Nella Last's Peace Page 12

  Tuesday, 9 July. By Gad, whatever else my men folk may be, they are not boring. I never know what they will do next. My husband bought another car today! I went down town early to take my grocery order so that it would come today, and going down Dalton Road I saw my husband talking earnestly to a tradesman we know, and as I would have passed on with a wave of my hand, he said, ‘Just a moment – I want to ask you if you would like me to buy Mr Kirby’s car.’ Mr K.’s retiring and had mentioned he was selling his car and wanted £300. It’s a 1935 Morris – only a year later than ours – but has only done 35,000 miles and been very carefully driven, laid up five years, thoroughly overhauled and got five new tyres. My husband fears the crown wheel and pinion they suggest fixing will not be satisfactory and that if ‘we have to wait ten–twelve weeks we will miss the summer, and we have missed a lot out of life through the war and are not getting any younger’. I thought the idea well worth considering and Mr Kirby said, ‘I will get it from the garage this afternoon. I’ve been having it greased and the oil changed in the sump. I’ll call round and let Mrs Last see it’…

  When I got in I slipped off my blouse and costume and changed my shoes and sat down to drink some cold tea I have in a glass, poured over mint leaves after breakfast when I put a little hot water on the tea leaves after breakfast. A car stopped and my husband came in and said, ‘Come and see the car. Mr Kirby went for it straight away.’ I had to go out and look it over and get dressed again for I couldn’t go riding round in my overall! It seemed all right to me, but I don’t pretend to be a mechanic and had not thought it over seriously, but my husband just bought it straight off and it was left in the garage! I said, ‘What about the other?’ and he said, ‘If I don’t sell it before, I’ll push it in the empty garage across at Mr Howson’s.’ ‘If you could only make up your mind often as easily as over this, life could be lots easier for you – and more profitable sometimes!’ …

  My husband was as excited as a schoolboy to take the new car out. The gears are a bit different, but being synchromeshed, easier. He soon got into it and is so happy about it. I like him to be happy – he doesn’t seem to get much fun out of life somehow.

  Wednesday, 10 July. I didn’t feel too good when I rose and eight o’clock brought a lad to the door with a request would I let five men have some boiling water. I looked out. It was a gang mending holes in the road with tarmac! I put on my kettle, reflecting there must be secret signs on our gate. It cannot altogether be Mrs Atkinson’s idea that they know I’m soft! I had a cup of tea and some toast. I cleaned away and decided I’d make an early start on my bedrooms. The phone rang repeatedly. I had two garrulous callers to pay small bills. Shan We was a great attraction and I thought they would never go. Another start. The dustmen came. Please could they have a drink of water. They are such decent kindly men, and always shut the gate. The kettle had not been emptied. I switched it on and made them a jug of tea. It was such a hot morning and they looked tired out. The coalman came and said joyfully, ‘TEA’, so I made him a cup and started again. More phone calls. No butcher. Luckily the fish came, and I fried two nice hake steaks, and did cauliflowers and potatoes, and fried up a real good gingerbread from the beef dripping Mrs Picken sent, and made malt bread, to bake at the same time. Then the boy came for hot water again. I felt worthy and said, ‘Everyone else is in the street’, but he grinned cheerfully. I had enough soup for my husband and milk sweet from yesterday. I had a little fish and vegetables, and a cup of tea.

  I’d said I’d go down to the bank for my husband and I’d to pick up my bacon, or else I’d have relaxed quietly for the whole afternoon. It was hot, but a lovely breeze from the sea which made it pleasant. Two encounters gave me lots of reflections. Both women I’ve known from girls. One was a bar maid, and a very gay bohemian who met an Admiralty man a lot older than herself. When he announced his marriage, several took him aside and pointed out she was not a girl anyone married. He gave the answer, ‘She will suit me – a virtuous girl would bore me to death.’ He was Harbour Master at Hong Kong and they had four of the nicest, well-bred sons anyone could ever have. When she returned, no one would have any more to do with her than formerly, and she was a bit lonely, and always glad when I met her in the Park and talked, when we had the children out. Her husband died. They must have had lots of money, for all the lads had good schools and the eldest is a naval architect and going back to Hong Kong where she plans to go back to make a home when the two youngest boys make a start. They all adore her, and it’s the happiest family possible.

  The other woman has never trod the primrose path, prides herself on her respectability, and whined about her son getting married after being a POW and worrying her to death – she considers he owes his mother something for all the worry he has been. She came up in the bus with me. I felt she was the last butterfly on my wretched tummy. I came in and was very sick and had to lie down for an hour, wondering what was virtue and what was not! The first woman’s gay, vivid personality, too young dress, rather brassy dyed hair – and adoring family; the second’s sour Puritan face, whining voice, holier-than-thou attitude. Life is odd, and seems to grow more so!

  Friday, 12 July. I’ve had a job looking at me since I got back from Ireland – an old fashioned ‘play suit’ of Edith’s to cut and alter to an up-to-date sun suit – brassiere top and scanty pant skirt. At last there was a sketch in the Express I could copy, when I knew she liked it. I do dislike making new out of old unless I can have the wearer to fit, and the funny side struck me when after undressing and trying it on myself again and again, I wondered what it would feel like to be so scantily dressed and so much of me showing! It turned out really well. I felt really proud of it, and now I’ve only to hear if it suits Edith …

  We have sold our former car! Someone had been advised at the garage where we serviced it. It’s on the road and the noisy crown and pinion could last years, the proprietor of the garage said, and he told the would-be buyer it was a gift at £200. We said we would rather be paid £190 and get the new crown wheel and pinion when it came. I felt we owed it to the little car if not to a fair deal. I wished my husband had been a bit more patient, but he acted for the best – and it’s not my money anyway. I dearly loved that car. Somehow it stood for more than a thing. It carried me to the lakes and hills when I felt I could not go on. I slept and dreamed beside quiet Coniston Lake, feeling my wild fears calmed. We came home in the quiet dusk and left a lot of ‘bogeys’ to drown in the peace of the quiet lake. We kept it so well cleaned and polished. It never had rough usage, and money was spent in garages whenever it needed it. It was never tinkered. I wanted to say, ‘Be kind to it’ as it was looked over by a mechanic and thoroughly approved.

  The purchase of a new car, for £300, caused the Lasts no little bother, for in the following week they had to sell their old car to a dealer for only £150. A new crown wheel and pinion proved to be unobtainable and thus the prospective private purchaser backed out and the deal fell through. As Nella saw it, she and Will were sorely out of pocket. ‘It’s his money,’ she wrote on 20 July, ‘but I thought of how I could have done with only a little of that wasted £150. My carpets are so shabby and my blankets patched – I’ve only three unmended.’

  Tuesday, 23 July. We went to Spark Bridge. I got Joe an ounce of tobacco – such a scrap for 2s 5d. The poor dear only has what we take and it’s his only little comfort or extravagance. I had the kippers and haddock, scraps of fat off my meat I’d not rendered down, a little cup of dripping and some loganberries and some Bile Beans as a different aperient for Aunt Sarah. I think their weekly ration of flour had been a bit of a shock when she saw it, bless her. She likes to give and I know a neighbour has always got a cob or tea cakes. I said, ‘You will have to do as I am doing with Will’s mother – ask her to send an odd pound of flour up.’ She smiled but looked wistful as she shook her head. It worries her when so much that was the core of her very life is going – no sweeties for children, no rosy apples in the attic, no little
pots of jam and jelly for wee presents, always dodging and contriving.

  Suddenly I could have wept as she showed me a really beautiful rug, fit for anyone’s polished floor in its faded russets and browns in a quite good pattern, all made from washed scraps of cloth, nothing of value, just bits. I looked at her little wrinkled walnut of a face as she said, ‘We have yet so many blessings. It’s not right of Mrs Marshall (a neighbour) to be so angry about bread rationing if it will help the thoughtless to share with the hungry.’ If I’d put my thoughts into words, the rag rug would have seemed a symbol of my little auntie’s life. She has had so little, yet from its bits and pieces made harmony, and a home for an old cousin where they are ending their lives in peace and, in the eyes of the understanding, real beauty. She is so frail, so poor, so old, yet is so strong, so rich, so ever young, so happy with each day’s little efforts, so interested in all and everything, more alive at eighty-two than many young ones of today.

  Thursday, 1 August. Mrs Whittam brought a jug of tea and we sat on the little wall of the garden. Some German prisoners passed, glum and miserable but thoughtful, ordinary men. They glanced at us. Mrs Whittam and I smiled and I said, ‘It’s a lovely day. ’One replied in well-modulated English, ‘It is indeed.’ I wondered where he had learned to speak so well. We talked about the difficulties of life today when they had passed out of sight on their way to the fields, of all the unhappiness and frustration, heartbreak and misery, though we didn’t use exact words. There’s such a streak of wholesome sense in Mrs Whittam. I wonder if cows help country people to have it – or sheep? I’ve noticed people who have much to do with tending them have a clearness of vision and ability to think, however slowly. Both of her daughters rant and rave about German ‘beasts’; she quietly talked of their homes and little children growing up without them. We talked of the misery underneath, the heartbreak and despair that passed unnoticed, little things in human relationships that meant so much, security in the love of home, planting things with the serenity of seeing them grow, of seeing days come and go without anything happening, of laughing without cause, just because you felt happy. Mrs Whittam’s red jolly face, with its flying wisps of hair like a halo, saddened. She said, ‘Never long for grandchildren, Mrs Last. What’s in front of mine?’ I thought of my baby of twenty-seven years ago and my heartfelt relief that war was over, never to return. People don’t feel that sense of hope and thankfulness now. It’s more a ‘How long before it starts again?’

  Saturday, 3 August. This heavy weather seems to press like a weight on people, making tempers short and heads ache. My husband feels it pretty badly and today I felt my patience snap. I listened to him with rising wrath and then said, ‘What is this – a grievance airing? If so, trot ’em all out and by Gad I’ll match them.’ And proceeded to do so in real grand style, and he got a few things that had been coming to him. He whined because he had told me about some buttons and a tear on his working pants and which I’d quite forgotten, yet, as I pointed out, after thirty-five years of married life I’d never got a small clothes horse, an ironing stand to do my ironing on, or a decent tray or wardrobe. Anything in that line I had, I had bought – or gone without, as he never saw a lack of any amenities, and if he did it seemed too much trouble to see to in his own home! I felt wild. I thought, ‘You are the most pampered, cared-for man possible, and the more I do, the more you expect – and the less you think I need.’ I got right on my top note and said if he said one more word I’d not go out this afternoon with him …

  The black mood seemed to lift off my husband a little, so when he suggested going to Kendal I agreed, feeling, as always, glad to see the hills. Bowness was very busy, and the station at Windermere looked like a seaside station with its crowds and queues of people. We picked up a young fellow who thumbed a lift. His home was at Windermere and he was going to Kendal. First glance he looked smart, prosperous and happy, but a keen eye could see his clothes were a little too tight and of too good material for being bought today, and I saw bewilderment and hurt in his nice blue eyes. He had been in the Navy and talked of the difficulty of getting a job. He seemed a bit vague – only had the idea of wireless operator – and, as he himself said, ‘They are ten a penny now.’ He loved his home in the country, but chafed to be off to a town or city, where, he seemed to think, were the only places for opportunities and a chance to make good. He was bitter about the way moneyed people exploited the country, living in big houses with dozens of shut-up rooms, while two or three families crowded into cottages, married sons and daughters having to live with their parents through housing shortage. He spoke too of people – he gave names though they conveyed nothing to us, of course – going about paying 1s each for eggs, £1 for chickens and ducks, and any price for sides of bacon and ham. I watched him as he talked, thinking again of the queer yeasty urges of today. People talk of ‘this Labour Government’, of Fascism, Bolshevism, etc. – one name for the surging sap that seems to be rapidly changing the world as we know it, more thoroughly than atom bombs, so relentlessly it bears all and everything with it, except those too broken, who are swept on to the banks and into backwaters.

  Kendal always fascinates me, especially market days when scores of huge buses bring people in from miles around. Few stupid faces; many really handsome with boldly carved ‘horse’ features. Smart Land Girls, clergy, Boy Scouts, busy housewives and farmers and their families, all reduced to a common factor – ration books! No cakes at all – in Kendal! – home of such goodies as shortbread, pasties and plum cake. Not much bread either. I suppose people would have bought earlier. Apples were being carried. Not as many tomatoes as in Barrow, but the local potatoes were so nice and even sized. Lots of good dried fruit, but stoned raisins and prunes were for regular customers only – one shop had a ticket added: ‘Sorry, short supply’. Beautiful Utility fur coats, up to sixty-eight guineas. Lovely tweeds, lots of biscuits, gorgeous flowers of every kind, very poor watery ice cream, ‘amusing’ hats I couldn’t quite see on any of the country heads around, and lovely shop windows, none boarded halfway or empty as in Barrow. Our walk round was a real treat.

  Sunday, 11 August. It’s been a real summer day today. I rested till 11.30, had my bath slowly and lazily, and made lunch for 12.45 so that we could get out early. I packed pears and custard in separate jars, cheese sandwiches and cake and two flasks of tea, and we decided to go off to Keswick with it being so lovely. The sun shone so warm and seemed to tempt everyone out, either walking or cycling if they were only young. Farmers were taking advantage of the sun to toss hay to dry and, wherever possible, to load, but I noticed no one thought so much of future prospects to cut grass on any large scale. The hills stood out in their clear-cut beauty, with shadows sweeping over them from little swift moving clouds. Windermere was gay with craft of every kind, and in the huge bus park at Bowness there were charas from London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Newcastle, ‘on tour’ as well as the day excursions. Even Keswick, where either Dunmail or Kirkstone Passes have to be climbed over the hills between, had its share of charas. I wondered again, if Rogue Herries really existed, what he would have thought of Keswick and Patterdale nowadays.

  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 demob-bed 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.