The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  A big man whom I asked to buy a flag and who was picking 6d out of a handful of change gave me another 2s when I remarked on the hope we made lots of money for we could never think enough of seamen and sailors. He smiled and said ‘Thank you – I’m a seaman myself’ and Mrs Howson said he was a captain on an oil tanker and on leave at Barrow with his sister. I only got rid of half my flags but my box was full and I knew it was time to stop by my aching back. When I took the box in they said ‘Do have another for this afternoon. You are a born flag seller.’ But I said ‘Oh no – if that had been the case I’d have had a back and feet to stand the strain better’! When I thought of Mrs Howson and Mrs Hunt’s full box and Margaret’s nearly full one I felt glad I had turned out for they would not have gone if I had not.

  Tuesday, 4 August. I went down to be at the shop for 2 o’clock but the keys were not there and we waited till nearly 2.30. Talk about dirt. It was appalling – blitz dirt, neglect and repeated Flag days when it was used as a centre for collectors had all added dirt and dust, and then the shop next door, a plumber’s, had stored glass and glass crates in the passage and yard. It’s not a very good shop, really, for beyond good windows with the entrance door between, there is only one room and not a very large one either. A passage leads to the yard and a wash bowl is in the passage and the lavatory at the bottom of the yard. Not a cupboard or shelf, not even a peg to hang anything on. We will have to get electric light bulbs and some kind of electric radiator for it will soon be impossible to sit in the shop without warmth. It is on the shady side of the street, too, and that will make it worse. Still, it’s a shop and big enough for a start and if we find we do well we can move into one of the shops in the main street that we thought too big for a start. I’ve had a lot of things promised and hope I get some of them before we open, but as we talked things over we decided we cannot do so before the 26th of August for we do not open at Centre till the 19th and we will need a week to prepare people, collect goods and arrange about the opening day with the Red Cross.

  We could see people pass and re-pass, trailing about in the chilly day. The picture houses all have ‘House Full’ notices on a good half hour before they started. Most shops were shut and the Park was not attractive to everyone for sports don’t find favour with all tastes. Bus loads went to the shore – and now the little cheerful huts and booths that supplied tea and hot water, buns, rock, buckets and spades, sweets, aspirins, deck chairs, periodicals and books, minerals, home made lemonade, toffee, ice cream – all the little happy making necessities for a day by the sea with a pack of kiddies – have gone ‘for the duration’ …

  After tea Mrs Atkinson came to see if I’d go to a whist drive but they are such keen swift players there and I felt more like quiet and relaxing. She said ‘You never seem to have much fun out of life. You work and work and take on more as time goes on. You will be an old woman before your time.’ We were standing outside and Mr Atkinson said from over the fence where he was gardening ‘You are the happiest and gayest woman I know, Mrs Last. Take no notice of my Winnie. And what matters fading hair if your heart keeps young?’ We all stared at Mr Atkinson for he is such a very quiet man. He is on holiday and I’ve asked them to come in for a game of whist tomorrow night for a little holiday change. When I told my husband he was not at all pleased and he said ‘Don’t you ever think of consulting my wishes before you ask people in? You know I like my evening to myself.’ Me – I must be a queer shock to him, I realise it plainly. I just said calmly ‘You will have a few evenings entirely to yourself if you talk like that, or be odd if people come in. This winter I’m going to ask two boys from Canteen every week for an evening by the fire. Cliff is far away and Arthur might be in China he seems so far away. I’m going to ask two boys who like beans on toast to eat – Cliff’s beans I saved for him.’ And I will too, moods or no moods. I’m growing hardened – tough, as Cliff calls it.

  Life is slipping so quickly away, so much unhappiness and grief and loneliness. We must not neglect the slightest help we can give to others. I heard today that we got £300 and over on Saturday for the merchant seamen. I hope it’s true although it is a lot for Barrow, especially when so many were going off out of town. I wonder where my Cliff is tonight, if he is happy. Always there is a little prayer in my heart for my boy. I look at his smiling face on the mantel so often and smile back and say God bless, and see again the little intense boy on the other corner and they go all jumbled up in my mind and I am not sure which I am grieving for, so quickly did my little baby, my odd little boy, grow up – and then go away. I often think I was designed for a large family. It would have been nice to have had more young things at home now that Cliff has gone, and yet they too might have been boys and had to go [to war].

  Thursday, 6 August. I had to dust and vac upstairs after lunch for this week I am catching up with any housework and will have all clean to start Centre. I laid down with a book when I’d finished but dozed off and was wakened by Mrs Higham ringing. She was in very high spirits because she had got some planks that would do for shelves [in the Red Cross shop] and her husband had said he was sure that he had nails and hooks enough somewhere in the garage. I felt a queer dizzy shock when I knew husbands were entering into our work, a sick cold feeling. You cannot say to people ‘Look here, do leave my husband out of anything. I’ll work and work and give you anything I can but don’t let’s have husbands in it for it’s no use at all trying to get my husband interested in anything. He was never interested in his babies or little school boys, his home – he has only done what was damage repairs that could not be avoided for comfort. I told him we would need a shelf and hooks and he did not speak or offer to help. He hates working or mixing with either your George or anyone else. No coaxing or persuading will do anything. If he said “I don’t want to do” a thing, that finishes the matter as far as he is concerned. He seems incapable of reasoning or thinking things out, of effort, self sacrifice.’ You cannot tell people things like that about your man.

  Flashes of when I’d tried to insist on his being ‘more like other people’ came before my eyes – and the surprised looks on people’s faces at his attitude. One remark I’d once heard was passed by a rough but kind hearted woman. ‘Look at poor Mr Last sitting in that corner. God love him. He looks as if he is going to burst out crying.’ Of never daring to accept an invite till I’d asked him, of when he had been ‘trapped’ into acceptance and he had accepted with his ‘sweet pleasant’ smile, the moods I’d had till I’d thought of an excuse to refuse. Mrs Higham said concernedly ‘I say, you do look ill. I hope your cold is not going to get you down.’ I don’t know what I said. Cold! Yes, but in my heart I thought of my little life I’d planned and built crashing. I cannot let those women at Centre see my life. Their husbands are ‘all out’ for war effort and work. I cannot let them know my husband thinks it ‘too much trouble’ to put up a few shelves in a Red Cross shop for us when it is not going to cost him anything even.

  I felt like death when he came in. I said a little jumbled up prayer – I’ve prayed so often for some kind of growing up in his attitude to life and people I did not know what to pray for. I felt I held up my little efforts – I’ve worked so hard, often with aching back, tired head, but it is mine and I want it. I’ve nothing else now. I don’t want to be ‘different’ at all. I only want to go on working with them all and helping. I felt my wretched tummy starting to shake and tremble as if I would soon be sick but I asked him if he would go and see some wood and pick out any that would knock up rough shelves and Mr Higham and he could put them up on Sunday when it is his Sunday off from the Yard. I saw storm clouds on his face and he never spoke and the stillness got deafening and roared in my ears! Prayer can be answered in many different ways – I’ve never talked to that one before like I did. He knows what I think of my married life now. I pointed out I’d had three bad nervous breakdowns but the next one was his turn. I told him again of Dr Miller’s straight talks when I could not walk and my feet and legs
would not function and massage, violet rays, specialists who spoke of sclerosis did no use. He talked to me quite a lot – and to Arthur – and I was very shocked when I realised there was nothing wrong with me but nerves. My husband knew it all and had been scared enough at the time to ‘let’ me do anything I’d wanted – as long as I only went out with him. I was quite interested in what I said in my impromptu tirade. I told him in detail the many times I’d tried to build a little ordinary life – and the times he had kicked, pushed or whined it into ruins. I remembered incidents I’d quite forgotten and then I gave my ultimatum. I said ‘This helping us is none of my seeking but, by the living God, if you make things so that in my pride I leave Centre, so that they don’t know what a childish, stupid, mean spirited man my lads’ father is, or tell them or make excuses for you I will not, you will rue it for the rest of your days. It’s my last effort to build up with worn out tools. I’ve not my Cliff to think of any more and I’ll plan my life entirely to suit myself. I can work for myself and will go away, far away, and I’ll never come back if once I go.’ He has not spoken since, nor have I. I’m not sulking, just giving him time to think things over.*

  Such a storm in a tea cup. I think they often turn into the biggest issues. I’d give a lot for Arthur’s kind whimsical face to look round the door tonight, to hear him say ‘What about a stroll up Abbey Road?’, to feel the night air on my face, to have a talk with someone who understood. Funnily enough I’m not a bit upset now at all. I’ll fight this thing out. The boys were right – I’ve a weak streak or I’d have done it before. My mind is made up. If he sulks and frets and ‘will not be bothered’ to put up that shelf, which will cost him nothing but a few hours pleasant company and companionship with Mr Higham helping, I’ll not tell any lies or make excuses any more, and pretend things, or do them and make out he has done them as I’ve often done.

  Nella’s straight talking was to some avail, for the next day Will agreed – indeed, in a cheerful manner, she said – to lend a hand and meet Mr Higham on Saturday to look over the wood and get enough for the shelving for the shop. Nella was delighted. ‘I felt so happy I could have sang as I splashed through puddles in the rain. Appears to me that if I got on my top note a bit oftener and spoke my mind freely instead of humouring him at all times it would be better. He was pleasanter in the house than he had been for weeks and talked quite a lot’ (8 August). But she still had to endure his whims and quirks. ‘Early or late,’ she noted on 27 August, ‘whenever he comes in he expects his meals ready to put in his mouth and makes a scene if it is not perfectly ready. I’ve certainly spoiled that one.’ Later that day, having picked up a reel of photos that had been developed, she found that ‘the three my husband had taken of me were hopeless – out of focus altogether. When I think how Cliff begged for snaps and he would not take enough care to get even one decent one to send – and I don’t think I’ll be able to get another [film was now hard to obtain] and certainly not to send for Xmas. If he had said he was sorry it would have not been as bad but he was so unconcerned.’

  Monday, 10 August. The other day I made a bad gaff in the Canteen. A jolly, rather fat little woman bounced in and started joking and laughing and talking of ‘when we were on the Mobile together’. I looked at her again and again but could not place her. She stood there in her WVS outfit rather grubby and wind blown from her journey back and forward along the Coast Road to the big cooking place to the schools with dinners for school children. Her grey hair was a bit wispy under her beret, her wide happy mouth was free of lipstick and if her face had been powdered when she set off it showed no trace now. She was smoking furiously and telling a long yarn about what she had said to someone who had said ‘Oh, shut up Ricky’, and I gasped as I remembered the very nice but most unhelpful driver I’d had several times. Dressed so very beautifully in navy tailor mades with dainty hat and matching accessories, with high spiky heeled shoes, brassy blond hair and marvellous make-up which she seemed to repair at every place we stopped – while I washed the cups and counter down! She insisted on her full name of Ross-Ricketts. Now evidently she was Ricky!

  Monday, 17 August. Mrs Waite sent her granddaughter in with the keys [for the Centre]. Life is odd. Mrs Waite has such a lot to say about ‘girls of today’ and is down on every girl who is ‘fast’ or dresses showily and her tongue is both cruel and cutting. Her own granddaughters are ‘perfect examples of girlhood’ in her eyes – but in onlookers’! I looked at 12 year old Jean as she openly prattled of dates and boys and ‘getting off’, of back seats in cinemas, of her admission she would like to be married soon, and I thought it was enough to raise Mrs Waite’s hair if she heard. I said curiously ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell your Gran of your naughty lies to your mother and the tricks you are up to?’ She said ‘Oh no. Gran says you talk more and tell less than anyone she has ever met and if she had a secret she would never hesitate to tell you.’ My husband laughed out loud when he heard and when I asked him what the joke was he said ‘Your expression – you had such a look of comic surprise. But it is true, you know. You are deeper than your chatter leads people to suppose.’ Hmm – as others see us!!

  Sunday, 23 August. Mrs Howson came in for a chat and we spoke our vague fears and suspicions of little Mrs Hunt at Canteen. She divorced her husband early in the year and for awhile acted the fool when she came back, went ‘rackety’ in a too gay set in which there was a South African airman with a roving eye. She once said to me ‘Oh, I know he is not much – some would say he was a rotter. But Ron Hunt made me feel most at home with rotters.’ Although I work with her every week at Canteen, beyond thinking she was putting on weight I never suspected anything – I’m not really very bright in that respect and I often don’t notice my friends are expectant mothers for quite a while. Mrs Howson is such a kind little thing she has never voiced her suspicions, even to me, till now. I do so hope it’s not true for Mrs Hunt is such a nice, sincere little woman, tiny and helpless in many ways but a good worker and very reliable. Whatever she will do I cannot think. It has made me feel quite ill and so very anxious. I do hope that she is only ‘putting on weight’ and nothing more. I cannot possibly think what the poor little thing would do. The South African has gone away these months past – and anyway he is a married man.

  On 28 August Nella returned to the plight of Mrs Hunt. ‘It is so awkward with Mrs Hunt “putting on weight” for although nothing is said at all I saw several eye her up and down and she looks the picture of misery. She wears a smock in Canteen and never comes in a costume, always a coat.’ Nella expressed her concern again the following Friday, 4 September. Mrs Hunt ‘looks so ill at times’ but she thought that ‘one cannot go to a woman of 34 or 35 – a woman who has been married – and say “Look here, Kay, what is the matter with you? You are not going to have a baby are you – and divorced over a year?”’ Whatever her problem, Nella remarked, ‘she is heart broken over it’. ‘Poor little thing – she is not meant to stand alone’ was Nella’s verdict the following week (11 September).

  From time to time the world beyond Barrow entered Nella’s thoughts. On 8 August she remarked on ‘all this talk of India and wondering if all will be aflame there shortly and wondering and thinking of Cliff and if he is going there for certain. Not one corner in the whole lovely world where people can think “Here is peace to live and build”.’ The next day ‘I felt heart thankful to hear Gandhi had been arrested but have a fear it may lead to trouble although not as big as if he had been let run loose much longer. As if Japs were not enough – the country must be divided.’ ‘Such bad news from Russia’, she wrote on 11 August – Soviet forces were still retreating. ‘The Germans seem so dreadfully strong – and such worrying news about India. There has been enough talk in the past of “Armageddon” but it looks as if soon it will be an actual fact.’ ‘I often think of the people in occupied countries’, she declared on 12 August, ‘and I think “Hitler is a fool. He does not realise that banked down fires only need a poker to spring in
to life and heat. He may put out some fires but not others and it will be their flame which will destroy him.”’ And she worried about the Second Front, which was much discussed during these weeks, and actively agitated for by some. On 19 August ‘My heart nearly stopped beating at 7 o’clock this morning when the news came over the wireless about the Dieppe raid for I felt sure it was the beginning of the Second Front. At 8 o’clock when it was a “raid” and not an invasion I felt less upset. Always do I think of Dunkirk. I’m not very brave. I feel my bones turn to water at what lies ahead in those carelessly spoken words “the Second Front”.’