Most important for Nella was Cliff, his whereabouts and well-being. For several weeks she had no idea where he was. She got a letter from him on 19 August, ‘written from sea’ and saying little. Mrs Howson thought he was probably sailing to South Africa. ‘It will be six weeks on Monday since Cliff sailed’, she reported on Tuesday, 25 August. ‘I wonder if he has reached his journey’s end.’ Only on 27 August did she get a message from him in ‘Africa’, probably somewhere in the Middle East she thought. ‘I’m thankful the longest part of his journey is over anyway.’
Throughout the month much time and labour was invested in preparing for the opening of the Red Cross shop, which was to be run by a committee of which Nella was a very active member. The shop had to be cleaned up and fitted out, and it had to be stocked with all sort of items that were being donated by – or begged from – the citizens of Barrow. Finally, on schedule, the shop opened.
Wednesday, 26 August. Mrs Diss called and we arranged about the reporter for the shop and taking the Mayoress to the Girls Canteen for tea. I tidied up, made celery soup and a steamed gooseberry jam sponge pudding and after lunch was over and dishes washed I got changed and was down at the shop at 1.30 – to find a long queue already formed! Mrs Diss had asked for a policeman to be at hand but they were very orderly and when the Mayoress opened the door at 3 o’clock about ten were let in at a time. Talk about money being plentiful! A set of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs could have been sold several times – at £2 10s 0d the set. A doll’s bed at £2 10s 0d, a desk at £3 with the seat as well, all used toys – went in the first half hour! Dolls could have been sold in dozens, and no quibble about the price. By 4.30 the queue was served and we could open the door wide and let in the fresh air and Mrs Woods started adding up the money. We had £50, and all felt as happy as could be. Our stock is about exhausted but everyone we served we asked if they would broadcast about the shop and find us something or beg something and all said they would. We all caught the last bus before the Shipyard workers and got home in time for tea. I’d left tea ready and I don’t remember a cup of tea tasting better …
Doug Hines, Cliff’s friend, had sent word by Norah Atkinson that he was coming. He is rather a lamb but a description I once read somewhere does rather fit him – ‘He looks like the last descendant of a line of maiden aunts’! In a flash it came to me tonight why the boys and I always seem to attract people like we do – ‘nice’ people but those of what Cliff called the ‘wet lettuce’ type. Doug said rather wistfully ‘Do you always know your own mind?’ and I thought for a little and said ‘Yes, I think so, or if I don’t I think things out till I’ve got all clear’. He sighed and said ‘What a gift. Do you know Cliff was like that and he helped me decide lots of things?’ – and he must be ten or twelve years older than Cliff. Poor Doug. He actually wanted me to make up his mind about leaving Vickers Shipyard and going to work someplace else where he had a job offered! He said ‘Roll on the end of the war. You know quite seriously, if you and Cliff do take a pub and develop it, I’ll come in with you and invest what I’ve got. I can see to all the money side for I know you two are weak on that, and Cliff and you are both marvellous organisers and like people. We will make a good two.’ I said ‘Don’t forget, Doug, the trifling matter – a husband, with perhaps different views – and Agnes Schofield says she is “going to apply for a job”. Such whoopee. If I ever come through the war it will not be to collect cranks round me, pub or no pub’ …
Such a happy worthwhile day. It makes up for all the thought and planning, all the hurry and tiredness of the last three hectic weeks. There is no sweetness like success of effort. There will be a lot of thankful hearts through today. The poor prisoners of war will get a lot of parcels out of even today’s efforts. The Red Cross said a little prayer at opening and asked for a blessing on ‘the willing tireless workers who had created the shop’. I felt it had been granted from the start for everyone has been so kind and helpful and no one has refused or been curt when I’ve asked for help.
Thursday, 27 August. Outside it was a lovely heavy sulky ‘September’ day, inside [at the Centre] just a smelly close one with a feeling of decay coming from the blitzed church. The doors were wide open to try and get a current of air through and I walked into the church. I don’t go often for the welter of destruction gives me such a sick sadness – seats, stained glass, etc. where they fell among broken slates etc. It had a direct hit on the corner as a ‘torpedo’s shell’ sped past to smash flat a big hotel on the corner but no earth was brought to the surface, just rubbish and rubble over all, but the green weeds and grass was unbelievable for it had got a foothold everywhere. The boys had such odd notions and years ago I’ve sat entranced as they talked of ‘all passing away’ and civilization perishing and some day rising again and Ted held a theory that things went upward in some kind of a slow spiral and as it turned in its upward journey ‘conditions’ would be repeated again and again. I used to say ‘But it couldn’t happen like that, Ted. What about all the buildings, so strong and indestructible?’ He used to say ‘Oh, some things will endure to puzzle posterity, like the Sphinx and the Pyramids etc., or the ruins of Ancient Greece.’ Ted knows all about it now [he was killed at Dunkirk] and as I stood and looked at a little firm green dandelion root I wondered how soon our vaunted civilization would crumble if bombs and destruction go on and on.
Wednesday, 9 September. I stood for 15 minutes for a queue was rapidly forming for the Coniston bus and chatted to a Londoner on holiday who was going to Coniston and coming back on the 5.30 bus. She would have liked me to go with her and I was sorely tempted but I’ve so little time and I’d had a task to set this day aside then to see Aunt Sarah. Poor old pet. As I got out of the bus I saw her pop out of the cottage door and gaze anxiously down the road. Her cousin Joe told me she watched every Wednesday lunch time bus and had the kettle boiling in case I came and had never given up hope that some Saturday or Sunday we might venture. Ruth Tomlinson and a Canadian friend are here for the weekend and I would have liked their butter, tinned breakfast bacon and tinned Spam and sliced ham. There was a big 2 lb tin of butter that smelled like fresh cream and the Canadian girl gets a huge parcel of dainties, with which she can hold parties and picnics for her friends every month. Then they talk of ‘Save every crust of bread’ and ‘Think of our merchant seamen’ etc. It’s not right if a lot of Canadians and Americans are getting such luxury parcels. Tinned goods are very heavy and would soon make a shipload.
As I listened to all the news of the girls and boys going off to the Services, of those in India, Egypt, Iceland etc., it set me off wondering what ‘the new world’ will be like. Those who live to see it will see more changes than they realise. The little ‘back to the land’ will soon be stopped by private individuals and farmers gaining more feudal power with workers living with them or in hutments erected. We sat and talked of old times when no bus took lonely villagers to pictures and shopping ‘for things they didn’t need but only wanted’, as Joe put it. He is a fascinating old man to talk to, with a good memory. He spoke of villages so self contained that they deteriorated into ‘mentals’, and mentioned queer ‘dwarfies’ and a queer terrible couple I’ve seen in Ulverston streets, brother and sister. The first is about 7 feet if he did not droop and the sister a tiny ‘Mrs Mowcher’ only up to his knees.
When I got in it was only 3 o’clock and I opened all the doors to let the sun and fresh air in and started to bake. I got bread, scones, half a dozen little rock cakes, a custard and a dish of sliced apples sweetened with syrup made by tea time. My table looked so nice, so well spread. I felt so happy to see it. My husband never seems to notice my scones have so little shortening – today only a little dripping, but they were feather light – and the bran and raisin breakfast is a find. I felt very tired but it was no use [resting] – I had to go and see Mrs Waite for I knew I’d not have another chance this week. She is so fretty we cannot get up oftener, poor pet, and tonight she found fault and scolded because sh
e thinks we are not making as much as we should at Centre and is sure we are all ‘kicking over the traces’! I looked at her with a sadness – such a sadness. She is such a grand old trooper and only asks she can ‘keep on’. I do so pray she can come back to Centre for her place would be so very hard to fill. I sat and talked and the sun faded and it was soon dark. She clung to me and kissed me so lovingly and she said wistfully ‘I do wish you would come oftener. You always make me laugh. You have a perky sense of humour.’
Thursday, 10 September. Having a Red Cross shop is a full time job for someone really, for so many different things come in … Sometimes I feel the ceaseless planning and timetable [of activities] threatens to choke me. I feel if I don’t break loose it will do – and yet I’m lucky to be able to plan and fit in all my odd jobs, to have health to do it and strength to go on. I say firmly to myself ‘It’s no use at all – you are a soldier’ and smile at my Cliff’s and Jack Gorst’s photos and feel we are all pals together. If I slacked I could not meet their confident smiles … Always like a black shadow on my heart is the Second Front. Will there be trenches and mud and cold for all the bright faced lads I cook for and joke with at Canteen? I look at them and see my Cliff in so many of them, in a flash of white teeth, a laugh, a jesting remark. I think ‘Thank God my Cliff is out of the Second Front I so dread’, and then think ‘But there are Japs and cruel “natives”, burning heat, and thirst where he has gone’. There seems such a doom over us all. People say ‘You never worry’, ‘You are a real tonic, my dear’, ‘Daft as a wagon horse’, ‘Thank goodness you have come, we were saying how dead it was till you got down’ – just words about a frightened feeling woman who deep inside feels hollow and who clings desperately to little things, little ordinary things, to keep shadows from sweeping over her. I wonder if it’s true that all women are born actors? I wonder what I’m really like. I know I’m often so tired, so beaten, so afraid, yet someone at Canteen said I ‘radiated confidence’ just because I was not afraid of the rat [in the building] and the little cat runs to ‘talk’ to me. I’ve a jester’s license at Centre … What would I really be like if all my nonsense and pretend was taken from me? I have a sneaking feeling I’d be a very scared ageing woman with so pitifully little. It’s an odd thing to reflect – no one knows anyone else. We don’t even know ourselves very well – just get a glimpse of each other, or of ourselves. One thing always stands like stone – my work. Like an anchorage, however stormy and windswept things get, there is always work – and real work. I’ll never have to go and look for something to do if trouble comes. I’ve all my energies to walk the path I see ahead.
CHAPTER TEN
‘END OF THE BEGINNING’
September 1942–August 1943
Friday, 18 September. We had more sailors in than usual – off the mine sweepers in Morecambe Bay – and they seem such a hungry lot and ready for a hot meal. Some A-A boys came in to sell programmes for sports tomorrow – what they call ‘lucky numbers’ on them. Dolly Last, wife of a relative of my husband, is rather a spiteful person and spoke so skittingly to little Mrs Hunt [who now claimed she had fibroids] and her ‘queer figure’ was the first remark I heard. She has no family but prides herself on being sharp to see signs in other women. She says ‘Umph, if that’s a fibroid, Kay, it will need shoes’ and there seemed such a queer tension. I said ‘Dolly, Kay has told me what is the matter and I’m very sorry for her. You have no need to be mean about it. It’s a dreadful thing, really. A baby would be a blessing, however sad its arrival, but fibroids – the word is enough to make me shudder.’ I could see Dolly did not believe a word of it but I would have no discussion. I got Kay to do the books and Dolly making sandwiches. Whatever it is is none of our business and I’ll not have Kay Hunt hurt any more. Life has been cruel enough …
I had to stay till 7 o’clock for there had been a real mix up at the Girls Club and Canteen and no one turned up and one of our staff and Mrs Ripley had to go and do the afternoon shift. It’s about time we all had another shake-up to make us realise there is a war on. People seem to get so used to war. I often marvel really at my own acceptance of things – rations, queues – or going without! – blackouts, doing all my own work as well as war work [her char no longer came], all the contriving and fitting in of odd jobs, never having time to read a book in peace. Everything seems to get ‘bedded in’ to the pattern that is my wartime life and I just go on.
Sunday, 20 September. An autumn mist lay over the town and underfoot the leaves made the ground slippery on the damp pavements. I felt glad to get home. We had stayed longer than I thought we would and we stumbled about putting up blackouts that should have been put up before we went out. Of all the things that jar me about present day difficulties, blackouts still take first place. I hate them. I hate to feel shut in. I like to wake and glance out of the window and see bright stars or the moonlight, to see dawn come, to feel the fresh air blowing in through open windows and not leaking in through stuffy blackouts. Never to be closed in again, never to worry as to whether a chink of light might be showing. I’ve long got used to rationing, but blackout both in streets and home will always be a dreadsome hateful thing to me …
I saw tonight that they had started taking the iron railings from gardens down in the town. The blitz and housing shortage have pushed a lot of nice oldish houses into slums – the ‘open’ gardens will finish the look of them as the careless people who live in rooms and apartments have broken the insides. Houses that doctors and professional men lived in now have four or five noisy untidy families and dirty curtains vie with blitzed shutters to depress one. Everything altering and changing and going. What will have gone before peace comes? And when will all be cleared up again?
I’m tired tonight, tired through and through. I looked at my little bright dining room when I had come from the run-down, neglected, rather sordid home of my husband’s people. I felt a funny little prayer in my heart, a jumbled prayer, that I could always cling to little bright things and hold them fast. My brass tray, my little welcoming cat, the gleam of my little aluminium teapot seemed to have a life of their own, a bright life. I feel that little homey things are dearer and I spend precious minutes that can be snatched from my busy hours in polishing, washing best tea cloths, changing my gay vases about, polishing mirrors till they gleam. To me they ‘mean something’ I cannot explain, a symbol, a gesture. If I had to live in a hole in the ground I suppose I could, but I’d not like my home to grow into one.
Wednesday, 23 September. I was so thankful to get an air graph from Cliff and know he had reached his journey’s end although it is in the Middle East and not India as he hoped … Always there is a shadow on my heart when I think I’ve lost my boys for good now. Arthur will bring a dear little wife and will be his kind lovable self, but different, and as for Cliff ________ [she leaves a blank space]. I suppose it’s a part of a woman to want ‘children’, to feel someone depends on her, someone she has to fight for and see they get on. Red Cross shops, Centres and Canteens keep one busy but somehow lately they have felt a bit hollow. I feel a wishful longing that if I was not firm could grow into the miseries. I always feel dim when summer goes, when smudge fires† burn and their exciting smell drifts about. It’s been such a short elusive summer. I feel it’s gone too soon and in some way taken something from me, something I’ll never recapture. Perhaps it’s Cliff’s going. Perhaps I’m tired, perhaps a bit run down, but I feel such a shadow on my heart. I’m thankful at times for my gift of hiding my feelings, at the self-discipline that can force a smile or a jest when I only want to sit quiet. I’ve missed my quiet Sundays by the peaceful Lake more than I have realised and have relied on them more than I knew.
‘I tried not to think longingly of the Lake woods,’ Nella wrote on Sunday, 27 September – Sunday had been her most usual day for drives to the Lakes –‘their colour, their smell, the thick green carpet of moss. It’s a comfort to think they are all there, all waiting quietly and patiently.’ For her the sig
hts and sounds and smells of the countryside were restorative. She was also very aware of the contrast between her inner self and how she commonly appeared to others – patient, cheerful, upbeat. The latter, she knew, was at least partly a mask, which she felt duty-bound to put on. Her actual gloomy feelings often belied her outward sunny conduct. On 2 July 1942 she had written explicitly about her two selves. ‘I feel I’m dividing more and more into two people – the quiet brooding woman who when alone likes to draw the quiet round her like a healing cloak, and the gay lively woman who “keeps all going”, who “never worries about anything” … The quiet one seems to be the real me, but the gay one is the most liked.’
Friday, 25 September. Two boys came in [to the canteen] very flushed and wanted something hot. I said ‘You two go and be quiet for awhile on the settee. Try and have a nap and then a wash in cold water.’ Very sheepishly they walked pompously to the rest room and Mrs Parkinson and I were talking of boys in general when I looked up into a humorous coal black face and a gentle voice said something about ‘Minding serving him’. Perhaps I was not quick on the uptake with my cold or my mind was on the silly boys but I said a bit shortly ‘I don’t encourage boys to sleep off a glass too much beer – you are older and should have more sense’, and I realised my mistake as soon as I spoke and said ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. What did you say?’ He said diffidently ‘Do you mind serving a coloured man?’ I felt awful as I said ‘We serve soldiers, my dear. What would you like? But I must warn you we make awful coffee – out of a bottle.’ He took tea and sandwiches and stood by the counter to eat them, and asked if ‘all Barrow people were like us’. Mrs Parkinson said afterwards she had a feeling he had been in some place where he had been unkindly treated because he was so black so she said ‘If you mean we don’t notice people’s country here, yes. You see, we have built ships for every country and got used to seeing other colours, faces and peoples.’ Mrs Parkinson says she stayed at Lancaster once and heard a man say ‘I’d not let my wife serve a dirty nigger’ and she said she blushed for him for the ‘nigger’ in question at the Canteen was a cultured Jamaican.
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