Nella Last in the 1950s

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Thursday, 15 November. I never saw anyone quite so averse to ‘touching capital’ as my husband. As I sat finishing off the two monkeys, with scarlet fez and little felt banana in white and yellow, I couldn’t but think of good chances he had thrown aside just because of ‘Never touch capital’. Once I had a plot of land offered. A friend had bought twice as much as she needed to put up two semi-detached houses for herself and sister. Although I’d enough money of my own and badly wanted to ‘speculate’, he nearly went mad – literally so – as he shouted and rolled his eyes and stuttered in rage. I gave way for peace. The one who bought the land for £130 sold it six months later for £200, and all he would say was, ‘I couldn’t have stood the worry of knowing I wasn’t getting interest and mightn’t have sold it at all’. Useless to point out it was my money and that my father had made his money with just such speculations rather than be niggardly saving.

  Saturday, 17 November. I felt glad of my bits and pieces all matching and good as I got ready [for the wedding]. The cultured pearls Cliff brought from Spain are the best I’ve seen and link up with my good pearl earrings and filigree gold and pearl spray brooch, and were perfect with my leaf-green two-piece, but my Texan lamb coat did look ‘utility’ amongst the lovely fur coats. I’ve never seen so high a percentage in a comparatively small gathering – both mothers had new ones. Nellie is inclined to be jealous of Roma’s mother and to copy all she has, but it will always be a copy. There’s too wide a gulf between Nellie, so narrow-minded, so fond of making trouble and laying down the law, and pleasant, busy Mrs Harper, who teaches and runs a home, except for making a midday meal as well or better than Nellie herself. Roma looked like a fairy princess in stiff white brocade. She brought her dress from London and sent the bridesmaids’ dress material to be made up, a lovely wine-red silk with faint ‘shot’ effect of gold. They fit so very badly, as if the maker had bought the pattern and made it up exactly, with no thought to little individual differences. They looked like Mrs Howson used to do before I convinced her that all clothes needed a bit of fitting. It poured with rain, but there was no waiting about. A motor coach took a full load and taxis and private cars the rest. The hotel, on Morecambe Bay at Rampside, had big wood fires in the two comfortable lounges and in the big dining room, and a really pre-war spread was laid, looking as if restrictions were quite unknown. The ham, served with the tender chicken, would be tinned no doubt, but the small crisp lettuces in the salad and quite half a new laid egg, hard boiled, was a treat. Butter, with the unmistakable freshly churned taste, a huge blob of fresh whipped cream on the delicious small trifle, seemed too good to be true! I felt vexed that Cliff had forgotten to send a wire when a handful were read out. His memory is really deplorable for his age.

  Saturday, 24 November. At the hospital Dr Wadsworth drew me aside and said, ‘I feel concern for your husband’s deterioration in health since he was last here. Can you account for it in any way?’ I said I couldn’t, but in my mind I’d a great sadness as I realised how Cliff had innocently upset him so often. Little arguments, chance remarks and opinions as to how he should ‘try and snap out of things’, far from helping his father, were like tiny thorns that worked deep, later to fester. Even after 40 years of married life together I still get little amazements when such trifles can so affect my husband. Times I long for money to take him to a psychoanalyst or the like – and then wonder how deep he would have to dig. If I can keep control and courage to pick every rose leaf of worry from his path, always keep cheerful and gay, never let him see I feel ill, worried or depressed, I can manage to help him. If things get past my guard, it sets up a quick and devastating reaction and seems to knock him off his feet. I can tell his going to the wedding brought old worries and upsets back into his mind …

  My husband finds pleasure when he is not well by watching me make things. I generally work on a belt system – hats all made, pants, collared shirts, etc., and then assemble them. Tonight when he was impatient to see a whole cowboy, I made one. Always does it puzzle me that my dollies look so different when their faces are embroidered off the same pattern, and their clothes cut more or less alike. It’s as if a few stitches put differently or a different material makes a totally different individual. I was frowning at the happy-faced little cowboy who suddenly came alive to me as his felt two-gallon hat was firmly fixed by a few stitches on his fur wig and said, ‘What should we call the little man?’ My husband considered a while and then said, ‘Andrew – he has such a “Merry Andrew” look’. So my wee man got his name tag on. I’ve often been so amused when people as well as children keep to the original names I give them. The baby doll I sent up for the sale of work I called Susan Mary – she looked both demure as well as gay. Mrs Higham has referred to it several times and never as the ‘dollie’ but always as ‘Susan Mary’. My mind would swing backward tonight as my little doll child seemed to smile up at me. I wondered how many I had made, where they had all gone – little Ann still has Dear Ruthie, a now dirty-looking shabby crinoline dollie in felt poke bonnet whose skirt has been washed and replaced many times in three years, but as Mrs Atkinson says, ‘Never a stitch needed in repair’. My own little boys keep and love their animal toys. It is a nice hobby to have.

  Months later, on 7 August 1952, Nella ‘suddenly thought how lucky I was to be able to sew, and to lose myself in seeing something take shape in my fingers’.

  Sunday, 25 November. What a DAY! I’d a rest and wrote two letters before I rose at about 11 o’clock, feeling a bit disgruntled at the coolness of the water as I bathed. I’d just got out, feeling it wasn’t warm enough to linger, when I heard my husband dash upstairs, then down, and then up again clanking a bucket and the step ladder. He called, ‘If you are out of the bath, for goodness sake come here’. Snatching my dressing gown, feeling a vest and one stocking, poor ‘fighting gear’ whatever it was, I dashed into the back bedroom and gasped as I saw water pouring out of the top of the cistern over the hot water tank and splashing on the floor. I ran for all the towels in the bathroom to mop up, wringing them into a bucket. My husband said, ‘I’ll go for Charlie Atkinson. He might know what to do.’ For a ‘practical’ man, my husband knows less of the other fellow’s job than most men. I took it for granted he would have turned off the stopcock† on the kitchenette to cut off the water from upstairs. He hadn’t thought to do it. When Mr Atkinson did, it lessened the cascade of water, and running all the taps lessened it again. I took all the sopping wet clothes out of the airing cupboard shelves and got dressed. My husband took the car and went to search for a plumber who lived on the premises. When he did locate one, his wife said, ‘That’s odd. He has had to go to two other similar jobs.’ He came and turned the stopcock with a spanner, for a trickle of water still ran. I’ve feared for the living room ceiling all day, wondering where a spate of water could drain without coming to the corner of the ceiling …

  What made me vexed was that we had warning there was something amiss some months ago when, for some reason, the outlet pipe threw water out like a fountain, splashing all the living room window and frightening Mrs Helm at the time. I thought we should have had a plumber but my husband said it wasn’t necessary, but it seems as if the joint on the ball arm that was found broken could have been going.

  Friday, 30 November. Mrs Howson and I talked of Sheila Diss, wondering how long she would be in plaster. Looking back to last Xmas when that vital glowing girl made such a spread for Mrs Diss’s big house party, nothing was a trouble or worry for Sheila. She loved to use her Domestic Science training in any way, from arranging lovely flower displays to boning a turkey and folding it round a chunk of ham before cooking – and was ready to go playing golf or dancing half the night with her adoring young husband. I thought with a sadness that was half relief, ‘It’s a good thing we don’t know what lies ahead of us’. Mrs Howson said, ‘They hope Sheila will walk again’, as if there was doubt. The only bright spot is that there’s unlimited money as well as all the love and care the whole Dis
s family, as well as her own, pour on her, and dear little Michael.

  Tuesday, 4 December. I wasn’t out of the hairdresser’s till just before the Shipyard came out so knew I’d have to walk two stages before I could hope to get on a bus, when the men started getting off. When I got in I felt concerned to see my husband looking so upset. He said he had had a little upset while he was in the barber’s – a young woman ‘just fell flat’ by the door. She had been ill and was out with her mother for the first time and they had been to the doctor’s. They phoned to the surgery and the doctor said he would ‘be along’, but it was a while before he came and the patient lay without the slightest movement, and the barber, a first aid man, couldn’t feel the slightest pulse in her wrist. The doctor got the ambulance, but my husband said he was sure she was dead. [He was right.] I wished to goodness I’d not suggested – insisted – on him going to get his hair cut.

  I scrambled an egg for him and made toast. I’d toasted cheese and there was apricot jam, bread and butter and crispie. We had settled down by the fire. I was finishing Edith’s letter when there was a ring, and to my great amazement it was my husband’s brother, Harry, and his wife. They had come to see my ‘Wonderful hospital dollies. Our Ken [a doctor] had been at Dr Ronald’s to call for him and his wife to go dancing on Friday night and had seen a loved, battered gollywog you had made in the war. It had been loved by both their own boys and got out for a child visitor. Dr Ronald did rave about all the pleasure you had given the children, and said you had done it for, he thought, 30 years.’ I got a real surprise to think of my huge ragbag family. I used to make two to three dozen dollies and animals every year. Then there were all the ones I made in the war to sell and raffle, as well as those for my own children and little friends. My brain reeled as I heard her say, ‘You must have made hundreds!’ They loved the monkeys and the felt Dutch dollie, but as Harry said when he picked up a cowboy clothed from such small oddments, ‘It’s easy enough to make nice things from whole cloth. It’s chaps like these, though, that have the individuality.’

  Thursday, 6 December. I’d a little rest after I’d dusted round and then went to the committee meeting at Mrs Diss’s house. Although I’ve known so well she has wanted to resign – and now with her having her little grandson and her son when he isn’t at Birmingham where his wife still lies in plaster after polio – it shouldn’t have been the shock that it was to all of us when she said she had at last convinced Headquarters that her resignation must be accepted. We all sat dumb after the breath like a hiss had died away, as if we were too surprised to have anything to say. Then I began to get pokes and nudges and several said, ‘You get up and say something. If I do I’ll only burst out crying.’ I did, feeling what I said was the outpouring of all the years of endeavour, friendship and loyalties. I noticed tears running down many faces and was surprised I too was crying. Mrs Diss said, ‘If that’s how people have thought of me my dear, I feel I can only say thank you—all of you’, and Miss Willan, that odd old schoolmistress, said, ‘Thank you for saying everything I’d have liked to say. It was the most heartfelt speech I’ve ever heard’, which left me wondering as I sat down what exactly I had said. It was just a little fleeting inspired moment.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TIMES CHANGE

  January–July 1952

  While most of the public events that Nella mentioned were local, a few were national, including the death of King George VI on 6 February. ‘My pity and concern went in a rush of sympathy to Princess Elizabeth,’ Nella remarked that day, ‘whose youth dies at 26.’ Other occurrences that she wrote of were personal or at least rooted in community: the imminent move of Arthur and his family from Northern Ireland to London, and their plans to buy a house (to do so, they borrowed £500 from Will and Nella); the illnesses and deaths of several people she knew; her usual frustrations and spats with her husband. ‘I had such a passionate longing to set off on the bus to Ambleside’, she wrote on 29 February. ‘To have done so would have created a situation of hurt such that living it down in the next few days would have taken away any benefit a flight would have been.’ The weather was sometimes severe, especially in January, which tended to keep her at home: on the evening of 17 January ‘the howl of the gale wind and the rattle of hail made the cosy fire seem even warmer’. And there was the usual wear and tear of everyday life. ‘I feel I’ve been whirled round in a lift shaft today’ (4 February); one day in the Barrow market ‘I had the dim feeling of always rigid economy ahead, and it didn’t help to see women eagerly snapping up the very bargains I’d have liked’ (29 February). Some of Nella’s most striking observations – in addition to descriptions of natural surroundings – concerned changes in entertainment and popular culture, taste, material provisions, and household and family arrangements, all of which figure frequently in her diary for the first half of 1952.

  Saturday, 12 January. We went by the Coast Road to Ulverston. The tide was high. The last one had evidently been higher and and tossed sea wrack† and sand on to the edge of the road. Every 50 or 60 yards or so people strolled along, keeping a keen eye on scraps of wood. Gone are the days when no one bothered. It’s a recognised walk to go to Walney or Morecambe Bay shores, gleaning the smallest pieces. The sun shone so warm and bright. The ewes folded in sheltered fields, and climbed slopes to nibble grass on the sunniest part of fields. Thousands of plovers and sea birds made huge carpets as they waited anxiously on the shingle for the sea to leave the sands – they could begin to get the cockles before they sank too deep in the wet sand.

  Ulverston was as thronged as on a busy Thursday market day – perhaps with last Thursday’s snow and sleet making Lakeland roads impassable. I heard an odd remark in Woolworths. Two middle-aged women, both with heavy shopping bags, were discussing some ‘quick-working’ rice in packets – 1s 3d a pound. One said, ‘I got two packets today and two last Saturday. I’m storing up all I can – Kellogg’s Cornflakes, packets of oats and cornflour – anything unrationed’.* I had such a longing to know if she had been to a Civil Defence exhibition and got a ‘C.D. slant’ on things. They all – the organisers – have a ‘when’ as against ‘if’war comes!

  I got some elastic I needed to finish off my underwear, but this week and next I have to be so very careful. I had nothing in my purse against coal and the electricity bill, with it being Xmas and Cliff here. It’s the first year I’ve felt I begrudged the tips to trades people I felt were so much better off than myself. I begrudge the money spent on the coal I got – 4 cwt were £1 1s 6d and it’s the kind only to be burnt with the help of wood, which we cannot get. In all the years and through two wars we could get small log wood – in Lakeland it looks as if the long line of woodsmen who cut coppice woods in rotation every 5-7 years will follow the equally long line of charcoal burners. Even when Arthur was small there were plenty of them, spending lonely hours in small rude huts on the hillsides.

  I got so out of patience with my husband as I walked round. I asked him if he was going to take Gilbert Harding as a model, adding, ‘You may find yourself alone more if you do’, and wondering if part of his mood could be due to the knowledge I will be out every Tuesday afternoon for six weeks at the Civil Defence canteen class, an idea rather confirmed when I saw his reaction to another C.D. notice saying First Aid classes were starting Wednesday evening – would I attend? – if not, stating an evening I could. It was said WVS would take over ‘Canteen and Welfare’, and not be full-time Civil Defence. No Civil Defence women seem to be bothering about any of our training, which we did all the war years.

  Saturday, 19 January. It was a bright cold morning. We would have gone out, but with having the appointment with Dr Wadsworth at 1.45, it would have been a rush to have lunch and be out again by then … I do feel these visits do more harm than good now. My husband is the very last person to whom a doctor should say, ‘I’ve never yet come across a case like yours, Mr Last’. Poor dear. He cherishes every symptom as unique but takes comfort always from hearing of wor
se cases that have responded to treatment of some kind. I’ve felt for some little time now that no psychiatry is any use, that it is some physical decline or lack. Looking back over the years, he always had symptoms of this breakdown, little traits and behaviourisms that made them say in the family, ‘Our Will and Flo take after Mother’. She was always a law unto herself. Born very late in life to parents brought up on a remote Cumberland fell, she never seemed to fit in with any kind of town life or any difference in thought, customs, etc. Added to that she had a – for them – very good little income of £4 a week when her aged parents died and it helped to give her that ‘I’ll do as I like’ attitude. Her odd ways were first put down to those facts. When she grew really away from life, at between 50 and 60, her ways were talked of rather as a spoilt and somewhat subnormal child. She was old at 60, as she is today at 83, when her mind went and her body gained strength. I pondered on both mother and my husband, striving to find any suggestion that a psychiatrist could have reached something that was never there. I do feel glands could be the root of the trouble, though Dr Miller pooh-poohs such a suggestion.

  Today when my husband came out of the doctor’s consulting room, I’d a great sadness as I realised his visit had really done him harm. He had asked Dr Wadsworth if there was no treatment, tonic, diet, etc. likely to benefit him, and been told flatly ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Last’. I could have rushed back into that room and told Dr Wadsworth a few things. I felt, ‘To hell with your so modern notions. I’m utterly ignorant of “isms” and what not, but I’ve enough natural wit to realise the result of such a remark on so obviously a sick man. Why couldn’t you have given him some simple cheap tonic, told him he needed a long holiday in the country on a farm, asked, “Couldn’t you have a sea voyage?” etc. – I’ve heard of such “treatments”.’ I could have wept aloud in pity for the poor dear, and a lot of help that would have been!