Nella Last's Peace

by Patricia Malcolmson

  Sunday, 26 October. We went round Coniston Lake, paused a while in the stillness that always seems a part of the charm of that quiet place, and then round by Ambleside. The sun shone, but from behind the hills, and made Windermere at Waterhead like a faintly coloured steel engraving. Little boats, landing stages and the hills across were a silhouette of dark colourless angles. The lake was pale grey, only a faint colour in the sky and where the sun tipped the hills with metallic gilt. It looked strange and remote, as if all the gaiety and welcome of the summer were gone and the hills and lake preparing to live some somber, withdrawn life of their own. I often wonder as I glance towards the field on the side of the lake where Roman remains have been found, how those exiles from sunny Italy, cultured Rome, fitted in, if they liked their life so different here, or if their hearts withered and died with longing. Times like today I feel it was the latter!

  We didn’t take tea – with no visitors in motor coaches, or at least very few, it’s easy to get a meal anywhere. We went down through Hawkshead and Lakeside and had tea at The Landings, a wonderfully restored, old, early Victorian house, which has gone all out to attract the quiet visitor. Mrs Woods’ brother, the Chief Constable of Fleetwood, spends weekends and all holidays there, and as we went round to the tea room, which when I was a girl was a huge useless conservatory, no use to anyone, but is now a wood-block floored, flat concrete-roofed place where small dances can be held, we saw the luxury and comfort of the two lounges for resident visitors, who sat in big easy chairs, with a leaping wood fire, though the sun was on that side. We thought how cosy it looked and realised why people went again and again.

  The tea was really amazing – tomato sandwiches, with the crusts cut off, little hot French pancakes, bread and butter, slices of sweet tea buns buttered, apricot jam and little homemade pastries and cakes. The tables were mostly set for dinner. They must have a regular feature of dinners, judging by the number laid. The china and silver were like the tablecloths – pre-war in their condition. Everything was exquisitely kept and served, a treat if it had only been bread and butter and the really good hot tea, with unlimited milk and sugar – and the tea was 2s a head! I felt I wanted to linger and then walk round the well-kept grounds, down to the water’s edge, where the lawn sloped to the quiet backwater end of the lake. I enjoyed the food I’d not seen before it was set before me, but even more the luxury and comfort. Not one little hint or sign of utility or make do and mend. I felt I’d have liked a holiday there but realise it would pall on my husband. He doesn’t like to have to amuse himself and, unlike Mrs Woods and her relations, wouldn’t like sitting round talking or playing cards in the evenings, and of course when the car couldn’t be used, there would be nothing at all for him …

  I finished two more dollies as I sat listening to the wireless. What a grand talk about craftsmanship after the news. I’d like it printed and put in the ‘lessons to schools’. Every word in the rough North Country burr was like a message, and so very true. I’m not clever beyond homely things, but if I’d not the delight in a well-cooked and -served meal, and well kept house and my odds and ends of sewing, I would have nothing to make me happy at all now. My dollies are very homely craft but are a joy to make and seem always a pleasure to kiddies. I looked at the two smiling faces as they sat perched on the sideboard and felt they were a little craft. They were my creation. I often feel glad I never snubbed the boys in the mess and welter of stage making, clay and plasticine modelling, and every doll-eyed homemade thing they insisted on making. They loved to make their own Xmas cards, calendars and presents. I feel Arthur with his love of drama and glove making has good escapes from dull income tax, and Cliff’s childish crafts have turned out well for him. If I’d been unusually tidy and resented the mess, I could have robbed them of something very precious.

  Monday, 27 October. What a day, though dear knows it started off calm to dullness! Last Thursday Mrs Higham and I were talking of the coming opening of the Children’s Ward, for which the WVS had handed over monies left when Hospital Supply, etc. was wound up and ‘efforts’ and the sale of the WVS van brought the sum up to about £800, which furnished and redecorated the Children’s Ward. Invites have naturally had to be kept severely to a limit, but we quite expected one, she as Secretary and I as the money raiser for Hospital Supply. I said, ‘Oh, we will get them on Monday, perhaps. They will get them ready at the office and post them at the weekend, but if by then we haven’t had one, I’ll ring up Mrs Diss.’ When the postman passed the gate, I rang up Mrs Diss and asked if Hospital Supply were not being represented. Mrs Waite couldn’t go and I knew Mrs Lord, the Chairman, was going away to a wedding next weekend. Mrs Diss said, ‘Mrs Lord has invites for both of you. Get in touch with her.’ I did and felt very taken aback when her ‘Mrs Feather’ voice fluttered over the phone telling me she and Mrs Waite, who is a cranky, rude semi-invalid, snubbing anyone who calls, if she will see them at all, had talked it over and decided Hospital Supply would not be represented, and burnt the three tickets.

  Suddenly I realise why men strike, against all reason. I felt there would be bother if two more tickets were not found for us. I was determined that neither Mrs Higham nor I, who had had to do so much alone, should not be snubbed by either of those jealous, bigoted old women. I went down to the WVS office and spoke my mind, asking why tickets should have been given out like that and not sent by post, etc. etc. etc. A little later I couldn’t think I’d been so snooty. I think it was the memory of all Mrs Waite’s underhand tricks, her hatred of a committee, not having all her own way, come what may. I felt, ‘You shan’t have the last laugh, you hateful old woman’. Anyway, phones buzzed and first one and then another was rung up and two tickets found that could not be used.

  Mrs Higham was waiting when I got back. I had remembered to put in my grocery order and get my hungry cats some fish bits and two packets of grease band for the fruit trees, but hadn’t paid my electric light bill or ordered vegetables as I’d intended. We had a cup of tea and a real good laugh – a triumphant one, as we talked of the time Mrs Woods, Mrs Higham and I resigned and only went back because of Mrs Diss pleading we ‘were Hospital Supply and couldn’t possibly “desert”’.

  Tuesday, 28 October. I’ve often had a little example of hair trigger temper lately, both in myself and others, and this morning had another. I did not feel too well and planned to turn out my cupboards and pantry as I rose. I put on my dressing gown and heard a commotion and shouting from Mrs Atkinson and Mr Atkinson’s quiet voice raised in anger. She has only had a few outbursts in my hearing since they came – real shouting temper – but this morning I felt there was something to do, when she went into the garage, shouting. I went down in my dressing gown and really felt afraid of her glassing eyes, till I saw she had Murphy hanging on her arm. She yelled, ‘Murdering little beast – he caught a poor little sparrow and I’ve hit him on the head with the sweeping brush.’ Mr Atkinson followed, looking upset, and said, ‘Oh, I do hope the poor cat’s all right. You will do someone an injury in one of your nasty hysterical tempers some day.’ And turning to me he said, ‘Should I phone for the vet, Mrs Last?’ Cold rage flowed over me like a current of air. I said, ‘If that is necessary, Mr Atkinson. The Cruelty Inspector will be called too.’ And I turned to Mrs Atkinson and in a cutting tone said, ‘If there was less bread wasted on your shed and lawn, the birds wouldn’t come and feed till they are too stark fat to fly easily – and remember, it’s a cat’s nature to catch birds if it can.’ Luckily for things the poor cat opened its eyes and huddled under my arm. I’ve never felt before I could have had a real row with a neighbour – a real fight!

  Later she came in very apologetic, with some meat scraps on a plate. She said, ‘Charley and I have been wrangling for days and it came to a head this morning. He knows I’ve set my mind on a fur coat and he won’t give me anything towards it – says we might need money for something more than a fur coat.’ I felt very stiff with her but could have laughed out loud when she said
quite artlessly, ‘Did you get any currants from your grocer? With you having made your Xmas cake and mincemeat, you won’t need them, will you?’ I said, ‘With dried fruit being so short supply, unless I get some from Australia from the Sydney firm who promised to replace the damaged parcel, I don’t think I’ll have any to spare. Remember I make fruit bread and any cake I can.’ She collected my shilling for the big race – we planned 1s each way between us on Wild Child – and went. I felt, ‘There’s nothing as queer as folk’ …

  Arthur’s letter distressed me today, far beyond the surface of it. He is so bothered with persistent impetigo, and while I still think a neglected liver could cause it, plus too much grease from fried food plus too much cake, the doctor speaks of poverty of the adrenal gland. The word ‘gland’ strikes cold. The Lasts as a family seem to have some kind of glandular deficiency. It worries me to think he could take after them. They age so quickly, seem to have so short a sex life, go grey far too young. When Arthur was here I noticed with a little sick pang how thin his neck had grown. He still looks young and virile, but he is thirty-four. Sometimes I have a feeling I’m getting a pile of little stones on my head. My husband says sometimes how lucky he is because I’m always ‘serene and calm’ and ‘there’s always home, thank God’. Only the good God knows inside my head. I’m not really calm and strong, and I sometimes feel tired out with being so. I must be a very good actress, for inside me I feel worry and more worry about little things. Now it’s Arthur’s health as well as my husband’s. I turn to thoughts of Cliff, that gay Arab, knowing well the shortness of his life line, which curiously shortened in the war. He used to say jokingly, ‘Don’t worry, Dearie. It looks as if I’ll live to forty–forty-five, a short life and a merry one. I’ll have to work overtime if I’ve to achieve anything.’

  I sat quietly after I’d ironed and stitched my dollies. Their pleasant little smiling faces from the sideboard seemed so friendly and cheerful. I wonder just how many I’ve embroidered from this transfer. Cliff traced 200 before he went overseas in the war, and I’ve made some dozens of gollywogs, whose faces couldn’t be traced on the black material and had to be done free hand. I do try to reach out into the Rhythm, where all courage and hope lie ready if we can only submerge ourselves. I do pray earnestly for courage and gaiety, kindness and strength, feeling my little lamp flicker so often, feeling I’d like to sleep for a week and get everything in focus before I woke.

  Wednesday, 29 October. When I was at the WVS office the other day, they told me they were trying to get collectors at the various picture houses for the proposed memorial to fallen American soldiers, and I took it they meant young people. Today they rang me up, asking if I could possibly take a turn, and get anyone else, as no one wanted the job. I said I’d go tomorrow night, and Mrs Higham will come. I’ve broken it to my husband, and he is not very pleased. Although he works in the other room when bookkeeping, he likes to feel I’m in the house! I was very airy about it – wouldn’t notice his hurt look. I’ve felt lately as if I was being slowly strangled, and when the car is laid up for pleasure motoring, it will be worse. I must build up some kind of reaction.

  Mrs Diss is beginning to regret a few things. She has a little love of authority and when just after the war her mother’s health failed and she became an invalid and needed a nurse constantly, and Mrs Diss only had one maid for her big rambling house, she had to turn over a lot of WVS work to her deputy, Miss Willis. The latter is sweet, a retired school mistress, good to work with but fussy and afraid of any kind of effort started. I feel, between the two, a lot of chances of service went adrift. Then again, after the war ended a ‘bank manager’s daughter married to a wealthy jeweller’ complex raised its head in Mrs Diss. She recovered her pre-war snobbery and lost touch with the rest of us, all of whom I used to feel she considered much beneath her. I laughed and went my way but often regretted the break-up of such a grand lot of women …

  Mrs Diss talks vaguely now of trying to revive the old wartime spirit, and hence this proposed trip to Preston to hear Lady Reading speak of the future of the WVS. She speaks of some kind of service to old people, doing their shopping, etc., and seems quite willing for anyone to start something now, and looked at me speculatively. I thought of the way we longed to keep together, and wondered if I could rally my good Canteen squad. Mrs Higham would work happily with me. The trouble is that many women have found matinees at the pictures, little bridges or whist fours, joined classes at the Women’s Institutes to make up clothes in the make-or-mend class. Mrs Diss said, ‘Couldn’t we have a make-or-mend class, or toy or rug making, or something?’ If she had listened to a suggestion I had, to let us have the top room of the WVS office, the Club would have been formed long ago, and all the women with ideas would have worked out something to keep the WVS alive. It’s easier to keep a thing alive than to revive it.

  Thursday, 30 October. Although it was Thursday, the night when most picture places are full in Barrow, there was a poor audience for first house and we soon collected and then sat down to wait for the second house collection. The programme was a double feature – Bob Hope in While There’s Life and an adventure of someone called The Falcon – and we realised why there were so few people in. Of all the weak drivel I’ve seen, these two pictures took a bit of beating. Not a titter from anyone for Bob Hope’s efforts. My idea of Hell would be to go to the pictures every night, as many people do. It often puzzles me when people say, ‘It passes the time away.’ I never feel I’ve enough time and what I have seems snatched away before I’ve done what I want to do. I rather expected people to refuse and pass the box along, but only one pimply-faced youth waved me rather grandly away. When we counted it, there were a lot of sixpences and shillings and I had two two-shilling pieces in the £2-9-0 I sorted. Mostly it was copper – three-penny bits – but there were eight foreign silver coins, six ditto copper and two farthings. I said, ‘It looks as if some people keep dud coins in case there’s a collection.’ The manager, a somewhat disillusioned-looking man, said, ‘I think, madam, you have the same dim view of human nature I have myself.’ We got just under £9. The most they got was £10 Monday, since when the houses have been poorer each night. We did feel our luck out when we saw the trailer for next week, Moss Rose – it looked pretty good.

  We were out by 9.30 and had a cup of tea at the ice-cream shop, feeling very gay and carefree. Somehow wearing our uniforms brought back a feeling of comradeship and we felt ‘let off the chain’ and not at all like going home. We sat and talked. I’m sorry Mrs Higham cannot come next Wednesday. Her husband will be away next week and get in tired out on Wednesday noon and she wants a hot meal ready for him. The cold was like winter and reminded us of coming home after Canteen parties, though of course it was not so late. Mrs Howson said suddenly, ‘Do you ever look back on Canteen days with regret?’ I said, ‘Oddly enough I was just thinking of the days when the Scotties were here and loved farewell parties. Yes. I had quite as much out of all I did as I put into it – but life’s like that. It’s what we do rather than what we get that is the real heart’s-ease.’ And rather to my surprise she agreed. She said, ‘Yes, and looking forward to a thing. I always wanted the day when Steve was out of the Navy and now I don’t know. It isn’t going to be very easy to settle down in any way.’

  Friday, 31 October. I’m tired out tonight. It was such a lovely morning. I hurried round with vac and duster, kneaded my bread and left it by a little fire to rise, and was out by ten o’clock. My husband was lucky enough to see some good carving tools, second hand, and I packed them, together with a mallet to replace one Cliff broke, and took them to the post. Never in the worst of the war did I see so many queues – or such long ones. In their order they were fish, sausage and meat pies, potatoes, fish and chips, cakes, wallpaper and children’s shoes. I stood a few minutes in a fish queue for some fish bits and a bit of filleted plaice and was struck with a little incident. An elderly woman, obviously rather feeble minded, walked into the shop without queuing,
saying vacantly, ‘I can’t stand out in the cold. I’d be badly.’ There was not one look of pity or tolerance on one woman’s face, but there was resentment, annoyance and real anger, and remarks of ‘cheek’, ‘she always does that’, as they moved up to keep her out of the queue inside the shop. The shop man said, ‘Couple of herrings?’ and she said, ‘Yes – and I’ve got my paper ready’, and she had exact coppers ready. I thought he showed wisdom in removing an irritation but the women weren’t at all pleased. It was such a trivial thing to cause anger. We do seem nervy nowadays and little kindly acts and tolerance grow more scarce …

  I remarked to Norah [who was pregnant] how well she looked these last months and she said, ‘I feel it. I’m sure I’ve been calcium short for years and I’ve had calcium injections and vitamin tablets, cod liver oil and orange juice – everything there was available. I feel better than I’ve done in memory.’ She didn’t mention the chop or juicy steaks her husband [a butcher] brings every day! She brought a plate of scraps for the cats – more meat than I generally have for two meals for both of us. Mrs Atkinson has been very gushing since she hit Murphy, and brings him scraps. I wonder how much meat above ration they all have. Nowadays to have a husband – or any relative – in any branch of food distribution seems the best way of being well fed!

  Saturday, 1 November. I’d got a good start when Mrs Salisbury came just after nine o’clock – beds stripped and all mats and rugs on the line – and she was in a lot better working way. She has got someone in for a fortnight and it will give her a chance to get a ‘permanent’. With so many less working at the Yard though, and no Service people wanting to bring wives or families, there is not the demand for lodgings and apartments. She brought me a pound of bananas – she wanted a swap for a bottle of fruit. I let her choose, and she took sweetened damsons, so both of us felt satisfied with our respective treat. I’d planned my work so that I could have my bath before lunch and get shoes and stockings and underwear changed. I slipped on an overall again to work and serve lunch. I’d cooked a wee piece of shoulder of mutton with vegetables and a jar of tomato puree. Today’s soup had a tin of vegetable soup added to a little Oxo and shredded onions, and I fried sausage ‘pats’ and some potatoes from yesterday’s casserole, boiled cauliflower and made a cup of tea.