Joyce's War (30 page)

November 17th 1943

Harrington Street B Floor

Night duty when I last wrote herein and much has happened since. I have seen David – but not in Dacca – that was cancelled at the last minute as he wired to say he was being evacuated, to Dehra Dun. After a fortnight of wondering what was happening, hearing that he had started off in a river steamer and then spent some days in transit, at Seraj Sange, I had a wire to say he had reached Dehra Dun. I was delighted to know he had gone there rather than Biralli or Lucknow, but sad that I had missed him passing through, and that he had not come here to La Martiniere. About three days later, quite late in the evening, I had another wire saying: ‘Have been recommended invaliding home. Imperative I see you before Board takes place. Can you come to Dehra Dun immediately?’ So I went – starting off at 7.40 for Howrah on a Friday and reaching there about 4pm on a Sunday afternoon.
I took a tonga out to the hospital and just as I was nearing the mess, Mona hailed me from the gardens, where she and David were having tea under the trees. To my horror he had a stick and was walking lame and then I learned that, owing to a vitamin B deficiency, he had wasting of the exterior muscle of one leg, a dropped foot and loss of sensation. I saw Colonel Thuraton next morning and he assured me that everything would become normal once he got home and that there was no need to worry. Poor darling, he looked so thin but swore he was much better, although it was very obvious he was still far from well.

I had a room next to Mona and it was delightful there in the sunny compound. The quietness and the complete absence of planes and taxis and cars were as balm to my soul. The gardens were a delight and the lovely hills which surround that place made me long to be home again. I had four full days there and we had tea in the gardens daily on the grass or under the trees. The gramophone came too and it was good to see David come to life again during the
Unfinished Symphony
. I think he realised then that the illness was a superimposed thing after all and that when it passed, everything was intact underneath, and it was a great relief to him and to me.

I left on Thursday evening and arrived at Howrah on Saturday about 8pm. We crossed the flooded areas where 20,000 people had lost their lives and the lines were still down after three months. An incredible sight. A monkey came abroad and stole my complete bunch of bananas when I was out of the train having lunch at one station. I had pleasant companions all the way but the second night was very interrupted with Indians who came and went all through the night. We had a large breakfast at 9 the next morning and then nothing until about 4pm: that was tea and toast which had to be consumed in about five minutes so we were ready for a meal when we arrived back. I returned to Harrington Street to my cholera patient to find another one as well. Both did very well eventually.

David, all this time, was sceptical about his Board passing him, although the CO seemed in no doubt at all. Anyway, it has gone through and he has now arrived in Bombay and awaits his ship.

It’s a queer feeling to think everything has changed so within these last three months. Before – one thought of dragging rather drearily on in India until the end of the war. Now the whole face of things has altered entirely and wonderful and unimagined vistas have opened up instead.

I am afraid that I can’t get more leave to go to Bombay to see David before he leaves as we are short-staffed and are busy with an influx of malaria cases again. My application has gone to the Principal Matron and I still await a reply. David has written himself, so perhaps I shall hear something soon. I feel so sorry that I cannot give him any definite assurance before he goes but I am certain that I shall get back within a reasonable time. I am buying linen and such things, difficult to get at home, with a view to future days. I can’t think of anything else now but the day I arrive in the UK. It’s unbelievable when I have been away so long.

It is perfect weather here now – cold nights and chilly mornings and warm lazy days. The humidity has gone entirely.

Christmas arrangements are in full swing. The mess dance is on December 22nd and our Xmas dinner about 27th, after the patients have had theirs and the MOs are having their dance in the first week of the New Year. It is good fun at Xmas on the wards and decorations have already begun.

There has been very little news from home: Clwyd is still in Melbourne; Mona is still in Queensland and Glyn in New South Wales. Mother had flu when she wrote and seemed rather miserable with it. They didn’t know when I last wrote that David was ill; it seems fantastic that the mail takes so long coming and going.

As I write the siren goes – the first time since last December – and the planes are overhead though we can’t see them and anti-aircraft fire is making a fearful din in the calm of a Sunday morning. Signs of the times, I expect, with more to follow over Xmas.

1944

Bombay – Calcutta – Wales

January 23rd 1944

And so it has come to this: I sit here not very patiently, I admit, and await the word ‘Go’! The Indian phase is nearing its close and although I go with mixed feelings, for there is much here that I love and shall miss, I know with absolute certainty that I am glad to be going and that I would not have it any other way. But to go back six weeks – I went to Bombay to see David off in the end. He rang me up one day when I was on duty in Harrington Street, ostensibly to say goodbye. I knew then that I must make a desperate effort to see him before he left and so I went to Matron – knowing that we were less busy and better staffed just then – and she said I could go. I think I was very near to getting a seat on an RAF plane but the registrar spoiled all that and I had the usual long and boring train journey after all plus the expense which, as usual, I could ill afford. And as usual, of course, no one knew the time of the arrival of the train within about four hours but fortunately David was there and all was well. He looked fairly well but tired very easily with walking as I quickly realised. I stayed with Mona’s friends the De Muires, where David had already established himself and they had been extraordinarily kind to him. It was a large and pleasant house above Malabar Hill and it was grand to become civilians again and out of the services for a few short days. We came and went as we pleased and, in spite of Mona’s added presence, we did manage to have a few hours to ourselves. I was so glad I was able to have those few days and we both felt so much happier about everything in the light of perhaps – we didn’t know – a long separation.

I got back to C floor on the 20th to find B floor in Harrington Street in isolation for smallpox. We had 33 patients for those weeks, all fed on the ward, and, as none of them was ill and quite 25 of them could have been discharged, there was little to do except feed them. It was grand fun on Xmas day, in spite of the fact that three of our orderlies had drunk so well and so unwisely, that they were totally useless by midday. The patients came into the kitchen and served their own supper and everything went with a grand spirit. Sally and I were presented with a handbag each and a box of chocolates and flowers and altogether it was quite a family party. I didn’t go out on Xmas eve, preferring to stay on until about 1am for the night sister. The unit dance was a great success at Loreto on the 23rd and on New Year’s Eve there was the usual Braces club party at the Chinese restaurant, followed by an hour at the pantomime ending up in a frantic rush to get to Jimmy’s flat before midnight to see the New Year in. We didn’t make it actually, in spite of considerable abuse, in our best Hindustani, to the taxi driver. But we turned all the clocks in the flat back, and started all over again. The CO’s dance started with dinner in the Great Eastern, given by Mac, of all people. It was very hilarious – the champagne probably – and Mac was persuaded to ascend the platform and sing
Danny Boy
, his theme song, and for the rest of the time the orchestra played Irish airs, believing us to be an Irish party, I presume.

I was fairly drunk before I had drunk anything at all, because I had had the news that day that I was to be transferred to Colaba to wait a duty passage home. I didn’t, I regret to say, remember much about the rest of the night except that it was an occasion for much good will and toasts on my behalf and everybody telling me how glad they were. We got to Loreto somehow in Jimmy’s car and we were told that the dance that had been fairly dull up to that point had brightened up after our arrival. I shouldn’t wonder.

A few nights after that the Brace’s club farewelled me again, first at Jimmy’s flat
avec
the Matron and Colonel Jones and later at the Chinese restaurant. Vera had by this time just discovered that she could be repatriated and Patrick had decided that it would be better for her to go. I am sorry I can’t remember the speeches, especially Johnnie’s delivered in best Churchillian-cum-Roosevelt manner: they were gems. The prawns, as usual, were excellent and I regret to say that I ate far too many at the instigation of Johnnie who kept telling me that that every prawn might be my last for years. I thought that that would be my last – positively my last appearance at those happy but mad dinners – but Johnnie Hall was expecting to be posted to Japan the next week and, of course, that was an excuse for another one. This one ended rather abruptly with Jimmy being driven home in his own car by Willie Thompson who was distinctly more sober. We went down next day to see Johnnie off and, although I very definitely meant to go back to my packing immediately after, somehow or other we ended up for lunch at the Stafi and they all came to the Minto Park afterwards and insisted on staying for tea. In the hour they had to spare they climbed up poles and palm trees and jumped the dahlia beds and altogether behaved like naughty boys.

I’ve forgotten to mention that Mona bussed up with her unit about a week before I left and she kept appearing at some time every day. We had dinner with Padre Thompson one night and I took her with me to say goodbye to Ray and Oomah.

I was off the two days previous to my departure and although I’d been packing for days – it still haunts me – much of it couldn’t be done until the last day. My warrant and orders were handed to me duly and I was to leave by the Bombay Mail on the Monday evening. Well – I didn’t. I was so certain that I knew the time of the departure of the Bombay Mail that I merely glanced at my orders, without reading them properly. Mona, Vera and Patrick came down in the ambulance with me and Tommy and Mac followed in T’s car. I had given myself a full hour to deal with my luggage – but – I discovered to my horror and chagrin on arrival that the Bombay Mail was just steaming slowly but definitely out of the platform. It was a good thing I suppose that I wasn’t alone for I certainly would have wanted to sit down and howl – but they were all so good and so helpful and I shall always remember the crowd of us threading our way in and out of the bodies on Howrah station, with Tommy and Mac roaring out, ‘A troopship was leaving Bombay,’ trying to cheer me up. We installed the luggage in ‘the left luggage room’ and went off in Jimmy’s little car – the men all roaring lustily – to Firpo’s.

There in Firpo’s we dined and danced for the last time in Calcutta; it was January 1944. After that we went onto the Palo Rica for a while before going home. We delivered Mona safely and I crawled into Minto Park and into Vera’s bed for positively the last time. Mona came early next morning and we did some shopping prior to a last lunch with T and M at the Great Eastern. They had to get back to their work and Mona came down to Howrah with me and saw me safely installed with all my belongings – bound for Bombay – and Blighty.

And so ends my Calcutta interlude. In many ways I felt sad at leaving for I had so many real friends there and I was always happy in the unit. But this, of course, is merely incidental to my life and, in leaving it, I close the door – only too readily – on so many things that are extraneous and quite outside my life and the life I want. So
Vale
Calcutta – Chowringhee, Firpo’s, the Great Eastern, Christies, the Nan King, the Slap and all the other haunts – and those names that will become mere memories, I suppose: Vera and Audrey and Margaret and Peggy and Mac and Watson and McNamara and Blondie and Babs and Sally – Patrick and Tommy and Mac and Johnny and Willie and Gay – and Wender and Paddy and Arthur – and as Johnny would say, Uncle John Cobbly and all. They were as grand a collection of friends as anyone could have wished and I am grateful to them all.

But now I am in Bombay – in Colaba – and as restless as a leaf in the wind. I don’t, I am afraid, like the matron, who made it definitely clear to me – without any need of words – AC1 was a rank she had never heard of, when I was giving her David’s particulars. It enraged me so much that his number went completely out of my head and it wasn’t until I had cooled down and I had got back almost to my mess that it came back to me. When I first arrived the girls were having only two and a half days a week, which rather horrified me as I felt I had so much yet to do. Today a notice has gone up saying that we may take every other half-day until further orders. Another thing which has made me cross is that messing here is 100 chips a month. We were on rations of course and paid no more than Rs46. This, in my present financial state, is more than a blow, especially as I never appear for breakfast or dinner. The food is very good, I admit, but it seems entirely unnecessary somehow. The mess itself is quite charming with everything nicely done. I am not in Alexandra House but in a long two-storied bungalow across the road. It has wide verandahed balconies on all sides and is most comfortable. Another girl shares the room with me: it is a large room with real beds and there is a dressing room with three wardrobes and a bathroom off stage. Colaba itself is a huge military compound, covering numerous acres on the sea front, and must ‘house’ thousands of army and naval personnel of various units. There are churches and cinemas and canteens and halls and barracks and houses (many families of course live within the compound) and altogether it is a complete world in itself.