The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  All the harvest is being quietly and swiftly cut and gathered and it astonishes me how they do it with so little labour. Aunt Sarah looks fretty and ill – I bet Aunt Eliza worries her. And things are so bad to get in the country where all hawkers and door to door canvassers for orders have stopped beyond the fortnightly delivery of rationed goods. That means that oddments are missed from village shop and from town grocer for obviously the village shop keeps its few scarce things for what few rationed customers they have and from the town delivery of a fortnight ‘bits’ are missed. I said ‘You should have registered at village shop’ but knew that sentiment was responsible, for Dorothy Parker, the grocer of Ulverston, was a childhood Quaker friend of Gran’s, and a strong friendship existed and we always dealt with the Parkers, and country people resent change and keep faithful with old ways. Eager would-be blackberry pickers were on roads and fields but I saw no ripe ones for there has been so little sun lately. We called at Mrs Thompson’s, our part-time secretary from the Centre, to take the Gretchen dollie for her poor little girl and she was in bed and Mrs Thompson said ‘Come upstairs and give her the dollie and have a little chat’. It’s such a lovely home and the big primrose nursery was a delight. Walls and ceiling and finishing all in soft golden yellow and carpet, curtains and bed cover of soft leaf green. No expense spared, money for every comfort possible – and only a poor dreadful little idiot girl in the lovely bed. She lifted her queer little face with its soft thatch of dark hair and made noises at me and I said ‘I was sorry her tummy was bad and I’d brought her a dollie to keep her company’ and she managed to say ‘Truda’ and her mother was delighted. More than ever did I realise the fact that it is not money that makes for happiness. She is 15 and her mother adores her but she must feel unhappy about her, and she is such a sweet woman. Such a burden.

  Tuesday, 2 September. Someone [at the Centre] started a queer line of talk – a kind of ‘Turn the clock back, if but for an hour’. It started about ‘peace again’ and led on to whether we would like the world to step back to old ways and days. I said, speaking personally, I’d not live a year of my life over or go back to anything, that I’d rather ‘march on’ to better days than go back to any I’d lived. Mrs Waite said ‘You would rather have the “shadow” than the “bone”, I can see’, and that started a discussion as to whether the old days were the delight the sentimentalists would have us believe, of beer so cheap that Saturday night was a horror, of wages and standards of life so low that children went barefoot. Mrs Woods, who was a teacher, recalled the swollen faces of poor kiddies with bad teeth that ached with every cold wind, of faces that were scabbed and raw with impetigo. One talked of heavy woollen stockings and underwear, boned bodices, dresses that trailed in the dust that were so ‘sweetly feminine’! Then off we went along another track – men’s attraction to their wives and visa versa. There were two women in the discussion whose husbands have always to my knowledge had big salaries but their lips had a bitter twist as they spoke of ‘having to account for every damned penny’! We wondered if this dreadful mess of war would release people from taboos and inhibitions as the rest had undoubtedly done, if, when it was over, much bad, wrong or raw would have gone.

  Then we thoroughly picked two of the morning women to pieces, one for wearing four bracelets, two of them wristlet watches. I said ‘She always reminds me of a Xmas tree’ and Mrs Higham said ‘Have you seen her newest watch?’ and I had to confess I’d not looked closely but it seems that it’s the loveliest and silliest watch they had seen, a tiny gold face with big diamonds round! Captain Corbyn’s wife shocked us all by keeping her car and sailor chauffeur while she did some very bad sewing and had a good gossip – for over 1½ hours. Talk about wasted manpower. What with one thing and another there seems as much in the Services as anywhere! He is such a strong virile looking young man too and lackeys round Mrs Corbyn like a poodle. He looks resentful and Mrs Wilkins, whose two boys are in the Navy, said ‘I’d hate to think my boys had to do a thing like that’ …

  I’ve had rather a surprise lately at the savage sentences – for our courts – that have been passed on looters from blitzed houses. Several quite respectable people have been sent to prison for two and four months. Today Mrs Burnett came in from the country – odd, but she is lots more human when she is not head of WVS; she seems one of those people who cannot stand ‘authority’. Her house was so badly damaged and walls and ceilings so bad they were warned they had not to move about in it until the worst had been demolished. Her store of tinned goods and three crocks of eggs were in a deep cellar and she felt quite happy about them being ‘so safe’. Her house stood in its own grounds so perhaps the thieves could work slowly and unobserved, but when the Burnetts finally got into their house to remove anything of value they found all gone that could be carried, and the cellar’s stock of food, wine, eggs – even coal and wood – gone. It started an ‘I heard about’ kind of conversation and made us wonder what the police had been doing since our bombings, for what with looted houses and gardens a really shocking picture of theft and utter lawlessness was revealed. It made us wonder what it was like in big cities. We had seen a remark of magistrate’s somewhere in London where he said he wondered if there was ‘one honest demolition man’ in the whole of London, and there were several who told of demolition men going home from Barrow to outlying districts with bundles of curtains, bedding etc. rolled up and carried quite openly under their arm!

  Thursday, 4 September. This week there has seemed such a lot happier spirit at the Centre. Perhaps it’s the glass in the windows, or the roof getting mended and the dirt and discomfort lessened. We are all excited to hear of a boy of 17 who has been awarded a medal [by the Boy Scouts] for his bravery in our blitz when as a messenger he went from one post to another while the raid was at its highest and worst. It seemed so splendid to find someone who had stood fast, for so many who should have done fled. I suppose it was the dreadful shock of ‘first time’ that shook people, although hundreds still go out to sleep yet. They make the excuse that ‘no glass in the windows’ and only the shutters of felt depress them, and women who should conquer their fears for the sake of toiling husbands or sons laze in apartments in the countryside while their men folk struggle backward and forward on too full buses or if it is near enough their bicycles. I was shocked at appearance of a workman of my husband’s. He is about 58–60 and always looked so fit and well and was such a grand worker. His wife would not live in Barrow, ‘would sleep under a hedge rather than do so’, and they found a very old labourer’s cottage on a farm a few miles out. It was in terrible condition and he worked like a slave at nights and weekends to make it habitable and now they live there and he is still working and then has the daily journey and the ‘sketchy’ midday meal. The homeward journey has to be made up a very steep hill when he has to walk and push his bike. I look at his fat complacent wife when she comes in to shop and go to a matinee. I think it will be a bitter regret someday and by the look of her husband not very long, for he daily grows more bent and grey and loses flesh.

  Friday, 5 September. Perhaps it is the time of year but restlessness is laying hold of me – a feeling of change, of saying ‘today I will do so and so’ but never that I will do it ‘tomorrow’. I had the same feeling but to a greater degree before Easter. I felt I could never admire or love my little house enough, put clean curtains up to my wide windows, alter my bits of brass to catch the sun, change my rugs and chairs round. Now with my indoor shelter in the big bay in dining room, my cracked ceilings, the packed up china and pictures, I have more the feeling one has for a sick child – no real joy. I packed my things up when we had a week of raids and when so many homes went of friends, and when I want to straighten things my husband keeps saying ‘Wait, you don’t know what will happen any time’, but I am getting tired of living in a state of siege and if this and next month passes [without raids] I shall insist on his moving things back to their places. If I ask him to do a thing he goes on and on. I did not
want wardrobes bringing downstairs but he insisted and says they are best there.

  Sunday, 14 September. My husband had his books to get ready for auditors so Arthur [who was visiting from Northern Ireland] and I went for a little run. Arthur shares my deep love for all the Lakeland and today all looked at its best. For the first time for a long time we were not signaled for a lift by any service man. A girl with a heavy bag was standing waiting for a bus at a lonely road end and we asked her if she would like a lift and she was quite glad for she doubted if there would be a bus pass for hours. After tea – rather late – we sat talking. Arthur has such different ways of looking at things than we in England. He thinks there is no danger of invasion as long as Germany is busy with Russia and without exactly saying ‘the back of the war is broken’ really thinks the worst is over. He seems so out of things somehow – rationing even. Northern Ireland has up to now been ‘off the map’ except for the raid on Belfast [on 15/16 April and 4/5 May]. He went down to meet Cliff but came back without him and we wondered if he had missed the train but there was a later one not in timetable and in strolled Cliff an hour and a quarter after. He looks well and is growing a mustache again and looks older. He went into pantry and came back into dining room laughing and said ‘Gosh, Mum, have you gone crazy and forgot the war? There’s a fowl and mince pastry and apples and a Xmas cake, gingerbread, shortbread biscuits and some walnut bread. I’ll drop a line to Lord Woolton [Minister of Food] about you!’ I said ‘Ah, he would not worry, duck. I’ve saved it for a long time. My cake and mincemeat were made last March and after all my darling “time is measured by heartbeats and not by figures on a dial” and we will have our Xmas and our festa now when we are all together again.’ I saw his face change a little and when I took his fresh towels upstairs before he had his bath he told me that he will be going abroad soon. I felt a chill. In spite of brave words that mothers speak, down in their hearts there is a protest against fate that their boys, their babies should go. It was not the half dressed figure in khaki I saw in the steam of the hot tap. It was my little boy. We had no time to talk. My husband will have to know sooner or later and I will just let Cliff break it to him himself. We cannot keep worries from people nowadays, and try as we may they have got to know things. The noise, the cigarette smoke, the old dog calmly trotting upstairs to sleep by their bedside, rolled the years away. Dear God, mothers don’t ask much for heart’s-ease.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PAST AND PRESENT

  September–October 1941

  Wednesday, 24 September. After tea I was very surprised when a cousin called whom I rarely see and she sat for awhile and I kept wondering what had brought her and then it came out. She wanted to see if I could get her a job in the Civic Restaurant! I gasped, not believing my ears. She is the daintiest, most aloof thing imaginable, has always been pampered at home – that aunt married very well – and has always had everything. I said ‘My dear, the only jobs at the Civic Restaurant are both hard and dirty – dishwashing and cooking’. She said ‘Well, Mother is dead against the Services. I would not be able to stand up to heavy farm work. I’ve not had office training and am scared of machinery – so I’ll just have to make the best of it and not grumble.’ I explained that I could do nothing – she would have to get any job through the Labour Exchange – but that if I saw the Head of restaurant I would see what I could do. The thought of Jean washing piles and piles of dirty crocks made me want to giggle – or of keeping regular hours. As she was going out she said ‘We live not far from you, you know – got a furnished house since ours was blitzed. May I bring Mother round when I come to see if you have been able to do anything in the matter? She will be lonely when we are both out – and you were always her favourite niece. She says you were always gay.’ I said ‘Well, no one can be that nowadays, Jean, but you may certainly both come’.

  Friday, 26 September. Often I think of the drastic changes going on all round and when the announcer said ‘All shop assistants between 18 and 25 except food shop girls would be called up’, I realised his words had wiped one racket away, at least here in Barrow. There is practically nothing for girls in Barrow, except the Shipyard offices and teaching, and many clever girls have had to waste their talents, or else leave home and go to the cities. When permanent waving came in fairly cheap – say 10–12 years ago – big premiums were paid to learn it at the two or three hairdressers who went away to learn the art of perming and setting, tinting and bleaching. They in turn were set up by parents who were only too glad to start their daughters in a decent career and they in turn took premium apprentices, charging about £20 to £25, and then paying it back in a few shillings a week learning the trade – two/three years. It was like a snowball and the more that started the less the premiums grew until to get girls latterly the advert has stated ‘No premium to really smart girl’. I know a number of girls who learned the trade, got a little money and their drying and perm machine on hire purchase and two assistants – and themselves not be over 20. Prices dropped all round until a ‘full head’ would be done for 7s 6d, or if it was the first one done and the person liked to chance it, for 5s! Now all these little half trained things will go and the day of ‘curl rags in the morning’ return.

  Saturday, 27 September. However I appear and whatever people think of my ‘gayness and cheerfulness’, personally I realise that under it I feel thinner skinned and know that I could not be as patient as I was. I often speak sharply to my husband when he gets beyond a certain point. My end of patience is reached quicker now – such a pity, really, for more forbearance will be needed …

  We went to pick blackberries for a sister-in-law who has no car and we got quite a lot although everywhere people are out picking them. I had put Cliff’s slipper on and not tried to force my shoe on [she had a swollen foot], so after awhile I got tired of limping round and sat down on a little raised bank. Gran’s old farm is just off the road from where we were and I started on a train of thought – as the airplanes zoomed low over the hill. I’m not very old – say it’s 40 or 44 years since I used to sit on the same bank covered in the summer with bright yellow ‘ladies fingers’, where Gran said the fairies played. The hours I’ve particularly sat waiting in the sunshine with the hot sweet incense of the whin† bushes round and the only sound the bumble of bees. I wonder if everything was so heavenly peaceful, so gay and bright, so generous, so bountiful, so kindly as my memory insists; or had my Gran’s ‘gift for living’, as I once heard it described, a lot to do with the mellow rhythm of those days, I wonder? She belonged to her day. Her serenity would have been shaken by the bombers as they passed over and it would have hurt and bewildered her not to be able to give and share all the good food of a farm and she would not have been happy in these days of cheese-paring. The fields are all getting ploughed and set again and from where I sat the clouds of birds in the distance betrayed more freshly dry land where I could not see it. A blessing seemed to lie on the quiet countryside, so still with the long shadows of the hills. I am so lucky when I can go and share it – it always does me good to sit quiet and still amongst it all …

  My husband has put the 70th shop window in this week – not bad when he has lost three apprentices and one of the men lives out of town and is getting old. Every master joiner and builder has had to ‘take up the tools again’ however old he is and work hard to get all shipshape after blitz, and there are a lot of shops heavily shuttered yet and waiting for a little window to be let in and for all to be made light and weather proofed for winter.

  Sunday, 28 September. My husband said ‘What about making an inventory of each room in case there is a fire?’ I’ve been at him for weeks so we sat down, he to write and I to prompt him. He has a very peculiar aversion to insurance and beyond an endowment policy due next year, we carry no insurance for either of us. It’s no use at all saying anything for he has all the stubbornness of a weak minded person and no amount of advice from my parents did any good. The house is insured, but that is mine, and I bou
ght a lot of the furniture when we came back from Southampton after the last war and my Dad died. I insured it and it has been increased through war risk to £300, and that includes the £70 or so for the car. I’ve kept on and on about it not being enough to cover all the furniture but today even I got a shock. We took each room and made an inventory. All my good rugs, eiderdowns and bedspreads I made, and for much less than I could have bought. My lovely cushions were all home made when I went to handicraft classes and they were cheap, and the two bedroom suites my husband made, so there was no ‘high prices’. We only put £20 down for the piano and much of the furniture was discount price, and yet when added up came to nearly £700 worth. My husband said ‘I’ll see about increasing the insurance tomorrow’, but I’ve a nasty feeling we have left it too late. I seem to remember a time limit – I hope I’m mistaken …

  I think it was catching a glimpse of the rising moon through the ragged black clouds that set me thinking of raids. Terrible as it sounds, I wish there were a few odd ones. Sometimes I feel that each day adds an imperceptible layer of dust on me. Dust of apathy? No, not quite. Indifference? Hardly that either. It’s as if I am getting too complacent about things. While no doubt it’s best to take life as it comes, adjusting myself to all changes, I feel I am getting rusty instead of razor keen. I try to keep on my toes, never leaving anything till done and working as hard as I can, but there is that ‘got used to things’ I don’t feel right about. I wonder if other people feel like it. I feel many do for I hear remarks like ‘Hitler will have his hands full all winter. WE have no need to worry.’ Many of my friends have put all their household treasures out that were packed away and many have stopped clamouring for indoor steel shelters – ‘they are ugly things to have about anyway’. I see either burst useless sandbags in porch corners or none at all. Gone are the buckets from many gardens or else falling leaves float on the half filled ones that are there. One good thing of the strange ‘it will not happen’ feeling is that many people are coming back to their houses now they are roofed and weather proof. Our school children are evacuated to places where there has been little or none before, and whatever the children experience in the way of billets, the masters of one school who are at Tebay [north-east of Kendal] are having a grim time as ‘unwanted guests’. One very nice master asked if his wife could spend her holiday – ten days or a fortnight – at Tebay, in Cumberland. When she went the landlady said sourly ‘You can share your husband’s bed – if that’s what you’ve come for – but I cannot do with you about the house in the day and I won’t cook for you. They cannot compel me to do that.’