Nella Last in the 1950s Page 11
My husband I could see didn’t want me to go down to the Civil Defence meeting. I felt if I didn’t get out for a while, I’d be really ill. I felt like an old glove – nothing but the outward shape. I couldn’t eat much but had a rest. He nattered about ‘being glad when this silly fad is over and your Civil Defence lectures finished’, and wondered ‘what can I do all afternoon’. I lost patience as I pointed out the lecture was an hour, and another 30 or 40 minutes to go there and back, and suggested he went to the cinema or go over Walney. I can never understand his attitude to the car. Most folk use a car as a help to get about. He won’t take it out if he thinks it will get wet, or leave it in a car park, however public, in case someone scratches or damages it. He wouldn’t hear of going down to the pictures and leaving it unattended, but with one of his most hurt expressions decided to go over Walney and sit and watch the sea. I said, ‘Well, that will be cosy and uplifting – enough to give anybody the miseries on a day like this’, but I went off thankfully on my own.
Odd how differently people look on home. To me it’s my real ‘core’ of life and living. I can always relax and read or sew happily if I’m on my own, and would like to have people in rather than go out looking for change. My husband has his mother’s deep horror of being in the house by himself, and only wanders around unhappily, looking out of windows, watching the clock and timing my return. I often feel I took a wrong course of action somewhere or he wouldn’t have got quite so bad … Mrs Higham ‘wonders how on earth you keep so serene and calm. I’d go mad if I was you, cooped up as you are’ – and says, ‘You will pay for all this, you know’, as if life was all ruled in little routines with rules made for every condition. I said, ‘Well, things do get me down at times, but I firmly count my blessings, and I’ve a lot you know, including my queer intelligent cat friends, who are unbelievably good company’. She said, ‘Cats! – fah!’ I said, ‘Well, add books, my letters and the regular arrival of the boys’ letters. Many women don’t have even that link with families, you know.’ She said, ‘I repeat, you lead a most unnatural life, and will pay dearly for it some day’. I began to argue. As I pointed out, nothing or no one could hurt you if you didn’t allow things to eat into you, and she got out of patience with me and said, ‘Only visionaries and cranks talk like that. I repeat, you will pay for repressing yourself. Much better to begin to face it.’ I felt sardonic amusement as she talked and reminded her that we ‘all march to our own drummer’, and thought secretly that, when done, I’d not change places with her. It must be very bleak not to have a family when you grow old.
Tuesday, 12 September. Anybody I met downtown seemed agog with the gramophone broadcast at 4.30 yesterday by William Chislett, our magistrates’ clerk – a well known solicitor – who went off with a young married woman, and now keeps a bookshop in Oxford. It was a nine days’ sensation, and sides were taken. As I disliked his whining ‘child wife’ who at quite 50 talked baby talk and whose mother and aunt had shared their house and interfered for years, I took his side. I felt so impatient today and would have liked to be rude to several people who got so sanctimonious. After all, it was no business of anybody’s but those concerned, and if reports speak truly there’s a queer enough lot of people work for the BBC another wouldn’t be noticed.
Barrow had been abuzz with amazement in the early spring of 1948, when this extraordinary elopement became public knowledge – ‘It’s been years since such a thing – or anything – has stirred everyone’, Nella had written on 31 March 1948. (The episode is mentioned in Nella Last’s Peace, 11 April 1948, where the surname is given as ‘Chislet’.) A few weeks after the elopement, on 6 May 1948, Nella wrote of the aggrieved wife. ‘I was going through Croslands Park, and ran slap into Mrs Chislett, who is taking a house not far from Mrs Higham’s. I didn’t know whether to speak. Last time I saw her to speak to, in the air raids, she was very rude to me, really passing on her spite to me because Mrs Diss wouldn’t let her have a permit for a WVS uniform, saying she had better apply to the Ulverston branch when she had gone to live there – they were sleeping on the floor of Mr Chislett’s office, though he was Head of the Home Guard! She planted herself in front of me and said mournfully, “Ah, Mrs Last, how nice to see you. I suppose you have heard how dreadfully I’ve been treated.” I felt any faint liking or sympathy fading, as she talked. I felt her lack of all dignity and reticence distasteful in the extreme.’ During the war, according to Nella, the Chisletts had left their home in Barrow for the relative safety of Ulverston because ‘both were so terrified. We used to wonder what would have happened if invasion had come!’ (31 March 1948). The scandal got a second wind in late August 1948. ‘I heard Chislett’s name mentioned for the first time in weeks. He has a baby daughter now, and has a bookshop in Oxford, and is “very happy”. There was the same heated arguments as to whether his wife should divorce him with a slight bias to “I’d never let a man free to marry another woman” etc.’ (31 August 1948).*
Wednesday, 13 September. I noticed my husband get up from reading the paper and begin to chop some wood we didn’t really need. I baked bread and turned out the pantry and kitchenette cupboards. I keep wanting to get curtains and two blankets washed but couldn’t dry them indoors with my husband always about. I’d made vegetable soup with a little scraggy end of the weekend mutton, so it only needed heating, and I cooked potatoes and turnip to the cold mutton and made a baked custard. I felt tired yet longed to go out. It was no use suggesting the cinema. Every picture this week seemed too ‘thrilling’ to suit my husband. Luckily I’d got him a novel by Berta Ruck which I’d skimmed through in the library to make sure it had a happy ending and no deaths or partings, and he settled with it. I got out my dollies but felt too tired to sew for long and relaxed on the settee. I wish the appointment for the interview with the psychiatrist would come soon. Times I feel desperate as I look at my husband and see him ageing and letting go of so much, shuddering to myself as I wonder what he would be like if I didn’t sternly remind him to use his handkerchief, etc. I insist on him changing his clothes or I’ll not go out with him, and keep an anxious eye on him altogether, and try and push all memory of his mother out of my mind, though she poor old thing is 83 and not 62. Shut in day after day, when he thinks and thinks about every symptom, every ache and pain, he hasn’t the chance of fresh ideas and interests, and he does get despondent. By tea time today I felt I could have climbed the wall. My hands shook – I sliced tomatoes for a salad to eat with cheese, and I cut my finger. Mrs Howson came in with her knitting. I breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief as she settled to talk about clothes and shopping. I’d have welcomed anyone who read the railway timetable out, and she is the only person whom my husband doesn’t resent ever. I think he sees always the little girl she was when we first knew her.
Mrs Howson was 20 years younger than Will. Four days earlier Nella had remarked on his unsociability and how ‘people don’t like it. Mrs Atkinson has stopped coming in. If she wants me, she calls me to the back garden fence, and if he is in the garden never pauses for those little “aimless” chats that can help brighten women’s daily round’ (9 September). ‘He has an unfortunate way of making people feel unwelcome,’ she later lamented, ‘though I know well he doesn’t mean to be as rude as he seems and would often now like people calling’ (7 October). While Nella was sometimes critical of Mrs Atkinson, perhaps unfairly, and had complained of her borrowing ways (see Nella Last’s Peace, especially pp. 143–4), friendly chats over the fence were common, and on one occasion Nella rose to defend her against Mrs Howson. ‘Yes, she isn’t backward in asking for what she wants, but she tries to pay back in other little ways – it’s not altogether one-sided – and I know well if I ever need help in any way, I could rely on her’ (25 October). Nella also lauded Mrs Atkinson’s ‘glowing vitality’ (27 October).
Wednesday, 27 September. Power was off two hours. I’d not anything in the oven as it happened, and my bread was slow rising, but it meant Mrs Salisbury couldn’t vac, a
nd I had to bake small coconut cakes to put jam and ‘Serocream’† in, and a tin of crispies, and I had to work longer than usual. Before getting washed and changed, I made a little fruit cake too. I’ll have to place oddments that won’t go stale in airtight tins, and bake bread after tea. To read about the wasteful lights at Morecambe and Blackpool doesn’t help! Mrs Salisbury was full of ‘blue sun and moon’. Her old stepfather quotes Revelations, and quite expects the end of the world comparatively soon, speaks of Russia as the ‘eagle’, and the Chinese war when it first started as the ‘war in the East’ that would creep over all the West, and says the last world war was only part of the conflagration soon to overwhelm the world. She said in awe, ‘I’m keeping away from our old fella for all week. I know he would get excited about the “strange sign in the sky” as soon as I saw it.’ I soon finished baking for I’d all ready, and fixed bacon and egg for my husband, and heated tinned soup. Meals will have been a problem where electricity was the only means of cooking.
I got washed and changed and felt I would have time to relax before Miss Butler came, but she was here soon after 2 o’clock. For short periods she is a good companion, and as we all have a small town background and know people and incidents in general, we can gossip aimlessly and pleasantly, though I utterly lack the intense interest in the royal family and the ‘social register’ that is an inheritance for her from her mother. I see the same knowledge and interest in Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Eliza had it too. ‘Poor relic of something sweet and serene that has passed forever’, I thought. She is sweet, and at 60 has the loneliness and helplessness of a child. She never went to school, but had clever governesses, and was reared to be ‘mother’s companion’ and when her two young brothers were killed in 1915 and one of their friends she showed interest in was killed later, the gates clanged behind her for life. She is not by any means the first to be reared with three maids – a cook, governess, gardener and coachman, later chauffeur – and who stepped into today’s bustling stream. She dallies on the bank, utterly helpless, lets her house go lost and dirty when she hasn’t a daily help, and confessed swiftly she ‘lived in the back kitchen with its combustion stove always making it so nice and warm’ rather than make a fire and enjoy the comforts of her two other beautiful living rooms. She enjoyed her tea, with a healthy schoolboy appetite for sweet things, complaining plaintively about ‘never being able to learn to manage the stove’. Perhaps if she had married things would have been better for her. She would have grown and developed, in spite of her height and increasing weight.
I felt motherly towards her as she spoke half fearfully of growing old. She asked me if I didn’t fear old age, ‘when no one wants you’. I said, ‘Well, candidly, I’ve often more worry to push out of my days to add any more. It’s so much better to fill each day, “do the best you can”, as my Gran taught, and “pass on”.’ Unless anyone was fond of running a home entirely and didn’t mind Miss Butler’s utter ‘sloth’ of mind, she would find difficulty in sharing a home. Miss Butler speaks so longingly of a ‘clever bright companion’ – someone to go about with, laugh and talk with. The wind howled and sent leaves flying. The paths were covered when she went out. We talked of crisp bright autumn days, and wondered where all this rain is coming from. Mrs Howson came in with her knitting. I felt I’d rather have spread out my visitors – Mrs Higham coming tomorrow. Mrs Howson was in one of her sharp-tongued humours, wanting to know ‘What does Miss Butler want? I hope you aren’t going to try and sort things out for her. She is such a negative lump.’ I said, ‘Well, we enjoyed her company. She is kind and pleasant, and we found lots of “Do you remember so and so? Wonder what became of them?” and though everything seems against her making friends, she is not snobbish and stand-offish as you say. I think her aloofness exists more in people’s minds as they remember her snooty “exclusive” mother, who, dear knows how, was “presented at Court” and never forgot it.’
Miss Butler was a new personality in Nella’s diary. Her first appearance had been on 16 August 1950 (see above), her second on 28 August and her third on 8 September, when items were being collected in aid of charitable causes, including Barrow’s famine relief shop. ‘It’s only the Edwardian “sheltering” ways that has made her so utterly useless’, Nella wrote on 28 August. ‘I gave her a label they had sent me, and told her of my “sacks” and suggested she gave me any warm or useful cast-offs for displaced persons, or better still get one of her own and worry folks to give her things. I said “People would, you know. Look how marvellous everyone was in giving to the Red Cross shop, your mother amongst them.” She looked at the picture of hungry children and said, “I often think of your belief in reincarnation and ‘things coming right somewhere’. I loved working in Canteen amongst you all. You all seemed to argue and think. Perhaps next time I’ll have babies and a family of my own.” I thought of how in the First World War she and a friend of her brother had been so “friendly” and how he hadn’t been thought good enough, and how it had been considered her duty to stay at home with her parents when her two brothers were killed, and now she is lonely and a bit eccentric at 59.’ Miss Butler was, thought Nella, struggling to fit in. ‘Her people were so wealthy – and snooty – that lots of people who would be friendly fear a snub. She will have to pick up threads herself. It was a mistake to stay away so long if she intended making her home in Barrow. One thing – I’ve got her interested in Oxford Relief, and she has got some friends and relatives interested too’ (25 September).
The next several weeks in the Last household were fairly routine and unremarkable, punctuated by outings in the car and such small rituals as Nella’s weekly filling out of the football pools – though she considered herself ‘a complete dumb wit at football’ (25 November). Consequently, only a few selections are presented for this period, before resuming a fuller recording of her writing from 30 November.
Thursday, 12 October. In Ulverston I met an old friend from Greenodd and we had a chat about old times. She has one of the loveliest – and dumbest – girls I ever met. Her gorgeous corn-coloured hair, perfect complexion and limpid blue eyes never seemed to make up for her rather raucous voice and real twaddle of small talk. Yet she is a good hairdresser with a little business of her own in Grange. Mrs Barrow was always rather a silly person herself, and put the idea in Maisie’s head that her really exceptional beauty would ensure a very good marriage. I’ve heard her say proudly to the exquisite little girl, ‘Our Maisie won’t have to work like I’ve done – not with that lovely face’. Today she complained that ‘Our Maisie never seems to get an offer and she is now over 30. She will have to meet your Cliff when he comes home.’ I smiled to myself, feeling a bit wistfully, ‘Well, after all, Maisie would be better than him not marrying anyone’ but realising too there didn’t seem any likelihood of Cliff marrying. He likes his own way too much and, like several of my father’s brothers, at the heart of him he is a rover, both bodily and mentally.
Thursday, 19 October. When rain began to fall in a soft curtain of drizzle, I didn’t expect my husband to go to Ulverston as usual. He felt restless, though, and when Mrs Higham rang up to ask if we were going to Ulverston could I see if a stallholder there had any checked ‘suiting’ weight material, he said he would go as usual. I got a nice bit of English lamb – 3s 8d – and a good sheep’s head and some lights for my cats. As I picked up my parcels of meat I felt something different in one, and Bob whispered, ‘There’s a little present from Alice in that – she thought you looked real poorly when she saw you the other day’, and he winked and nodded his head as if it was a good joke. When I got into the car and opened it I couldn’t believe my eyes – half a pound of fresh country butter! His wife was my hairdresser before the war and till the call-up took her into the Yard, and we always liked each other, but her kindness amazed me, and I felt glad I’d got a dollie made for the baby for Xmas. I couldn’t see anything to suit Mrs Higham, but did wish I could have bought a Harris tweed coat length for Edith and a sports jacket length
for Cliff and Arthur for their Xmas present – only 15s and 18s a yard. It amazed me to see such good woollen material and no ‘rush’ buyers who saw the value. There were really amazing bargains in oddments on every stall, especially for anyone who could make things up themselves.
Sunday, 29 October. I grieved to hear the fire last night was a disastrous one on the Oronsay, the new Australian liner, due for her trial trip next March, so she will be partly furnished, and the cork insulating slabs would burn like wood. We went to church, and when we came out the smell of burning wafted on the chilly wind, which was south-west and blew straight over the town. I heated cream of chicken soup and had a little with toast, and then had celery and bread and butter. My husband had soup and bacon and egg, ate bread to the latter, and finished with a cup of tea. I put tea up in the flask and when he went to lie down picked up my book – a Crime Club, Murder among Friends, by Elizabeth Ferrars – quite good, but I wish the whim for ‘crimes’ would pass. Oddly enough, when I’m really well I dislike them. My husband wasn’t well. I notice he never is if he motors above 20 - 30miles. Yet I don’t feel it would be wise to find fault with anything he takes a fancy to do. It’s when he just sits that makes me worry so much. I feel a curious feeling at times that all vitality of the room dies, not only in myself, when those deep depressions sweep down over him. I’m sure too he is growing a little deaf. So often he takes no notice at all when spoken to, and I noticed at Mrs Higham’s he let her remarks pass.