The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Wednesday, 29 January. What with buses, post offices and Shipyard, girls are leaving positions as maids to flock for good wages and I know several women who are trying to run huge inconvenient houses with a char† where four servants were needed. One huge, central heated and really marvellously equipped house owned by a retired corn merchant has none at all except the ‘lady’ housekeeper, a naval man’s widow who is wearing herself to a shadow in effort to keep the old man warm and fed in reasonable comfort in huge bleak house, for she cannot manage central heating that needs one ton of coal a week for house, big green houses etc. She was told at Labour Exchange that no maid would consider ‘Arnolene’ in ordinary times unless there was four or five of a staff and then it was hard work, and dark hints were thrown out that it may be commandeered soon! It would be ridiculous to pass by such a wonderful hospital of a house.

  Wednesday, 5 February. Poor Ruth is so distressed for her fiancé has calmly told her he does not know whether he prefers his former girl or her – after two years happy friendship and three years since he saw his other girl friend. When they parted it was because she ‘wanted to have a good time for a year or two before settling down’. Presumably she has now had her good time, or as Gerald’s mother shrewdly said ‘found no one else and heard of Gerald’s high wages here in Barrow’! She lives in Leeds and Gerald has never heard of her until this Xmas when she sent an expensive scarf, recalled old times and begged him to write and ‘make it up’. There seems unhappiness for everyone in some way or another and I felt so grieved to see happy little Ruth so sad. She is such a kind sweet girl and deserves nothing but love and happiness. Young things all seem to get hurt nowadays – partings and sadness and break-ups of marriages and engagements when the lovers and husbands have to go. Makes older people so baffled and helpless to see their eyes and not be able to do one thing – except pray that some day soon the shadows will pass and the sun shine for them again.

  Friday, 7 February. I had been up early enough to tidy round and dust and vac so walked from hairdresser’s into town and I noticed another sweet shop was closed and my husband said when I told him at lunch time ‘There are 13 shops vacant now in Dalton Road’, our main shopping street which only takes ten minutes or so to walk from one end to the other. Several windows – my grocer’s were one – had bold lettered placards prominently displayed, ‘Young Lady Assistants Wanted’ – such a rare thing for Barrow where there is normally nothing for girls except the Shipyard offices and the few vacancies for shop assistants etc. In our slump years there was a big outcry at Woolworths demanding a Higher School Certificate! I felt very sceptical and plucked up courage to ask manager once when I was in shop. He said it was perfectly true and gave his reason. He said that over thirty girls answered advert for three girls and, to use his own words, ‘all peaches’, fit for good class trade and every one with a matric.† Obviously it was impossible to choose and he said ‘Any of you girls got your “Higher”?’ and three stepped forward and were engaged! That was about seven or eight years ago and there’s plums of jobs now for every girl. I’ve a tatty looking little thing to bring my papers – she never looks as if she was properly washed, or fed – and newsagent has to pay 16s for her morning and evening delivery of papers. She confided in me that riding a bike was ‘stretching her out fine’ and as soon as she was ‘big and strong enough’ looking she would go on the buses and ride into Yard. I suggested meal porridge and potatoes and she flashed a cheeky grin at me as she said before she dashed away ‘Don’t you start. Mom says it’s the only way to fill us all for she is a widow and there is five of us not yet working.’ …

  A man in our road who keeps hens and knows all about them says I should not keep these hens I’ve got another winter but as each finishes laying I should kill it and then replace with pullets.† They are such nice kind hens it’s a pity. I wonder if I could keep several of my six good layers and get just a few new ones, or would they fight and hurt each other in small space. I wish my garden was bigger and I could get a piglet. There’s something very appealing in a pig – so clever of it to eat such trash and give such good bacon and ham.* My husband said ‘Why not rabbits?’ but I’m so fond of furry things it would be useless to rear them and think of killing and eating them. I’m not so sure I’ll enjoy my little hens when they go into the pot!

  Saturday, 8 February. When I listened to news I said to my husband ‘Does the war news seem real to you? Do you worry or rejoice much?’ And he said after some consideration ‘Not really. War seems to have receded since we had few air raids over England.’ It’s really astounding to me sometimes how little I do think of war! I’m terribly single minded and know and think of what I’m doing to the exclusion of most things, but when I consider how much of my life now is centred on ‘war things’ – bandages, comforts and money raising for same – and yet how little I think of big things, I’m often amazed at my limited vision and wonder if others have it. They came today to ask about billeting people in case of a blitz and I said I’d made my own arrangements. The Group Warden was amused and said ‘A bit early, weren’t you?’ but as I told him, if I have to do a thing or think I’ll have to do a thing I like to make a plan, think things well out, arrange it – and then forget it until need arises, for I find it’s less worrying. If I have to have a soldier and Ruth and her aunt have to come to live with me I’ll be full up, unless of course it’s a case of tiny ones we could push in anywhere. I hope whatever comes it does not tie me for I must keep on at Centre. I’ve that fact drilled into me constantly by Mrs Waite and Mrs Lord and I can really see it’s the best work I can do for I’ve a real gift of ‘being bright’ and of tactfulness however I feel inside me. Think next time I come [on earth through reincarnation] I’ll be qualified for a stage career for I’ve done quite a bit of ‘laugh, clown, laugh’ [clowning despite being sad] here. Then I can coax pennies, and pennies soon make pounds, and after nearly two years of working and understanding I’ve got a really good raffling and begging psychology worked out. There’s nobody but can be done without, but I realise we must all do our best and my best is at Centre and not just in the house working after evacuees as billets.

  Nella had already written warmly of some of the friendships fostered by work at the Centre, her admiration for some of her fellow volunteers and the importance she attached to this volunteering. ‘I like to be busy’, she wrote on 29 December 1940, ‘and I like the company too at Centre. I like to be with people when I’m working. This week has made me realise even more what a blessing to me my work is, and what a lot I owe to it.’ She had resolved to be a soldier in service to others – just as ‘my Cliff’ was a soldier. ‘It’s a great privilege … to work down at Centre’, she wrote a few weeks later (6 February). ‘I am never sufficiently grateful however I try.’ She liked being among women who did not think her odd, and who valued her talents. And in one entry the following month (23 March), after regretting that, with her boys grown up and away from home, ‘There’s nothing “growing” now in the house – only older and downhill’, her next sentence recorded that ‘I’m always so grateful for Centre when I get a little fit of the miseries and I wonder what my life would have been without its organised service.’

  Sunday, 9 February. One thing I cannot do as they advise on BBC – eat raw vegetables at this time of the year. I think it’s because cabbage and carrot are rather too woody and coarse but neither my husband or I can digest them although when they are young I use a lot of carrots raw. I scrambled eggs on brown toast and we had a piece of mince pastry that I warmed slightly. My husband said ‘I think I get fonder of nice meals and dread the thought of being so short of food that they are impossible’. When I looked at my so simple lunch and bowl of snowdrops on embroidered cloth I said ‘Don’t worry my dear. It will be a bit yet before we reach the bread line standard.’ And he laughed and said ‘Yes, and when we do I bet you toast it crisp and cut it in fingers and serve it on a gay plate to make it look nice’. I’m so finicky myself I think other p
eople are as well and I know that if food looks good to me, well it tastes good.

  We went out for a little run in the car and the damp sweet air coming in through open top was like perfume. All the trees are greening along branches as if good new blood is starting to stir again and they lift their bare branches eagerly as if waiting a signal before they start to throw out buds. Moss and lichen and polypodies† glow emerald bright and we got a big armful of catkins – enough for us and for Margaret and some to give to Ruth tomorrow for we all share a love of ‘live’ things about. Suddenly I said to my husband ‘Have you noticed anything about country people walking today?’ and after awhile he said ‘No, except they all seem to be carrying a bunch of sticks as if they were flowers’. I said ‘That is what I meant. Do you remember we always took in “enough twigs to boil the kettle” when we stayed in the country when the boys were small?’ It used to be a feature of the boys’ stay to gather sticks and fir cones out of the wood and put them in Aunt’s wood shed. In later years the firewood cart took bundles of firewood and firelighters to the remotest country shop but now even in towns there is an acute shortage and people are always begging wood when they see my shelf in garage. My husband said ‘You will have to stop giving so many sticks away for there is so little wood in workshop there will be none to follow and you will have to be careful of what you have’.

  We had a little adventure today and it kept us laughing all the evening. Cutting down a quiet country road, we saw an obviously ‘town’s man’ standing. I’ve the country woman’s understanding of giving a lift and always remember Gran giving all and sundry a lift in the old gig, so we drew up and said ‘Going Barrow way?’ and as man got in with thanks my husband said ‘You’re Murray the painter, aren’t you?’ and mentioned a place they had been to see about a contract. It seems he had been to see his fiancée and had to return early as he had a service in Dalton at 6, and also that he was a Gospel Haller. They are a very strict denomination – I’ve known several – and think it a sin to go to a party or pictures or even a football match, and find their amusement, recreation, pleasure and what not ‘studying God’s holy word’. Perhaps if he had not breathed so heavily down the back of my neck, or mentioned that he had appealed against [national] service in any form, I’d have listened and said nothing, but I felt really belligerent. I said ‘Excuse me, Mr Murray. Do you realise that each book of the Bible was written by a different writer? What makes you call it “God’s word” altogether and interpret it to mean a narrow joyless creed? And another thing – if invasion comes would you stand and see your wife attacked without raising your hand to defend her?’ He said ‘Yes, if it meant attack, but I would attempt to stand my body between my wife and an assailant’. I said ‘Well, that’s something anyway, but a well bred collie will stand between the fire and a small child. I think Christ who drove the money lenders out of the temple would have done better than “stand between”.’ I must have got a bit eloquent for he said ‘Ow, Mrs Last, you talk like the gentlemen at the tribunal where I went to appeal’ and offered to let me read all he had said and had said to him, all typed out ‘plain and proper like’. I thanked him sweetly and said I would not dream of putting him to so much trouble. ‘No trouble, Mrs Last. A pleasure, I’m sure. We like to talk to people who do not understand us. We are really very misunderstood, Mrs Last. A Gospel Haller has to be a mixture of patience and courage – to stand up for the teaching of Christ, you know.’ I’d had all I could stand of Mr Murray and felt slightly sick. Luckily we had just reached where he got out so I added ‘Yes, I’m sure no “everyday” man could possibly be the mixture you describe and I should imagine you would need a good streak of exhibitionism too in your makeup’. When we drove off I saw my husband was laughing and I said ‘Ugh – that one reminded me of Uriah Heep’ [an unctuous, hypocritical, ingratiating character in Dickens’s David Copperfield] and my husband said ‘I know’ and laughed harder than I’ve seen him for some time. I joined in when he told me I’d addressed the poor man as Uriah when speaking! My tongue did not wait to be told by my mind. So odd!

  Friday, 14 February. Such alarming news in the papers today – looks as if all the world will be aflame soon and no sanity or peaceful corner left anywhere. Arthur says ‘The sooner the better, it will hasten things’. How hasten, though, when it’s death and destruction. I’ve laughed at Cliff’s Australian friend for his ‘Japanese bogey’ but it looks as if he had grounds for his fears and talk of ‘yellow peril’, and Australia is so huge and defenceless a place with its thousands of miles of flat unprotected coast line. With everybody killing and fighting each other and sinking each others’ ships and crops not getting planted and labour shortage everywhere due to men being soldiers instead of growing food, how soon will there be famine over the world? Whole countrysides, it is said, are lying waste in China through the war there and there is the wasted farms and land in Europe. Men cannot fish in the plentifully stocked sea because of mines and U-boats – such senseless useless waste. Food and beauty for all in this world and yet soon none will have the first or care about the second – so wrong and twisted. I know I will never see the end of this tangle for it will take too long for men to think sanely and straightly again for my length of days. I used to wish we had all gone to Australia when we had the chance but there soon will be no spot to long to fly to and feel ‘far from turmoil and strife’. If people were fighting for something it would be understandable – some big gain – but it’s so dreadful to have to fight and kill and destroy just to let live peaceful ordinary lives. It’s odd to call the Force of evil that is loose today by a name but Hitler is as good, or bad, a name as Satan, or the ‘anti-Christ’ an old friend of my Dad’s was so fond of talking about. Poor old lamb, we thought he was crazy when he talked of ‘Armageddon’ – looks now as if he was extra wise! Nowadays when my husband and I hear bad news on the wireless we just look at each other and don’t talk much about it. In his eyes I read a puzzled wonder, as if he cannot believe what the announcer says. I wonder what he reads in mine?

  Wednesday, 19 February. Among our visitors today was the first gypsy of the season. I think there must be a kind of secret intelligence among gypsy people for they always call about lunch and without asking for tea I know somehow they expect a warm drink. Today it was an old crone I’ve known since I was a child – and she looked very different then! Gypsies are always sensibly shod and warmly clad and I have never found rudeness or ill breeding among them. She was selling cheap oddments that looked as if they were from Woolworths and asking 1s 6d and 2s – and she would ‘read your hand’. She was grateful for cup of hot soup Ruth took into garage and said ‘There is a parting between you two women folk, but no harsh words and you will always come back with a feeling of welcome’ [Ruth was soon to be called up for national service] and went on ‘You have not been very lucky in love, my dear. You will need a lot of patience with your man.’ Ruth and I laughed and I said ‘Black, white or yellow, my dear, take it from me, any and every man needs that!’

  Thursday, 20 February. Ruth says it’s not this week but next month she registers so we are going to try and do our spring cleaning early and have all cleaning done by time she has to go. We will start on Monday and turn one room out. I boiled an extra pan of vegetable scraps today and threw it out of dining room window onto garden for I could not bear to see the flock of famished gulls, crows, rooks, starlings and all the lovely little finches, tits, robins, etc. Strange today there were no blackbirds or thrushes. I lay and watched the beating wings till I went to sleep and woke feeling rested and sewed a little. Miss Mac came in and nearly drove me frantic by her nail chewing – they are down nearly to half moons. She looks so ill and says her nerves get worse and is getting to sleep so badly again. She said ‘It’s dreadful to wait and wait and wonder if invasion will come in a day or a week or a month’. I said ‘I try and not think of it, but think of how much worse it is for South and South-East England’ and got the answer ‘I seem to only be able to think of the
m landing on our Coast Road, or on Walney Island, and I wake up at night wondering and wondering if I can hear a strange noise or it’s only the wind, and if it’s very quiet I wonder if the siren has gone and I’ve not heard it’.

  Sunday, 2 March. Bowness was full of strangers and the waterfront was as thronged as on a summer day. There were a few big ‘offcome’† charas parked at different villages as if parents were visiting evacuees. All the Home Guard were out at manoeuvres at crossroads and strategic points – gentry, farmers, farm labourers, retired townsmen – all alike and working together as one. We will be more socialist after this war and barriers that started slipping in the last war will go for good. I am old enough to have seen many changes in the countryside. Wide gulfs and barriers between class that were like the bars at a zoo. My own Gran was a snob – bless her – and she was as poor as Job’s turkey! Of a family who were ‘free men’ and yeomen farmers of standing in [Queen] Elizabeth’s time and with Rawlinson’s† name on hundreds-year old tombs and church walls, she had an intense pride of race, and her standards were high. She had the ideals and the dignity of a duchess and although rather comical in a farmer’s wife she taught her family to be true to the best in themselves, to help others, to be clean in mind as well as in body, and to speak the truth and keep their word when given. Her scorn of what we now call ‘new rich’ was cutting and I can remember the look on a woman’s face who had loftily offered to buy an old little tea pot that stood on the dresser. Although all words are forgotten, I said ‘It’s an old teapot, Gran – why did you get cross?’ and faintly recall ‘upstart’, ‘money not always “talking” wisely’ etc.

  Whatever indications there had been that the people of Barrow gave the war little thought, by March 1941 this feeling of distance had clearly eroded. The signs of combat were more and more manifest; reminders of potential death and destruction were edging closer to the relatively remote Furness peninsula. These signs included bombing alerts (and the consequent loss of sleep), increased aerial activity, anti-aircraft gunfire, and actual though small raids. Nella took notice of soldiers in nearby camps, the lack of shellfish in the market because of gun practices on Morecambe Bay that restricted fishing (22 March) and kerfuffles concerning the first steps in the call-up of women for national service (18 and 19 March), which initially was to apply to those born in 1919 and 1920. The conscription of women in wartime was without precedent and set tongues wagging, and Nella thought that ‘it seems in some odd way to have finally “brought war home” to some people’ (19 March). There were reports of heavy raids on other port cities, including Plymouth, which was well known to the naval families then in Barrow, for Plymouth was where some had friends and houses (25 March). A thirst for revenge was almost certainly intensifying. ‘I felt a real thrill of satisfaction tonight’, Nella wrote on 24 March, ‘to hear of our latest “fortress” airplanes. NOW we will start in earnest. I’d like to see Berlin flat – and what a smash it would be if all the pictures of huge glass houses of flats are typical of their buildings. I’ve no real animosity toward the German people as a whole, but I’d like to know they were frightened and homeless as our poor ones were in London, Bristol, Coventry and Liverpool, and be happy to know they had to sleep in tubes – if Germany has tubes – and stand for hours in damp shelters. They have not the resistance and courage of free people who can choose and think things out and no reserves to strengthen their backbone.’ As for Barrovians’ sense of security, some people feared imminent attack, others felt that the war would be over by the end of the year. ‘I often wonder whatever would happen if we got a blitz’, Nella wrote on 31 March. ‘I think we have stayed too safe and secure and a general feeling that we are “too out of the way” prevails.’