Some Sunny Day

by Madge Lambert

  Madge left Matron’s office thinking of the week she had spent in Calcutta with Basil and wished he was still around so they could enjoy the Himalayas together. She was on a BOR ward that morning and, as luck would have it, Grace was nursing in the DI ward right next door. Their paths crossed late in the afternoon when they stepped out for a breath of fresh air and Madge told her about Matron’s offer.

  ‘Let’s talk about this after work,’ said Grace. ‘I’ve always thought that to come to India and not see the Himalayas would be a very silly thing to do.’

  Phyl and Vera inevitably got wind of the conversation in the nurses’ mess later that evening and said that as somebody would be having a birthday towards the end of July, it would make the perfect celebration.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Grace.

  ‘Could be somebody with a birthday on the twenty-fourth of July and a name beginning with M,’ said Phyl, who added that the best place to stay in Darjeeling was definitely the Windamere Hotel. ‘The views from Observatory Hill are just amazing and the bar is always full of very wealthy and very handsome tea planters.’ Phyl raised her eyebrows at Madge.

  ‘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 Calcutta. Again they were to take a DC-3, but this time it was a passenger flight and full of RAF boys instead of those very charming Americans. Within minutes of take-off the girls were bombarded with offers of dinner in Calcutta, dances in Darjeeling and told what to do and what not to do if they wanted to stay alive in the Himalayas.

  ‘There’s a big problem with several of the stations on the Darjeeling Himalayan Mountain Railway,’ a handsome young RAF pilot told Madge, ‘because tigers often eat people in the waiting rooms.’

  His friend shook his head and laughed behind the pilot’s back.

  ‘Take no notice of his nonsense. The truth is, he read about a tiger eating a station master in a book by Mark Twain, but if you have time to join us for cocktails at the Grand Hotel in Calcutta this evening, we will tell you all about Darjeeling.’

  Grace simply couldn’t keep a straight face when she explained how disappointed she was to turn down the kind offer, but they had to catch a train to Jalpaiguri station in the foothills of the Himalayas.

  In fact, they had little option but to stay overnight in Calcutta because the journey from Howrah station to Jalpaiguri was in excess of twelve hours and then another fifty miles or so up on the Darjeeling Himalayan Mountain Railway. Madge was delighted they had taken Vera’s advice to travel as light as p
ossible. The platform heaved with soldiers and RAF boys waiting for the locomotive to take them to the military camps around Ghoom and Darjeeling. The wounded were on crutches and walking sticks and several combat lads from the front line had arms in slings and heavy bandaging. Come hell or high water they were going to have a good time on their recuperation period at the most famous of all hill stations.

  A loud hoot announced the arrival of the little steam-driven train and the passengers greeted it with a cheer. White smoke belched into the fading pink sunset and Grace felt a polite but firm tug on her sleeve. She turned to find a smiling, khaki-clad Scotsman with a leg in plaster leaning on a single crutch, and shouting above the noise of the approaching train, ‘Pardon me, please. Is this the Darjeeling choo choo?’

  She looked at the young man, who had been so badly injured laying his life on the line for his country. The little train had finally shuddered to a halt as Grace instantly joined the fun and answered in her broad Yorkshire accent, ‘Track twenty-nine, boy, you can gimme a shine.’

  Within seconds the platform was in chaos as a huge Welshman, with the most magnificent baritone voice, boomed out, ‘I can afford to board the Darjeeling choo choo. I’ve got my fare and a trifle to spare.’ Injured soldiers pretended their crutches were trombones and a wheelchair-bound warrior completed a full circle in his chariot with Indian passengers laughing and applauding.

  Madge was a huge fan of Glenn Miller and so was Grace who said that ‘In the Mood’ was her favourite. Then, as the warning hoot came that the train was about to start, there was one last serenade from the Welsh baritone. He looked directly at the girls and crooned a very charming invitation: ‘Dinner in the diner? Nothing could be finer.’

  ‘Sorry,’ smiled Madge, ‘but there isn’t a dining car on this train!’

  Madge realised, however, just how hungry she was and when the carriage quietened down the girls agreed that as soon as they arrived, instead of having an early night, as originally intended, they would go out for a meal.

  The train rounded a bend on a steep incline with the wheels screeching on the single-track narrow-gauge line. Just then, one of the walking wounded passed out and cut his head as he fell. He couldn’t have chosen better company because within seconds the two young nurses had loosened his tie and collar, turned him on his side and cleaned up a wound that was already starting to ooze.

  By way of thanks to the nurses, water and a tumbler of very fine brandy was passed to them as they kneeled on the floor.

  ‘That’s a rather splendid-looking bottle of brandy,’ said Madge to the young West Country boy who had so willingly filled the tumbler.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ he replied, ‘I borrowed it from behind the bar of the hotel where we stayed in Calcutta. Purely for medicinal purposes, obviously.’

  While the toy train built in Glasgow in the late 1870s heaved and rumbled its way above the clouds the lad who had banged his head regained consciousness. He perked up after drinking several tumblers of water and as the train finally pulled in to Darjeeling station he hobbled over to the girls to thank them.

  ‘When I came to and saw you two looking at me I thought I had died and gone to heaven. But what happened to the tumbler of brandy my pal handed over?’

  ‘Our need was greater than yours,’ replied Grace with the sweetest of smiles.

  They ended by having a very late night and were more than grateful the following morning for the first long lie-in they had enjoyed in weeks.

  ‘You can have the bathroom first,’ said Madge to a sleepy Grace, who instantly asked for a cup of tea.

  ‘Milk and two sugars, please!’

  ‘We’d better get a move on,’ said Madge. ‘Breakfast finishes at eleven and it’s past nine now.’

  There was suddenly an irate snort as Grace looked at her watch which was showing the time as eight. ‘Ha, I’m not falling for that, young lady,’ she laughed. ‘You’d best make it up to me now and bring me that tea on the double!’

  Phyl had told Madge about a shop in Darjeeling that was renowned for making shoes of any design so the first thing they did after breakfast was walk to the open-fronted stall where tourists stood and watched the cobblers. Madge gave the owner a page from an old copy of Vogue with the style of the shoes she wanted in gold lamé, and another pair in silver lamé, plus a pair of white leather shoes for work. She left the magazine page at the shop and was told all three pairs would be ready in forty-eight hours.

  It was a beautiful sun-drenched morning and they had decided to take a mini tour of the town.

  ‘It’s surprising just how quickly the temperature warms at this altitude,’ said Grace. ‘I’ve never been this high and it was really surprisingly chilly first thing.’

  Madge was overwhelmed by the view; verdant green tea plantations were perched above sweeping bamboo jungles. The predominantly Nepalese population greeted them with smiles and cheery waves as they wandered across the beautiful hill station, which was a remarkable piece of engineering in itself, surrounded by astounding views of the Himalayas.

  ‘What amazes me about this lovely town,’ said Madge, ‘is that it’s built into the side of such a steep hill. The waiter at breakfast this morning told me Darjeeling is close to seven thousand feet above sea level.’

  Thousands of feet below the plains stretched for miles into a pastel grey horizon. The tour included a visit to the impressive Loreto Convent, which looked more like the main house of a French country estate than a boarding school. It was where the Macedonian-born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu completed her novitiate before becoming known as Mother Teresa. Grace was impressed to be told that British actress Vivian Leigh was a former pupil of Loreto Convent.

  ‘She was absolutely wonderful in Gone with the Wind,’ said Grace. ‘It’s my most favourite film of all time.’

  ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,’ quipped Madge, making Grace chuckle. ‘I was far more impressed with Clark Gable.’

  During a late lunch that afternoon, Madge and Grace met a pair of young army officers who said they were planning to see Mount Everest from Tiger Hill, the best local vantage point, early the following morning.

  ‘We’ve been warned that heavy rain has made the roads far too dangerous so we’re playing it safe and are going to go on mules instead,’ one of them said.

  ‘It will mean leaving at two in the morning if you want to see the dawn rise over the Himalayas, but apparently it’s so amazing that it’s really worthwhile making the effort,’ said the other, a blond-haired lieutenant.

  The girls asked where they could hire guides and mules and within an hour had booked the trip.

  That night the girls were given a warm welcome when they went to dinner at a restaurant where the pianist heard that Madge had celebrated her twenty-second birthday a few days earlier. As a treat he played and sang ‘A Sentimental Journey’, one of her favourites. The pianist, Tibor Stary, even bought them a birthday drink. He told them that he was Austrian and his father Elias had been so worried about the Nazis that he had changed the family name from Starykoff, which was Russian, to make it ‘sound less Jewish’. Tibor said he had made his way towards India after escaping from Vienna, but his father had been arrested and he thought he may have been sent to a concentration camp.

  ‘Tibor is such a lovely man,’ said Madge as they waited for the bill to arrive. ‘I can’t begin to imagine the utter despair he must feel not knowing what’s happened to his father.’

  ‘So many people in Europe must be in similar situations right now. It doesn’t bear thinking about really,’ said Grace, after which both girls fell silent, contemplating the horrors they had been hearing about as news of the full extent of what the Nazis had done was slowly making its way around the world.

  The girls left the restaurant to get a couple of hours’ rest before their Himalayan adventure, but all too soon they were back on their feet and walking down to the meeting point with the guides and mules. It was a bitterly cold Himalayan night, but they had take
n Phyl and Vera’s advice and were well wrapped up. This birthday scarf is a real bonus, thought Madge as they began the eleven-kilometre ride to Tiger Hill.

  A vicious wind whistled down from the mountains, which were shrouded in clouds and mist. It was so cold that Madge pulled her new scarf up to use as a face mask. The mules were startled when a ghostly and surprisingly large creature fluttered past to leave them in a grumpy, skittish mood, but as the guides spoke little English it was impossible to find out if it had been a bird or a bat. A smattering of rain, usually the prelude to a full-scale Himalayan downpour, didn’t exactly lift the spirits.

  With a 4 a.m. dawn approaching, the drizzle stopped and the clouds drifted away on the swirling wind that slowed to a gentle breeze. Tiny lights flickered ahead and Grace, who was used to night hunting on the family farm in Yorkshire, told Madge that they were within minutes of their destination.

  ‘Those firefly lights are people smoking,’ she said.

  The girls were stiff and more than a little sore after almost two hours on bony and uncomfortable mules and when they reached the foot of Tiger Hill they simply couldn’t believe the number of parked taxis.

  ‘Well, Tiger Hill itself isn’t exactly anything to write home about,’ said Madge, as they surveyed the plateau that jutted out from the side of the hill on which they were standing.

  ‘Absolutely right,’ said Grace, ‘but I am surprised that there’s such a big flat area on such a huge slope.’

  They continued to walk towards the car park when they spotted two men in a car with their feet hanging out of the windows.