The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Friday, 4 August. We went down the Coast Road again. It was a lot cooler, and looks set for a change. The fields were being prepared for the reaper and binder to begin harvest. Down the edges, two sides, men cut and tied a swathe – it does look a poor thin crop, and I can hear it’s much worse over the Duddon estuary in Cumberland. The incoming tide was dotted with bathers. Happy family groups round little tents everywhere on the grass verge looked as if they had been down all morning. Cars with numbers from every part of Scotland and England passed or paused awhile. The number of Scottish cars increases each summer. The other day when my husband was getting petrol at the garage where he generally deals I said ‘The news and situation in Korea makes us wonder how much longer petrol will be off ration’. The proprietor said ‘I think it’s found its level. The trade say only 10% more was sold, and that includes part of the holiday traffic, you know. My son says our sales haven’t gone up a lot, but people will be buying petrol further afield, as they take longer journeys.’ We walked along the sands before the tide was full. The air was sweet and fresh. We met several people we knew and had a chat, and had tea in the car …

  The news of retreat and yet still retreat in Korea is bad. It seems to play right into Stalin’s hands and give him such cause to crow ‘America – pooh – why Koreans can send them packing. They would never have a chance if they struck at ME’, and it’s not good Westerners should lose face. I had a fearsome little remembrance of ‘The last war of all will start in the East’ and vague oddments of revelations that were ‘being proved every day for those with eyes to see’ and such like – hangovers from a nosy childhood when there was nothing for curious children to interest their minds as now, and a street orator was a treat. I can see plainly as I write a figure I’d forgotten long ago, only coming back now as his wild prophecies of the ‘end of all things’ was shouted at indifferent adults and enthralled children. Not one corner of this lovely world is safe or secure. I wonder what this dreadful H-bomb is like in its effects. It will be a fearful ‘adventure’ to set off a trial one. I wonder if America will set off the atom bomb in Korea. To do so could set the whole Eastern world against us. As Stalin would be able to say, ‘This is what the West means to you, death and mutilation or a wholesale massacre’.

  The war in Korea had attracted Nella’s attention on several occasions recently. On 26 July ‘When I heard the 6 o’clock news I felt faint shock – that we were sending troops to Korea’. Hundreds of thousands of British families were bound to be alarmed, as their boys of military age faced the prospect of being sent, once again, into battle. ‘Fear and concern is coming to mothers of boys who will be due for National Service’, Nella wrote on 28 July, ‘for now it sounds as if they will be soldiers from the start, liable for overseas, and all it can mean, by the time they are 19.’ Moreover, the current crisis raised for the first time since 1945 the potential use of atomic weapons, and Nella was gloomy about Britain’s post-war weakness in a world dominated by the two superpowers. ‘America has the A-bomb – and is young’, she remarked on 27 July. ‘We would have little or no say whether one had to be dropped in Korea, and if such a dreadful thing did happen – and Russia has them – all hell could be easily let loose. A terrifying outlook.’

  Saturday, 19 August. I tidied round quickly after breakfast and we sat waiting about 15 minutes for the taxi. Being such a big wedding [of a cousin’s son] and so many to bring from a wide district, even with a fleet of taxis it was a rush to get everyone to church in time. The bride lived at Rampside, a small village on Morecambe Bay, five miles from town. The church was beautifully decorated with pink roses and tall pink spikes of gladioli, and I don’t remember seeing a lovelier bride and attendants. Nancy had a medieval plain cut dress with long tight sleeves, flowing train in stiff corded silk, and wore a family veil. The bridesmaids had stiff striped brocade of blending pastel shades with a silver thread between each delicate hue. They were simply made but cunningly cut and so different from the usual bridesmaids’ dresses. We knew nearly everyone. Miss Ledgerwood, who worked with us at Hospital Supply, is an aunt of the bride, and there was the usual big turn up of relations rarely seen between weddings and funerals. Mary Rawlinson was there, beautifully dressed, serene and aloof, parrying enquiries about the break between her and Cliff Crump, after a long drawn out courtship of nearly ten years, when she had kept putting off her marriage, saying ‘There’s plenty of time’, and now he has tired of waiting. Perhaps because I asked no questions, she told me ‘We grew to have less and less in common, and anyway Nell, I think I’m like your Cliff – too content on my own’. I said ‘Well Mary, you are so like my own mother in looks and ways. I think it’s as well for either a husband or any children you might have had that you don’t marry. I know Mother would have been happier if she hadn’t married my father, but put it down to the fact that the “real” life of her died when her first husband did. Now I wonder if she was like you – a kind of Rhine maiden.’ She wasn’t at all pleased, but she knows well I’ve known several of her half finished romances in all their details. It’s as if she seeks a perfection in human relationship almost impossible to find, and the comic part is that she is more full of whims and whamseys† and more difficult to understand than most.

  We didn’t go to the station to see the bridal couple off, first to London to spend the night, and then to Newquay on the Cornish express. It was too late to make the journey in one day from Barrow.* Instead we went to Spark Bridge to tell Aunt Sarah all about the wedding. Other days, others’ ways – she was so disappointed her share of the ‘wedding feast’ and a glass of wine hadn’t been sent. Useless to try and explain the difference of hotel catering and that of the old time personal attention to everything. I recall country weddings when I was small when any old or sick who couldn’t go had their share of goodies put aside – someone took it and told of every detail. Ruth [Tomlinson] is staying in the cottage next door. She came in to hear all about all that occurred. I felt shocked to see how suddenly she had begun to look her age. Her lecture tour in America was so strenuous and she did so hate New York, saying ‘Never go there if you can help it. It has the least soul of any place I’ve known.’ I can tell she feels gloomy about the way things are going in Korea. She seems to have got atom bomb and total destruction of civilization pretty bad. I said ‘I’ve got past it, Ruth. I’ve a growing Sayonara – “if it must be so” – a feeling we are all in some great and intricate “Place”, that “it’s not life that matters, but the courage we bring to it”’. She thinks I’m a ‘visionary’, ‘a perfect sweet’, that I ‘must be delightful to live with’, etc. Knowing dear Ruthie, I knew she was trying to convey that I wanted my bumps read!

  Saturday, 2 September. As we ate lunch I asked my husband ‘What would you like to do, short of putting your head in the gas oven?’ He looked aggrieved at my flippancy, but wouldn’t give any kind of answer. But when we got out, he perked up and said suddenly ‘Let’s go to Kendal’. I felt surprised. He has never suggested going since Robert was here just after Xmas. I said ‘I’ll be delighted if you feel up to it’. We went slowly. It’s not much more than an hour’s run from Barrow. Everywhere in the high wind and fitful sunshine farmers were busy. I saw many ricks being covered with tarpaulin as if some grain on higher ground had dried sufficiently. Hay too was being cut, and quite a good crop if it only dries. Two hikers hailed us for a lift. They had huge packs on their backs but my husband wouldn’t stop. He had read an article or letter by a motorist in the Express the other week saying ‘Why should motorists, who are taxed have to pay so dear for petrol, pander to some people’s desire and determination to get a cheap holiday by hitchhiking?’ My husband pointed out that there was a very good bus service, and just before we came along a service bus half empty had paused to pick up passengers, and the two hikers had not bothered though it would only have been a few coppers to go as far as Kendal.

  There was the usual life and bustle of a county town. Kendal has been as unfortunate for weather
as the rest of Lakeland. In two shops where I went – one for a lettuce and celery, one for elastic – they spoke of the ‘terrible weather for August’. We came round by Bowness and parked by the Lake to eat tea, from where I could see into cars round about. Most of them were having a picnic meal – and some really large expensive cars. Perhaps the price of petrol hits more people than one realised! Fewer cars and only a very short line of motor coaches in the big car park. Perhaps Morecambe illuminations will take most coach trips now. We were home by 7.30, already foam over the Irish Sea. Banks of rain were rolling in. It’s only been a ‘borrowed’ day.

  Thursday, 7 September. There was wild confusion of piled furniture and carpets in some side streets of Ulverston, brought hurriedly from houses never been flooded in living memory, and a great deal of damage to two bridges and roads had been caused. A ‘river’ surged through Ulverston station, washing all before it. Passengers from Whitehaven to Euston were taken off the trains at Dalton and travelled by road round the Bay to Carnforth, and we didn’t get papers till noon as all had to be brought by lorry or bus. Low lying fields were lakes. Others I never remember seeing flooded were under water, any stooks of corn that didn’t float submerged altogether – a pitiful sight. I’d not dared to look at the poor garden before I left, and hardly knew where to start when I got home. I had a promising crop of pears and James Grieve apples – half were on the ground – herbaceous plants flat, rose branches torn off completely, the lawn was covered with branches and pieces of Michaelmas daisy, chrysanth plants, etc. With the dry spring and too wet autumn, stems and stalks were too spindly and thin to stand up to much. I looked at apple blossom, spring rock plants, aubretia and polyanthus in bloom, and could not remember so freakish a year. I felt spent and exhausted long before I’d made much tidy, so left it to heat cream of chicken soup and fry fillets of hake to make a handy meal.

  My husband I could see didn’t want me to go down to the Civil Defence meeting. I felt if I didn’t get out for awhile, I’d be really ill. I felt like an old glove – nothing but the outward shape. I couldn’t eat much but had a rest. He nattered about ‘being glad when this silly fad is over and your Civil Defence lectures finished’, and wondered ‘what can I do all afternoon’. I lost patience as I pointed out the lecture was an hour, and another 30 or 40 minutes to go there and back, and suggested he went to the cinema or go over Walney. I can never understand his attitude to the car. Most folk use a car as a help to get about. He won’t take it out if he thinks it will get wet, or leave it in a car park, however public, in case someone scratches or damages it. He wouldn’t hear of going down to the pictures and leaving it unattended, but with one of his most hurt expressions decided to go over Walney and sit and watch the sea. I said ‘Well, that will be cosy and uplifting – enough to give anybody the miseries on a day like this’, but I went off thankfully on my own.

  Odd how differently people look on home. To me it’s my real ‘core’ of life and living. I can always relax and read or sew happily if I’m on my own, and would like to have people in rather than go out looking for change. My husband has his mother’s deep horror of being in the house by himself, and only wanders around unhappily, looking out of windows, watching the clock and timing my return. I often feel I took a wrong course of action somewhere or he wouldn’t have got quite so bad … Mrs Higham ‘wonders how on earth you keep so serene and calm. I’d go mad if I was you, cooped up as you are’ – and says ‘You will pay for all this, you know’, as if life was all ruled in little routines with rules made for every condition. I said ‘Well, things do get me down at times, but I firmly count my blessings, and I’ve a lot you know, including my queer intelligent cat friends, who are unbelievably good company’. She said ‘Cats! – fah!’ I said ‘Well, add books, my letters and the regular arrival of the boys’ letters. Many women don’t have even that link with families, you know.’ She said ‘I repeat, you lead a most unnatural life, and will pay dearly for it some day’. I began to argue. As I pointed out, nothing or no one could hurt you if you didn’t allow things to eat into you, and she got out of patience with me and said ‘Only visionaries and cranks talk like that. I repeat, you will pay for repressing yourself. Much better to begin to face it.’ I felt sardonic amusement as she talked and reminded her that we ‘all march to our own drummer’, and thought secretly that, when done, I’d not change places with her. It must be very bleak not to have a family when you grow old.

  Wednesday, 13 September. I noticed my husband get up from reading the paper and begin to chop some wood we didn’t really need. I baked bread and turned out the pantry and kitchenette cupboards. I keep wanting to get curtains and two blankets washed but couldn’t dry them indoors with my husband always about. I’d made vegetable soup with a little scraggy end of the weekend mutton, so it only needed heating, and I cooked potatoes and turnip to the cold mutton and made a baked custard. I felt tired yet longed to go out. It was no use suggesting the cinema. Every picture this week seemed too ‘thrilling’ to suit my husband. Luckily I’d got him a novel by Berta Ruck which I’d skimmed through in the library to make sure it had a happy ending and no deaths or partings, and he settled with it. I got out my dollies but felt too tired to sew for long and relaxed on the settee. I wish the appointment for the interview with the psychiatrist would come soon. Times I feel desperate as I look at my husband and see him aging and letting go of so much, shuddering to myself as I wonder what he would be like if I didn’t sternly remind him to use his handkerchief etc. I insist on him changing his clothes or I’ll not go out with him, and keep an anxious eye on him altogether, and try and push all memory of his mother out of my mind, though she poor old thing is 83 and not 62. Shut in day after day, when he thinks and thinks about every symptom, every ache and pain, he hasn’t the chance of fresh ideas and interests, and he does get despondent. By tea time today I felt I could have climbed the wall. My hands shook – I sliced tomatoes for a salad to eat with cheese, and I cut my finger. Mrs Howson came in with her knitting. I breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief as she settled to talk about clothes and shopping. I’d have welcomed anyone who read the railway timetable out, and she is the only person whom my husband doesn’t resent ever. I think he sees always the little girl she was when we first knew her.

  Mrs Howson was twenty years younger than Will. Four days earlier Nella had remarked on his unsociability and how ‘people don’t like it. Mrs Atkinson has stopped coming in. If she wants me, she calls me to the back garden fence, and if he is in the garden never pauses for those little “aimless” chats that can help brighten women’s daily round’ (9 September). ‘He has an unfortunate way of making people feel unwelcome,’ she later lamented, ‘though I know well he doesn’t mean to be as rude as he seems and would often now like people calling’ (7 October).

  Will’s persistent dark moods, reclusiveness and hypochondriacal fretting led to a consultation with a psychiatrist.

  Saturday, 18 November. We had to be at the Hospital for 10.30. I hurriedly dusted and shook the rug, washed up and made beds, and we set out by 10 o’clock. I felt far from happy. My husband rose looking ill and was in one of his silent brooding moods, and I knew he dreaded going. After he went into the smaller room of the annex with the doctor, the nurse-receptionist and I settled silently, she with her knitting, I with a rather tatty magazine off the table. Our silence contrasted with the noise of all kinds of traffic noises, cars being reversed or started in the Hospital quadrangle, shouts of children. After what seemed a long wait, Dr Wadsworth came out and spoke to the nurse, who hurried off and returned with a pillow. She mouthed at me ‘Can’t get him off’. Then followed another long wait till the door opened again, and looking across at me the doctor said quietly ‘Will you come in please, Mrs Last’. I had that awful feeling when the blood all seems to drain into the feet and makes them heavy as lead, and the rest of the body feather light and giddy, and for a split second I felt incapable of moving. It was only a few steps to the door of the inner room, and I
saw my husband in one of the worst nervous shaking attacks he has had. I crossed over and took his very cold hands and rubbed them. The doctor got some kind of tablet and dissolved it in a glass of water, and I soothed and ‘petted’ my husband until the dreadful tremors passed, knowing so surely there was wild terror and some kind of memory behind them. I’d seen my poor old Cliff like that often, when he was first home, and the horrors of war hadn’t faded out of his mind.

  Dr Wadsworth said ‘We will leave Mr Last to rest quietly till his tablet takes effect’, and he took my arm and gently propelled me from the room to a chair by the radiator in the anteroom and began to talk. He said ‘Does your husband get so easily upset at home? He was only being asked a few routine questions, and he reacted so badly it was impossible to hypnotise him.’ He seemed to be able to put leading questions so simply. I recalled afterwards he must have been able to build up a very clear cut picture of my husband’s habits, moods, and approach to life in general, not only now but for years. He said ‘Would you agree to bring your husband to the Moor Hospital at Lancaster some evening?’ I said ‘Doctor, I’m beginning to feel so desperate I’d take him to China if I thought it would help him’. He said ‘Something will have to be done. I can see he is worse than when I saw him first. His life cannot be worth living – yours either if I may say so.’ I said ‘Tell me please, doctor, am I right to give way to his moods to avoid such attacks of nerves, or should I, as his doctor suggests, “rouse and stimulate him, and quarrel with him if it’s the only way to jerk him out of himself”?’ Dr Wadsworth pursed his lips and slowly shook his head as he said ‘Any course at present that helps to avoid such distressing attacks is your best policy, but rest assured, everything in my powers will be done to help him’. Once an attack is over, my husband seems himself, often better, seemingly, than I feel after one!