The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  I quite recklessly spent all my points today for there were few tins of ham about and I liked them so well. I got two small tins of American chopped ham and a pound tin of sausage meat – 12 points each so I’d only 4 points left and I got half a pound of prunes. Although I hardly dare hope that circumstances will bring Arthur and Edith from Northern Ireland for their holiday in June [their planned marriage did not in fact take place until 1 June 1944], I shall prepare and hoard up anything extra nice for that fortnight. I already have tinned fruit in my store and if they come I’ll use the cake I made for next Xmas. I’m beginning to rather worry about a wedding present. I would so love to give them something worthwhile but if things go on as they have done lately I’ll have no money at all of my own – I lost over £200 more that was invested in Shanghai. Poor Dad had his money [some of which she inherited] all over the place wherever he thought was a good investment. I’ve eleven Savings Certificates I’ve bought with my 2s 6d a week at Centre. If I go on I ought to have quite a lot more and I could give him those and help him in other ways as much as I can. Round town there were more queues than I’d seen lately on a Saturday. Long queues for sweets and confectionery, meat pies and pork sausage. On one window was a notice ‘No oranges, no potatoes’! – surely they are going to be scarce.

  All was stark and bleak in the countryside as we went to Spark Bridge. The near hills and moors were only sprinkled with snow but further hills and mountains were gleaming white all over. Farmers carting and spreading dung were the only signs of activity – and the wheeling screaming gulls. Aunt Sarah and her cousin Joe looked pinched and wan. It’s been a terrible fortnight up at Spark Bridge for it lies rather low and the snow had drifted as high as the top of the windows on several mornings. The warm smell of baking and the good smell of the stock pot on the wood fire was like the very breath of home. They had got their first meat for over a fortnight but a farmer had brought them a rabbit on one day and some wood pigeons another so as my little Auntie said ‘They had managed fine’. She said ‘We must never grumble, Dearie. If we have a fire and shelter and bread we have enough to thank God for. It would be ungrateful and wicked to complain of a bit of snow when we think of all the poor ones in the world today.’ She looks so frail but at 76 has the courage and faith that ‘All will come right in God’s good time’. Her niece Mary is going to Preston to train for some kind of engineering. I was rather surprised for I thought all unmarried girls had to go into the Services or munitions. [Mary was in fact shortly to be employed by an aircraft manufacturer.] She is a lovely restless girl of 24 who has never had just that courage – or selfishness – to break away from a cantankerous father and she has not had a very pleasant life.

  Wednesday, 25 February. I listened to the 9 o’clock news with new hope – Sir Stafford Cripps’ speech in the House. Churchill is a grand man and I would not belittle him or hear him belittled but there was a positive ring about Cripps’ speech somehow, a getting down to bedrock. I pray he is given a free hand and that he can cut through the stifling bonds that seem everywhere. Instead of life today having one goal and aim – Peace – we seem to be going on a queer overlapping ‘one step forward, two back’. Gosh I wish I could make the laws for a day – I’d be ruthless. Black marketers would not be fined – I’d keep the fines for the buyers; the sellers would go straight into the Army, old and young. I’d find them a job that would jolt them too when they got there! I’d shake up the matinee-whist-drives-in-the-afternoon, Where-can-I-get chocolates? I-must-have-flowers-whatever-they-cost, My-dear-it’s-my-artistic-temperament-you-know. They would get a job to do, married or single. I’d find some way to make the new rich save beside buying diamond rings ‘as an investment, you know’ and stop the silly women carrying round rolls of notes in doll-eyed† handbags. I often marvel there are not more ‘grab’ – no ‘matched’ – handbags …

  My husband says I’ve a dictator’s mind, but I haven’t really – I know I haven’t. But there is so much to do, for everyone, and I get so frightened sometimes. I feel we are getting close to a weir and that I can hear the seethe and turmoil of the whirlpool and those of us who work and try are only straws that do little good. For one woman who knits or helps at Canteen, or even buys my raffle tickets for my endless efforts at Centre, there are at least 50 who think we are ‘so serious minded’ – as if that’s a crime! – or else plain daft to worry – England always wins in the end. I want to cry aloud – I don’t want us to win ‘in the end’. I want us to win soon. I’m 52 and a tired woman and I want my boys – to see them building their lives, not fretting at the futility as my Cliff does. I don’t like hens on my lawn and air raid shelters in my dining room. I want to bring peace nearer when everyone can be happy. Do you never think of anyone but your over-dressed, over-fed black-marketed selves? I feel myself getting really hysterical inside me – but to what purpose?

  February/March 1942 was decidedly a low point in British morale, for much was going wrong and little was going right. Although the United States was now a military ally, it had yet had time to make its weight felt. Some two weeks later, on 9 March, Nella reported her husband saying that ‘“I feel more depressed than I can remember about the war”. I asked in what way and he said “Well, I cannot see us being strong enough to attack and yet if we don’t we will soon be invaded – and then what? How long will it take to drive them out, and will England be over-run like other countries?” He spoke so sadly he seemed to set me off on a dismal train of thought and my head and back ached so badly I came to bed early.’ Two days later she remarked on her neighbour, Mrs Atkinson’s, uncharacteristic moroseness. ‘I notice such a change in her nowadays. She has lost her pleasant “optimistic, war will be over soon” attitude and her face is taking on discontented and really feverish lines’ (11 March).

  Thursday, 26 February. We nearly had a row at lunch time [at the Centre]. Such an argument – and an unfriendly one at that! We were sitting over the remains of our lunch when someone mentioned Cripps’ speech – and up in the air went Mrs Waite! She thought that he was ‘trying to get Churchill’s place’, and the nasty Bolshie! Two of us thought it a fine speech – and the worst of me, if I really believe in a thing I cannot compromise – and I said it was ‘time we all went a bit more Bolshie, if it meant getting down to things and cutting out waste and muddle and pulled everyone up with a jerk to face the realities of today’. [Nella, a Conservative, would not have been expected to be so sympathetic to the Labour radical Cripps.] We all talked at once and Mrs Wilkins slammed on the table to emphasise her point of view but it was difficult to hear anyone clearly. Mrs Waite did not like either my views – or to hear me scolded for them! – so in a soothing way she said grandly ‘I can plainly see what Mrs Last means, and don’t worry Mrs Wilkins, after this war there will be no Bolshies and Communists. They will have learned their lesson!!’ I could have hooted with laughter but keeping a perfectly straight face I said ‘Yes indeedy. They will all be good little Conservatives and go to church twice on Sunday and leave their country that they have fought and suffered so much for to all the old maids of both sexes, the dreamers and wishful thinkers, and party politics to cook up another war in the years to come.’ That nearly started a war for me but I felt like it – ‘real nowty’† as Mrs Higham said. I’ve felt lately as if I’d like to get up in a big roomful of people and speak all that was on my mind, to see if I could awake a lot of people I know. I must be in a militant humour.

  Tuesday, 10 March. I listened to the news and the report of Eden’s terrible disclosure of Jap atrocities with a cold sick feeling. Two thousand years of martyrs and missionaries, of lives given to ‘teaching the heathen’, of unceasing effort and money spent – and this can happen. I thought of a number of Barrow and the district families who would be feeling upset over the fate of daughters and sisters who had gone out to Hong Kong to settle, and that ‘there but for the Grace of God go I’, and the helpless women of England. I thought of little bright faced Ruth who once so shocked me by
saying that she and her friend would always carry a razor blade in their handbags if invasion came – that no German would get them, they would die first. Sometimes I feel I could shriek aloud for action – to do something – and not wait like a rabbit at the zoo for the snake’s next meal! I listened to Eden telling us to ‘redouble our effort’ and tried to think what I could possibly do to help. My little smiling dollie on which I was stitching ‘long and short stitch’ hair in wool seemed so futile I put it away. I feel so helpless and useless tonight, and yet so eager to do something constructive, something worth doing. I looked at my husband’s set strained face and wondered what he was thinking about in his innermost mind, that part of ourselves we so rarely reveal. I know he worries over the future – who doesn’t? – but he is a very timid nature and I always try not to show if I feel down, but he often notices now and I’m never sure whether it’s because he is getting more ‘noticing’ or that I am less good at hiding things.

  Thursday, 12 March. Mrs Wilkins had a bit of a shock today when she went shopping and it rather unnerved her. She has always had a standing order for fish twice a week. However dear or scarce, 2 lb salmon or 2 lb filleted plaice was sent, and oysters, game, poultry and eggs. This last week or two has seen a ‘NO delivery – and that means everyone’ order has come in with a lot of shops. My own grocer started it months ago. It seems Mrs Wilkins just walked in and a queue was waiting, and a very long and impatient one for the fish had been late and had to be sorted and cut up. We were a bit uncertain as to what exactly happened for Mrs Wilkins has a love of dramatics that often makes her exaggerate, but we did gather that loud cries of ‘Here, you get to the back of the queue’ and remarks about ‘Dressed up women thinking their money better than anyone else’s’ and ‘Shipyard bosses’ wives fancying themselves’ and also threats as to what ‘would be done to her fish if she dared bring it out’! I offered to cook the nice filleted plaice and wish I’d insisted for she is an indifferent cook and burned one side. She said she ‘would go off fish if she had to queue for it among a lot of common women’, a remark that made me smile when I recalled she was a village blacksmith’s daughter and until her husband got on, by his own undoubted merits and abilities coupled with very hard work be it said, she was ‘only a common working man’s wife’!

  Friday, 13 March. A rather subdued lot came in [to the canteen]. They had been to the funeral of one of the two who crashed on Sunday – a Pole. He was such a gay lively fellow of 30 or so – a sergeant pilot who was taking a spell of training and had flown thousands of miles while the other lad of 23 had been married a month. I would not like to be a canteen worker on an airfield. It’s bad enough to lose a few … One lad, perhaps 26 or so, stood at the end by the stove and we got chatting and he told me he was a chef in civil life and if it had not been for the war would have got a job as second chef in a good class hotel or restaurant to prepare him for his ‘chief’s’ post and then having a little exclusive restaurant somewhere in London. He said he had saved £500 and his father had always said if he could save that amount himself he would put up the rest. I said consolingly ‘Why that is marvellous of you to have saved so much – and anyway you will be a treasure where you are, for good cooks don’t grow on gooseberry bushes, do they?’ He said gloomily ‘I had all my papers and two diplomas, but they put me on lorry driving and had to teach me to handle it for I’d never even had a motor bike never mind a car.’ He said ‘The waste at our camp would make good meals for half as many more and our food is so indifferently served that if the food is cooked properly it’s cold and unappetizing.’

  Nella tended to be glum about post-war society and people’s capacities to put their lives back together after the disruptions of wartime. ‘There will be old tired people of all ages’, she wrote on 2 April 1942, ‘and not just those of three score and ten. There will be people marred in body or crippled in spirit by loss of all that made their world, crowds of half trained and unsettled youths of both sexes, destruction and burnt earth – scorched earth – such a lot of building up with worn out tools.’

  Saturday, 14 March. I noticed with a shock today what a lot of empty shops we have in Barrow – tobacconists, little sweets and tobacco shops and fruiterers mainly, although there is also a big one-time clothier’s and a paper hanging shop that had two big windows always full of beautiful wallpaper. The empty shops, the shuttered fronts with only a small glass window for display, and the queer hybrid creatures pushing prams with pants, a woman’s coat and either a pixie hood or a beret seemed to make the streets so untidy in the bright sunshine. I could not help but think that many women are seizing the excuse of there ‘being a war on’ to give full rein to all the sloppy lazy streaks in their make-up. When the raids were on anything could be understood or forgiven – but WHY NOW? Surely it’s best to try and keep on as usual and not let go and grow careless and untidy? Many girls and women who were pictures of make-up and hair sets and bleaches have a really unkempt look as if their use of cosmetics has made them forget soap and water and ordinary tidiness.

  Wednesday, 25 March. It is such a heaven sent night. I kept going out into the garden and breathing deep. There is such a calm sweetness over the gardens – an expectancy. I never remember such a backward spring for the warm bright sun in the day now is countered by the sharp frosts at night. I wish I’d an atlas handy. I cannot just place Felixstowe, whether it’s near Dover on the South coast or round on the other side. I wish Cliff could have his leave before he starts. It’s nearly due now. Perhaps if he gets so far away he will not get it.

  I wonder if there will be an invasion. I wish I could think there would not be. Nowadays it’s not an asset when one’s mind turns over a thing, an annoying persistent thing. Try as I do that article in the Sunday paper comes back – ‘50 planes over Barrow-in-Furness’ – and when our raids were on it was thought there were never more than four circling over and dropping bombs. They zoomed over when they went to blitz Belfast – and Glasgow. I wonder if there were 50 then? Sometimes when I have a strained tense feeling I look at the soldiers’ faces in Canteen and wonder what they are thinking of. Hitler has perhaps been cleverer than we realise for this waiting, waiting business is setting all thinking people on edge. Sometimes I marvel at the way things have ‘just worked out’ in our favour – and only just. I wonder if our luck will hold.

  On 2 April, Nella wrote again of the risk of invasion and how important it was to take the offensive. ‘To let the enemy into England would be worse than it sounds. Some place must be kept sane if there has to be a rising, a rebuilding. Some people say “Let them come. They will be caught like rats in a trap and never get away.” But the role of a bit of cheese doesn’t appeal to me at all.’

  Wednesday, 8 April. Ena and I worked well and I’ll make do for spring cleaning. As I put my curtains up my mind went back to last year’s spring cleaning. Everything was bright and unspoiled and somehow I never saw my little home so gay and attractive as I did then, or felt so proud of it. Curtains and loose covers were nearly new and no blitz had jagged holes in them or cracked my cream walls. This year I had no pride in cleaning, none at all. Rather it was the careful ‘make do’ care and attention one would give to a hurt or sick child, no hard rubbing that would loosen slack and damaged plaster or ceilings, and tiles in bathroom and kitchenette to be held flat while wiping over for so many are loose, a feeling that ‘There, that’s over’ rather than lingering to admire the polish and sheen on freshly cleaned furniture and brass and floors. Something died in me that night – and perhaps something was born, perhaps a balance was struck. Cliff says that I don’t worry over things as I did, and I know I often am content to clean the places that show most and not worry unduly over the rest …

  We were not too late in [after an evening at the Atkinsons] and my husband did an estimate he had forgotten. What with ‘being dragged out to Atkinsons’ and Agnes coming at the weekend he is far from being in a good humour, but when I realise he has two excuses for two moods and I reme
mber other days, I marvel. One thing – I’d not stand them now. I know I wouldn’t. I’d say ‘Oh, do be your age, my dear. I’ve smacked the boys soundly for less displays of tantrums’ – and I’d go out. We generally ‘get nuts when we have no teeth to crack them’. My courage has come too late to change things or let me be like other people and not shut up like a bird – how I hate things in cages. The joke is on me for I realise there was never anything to fear – only my husband’s fear of life in every way. How much better if I’d realised what lay behind his refusal to go into company or have friends or go places. My energy could have been used in trying to help him instead of frittered in nervous breakdowns and frustrations.

  Friday, 17 April. Little Mrs Hunt who divorced her husband and looked so sad was gay as a bird [at the canteen] and I could not understand why her close friend was so cool and distant with her. After awhile when Mrs Hunt was collecting dirty crocks, Dorothy said to me ‘Kay is riding for a fall, running round with a married RAF officer. I’m not going to go to any more dances with her.’ Mrs Hunt knew she was being discussed and tossed her head and said ‘I suppose now you know what a sinner I am you won’t want me on your squad, Mrs Last?’ but I was not going to be drawn into any argument. When we were getting our coats on to come home she said ‘Do you think that children keep couples together?’ and I said ‘Oh, I don’t know. People are all different, aren’t they?’ and I thought that nothing could have kept Roy Hunt ‘on the rails’. He had the moral make-up of an alley cat – in every way. She went on ‘Here I am, 35 and nothing, only my Dalmation to feed and that I’m wondering what I will do with if I go down South again and get a job’. She went on, ‘Isn’t it odd – I never thought I would have to divorce Roy. I’d forgiven him so many times but this time he insisted on saying he was “all washed up” and did not care about his boss knowing the scandal or getting the sack, and yet as soon as he was free he left the girl.’ She paused a moment and then said ‘The worst thing though he ever did is to give me a taste for “rotten”. I don’t feel any attraction to a nice fellow now.’