Nella Last in the 1950s Read online

  The hurt and anger is passing from the latest trashy sensational bit of journalese Cliff sent. The most annoying aspect of these interviews, with their different and wholly inaccurate blurb of Cliff’s background – but accompanied by such good photos of surprisingly good work – is that I wouldn’t dream of letting people read them, people who know we haven’t exactly sprung from the dregs of a Lancashire mill town, or that Cliff fought single-handed against odds, and people who apparently threw every obstacle in his way, or at least never took notice of him. I make every possible allowance for the silly inaccuracies, but cannot but see that there’s some fault in what Cliff told them. Another thing that wryly amuses me – I’ve laughed so often at odd little ways of mother’s people who for some reason were always termed ‘the proud Rawlinsons’, laughed because so few had much to be proud about. I realise that proud streak runs deep and wide in my makeup, difficult to explain in myself as in some of the others. It’s the kind of way that doesn’t like silly lies, that ‘holds their heads up’ not for achievement or possessions as much as conduct. To read articles supposed to be dictated by Cliff making my quiet dignified father – or his genial well-spoken Londoner father – sound as if they were something akin to tramps makes me wild for their memory. For Cliff to make out he had a home where presumably he was ignored and thwarted makes me bewildered – or else long to smack his head! I had to cut off the pictures and burn the silly articles that would have only hurt and upset my husband.

  Tuesday, 2 January 1951. An unexpected ring on the phone sent us both hurrying into the hall, both with the same thought – that Arthur was ringing to tell us about Edith.* I didn’t feel too pleased when it was Mrs Howson’s sister from Windermere. She went to a funeral and couldn’t get back, and calmly asked me to ‘go and tell Evelyn’. Mrs Howson was cross. Steve has had two days in bed, and now her mother has flu, and she has an appointment at the hairdresser’s in the morning, and Mary promised to catch as early a bus after the funeral that she could. I had to climb over frozen snow that lay in banks, one side off the pavements, the other thrown up by the snow plough. The road was like black ice. Any sand and grit has been kept for main roads and streets. No one was walking. It would have been impossible to go far, and when a taxi came slowly down, fearing a skid I climbed back over the frozen snow. The roads out of town must be dreadful. I settled again to my merry job [of sewing] – and there was another ring. Sure it must be Arthur this time, I hurried to the phone, but an unfamiliar voice spoke, wishing me a Happy New Year and hoping I’d not been disturbed. One of my pet hates is not to know to whom I’m speaking on the phone. I asked, ‘Who is speaking, please?’ The voice said, ‘Well, that’s the trouble. If I say I’m Margie Robinson and live in Furness Park Road you may not be any wiser, but I’m hoping you’ll do me a little favour. I’m speaking from Kendal, have rung several people I know and they are out or something, and I’d like my mother to know I’ve decided to stay till morning. There’s a dance here.’ She giggled, ‘My auntie says I’ve an awful nerve, but I said “Oh, WVS and all that, you know”’. I said curtly, ‘I’m inclined to agree with your aunt, Miss Robinson. I’ve already been out to take a message for a friend, and that was only across the road, and I found walking dangerous. I couldn’t possibly go to the top of Furness Park Road. It’s a ten minutes walk at the best of times. I don’t know how long it would take tonight.’ She said, ‘Well, do you know anyone else on the phone who would be likely to go for me?’ I could only suggest she contacted the police station, and the policeman on the beat would probably call. I’d heard cases where they had done in case of need. I wondered how many she had rung up! I felt it was asking too much of even a WVS – equivalent to MUG so often – to ask them to risk a broken limb because she had decided to go to a dance!

  Wednesday, 3 January. Mrs Salisbury came. She looked washed out and said she had been ill at the weekend. Poor thing. She is so worried about her husband – he is only a labourer at the Yard – and says he hasn’t done a decent full day’s work in the last six weeks, and every week fears he will be paid off. There’s a big pay-off due, and finishers like carpenters, joiners, painters, etc. won’t be needed now there’s no more liners to build. I baked bread and some queen cakes, made leek soup, heated tinned peas, and cooked potatoes, and we had the rest of the cold meat. My husband was in one of his worst moods – nothing was right. I felt thankful when he said he would go out a while, though it was only to draw his sick pay at the post office.

  Friday, 5 January. Mrs Atkinson came in to tell me something that shocked and saddened me. A brilliant boy of 18 at the Grammar School, intended for a university soon, has, with a boy of 16, been committing weekly burglaries. It was in the Mail tonight. Margaret’s husband coached him for an exam – he had been off with a football accident – and he described young [Dennis] Veal as ‘impossible – a rank exhibitionist who has been thoroughly spoiled and pampered all his life’. He verged often on the eccentric. Once he rose from his bed in the depth of winter, climbed down a spout, walked 1½ miles in pouring rain, climbed a spout and shed to enter his friend’s house – to leave a note pinned to the sleeping boy’s pyjamas, and carry off his hair brush as proof of his visit. Sixteen or not, if Cliff had done such a thing – Arthur would have been too mature minded at eight for such an escapade! – I’d have taken a stick to him! What puzzles me is where, in a small detached modern house, he could have hidden jewellery, bottles of wine and spirits, and hundreds of pounds. His mother cannot have any discernment. And how could a boy of 18 be out all hours of the night with no reasonable excuse?

  There were, the Chief Constable said, ‘a number of other cases against them in which several hundred pounds worth of property was involved. He objected to bail, saying that the house-breaking offences would probably be continued if the youths were not remanded in custody’ (North-Western Evening Mail, 5 January 1951, p. 7).

  Monday, 8 January. I didn’t feel keen on the WVS Club meeting, knowing it would be a somewhat noisy ‘romp’, as it was styled ‘Song and Dance’ and a dancing teacher was coming to ‘get everybody dancing’. I never could find attraction in ‘hen parties’, dancing and making merry. In the war when I had to arrange social afternoons for Hospital Supply, I steered clear of dancing and found cabaret shows better. Quite a number of the younger members had a good time, though, and we who preferred to watch and talk enjoyed ourselves quietly, and it’s always a pleasure to meet old friends and talk. Mrs Diss is still in bed. She had a New Year party to see the New Year in and celebrate her daughter Julia’s engagement – and shared the flu she already had with a number of others. Four of them are in bed who were staying in the house, and another five are ill who were at the party. Mrs Howson and I did a bit of shopping, and walked slowly home. The worst of me once getting out is the ‘What the heck’ feeling I get. My husband was getting fidgety and worried but I didn’t feel as repentant as he thought I should be. He had tea ready. I’d said we would just have cheese and celery, honey and bread and butter and cake and biscuits.

  Mrs Howson came across to talk over the afternoon. Her mother is downstairs again, but far from well, and at 75 flu can be a real shake up. We talked of young Veal, an 18-year-old burglar. It’s amazing how that young fool has broken into so many houses, and sad he has led off a 16-year-old boy. Veal’s parents intended him to be a doctor. He was a brilliant scholar till lately, when wild unhealthy excitement seemed to have seized him, to set him off on his mad escapades. There was an upset at school 18 months or so ago when he stole a lot of expensive chemicals and pleaded he ‘wanted to experiment’, and the Head didn’t let him cut short his school career. It made him into a kind of Robin Hood hero in the eyes of a lot of boys. I wonder if that unwholesome hero worship egged him on to later escapades. Mrs Howson says even Leo [her well-behaved teenage nephew] regards him as his hero!

  Thursday, 11 January. I got an SOS from the WVS office to go and help at the clinic with the blood donors. I’d not bothered this year when I
could see the list made up, but flu has laid so many people up. Mrs Newall asked if I’d go this afternoon … I went off feeling glad of my unexpected afternoon out, even if it did mean work. I like meeting people, and today the doctor in charge, together with, I think, six nurses altogether, and two such amusing drivers, were so interesting. The doctor came from Belfast and seemed eager to talk about home. The drivers could have joined Frisby Dyke in ITMA. * They were so ‘Liverpool’ as they talked through their nose, and to add interest there was a lovely Australian sailor whom they had met in a pub last night and who ‘came along’ and was delighted to tell of Sydney and the sunshine. Mrs Newall said, ‘My God, it’s like a “To start you talking” with you around, Lasty’, but we enjoyed our afternoon in spite of the little ‘rushes’ and two men fainting and one being so bad to bring round. They seem a lot more careful about taking a pint of blood nowadays. Three who had had flu recently, two ‘high blood pressures’, and one man who had just recovered from jaundice were told ‘not this time’.

  Nella’s response to Mass-Observation’s Directive† for early 1951 revealed something of her feelings about world affairs at that time. She was especially concerned about ‘the supreme power the Americans grant to [Douglas] MacArthur. He seems to do exactly what he likes, and should never have gone over the 38th Parallel and brought the Chinese into the war.’* There was talk in some circles of resolving the Korean crisis – even the danger of Communist attack elsewhere – by means of atomic weapons, and this possibility horrified Nella. ‘I firmly believe that any atomic or H-bomb knowledge should be kept very much to some kind of [international] “control”. It’s a dreadful knowledge and should never be in any way regarded as part of warfare, or come to be considered lightly in any way.’ Occasionally she reported other people’s fears of this extraordinary new technology. ‘I met two couples who had read, as I had, about the “atomic” snow that has fallen in America, and which “might” reach England this weekend. I felt a bit overwhelmed by the way each couple greeted me – a kind of “Here’s Mrs Last; she has been to Civil Defence lectures; she will know whether it will be dangerous”.’ Nella’s reply was that nobody could know (3 February 1951).

  For the next two and a half months Nella’s diary discloses less variety and incident than previously. Consequently, the following selections for early 1951 are less abundant than those for the early months of 1950.

  Tuesday, 23 January. There was nothing on the wireless very entertaining till 8 o’clock, when there was an interesting discussion on the cost of living, though it was very inclusive and mainly reviewing. I fell into a train of thought, realising our own position was worsening. My husband still gives me £4 10s 0d a week, but everything with the exception of petrol and car insurance and licence has to come out of it, and more and more things from the chemist. I pay my rates weekly – 10s – and water and electric stove rent runs 17s 6d a quarter. It’s impossible to clean the upstairs windows from inside. I pay 1s 6d a fortnight. I’ve had Mrs Salisbury for half a day a week, up to now 5s, but realise I cannot have her much longer. I’ll have to face up to leaving what polishing I cannot do, and do with a mop what I cannot do on my knees scrubbing. Four or five cwt of coal a month vary slightly in price from slightly under £1 to about 24s, and I put 5s every week in the meter and get a rebate of 8s or 9s. A three or four weekly trip to the hairdresser’s costs 5s for shampoo and set, or 3s 6d if I wash it myself. I bake bread and any cakes or biscuits I can but any saving is offset by two pints of milk a day. Sanatogen, Phyllosan tablets,† rubbing cream or embrocation†, Allenburys Diet often work out over 5s a week over the weeks.* I try to buy a pound of soap, a tin of jam, syrup, meat or evaporated milk each week to prepare for Cliff being here soon, but even more for rising prices or in the dreadful event of war. All clothes, renewals, cleaning, shoe repairs, church or charity collections come out of my money, and oddments for the garden. I send only sheets, tablecloths and pillowslips to the laundry. I buy few sweets. We don’t smoke. My one ‘extravagance’ beyond my dear cats’ fish bits – with more potatoes boiled than ever before when they are boiled – is 1s a week for a football coupon. Started thinking it would interest my husband, and he would ‘study’ teams and do the pool form. I kept on when he lost interest.** I’ve tried not to cut actual food bills, though we often get less meat, and fish is more expensive. I feel my next ‘economy’ will be Mrs Salisbury.

  When my husband gets his very gloomy fits, he talks as if we are going to live to be 100, and our capital be exhausted. He even talks of selling the car and I don’t want him to do that. I know that if he didn’t have that he would speedily crack up. It means something more than ‘just a car’. We don’t need it, but it takes him out of himself however little we use it except in summer, and I know well he would never go out as much then and take walks on the sands or relax sitting by the sea. I would be very much against him parting with it.

  Thursday, 1 February. I’d taken a beaker of hot milk to bed and settled to write up my M-O diary when I heard frantic banging on the bedroom wall from next door and jumped out of bed to rap back to let my adjacent neighbour know I heard, and would be in. Her husband has been in bed a month, first with a very severe cold, and then he seemed to go to pieces. He is nearly blind and worrying whether a cataract operation on his second eye will be a success. He had haemorrhage of the eye when he had the operation on the first eye and lost the sight altogether. I was speaking to Mrs Helm the other day and told her to knock if he was worse, whatever the hour. I was hurriedly dressing and there was a ring. My husband was still up and he answered the door and I heard Mrs Helm say, ‘Do come. Mr Helm has fallen out of bed and won’t speak and I cannot lift him.’ My husband said, ‘I cannot come – it would upset me too much – but Mrs Last will be there as soon as she is dressed’.

  I followed her almost immediately and was struck by a pungent smell of burning – like feathers. Mrs Helm always has catarrh but either she did not smell it, or the opening of the bedroom door made a pillow which Mr Helm had clutched as he fell and which had rested against a portable radiator burst into flame. I snatched up a rug, put the burning pillow flat, placed the rug over and stamped on it, and then dragged the smelly charred mess on the landing. We couldn’t lift Mr Helm – he’s a big heavy man – so tucked blankets over him as he lay, and I ran downstairs to phone the doctor and Mrs Helm’s daughter and her husband, and all three quickly came. Knowing Mrs Helm and how very upset she gets, I’d slipped a bottle of sal volatile in my pocket, and after she had some she felt better. I made up the fire in the dining room, and had the kettle boiling on the stove, and everyone, including Mr Helm, had a cup. After a discussion with Dr Miller, Mrs Helm at last consented to shut up the house for a while and go to her daughter. Elsie said she would stay the night, and I tucked her up on the settee and made up the fire to do till morning and came home. My husband always says, ‘The slightest upset wakes or keeps me awake’, but when I peeped in his room he was sleeping peacefully …

  I thought how lucky Mrs Helm was when they could go and stay with their daughter, and she could help look after her father. I began to wonder if they would come back to their house, if we would have new neighbours. They have always been such quiet reserved people. Beyond seeing them in the garden and exchanging a few words, the dog occasionally barking, or being asked to take in parcels or messages, we hardly heard them.

  Monday, 19 February. I sighed to hear a ring and to see Mrs Howson come in with her knitting. She is very difficult to converse with. She shies away from ‘topics of the day’ or conjectures about the future. She never reads a book, and buys two 3s monthly woman’s magazines and ‘never bothers to read anything but the fashion articles’. I did feel out of patience tonight. Most times I can feel secret amusement as she talks of ‘wishing I could clear off and live in a town where no one knows me. I’d have my eyebrows plucked and wear scarlet nail polish without sending Mother and Mary into a pig’s fit, and I’d love to get a pair of those new corsets
that make you have a small waist, and I’d pad my coat basques† like in Vogue’. As her figure is round-shouldered with tummy thrust forward to counterbalance her shoulders, I felt the result would not be as Vogueish as she imagined …

  I was feeling a bit nowty as I thought of one of our favourite programmes, Twenty Questions, and even more were we looking forward to David Copperfield, when at 8.10 Leo rang the bell and told his aunt that some visitors had arrived and ‘Gran would like you to make supper for them’, so after all we listened as we planned. Of all authors, Dickens has something magic for me. I can remember my father bringing me the first few I had of his books – David Copperfield, Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby and Old Curiosity Shop. Badly printed and on very poor paper, they were a special offer at a Boots shop. I would only be about nine, at most, but had been a good reader for a long time. Being lame, I’d not a lot of ‘amusement’. The thrill and magic of other ways of life and living was as fresh as ever tonight, every artist so perfectly cast. We sat entranced as children. My husband had complained of ‘not feeling well at all’, but he seemed to forget everything as he listened.

  Wednesday, 21 February. It’s been wilder and colder than ever, and hail has rattled and beaten against the windows and the gale wind howled over from the Irish Sea. There hasn’t seemed to be any warmth in the house, in spite of a fire. Mrs Salisbury said a lot of people round where she lives have neither coal or coke. She has got two men boarders – she really has to let rooms for a while. I had difficulty in concealing my amazement when she said they were paying her £2 5s 0d each. They are brothers and share the same bed. One is a labourer, the other an engineer at the Yard, and they have lately come from Scotland to work. They live in with Mrs Salisbury’s family. How they get into her tiny living room I don’t know. One is a vegetarian and doesn’t even eat eggs. A big bowl of porridge and bread and jam does him for breakfast. He takes bread and jam and cake for his midday meal. The other has brawn etc. in sandwiches and cake. Neither eat fruit. The vegetarian takes no nuts, bean dishes etc. Their weekend meals uses up the 8s of meat. The rest of the week sausage, black pudding, kippers or haddocks seem to be the evening meal. I’ve heard of poor food in lodgings. I realised these two lads of 21 and 23 must have had some poor places when they were so delighted at the ‘good home’ they had now. Both are very religious and joined a Methodist church and attend several times a week.