The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Monday, 1 December. I went to the hairdresser’s today and will go in future on Mondays for I’m rearranging things generally and with Friday afternoon at Canteen, it’s too hard to go out in the morning as well. On a wall where I pass on my way there are always town announcements and I noticed today a big poster issued by Communist Society and calling on the Youth, who will have to rule the world in the future. It’s puzzling and rather upsetting to many people to read on the Communist posters that they are held in the Town Hall itself, where no meetings were held before the war and now are only held because there are so few halls available. The fact that our Director of Education is a big Communist, and in last war was a conchie who spent six months in jail for insulting remarks and behaviour toward soldiers, puzzles people who come to Barrow even more. It’s a startling thought that more people are being encouraged to be Communists now and it will no doubt be one of many problems after the war.

  Tuesday, 2 December. It was a dreadful morning and I felt a bit nervy going down in the bus through the thick fog for visibility was so bad that we kept stopping with jerks that nearly shook our heads off! … I went into a stationer’s for a 1s 3d calendar called the Churchill Calendar, with twelve large ‘alive’ and vital pictures of Mr Churchill. Someone had bought one and we thought we would like one for Centre. Mr Spencer, the shopkeeper, said ‘When I bought that lot the traveller stared and said “Are you buying one for everyone in Barrow?” but I bet I am refusing them before Xmas, never mind New Year, for they are selling at the rate of six or seven to every other kind’ … I had a sadness as I walked the foggy street, a regret for the spirit that craved so for ‘life’ and ‘expression’. Is this what Arthur calls sublimation? I wonder – this ‘straight ahead and don’t falter or look back’ – or is it age? I don’t look old – my hairdresser said yesterday that my skin and hair were ten years younger than my age. I don’t bulge and my step is quick, but I feel so old, so aged, since war broke out. I wonder if this feeling of the inevitability of having to keep on is what brings that sadness to many soldiers’ and airmen’s faces – ground staff airmen? I never saw it on a naval man’s face. I am often startled at Canteen at the types which seem to sort themselves out. The khaki battle dress helps but it’s often as if individuals are being merged into types. It’s the folded lips that make for the likeness I think, the lips that pressed tightly to keep back the cry that would have ‘keened’ out into the silent night those words of protest, refusal, protestation.

  Wednesday, 3 December. I felt glad when Ena was coming this morning to help with the heavier work and not even the deep trouble the poor thing was in stopped her from scrubbing and polishing. I’ve always been struck by the trustful credulity of the extreme poor – and their distrust of banks or savings accounts. Poor Ena has paid 2s 6d a week for 24 weeks and had only another two to pay to draw £3 5s 0d. When a money club is started they have 26 members if it runs for 26 weeks and each week one of them gets ‘the draw’, which is decided by drawing numbers out of a hat and each member knows the date of her draw and works accordingly. Ena changed with one woman who wanted an early draw for, as she said, ‘With five kids one wants a bit of money at Xmas’. The woman who ran the club draw was sent to prison last week, for six months, for inciting a lad to steal. I said soothingly ‘She will have “books”, Ena, and those who pay in their half crowns will take them and you will get yours whether the woman who runs it is in goal or not’, but Ena says that she ‘never bothered with books or accounts – just trailed round collecting it’ … Ena is a great talker and today entertained me by details of her first husband’s neurasthenia and rather horrible suicide – he cut his throat at an open window and fell into the street. I was thankful when she hurried over her work to finish early – 2.30 – to go an errand for a neighbour.

  She lives in one of the oldest streets in town and it was condemned before blitz and if we had not had so much Council property destroyed and damaged it would have been cleared away. The people living in the houses are all very poor people who up to the war seemed ‘on the dole’ or Public Assistance. Ena’s neighbour has a husband, son, and brother in the Yard and, as she puts it, ‘doesn’t know what to buy with all her money’. Ena [says she] knows a farmer well and was going to see if she could order a goose for Xmas and a turkey for New Year – price NO object at all! Ena said ‘You should see what she has bought for Xmas. She has spent all the coupons in the house and the girl has a dance dress that must have cost points† and will be done with once on – and gold slippers too.’ She has paid 30s for a box of [Christmas] crackers with lovely velvet flowers on each and got a full dinner set and paid £7… I felt tired out and my back ached so badly and I said ‘I think I’ll go to bed although it’s only 8 o’clock and I’ll get my writing done and then lie and read’, but Isa came and stayed till after 10 o’clock and I’d supper to make. She looks so peevish and it wipes the look of youth off her face like a sponge. She so resents having to go into her husband’s shop – even to escape the Yard …

  Such a lot has gone from life – repose and serenity, leisure and enjoyment in little things like reading or a gay piece of embroidery growing under fingers that are smooth and well kept. It’s wicked to grizzle over such trifles. Perhaps it’s my back aching again that makes me give a slight backward look over my shoulder … I count my blessings, as Gran used to sternly tell us to do, and I’ve so many, fire and warmth and a soft bed and a door to shut out all that troubles and work at Centre and not too bad health. At least I can keep on. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to have a wailing place like the Jews at Jerusalem and go there and think of all the misery and anguish, the pain and loss that is in the world, and wail to the heavens above. Not keep shying away from thoughts of things, of refusing to think of Rostov, of starving Greece, of our boys in Libya. Thinking can be such a curse. I can well understand why mind tortured people take to drink or drugs, for a little nirvana.

  Thursday, 4 December. I felt glad when no one called – I like the Please Begin With Us and J. B. Priestley programmes [Listen to My Notebook, at 20.30, written by Priestley] on Thursday night. J. B. always seems to start one on a train of thought, and tonight my husband said in a startled tone ‘Was it really like that 100 years ago?’ and we talked and wondered if the same startling changes would occur in the next 100 years and if our descendants would shudder at life as lived today, or whether the mad spin the world has got into would have thrown us back even further. My husband gazed reflectively into the fire and then said ‘What a long time it seems since Arthur and that pale lad in glasses – I forget his name – used to sit and talk so calmly about this “inevitable war” – and do you remember how Ted and you used to nearly fight over your arguments as to whether germs would be used?’ … I felt the warm tears on my cheeks and as I turned for a handkerchief to wipe them away I was surprised to see my husband’s eyes wet. He said ‘What a slice went out of our lives, at one stroke. I’ve only realised lately, my dear, how you must have missed them all [the young men of her sons’ generation]. You seemed to mother them all, didn’t you?’ I just nodded.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WINTER’S TALES

  December 1941–February 1942

  Saturday, 6 December. We went on to Spark Bridge and went into Woolworths at Ulverston for I thought I would like some little oddment about 6d to put in four gay bags I’ve made for Hospital Xmas tree. I thought they would do for older children. I was unsuccessful – there was nothing suitable under 1s 3d. I thought of a tablet of toilet soap – there was not one piece on the toilet stall, and lately there has been hundreds, of every make. I went back to look at the household stall and there was very little of any kind of soap powder and only a small ‘tray compartment’ of ordinary soap. It’s puzzled me that soap should have been continued making in such amounts, with fat shortage.

  Aunt Sarah looks failing and each winter has looked frailer and this fall downstairs has shaken her more than she will admit. She refuses to discuss it
– says it’s past and ‘not worth thinking about’ – but at 76 even a strong mind is not enough to override bad attacks of flu and falls down stairs. Aunt Eliza was not in – she is down in Barrow looking for a ‘bed sit’. She is tired of the country. Such a difference from Aunt Sarah. One gives to life and the other demands as ‘a right’, and the one who has given and given although having so little to give has the serenity and balance and the conviction of ‘all coming right somewhere’. Aunt Eliza, who has had plenty of money all her life, spent it as she got it, and had a way of seeing the worst in people – and telling them! – has no one who really cares for her and her three children don’t like her very much – I don’t myself. There is no foundation for a liking at all.

  People are talking of a pawnbroker’s advert – see Thompson’s advert in December 6 Barrow News. In his three shops there has been an astonishing number of rings, round about £80 and £100, and they have all disappeared from view and a lot of women have got rings who never had them before the war. Today is the first time such an open advert has appeared in our papers. A diamond necklace priced at £700 and a ‘bargain’ ring at £110 advertised as an ‘investment’ seems so shocking these days, and in a place like Barrow where there is no unearned income unless it’s a retired income, and they are never very much. Mrs Atkinson said ‘It’s a bit odd to have adverts to “save and lend” and those to invest in £700 diamond necklaces in the same paper’. We talked and laughed at another odd advert – she notices them even more than I do with her husband working at the News and Mail† office. It was worded ‘Domestic help may be a reserved occupation and exempt. You will receive good remuneration at ___ Abbey Road’, and a number in the 100s told us that it was likely enough a boarding house and one that advertised 30s a week for a maid the other week.

  With getting at least four eggs a day I have rather too many and today let Mrs Atkinson have half a dozen – greatly to her delight. I’m keeping accounts and putting any egg money away in my Post Office box in case I decide to buy day-old chicks again in spring. As my bill for mash comes to only 5s 8d I find it’s a cheap price to pay for all the eggs I want for table and cooking. It’s a bit embarrassing to receive so many enquiries for eggs and to be told that ‘I’ll be glad to buy any eggs you have left’ by so many friends. I decided to keep hens, though, for our own use and because my husband is not a strong man and I feared food shortage would be greater before this and he would go down through me not being able to get enough of the little extras I’ve always got for him, and I feel quite callous to pleadings for ‘only one egg for John’s tea’. I think ‘No – you skitted† at my “messed up” lawn and only reluctantly put a few cabbages in the borders’. Mrs Atkinson heard me refuse the last mentioned neighbour and say I ‘needed all my eggs either for myself or friends’ and she said ‘Well, of all the perishing nerve. I’m glad you refused to let her have even one. She had enough to say about you starting to keep hens and would not even let her husband put a beehive in the garden as it made it untidy!’

  Such a good programme tonight. I love the full Saturday night programmes with In Town Tonight, Week in Westminster and They Also Serve, and the new Circus serial sounds good – such marvellous ‘effects’. Of all the things I’d like to do would be to potter round Broadcasting House ‘seeing the wheels go round’, not as a visitor to be rushed from one thing to another but to wander for days round it and meet all the interesting people and watch some of the programmes for myself. I like to see the ‘effects’ best of all. It often intrigues me where some of our family get their love – and ability – in acting or producing. It’s on my mother’s sober farming side too for my cousin’s girls are such experts in dancing or teaching dancing – rink skating or designing really wonderful dresses for stage work in local amateur shows. My two boys always ‘played stage’ and when Arthur was a tiny tot he arranged his toys puppet fashion and talked for them, weaving conversations for them in a sequence that lasted for days. Arthur is a good producer, can write in extra scenes, act and make up like an old hand who has been taught or used to it and no one seems to know where it comes from! Gran used to vaguely hint that it came from ‘the Spanish hussy’ in the family tree!

  Monday, 8 December. Oddly enough I found her [Nella’s hairdresser] jubilant over the war spreading to America and Japan. She said ‘It’s time the Japs were put in their place and it will make America realise there is a war on and they will have to wire in and forget their strikes’. I said ‘There is another angle. What about help to Russia and Turkey as well as the munitions, food, tanks and planes for us, and the ships she sends petrol in? I cannot see your view. I am appalled myself.’ She said ‘I had never looked at it from that angle’ and we began to talk of what it would probably mean. Since it has been ‘passed’ that no married woman has to go into Services, she tells me there is a big rush to get married by women who dread going into ATS and who hope to get into the Shipyard here. She is thinking herself of getting married and going into her fiancé’s butcher’s shop – he is exempt through what the doctors call varicose arteries …

  When I went for a bus to come home after leaving hairdresser’s there was a long queue and most of the buses were nearly full of women who had been to matinees and only two or three could get on. Two boys in Air Force uniform rushed from the bottom of the queue and elbowed their way on to the platform past waiting women and children but one big old man calmly ‘hooked them off’ by coat collar and said ‘Now then lads, none of this “Lords of the Air” stuff – wait thy turn’ and it made a good laugh. A woman said ‘I’ve noticed in a certain type of youngster of 20 that a uniform seems to develop a swagger and makes them think they have gained importance!’

  I was in in time to dash round drawing blackouts – after feeding the hens. Four lovely eggs today. They are always such a thrill to me and seem much more wonderful than they really are. I’d the fire poked into a blaze from its banked† up smoulder and my husband’s slippers warm and tea ready to pour out when he got in tired out. We had stewed prunes, cheese, jam, whole meal bread and butter and cake cut into thin slices, and my husband said ‘I wish everyone was as lucky as I was. I never seem to know there is a war on. You do seem to manage well, my dear.’ It’s odd to hear him talk like that for he never used to notice how I managed and contrived and took everything for granted. Now he looks at my baking on baking day and says ‘All that out of rations! I do think you are clever’!

  Wednesday, 10 December. With Ena being here I managed to get settled to my Hospital sewing at 1.30 and had a real good afternoon and evening, from 1.30 to 9 o’clock, with only getting up for tea making and serving and feeding the hens – three lovely eggs today – I am a lucky woman. I asked Ena if she had got her ‘draw’ money she was worried about and she said ‘Aye, all but 15s, and I’ll maybe get that this week’, so I felt very glad for her. One of the little girls insists on coming home – I can hear of many evacuees coming home for Xmas. The news of the Prince of Wales and Repulse [sunk by the Japanese] was a sad blow and what about the men? My husband came in looking vexed and he said ‘The Bruccianias’ – a local Italian family with several shops – ‘tuned into Italian and German news and they say our ships were sunk by masses of explosives rained from planes and they had no chance as wave after wave of planes poured down on them and they sunk immediately’. He went on, ‘I always say they are no friends of ours for they repeat the foreign news with such glee’. The boys were all born and reared in Barrow but they had big business interests just outside Florence and one brother or the father were always over there and children born were christened Bruno and Edda. Always they reminded me of greedy little boys of 10–12, uncouth and bad mannered and grabbing and with all the unlovable traits that most boys pass through and grow out of – they kept theirs and added to them.

  If I had been sewing anything else but the dollies for the Hospital tree I could not have kept on tonight. My husband sat so troubled and white and he has got another bad head cold and that depres
sed him more. [Sidney] Strube’s dreadful cartoon in the Express, so stark and simple with Hitler taking the call for ‘Author’ against a back cloth of the world in flames, was the only way of thinking of things today. I’ve always felt that things would be worse before better so cannot say that I’ve had a shock over the turn of events but I’ve a sick fear growing as to what will be the next move. Will Hitler start here again? I can never think as so many do that ‘he has his hands too full in Russia’ to think of us. I feel he is building and creeping and planning and, like a watching patient cat who to onlookers seems unobservant, will pounce and tear, and Britain is so small and where could we hide and keep safe all the helpless ones, I wonder? Any little triumphs that we hear on the wireless sound so small in comparison to the Ark Royal, the Prince of Wales and Resolve. Common sense says that we must inflict punishment when our armies go over to Germany but we don’t know.

  A dread of Xmas seems to hang over me. I wish the sun would shine and chase a few of my ‘mulligrubs’† away. I feel as if the effort to be bright and cheerful will get me down.

  Saturday, 13 December. We went to Spark Bridge and I took a nice pierrot dollie for a cousin’s baby girl whose father is in the RAF. I don’t know her very well but she is a very nice girl and when I saw her delight at ‘being thought of’ I was glad I’d taken the dollie. She will save it for Jeanette’s stocking. She is such a lovely blonde curly-headed baby of three with the manners of a grown-up. She said gravely ‘My daddy cannot come home for Xmas – he has to smack a few Germans out of the sky’ and her mother said ‘I don’t know where that child picks up some of her expressions!’