The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Wednesday, 14 August. There was great excitement at North Scale – ‘squatters’ were moving in to the RAF huts in Mill Lane. I feel shocked at the good Army and RAF huts that are going to waste while people are wanting homes so badly. Nissen huts could be made as comfortable as the hideous prefabs, I’m perfectly sure. One quite good camp seems to have got into bad repair altogether, yet it was ideally situated for, if nothing else, a holiday camp, for it was right on the Bank, only across the road from the sea. I felt ‘Jolly good luck to all squatters. In these days when we are anchored down with ration books and restrictions and growing into a nation of “yes men”, it’s good to find someone yet with pluck and spirit.’ I really enjoyed my afternoon. It nearly blew us away as Mrs Whittam and I strolled up the Lane to the fields for the cows …

  When war first broke out I used to feel wildly ‘Dear God, where has all the fun and laughter gone?’ It crept back a little, if dressed in battle and service dress. I wish it could get demobbed too. The lack of bright sunshine is, I think, the cause for fretfulness and gloom; a sunny day seems to wave a magic wand. Mrs Whittam said wistfully to me ‘We did have good times at Canteen, even if we had to work hard sometimes, didn’t we?’ They were such nice people to work with always. Yet now we are all like an untied bundle of sticks, all tired and busy with household tasks and worries we took in our stride, or made them fall into the pattern that was our life for so long.

  Saturday, 7 September. The morning flew past. It poured with rain but my husband had to go down to a bungalow on the Coast Road to see about some windows repairing and we all went. [Arthur and Edith were visiting.] It cleared up as the tide went out and we got as far as Grange. We had a late tea and lingered talking. Arthur seems to be confident he will get his Higher Grade next year, with a rise in salary of £250 a year. I listened to their plans. When they had a little surplus money, they are going Youth Hostelling every fit weekend, buy a little car as soon as they can afford it, have a fortnight in Switzerland in the near future. No talk or plans of beginning a family. I sat quiet and listened and watched their faces. Arthur seems to have a poor view of prospects of peace for long. He seems to think Britain has dropped to a third rate power, and Russia and America the ones who will decide the future for some time. Without him actually saying so, he gives me the impression he thinks it folly to have children nowadays. Yet if they don’t, their happiness will have no roots. Edith is very ‘primitive’ and wholly natural. Her home is her delight and, to her way of thinking, children are home. It will be a sad mistake if they don’t choose to have children, and, I feel, a tragedy if they cannot. We live in our children, try and help them avoid our own mistakes and failures, pass on the torch of faith and trust in God’s goodness and Plan. They are our standard to carry on and on, when we would sink and fall if we only had ourselves to think about. My Cliff was not a very lovable baby. He was nervy and difficult, with a tendency to fight and scream beyond belief – or patience! I used to be so ill after a major operation when he was 18 months old, my one prayer was that I would be spared as long as my nervy, cantankerous scrap needed me. I had so little money. Life was a struggle, for my husband was never very strong. It was the need for my baby and my faith that kept me going. I’d have been unable to do it for myself. My longings for a grandchild recede. It looks as if my little cats will have to be my only pets! …

  We were all tired, and came to bed early. We plan to go to Keswick if it’s fine tomorrow and show Edith a bit of the Herries country. How I’d have loved to work with Hugh Walpole, covering ground for his fine Herries books. Of all gifts I crave, that of ‘expression’ would be my dearest wish. I’ve met such interesting people, and always heard unbelievable stories about people’s lives. If I could put all in written language and sequence, I could write books, I’m sure. Maybe I’ll get my wish in some future reincarnation!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EVERYDAY SCENES

  November 1946–October 1947

  Saturday, 2 November. My head felt so heavy and I could hardly sit up straight, but it was worth the effort to go to Kendal to see that it was doing my husband good and helping him forget his business worries. It’s so difficult to find comfort for him, but I did point out there was only the two of us, and dear knows I’ve always had to manage on little, and as I pointed out a bit heartlessly when he talked of a slump being inevitable sooner or later, that by then he might not have to give his parents £2 10s out of his business profits. When I think of his well-to-do chemist brother and one who left the business in resentment of what he called ‘carrying a couple of passengers’, and realise how my husband has it all to do just because of an argument when the business was turned over to the two of them – and the chemist brother can make his son a doctor, he has so much money – I feel I detest that family more than ever. I think as always how my husband has been the complete mug for them all his life. Some part of him never matured. He went into the workshop at the back of the house, never went away from home, never mixed in company if he could help it, never reads, never listens to anything he calls serious on the wireless, and has carried the domination of his parents all his life. Instead of making him more understanding towards Cliff, he goes on and on about ‘If Cliff were only like other businessmen’s sons’ etc. Quite useless for me to point out so many sons who have not followed in the family business. Nothing wipes the look of injury off his face once he starts off.

  All my life people had wanted to change me. My mother wanted a boy – or a blue eyed, golden curled child like the one of her first marriage, who died a gentle being of two. She could have forgiven my dark eyes and hair if I’d been a boy, but as it was I always felt her disapproval in everything I did, or how I looked. My husband was attracted to me because I was ‘always so gay and lively’ but has always disliked any gaiety himself, always pointing out that he was satisfied to be with me alone, he didn’t want outsiders etc., always wanting me to be different. It bred and fostered in me a real horror of trying to make people alter to please me – I’d not try and alter my little cats beyond training them to be clean and agreeable.

  Cliff must live his own life. I stood it till my tired aching head could stand no more and then I said as I held out my left hand, ‘Before I would dominate Cliff’s life in any way, I’d thrust this hand into the fire, as God hears me’, and then smiled wryly to myself at the futility of my remark. Cliff would never be dominated, by people, or circumstances. Anyone who tried to do so would find they only held shadows. If circumstances held his body, the real Cliff would go. Oh dear, I could have shrieked ‘Shut up’ like a fishwife!

  Monday, 4 November. Cliff’s letter came telling me he was spending Xmas at home and would be off to Australia by the end of December – dear knows how he has got his passage. I wonder if he will be better away from the London he so loves, and a lot of the silly useless people he calls his friends, and who don’t seem of any value to him. Perhaps in Australia, where he will have to stand alone, my poor laddie will get his values finally sorted out. Weak tears streamed down my cheeks, I felt so very unhappy. My husband thinks I’m a fool not to put my foot down, for Cliff says he would never go if I was very set against it. I cried till I felt all life and vitality was drained out of me, and as I bathed my face I felt I prayed in my heart that I could keep in my mind how unimportant my little troubles were, that we were all part of the Plan, that all would work out some place, some day. ‘I am the captain of my soul’ is feasible but ‘I am the master of my fate’ is not true.

  With peace came little in the way of plenty in 1946–7. The lights had indeed come back on – to reveal a worn and shabby people inhabiting a nearly bankrupt nation. There was an impressive litany of woes, many of which got Nella’s attention: a colossal national debt; housing shortages; thin or even virtually non-existent supplies of consumer goods; and austerity policies from Westminster that continued or even increased wartime rationing and added new regulations that constricted daily life. The burdens of existence fell heavi
ly on housewives, for it was they who did most of the mending and making-do and queuing, and it was they who dealt directly with new restrictions and unpredictable shortages. Bread had never been rationed during the war; now it was. In 1947 about half of consumer expenditure on food was rationed, and non-rationed perishables such as fish, fruit and vegetables were often in short supply or to be had only at alarming prices. Rations of some coveted items, including bacon, ham and fat, fell below wartime levels. The widespread shortages of consumer durables were exacerbated by the government’s drive to revive Britain’s exports of manufactured goods, at the expense of the domestic market.*

  Tuesday, 26 November. When I went downtown I thought I’d never seen so many angry, baffled women – all except Co-op members! – who lately have been so well served. Tinned fruit was the bone of contention. ‘Strachey [John Strachey, Minister of Food] said there was 2 lb per head for everyone and it was in the Daily Mail and the Sunday Dispatch’ – yet my grocer, with hundreds of customers, had four small cases and we were told we would have to queue in the morning if we wanted one. If Cliff had been home for Xmas, I might have considered going downtown at 6.30, though at that time I’d have had to walk, but I’ll not bother. Someone with kiddies might get the tins I’d have got.

  I stood among the women waiting to be served. Well dressed or otherwise, they all had one thing in common – a kind of look in their eyes and compressed looking mouths, as if they had closed them tightly at times to keep back sharp words of irritation. I was covertly watching their faces through a little strip of mirror, rather badly lit, and one mouth looked particularly set. I looked again at the bit of chin that showed above a row of tinned pears, feeling pity as I thought ‘You do look repressed and irritable’, till a corner of the hand woven scarf under the chin caught my eye, and I recognised it for my own mouth, and wondered ‘Do I often look like that? Where, oh where is “Lasty’s gamin grin” that seemed to amuse in those far-off Hospital Supply days, the “sugary smile” which at Canteen was said to spread over my face when Naval or Merchant Navy boys came in tired and hungry?’ My face so fascinated me I went into a chemist’s shop next. I felt I must really see myself as others see me. I walked to the cosmetic counter and under pretence of selecting rouge under the daylight lamp, I looked closer at myself than I remember doing and was rather shocked to find how ‘unlit’ my face was, so tired and shabby, so resigned, as if gaiety and laughter had fled – a November face. I bought a little box of rouge, feeling I needed it inside rather than outside, realising with a little shock how dead and heart-a-cold I really felt, knowing suddenly what makes a man get quietly and steadily dead drunk!

  Christmas was ‘a very pleasant day, if rather quiet, after last year’, and since Nella had persuaded her husband to close his workshop for the better part of a week, they had time to relax and to take day trips.

  Friday, 27 December. It was actually a fine day, and after a slap happy tidy round with vac and duster, we set off at 10.30 to go to Ambleside to pay the bill for towing the car when the crown wheel went. They were very off hand – said they would have sent it sometime but were very behind with all book keeping and bills! It was a lovely day. We lunched at Ambleside at the White Lion, quite the best place we have been for years, and on to Kendal. The hills toward Scotland were covered with snow, but the sun shone like a blessing. Everywhere men worked at tidying hedges and ditches and road borders and carted huge drifts of leaves away.

  To me it’s really terrible to see German and Italian POWs, as well as Poles. Why oh why are they not sent home to work at repairing their own land, building up family relationships, and doing a man’s job? Whose idea is it, I wonder, to keep men in semi-idleness, destroying initiative, making them soft with regimentation and pampering? They cannot all be Nazis and two wrongs never yet made one right. I look at their brooding sad faces with a great sadness. Human beings have no right to treat their fellows so. Hope deferred doesn’t only make the heart sick, it withers and kills. My husband says I’ve always some bee in my bonnet, but nothing would make me feel it a right thing to do. I’m not ‘sloppy’ about POWs but you cannot punish a nation. What’s the use of scraps of rations and old clothes in helping folks? Give them their men folk. Help in things like material to repair, seeds, livestock. Make all Germany on the same footing, not zoned so that one fares better than another. Help decent Germans and back them to accept authority – and start afresh ourselves. My husband says they must be kept for harvesting our food. Then how can we pray for good crops and fair weather if we use slave labour, and anyway how expect them to work ‘worth their keep’? There may be Italians and Germans who, like many Poles, want nothing more than to settle in England. That’s different, and surely work could be found on the land or in the mines, though from what I hear they are not wanted in the mines by the men who don’t want their own sons to be trained for mines.

  Whenever I’ve my WVS uniform on, it’s almost certain at least one Polish soldier will speak to me. Last week I solved a mystery of quite a few weeks standing as to whatever the Poles could buy to pack into parcels they are always sending home – it’s second hand clothes. They haunt the cheaper wardrobe shops in a rather poorer shopping street, and I feel sure the Pole was telling me of his family and their footwear trouble. His companion seemed to be telling me of his desire for work in a woodwork factory and insisted on showing papers – I could have read them if I’d had my glasses, the ones in English – and he drew a tangle of carved wood from his pocket and it was a chain cut out of a solid piece of wood, like Norwegians and Danes make. It’s a very great problem no doubt, but it must be tackled; it’s not good for anyone to have numbers of men herded together, growing bitter.

  Saturday, December 28. I took my little Shan We [on the drive to Morecambe] – he refused to be left behind. Such an odd cat. He either loves motoring, or my company, enough to conquer any fear of the traffic noises, and when we had lunch at the Royal at Bolton-le-Sands, he was tied to the table leg, but showed no signs of wanting to stray. He had his lunch and bottle of water in the car, but so strong is habit, I’ve to take a scrap of ashes in a newspaper – he must have at least one forepaw on familiar ground.

  The shops at Morecambe were very attractive, and like Kendal, still had tinned fruit like apricots and golden plums. Either people had no points or there had been plenty. We walked round the shops and along the Prom. There was a surprising amount of visitors sitting in the windows having late lunch and a lot of huge new cars about. South Lancashire people like Xmas Holiday always. As I looked at them I thought, as often, how silly and futile to lump people together and say ‘I don’t like Lancashire people’ or Germans or Poles or any country. There were two South Lancashire men staying in the hotel where we had lunch, and no one could have been favourably impressed, and I thought ‘I’d hate to be classed among those men and typed as from Lancashire’. They looked as if material things were their god; too well fed and too fat, too loud mouthed, far too expensive clothes and car for the feeling of black market not to come into my mind, and I’d have liked to slap one of their faces as he leered at me and kept touching my hand as he petted and played with Shan We. A really horrible man. We were back home for 4 o’clock, both feeling better for our little trip.

  Wednesday, 1 January 1947, New Year’s Day. It was such a lovely bright morning. We decided to set off at 11 o’clock and have lunch at Ambleside at the White Lion again. I took Shan We and nearly lost him – if coaxing could have made me part with him, he would be lording it in the White Lion, with several cat lovers at his command! He loved it, particularly when he got scraps of turkey brought to him. It was an ‘extra’ lunch – turkey and a choice of trifle or plum pudding but I preferred cheese and biscuits. We would have gone off to Keswick, but snow powdered fields and roads and lay on the hills and heavy clouds threatened more, so we turned back and came home by Kendal. Ploughing, hedging and ditching, and dung spreading were all going on busily. Even the heavy water-logged land was being turn
ed by tractor ploughs. Farmers are more behind than last year for the wet autumn was bad for planting winter seed. We were in by 4 o’clock, and I made up a good fire and we sat down to get warmed …

  We sat talking of the coming year. He said ‘I wonder what it will bring?’ I said ‘I feel changes all round somehow’, and to amuse him I began to talk of ‘If I won the Irish Sweep’, or rather the share of a ticket I have. I feel so sorry he has lost Norman [a reliable workman], for it means he has to work harder, and he did plan to take things easier after the war. His condition rather than his health gives me concern. I notice a big change in him – an aging far more than his actual years, and he says he feels he is growing old quickly. If only he could take things easier, and think out his work better so as to minimise effort. He should have had a son to help him, though few sons would have been content with the muddling ways of that workshop, and he would never change in any way of anything; and it’s difficult sometimes in the house, where I do insist it’s my place, and as I don’t interfere with the shop, tell him he should not interfere in the running of the house. I’ve fought my way to that stand, and anyway he cannot really prevent me giving things when I have to help his old ones. Never a day passes but a wee taste of some kind goes down [to them]. I never open a jar of jam etc., bake or make anything, but they get a tiny share. I hoard my sweets or chocolate and they have little cheer-ups when they feel dim and have often eaten their share.