The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Thousands of bright stars tumbled out of the frosty sky, and in spite of my parcel of scraps for the hens I walked home. I like to walk alone sometimes and clear my head of all trying thoughts. I’ve often thought as I looked at the stars that it was presumptuous to think that in all that number there were no other worlds with people on and I wondered tonight if there were indeed other worlds, all with their problems and worries – even wars. The searchlights all round the town swept in pencils of light, like feathers dusting the bright stars, for their beams seemed to stretch so far into the quiet sky.

  Monday, 12 January. A woman I’d not seen for a long time overtook me on my way to the bus and we got on the same one. She was really beautifully dressed in spite of the bad morning and stumped along in a pair of sheepskin Glastonburys† that fascinated me by their girth. Her fur parka matched her lovely coat – but her gloves wanted mending. She moaned and moaned about ‘nothing to buy’ and spoke of ‘unnecessary cuts’ by Lord Woolton – and ‘What was he anyway? A dirty Jew.’* And she at any rate would take badly with it (toss of the head) – she had ‘never been used to such pinching’. I’d had quite enough and I hate conversations in buses that are loud enough to entertain others and I’ve a long memory and remember that Mary Hagan was ‘shanty’ Irish. I said ‘Don’t worry, Mary. You will get used to all our English ways, like you did to wearing shoes and stockings when you first came over’. I hope she got her silly mouth closed again before lunch. She gaped like a fish as I smiled and said ‘Gooood morning’ and stepped off the bus. ‘Dirty Jew’ indeed – and only the fact that her father died and her mother came over to live with a sister and work in a jute and sails mill saved her from crying fish round Dublin as her mother and elder sister had done. That’s the worst – and the best may be – of a small isolated provincial town: if anyone starts to ‘put on dog’† there are people who remember earlier days!

  Wednesday, 14 January. I was glad to see Ena go. She talks and talks all about nothing, like a person who is nervous and not sure of themselves. Her time – half day – is up at 2 o’clock or 2.30 and it’s 3s 6d and insurance which will be another 4d or so and although I’m thankful to have her it seems a lot for what is done, and the way I have to keep working with her. Then there is the lunch problem, and the poor little thing hangs on till I have to make a cup of tea before she goes. She gets her outdoor clothes on and if I have got washed and changed to sew she stands talking and talking.

  I get such odd glimpses of the mind of the very poor. She was talking of a man in the Yard who won £50 the other week in some football ‘points’. She said ‘George and me sat and talked of how we would spend it if he was ever lucky’. I thought of their five children, their badly blitzed house – they can only occupy the downstairs rooms – their battered and inadequate furniture. She went on, however. ‘Yes, we have got it all planned – a month in Ireland with George’s people and no work for George this side of Easter.’ I felt rather shocked and said ‘But Ena, you would not be let go off to Ireland without some business reason, and George would be fined for staying off work you know. Besides, look at the nice things you could buy with £50 – even yet – for a house.’ She nodded but said ‘Aye, that’s right, but as we say, it would come right out of the blue and be no trouble to save so we would get all the joy out of it we could.’ While my prudent thrifty side was shocked, the ‘Over the hill to the other side’ said ‘Why not?’ and [I had] a feeling of envy for the courage of mind that could shout its plans so gaily.

  Friday, 16 January. I always used to say to the boys ‘If you are in doubt as to which course of action to take, take the one that is kindest, or at any rate will cause least hurt or pain to anyone’, and it looks as if I’ll have to follow it closer myself in future. When the non-combatant lot came in [to the canteen] the conchie group among them seemed quieter. They only shouted and stamped because no one took notice of them. One impudent grinning lad was absent – he had the wide turned back lips and glossy kinky hair of a Negro although his skin was white. Last week when he looked so cold I relented and gave him a hot sandwich that I keep for A-A boys – I won’t cook for the well-fed conchies as a rule. Before I could ask where he was they told me he had been killed by a lorry that either slipped its brake or skidded after they left the Canteen last week. It didn’t matter but I felt so glad he had had his hot sandwich and I seemed to see his pleased grin as he took it. Mrs Fletcher said ‘Wasn’t it odd we should have joked with him last week?’ for we none of us like conchies. We all have someone in the Services and look on them as quitters.

  Sunday, 25 January. I was determined to have what the boys called ‘a real banquet’ of a dinner – and I did. [Cliff was home on embarkation leave.] My little shank was only fit for boiling so I boiled it till it was nearly tender and then popped it to brown among the potatoes that were nearly done. I opened a small tin of grapefruit and served it first and then the roast lamb, baked potatoes and brown gravy and lots of lovely sweet sprouts from the garden. Then jellied apple pie, warm and fragrant, with custard sauce. Coffee with a pinch of salt as we make it for the Canadian boys at Canteen and a cream cracker each with a wafer of cheese. Everything was perfection and I could have purred like a happy cat. Cliff said to his father ‘You don’t realise, you know, what a wonder meal this is. You should see and taste the food in hotels now. George paid 12s 6d a head for three of us at his farewell dinner and quality and quantity were far below this meal, and instead of grapefruit we had vegetable hors-d’oeuvres.’ I was very tired after I’d tidied round although my husband helped me, and I sat and rested and listened to Hobson’s Choice – I love the Sunday afternoon plays.

  The Atkinsons came in at 5 o’clock, except Norah who was working till 5, and we waited tea till 5.30 and all sat down together. It was a real Xmas day tea for I’d kept goodies for Cliff, and most of the Xmas cake. We had tongue and chutney, fruit set in jelly with a wee dab of tinned cream, mince pies, chocolate biscuits, whole meal bread and butter and warm split tea buns – and no skimpy helpings. I could have sang aloud with happiness to see them all. They had such a good tea and Mrs Atkinson said quite seriously ‘Let’s split our things in future, Mrs Last. I never thought of having a gorgeous tea like this when Xmas had gone. In future don’t let’s both “spread a feast” – I’ll do it one day and you another and next Xmas the boys may all be home and we could have grand “double” parties.’ I’d a queer fancy that their faces changed in the firelight – that it was an old-time party and not just four next door neighbours come in to tea … We played Newmarket† and laughed and ‘cheated’ and pinched each others’ stakes and Cliff teased and tormented the two girls and we laughed and laughed at the wit and fun that flew. I’d a big carton of ‘Honeycomb’ sweets I had saved from Xmas when my husband got it from a shop where he was working – such lovely ‘sucky’, coloured glucose blocks. The carton was gay and seemed Xmassy and Cliff said ‘Let’s sing carols’ but instead got out his portable gramophone and records and insisted on dancing. With seven people in our dining room plus an air raid shelter in the bay window I thought it impossible, but not that one. He showed the girls some new steps – Norah insisted they were so new he had made some up tonight! He was a mixture of a silly school boy and ‘travelled man’ who had seen different things and from the noise and laughter there might have been twenty happy young things. We were sorry when Mr Atkinson had to go early – fire-watching at the printing works where he works – but as Norah had to be at work early in the morning and Margaret is hard at it at her commercial school, we split up at 11.30. Such a happy day, a ‘memory’ day.

  Wednesday, 28 January. Cliff [who had just been suddenly recalled from his leave] said ‘It’s queer somehow to feel a new road is ahead and all you know is held behind. I hope you are not bombed out or anything, Mom, mostly of course for your own sake, but also because I always want to feel I’ve something to hold onto. I’m a queer devil I know but I do appreciate your love and care – don’t forget that.’ I sa
id ‘No, I won’t, my love, and always remember we will think of you and if you don’t get your mail never doubt that it has not been sent. I’ll never fail you and whatever happens, if I am alive, there will be a home somewhere – if I have to build it myself’, and I laughed a little and tried to make him laugh too. His reply surprised me. He said ‘I’ve got my plans for after the war. I’m going to have a country pub and you shall help me. So keep young and lovely’ – and he ruffled my hair. I’m not the one and have never been the other but the love that made him say such a thing warmed me and the kind look in his eyes made me feel a very lucky woman. He said ‘Now don’t laugh so. You know you are a born hostess and your tact and gift of peace would be a wonderful asset. Can’t you see us making a fortune? Let’s make a promise.’ I said ‘You want more than “tact or a love of peace”. You want money and experience and a good business head, you know, and neither of us have that. Beside, it’s a wife you will want and not your Mom.’

  Saturday, 31 January. There was a ring and to my surprise it was Mrs Hunt, one of my helpers at Canteen. She is such a nice sad little thing and I knew she had divorced her husband early this year and she had told me she was going down to London – Slough – ‘on business’ and would not be at Canteen this week or two. I knew her husband’s people. Her mother-in-law had the morals of an ally cat and her husband knew it when he married her so it was not surprising when the two children were rotters, albeit charming ones, and both were divorced. I could not tell what Mrs Hunt came for so I made a cup of tea and we sat up to the fire. She sipped her tea and gazed into the fire and said with averted eyes ‘Would you take a man back after he had lived with another woman for six months, a common factory girl with nothing but a mop of blonde curls – and those bleached – to redeem her from looking what she was?’ Me, I don’t like butting into people’s affairs, or interfering at all, so I said gently ‘Would you forgive him, my dear? That is the question.’ And she said ‘I always have’ and I felt a great pity for her. She said ‘Mother is so very bitter, Mrs Last, but you know your generation cannot grasp the jungle law that is growing on us today and it’s women that are the worst. Among the set I was in at Slough “morality” as I’d always known it didn’t exist at all and my husband seemed to fall into the same slack ways.’ She said ‘Why once when a girl of twenty was being discussed someone said of her “I really believe she is a virgin still” in the same tone that one might have discussed a spotty face or a slight disfigurement’. She said ‘What should I do? What should I do?’ and big tears poured down her poor little face. I’d the queer pitying detachment that thought how very little any personal problems mattered and I gathered her in my arms and as I wiped her face I whispered ‘Do as you think, my dear. It’s your life. You must do the best you can.’ And she sobbed as she burrowed her face in my neck, ‘Oh Mrs Last, if he would only want to be forgiven, if he would only come back’. Poor lamb, she looked a wreck in spite of bathing her eyes and heavier makeup and I packed her some sandwiches so that she could go straight to the station.

  Sunday, 1 February. When people talk so lightly of ‘after the war’ and as if it was only a short time now before all would ‘be the same’, I wonder what it will really be like. No one was ever quite the same after the last war and there was more sweeping changes than we realise, but what with so many people being killed and moved to other lands and the wholesale destruction of so much we know, there is bound to be a revolutionary change and ‘passing’. How many years before production – even simple farming and husbandry – will get back to normal? How will the millions of young men – and women – react to peace conditions and above all what will all the half-trained youths do? I often wonder what Cliff will do, going as he did into the Army before he had finished serving his time and now being made an instrument mechanic. He will not know enough of his father’s business to take over if, as I very much doubt, he would want to do. Then there will be no A-A instruments to attend to, and he will be too old to retrace his steps and start afresh. I tell myself that he is only one of thousands – tens of thousands – but that is no comfort. I talk sometimes to the boys at Canteen, only snatched conversations it’s true, but enough to realise that a mañana dust and rust is creeping over most of them, a day-to-day kind of existence in which letters from home, being lucky enough to get a packet of fags, and the chances of leave space out the days and make conversation. There is one earnest corporal who, if he is let live, will go far. He persists in putting ‘brains trust’ questions to the other occupants of a table – questions about ‘Was the sergeant right?’ or points of etiquette in procedure or Army rules. He is far from popular! He insisted once on showing a woman how to cook waffles! He is I fear too small a leaven to work much good but he is one of the few ‘thinkers’ in the Army I’ve met – and that includes my Cliff. Cliff says ‘When this mess is over I’ll go roving for awhile’ and he saves every penny he can and buys Savings Certificates. When I was surprised to find he had nearly £50 saved he said ‘I’ve never spent any of my 21st birthday money and you send my cigs. If I’ve to do anything I want I’ll have to have money to start off. I’ll go wandering and when I come back I’d like an old country pub and we will turn it into a peaceful spot where people who are tired or hurt will come and stay and find peace and healing.’ Such an odd mixture of sense and nonsense that one is – so young one minute and so old the next.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TIME PASSES

  February–June 1942

  ‘Time passes so swiftly’, Nella wrote on 26 February 1942, ‘that I often have to pause and think whether the date I’ve written on a letter is really correct.’ She felt it wasn’t a matter of just being busy. ‘It’s as if we have got into a mad whirling kaleidoscope of happenings that form and re-form, pass and re-pass, till nothing seems real and firm any more.’ ‘Only some great “hidden” force could account for the changes in the world of today,’ she observed on 12 April 1942, ‘the changes of all we know or knew before.’

  Thursday, 12 February. All was so peaceful [at the Centre] as we sat for a little rest – and then the storm broke! A real ding dong ROW!! We were idly gossiping about salvage when Mrs Woods said ‘Why don’t they take those three bronze statues out of the squares? They are no use.’ Mrs Waite said ‘WHAT – would you destroy history like that?’ Then there was a laugh all round for 100 yeas ago Barrow was a village. The docks were made and a German called Schneider started or helped to start the Iron and Steel works and was our first Mayor. A carpenter protégé of the Duke of Devonshire got on well by doing all the Duke wanted whether it was for the good of the future of the town or not, got knighted and was Sir James Ramsden. They got a huge bronze statue as did one of the Cavendishs, the eldest son of the Duke. We were all ribald at first but Mrs Waite was furious. She said ‘Would you destroy a tombstone in a churchyard?’ and Mrs Wilkins said ‘I certainly would – ugly, pretentious things, doing no good to anyone’. When Mrs Waite got her breath back she said ‘You don’t agree with that do you Mrs Last?’ I said ‘Yes, with all my heart. Why have ugly rows of cold marble. Why not have a “Garden of Remembrance” where trees and shrubs were planted by a gardener with a knowledge of landscape gardening and our ashes only planted? I’d like mine scattered on Coniston Lake, I think.’ Mrs Woods acted the clown and said she would like a nice pond over her ashes – one with gold fish in. Mrs Higham thought she would like to lie under a piece of the crazy paving.

  It was all very silly and childish but Mrs Waite got so very angry. She called me an infidel – I expect she meant vandal! – and said ‘It was what was the trouble with the world today – no respect and veneration for things’. I said ‘You are right in one thing – that there is something wrong with us all, but don’t you think it’s because “new skins have been patched on to old bottles” and we try to live in two worlds. Look at the Russian and the Jap. They jumped into a new world and threw aside all outworn ideas, and look at them. Would they hesitate about ugly modern (or Victorian a
t the best) statues or railings? Would they dither and dither and dither about things?’ It was a good thing that we had to get up and get ready for the afternoon lot coming. We would have been at it for hours …

  Later we talked of black markets and ridiculous punishment meted out to offenders. Mrs Wilkins said ‘They should be shot’. I said ‘I know what I’d do. I’d put them in prison, give them a very stiff fine and then draft them into the Army – into the Non-Combatant lot who see to smokescreen lamps and unloading oil etc., and the first six months I’d put them on latrines.’ But the worst part of this black market business is that people make it themselves. I’ve often been asked by neighbours and friends if I’d let them have a few eggs and of course they would pay the ‘proper price of 3s 8d a dozen’. When I say I have none for sale as I let two friends have the few spare I have, and at 2s 6d, the same as they pay in the shop, they think it crazy. I’ve always held the rather fantastic idea that peace will never come with guns and planes but will be from ‘within’ – by a change of thought and purpose. What chance is there of peace or a brave new world if it’s to be marred by people who have grown more twisted and warped by grabbing and greed, by only thinking of what they can get extra?

  Saturday, 14 February. Valentine’s day – the day the birds mate, according to the old country saying! For a day or two lately I’ve noticed a lot of bird activity and they have practised notes of song. Today a blackbird sat on the fence and he had three clear notes and the thrushes had two good ones and a little warble. It’s such a nice place to live in Ilkley Road for it’s only a quarter of an hour’s walk to town and the bus is handy and yet the wild birds are all about and the Abbey Rooks and the sea birds visit when hungry …