which was what she thought they had done.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look as if they quite did that,’ said Matron, whose response left Madge more than a little bewildered.

  Far from taking the canisters into the wards, the ward-boys simply carried everything back to the kitchens and told the cooks that they would not be serving anything to the patients because the food had been made inedible.

  ‘There was nothing wrong with the food when they picked up the canisters,’ said Madge. ‘So I wonder if they carried on eating it?’

  She still didn’t understand what the problem was, until Matron, with another shake of her head, explained that when she walked over to the ward-boys her shadow had fallen on the canisters. Once the shadow of a non-believer fell on food it was automatically destroyed. ‘Instead of the patients getting more last night they got nothing. Nobody got anything to eat at all!’ There was, however, the faintest hint of a smile as Matron pointed to the door to indicate that the incident was over.

  When Madge met up with Vera later in the day in the nurses’ mess she was greeted by a rousing chorus of ‘Just me and my shadow all alone and feeling blue’, followed by laughter and applause. The incident had played on Madge’s mind throughout the day so the bit of fun and nonsense in the mess cheered her up.

  There were more interesting things to talk about anyway because she had been too busy in the past few days to have a good old gossip with Vera, who lowered her voice and said she had been in Chittagong that afternoon and couldn’t believe what she had seen. There had been a demonstration calling for home rule for India and it had been very civilised, if somewhat noisy. There were lots of drums being beaten and flags being waved. Some, said Vera, had emblems on them that looked very much like the German swastika and she was worried what the connotations could involve.

  As Madge sat listening the ever-present Sister Blossom wandered past and told her not to worry about the ‘shadow incident’ but sensed there was a bit of a problem and asked if she could help. Because the home sister had been so honest and helpful since the VADs had arrived, Vera told her outright that she was pretty sure she had seen a number of swastikas being waved at the home rule demonstration.

  Sister Blossom pulled a chair up to their table and told Vera she was almost certainly right. But the emblem on the flags, far from showing support for Nazi Germany, was a symbol of peace and love and had been so for thousands of years in India. It was sacred to Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism and was also believed to bring good fortune, said Blossom.

  The monsoon season was long over, but the humidity was still extreme with temperatures between 85 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. In a basha ward that lacked air conditioning and shifts that involved long and very demanding hours Madge found she was becoming increasingly jaded. There also seemed to be a cocktail party, dinner or dance every night as well, which she had been attending regularly, so she decided the best thing to do, for the first time since she had arrived in India, was to have a couple of early nights.

  She certainly began to feel more like herself, but that meant that she soon rejoined the others for evenings out again! After one particularly late evening that had begun with a cocktail party and ended with a dance, Madge was looking forward to a lazy morning in her basha as she was not due to work that day. All of a sudden there was a knock on her door. ‘Come on, Madge, rise and shine,’ said a croaky voice that she just about recognised.

  ‘Have you got a sore throat? You sound terrible,’ she asked Vera after escaping from the mosquito netting and opening the door.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Vera. ‘I
met a rather nice chap from one of the artillery units last night and he says there’s a picnic going on this afternoon. He’ll take me on one condition,’ said Vera.

  ‘So why are you banging on the door so early in the morning? I’m very pleased you’ve got a date,’ laughed Madge. ‘Hang on a minute . . . what’s this condition?’

  ‘He wants me to bring a friend along for his pal,’ laughed Vera.

  Just then, as if on cue, a camouflaged three-ton army lorry chugged through the gates with the horn blowing and balloons bobbing from the wing mirrors. ‘Surely this can’t be them come to pick us up, is it?’

  ‘It certainly is!’ smiled Vera.

  Nine hours later they were dropped back at the gates after a wonderful time swimming, eating, drinking and singing, and both the girls were on a high.

  At breakfast the following morning Madge told Phyl, ‘The boys had laid a couple of huge carpets on a riverbank and got a fire going so we had roast chicken with all the trimmings, and the flames kept the mosquitos away. Do you know the best thing about the whole picnic?’ she asked, barely taking a breath. ‘I didn’t get bitten once!’

  Later that day, while she was busy on her shift, Matron Ferguson asked Madge whether as a favour she would be happy to help with some catering problems which had developed up at the big house where a conference of bigwigs was taking place. ‘You are a brilliant organiser and the staff up there like you,’ said Matron. ‘It’d be much appreciated if you’d give them a hand.’

  Lunch was already running late by the time Madge had walked up the hill from the hospital and changed into a clean, newly ironed uniform. She organised the waiters into two groups and food finally began to arrive from the kitchens, which were in a separate building some ten yards behind the Governor’s house, into the dining room.

  Even so, it was all still moving far too slowly for her liking so she picked up one of the large oval plates, which was beautifully adorned with cold cuts of chicken and beef. Considerable care had been taken in making sure the plate looked perfect and Madge wasn’t at all surprised when she was told it was for the top table.

  One of the kitchen staff offered her a cloth to cover the succulent feast and Madge remembered the shadow incident. She decided, however, that because this lunch was almost certainly for Allied officers there would not be a problem this time. Within five yards of leaving the kitchen she wished with all her heart that she had taken that cloth.

  As she walked out of the doorway Madge felt something whoosh past her head. She ducked instinctively. A kite hawk swooped from nowhere with claws extended to snatch huge portions of the sliced beef and chicken breast from the plate, which went tumbling onto the lawn. Madge waved her arms and shouted ‘shoo!’ to try and drive away the greedy black scavenger and as she straightened herself up after picking up the plate the kitchen staff were in hysterics. Her uniform was in a mess and the food ruined. The particularly ugly bird returned for a second helping, leaving Madge with no option. She burst out laughing as well.

  13

  Madge Goes Dancing

  Madge had been at 56 IGH for two months when she walked into the nurses’ mess and saw a group so engrossed in conversation that she thought a serious problem had developed. She decided to sit down and join in.

  ‘I can’t believe how much I took for granted being able to wash my hair back home,’ one of the nurses at the table was saying. ‘I wouldn’t have been seen dead going out the way I look now!’

  Shampoo was virtually unobtainable in Chittagong so soap was the only option for the nurses when it came to washing their hair; Madge herself had got to the stage where virtually every day was a bad hair day. It was coming to something, she thought, when the height of luxury would be washing your hair with shampoo.

  The only option was a trip to Calcutta, which by road was hundreds of miles away, and then you ran the risk of being given a large shopping list from the other nurses. A lovely Scottish nurse, Julie Boyle, was a bottle blonde, who asked any friend visiting Calcutta to bring back some bottles of shampoo and peroxide for her.

  It seemed everybody missed out one way or another. Girls with curly or wavy locks found that within half an hour of dressing up for a dinner date or a dance the hair on which they had spent so much time and effort became one great big frizzy mess. Girls with naturally straight hair couldn’t even wear pigtails because of the hospital’s ‘above the collar line’ rule. Some even found their hair falling out in lumps when it was brushed. Girls like Madge, whose hair was not quite wavy but also not quite straight, found that whatever they did it never looked right, although she had a trick of cutting off the elasticated ends of army-issue stockings and making them into a halo which she would use to keep her hair neatly rolled.

  Numerous other worries came to light, but nobody at the table had a solution until a raven-haired Indian sister walked past. The whole table turned to gaze in admiration and it spurred Madge into making a courteous little wave.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but we’re talking about the problems we’re having with our hair. Yours is beautiful. Would you be so kind as to tell us your secret?’

  The girl was attractive and very charming and said that she had been blessed with beautiful hair, but even she had to take the greatest of care in Chittagong’s suffocating humidity. There was almost total silence in the usually noisy nurses’ mess when she said that there was, however, a secret, and that secret was coconut oil. The barrage of questions from the table full of VADs stopped only when she held her hands up and laughed as she pleaded for silence.

  ‘While my hair is still damp after being washed I massage coconut oil into it. Many others rinse it off after thirty minutes, but the key is actually leaving it on,’ she explained.

  ‘Do you mean not rinsing it off at all?’ asked Vera.

  ‘You would have very greasy pillows if you did that,’ the sister replied. ‘What I mean is leaving it on as long as possible. All evening if possible, or a few hours at least, then rinsing it.’

  Madge compared the condition of the shining black locks with her own sadly lacklustre hair and decided there and then that coconut oil was the answer.

  As luck would have it, Madge had an afternoon off the following day and she cadged a lift to Chittagong in one of the ubiquitous three-ton army supply trucks that drove in and out of the hospital. She was on a mission to buy coconut oil but wasn’t having any success. She turned down a side street that consisted mainly of one-floor shops that included a grocer’s, a cafe, a laundry and the inevitable stalls. There was nowhere that sold coconut oil, however, and she was so engrossed in her search that she was more than surprised to find instead what looked like a ladies’ hairdressing salon. Madge could hardly believe her luck and all thoughts of coconut oil were forgotten as she peered in through the window. Suddenly the door was opened and an assistant in an intricately embroidered sari confirmed it was a salon and asked whether memsahib would like her hair permed? Madge replied that she most certainly would.

  The salon was impeccably clean and comfortably furnished, if a little dark, with the enchanting aroma of jasmine oil. Three double settees were draped in deep red rugs and at the back there was a washroom with stairs leading to an upper floor. There was even a little kitchen and one of the many assistants produced a pot of tea as Madge settled in. When the girls, the same age as their customer, heard that she had been invited to a dance that night they got very excited and promised her a special treat.

  There seemed to be a lot of staff, but Madge was told they were needed for later in the day when business picked up. One or two of the girls wanted to practise their English and happily translated every word to their friends who had gathered round. Stools were drawn either side of the carved high chair in which Madge sat, and it turned out the special treat was a manicure on the house.

  ‘This is absolute heaven,’ laughed Madge to one of the brown-eyed beauties, who was maybe just a year or two younger than her English customer. ‘It is luxury beyond
a dream!’

  While her hair was being permed Madge took the opportunity to ask if coconut oil was the reason why their hair looked so shiny and healthy. All said they used it but opinion was split on whether to leave the oil on or wash it off. The nicest surprise of all came as she left the salon after tipping and thanking the girls and they gave her a gift of a bottle of coconut oil.

  When she returned to her basha the light was fading as Madge made one last check of her new hairdo, had a little twirl to make sure there were no creases in the piqué dress she had bought in Poona, and off she went for a jolly night at the SIB (Special Investigation Branch) mess. After being virtually danced off her feet Madge realised she was beginning to feel a little jaded as she was being whisked round the floor during a Glenn Miller number. That was until her partner said he loved her dress and then asked how on earth she kept her hair in such amazing condition. She felt like the belle of the ball!

  Later an RAF pilot won a competition by drinking a pint standing on his head. Another won a bet with his pals when he stood with his back to Madge before he completed a backflip. It left her so open-mouthed in surprise that she simply couldn’t refuse when he asked her if he could have the next waltz.

  The dancing went on and on and it was only when the master of ceremonies announced that ‘the lovely ladies who have graced us with their presence here tonight need a little break’ that Madge realised the midnight curfew on returning to her quarters had long since passed. You’re in trouble again, young lady, she told herself.

  Madge’s escort drove her back in an open-top jeep from which she enjoyed the sight of a crisp new moon and a million twinkling stars. By the time she got back to 56 IGH it was close to 1 a.m. and it looked for the entire world as if her perfect day was going to end in tears. After she identified herself, the gate was opened by two heavily armed Gurkhas. She was asked to step into the office and introduced to Havildar Bahadur, who checked her pass and looked pointedly at his watch. Just when Madge convinced herself that things couldn’t get worse he caught her completely by surprise when he burst out laughing.