Tuesday, 20 April. George called early. He had come down to tell Jessie’s aunt that he had left her in Lancaster, and was very cut up at the brief, not to say callous, reception they had got. A woman friend of the family went with them and Jessie was perfectly docile and allowed them to wash and dress her and get her ready, never speaking a word to anyone, but she took notice of the signposts on their journey. When they got to the mental asylum, Jessie was led into another room and they were asked to wait. A little later all her clothes from her vest to her coat were handed out, with every little toilet requisite, even her comb and toothbrush, and they were told they would be communicated with by post …
I had a pleasant afternoon at the cricket pavilion, and not a bad game of whist, and hurried home to make an early tea, for my husband had said he might come home early enough to go to the pictures. I wanted to see Mrs Miniver again. I only made a simple tea, peaches, new buttered tea cakes, whole meal bread and butter and jam and sponge sandwich. I often get so out of patience, knowing so well we both need more ‘gadding about’, but he won’t go to last house shows. He insists if he is not in bed before 10 o’clock and gets 8 or 8½ hours sleep, he feels too tired in the day. I say ‘Well, I don’t and never will see how you cannot plan one evening so we can go to a show’. Now the variety doesn’t start till 6.30, it’s alright, but mainly owing I think to the stoppage of the last bus service before the ‘old’ time of coming out, we stick to the wartime picture showing, 5.30 first house, and the second always starts before 8 o’clock.
Last time I saw Mrs Miniver was in wartime, when we had worry and fear, but high hopes and courage – hopes of all the good we would do, the feeling we could do as much for peace as for war, never realising the queer frustration – frustrating everything – everybody would find when the ceasefire sounded in Europe, and certainly never thinking of the flare-up in Palestine, or that Stalin would replace Hitler in his bid to rule the world. I loved every minute of the picture, wondering again just why futile silly pictures are made, crime and sex glorified, slime and mud flaunted, when a simple picture of nice people packs the cinema, as I’d not seen it for a long time – first house at that! My husband enjoyed it thoroughly and had that ‘we must do this often’ air. I bet if he could see a few comparable pictures he would! We have booked for the variety tomorrow night. The first week was a triumph for the promoters. The second, with the all male cast and memories of the queer set up of some of the leads when it was in Barrow once before, must have made them wonder if it would meet expenses. Yet the Five Smith Brothers and a goodish support packed both houses in that big place, and it looks as if Sid Millward’s ‘Nit Wits’ is going to do even better, for those who went last night are saying ‘You mustn’t miss this show, it’s a yell’. Barrow is unique in many ways. If word goes round the Yard a thing is good, or bad, men seem to rely on their workmates’ word, and a failure or success relies on the huge Yard crowd.*
Mrs Howson brought in such a lovely little worn coat for Mrs Salisbury, who is always glad to give coupons if she can get good clothes without money. I looked at this non-utility coat – I recall the material was very expensive, and Mrs Howson insisted she ‘must have silk lining, as she had always been used to it’. She went to Manchester in her search, and it’s a coat little worn, and younger than either of mine, yet to hear Mrs Howson talk is ‘quite unwearable’. She was in such a queer prickly mood tonight. I bet she will be difficult to live with. The jealous skitty way she always had in a pawky malicious manner, that once made us laugh at Canteen, is settling on her, and like a bag of pepper on a piece of meat, tends to utterly spoil any goodness or niceness. I saw my husband stare in blank amazement as she talked so shrewishly of anyone who had pinched and scraped to buy houses while their men folk had been at war. She said ‘I believe in enjoying life while I can. Doesn’t it make you sick to think of the way women worked and saved every penny, and grew old before their time?’ My husband rubbed the top of his head in perplexity. I know he was searching for words. He said ‘Well, I cannot say much. I know it’s what Nell would have done. She was a grand manager in the last war and managed to save £100 for us to put on our house.’ I felt the glare she gave us both. I could have giggled wildly. As long as I’ve not to work or live with her, I can see a funny side.
Someone of my own blood will die soon. I had Gran’s old dream of carrying flowers for someone. As I didn’t feel very sad, perhaps it will be one of the old ones. It’s a long time since I had the flower dream. Poor Dad joked about it, when I told him, and said ‘For goodness sake, don’t get the same silly ideas your mother had about dreaming of flowers’, but he died very suddenly, and the daffodils I’d carried in my dream were in the wreaths heaped on his coffin. I’ve not been sick once today and [had] only faint butterflies. Perhaps my rest after meals is helping.
Wednesday, 21 April. Mrs Salisbury came, and we had a busy and unhindered morning, and I found time to slip round to Aunt Eliza’s before lunch and took her a little bottle of damson, some papers Cliff sent, and a bunch of such lovely spring flowers out of the garden. She was looking bright, but felt neglected – nobody loves her. I said flippantly ‘What the heck ducks, you’ve got your parrot’, and to my horror she said ‘I’ve decided you must have Colchester when I die’. I said ‘Now you know darn well I detest birds in cages’, but as she pointed out he rarely went in his cage. I said ‘He wouldn’t have much fun with my two cats’ but really meant my poor cats would have none at all if that wretched bird was round. He delights in biting their tails or tweaking their ears, and his raucous voice and really terrible laugh has always kept any of Aunt Eliza’s cats well under his claws. I said firmly ‘Now don’t wish that bird on me. You are worse than my mother-in-law. She wants me to promise to look after granddad if she goes first, and no arguments made me falter. Have that nasty parrot – I WILL NOT.’
I had tinned soup to heat and sausages to fry and I did steamed fish for myself, cooked cabbage and potatoes and made a semolina sweet to go with bottled apples. Mrs Salisbury washed up and I got washed and changed, for I wanted to do some shopping before going to a big Social and Moral Welfare meeting in the Town Hall. Two bishops, Lady Fell, and most of the clergy in Barrow and Ulverston, as well as a good number of subscribers, made the meeting a big success – and me feel like a fish out of water. I nearly disgraced myself by falling asleep, as [the Bishop of] Carlisle’s sonorous voice boomed platitudes. To my embarrassment the Bishop of Penrith thought he recognised me, warmly shook me by the hand. I’m sure he mistook me for someone else. I’ve only seen him twice when he was at Hawkshead and we went to church there in wartime. I didn’t feel at all interested somehow, good cause or no, and I looked round at the best workers and thought how dull, not to say sour, some of them looked. I’d a little game with myself, trying to pick out the ones I’d turn to if in ‘trouble’, plainly recognising that much as I like and respect Mrs Higham she wouldn’t be amongst those I’d feel would understand passion and temptation.
Sunday, 25 April. It’s been such a lovely day – we longed to be off in the car.* I’d my usual rest till lunchtime, and got letters written and had a nap. Lunch was soon ready, mutton soup, cold mutton, salad, yesterday’s remains of a milk sweet with jam, and a cup of tea to finish. I packed the laundry, went into the garden, and did a bit of weeding. It was so warm and lovely I took a chair out and sat in the sun. I could see George and Jessie’s cousin busy in the garden and later he came in, looking a little happier. He had a letter from Lancaster, saying Jessie had spoken to the nurse, and asking permission for some electrical treatment to be given. He gave me the address so I could write each week, saying letters were allowed but didn’t know about flowers or papers. He said the baby was unbelievably good, and Jessie’s mother was having no trouble at all looking after her, and he will travel from Broughton each day. He said sadly ‘Eight years married and I’ve only been able to look after her for less than a year, and a sorry job I’ve made of it’. I said ‘You may fi
nd that Jessie is better sooner than you expect. They said she was in such poor physical condition, you know, and she will get the very best of care for body and mind.’ I prayed my words could be true.
Friday, 30 April. Early this week I heard the cuckoo, and the Howsons disputed it, but this morning both she and Steve had heard it. We talked of when the nightingales sang so sweetly from somewhere near. The gun batteries seemed to frighten them away, and the last time I heard one round here was the night after our heaviest raid. Cliff was home unexpectedly, and we had just heard that little Kath Thompson had died in the hospital from bomb injuries. It was the first death like that that had touched us closely. I was standing listening to the liquid bird notes, in the still sweet evening dusk, and Cliff came out. Perhaps something in my attitude kept him from his cheery ‘Come in for your supper’. We stood quietly till the bird moved away from the nearby tree, and he put his arm round me, kissed me lovingly, and we came indoors without a word. Both of them had such an ‘understanding’ way. We didn’t need words …
Margaret and I talked of poor Jessie, and when she went I listened to The Clock. I think the productions dealing with mental kinks and illness the wisest, most worthwhile features ever put on by the BBC, Lamentable Brother especially. To unthinking or ignorant people, who had never come into contact with breakdowns, they give an insight and understanding. Years ago I had a very bad breakdown after a major operation and a lot of worry. I said to my doctor ‘Do you think I’m going mad? I feel I’m losing some kind of protecting “sheath” off my mind, and feel people’s emotions, thoughts and fears, have queer “clairvoyant” dreams, and can tell fortunes in a really odd way.’ He said ‘No lassie (he was a Scot). You are not the type to have melancholia.’ But it made me realise deeply how minds can change and grow perplexed. I once told him a dream I had, so queer and arresting it did me as much – perhaps more – good than the long sea voyage he said he would like to prescribe. I thought I was standing leaning over a low parapet, looking at a wide, strangely green river. As I looked closer I saw it was closely covered with leaves of every possible shape, colour, condition and variety. I stood dreamily gazing, growing more conscious of each separate leaf. Some were jostled by others, some sailed calmly and effortlessly, some were battered and bruised, carried in cross currents, some actually seemed to be trying to flow upstream against the stream. For one I felt real contempt – it seemed to be so determined to be bruised and broken and to go any way but to glide serenely. Then I knew I was that leaf, broken at the edges, getting nowhere at all. I felt conscious of a pulsing Rhythm, of the countless leaves sweeping by me. I lifted my hands off the parapet where I had gripped so tightly and, not praying, not conscious of any plea, held them outstretched for help. So moved was my whole being, I felt strength flow into me. He was a nice doctor. He didn’t laugh or make fun at all.
The next several weeks were unremarkable, although there was some warm, even hot, weather to enjoy. Jessie Holme, though absent, was often in people’s thoughts and conversations. Nella picked some lily of the valley to send her, regretting that ‘there’s so little I can do to show my loving sympathy, beyond writing gossipy letters … George has had another “normal” little letter, again saying how sorry she is to have been so much trouble to everyone. I feel a bit of wholesome selfishness would be an asset to that gentle loving creature’ (6 May). On 10 May George ‘told Mrs Atkinson that Jessie was fretting badly to come home, that she looks perfectly normal, and worried about her house getting dirty and dusty, and the house being too much for her mother. I felt again that the poor girl should never have got to beaten state she did. Most people I’ve heard visited for the first time in a mental home have either not known their visitors or bitterly reviled them for “shutting them up”.’ On the 21st Nella was buying film so that George could send Jessie photos of their baby, and the following week (29 May) she reported that ‘Jessie is worrying and pining to come home, but the treatment is for three months. Someone told George that he had not to build up too high hopes on the sudden recovery Jessie had made – it could only be temporary. What cruel people there are. It took the light from poor George’s face.’
Tuesday, 24 August. Margaret had sent to Hutton’s of Larne for a catalogue and then a piece of linen for a big tea cloth – she likes the way I always lay a ‘nice’ table. Mrs Howson came to see what she had got and to see the catalogue, and we were sitting happily discussing linen, ‘bottom drawers’, etc., when there was a ring and I went to the door. A radiant, laughing-eyed woman seized me in a loving hug, saying, ‘I’ve caught you in this time’. It was Jessie. I looked at her and couldn’t speak. I felt tears brim and fall down my cheeks as I said ‘Jessie, my dear – I’d have passed you on the street and not known you’. George was with her. They came in for a few minutes. She had been to get her hair permed. She said ‘I’m going to try and repay all your kindness, though I shall never be able to tell you how much your letters and papers meant, even more than the flowers and tit bits. The sister and doctor used to be interested in all the cuttings you sent and we all used to read them, and once the doctor said “Well, it seems the papers do still have happy bits of news” – and he bought his wife a Siamese kitten because he said Shan We seemed such a pet.’ Mrs Howson is very tender hearted, and Margaret too got weepy. George looked at us all and then at my husband and said in deep disgust, ‘Wimmin’, and it made us all laugh. I said ‘It’s all right for you. You remember this happy-eyed Jessie – we don’t.’ He shook his head and said ‘No, I never saw her like this. I think I’ll keep this one instead of the Jessie I used to know. I feel we are going to have such lots of fun together.’
We seemed to laugh and talk nonsense, and a remark of Jessie’s made us laugh out loud, as she said seriously ‘George said you gave him the most comfort and hope of anyone when one day you “snorted” at him and told him that the only thing wrong with me was that I was buggered and you laid down the law about one thing piled on top of another’. Mrs Howson looked a bit startled, but no one knew how worried poor George was that day, or that he had such a deep fear Jessie’s mental trouble would mean she would have to be kept in Lancaster for a long time, perhaps years. I’d forgotten what I had said to comfort him, poor dear, but it was certainly an odd way to comfort a man, and I laughed with the rest. She said nothing about giving up her home, and I don’t think she will do so. It would be a tragic error. Jessie begged us to go up and see them at Broughton if we can. I’ve hesitated to call. I don’t know the mother very well, and felt I might have intruded, but Jessie was shocked at such an idea. They hurried off to catch the 7.30 train, and soon Margaret and Mrs Howson went and I began to iron, a feeling of such deep happiness in my heart since my Cliff began to walk [after his war injuries] with only a slight limp.*
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT
January–February 1950
While Jessie Holme’s struggles ended happily, Will was not so fortunate, and his distress was a frequent and growing concern to his wife. He had always been unwelcoming of company, needy, insecure, lacking in friends and interests, and prone to anxiety, and these tendencies became more pronounced as he entered his sixties. Sometimes he caused Nella no little frustration, at other times much worry. His depressive moods sometimes took centre-stage in her diary. For this and other reasons, 1950 was a year of often intense and volatile emotions.
* * * * * *
‘Such a heavy dull day,’ Nella wrote on 31 December 1949, ‘with the feeling in the air that the old year was actually dying … Ever since I can remember I had a sadness on me on New Year’s Eve. Cliff always teased me about my “Hogmanay Blues”.’ The next day, the first of the New Year, she and Will visited Aunt Sarah and Sarah’s cousin Joe in Spark Bridge and then returned home, to spend the evening alone.
Sunday, 1 January 1950, New Year’s Day. The fire soon blazed when poked. I had banked it with slack and coal dust dampened, and I made tea, meat sandwiches (tinned), crushed pineapple an
d whipped cream, Xmas cakes and mince pies. I wished there had been someone in to share, as we sat by the fire and I stitched at my crazy patch work. I felt the ‘blues’ I’d missed last night enfold me like a mist, helped no doubt by an article in an American magazine the Atkinsons sent in, speaking of war as inevitable after 1951, and hinting at atomic bombs being puerile when compared to the germ bombs Russia was concentrating on. All my fears and conjectures of before this last one rushed over me. I felt if I turned suddenly I’d see some of Arthur’s friends’ faces as they argued against such a thing as ‘too inhuman’ etc. I thought of the unrest of today, the state of affairs in Egypt, hoping if King Farouk did lose his throne for ‘romance’, it had as little effect as it had when it happened in England.* I felt, as I thought of one upset or worry, it brought its fellows along. I heard my husband ask me something and looked up to see him waiting for an answer. He was ‘thinking how neglected we have let your parents’ grave get – we will have to go up and clean the marble stone as soon as the weather gets better’. I felt it was the limit, and tuned in Palm Court, which he had earlier refused as his head ached, and then we listened to the first instalment of The Virginians – sounds promising.
Tuesday, 3 January. Though it still rained heavily I persuaded my husband to go to the pictures to see The Hasty Heart. Such a well acted picture. It’s a long time since we have enjoyed a picture so much. It had stopped raining, we walked home, and I soon had the fire blazing warmly, and did cheese and toast. Before we settled down, Mrs Howson and Steve came in, with the air of staying the evening. I did feel so glad. Then there was a ring, and an old school friend of Cliff’s came in, one I’d never met when Cliff was at home. He is a ‘fridge’ engineer on a line of steamers that take frozen meat from Australia and America and bring it to England, and while in Adelaide had seen Cliff’s exhibition posters the week after it had closed, and read the notices of the ‘clever English sculptor’, and tried to track Cliff down in Melbourne without success, so called for his address so as to find him next trip. We had a real merry party, laughing and joking. Steve and he soon got yarning. I opened a tin of Australian chopped ham, and there was rum butter, chocolate biscuits and Xmas cake, and the table looked like a real party, and the cats were as delighted as I was – they are nice animals – to see them happily being ‘one of us’. Their heads turning as if listening and enjoying everything was comical. Alan was so taken with Shan We, and I begged him to tell Cliff as much as he could of my little cats’ funny ways. Shan We blinked understandingly and shared tit bits of chopped ham offered. Alan had to rush off to catch the last bus to take him to Walney but is coming again if he can before he rejoins his ship. Steve said ‘Well, we didn’t think we were coming to a party when we came across. It has been a jolly evening.’ I looked at my husband, sitting so quiet, who had refused even to sit at the supper table or eat anything in case it made him have a wakeful night, and sighed. But I was so grateful for my happy evening. I feel sometimes as if my face is ceasing to fit me properly, as if it creaks if I laugh. It’s not good to get into a deep rut of passive acceptance of sickness of any kind, yet it is so difficult at times.
The Diaries of Nella Last Page 39
