Nella Last's Peace Page 17
Nella liked visiting and meeting new people, and being with Arthur and Edith, and not having to worry about whether her husband was enjoying himself. ‘This week has passed very quickly,’ she wrote on 4 June, ‘yet England seems strangely far away. I couldn’t have had a better break and I’ve begun to sleep better.’ The next day she was bound for home.
Thursday, 5 June. I’m getting the thrill I hoped for as we sight Liverpool and look down on the lovely little estates of houses. The sun is shining on them as they are laid in segments, half moons, or scattered in gardens – so beautifully planned. I’d not realised we had such well-planned building estates. They look more like America.
I had a very good journey home. There was a taxi waiting at Lime Street station and when I got out at Exchange station and asked the next train to Preston, I found I had about a minute to catch it – the guard’s whistle was beginning to toot. He flung open the door and the porter passed my case in and as it was the Liverpool to Glasgow train I went straight through to Carnforth. There were Scots folk in the carriage and one young fellow had evidently been discussing his life as a soldier and I gathered he had been taken POW at Dunkirk. The man to whom he was speaking asked details about treatment, boredom, etc., and got non-committal answers, but I felt an echo from the past when the speaker said, ‘Only Red Cross parcels kept life in us at times.’
Sunday, 22 June. We set off to Silecroft, at the foot of Black Combe. The hot sun after the shower of rain brought out the scent of new-cut hay, honeysuckle and clover till the air was drugged with sweetness and the larks seemed singing in competition, so sweet and shrill they sounded. The sea rolled up with little waves, flopping on the shore. Bathers and happy paddling children were everywhere. A lot of German POWs strolled about, a surprising number on their own and quite plainly letting any of their countrymen know they preferred it that way. I never saw such a mixed lot, a number had such brutish faces. I felt they were the type that would look on at the Belsen camp, so utterly insensate their expressions, their huge outstanding ears and flat-backed heads making them look subhuman. Yet amongst the group were men who looked like musicians, thinkers, scholars – and aimless boyhood. One, perhaps on a farm, had a working dog with him and I bet it had never known such fondling and affection. They sat in deep content, looking out to sea. They were better dressed – in dyed service clothes, but quite good fitting – and only a few had small POW patches stitched on. A number had jungle jerseys on. I thought of the WVS who had patiently put on the shoulder patches, never thinking Germans would wear them. It brought back Hospital Supply days, now so long ago. Our work and effort seem only a dream that has faded. So too has my family dream – that I had little happy boys around me. I’ve often longed for Arthur and Edith near, but a growing suspicion makes me feel it would never bring happiness to either Edith or I, unless Edith has children of her own. She will grow very jealous. I’ve always tried so hard to make her feel a daughter, but I fear she would get the music-hall idea of a mother-in-law and resent Arthur’s deep love for me.
Monday, 23 June. My husband put his head round the door this morning and asked plaintively if I’d seen his grey trousers. I said, ‘No. But why worry? Put on another pair.’ But he said his bunch of keys were in the pocket. I helped him search, but without any luck, and he went off worried, and after breakfast I hunted in every likely and unlikely place and still couldn’t find them, and felt the mystery deepen, for in a small modern house where everything is always kept in its place there are no hiding places! I looked in drawers and cupboards, behind doors – everywhere – but had to give up and go down town shopping. I took my grocery order, got fish scraps, went to the library and came home, and began to hunt again, feeling completely baffled. I told my husband I hadn’t found them and, short of throwing all out on the lawn, couldn’t think where to look. As a last recourse I went to the drawer where he keeps his books. They were all stacked neatly away, the big ledgers on top. I lifted all out and there were the missing pants, for once neatly folded at the bottom. I said, ‘I’ve got so used to tidying up after you, I’d much rather go on than you putting things away and forgetting where you put them!’ The time I wasted was unbelievable. I didn’t find the darn things till mid afternoon.
Thursday, 26 June. Mrs Higham and I sat on her lawn in deck chairs. She had been down to the Social and Moral Welfare† this morning and was a bit downcast. She spoke of two ‘wasted’ young lives and blamed mothers going out to work and their not having a home life. She is like me and bigoted about the importance of home and mother for young things.
The curate came. He is so deaf he wears an ear appliance and has odd mincing ways and affectations. I looked at him as he girled and gushed, with the feeling I could ‘throw up’, and when he said, ‘What is the matter with dear Mrs Last?’ I could have leapt in the air. I felt he was the answer to ‘Why Christianity has failed’. Thank goodness he didn’t stay long. I shuddered to think he was going to a living of his own shortly. He is called ‘little Tom’ in the parish. I prefer dignity and someone to respect. I looked at him and thought of the dignity and reserve of my two cats!
When he had gone, we talked of the lost dignity of the clergy, wondering if the ‘jolly good fellow’ attitude had been the cause of a lot of the casualness of today. Mrs Higham always causes a little resentment in me when she insists I am a Christian. I say, ‘I’m not, you know, and haven’t been since I was a girl of twelve– fourteen’, but again today she said, ‘Nonsense – you are one of the best Christians I know’, and went on to talk of our war years together and said, ‘Only a Christian could have said that – or done so and so’, as if conduct depended on any creed.
Wednesday, 2 July. It’s been wet and foggy, and poor Mrs Salisbury was in a worried mood when she came. I’ve always advised her very strongly against making a change just now, telling her to be patient till the boys of thirteen and twelve get to work before she commits herself to any further expense. I felt she has been rushed into buying this house and selling her own, for the man gave her £5 off hers and bound the new one with the same £5 she put on it. Now her lawyer, the building society and the insurance man all tell her she has taken too much on and the house dealer is keeping out of her way and she cannot contact him. You cannot point out to anyone how ragged and unkempt her little family are, how uncouth her husband, how shabby her curtains and furniture are – and how all will combine to make her unhappy in a smart neighbourhood – but I stressed the many coppers needed for bus fare for the children going to school and shopping, adding my advice to all she had already got. I do hope it will straighten out for her. She so wants to get on for the sake of the children …
I went down town for some cat bits, the last I’ll be buying for some time, and then went on to Walney. Talk about salons and witty and interesting talk in them – I’d back Ena Whittam’s tatty untidy kitchen against any. If it’s not politics – Ena is Secretary of the Women’s Unionist branch for Walney – it’s a discussion on clothes or domestic economy, and there is always her sister and several friends drifting in, and Wednesday afternoon, when they expect me, seems their At Home day. I was later today and found them deeply discussing of all things – Lesbianism! I sat and laughed and my amusement and my ‘Well, well, and all respectable married women’ didn’t offend them. Maisie, one of Olga’s friends, had had a book on sex sent from America, and a chapter was given up to the subject. I could add little knowledge, beyond knowing several ‘kinkies’ and having a strong suspicion of a few more. Maisie spoke of a ‘somewhat unhealthy curiosity about private parts’ – she is a solemn-eyed little mother of two children and her husband is even more solemn and is a Youth Club Head – a paid post. She said, ‘I don’t quite see why you laugh, Mrs Last. It’s a very serious subject.’ And when I said, ‘So are the Pyramids’, she stared. I could tell she thought it a phase of modern times. I thought of the utter ignorance of my young days, and the horror there would have been if such subjects had been discussed openly. I thought
how much better it was nowadays when curiosity was not a crime.
Nella and her husband had for months been planning a holiday in Scarborough. Despite car troubles, they arrived there on the evening of Saturday, 5 July, and settled in for a fortnight of relaxation. It was a pretty typical seaside holiday – lots of eating, evenings out, taking it easy most of the time. Sunday, 13 July was ‘Such a nice warm morning’, she wrote. ‘We sat on the front and read the papers, feeling it was just what we had hoped we could do – laze round in the sun.’ The next day, ‘another lovely heat-wave day, we had deck chairs on the sand to meet the incoming tide this morning, moving them back as it rolled up’ – she felt ‘utterly detached and carefree’. Her husband, freed from his workplace, was much less gripped by anxiety and moodiness, and during these two weeks she reported no marital tensions.
Friday, 18 July. The memory of the lavishness of Scarborough will take some forgetting – the stacks of milk bottles in milk and snack bars, the milk shakes, the cheap and good ice cream, the blackboards outside the cheaper snack bars offering bacon, mushrooms, ham and at least half a dozen varieties of fish – all served with chips – even fresh eggs and chips at several shops. The gorgeous dry cherries and plums, strawberries and raspberries, huge stacks of tomatoes, well-filled pea pods. The really remarkable show of shoes – many folk seem to recall last year the same and are buying shoes. Hot-water bottles, Wellingtons, plenty of stockings, marvellous Shetland knitted garments and lengths of wonderful tweed, rug wool in great bales, Angora wool in every possible colour, ‘quick knit’ too, and today there must be hundredweights of wool in the wool shops, just stacked in original great bundles, no display attempted. Fish of course should be plentiful, but even so the shell fish of every kind, prawn and lobsters, crab and dressed crabs, also dainty sandwiches, all fresh every day, sold by wives and daughters of fishermen who wrap all daintily and hygienically in cellophane wrappings. I’m sure a lot of jewellers, etc. must have pre-war stocks – nothing yet has been made like their necklaces, brooches, etc. – and they are fairly reasonable.
I’ve packed everything I could and when we go in for tea – we are on the sands – we will pack as much as we can in the car and pay the bill and get as early a start as we can. I’ll be glad to see 9 Ilkley Road.
Friday, 25 July. Mrs Howson came in. She hindered my work, but the rest was welcome. She asked me if I’d seen last night’s North Western news and if I’d seen Eric’s death in it. Poor creature – he had gassed himself. He was one of life’s misfits and I bitterly opposed him coming to the Canteen as cook. He had the reputation of being a ‘kinkie’, and certainly kept strange company. Yet at Canteen he worked well, and would do anything for anyone who gave him a kind word. He was always a grand help to me when we gave the Canteen parties in the Warden’s post, and would see to the fires and get the cups out and help wash up.
Saturday, 26 July. Mrs Salisbury came, full of news. She went in for the £1,400 house after all, putting the money she got for her other – £600 clear – and the £300 repaid to the building society, on to the new one. There’s a lot of sharp dealing with houses, clever ones skilfully working up prices and snapping down on deals, before folk have weighed things up. How Mrs Salisbury will pay interest and something off capital, rates, extra bus fares, the very necessary extras in such a better neighbourhood, and the repairs that are needed now, and which will increase in a twelve-year-old, very jerry-built house – they were built with a garage for under £600 – and then on top of it all work on such a close margin, I don’t know. She has two half days a week and that twelve shillings is vital, and as her husband is only a labourer and liable to ‘pay off’, it’s a great risk. I hope all goes well with her …
We listened to Journey’s End. Perhaps the dour grey day helped to bring on the fit of miseries, but I couldn’t bear to hear the finish. With startling clarity I seemed to recall my girlhood friends who died in the 1914–18 war and the memory of this last war seemed to rush back in a flood of sadness to choke me. The utter futility and senselessness of mankind, the cruelty to each other, the utter waste of it all, and not one lesson learned – unless it’s to do more destruction in less time with atomic warfare. I felt I caught a glimpse of the despair that had made poor Eric put his head in the gas oven. I felt we were all like struggling flies in a web; if we escaped for a while, it was as much as we could hope – or expect.
Sunday, 27 July. After the nine o’clock news we went and picked the raspberries that had ripened and I got a 1 lb jar and ½ lb jar filled and covered with sugar syrup to sterilise tomorrow. I felt I didn’t want to leave my quiet fragrant garden to come to bed, and my little Shan We felt the same. He had been out with me, but plainly showed he loved the cool grass to roll on and the mystery of shrub and bush to play his own little games of hide and seek. The evening seemed to carry on the sweet nostalgic memories called up by the lovely music and opening tune of To Let. Were Edwardian summers warmer, times more gracious, or only so in memory? To each his own.
My earliest Victorian memories are of being a somewhat spoilt crippled child, of plump women who seemed to jingle with what they termed ‘bugle trimming’, a vague smell of caraway seed, quite a few parrots at different houses where we went – how I hated and feared them, dear knows why – of lots of men with beards, of flannel petticoats and the weirdest washday articles on the line, too much to eat, and horrendous stiffly starched pinafores, which were a stern test of a little girl’s niceness in keeping them clean. I was nice once for quite a while, till my horrified mother found out I was leaving it folded on a shelf in the pantry as I went to school, and donning it as I came in. Perhaps the fact I could walk without a crutch when I was eleven, began to go off on business trips with my father when I was twelve – five years or so after Queen Victoria’s death* – made for a ‘lightsome’ outlook, a quickened interest in life. The hoof beats in The Forsyte Saga, the perfect, perfect productions of a land where it was always summer, thrill and hold me as nothing ever before on the BBC. Did fires burn more brightly, people always sing sweetly old ballads when asked out for the evening? Were the new-fangled Viennese bands that were brought from London to big garden parties in the country so very good? Were there so many raspberries, damp fragrant mushrooms, juicy blackberries – and so many wild sweet chestnut and walnut trees? And do children now ever discover the rows of Dickens, Thackeray, Dumas, Harrison Ains-worth, Scott or Bronté on the higher shelves of the bookcases?
When the boys were small and begged for stories, they loved best to be told ‘when you were a little girl’, of life on Gran’s farm, of trips to London and Ireland. Arthur said as he grew older, ‘You had something Cliff and I never had’, not realising they too had different memories than their children will have, that time speeds by, and only by comparing can we see how swiftly, so swiftly that as we grow older there is a little confusion. Sometimes when I’ve had a sadness, I look at my treasured snap album, often feeling my little boys nearer than my grown sons, often, alas, feeling I’ve dreamt it all, now I see them so rarely. All the striving and worry, the anxious love – all passed. Only two wise, kind little cats about now.
Monday, 28 July. We went round to see if we could find where Mrs Salisbury had moved. I cannot do with her on Saturday as my husband will be off, and will want to go out early. She lives in a big estate, built before the war, on the outskirts of town.
I really gasped to think of anyone asking, never mind getting, £1,450 for the tiny, poky little jerry-built house, built originally for £450 or less. It’s nearly half a mile off the main road, and up and down hills to her house. Then there’s about 100 yards to a bus stop – or across the main road to a Co-op, built at the same time as the estate. It was planned to have a shopping centre, but only a shop where groceries and vegetables are sold, and a little sub post office in one corner of it, an outdoor beer licence where odd packet goods are sold, and an Army hut recently converted to a Methodist chapel, offer any amenities. Small children have all to g
o by bus to school, and I don’t remember seeing for years so many small children playing round. It looked to me as if an infants’ if not nursery school was a real need.
While many different types of houses are on the estate and there are different sizes, the one Mrs Salisbury has bought is amongst the poorest and pokiest, the kind where any ordinary furniture is almost useless. She hasn’t much, dear knows. But everything looks overcrowded. I felt a real dizziness for her when I looked round. She doesn’t yet realise what she has taken on.