Last war was the start of a difference in sex life in a general way with men having to go to France but women did not always behave too well. There were some gay goings on and one heard whispers of ‘women in the know’ that the munitions girls and women said ‘got one out of trouble and kept one out of trouble’. I had been married four – nearly five – years before I knew of such a thing as birth control as a ‘decent’ thing and not as a ‘horrible French practice’! I went down to live in Southampton when my husband went into RNVR.† He was a C3 man† and got a shore billet which meant he could get home weekends and I went and lived in the New Forest to make a home nearby. I remember the crowds of disreputable and diseased looking girls and women who infested camps on roads where soldiers went, the way that the soldiers seemed to shout after you if you were out alone and the bold glances you were always conscious of. I worked in a canteen after my Cliff was born [in December 1918] – just odd times for I was always ailing. Girls were either unwilling or not let [to go out] by their mothers for the soldiers were regarded as ‘wild beasts seeking whom they may devour’ kind of thing! Now I sense a different spirit. One never sees the pub doors disgorge groups of fuddled soldiers and harpies either hanging on to their arms or waiting outside. Lads and men with set faces walk in groups, bathe in big batches off the shore at Walney and kick a bundle of tied up paper about if they have no football. Everything in the sex respect is altering. When I think of naughty old men I knew engaging front seats at a music hall we had then ‘because they could see the girls’ knees when they danced’, and when I think of what they could see of the ‘female form divine’ (?) on a country walk – well, I chuckle. As to actual intercourse, what sweeping changes must have taken place with everyone being parted, civilians through evacuation as well as soldiers. At one time it was taken as a foregone conclusion that if a man left his wife alone or vice versa they ‘asked for all they got’ if the one left behind ‘went off the rails’. Yet here in Barrow I’ve not noticed anything much different and when I tried once to explain my views to Cliff – about Army then – he said ‘Ah, they dope the Army lads – give ’em bromide or something’. I laughed and said ‘I see. You all line up and take it like good boys – like Mrs Squeers [the abusive and sadistic wife of the master of a brutally run boarding school in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby] and her brimstone and treacle.’ He said ‘No, they put it in our tea’, which seems a bit tough on the two and three cup men!!
Monday, 16 June. I smiled at the tickets on dresses etc. Instead of ‘Smart, Chic, Up-to-date, Fashion Latest’ etc., already tickets boasting ‘Solid Value, Good Wearing, Good Value, Will Wear Well’ are appearing. Just another straw in the wind that is changing all and everything we have known! I heard of a girl going to be married to a man in RAF whose people are ‘frightfully posh’, as she put it, and whose home she will stay near if not actually in after her marriage. She has worked on our local paper, in the office, but still it’s grubby enough there and she has worked a lot of overtime and like the rest of us ‘let herself go’ in stockings etc. but announced that she had plenty saved up and the week after she left work and the one before she married was to be a ‘shopping orgy’ and she would never wear a single thing of her old things after her marriage. She is distracted now. Gone are her plans for a fine wedding and trousseau and she is wondering how she will even ‘look decent’ on 22 coupons. Several friends have given odd pieces of dainty underwear as wedding presents but as she wails ‘My stockings alone’. Although it’s laughable at sight, I hate to think of the way she has worked so long and such trying hours, denying herself, and then contrast her to some women with such a lot of time and money and who can brag and do of huge stocks of now rationed things, particularly stockings.
My husband was working in a jeweller’s shop today – our best shop where ‘presentation’ things like silver tea sets and gold watches etc. are made a big feature and where people go when they subscribe for a really good canteen of cutlery for a workmate. He said he was staggered by the money passed over counter and he said ‘You would not believe me if I tried to tell you of the gold wristlet watches, the expensive rings etc. – and the requests for solid silver articles. They were not plated or pewter tea sets and trays asked for and any cut glass had to be “the very best”.’ I said ‘Ah, I’d believe anything, however fantastic in the spending line, and I know a woman whose hands fascinate me – work worn hands now wearing rings that a duchess would not turn her nose up at – and not just one! I think it is a kind of investment in some cases to avoid income tax – or compulsory saving.’ I’ve heard the remarks ‘Goods are better than money’ so often and I sometimes think it’s a bit muddled thinking, as regards expensive jewellery at any rate, for if the war goes on we shall all be so beggared that a covering will be all that will be expected and we will have grown very simple in our tastes. It looks somehow as if a new society is growing nowadays. Instead of the old order – the aristocrat and the ‘lesser orders’ – there will be those who have ‘given and striven’ and who are left with nothing – health, home, breadwinner, in some cases hope itself – and the other will have leisure and comfort and scrounged rations from black markets, money saved, hoards of everything – and devil a bit of ‘sacrifice’. Perhaps Hitler and his airmen will level up things a bit but it’s going to be a very oddly different world when the pot ceases to boil and the world settles again, and it will be a new order in all conscience.
My next door neighbour called over and said ‘Would you like to go to a whist drive tonight up at St Mathews? Only a little affair in aid of the organ fund.’ I was eager to go. I like doing things rather than watching them and get more pleasure out of a whist drive than out of the pictures, unless it’s a really good show. It was 1s, and the organiser had announced it in the paper as it was so short notice and she ‘did so want to raise £5 or £6 and then about £2 off a raffle’. It started at 7, or was supposed to, but the way people rolled in was amazing till we remembered that things are so at a standstill in Barrow. It’s not Hospital Supply alone that has gone down but all little whist drives and dances too, many through the halls where they were held being damaged and many taken over for the soldiers and one – the largest – for a Communal Feeding Centre [soon to be known as a British Restaurant], but when I saw the different kinds of people so eager for ‘a bit of forgetfulness’, as I heard one woman say, I thought it such a pity more efforts had not been made to keep on. I recalled my husband’s words as to jewellery buying very forcibly for by the time the game started there were 84 tables – and they prepared for 30! Some cards ran out and people played using pieces of paper and cards were used that looked positively mouldy – dug up from any old corner or borrowed from anywhere! One woman I played with had a brooch buckle on. It was the loveliest thing of its kind I’d seen, a simple ring of diamonds about the circle of a penny piece. I did not know her but listened eagerly to scraps of talk of it. I gathered that she had always wanted a ring – a diamond ring that would ‘knock’ all her friends – but when her husband got enough money her hands had knotted with work and rheumatism, and as she good humouredly chuckled ‘Nothing would do my hands justice except gloves’. Business had taken her husband to London and she had gone to see this brooch at Gooches (?) and immediately wanted it, and it had cost over £100!!! On a woman who always did her own work – or up to now anyway – it was a queer adornment.
Wednesday, 18 June. Ruth was busy working about and I said suddenly ‘I’d a question in M-O about sex, Ruth. It was really a personal question but I’ve wondered, really, what was others’ opinions. Do you think thoughts, or actions, differ about sex since the war?’ She wrinkled her brow seriously and rubbed energetically for a moment or two and then said ‘Well, it’s hard to put what I think into words, but once all the boys and girls round us seemed to tell dirty stories and jokes and kiss and cuddle in every corner as soon as it was dusk, but now it’s as if they do things and don’t talk about them. I cannot tell you exactly – I don’t
mean they are “bad”. It’s as if people don’t think it’s wrong any more, or giggle about so and so and her being “as good as married”.’ She said earnestly ‘Life is different, Mrs Last. It seems now there is so little but work. There is no dancing or hiking and only about fortnightly can we go to the pictures in the evening or go off to see our pals on Gerald’s (her boyfriend) motor bike, and there is less petrol and we never go to see Gerald’s aunt in Leeds as we did.’ As I looked at Ruth I suddenly saw how altered she was from the plump rosy girl she was four years ago when she first came to me. I recalled how she now scolded the dog and cat so for their paw marks or grumbled when it rained on her clean windows! …
We finish with the mobile canteen this week – for the present. There are no demolition sites now without means of water, or gas etc. to heat it, and many of the men are being billeted. There has been heated controversy about supplying tea by ARP, and I had such an interesting talk with a ‘ganger’, as he called himself. I jokingly said ‘I know you don’t like us coming and stopping work but it’s only for an odd few minutes and I’m sure the men work better’. He is a big scowling brute of a man with hands like hams and he struck his fist on canteen counter and said ‘It’s charity – just charity – and waste of your time as well as mine to give this pack of swine tea. They are the worst bunch of slackers and wasters I’ve ever struck!’ I said as I looked over group of men sitting on debris drinking tea, ‘Pooh, you should see some of the gangs. These are all strong men – and many look as if they draw Old Age Pensions.’ He snorted angrily ‘Mine are mostly Irish’ and the way he said it I felt startled at real venom! I said ‘Well, if my memory serves, the Irish – and the Italians – have always supplied the ganger with most of his labourers’, and got the answer ‘Lady, do you know what’s the curse of the boss’s life today?’ Rather haughtily I said ‘shortage of cigs’ but the ferocious look on his face showed real frenzy of feeling as he went on. ‘Do know how much he – and he – and he gets a week?’ pointing to different men. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. This one got £6 4s 0d last week, one £6 14s 0d and one £9 8s 0d for he drives and loads the trucks!’ I must have looked unbelieving for he called them over and they admitted it but said – the £9 8s 0d man – ‘Sure what’s the use of big money these days with the Government ready to claw the half of it off you?’ The ganger said something else very surprising for he said, in front of men who could have contradicted him, ‘Thank goodness for one thing, though. They don’t get off home as often as they did. They could work for six months, stay in Ireland ten days and get their fares paid over and 24s 6d “subsistence” allowance and pay no income tax.’ I must ask Arthur [a tax inspector] about that – sounds fantastic!
Thursday, 19 June. Everyone at Centre today seemed edgy and touchy and there was a queer ‘What do you think of things now? Do you really think Turkey is our friend, or is she edging and will join Germany?’ Miss Ledgerwood and Mrs Waite have had a queer optimism that they seemed to derive comfort from to a degree – that this month would see ‘the beginning of the end’. From laughing or disagreeing with them I’ve passed into a consoling ‘Well, perhaps you are right’ and today I said ‘You know, you may be right; this radio location may be that beginning’ and as we have – or are supposed to have – the largest experiment in it here in Barrow, they looked a bit cheered. Then there seemed dismal remarks about the strike among some thousands in Yard and I heard of a meeting today with a Government man who had come down from London to settle things. There is a more bitter feeling about our ‘new rich’ springing up than I’ve yet known. It’s caused by them being able to go out each night either in their own cars or clubbing together in a friend’s car. They go out and stay at an outlying farm and have bed and breakfast – home cured ham or bacon and eggs – and bring in butter and fresh eggs and in some cases cream and home made jams and chutney bought at fancy prices from farmers’ wives. I said ‘Why don’t you let the Food Control know if you have proof? Why grumble and growl and say and do nothing? If eggs are being had 1s a dozen more as you say they are, well, someone ought to suffer for it!’
Wednesday, 25 June. Ruth had to wait a long time at the Labour Exchange and did not get up till nearly 10 o’clock … I am to lose Ruth in a month and the head of Labour Exchange said if Ruth would take advice from her she would try and get post as nurse, even if for only two hours a day to relieve a nurse. There is no chance of a post woman’s job for they had such a stampede that a fresh rule was made and only wives and sisters of postmen were taken. They asked Ruth if she would go into industry or Services, particularly Land Army. Ruth is very like myself in some ways and has both a horror of noise and hatred of smells of oil and machinery and seems to rather shrink from ‘launching out’ in ATS.† All her talents are in the home and with personal circle. She took all the little awards in St John’s Ambulance and passed all examinations and then took her 100 hours to make her eligible for Civil Nursing. She is such a dear girl. I would not like her to be unhappy. She would work so much better if she could be in her own niche. I’ve written to Matron at the Hospital to see if she can help in any way. I think she will for I’ve always tried to help her all I could.
During the next two months Nella wrote a lot about housewifery and shopping. There are many references in her diary to rationing, prices and the scarcity of many goods – and queues, queues, queues. Perhaps Barrow really was worse off than other places. ‘Food really does seem short in Barrow’, she wrote, ‘if we are to believe what people from other towns, or visitors to there, tell us. Queues are killing pastimes – beside time-wasting. Then again, so much housekeeping money is about among the Shipyard and Steel and Iron works men’s wives, who feel quite rightly that their men must be fed.’ (Overtime pay was swelling household coffers.) Some people grumbled a lot, others took pleasure in their successes in acquiring provisions off ration. As Nella observed, those who produced some of their own food, ‘in a small way perhaps, have the same housekeeping problems [as industrial workers] and a little extra is welcome … It must be a temptation to supply “privately”… I’m not referring to the “big” black market – just the farmers and higglers and those who grow fruit and vegetables’ (16 August).
The daily grind loomed large this summer. Nella recorded (sometimes in great detail) the prices in shops and at stalls, as well as people’s search for cigarettes and other valued commodities; she wrote a lot about her chickens and her satisfaction in minding and feeding them; and she gave details of her cooking, baking, sewing, mending, alterations of old clothes and making dollies. Her volunteer work took her to the Centre two or three times a week, where there was much gossip, irritability and back-biting, though Nella was hopeful of improvements when it was learned at the end of July that the capable Mrs Diss was to become the new WVS Organiser. The Lasts refreshed themselves with drives to Walney, Morecambe Bay and various places in the Lake District, and they saw the occasional film. During August they received visitors from out of town – their younger son, Cliff, on leave from his base in Woolwich for a few days (the Lasts were taking two weeks’ holiday), and Jim Picken, the brother of the young woman in Portadown, Northern Ireland, to whom Arthur had just get engaged. Now and again a celebrity visited town to boost morale. ‘Gracie Fields came today and got a good reception in an ENSA† concert at the Yard and more stood to see her pass than did to see the Duke of Kent last week – so they tell me’ (16 July).
A rare instance of a discussion of international issues took place at the WVS Centre on 3 July. ‘Over lunch we talked of the terrible fact that we had to have Russia as an ally and “glad to do it”. [Britain and the Soviet Union became military allies after the German invasion of the USSR on 22 June.] We recalled the horror the very word “Bolshevism” caused. We wondered if good could possibly come out of evil – the evil of associating ourselves in any degree with people whose thoughts and aims differed so widely from ours and felt a fear at the desperate plight of things when we did it.’ Still, there was an ackno
wledgement, even in these passionately anti-Communist circles, that a Russian defeat would be disastrous for Britain.
Saturday, 30 August. We picked a soldier up on Coast Road who was going to Ulverston. He was a very superior type of soldier and in conversation told us he was a Londoner, an accountant and married to a Leicester girl. We talked of war and its drawbacks as regards ordinary life. He has had a hard time – last winter up in Scapa Flow – but it was not ordinary hardships of cold and discomfort that he so bitterly resented but the frustration, the wastage, the sinking of every scrap of individuality – our Cliff’s complaint. He looked so ‘fine drawn’ and nervy as he talked of how a year ago he was recommended for an officer. It always seems so cruel to me when recommendations are given and men just live on hope – and then when nothing more is heard get such a bitterness. I asked him to come whenever he felt like it but don’t suppose he will be able as his camp is a long way from our house and there are less and less buses and the last one leaves the centre of town at 9.10 and it would mean leaving our house at 8.40 or so to catch it.
The Diaries of Nella Last Page 10