The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Monday, 12 August. Woolworths was a sight for German housewife’s eyes with its huge stock of tinned stuff and sweet biscuits, although the way people were buying it would not last long. I see they are not a 6d store any more for prices are up to 10d – in many instances for same lines in food. This cold snap has brought out all the new fur coats and I laughed at Arthur’s surprise at so many new ones. When one lives in a place like Barrow where so many people are known, if only by sight, and most people’s circumstances can be guessed at by knowing their trade, it’s amusing. Arthur said shrewdly ‘I don’t know much of fur values but some of these coats don’t look as if they had come out of Barrow. They look high class even for Manchester.’ I said ‘Well, the best ones come from Glasgow, from the visiting furrier, but now I think our shops have a “sale or return” system’. Arthur and his father can wear the same overcoats so today we went to order a winter all-weather coat for my husband’s birthday. It is costing rather a lot so I’ll say it is for Xmas too. It’s such a grand navy waterproof – not mackintosh rubber but a rubberised fabric and guaranteed to stand 24 hours steady rain. I’ve ordered a pair of leggings too and the coat is £2 12s 0d and the leggings are about 15s 6d. It’s a lot of money but I’ll feel more content when he has it for last winter was severe and he cycles to work.

  Tuesday, 13 August. I seem to have bought popularity pretty cheap today! A few jokes at Centre, some paper bags to greengrocer and the remark that the bacon was delicious to grocer and I was surprised at pleasant smiles in return. As one of the jokes was what Mrs Waite calls a ‘rude one’, it was a yell rather than a smile but it was good to be back among them all and I missed them. We were very busy for Millom are forming a Hospital Supply and had sent for samples of bandages etc. I had my work set for me, getting all the women together who had said they were joining the Group Saving for my sister-in-law was shy. She will not be again for everyone tried to be friendly and put her at ease and we collected £2 5s 6d, and I feel sure it will increase …

  My husband had planned a business trip to Ulverston so that we could have a run out on business petrol and it was not raining so I decided to take some aspirins and go. [She had a cold.] We came home over the moor and I never remember seeing the heather such a lovely carpet of soft colour. There was the coolth† and sadness of autumn over all and the golden patches of bracken made us think winter would soon be here. It’s so terrible to think that when I am so quiet and safe in my bed that the raiders may be over Southampton and Portsmouth and little children will be cold and scared in shelters. We often grumble in Barrow over living in a ‘dead end’ but so far we have only had warnings to Shipyard and no general air raid alarms.

  I was so sorry tonight to hear from Arthur that he had been down to see Dorothy [whose soldier husband had been killed a few weeks before] and she had told him she ‘just lived’ at the Spiritualists’ meeting house. She doesn’t come to see me now and I wondered how I’d offended her but she told Arthur that she would never forgive me for refusing to ‘tell her cards and see what had happened to Bill’. She said I’d ‘seen her meeting Bill and also marrying in a hurry and parting from Bill’ and that she could not understand my meanness. Poor Dorothy – I could not make her see that things done to amuse at a party could not be applied to serious things.

  There is a lot of fortune telling and Spiritualists visiting going on here, in back streets and quiet houses where the police will not be likely to hear of it. Last war I knew women who bought their houses with the 6d and 1s they got from credulous munition girls. I said to one I knew well ‘How do you do it, Mrs Adams? Do you really believe in what you tell people?’ She said ‘Yes and no. I’m psychic but even more observant and I think I get the drift of their hopes by their remarks. Anyway, what do you expect for a bob!’ It was not the money, for the girls made a lot, but I remember a friend of mine who used to haunt the fortune tellers to ask after a boy who had ‘kissed and rode away’. We all knew that it was just a flirtation on his part and that he had never been serious but Sis went from one to another asking ‘if he would come back’ and dropping out of all the little festas that she had been used to sharing. All her friends paired off and married and she lived in a dream and after her wartime job in an office went she had nothing and now is an unpaid nurse housekeeper to a crabbed old aunt.

  Friday, 30 August. Today I wondered whatever the reactions of the women – the housewives – in areas that are bombed so often. It was not only that I felt tired but I felt it impossible to settle to ordinary routine. I wanted to talk to people and see what they thought of last night’s air raid, how they felt, and had they heard anything about it? My next door neighbour’s butcher boy told us the simple facts – there had been bombs dropped, six of them and not nine as was first reported. By nothing short of a miracle they had done no damage and only one had fallen on Biggar Bank on Walney Island and made a hole and the blast broke windows in tram shelter. The others fell on what are called the ‘gullys’, a marsh which is flooded every tide and is a squelchy place without any bottom. A split second [probably ‘earlier’] in releasing bomb and they would have fallen on Shipyard, only a few hundred yards across the narrow Walney Channel that separates Island from mainland …

  After tea we went to a social evening got up by some school teachers in aid of Motor Ambulance Fund. It was 1s 6d and tea and biscuits were handed round. There was music and a sketch and I knew most of the people and we talked of how we felt. I was quite grateful to find out that many had felt like I did – not really frightened but queerly shocked and ill and when I said I hoped next time I could ‘master’ the feeling of dread a lady said ‘Oh, you will do. I stayed at Bolton and got used to it and could snatch a nap in the day.’ I planned a comfortable little ‘hidey hole’ under stairs and put two stools in with woven tops and thought my husband and I would be best in there. We could put my ironing board that stands in there across our knees and play two-handed bridge or try and read for there is good light. I think I’ll get a few sweets and put a tin with some biscuits in and if things got bad I’d make a hot drink in flask at supper time and leave it there. We might as well be comfortable if we can!

  Saturday, 31 August. It looks as if the peace and quiet of Furness has gone for good. We had an air raid warning for two hours last night and it must have been a serious one for the furnaces were damped down at the Steel and Iron works [the second leading industry in Barrow]. With us standing high and the wind being from the west, it was like a gas attack and the queer acrid smell lingers about today … I wonder how long it takes to get used to air raids. Everyone I’ve met or talked to complains of tiredness but I’ve not spoken to a single person who is jittery at the thought of the air raids we will be sure to have in the near future now that we have been ‘discovered’. I hear plans of turning downstairs rooms into bedrooms, and today everyone in our road was turning out under the stairs and asking advice on the subject but there seemed no surprise or shock of the last two nights, just a general plan of readjustment. Most people of my age seem to have felt as I did – really ill physically but not mentally. One thing I’m very thankful for and that is that I know my nerves will not take the form of panic.

  Sunday, 1 September. We had such a nice afternoon. It was sunny and my husband said ‘If you had not got enough blackberries we would have gone blackberrying’. I said ‘Come on then. Mrs Boorman would like some, I know, and she gave me all those lovely apples’ – for myself to store. It was so lovely on the tops behind Greenodd. The wind blew gently off the Bay and the Coniston hills looked dwarfed with us being so high. Perhaps it was the peace of the old days when I was a happy child and ran the roads and fields of Gran’s farm but I felt the glow of content soak into my tired head and when we sat eating our picnic tea I wondered if there was another spot more peaceful in the whole world. A wild, eerie call of ‘yoich, ’oich, ’oich’ came floating over fields and soon the soft ‘moo-oooo’ of the homeward cows and their hooves knap-knapping on stony road. They were mildl
y curious about car and us and their soft warm breath gusted and blew as they turned their heads to look at us. They went and the peace descended again. Not even a bird called and I felt I wanted to sit quiet and still and be part of the living peace. My husband said suddenly ‘I think your Gran owed her poise and peace a lot to always living here – always looking at the hills and never hearing discord’. I looked across at the little old farm and remembered that now the farmer’s son runs a butchering business and I said ‘Yes, but times have changed even there’ …

  Tonight as I listened to J. B. Priestley I too went back to the outbreak of war.* It was a long journey although my days are so short. Cliff was at home and Jack was always in and out and Cliff brought other friends and there always seemed talk and laughter. Now all is quiet except on the rare weekends Cliff or Arthur gets home. Life changed altogether – widened in most ways for me if narrower in others. I turned to war work and service to fill the ‘blank spaces’ and made Centre an interest that has grown. I’ve found companionship and unexpected laughter and gaiety, understanding and sympathy. They have brought out unsuspected little gifts of money making ideas and organising. No one thinks my ideas are ‘crazy’ or ‘fine ladyish’ or ‘so different from other people’s ways’ – or if they do they only laugh and never make me feel like a freak. My work has brought me strength in a surprising degree and I don’t care tuppence for anybody – not even Mrs Burnett [then head of Barrow’s WVS, and anathema to Nella] – not one scrap. I’ve found a serenity of mind and purpose that this time last year was, or seemed to be, impossible and I thank God and pray I may keep it and that it will increase as need arises.

  Sunday, 15 September. I’ve always loved the sea, in all its moods, and it was a pleasure to me to stand on shore and face the crash and roar of the big waves – but not now. I see too many pictures [of destruction] when the sea rides high and I hear the wind tear round the chimneys. My husband said one day ‘You are changing your mind about the sea and the Lakes. You always have liked to go to Walney and watch a heavy sea and now you prefer sitting by Coniston Lake. Why is that?’ I thought for a few minutes and I said ‘They make different pictures for me – one of violence and death and suffering and the other of steadfastness, quiet and calm’. I thought to myself ‘You are altering your outlook too when you don’t cut me off when I talk of “mind pictures” or listen to me when I talk “fancifully”.’ I often look round and see how people are changing and sometimes when I have not seen friends for awhile the change is more apparent. It’s a kinder, friendlier kind of change, a more tolerant feeling. I was surprised at Miss Ledgerwood on Thursday. Mrs Waite and Mrs Machin congratulated me on success of my little ‘brain wave’ [a party to raise money] and hoped I had another winner ‘up my sleeve’ when Miss Ledgerwood interrupted and said ‘Brain wave nothing. Mrs Last wants a rest and it’s time she got back to helping in the bandage cutting. Mrs Boorman and I miss her.’ As I know Miss Ledgerwood disapproves of my lipstick, high ‘tapping’ heels, silly habit of humming when I’m washing up, my slang AND ‘rude’ jokes, I wondered what she missed, and thought perhaps she only meant to be kind – a rare gesture from her anyway.

  I hope my brother writes a letter to me this week.* I got one last week but it was posted before the horror descended on London. Today I’ve walked in ‘fancy’ along the Embankment and watched the sun fade – our sunset tonight was a bit Turneresque and only needed smoke over the ‘hard’ pink of dying sun. I’m glad I knew the old London. I went the first time about 43 years ago and saw it change vastly up to my last visit 10 years ago. Perhaps it was because my father’s people came from Woolwich and spoke of it as home but I’d always a feeling I belonged – more than to the quiet of the hills and Lakes of my mother’s people.

  Nella by this time was writing more often of matters military and of sights in Furness that reminded her of the realities of war. On 19 September she concluded her writing on that miserable, stormy day by saying that ‘I feel so sorry for the soldiers in the tents on Walney and the Coast Road, and at the “listening posts”. They look so cold and last night when we were over Walney we gave two of them a lift back to town. They looked smart and trim but the heavy odour of stale sweat and damp khaki was overpowering in the little car and made me think of all the discomfort our Servicemen had to undergo – dismal discomfort that can be deadlier than danger itself and more hard at times to bear.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  WATCHING, WORKING, WAITING

  September 1940–April 1941

  As the summer of 1940 was ending and autumn beginning, the realities of warfare had yet to bite deeply in Nella’s corner of England. Rationing, although it had started, was not yet really troublesome. ‘I cannot see a shortage of anything at all unless it’s sugar, butter and condensed milk’, Nella wrote on 14 September. Belt-tightening was minimal, although some people expected that it would soon be more severe (and they were right). On 21 September 1940 Nella was around Spark Bridge in the Lake District and recorded that ‘The countryside was a painted glory of crimson and gold and green – so heartbreak-ingly lovely – and it was so impossible to believe that in the South – our South – there was death and destruction.’ (The London Blitz began on 7 September.) She felt a queer ‘unbelief’ about her nation’s crisis, but wondered ‘Will I keep it until bombs come and work havoc in Barrow and I’ve seen destruction and death for myself? I feel as if between me and the poor London people there is a thick fog and it’s only at intervals that I can believe it is our own people, not Spaniards or French or Dutch etc.’ During the several weeks from later September there was a creeping sense in Barrow of alarm and imminent threat: price increases, scarcities of some everyday items, postal delays, newspapers arriving very late, reports of carnage in London, barrage balloons going up over the city, sirens sounding, public discussion of such mundane matters as what bus drivers and passengers should do in case of an alert, talk of the need for shelters – Nella was a keen exponent of ‘deep shelters’. The prospect that the town would soon be blitzed was a common topic of discussion. ‘Barrow is really getting shelter minded’, she remarked on 12 November; for the first time she wrote this month of Anderson shelters, and Will had just devised a shelter at 9 Ilkley Road under their stairs.

  By November, then, war and its perils seemed much more real to Nella and most of her fellow citizens than they had done a year earlier.

  Saturday, 16 November. Barrow is plunged in gloom over the terrible Coventry bombings for it’s a town where many Barrow people have moved to in times of bad trade. I have many friends and old neighbours there and also a cousin and his wife and no word as to their safety or otherwise has as yet come through. At Spark Bridge there was the same feeling of unease for several people had sons and daughters who had gone to work in Coventry. One woman was very upset for she had refused to let her daughter come home to have her second baby. There was some trouble when she came home to have her first baby and the mother said she was tired of being ‘put on’ and daughter had plenty of money to pay for attention. The poor woman was distraught as she remembered her daughter’s words about the flat she occupied ‘in the shadow of the Cathedral’. One farmer had kept his son down so much that he jumped at offer of a visitor from Coventry to get him a job there. Such a feeling of ‘If we had only known’.* Aunt Sarah looked so sad and unhappy over her friend’s troubles as she repeated her slogan – we must all be very kind to each other; ‘it’s always best to be kind, my dear, always remember that and act on it’. She is as poor as Job’s turkey in money or anything that counts in the world’s eyes but so rich in courage and hope and in friends. I’ll never live to 76, I know, but if I do I pray I keep my ideals and courage undimmed as my little deaf aunt has done.

  Saturday, 23 November. My cousin Mary had a huge pile of gramophone records for me. They had been collected for salvage but she begged them for my sailors. On the little mine-sweepers a gramophone is a treasure and the Sailors’ Home is always eager for records. These wer
e such a nice lot of homey old-time songs and tunes – no jazzy or out-of-date swing numbers. There was Xmas carols and good hymn tunes – altogether they were about the best mixture I’ve seen. I had two parcels, each as much as I could lift into car. I found rejoicing at Spark Bridge for Auntie told me that her neighbour’s girl was safe and will come home from Coventry to have her second baby after all. She is trying to salvage a few bits of her home and then will come home for a few months. I looked at the few townspeople who were on the country roads. They look unhappy and unsettled, only the children seem to be able to adapt themselves to a country life in winter. I’d hate it myself if I had to go and live in most of the country cottages around with no proper sanitation or water and the door opening directly into the living room and letting out all the warmth as soon as it was opened. I saw two new whitening writing signs today in Ulverston – NO SMALL BATTERIES and NO DRAWING PINS – must save a lot of time both to dealers and customers. We were surprised to see that Woolworths had so much Xmas stock left in Ulverston. In Barrow if a stock is put out in the morning by afternoon it looks as if a swarm of locusts had been over! I got a thick writing pad at Ulverston – they saved it for me when re-doing window. I thanked the girl and said ‘I wish you had saved me two’, and after a little hesitation she said “I believe there is another one upstairs’ and she brought me another one …