Nella Last's Peace Read online

  Sunday, 18 August. My husband was so moody. He hardly spoke and beyond a curt ‘Yes’ or ‘Ah’ didn’t answer any remarks I made, but gets moodier if I’m quiet. We sat by Coniston Lake. I felt the healing, soothing peace of the quiet hills and lake, my little Shan We on my lap, his little sable paws curled round my hand. It looked very dull after we had tea and heavy clouds began to pile up behind the hills and we thought it best to start for home. I felt worried somehow. I felt my husband’s mood had lasted too long. I felt it was the reaction of the car mishap, and having to spend money on a ‘new’ one. I felt for the first time I’d like to be lucky in the Irish Sweep and win enough money for a little income!

  We were home by 6.45 and it had started to rain very heavily, and as my husband turned into the garage, a man spoke to him – someone he knew slightly – and asked if he had a drop of petrol in a can as his car had conked out – we actually saw it on the side of the road and his wife sitting in it looking very chilled as it was an open sports car. We had no petrol in tins, but as the man had some of his own at home, my husband said he would run him over Walney to get it. He didn’t come back. I packed the laundry, weighed up ingredients for pastry and parkin biscuits and jellied my apples for an apple pie. He came in looking ghastly and said, ‘I’ve had an accident to the car. A woman in a car turned out of a side street and ran full into me.’ He had to go back and phone the police and get the car pushed into a side cutting. He says one wheel and the front axle and the side are badly damaged – the front axle broken. When I think of Mrs Picken and Jim coming, as well as Arthur and Edith, I feel it’s a real calamity. I’ve felt a bit sick about the car since Friday when my husband had it in the garage for greasing and was told it must have been in a smash as it had had a new chassis! I would not have had a car that had been in any kind of an accident if I’d known, and the garage man said it must have been a smash. The worst worry is the effect it may have on my husband. He just cannot stand worry and upset.

  Monday, 19 August. Such a load off our minds. The car is not as badly damaged as we feared. The axle can be straightened at the blacksmith’s, the spare wheel put on while we get the other repaired, or a new one and bumper and mud guards straightened out, and they promised to do it for the weekend, to make it usable if not looking so good with damaged paint work, etc. It was such a relief to know my husband would not have as much worry as I feared …

  My husband pruned the raspberry canes, and they look tidier, and took the worst of the weeds out of the crazy path – they grow so quickly. I wish to goodness I could get him to cement between the little flags. I came to bed early. No writing or reading till nearly twelve o’clock now for a fortnight. My husband is sharing my room again and he will expect the light out when he settles. I never thought I’d find it a bother to sleep with my own husband! He has preferred his own room these last few years and now I feel I like it best, although at one time I felt queerly lonely.

  Wednesday, 28 August. There are a lot of strangers still in town on holiday. The bus I came home in had several families – mothers with small children. One quite well-dressed woman rose with her little boy of about four to get out at the station. She pushed him hurriedly in front of her, and he said shrilly, ‘We didn’t give the man the pennies, Mamma.’ She took no notice – the conductor was upstairs – and as he spoke again as they got off gave him a push and said, ‘Shut up.’ I saw the look on that child’s face. I’d not have liked to bring it to a child’s face for more money than I could stuff in my purse. I wondered how long the episode would linger in his mind, and how it might influence his baby actions.

  Most of later August and September were to be dominated by visitors, first Mrs Picken and her son Jim (from 20 August), and shortly after they left, Arthur and Edith (from 7 September).

  Saturday, 7 September. The morning flew past. It poured with rain but my husband had to go down to a bungalow on the Coast Road to see about some windows repairing and we all went. It cleared up as the tide went out, and we got as far as Grange. We had a late tea and lingered talking. Arthur seems to be confident he will get his Higher Grade next year, with a rise in salary of £250 a year. I listened to their plans. When they have a little surplus money, they are going Youth Hostelling every fit weekend, buying a little car as soon as they can afford it, and having a fortnight in Switzerland in the near future. No talk or plans of beginning a family. I sat quiet and listened and watched their faces. Arthur seems to have a poor view of prospects of peace for long. He seems to think Britain has dropped to a third-rate power, and Russia and America the ones who will decide the future for some time. Without him actually saying so, he gives me the impression he thinks it folly to have children nowadays. Yet if they don’t, their happiness will have no roots. Edith is very primitive and wholly natural. Her home is her delight and, to her way of thinking, children are home. It will be a sad mistake if they don’t choose to have children, and, I feel, a tragedy if they cannot. We live in our children, try and help them avoid our own mistakes and failures, pass on the torch of faith and trust in God’s goodness and plan. They are our standard to carry on and on, when we would sink and fall if we only had ourselves to think about. My Cliff was not a very lovable baby. He was nervy and difficult, with a tendency to fight and scream beyond belief – or patience! I was so ill after a major operation when he was eighteen months old, my one prayer was that I would be spared as long as my nervy, cantankerous scrap needed me. I had so little money. Life was a struggle, for my husband was never very strong. It was the need for my baby and my faith that kept me going. I’d have been unable to do it for myself. My longings for a grandchild recede. It looks as if my little cats will have to be my only pets!

  This was a month devoted to family. Journeys to the Lake District occupied several days – Arthur and Edith did a lot of walking; some evenings were marked by entertainment (several films, a travelling dance company at Ulverston, another a dance for the younger generation); and many hours were consumed in dress-making. The weather was often disagreeable– Nella mused on 19 September that if she were to win the Irish Sweepstake, ‘I’d go and live in Cornwall or Devon, where the winds are not so searching and cold.’ On Friday the 13th Cliff arrived for a four-day visit, thus bringing her sons together. That evening she wrote, ‘I felt happy as a queen as I looked at them.’

  Monday, 16 September. Cliff is an odd one. A wife doesn’t seem to enter into his scheme of things at all. We were talking of Mrs Picken’s fresh start the other day. Edith said, ‘Mother says she wishes you could go in with her.’ I said, ‘In similar circumstances I’d not start a shop. If I had my health I’d go down to London, contact flats with bachelors or women on their own, and run a “Mother’s Help” or rather “Motherly Help” service – do their repairs, see to rations, little parties – not big parties. I’d charge a small all-in fee, employ part-time help, in time have “sitters in” while parents went out, take children to the Zoo and all the places beloved by kiddies, change library books for invalids, etc.’ Cliff said calmly, ‘You would NOT. You would come and live with me and we would adopt one or two small children for our own!!!’ I thought, ‘Mercy me, that lad loves planning and organising as much as I do!’

  Saturday, 28 September. It’s a marvellous run up the Cumberland coast to Whitehaven, and today we felt in a dream. Deep blue skies, sunlight to etch the hills in terraces as far as eye could see, soft shadows of purple and lavender, blaze of gold from fading bracken, the whirr of hay cutting and creak of carts as dried hay was being carted, happy laughter of children and shouts that sounded like laughter, soft Cumberland dialect, bleat of driven sheep – a tapestry of sound and colour only called into brightness by the blessed sun. The grain is all in. It’s the grass, poor as it looks, and the bracken for bedding that is the harvest home. Never in my life have I seen a haysel at the end of September …

  We had a good look round the narrow ancient streets. A lot of the very old premises are empty and almost derelict – not been used since
the slump, Arthur says. He says when he was at Workington office, Whitehaven was a real heartbreak town. I’d have loved to go in what Arthur called a ‘real low dive’ a few yards from the up-to-date Globe Hotel. I wondered if Judith Paris’s husband had sat drinking and plotting his smuggling activities there. We bought lovely ripe figs and sweet green grapes to eat as we went along. I felt as gay as a bird. I could have sung aloud. The sun shone so hot we had the windows as well as the top open.

  Lakeland is never very busy on Saturdays, but Keswick, Cocker­mouth, Ambleside and Bowness were thronged with local shoppers. I must have a small-town mind, as Cliff says. I could settle down happily at Keswick if I’d a home there. I could never live in a hotel. We had our picnic tea by the lake at Waterhead. Two swans were so friendly I shared my tea, and we got ice cream, to eat with our raspberries. It seemed too bad to leave in such brilliant sunshine, but the shadows slipped down over the hills and shrouded the steel-grey lake, as smooth as metal. Boats left a pencilled wake that close and left it calm and unruffled. All was so still and mysterious looking. I’d not have been surprised if a white arm had risen out of the shadows – or a monster appeared!

  It was nearly dark when we got home. I felt disinclined to get out my machine but gave myself a good poke and a reminder that I’d nearly finished my task of sewing, and I got on well. Arthur and Edith both had headaches. I made some strong tea and we drank it and all felt better. Edith is so quiet. I felt she was angry with me for something at first when she came, and she certainly looked happier when she saw I was going to be able to finish her dress and her mother’s dress and little jacket, but ‘dull’ is the only word I can find to describe her manner. She doesn’t seem interested in anything. Yet she eats like a healthy schoolboy, could go off tramping and climbing and seems well in body. I wonder if she is unhappy in some way.

  The wind has risen but it’s a south-west one and I don’t smell rain. I hope it’s fine tomorrow so that we can go off somewhere and make a nice wind-up for their visit. Already they are planning their next year’s visit and the routes they will take when they go climbing and walking. Me – I’ve a queer feeling on me that there will be changes before then. I’ve a feeling a chapter has been finished. Arthur begged me to read their cups. I think they have a suspicion that Cliff got round me to read his – he did! – but I don’t want to do theirs. I don’t want to either see something they won’t like or tell them a lie about it, and if I do see anything, I don’t want the worry of it. I feel so highly strung lately, and could tell fortunes. I’ll be glad when I can relax quietly and try and get into a less worrying frame of mind.

  * A conference in July 1944, held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, was designed to plan for post-war, worldwide economic cooperation. It led to the formation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

  * The arrival of these German scientists attracted the notice of three issues of the Barrow News, which was published weekly on Saturdays. On 12 January it wrote of ‘the intense dislike Barrovian women felt towards men who had so recently accomplished the destruction of their sons and husbands’, especially when it was thought that these foreigners would be housed more comfortably than most citizens.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  STRESSES AND STORMS

  October 1946–April 1947

  Nella had not been well, on and off, for much of 1946. She frequently complained of exhaustion, and of various gnawing ailments. ‘I realised lately a spring has broken in me,’ she wrote on 5 August. ‘Beyond a point, I just cannot stand things as I used to do.’ As autumn began, she wrote on 3 October that ‘I felt dead tired. My face has ached today. Perhaps I’ve got a little draught. I do so dread winter this year.’

  Wednesday, 9 October. I’m cranky tonight. Mrs Salisbury came and I prepared to work with her but it was one of those days when the phone rang and people called on business. Beyond cleaning my bits of silver and brass, changing the beds and packing Cliff’s parcel, I did little more. The butcher came early. I cooked the two wee bony scraps of chops out of some beef and mutton for stewing, with sausage and an onion for flavour, and set it to cool by the open window, and it got cool to put in the parcel. I must try to get it off on Wednesday. Even paying the express 6d doesn’t ensure Saturday delivery in London if I post it on Thursday …

  People are run down, but older people look ahead with a fear in their hearts to the new world. Restrictions and ‘permits’ harry and worry business people till it takes the sweet out of their brew. Young married people either cannot get a house or put money on a house that cost £650 and which they have to pay anything up to £2,000 for, and it’s a drag on them, and in addition find the cheap jerry† house that has been up about ten years wanting quite a number of renewals, not just paint and paper. Younger still, adolescents don’t work as they did for careers or trades. They have the unrest on them of going in the Forces and maybe going abroad. If they are timorous it frightens and unsettles them. If they are the adventurous kind, they cannot see today, only tomorrow. We are all in the melting pot of history, and that’s always hurting. The best part of history is to read it out of books when things get more in focus …

  I’d like to explain to Tom Harrisson just how laughter has fled – not through bombed buildings’ ‘clean cuts’ of trouble but with the slow steady drip drip of little worries and anxieties that eat into one’s mind and brain like water eats into a stone, warping and changing the shape, making clear a channel for itself and for all water – or worry – that comes after. When I meet old friends of Hospital Supply days and they say, ‘Do you remember when —— and we all yelled with laughter till tears ran down our face?’ I wonder if the crazy one they talk about was me. Did I really ‘keep them alive’? And I long for a little of the vitality I must have had somewhere during those trying years – trying but strangely happy, when we all felt worthwhile.

  Thursday, 10 October. Primroses and polyanthus are blooming with a summer show of roses, as well as all the autumn flowers and shrubs. The sun shone bright, but the cold south-east wind was cutting. I was glad to get in to a warm fire, which I’d banked before I went out. There was corned beef, tomatoes and chutney for tea, wholemeal bread and strawberry jam, buttered malt bread and fruit cake. Mrs Howson came in for the evening. She felt miserable. She said she has those ‘after holiday blues’. We listened to the little thriller from 6.45 to 7 o’clock. The BBC would be surprised if they knew the great popularity of that little shocker. It’s like a cocktail for the evening. Those who pretend to be too high brow listen in spite of themselves …

  I’d like a real holiday in the sunshine, not bothering about a single thing, never thinking of meals or cooking and shopping. But I’d like best to feel I could do something for Cliff, in some way. One thing has ceased to worry me – old age – for we have this house, and if we had £2 12s between us, and what bit we have, we would not be badly off. I know well my husband is no money maker. He never has been. It’s a mystery how he can work so hard and have three men and two apprentices yet make so little out of his business. The moon shone bright as day when Mrs Howson went home, but it’s so very cold – everyone says so, it’s not just my aching bones saying it. I must try and start my dollies next week, and then I’ll not have to rush to get them done for Xmas. I’ve got my pieces all ready for making and dressing them. In all the long years I’ve made dollies, I’ve never felt less interest in starting. I really am in a lazy, indifferent mood. I feel as if I’ve no energy at all.

  Friday, 11 October. The shop boy came up and helped me snip the remainder of the roses and take out all the annuals, etc. I dared not begin to bake this morning for fear they cut the electricity, so after a quick dust and vac I went down town and paid for my groceries and got a few vegetables, came back and kneaded wholemeal and also fruit tea bread and made a little cottage pie of corned beef, shredded onions and sliced tomatoes with a crust of potatoes, and heated the rest of the milk pudding from yesterday, added a little gravy and sliced tomatoes to
a tin of vegetable soup, and lunch was ready. I relaxed for half an hour whilst waiting for the boy to come – such a nice willing boy, and used to helping in their own garden. The sun shone brightly and the birds chirped and sang. It was difficult to think it was October. I’d time for a bath before tea and cooked lemon soles, and there was wholemeal bread and butter, strawberry jam, new tea bread and fruit cake, and the blessed feeling of a job well done, a glowing fire, roses in my silver bowl and chrysanths in my pottery jug. I felt very tired and glad to relax after tea, my little cat on my lap.

  Nella often wrote of her husband, sometimes sympathetically, sometimes not, and occasionally comically. ‘It vexes and annoys my husband when I joke about growing old,’ she wrote on 18 October. ‘He hates to think of age, and seems to think if he doesn’t notice or talk about it, it’s not there – like the Victorian attitude to legs!’

  That same day Arthur phoned to announce that Edith was pregnant; but shortly afterwards she miscarried. Nella was regularly worried about Cliff, his career prospects, his talk of moving to Australia, and his way of living, including his lack of a wife – on 29 October he told her he ‘ never was the marrying type’.

  Saturday, 2 November. My head felt so heavy and I could hardly sit up straight, but it was worth the effort to go to Kendal to see that it was doing my husband good and helping him forget his business worries. It’s so difficult to find comfort for him, but I did point out there was only the two of us, and dear knows I’ve always had to manage on little, and as I pointed out a bit heartlessly when he talked of a slump being inevitable sooner or later, that by then he might not have to give his parents £2 10s out of his business profits. When I think of his well-to-do chemist brother and one who left the business in resentment of what he called ‘carrying a couple of passengers’, and realise how my husband has it all to do just because of an argument when the business was turned over to the two of them – and the chemist brother can make his son a doctor, he has so much money – I feel I detest that family more than ever. I think as always how my husband has been the complete mug for them all his life. Some part of him never matured. He went into the workshop at the back of the house, never went away from home, never mixed in company if he could help it, never reads, never listens to anything he calls serious on the wireless, and has carried the domination of his parents all his life. Instead of making him more understanding towards Cliff, he goes on and on about ‘If Cliff were only like other businessmen’s sons’, etc. Quite useless for me to point out so many sons who have not followed in the family business. Nothing wipes the look of injury off his face once he starts off.