The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  When the boys were small and begged for stories, they loved best to be told ‘when you were a little girl’, of life on Gran’s farm, of trips to London and Ireland. Arthur said as he grew older, ‘You had something Cliff and I never had’, not realising they too had different memories than their children will have, that time speeds by, and only by comparing can we see how swiftly, so swiftly that as we grow older there is a little confusion. Sometimes when I’ve had a sadness, I look at my treasured snap album, often feeling my little boys nearer than my grown sons, often, alas, feeling I’ve dreamt it all, now I see them so rarely. All the striving and worry, the anxious love – all passed. Only two wise kind little cats about now.

  Saturday, 2 August. I feel a sadness when I look at my husband. He was so different on holiday. I began to feel it had done him lasting good, but now he is back his little worries have piled up into an overwhelming flood. I often wish I was clever and could help do books and bills but know in my heart, however clever I’d been, it wouldn’t have been really practical. No one could work with him. It’s best I’m good at cooking and housekeeping perhaps. Today as we sped along in silence I built a little dream – that we went to Australia and made a home for Cliff. I feel often so useless, so selfish; there’s so little to do in Barrow in the way of any voluntary work and it’s pounced on by women like myself who have learned the real joy of service and working together. If we could go to Australia, I could make a home where Cliff could bring his friends and work happily, and I know well, if my husband could potter in the sun, his health, mentally and physically, would be better. Some people need a certain amount of stimulus of routine, but others, as they get older, love best to just sit. It’s always a deep seated worry in my mind, and rarely lifts for long.

  There was a constant stream of holiday traffic, and, to me, more huge transport lorries on the road than ever, and our narrow winding roads are not really suitable. Before long this question of roads will have to be really tackled – bypass roads through narrow country towns like Kendal and Ulverston. It’s a marvel how the huge industrial loads get through. I’ve seen loads from our Yard that must have only got over some bridges, under others, and round narrow awkward bends with inches to spare.

  Tuesday, 5 August. I met Mrs Thompson, who was the Canteen manager. She is one of the unlovable type of Scot, and we often had little wrangles, but I felt sorry for the way she had been ignored in the winding up of Canteen. What bitches women can be, especially if they have snobbish daughter-of-a-bank-manger, wife-of-a-Rotary-member views like Mrs Diss, the head of the WVS, and Miss Willan, a retired school teacher who comes from Ulverston, that little town of snobs and worshippers of ‘the county’. I’ve come to a very catty conclusion about Rotary, if our town is any guide – super snobs, the lot of them, with a more feudal manner, a holier than thou, that is very at variance of its brotherhood policy. Mrs Thompson says they have wound up Canteen affairs in their own way, which puzzles me, for after all there would have to be auditors and she holds all the bills and several of the books. Her husband, an Admiralty man, is in poor health – he has ‘cardiac debility’, the result of war strains. She is still teaching and they plan to go to her people in New Zealand, who went out in a family of eight, and the parents, and who have all done well. She said ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go out on the same boat?’ I thought ‘Yes, if it was a very big one’.

  Sunday, 10 August. We were out before 2 o’clock and went to Arnside. It was scorching hot and a lot of people were there, mainly visitors. Scores of German POWs sauntered about, looking so happy and well kept now they can buy hair oil and blacking, light shirts – and ice cream. I looked at them, many such pleasant healthy lads, and thought if I’d to choose between them and 99 out of 100 Poles, I’d choose the German every time. I’m really getting a prejudice against the loutish unmannered Poles who lounge in the buses, while women and old people stand, and walk three and four abreast on the pavement. Why don’t they either send them home or let them work? They slouch so aimlessly about as if with no hope – they are ‘dying’ slowly. If there is a risk of what the Russians will do to them! – well, all life is a risk. They are men, and we have no right to spoon feed anyone. What was once ‘Britain’s sheltering arm’ and so forth tends to be interference to a degree nowadays. I often wonder in a ‘maze’ why on earth we don’t get out of Palestine and leave Jew and Arab to batter each other instead of using our poor soldiers as ‘in between’.

  The tide slipped silently in, as it generally does in Morecambe Bay. Soon happy bathers were playing and swimming round. We had our tea, and left for home just before 7 o’clock to travel slowly to be sure to be home for 8.30 to hear To Let. Somehow I felt as if I was part of Galsworthy’s ‘golden age’ tonight. I felt sun soaked and the westerning sun still warmed the dining room and made for that feeling of well being when all is glowing and warm. The very music is a triumph, a mental magic carpet to carry me back, and the tempo of their lovely voices is perfection. I got my husband to carry a bucket of water for each of the little fruit trees and I watered my leeks and broccoli and the little rockery walls and rose trees at the top of the garden. All seems very dry and it looks set fair for a day or two.

  Wednesday, 13 August. Mrs Salisbury didn’t come. She said she might be having a day at Lancaster with her sister-in-law, so I began to do the bedroom. There was a ring and Mrs Whittam’s agitated voice begged me to come over early and give her a hand. She didn’t know where to turn. The harvesters had come two days before expected and Ena had been up all night with a cow that had developed mastitis and there were sandwiches to cut for eight of them working in the fields …

  What a mix-up and mess they were in, and Olga does get cranky. I persuaded her to take her little girl and Ena’s three children off to bathe. I simply couldn’t have done anything today with them all squabbling round me. Mrs Whittam and I make a grand pair – I love to plan and ‘boss’ someone round, she loves to be told exactly what to do – and then she works like two. She said I could do what I liked and there seemed lots to go at, so I said ‘We will bake for two days and then it will help Ena tomorrow’. Mrs Whittam looked after the coal oven. I got all ready. Two big tins full of date cookies, three of cheese scones, three of plain to have cheese between – Ena cut into a 12 lb cheese she had saved for harvest. I beat up a batch of dough for little crisp rolls, using new milk, made a four pound gingerbread, two big tins of jam pasty and two of apple, and then the rolls were ready for the oven. A pleasant Jewish looking POW came from the field to carry the big enameled bucket of tea, and he took one side of the big basket of food with Mrs Whittam. We had washed crisp lettuce hearts and there was a bag of dead ripe tomatoes and we didn’t forget to put in a little box of salt.

  I took Ena some tea into the cowshed. She was so upset over the cow and the vet didn’t come. He had left pills yesterday and it seemed a bit better, but as I told Ena, she shouldn’t have let her drink. The POW came and I asked him to go gather an armful of marshmallow and we boiled it and laid big poultices on the cow’s swollen udder and we all helped to bathe her all over and put cold compresses on her poor hot head. They call the POW ‘Youbie’ or something like it. He had real kindness and patience with that cow. I said ‘You should have been a vet’ and he said quietly ‘I would have been by now if the war hadn’t come’. He spoke very good English. I looked at his intent face as he bent over the cow and at his long sensitive hands, and felt I’d have liked to know all about him. Oddly enough he knew Gran’s way with mastitis in a cow. He prepared the marshmallow as I’d have done myself, and I could see he thought the cow had been neglected. Ena is slapdash. Kindheartedness is not enough with animals. As much common sense is required as with children. My husband called for me, and we sat on the seashore for awhile, but I was tired out and I’d my potted meat to make.

  ‘I cannot recall such lovely prolonged weather for many years’, Nella wrote on 15 August, ‘not since the first year we were married.’ There had indeed been
day after day of sunny, warm, often hot weather, and Nella was feeling decidedly better and keenly soaking up the benefits of nature. As she put it on 18 August, ‘This golden life giving weather makes one able to resist colds and sniffles or aching bones. I’m sure it will help us all for the winter.’ This prognosis proved to be over-optimistic. One day in the following winter, 28 January 1948, ‘when a stray sunbeam fell on my face, I felt I wanted to clutch and hold it. Sunshine is life to me. Last summer I felt the years and my aches and miseries roll off me – to bounce back in the dull winter days.’

  Saturday, 16 August. We had all windows, the windscreen and the top open, yet it was only when we were moving we felt it bearable. Harvesters, road menders, bikers and hikers and drivers of heavy lorries looked very un-English with only singlets and shorts – many only the latter. Their golden brown bodies gleamed with perspiration, but they looked as happy as I felt in the lovely sunshine. I never saw so many tramps. They shuffled along, the only overdressed people about, for most wore tattered overcoats and had heavy packs that could have been a makeshift tent on their backs.

  We went to Arnside, thinking to find it cool by the estuary, but it was very airless. We had tea. The ice cream made our simple meal very festive. Scores of POWs from the big camp nearby sauntered about or sat on the wall. I felt really happy for them, to see how getting a little money nowadays had turned them from sad sullen prisoners into ordinary citizens. Granted this life giving sun would lift up anyone’s spirits, but the gleaming oiled hair and polished shoes, light open necked shirts, and some odd looking white linen caps they had bought from some queer source made them look usual in spite of coarse POW pants. Some had sunglasses, many ate ice cream – but it came to me suddenly that I rarely saw them smoking. A wide mouthed lad with gleaming teeth and long sensitive hands sat near, so like my Cliff when he went overseas – even his burnt orange shirt made the likeness more plain. Cliff loved to feel different …

  My husband said suddenly ‘This weather agrees with you – you look ten years younger’. I laughed and said ‘Only ten years – I feel as gay and light headed as a girl, and feel like buying a bathing suit and going swimming again’! I feel my body is soaking up sunshine like blotting paper. Work is a pleasure, simple well cooked food a banquet. I feel it will build us up for winter and help us face any crisis.

  We wouldn’t have come home as early, but wanted to hear Churchill’s voice again. I’d a queer little sadness when I heard him. I felt he was worried and heart sick, and baffled when he had no authority to sound the clarion call as formerly. Bless him for his faith and courage that we will pull through. I share his concern about so many who want to go abroad, but what can we do? Youth is so fleeting. This generation has lost so much, and dear God they ask so little – just that chance to work and see something for their labours, a share in those simple good things in life in the way of food that the colonies offer. I’ve never yet heard anyone speak of making a fortune or of big wages, only the chance to get on.

  Sunday, 17 August. We were out by 1.30 and got round Coniston Lake, over to Ambleside, on to Keswick, and picnicked by Derwentwater … I’ve always said there is very small litter left about the Lakes. Today I saw that if you are litter minded you can ride in a Rolls or motor coach or tramp the roads. Few little streams are running into Thirlmere, and only one where there was any coolness from its wetness or enough to bathe sticky hands. A very big car with four well fed adults and a chauffeur were just pulling out, and I suggested we park awhile. Thrown carelessly out, presumably from the car just left, were paper drinking cups, a small cardboard box which had had sandwiches in, two empty chocolate carton-boxes, and crumpled paper napkins. A passing tramp paused shyly as if hoping there would be something he could pick up. I smiled and picked up the sandwich box, which had two in it, and said ‘This box might be useful for you’. He came across and we looked down at the litter and he shook his head and then picked all up, and said something about ‘being kept busy’, as if he held himself to be the salvage collector of that piece of road, but when I looked at his grubby, shabby appearance, I thought he had a finer ‘inside’ than the untidy ones.

  Monday, 18 August. Another lovely day. I seem to have packed in two days work! I decided to go downtown shopping before it got too hot and put some clothes to soak, dusted round, and was downtown by 10 o’clock. I bought 4 lb tomatoes and 2 lb pears to bottle, left my grocery order, and got fish bits etc. The town seems full of strangers, and scantily dressed women and children in bright colours made such a happy note.

  I stood waiting for the bus and met an old Barrovian, whose family and my father were connected with the railway when it was local and called the Furness Railway. He is staying at a nearby hotel and I’ve often chatted to him going downtown or waiting for the bus. He seemed lonely, for he has spent his life abroad on tea plantations. He is older than I am. He married a friend of my father’s youngest sister, who was not ten years older than I am, and she died years ago and they never had a family. He has always asked after various relatives and friends – if my husband had been more sociable I’d have made him welcome and invited him round, but it’s no use denying the fact I’m giving up the struggle as regards visitors. The bridge was evidently up and buses delayed. Mr Jefferson suggested strolling on to the next stop. I remarked how I loved the sun, and how happy and well I felt in sunshine, spoke of when I lived down south and of envying Cliff in Australia – just talked idly as we strolled. He said something about me going back south to live, perhaps Devon, but I said if I made a change, I thought it might be Australia. I recall something about going for a long visit to Australia and coming back – ‘After all, you have your own life, and interests in England’ –and then I couldn’t believe my ears – he asked if I thought I could consider marrying him!!!

  Such a mix up. I’ve had a suspicion sometimes he was getting me mixed up with Aunt Mary, whose husband was killed in an accident in Abbey Road in the blackout in the war. I can remember telling him I was going to Ireland on my own, and how he teased me about ‘always being independent’. It was such an embarrassment to us both, and he apologised so sincerely for his mistake. I could see how lonely he has been these few months, for I’ve often seen him round town and always alone. I was so upset I got a bad attack of hiccoughs when I got in. I wish I knew some lonely friendly soul who could marry him. He’s a dear.

  The next day she saw Mr Jefferson from a distance at the cricket field and ‘thought of all the uprooted Anglo Indians coming back to England where memory had distorted friendships and associations and disillusionment followed quickly on their return’.

  Wednesday, 20 August. I’ve been nattering about the lavatory seat and lid ever since war ended. I hate shabby things and try and dodge some way to make them better, if I can. My husband never had that pride in his home to make the best of things and says ‘Ah, don’t bother – it’s right enough’ as long as it holds together. I wanted him to have the seat and lid French polished, but today I got on my top note and decided I’d do the darn thing myself. I unscrewed it off and partly stripped off the polish with a piece of woollen material, wrung out of warm water and ammonia sprinkled on, and I’ll sandpaper every scrap off. It’s mahogany. I think I’ll just oil dress it, giving it repeated stains of linseed oil and then Mansion polish will finish it off. I love a Chippendale polish on wood, or beeswaxed oak, far before a hand gloss …

  I was washed and changed before lunch, and off to Walney before 1.30 to Ena Whittam’s. The cow is better and out in the field again and today they were not so busy, for it was a little spell off in their harvest, for the two north fields are not ready till Friday or Saturday for cutting. There’s a lot of chinks in any scheme, rationing especially. Olga and Billy, two of Mrs Whittam’s family, have bought a pig between them to fatten and kill about Xmas, to ensure they have plenty to eat all winter. Olga has one little girl, Billy as yet no family. The pig weighs 22 score pounds, and they paid £25 and will feed it till killing, and there is
all the waste weight. Ena says she estimates their bacon will work out at at least 3s a pound before they get it, and they will only have to give up their bacon ration!! I helped pick pears and beans for two orders besides my own, and then we stacked up a pile of untidy raspberry prunings and potato tops, which, to Ena’s mirth, annoyed me as they lay around. She said ‘You’d never make a farmer. You are too nasty particular about dirt and untidiness.’ I smiled, but thought of Gran’s farm, tidy to a degree and as sweet and fair, in its own way, as a well-kept house.

  Monday, 25 August. Another lovely day. A pleasure to get up and face the day’s work. I decided to take all my curtains down, wash them, and left them in water to soak while I went downtown shopping. I met Mr Jefferson and quite simply got to know how he had got me mixed up with Aunt Mary. On the boat coming over, Amy was talking about people and families she knew in Barrow and the district and Mr J. and she found they had many mutual acquaintances. He asked if she knew anyone called Lord – Mary Lord, who had been a young friend of his wife and her sister. Amy said ‘Ah yes, very well – wasn’t it dreadful about her husband, but it’s a happy release’ and told of Uncle Jim’s death, and how very lonely Aunt Mary would be now her family were either married or, in the case of Molly, working away from Barrow. Then he said ‘I was walking down Abbey Road and saw you laughing and talking to someone and your whole appearance in your summer frock brought back a memory of before the war, when we were over. You looked so like Mary, and when I met you the first time and said “I’m sure you were a Miss Lord” I never thought of any other Miss Lord, or of the years between my visits.’ I told him about gentle sweet Aunt Mary, who, through all her bitter troubles, married to a brilliant clever man who was a dipsomaniac [an alcoholic], loved and shielded him and only 15 months after just stopped living and laid back in her chair without a word and died.