Nella Last in the 1950s Page 2
Wednesday, 4 January. Mrs Salisbury came earlier and didn’t stay for lunch. Her eldest boy has started at the Co-op dairies, helping deliver milk – at 34s 6d a week! It’s only a put-on till he can find somewhere to serve his time as a joiner or woodworker of some kind, but it means he is in mid-day and needs a hot meal. We worked busily, only stopping for a cup of tea and biscuits at 10.30, and I was glad really she wasn’t staying for lunch, when the butcher didn’t come before lunch, for we managed with a slice of chopped ham fried with an egg. I heated tinned tomato soup and added milk, cooked cabbage and potatoes and heated some raspberry blancmange left from yesterday for my husband. I had a cup of tea.
It was such a nice afternoon and we went out early and got as far as Bowness. Shafts of sunlight fell on fell and hill like magic fingers, making golden patches on the greyness when lighting up faded bracken. Little white-capped waves slapped on the shore, and there was a keenness in the air which hinted at snow on high ground. I got some locally made butter toffee, and met an old friend who lives at Greenodd, and she said she did all shopping in Bowness, registered there, and when the weather was bad got her groceries put on the bus. When I went in the front door I found my Co-op quarterly dividend cheque had come. Coal and milk, cat biscuits and compost maker are about all I get generally, making a total of about £6 I spend each quarter. Lately I’ve often had to count and recount my housekeeping, feeling sometimes I must have lost 10 shillings. There’s been Allenburys Diet,† Sanatogen† *Sloan’s Liniment, Disprins†, Frugoclone* bought every week, or when needed, and I’ve got into the habit of calling in the Co-op chemist’s as it’s on my way home from the Library. I felt ‘No wonder I’ve felt so hard up at times’ when I saw I’d spent over £13 this quarter, though that included extra milk – I always get two pints a day left lately.
I fixed some fillets of plaice and we had just finished tea when the phone rang, and it was long distance. It was Robert Haines, to say he would come this weekend if convenient – arrive off the mid-day train from Euston, which gets into Barrow about 6.40 – and leave for Leeds on Monday afternoon. I felt so happy he could come. I’ve only to change the beds – he can have mine and I’ll make the small one up in the little front room. All is aired. I’ll only need to bake on Friday and we plan to take him out to The Heanes for lunch Saturday if it is fine, and somewhere else on Sunday so he can get a glimpse of the Lakes. I put down the receiver and turned away, and then realised we wouldn’t recognise each other unless he sees some resemblance to Cliff – or in odd snaps! I’ve never even seen a photo with clear enough features; any I have had have been taken at a distance. As I sat down I thought suddenly and with amusement of the time I went to meet a girl Arthur knew – Agnes Schofield from Blackpool. Off my mind galloped on memory lane. I wonder where she is, if still a doctor’s secretary at the dental clinic, still so dependent on advice from outsiders, always searching for someone ‘to love me’. If we could only have as fair and sweet a day – or days – at the weekend as we have had today. Robert could have a nice look round, though I’d have really liked to give him an extra good time. If he doesn’t have to return to Australia till March, he may possibly be able to come again. Train fares ‘off his schedule’, though, might be expensive. I wonder if his grant is a good one from the British Council of Arts.
Friday, 6 January. The train was only five minutes late, and I stood by the exit wondering which of the men walking alone from the train towards me would be Robert. From the end, as the crowd thinned, a slight, rather diffident looking man approached me and with a slight stammer said, ‘I hope you have not been waiting long in the cold, Mrs Last’, as if we had met before! Robert is 35 – odd how Cliff generally has friends about five years older. I wonder if it’s the case of the difference in his and Arthur’s age. Could be, I suppose. He is extremely likeable and walked round touching or looking at different things, saying, ‘Cliff so often thinks of home and you. It’s his deepest concern at times when he feels a bit down that he cannot pop in and see you, and talk things over. You know I think the chief attraction of Cliff is his love of discussing every and anything. He is so interested in life from every angle.’ I sighed as I thought, ‘No one knows better than I do that attraction possessed by my two sons.’ I’m thankful little Peter shows signs of that same interest. All this ‘strong silent men’ talk leaves me cold. Any I’ve met have been too dumb – or too short of interest in things – to be anything else.
During the weekend, Nella and Will showed Robert around the Lake District – Kendal, Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside, Hawkshead and Coniston Water. Late on Sunday afternoon they were back at 9 Ilkley Road.
Sunday, 8 January. Robert fits in so well he might be one of the family. He so loves to talk, as we discussed conscientious objectors, Russians, Americans – whom he seems to detest, saying most Australians do! – flying saucers, the Australian way of life, the possibility of him living in London, even washing socks to keep them from shrinking – and things like central heating crept in. The day seemed to fly. My husband said it was just like when Arthur used to come home weekends! We settled by the fire, looking over old photos of Cliff and Arthur and a pile of odd snaps and cuttings of the war I’d kept, though tonight I did have a clear-out, feeling many more are for scrapping. I gazed in wonder and a little sadness at some of the earlier war snaps of myself, feeling that these last ten years have drained vitality and humour. Each I handled seemed to bring a train of memories of different little incidents and events and people I’d worked so happily with. Robert had a few chuckles over snaps. He has a few leg pulls for Cliff on his return!
My husband went to bed and Robert and I drew up our chairs. Even for an Australian, he is naïve and boyish for 35, and I had a little sadness as he spoke of future plans as if he was only 18, with golden youth ahead instead of past. He spoke of his fear of the future, whether he should marry, have children in today’s chaos when to thinking people so many problems and difficulties beset youth. As I pointed out, they always did to a varying degree. I pointed out the quiet leisured peace of The Forsyte Saga, which we had discussed as a little cameo of life earlier in the evening. I drew a word picture of the countryside as I’d known it, before motors and planes, and earlier still before trains when Gran was a young bride – earlier still in Rogue Herries’† pack horse and bridle path days. I said ‘It was said trains, later motors, would poison the air’. Every generation has its bogey, and fears of the future, but we who have lived through found compensations somewhere, and did live through.
Friday, 13 January. Wherever I’ve been today there’s been little remarks about the loss of the Truculent.* Barrow people always feel they own a bit of the ships and subs they make. George came in and he had been talking to someone who had grown old in submarine building and had said, ‘If those lads were in reach of their equipment, they would be up and floating like ducks.’ I shivered as I said to George, ‘In the dark cold water, no ship near to pick them up, it would only prolong the agony.’ Such a dreadful senseless accident, no combat, no ‘they died gloriously’, as much an accident as if crossing the street and been knocked down by a bus.
Tuesday, 17 January. I got the pantry and kitchenette cupboards cleaned out this morning, and it took me most of the morning. I had cold meat and macaroni pudding to do, and opened a tin of soup and added grated onion and a little Bovril, and cooked frozen peas and potatoes. My husband went down to the doctor’s and saw Dr Miller, who is better after his operation. He told my husband the same thing – that his cure is in his own hands. It’s what he thinks and does for himself, rather than drugs and potions, but added too he realised how difficult it was to conquer ‘nerve’ health when one got low.
Wednesday, 18 January. We set off at 1.30 to go to Windermere for the two prints Robert wanted for Cliff. It was lovely motoring along the glassy lake, where shadows met on the steel dark water, not even a boat or a bird to mar the smooth stillness. Farmers worked busily everywhere. Hedges that were not done earlie
r are being cut and trimmed, fields drained, and the queer machine that cuts a deep neat furrow for the draining pipes fascinates me – so much time saved. Lime, dung and phosphates were being spread, with a speed that hinted the workers smelled snow in the keen air, and snow ploughs were on corners of waste land all along the roads. If we don’t get a severe frost soon, grain will be poor next harvest. It’s far too ‘proud’,† as the old ones say. It needs to be ‘backened’† or else there will be too much stalk. I love the little Lakeland towns in off season. The shops are so attractive, with expensive fruit, flowers and vegetables as in a city, things we don’t see in such profusion in Barrow, and the cakes, fish, game and poultry are always a delight to a shopper with a long purse!
Thursday, 19 January. I shocked and offended Jessie a little. They had been talking about Priestley’s broadcast, and though Jessie is a real Conservative, I could tell Priestley’s kindly humble puppy philosophy had affected her.* She said, ‘Don’t you like him?’ I said ‘Ah yes, as a playwright and real kindly man, he has no peer, but he does see life through rosy spectacles, which, though cosy, is not realistic nowadays. We could do with lots more like him. They are a good leaven.’ Jessie said, ‘Sometimes you are very cynical. I either like people or I don’t’ and Mrs Atkinson agreed. Mrs Atkinson said a bit crankily, ‘Now if Mr Last had only been interested in cards we could have played whist and I wouldn’t have missed going to the whist drive so much tonight.’ I said, ‘And if he only had wings, he would be able to fly’, and joined in the laugh, but thought of what a lot of things he didn’t do or want to do!
Saturday, 21 January. It was bitterly cold, but the sun shone, and we went round Coniston Lake. The day had that newly washed crystalline light that Hugh Walpole so loved and described so lovingly of Derwent, Skiddaw and round Keswick. The hills seemed to drowse in veils of soft amethyst to deep sepia shadows. Swale† fires nursing under the whin† and dead bracken made long plumes of smoke that rose up into the still air like fantastic fir trees, higher than the hills in the background. Age-old grey walls were jewelled with emerald-topiary from little tufts of green moss, and orange-yellow lichen where the sun rays picked out the colour. Evergreens glistened as if every leaf had been washed and polished separately. Horses’ coats shone like burnished metal, and the hill sheep’s wool dried in the keen wind and made a little shimmering nimbus round them as they cropped the grass, or lay quietly resting. In sheltered fields fresh hurdles made folds for the expected lambs, in the rude shepherds’ huts. The glint of straw could be seen stacked and piles of turnips under rough shelters were ready. I stood by the smooth quiet lake, thinking how Robert would have loved to be with us today. Nothing stirred or broke the perfect stillness. The sun sank lower and brought fresh beauty as its light crimsoned the delicate tracery of birch and beech, larch and oaks against the clear blue grey of the sky. The nut trees looked strangely out of place, their fringe of catkins giving them the look of trees in a Japanese print. On the east and quiet side of Coniston Lake there’s several well built, stone summer bungalows. A year or two ago a garage was built by the largest one, a telephone installed and a boat house built for a little outboard boat. Today smoke curled out of the chimney and the place had a generally lived-in look. I wondered what kind of people lived in that lovely peaceful place – perhaps a writer who wove the calm, serene beauty of Brown Howe and the fells into writing, perhaps only a very tired person or persons. With a companion of one’s own way of thinking, life could be very pleasant, for books and the wireless could make up for other entertainment.
Thursday, 26 January. My husband decided to go to Ulverston on the bus. He wanted some ironmongery ordering, and I felt Mrs Higham’s visit was going to be like an old time one. She was in a humour I’d never seen her in before – a bitter ‘What’s the use?’ kind of way. I felt anger for her when she told me, and a realisation of what makes for strikes and frustrations. Mr Higham’s ‘Head’, an old school friend of mine, began to be ill about the time my husband did and his wife and I had been worried for some time previously about their health. A Cost and Estimate office has few but very experienced men, who each take different branches of ship building, and while Jimmy has been ill, his work was divided up between three of them, Mr Higham and two others, and as that meant more journeys to London, Sheffield and Rosyth, it meant hundreds of hours unpaid for the work had to be done. Now the doctor has given his verdict. Poor Jimmy is doomed – some kind of kidney trouble as well as a weak heart. Promotion has always been the result of such cases, with a fresh man at the bottom. In this instance a curt note to each to say someone is being sent from London to take charge – and no thanks for carrying on for so long – is the only result, and it’s made them bewildered and angered, and a feeling gone of feeling part of all the effort Sir Charles Craven [Chairman of Vickers-Armstrongs 1936–44] built and fostered amongst the men he gathered round him. They knew if orders were to be had, he got them. Once a ship barely cleared expenses – report put profit at less than £2. If men slacked, his language was something to fear – he had been a Naval Commander. Since he died the Chief Directors may be clever, but they are singularly colourless. We talked of leadership, of understanding that was a mixture of wisdom, that had to be first born in a person, then polished by contact, tolerance and good feeling. We sat up to the fire like Cassandras as we wondered with sadness where all the laughter ‘working together’, that purpose that got things done, had gone, which we knew in the war years.
I began to get fidgety. If my husband said he was going to climb onto the roof I would welcome it – or any thing he wanted to do – as a sign he felt interest, but when I know how easily he is upset, I don’t like him out long on his own, and he was about 1½ hours away. Mrs Higham could see I felt uneasy, but understood. Perhaps because she was so upset over her husband’s being treated as he had been, little barriers went down. I know so well why my mother’s family were called ‘proud’ Rawlinsons. It’s not really the right word for the feeling we have. It’s a mixture of distaste that people should come too close into things which, for loyalty, pity, even love, we consider intensely personal to us, and a feeling that, after all, everyone has their own troubles and worries and don’t want ours, all mixed up with a queer Pagliecachi ‘laugh, clown, laugh’.* Mrs Higham said in a gentle tone, ‘You are more worried than you own, Lasty, aren’t you?’ The old wartime name, her kind voice, made tears roll down my cheeks and I nodded. I said, ‘Um, um. It’s a lane that has no ending, but we all come to one sooner or later, don’t we?’ We sat and looked in the fire, as if we expected to find a solution there. She said, ‘You will have to get out more on your own. You know you are beginning to show strain.’ I said, ‘Well, aching bones don’t make for peace of mind. It will be better when he gets his glasses and can read, and when spring comes, for if I go out and work in the garden, he will come and I’ll have to make an effort to work with him and take no notice of his odd little ways.’
It wasn’t that we had a real good talk as much as little wordless silences that, when people know each other well, mean so much. She wants me to join the Fellowship Circle, a weekly meeting at St Paul’s Church. I said I’d think about it, feeling I shrank a little with memories of things I’d tried to join and interest him in, when either he had offended people with offhand keep-off ways and sat morose and alone, or walked out and never gone back. I made tea and we began, for Mrs Higham had a friend calling at her house at 6 o’clock. I’d baked some crusty rolls. We had them buttered and lots of honey on, laughing at each other’s crunching and enjoyment.
My husband came in exhausted, but I didn’t fuss, just helped him off with his overcoat and made him a cup of scalding hot tea by the fire, and then we began to ask him about Ulverston on market day. He had met a former girlfriend of Arthur’s, never married, and invited her down. I nearly gasped aloud. He had been so against the friendship and gone the whole bundle in condemning Eileen for a ‘flighty, tiresome, man chasing baggage’ etc!
; Friday, 27 January. Cliff sent me Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, and I’m deeply interested though not read much. I felt a bit nowty† as I got into the car to career along cold wintry roads with my husband in a black mood when to get him interested was like trying to strike a match on a patch of damp moss. I thought longingly of the fire and my book. We went up the Cumberland coast to Millom, today so bleak and windswept, the hills beyond in grey-black silhouette against the wintry grey sky, the Irish Sea so wild. The tide was going out, leaving a wide band of snowy foam, and the sands were left in glistening swathes where all had frozen as the last wave washed over. No wonder sea gulls seek food inshore, and sit on roofs and chimneys on the lookout for scraps. It’s a nice run with switchback hills. It’s a bit odd when both of us tend to nerviness that we love flying up and down hills! When we stopped at Millom we had a cup of hot tea before beginning to walk round, so though it was so cold, we didn’t feel it as bad as we would have done. I bought a small whistling kettle for 2s 9d – sale price. I paid more for my other before the war, and grieved when I found my husband had taken it for the shop, for on the red hot stove it soon burned through. I plan to be a gypsy this summer if it’s at all fine, taking both lunch and tea outdoors whenever possible, either to Walney when warm or to sheltered Coniston Lake. My husband doesn’t worry or brood as much outdoors and the fresh air will do him good.