The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Nella also wrote that day (5 June) that ‘It’s been such a happy carefree week. Arthur is such a good companion and I feel myself “uncoil” and relax in his company always – no strain, no wondering if I’ve said the right thing, no trying to keep the peace between his father and him [as she felt she had to do with Cliff], just a happy feeling of good fellowship, kindliness and good humour.’

  Tuesday, 9 June. When I got in to Centre I heard Mrs Waite’s voice as I went down the passage. Her appearance shocked me very much. She looks so very old and ill and her face has ‘blue shadows’. I bent and kissed her and said ‘Well, of all the contrary naughty old things. I thought you had to rest for awhile.’ She pulled me down beside her and leaned against me and said ‘Oh, it’s nothing, and if I was stuck up there in that blitzed house, so quiet and still, I would soon be ill. I’d go mad I think.’ I made her a cup of Bovril and poked the sulky fire into a little blaze and made her sit by it and put her feet up on another chair and she said ‘And then you scold me for coming down. Why nobody would boss me round like you if I was at home.’ And she smiled over her cup and my heart sank at her looks and quiet child like manner – it’s not ‘our Mrs Waite’ now at all, once so dominant.

  Mrs Wilkins said her piece about all the clever things SHE had done while Mrs Waite had been off last week and what extra work she had done and what she had said and to whom and I could have got her by the shoulders and run her into the street. Then she started attacking Miss Ledgerwood and saying how she ‘never thought of coming early and doing her fair share of bandage cutting’. That sent me up into the air. I said ‘Just a minute. To compare anything you must have fairly equal things. You are as strong as an ox. You have a good maid, plus a husband who helps you in the garden. Miss Ledgerwood is old and frail, has a partly invalid sister who cannot do much living with her, no maid, no help in the garden AND don’t forget this – she and Mrs Boorman cut out more bandages than you have seen in the first two years of the war AND you pick and find fault and generally act the clever devil with her till I wonder the poor old lamb doesn’t attack you with your own scissors.’ She tossed her head and went out and I said ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Waite, but Mrs Wilkins has asked for that. I’ll not have Miss Ledgerwood baited and badgered. Would you like to think we compared you to what you were three years ago? Would you like to have us pick and find fault at every turn? Miss Ledgerwood is my friend and from now on I’ll back answer Mrs Wilkins every time she says things like that.’ One thing about Mrs Wilkins – she is either too thick skinned or too conceited and puffed up with her own importance to bear ill will and she did not keep offence and beyond saying I was a ‘spitfire if I got going’ it passed off.

  Sunday, 14 June. Cousin Mary was in, home from Preston for the weekend. I looked at her as she sat, so hollow eyed and tired, for it is her month of nights and to get home to see her father meant working Friday night and, instead of going to bed, coming to Greenodd and then going back Monday and working all Monday night. She was such a lovely outdoor girl with a clear pink and white complexion and softly curling hair. Now her face is pale and her lovely wild rose skin looks sallow and her hair misses the air and sunlight. I asked her if she was happy at work and she said ‘Well, to be candid, the novelty is wearing off and it gets tiring and when the sun shines I feel distracted when I think of hills and woods. But I’ve never known what it is to be independent in all my 24 years and to earn money of my own and not to have it doled out for housekeeping and to wheedle the price of a new dress from Dad – well, it makes up for a lot. I’ll never go back to the old life, whatever comes. I’m free and I stay like that.’ She is an ‘examiner’ in Dick Kerr’s at Preston and makes very good money.* I said ‘I hope you will save something, Mary’ and she laughed loudly and said ‘Save, did you say? There is little to spend it on really nowadays. That is the general complaint.’

  Tuesday, 16 June. Mrs Waite did not come in till after lunch so we got every bandage and swab out of store and sent it off to the Red Cross for it was the week for the large packing case going. She likes to keep some in hand but it’s not fit to keep salvage in that damp smelly store. Mrs Higham and I gave out wool for knitting to everyone who would take it – double quantities – and I phoned to the Port Missionary that if he would come before lunch he would get a better haul than after lunch. Less than fifteen minutes after he was at Centre and the two huge heaps of sea boot stockings and comforts in the back of the car gladdened us all. We expected to get into trouble and I said ‘I’ll take full blame for the wholesale clearance’ but when Mrs Waite came in and saw the bit of fire and the kettle on in case she wanted a cup of tea she just smiled and sat down and did not grumble at anything.

  There seemed such a quiet sadness over all under the bursts of chatter. Two naval women are waiting news of husbands reported missing. One had a ‘presumed dead’ notice from the Navy and I lost count of the women who said their boys – and in one case of a nurse – were going overseas. I sat down for a little rest when I was raffling, for the little box of groceries was a bit heavy. I chose to sit down by a woman I knew had a son on the sea somewhere and another going any time now. She has always been a great church woman since a child and been very pious in her outlooks on life in general and her remark really startled me – she said ‘It makes you wonder if there is a God after all, doesn’t it?’ Facing problems like that at 56 must be dreadful. I felt thankful I’d settled all my ‘ology’ when a girl and, right or wrong, it’s a part of me and I have no doubts, no fears, as regards God, death or the unseen. I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell or choirs of angels or eternal damnation – no rewards and no revenges, just consequences and a beginning afresh and chance to learn and grow and grow.

  Mrs Waite said crossly ‘You spend far too much time in the big room. What on earth were Mrs Benson and you looking so serious about?’ I said ‘God’ and she nearly fell flat! She said ‘Really, Mrs Last, I’m surprised’, and her face flushed. She looked so shocked and Mrs Thompson and I got talking and then all the Committee joined. The two old ones, Mrs Waite and Mrs McGregor, were shocked at my ‘levity’. Mrs Woods, who is a woman who, though ‘kind and just’, manages where rations or scarce food is concerned to grab twice as much and ‘doesn’t care what she pays for things as long as she gets it’, thought ‘Holy things should not be discussed lightly but rather thought many people had the same feeling’. Miss Heath rather surprised us by her tight lips as she said curtly ‘I’ve my own opinions best not discussed’. Only Mrs Thompson and Mrs Higham would talk about it, and they only skirted the fringes. Suddenly I realised what I missed most in the life of today – TALK. Hearing things argued over and joining in and perhaps being squashed, perhaps listened to, but talking, Arthur talking in a clever way, Cliff and Jack Gorst in either an enquiring way or else a flippant one.

  I got up abruptly and went into the kitchen where it was darker and where I could blink the tears back and pull myself together.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AT HOME AND ABROAD

  June–September 1942

  Wednesday, 17 June. I had got all tidy and straight before lunch and decided to go to the pictures but there was a ring and it was Mrs Howson, a neighbour. Her husband is a naval man and she has been used to him being away – three years once – and she never has a home, just goes wherever she can be near him. He is on coastal convoy now and today she said ‘Do you mind if I bring my sewing across? I feel a bundle of nerves. I’ve not had a letter from Steve as usual. So silly of me to get so jittery. I never used to be like this. I feel I cannot be alone and mother has gone out.’ She works so hard at the Canteen but today said she felt like a rest …

  Always like a far off dirge when I think of Cliff going is the thought ‘For how long?’ and pity seizes me when I think of young wives and mothers of small children left with aching hearts. Such senseless muddle, pain, misery and heartache. Only history can see the ‘pattern of the carpet’. We will never see the ‘purpose of the Plan’.


  Friday, 19 June. It’s invasion exercise on Sunday again and I don’t know yet whether I’m out [on the mobile canteen]. Only four vans are out and I’ll know later. I hope I’m not for I like my Sunday morning for writing and a rest. I had tea when I got in and then went out to a driver friend to see if she knew anything about it but she had only got her order to have the Jolly Roger clean and ready for Sunday. I sat and talked about Cliff, and she is worried about her boy who is going into the Navy any time now. I find any women who mention the war at all so like myself about this ‘Second Front’ – so sure it is the ‘only way’, so chokingly afraid when we think of Dunkirk. Mrs Henley said ‘It looks as if we will lose Tobruk again.* Are we strong enough to go into Europe?’ Her husband said ‘Oh you make me tired, Jerry. Women cannot argue. They get too personal about things. They have no vision.’ I never liked Frank Henley as a boy and I said ‘That’s quite true, Frank, or we would never have children to rear into men to go and fight. It’s perhaps a jolly good thing we have no “vision”.’

  For a week from the end of the month both Nella and Will were on holiday, and on most days they enjoyed excursions in their car – Spark Bridge (twice), Morecambe, Coniston Lake, Kendal, and sunning themselves on the Coast Road.

  Saturday, 27 June. We went to Spark Bridge and on our way picked up two of a group of people left by the bus. I knew one and knew of the other and they were glad of a lift with their heavy shopping baskets. The one with the heaviest baskets – rations for nine people and two big jars of jam were part of her load – has an old blind aunt living with her and two Salford evacuees, her husband and self, four children at home and a lad on draft leave in the RAF and one lad in the Army overseas. She was smart in a plain country way and her quiet pleasant smile was like a blessing. I said ‘What a shame that townspeople fill the buses on your shopping day and you have so much to carry’. She said ‘Well, I’ve lived on the Common above Lowick before there was buses and we will just have to manage and be thankful we don’t live in Russia’. The contrast between Isa [a persistent complainer – and spoiled] and that country woman of not many years older was a sharp contrast. It certainly takes a lot of different people to make a world!

  Wednesday, 1 July. My husband is very down over the war news now and he says he hears a lot of despondent talk – and of this Second Front.

  I really have to keep out of the garden if my next door neighbour or his wife are about [the Helms at 11 Ilkley Road]. I’ve never quarrelled over the fence in my life but I feel I could assault those two. They fled for a year after the blitz and have only got back – after fire watching registration so he does not do it. His only daughter’s husband signed as a baker and goes into a bake house each morning for half an hour, although he has a big furniture shop. He has no one in the Services, does no war work of any kind and politely sneers at those who do or those who buy Certificates, but when it comes to criticizing the Government, howling for a Second Front, skitting at Churchill, or mouthing plans for winning the war, he is a real big noise. I’m not as good tempered as I once was and if I ever do start anything, by Gad I’ll finish it and he will have no illusions about himself, his ox or his ass any more! …

  All is so hushed and still, so peaceful and quiet, and yet there seems the same breathless hush there was before war broke in that quiet autumn – or rather late summer. My husband said today ‘We have got half the year over – and quieter than I thought we would’. I fear the second half will make up for it. All this talk of Second Fronts – I wonder if a plan is properly worked out, enough stores and equipment ensured, and above all adequate protection for our men.* Now I have seen torn roads and shattered buildings, and what I’ve seen of war Pathés and newsreels make me go cold at the thought of another landing on the Continent. Men will not have the fire and enthusiasm either of that first attempt, although they will be better trained. Every post that comes I look for a letter from Cliff and since he said that their ‘destination had been altered since Tobruk and that fresh code letters had been printed on kit bags and luggage’, I keep wondering if he will be in the Second Front. Yet if he goes abroad, will it be to another Tobruk?

  July was not without amusing moments. On 14 July at the Centre Nella heard of a joke told by a doctor. ‘A Polish flyer who had been in a hospital took a turn for the better and rapidly began to “sit up and take notice”. The doctor said “I’m delighted with your recovery. You can have anything at all you fancy – or would you like anyone to come in?” The Pole said “I think I’d like a woman now, doctor. You may send one in tonight. I like plump ones.” The doctor said in a shocked way “Hush – you are in England now and not on the Continent. English ways are different altogether and they would be very shocked if they heard a remark like that” and got the reply “Then why the Women’s Voluntary Services?”’ This story, it seems, was much enjoyed by the women present and, according to Nella, further witticisms were spoken in the same vein and ‘set a few of the more ribald ones off into a louder fit of laughter than the joke did’. Later that week at the canteen, when Nella was briefly out of the building, two Canadian Sergeant Pilots invited Mrs Howson and her to the cinema. Mrs Howson ‘had tactfully refused and I felt sorry for the lonely soldiers and if I’d seen them would have suggested they come to 9 Ilkley, for they were a homely type and I knew they only asked us because of that, but it was no good talking to that giddy bunch for they insisted I’d “made eyes”’ (17 July).

  On Sunday, 26 July Nella was surprised to have a visit from her cousin, Tena, who was ‘in need of a chat’ concerning her daughter Enid. This ‘lovely sprightly girl of 22 has broken off her engagement to a very eligible young fellow of 25 with a good position in the Yard and one which had excellent prospects. They seemed so suited and very much in love and I’ve wondered what the trouble was. Tena said “You know Nell, they are all down on Enid. Her father and Gran are really vexed” – Aunt Eliza is the gran. She went on, “I feel it may turn out for the best. Enid is so lively and loves dancing, dramatics, tennis, swimming, roller skating, hiking, or any kind of gaiety and fun.” Ken shunned it all and only liked going to the pictures, motoring alone with Enid or walking alone. She said if she tried to go Ken’s way she was miserable and felt unreal and he made no attempt to see her viewpoint. I laughed indulgently and said she “would settle down when she was married”.’ Nella may well have been thinking of her own marriage and how it had unfolded. She went on to declare that ‘It’s no sin to like fun and gaiety and goodness knows Enid works hard enough with all the Yard overtime. I’d not like Enid to always stand aside and give up every little pursuit, never to have friends or go anywhere alone, just wait till a man came in to take her out.’ Nella felt that she had learned the hard way about the perils of trying too hard to please a man.

  From July of this year there were two new developments that would have significant consequences for Nella: one was the ban on the use of petrol for private motoring; the other was the decision to set up and run a Red Cross shop in Barrow. ‘The tank is full of petrol yet’, she wrote on Sunday, 5 July, ‘and will take us to Spark Bridge at least twice more and then all will be used and finished with till after the war … Very few cars were about and the roads looked strangely empty.’ On 12 July ‘We used our last drop of petrol’. So, for Nella and Will, there would be no more day trips of the sort they had taken the previous month. If Nella were to travel outside Barrow, it would have to be by public transport, with all the accompanying bother and inconveniences. On 15 July, when she took the bus to Spark Bridge, ‘I had thought I could get a bus back about 4 o’clock but the girl conductor said there was not one till 6.15 after the return of the one I was on and when she said it was generally too full to pick up any Spark Bridge people I knew I’d have only an hour in Aunt Sarah’s’. Country drives had been one of the Lasts’ few shared pleasures, and now they were gone. On Saturday, 1 August she remarked that ‘My husband seems a bit moody about the car being laid up and having to stay at home holiday week’. As f
or the Red Cross shop, an idea suggested by Mrs Diss and agreed to this month, it was intended to raise money for the Prisoner of War Fund – and was to figure prominently in Nella’s life for the rest of the war.

  With the beginning of August, the Shipyard started its annual fortnight holiday, so most of its employees were not at work, and the Centre was to be closed for the first half of the month. August began with Nella helping out with Barrow’s ‘Flag Day’ for merchant seamen on the Saturday of the holiday weekend.

  Saturday, 1 August. We went out early with our flags and did very well. I started off well for I put my gollywog 5s in and had three 6d beside from my husband and the neighbours. We walked down Abbey Road selling as we went and looking for a good ‘pitch’ for our permit was for anywhere in Abbey Road. When we got to the station bridge and looked over we gasped at the dense crowd with suitcases, prams, babies and dogs and on going down to try to sell a few flags to those who were not wearing them found the station packed as well. It was just like a pre-war Bank Holiday except that everyone seemed to have new outfits. A porter told me they started to queue by 12 o’clock and by 2.30 a long queue formed for the trains that went out at 6.20. Many hundreds took the day off from the Yard yesterday to ‘get away in comfort’. If it was not for my back – and, these few days when it feels thundery, my feet and ankles – I’d like selling flags and I thought today that a clever person would have been able to make use of the characters if they had been writing a book. The pleasant people who came up with 6d and a pleasant word and took a flag. Little untidy boys with tiddler† nets and jam jars on their way to the park, with coppers knotted in grimy handkerchiefs and an earnest enquiry – if they ‘put a whole penny in could two of them have a flag please?’ They got them and nearly got a kiss each as well! Shy furtive people who confessed to ‘no change’. A ‘means test man’ in ragged coat whom I asked before I saw his poverty. He looked old and tired and I pinned one in his coat and whispered ‘This one’s on me, daddy – they will only worry you to buy one in the town’ – and he insisted on giving me a few wilting sweet peas out of the basket he had with a few vegetables from a friend’s allotment. A lordly male who ‘never bought a flag “on principle”’ – I smiled at him and cooed understandingly but suggested I knew he would want to put something in my box – and the dazed look in his eyes as he turned away after putting a 2s piece in! Bet that one has a copper ready another time and keeps his ‘principles’ dark!! …