The Diaries of Nella Last

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Wednesday, 4 January. Mrs Salisbury came earlier and didn’t stay for lunch. Her eldest boy has started at the Co-op dairies, helping deliver milk – at 34s 6d a week! It’s only a put-on till he can find somewhere to serve his time as a joiner or wood worker of some kind, but it means he is in mid day and needs a hot meal. We worked busily, only stopping for a cup of tea and biscuits at 10.30, and I was glad really she wasn’t staying for lunch, when the butcher didn’t come before lunch, for we managed with a slice of chopped ham fried with an egg. I heated tinned tomato soup and added milk, cooked cabbage and potatoes and heated some raspberry blancmange left from yesterday for my husband. I had a cup of tea.

  It was such a nice afternoon and we went out early and got as far as Bowness. Shafts of sunlight fell on fell and hill like magic fingers, making golden patches on the greyness when lighting up faded bracken. Little white capped waves slapped on the shore, and there was a keenness in the air which hinted at snow on high ground. I got some locally made butter toffee, and met an old friend who lives at Greenodd, and she said she did all shopping in Bowness, registered there, and when the weather was bad got her groceries put on the bus. When I went in the front door I found my Co-op quarterly dividend cheque had come. Coal and milk, cat biscuits and compost maker are about all I get generally, making a total of about £6 I spend each quarter. Lately I’ve often had to count and recount my housekeeping, feeling sometimes I must have lost 10 shillings. There’s been Allenbury’s Diet, Sanatogen,† Sloan’s liniment, Disprins,† Frugoclone [possibly a tonic] bought every week, or when needed, and I’ve got into the habit of calling in the Co-op chemist’s as it’s on my way home from the Library. I felt ‘No wonder I’ve felt so hard up at times’ when I saw I’d spent over £13 this quarter, though that included extra milk – I always get two pints a day left lately.

  I fixed some fillets of plaice and we had just finished tea when the phone rang, and it was long distance. It was Robert Haines, to say he would come this weekend if convenient – arrive off the mid day train from Euston which gets into Barrow about 6.40 – and leave for Leeds on Monday afternoon. I felt so happy he could come. I’ve only to change the beds – he can have mine and I’ll make the small one up in the little front room. All is aired. I’ll only need to bake on Friday and we plan to take him out to The Heanes for lunch Saturday if it is fine, and somewhere else on Sunday so he can get a glimpse of the Lakes. I put down the receiver and turned away, and then realised we wouldn’t recognise each other unless he sees some resemblance to Cliff – or in odd snaps! I’ve never even seen a photo with clear enough features; any I have had have been taken at a distance. As I sat down I thought suddenly and with amusement of the time I went to meet a girl Arthur knew – Agnes Schofield from Blackpool. Off my mind galloped on memory lane. I wonder where she is, if still doctors’ secretary at the dental clinic, still so dependent on advice from outsiders, always searching for someone ‘to love me’. If we could only have as fair and sweet a day – or days – at the weekend as we have had today. Robert could have a nice look round, though I’d have really liked to give him an extra good time. If he doesn’t have to return to Australia till March, he may possibly be able to come again. Train fares ‘off his schedule’, though, might be expensive. I wonder if his grant is a good one from the British Council of Arts.

  Friday, 6 January. The train was only five minutes late, and I stood by the exit wondering which of the men walking alone from the train towards me would be Robert. From the end, as the crowd thinned, a slight, rather diffident looking man approached me and with a slight stammer said ‘I hope you have not been waiting long in the cold, Mrs Last’, as if we had met before! Robert is 35 – odd how Cliff generally has friends about five years older. I wonder if it’s the case of the difference in his and Arthur’s age. Could be, I suppose. He is extremely likeable and walked round touching or looking at different things, saying ‘Cliff so often thinks of home and you. It’s his deepest concern at times when he feels a bit down that he cannot pop in and see you, and talk things over. You know I think the chief attraction of Cliff is his love of discussing every and anything. He is so interested in life from every angle.’ I sighed as I thought ‘No one knows better than I do that attraction possessed by my two sons’. I’m thankful little Peter [grandson, born June 1948] shows signs of that same interest. All this ‘strong silent men’ talk leaves me cold. Any I’ve met have been too dumb – or two short of interest in things – to be anything else.

  During the weekend Nella and Will showed Robert around the Lake District – Kendal, Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside, Hawkshead and Coniston Water. Late on Sunday afternoon they were back at 9 Ilkley Road.

  Sunday, 8 January. Robert fits in so well he might be one of the family. He so loves to talk, as we discussed conscientious objectors, Russians, Americans – whom he seems to detest, saying most Australians do! – flying saucers, Australian way of life, the possibility of him living in London, even washing socks to keep them from shrinking – and things like central heating crept in. The day seemed to fly. My husband said it was just like when Arthur used to come home weekends! We settled by the fire, looking over old photos of Cliff and Arthur and a pile of odd snaps and cuttings of the war I’d kept, though tonight I did have a clear-out, feeling many more are for scrapping. I gazed in wonder and a little sadness at some of the earlier war snaps of myself, feeling that these last ten years have drained vitality and humour. Each I handled seemed to bring a train of memories of different little incidents and events and people I’d worked so happily with. Robert had a few chuckles over snaps. He has a few leg pulls for Cliff on his return!

  My husband went to bed and Robert and I drew up our chairs. Even for an Australian, he is naïve and boyish for 35, and I had a little sadness as he spoke of future plans as if he was only 18, with golden youth ahead instead of past. He spoke of his fear of the future, whether he should marry, have children in today’s chaos when to thinking people so many problems and difficulties beset youth. As I pointed out, they always did to varying degree. I pointed out the quiet leisured peace of The Forsyte Saga, which we had discussed as a little cameo of life earlier in the evening. I drew a word picture of the countryside as I’d known it, before motors and planes, and earlier still before trains when Gran was a young bride – earlier still in Rogue Herries pack horse and bridle path days. I said ‘It was said trains, later motors, would poison the air’. Every generation has its bogey, and fears of the future, but we who have lived through found compensations somewhere, and did live through.

  Friday, 13 January. Wherever I’ve been today there’s been little remarks about the loss of the Truculent. Barrow people always feel they own a bit of the ships and subs they make. George came in and he had been talking to someone who had grown old in submarine building and had said ‘If those lads were in reach of their equipment, they would be up and floating like ducks’. I shivered as I said to George, ‘In the dark cold water, no ship near to pick them up, it would only prolong the agony.’ Such a dreadful senseless accident, no combat, no ‘they died gloriously’, as much an accident as if crossing the street and been knocked down by a bus.*

  Saturday, 14 January. The Yard pays wages on Thursday night now. I’d not realised how women’s shopping habits had changed, partly with having money to shop on Friday, partly through rations making shopping as such somewhat of a lost art, and again with men folk being at home Saturday. Every now and again there seems an urge by Chamber of Trade to close most if not all shops on Saturday afternoons. I was really surprised to see grocers’ and butchers’ shops empty of customers, and assistants just standing about. Grocers as well as butchers had geese, turkeys and chicken, their flattened shape showing they had been packed in boxes and in a fridge. While I don’t like poultry or meat too fresh, I don’t think I’d have liked to buy any this morning unless I’d smelled them thoroughly, and I smiled to myself at the look there would have been on the shopkeeper’s face as I sniffed!

 
Tuesday, 17 January. I got the pantry and kitchenette cupboards cleaned out this morning, and it took me most of the morning. I had cold meat and macaroni pudding to do, and opened a tin of soup and added grated onion and a little Bovril, and cooked frozen peas and potatoes. My husband went down to the doctor’s and saw Dr Miller, who is better after his operation. He told my husband the same thing – that his cure is in his own hands. It’s what he thinks and does for himself, rather than drugs and potions, but added too he realised how difficult it was to conquer ‘nerve’ health when one got low.

  Thursday, 19 January. I shocked and offended Jessie a little. They had been talking about Priestley’s broadcast, and though Jessie is a real Conservative, I could tell Priestley’s kindly humble puppy philosophy had affected her. She said ‘Don’t you like him?’ I said ‘Ah yes, as a playwright and real kindly man, he has no peer, but he does see life through rosy spectacles, which, though cosy, is not realistic nowadays. We could do with lots more like him. They are a good leaven.’* Jessie said ‘Sometimes you are very cynical. I either like people or I don’t’ and Mrs Atkinson agreed. Mrs Atkinson said a bit crankily ‘Now if Mr Last had only been interested in cards we could have played whist and I wouldn’t have missed going to the whist drive so much tonight’. I said ‘And if he only had wings, he would be able to fly’, and joined in the laugh, but thought of what a lot of things he didn’t do or want to do!

  Saturday, 21 January. It was bitterly cold, but the sun shone, and we went round Coniston Lake. The day had that newly washed crystalline light that Hugh Walpole so loved and described so lovingly of Derwent, Skiddaw and round Keswick. The hills seemed to drowse in veils of soft amethyst to deep sepia shadows. Swale† fires nursing under the whin and dead bracken made long plumes of smoke that rose up into the still air like fantastic fir trees, higher than the hills in the background. Age old grey walls were jewelled with emerald topiary† from little tufts of green moss, and orange-yellow lichen where the sun rays picked out the colour. Evergreens glistened as if every leaf had been washed and polished separately. Horses’ coats shone like burnished metal, and the hill sheep’s wool dried in the keen wind and made a little shimmering nimbus round them as they cropped the grass, or lay quietly resting. In sheltered fields fresh hurdles made folds for the expected lambs, in the rude shepherds’ huts. The glint of straw could be seen stacked and piles of turnips under rough shelters were ready. I stood by the smooth quiet lake, thinking how Robert would have loved to be with us today. Nothing stirred or broke the perfect stillness. The sun sank lower and brought fresh beauty as its light crimsoned delicate tracery of birch and beech, larch and oaks against the clear blue grey of the sky. The nut trees looked strangely out of place, their fringe of catkins giving them the look of trees in a Japanese print. On the East and quiet side of Coniston Lake there’s several well built, stone summer bungalows. A year or two ago a garage was built by the largest one, a telephone installed and a boat house built for a little outboard boat. Today smoke curled out of the chimney and the place had a generally lived-in look. I wondered what kind of people lived in that lovely peaceful place – perhaps a writer who wove the calm, serene beauty of Brown Howe and the fells into writing, perhaps only a very tired person or persons. With a companion of one’s own way of thinking, life could be very pleasant, for books and the wireless could make up for other entertainment.

  Friday, 27 January. Cliff sent me Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, and I’m deeply interested though not read much. I felt a bit nowty as I got into the car to career along cold wintry roads with my husband in a black mood when to get him interested was like trying to strike a match on a patch of damp moss. I thought longingly of the fire and my book. We went up the Cumberland coast to Millom, today so bleak and windswept, the hills beyond in grey-black silhouette against the wintry grey sky, the Irish Sea so wild. The tide was going out, leaving a wide band of snowy foam, and the sands were left in glistening swathes where all had frozen as the last wave washed over. No wonder sea gulls seek food inshore, and sit on roofs and chimneys on the lookout for scraps. It’s a nice run with switch back hills. It’s a bit odd when both of us tend to nerviness that we love flying up and down hills! When we stopped at Millom we had a cup of hot tea before beginning to walk round, so though it was so cold, we didn’t feel it as bad as we would have done. I bought a small whistling kettle for 2s 9d – sale price. I paid more for my other before the war, and grieved when I found my husband had taken it for the shop, for on the red hot stove it soon burned through. I plan to be a gypsy this summer if it’s at all fine, taking both lunch and tea outdoors whenever possible, either to Walney when warm or to sheltered Coniston Lake. My husband doesn’t worry or brood as much outdoors and the fresh air will do him good.

  There’s a queer semi-junk jeweller’s in Millom and I’ve often seen nice oddments – cut glass, bits of Edwardian or Victorian jewellery, like cameos or carved ivory heads, etc. There was a string of cut crystals – maybe topaz – today, and by their clasp looked good. My husband said ‘They look just your type of jewellery. I’d like to buy them if they hadn’t been so expensive.’ We didn’t bother to ask the price, knowing anything unmarked was high priced. The junk around was a guide to what would be asked for good things. As we walked back to the car I wondered why I’d ceased to long for – covet – lovely things as I used to do. Somehow in the war, I got things sorted out, and have never recaptured that ‘I’d love that’ feeling. Pity. It’s an added spice to a woman’s life if she can shop and think ‘I’d get that if I had money’. Maybe it’s a sign of age!

  We were back well within two hours. I built up a good fire and snatched half an hour with my book while my husband covered up the car, put in the lamp and put mats to the bottom of the garage door. He has made such a fuss of this car, with it being new perhaps. I made toast and scrambled eggs. There was cake, bread and butter and honey, and warmth to take ache out of bones. When my bones ache so badly I think of homeless people, especially displaced persons, with no hope. I read the paper but my husband wasn’t interested in anything tonight after he had listened half heartedly to Wilfred Pickles at 7 o’clock. I got out my sewing and just before 9 o’clock there was a ring, and it was Alan Boyd. What a friendly lovely lad he is. He was going to a nearby hotel for the Hospital Dance and had said he would drop some cutting of Cliff’s through the letter box, but rang to let me see him in his uniform because his mother thought he looked better in it than civvy clothes! He does too, like all men and no women, unless they have clock stopping faces and extra good figures, and then it’s figures that matter more than femininity. He sat and talked till I reminded him the dance would be well started. He made me laugh as he said a bit ruefully, ‘Yes, and I’ll have to have a drink to get me in the mood to meet my sister’s friends and dance for the rest of the evening’. My husband said ‘Don’t you like dancing, Alan?’ and he said ‘Yes, it’s alright, but nothing beats yarning and listening to folk talk’. I felt he was a kindred spirit.

  Monday, 30 January. The wind howled over the chimneys. More snow is on the way. It’s a dreadful kind of weather for elections to be held. A bill was put in the door tonight to say we were having a Liberal candidate in Barrow [a general election was imminent] – the first for many years. Mrs Howson and I talked of politicking in general. I said ‘I think I lean to Liberalism most, perhaps because though my father was a staunch Conservative he had only been so over the Free Trade-Tariff Reform bill and all his people and most of mother’s were Liberals’. We had not discussed our political views before, not taking any view of any beyond Labour-Toryism. I was surprised to hear her say ‘All mother’s brothers and sister are Liberal. Some never voted at all when only Tories put up against Labour.’ It set us wondering if it would be the passive Liberal vote coming out for one of their own candidates that would affect this election. I’ve had a little cynical feeling as I listened to J. B. Priestley and Maurice Webb* that for many waverers and Pollyanna minded ones the last speaker, provid
ed he or she insists that ‘Everything is ALRIGHT, the worst is over, all our mistakes and spade work finished with, only trust US’, will win. No one realises there will be any bills to meet. I’ve yet to meet anyone with more than a hazy idea that Marshall Aid† will cease, or be paid back. ‘America has all the gold. Why shouldn’t she shell out?’ idea.

  When I sit thinking, my mind often drifts back to 50, even 55, years, for I’ve a good memory for details. I’d not a very happy childhood and knew pain and endurance from five years old to about twelve – to be crippled by an accident those days meant effort to walk straight again. Partly through love for me, partly because he had a horror of anything marred, my father spared neither money or effort. All my pleasures were quiet, and the happiest days spent with Gran who in her busy life had little time for sorting out ages. She had the curious attitude of lumping people and animals. Her farm hands were equal to the Squire or her children in some queer alchemy of her own. She never talked down to a little intense girl, who was let see the seamy side of rural life as well as the lighter side. I was always conscious of troubles and strife, ‘sins’ in the way of unexpected babies, shortage of money, bad luck, and all the real life of the countryside. My father always talked and talked of everything. I’ve sat mouse quiet and forgotten while the questions and problems of that far off day were discussed and ‘settled’. I try and search faithfully so as to avoid that rosy distortion that time brings to people who are lonely and growing old. There was poverty, misery, drunkenness, wife beating, lads running off to sea, dirt, more sickness – or was there now? – little money, such a lot that needed ‘evoluting’. BUT, there was kindliness in need, laughter, that joy in scraping and scrounging for holidays you don’t seem to get from holidays with pay to go to a noisy Holiday Camp as there was from a week in the country ‘keeping yourself’, only paying for rooms and attendance. People moved slower. There was more time for family life and less outside distraction. We’ve got a Health Scheme [the NHS], and less time for doctors to find out what’s wrong with you.