Nella Last's Peace Page 28
I’d perched on a bale of ‘Help for Britain’ clothes – the chairs and desks were all full. I must have been looking thoughtful, for Mrs Newall slapped a 3d on the desk and said, ‘Hey, Mrs Last, three pence for your thoughts – the price of everything seems to have trebled.’ I didn’t want to start anything. I could see the clock on the Town Hall through the window and it was time I was home. We all dearly love to chew things over and could have spent the afternoon giving advice, which Mrs Newall always listens to and blandly ignores! I said as I slithered down off the bale, heartily hoping I didn’t smell of the queer pungent moth balls too badly, ‘I wasn’t thinking of anything really, but the thought ran through my mind that I could never bear withered flowers around me, and as for dead ones, their look and smell would so offend my soul and spirit I’d be ill. I throw them away when they droop, and remember their colour and fragrance.’ Mrs Newall said, ‘Here endeth the first lesson, and I can see a bus coming you can catch if you put a move on’, so I dashed out. I cannot see any happiness either way for her, and she is such a worthwhile person.
One day the following spring (13 May 1949), Nella happened to encounter Mr Newall while she was waiting for a bus. He talked with her – and she was exposed to ‘his Don Juan tactics’. ‘He has an ingratiating, smarmy manner, and obviously thinks he is irresistible … How Molly Newall, so cultured, kindly, so quick to see round and through people and situations, could ever marry the toad in the first place, or spend futile longing and hope that he will come back to her, puzzles me.’ Whatever Mrs Newall’s reasons for being attracted to this man, some of her motives for not divorcing him were later revealed. On 19 October 1949, Mrs Howson, after a visit to the WVS office, reported that Mrs Newall ‘had decided to get a court award from her husband and clarify the position of the income tax. He is furious, talks about his “position in the town”, etc. Mrs Newall had said, “Perhaps, Dick, you would like me to go on a cruise and drop off the ship in mid ocean without comment – or any blame on you?” And she refused flatly to discuss divorce. She said to Mrs Howson, “Look at it from a business point of view. Dick’s superannuation fund allows for a pension for his wife if anything happens to him. I’ll not give up prospects like that so that Dorothy can throw up a job worth £500 or more a year and live idly the rest of her life, as she is doing now, while I’ve to keep on working all my days. Again, if I divorce Dick and anything happened to him, I’d not get a Widow’s Pension. I’d only be divorced.”’
Sunday, 7 November. We went through the Lythe valley to Bowness. We haven’t been recently, though I remembered it’s a place for holly trees, and recalled their gorgeous appearance two years ago before such heavy snows. They are as colourful this year, and an old man who came past as we stood to look at two giants of trees with more berries than leaves said, ‘That don’t look so good, does it?’ I said, ‘Let’s wait till after the last change of the moon in November and see if there’s a sharp frost. Remember, “November ice to bear a duck, nothing follows but slush and muck”.’ He was delighted to chat about weather ways and signs. He was a gamekeeper, or rather had been. I felt I could have spent hours listening to him. He seemed like an echo of my childhood. We gave him a short lift, and parted reluctantly. He seemed to enjoy our meeting as much as I did. I wondered if he felt a little loneliness of spirit this stark November day. Coming down the lake, we didn’t meet a car, and only a few people strolled along. At times I felt in the calm stillness we could have been the last two people left on earth.
Every little war memorial we passed had or was having a Remembrance service. At Ulverston the square was blocked and traffic had to make a detour. I looked at the rows of British Legion of both wars, and felt I could have wept. We used to feel a sad but proud ‘Never again’ feeling in the two minutes’ silence. Now, God pity us, we feel a shrinking ‘How long before another war?’ creeps into our minds. It’s so ghastly to think that people who fight, endure and suffer are not the ones to begin wars, and are so helpless to stop them. Only if people’s minds and hearts could unite and change, only if we all could unite in a single purpose of personal responsibility to each other, to life in general, towards people we know exist but never see, to teach little children the beauty of peace and concord, how to agree with each other, share things – and laugh – can simple forthright peace come.
Such a lot of vicious circles. People are cold and hungry and resentful. They ‘strike’, literally or figuratively, and cause hunger and cold to others, and then it comes back full circle to them and makes the position worse. Maybe I’ve too literal a mind, and think too much of the importance of creature comforts, but I’ve seen so many cross, quarrelsome soldiers turned into happy, laughing lads and men with mugs of scalding hot tea, a plate of sausage and chips and a fire to lay by, even if most of them sprawled on the floor. I grew to feel those chipped mugs were in some way a symbol, that our Canteen work was a little dumb reaching out to help, some seed planted that could grow into a tree of some kind. But it all passed, all the good fellowship. I looked at the rows of faces as we waited for the signal from the traffic policeman, and realised why they liked the British Legion, and why soldiers spoke feelingly of their Army life.
We were home before five o’clock. I packed the laundry and made tea, bottled peaches, wholemeal bread and butter, cress sandwiches, chocolate biscuits and cake. I began to put hair on my dollies – only a tuft on the brow and over each ear, to show out of close-fitting felt bonnets with a flare to frame their faces. I got blonde, auburn and dark hair so crinkled it cuts into lovely natural-looking curls, and I’m really delighted with my dozen crinoline dollies. The combination of felt bonnets and curls is really amusing. Their faces take on a roguishness and coyness, with every one such an oddly different look. With enough resemblance to make my rag-bag children and ‘family’, they all have that little individual look of real people. They are a lot of work, and I realise all I ‘could make for yourself’, as Mrs Howson nevertires of telling me, but when I took the four I’d finished tonight and put them under the sheet on the settee I felt as always the pleasure and company they had been making, beside the pleasure and fun they will give.
Tuesday, 9 November. There was an electric cut from 4.30 to 5. 30 – a bad time for women who had to rely on electricity to cook a hot meal for husbands coming in from the Yard. People were rushing round trying to borrow candles. I’d been lucky enough to get two gay orange ones for my brass candlesticks, thinking when flowers were done they would be a gay note, so I lit them and my tea table looked like a party! There was baked apples and egg custard, toasted tea cakes, wholemeal bread and butter and honey and chocolate biscuits, but I wasn’t hungry. I felt rather sick with bending over the wood stacking and the rush I’d had.
Now my dollies are all finished. I put the two last on the settee, under the cover to keep them from dust. All the smiling, pleasant little faces of the dollies and the kindly bear and rabbit and mousie faces, the cheerful grins of the gollywogs, seemed a very ‘live’ thing. My rag-bag children always seem so real to me. I will have a tidy dining room again – no carrier and bundles under the stairs to annoy me when I get my vac out – and I’ll get down to the big pile of real sewing I have to do. Yet making dollies seems such company, so much more interesting than dressmaking.
Tuesday, 16 November. I called for Mrs Atkinson and we went to the cricket pavilion for the whist drive. It was warm and cosy and it’s always so pleasant to meet people you know each week.* Thinking of Mrs Howson’s words made me keener to notice what people said of the new Royal baby. [Mrs Howson doubted that the birth of Prince Charles would cause much excitement.] I thought, ‘I’ll not mention it first’, and waited for Mrs Atkinson to mention it as we walked up the street – in vain. We were overtaken by two women going to the whist drive – their talk was a bitter complaint that dried fruit was in so short supply ‘yet some people seem to have got hold of plenty’. I said, ‘Perhaps they had a little sent from overseas, or saved it in summer’, but my
words only seemed to annoy them rather than comfort.
Several women come by very early bus service, from out of town, and two from Rampside had brought sandwiches and been in the pavilion since 1.30, and two groups had joined and were discussing something very animated. I went over and it was cold perms, which have reached Barrow in a flood. I was very cautious in my approach to the idea. I said, ‘I’ve heard of a good many cold perms done by hairdressers that have been so unsuccessful. They have been “out” in a week. I should think a lot depends on different hair, and personally, I’d think twice at my age of experimenting, and leave it to those with young hair.’ To hear many of them talk, it was as big a marvel as the atomic discovery, and I heard of hairdressers all being ruined in the States and Barrow ones ‘trembling in their shoes’, etc.
I had a good game – could have had second prize but three already were cutting for the 5s – the small attendance made prizes very small today. It poured as we came home and I realised I’d heard snatches of conversation of local gossip, Xmas preparations, the Australian holiday two townspeople were taking and their preparations, Mrs Horne’s lovely new evening dress, prospects of snow after Xmas, coal shortages and fuel cuts, odd scraps of shopping gossip – but not one word of the Royal baby, though they are a kindly lot up there, and many are grandmothers!
The next morning, by contrast, ‘Mrs Salisbury’s first words were, “What did you think of Princess Elizabeth’s baby boy? Won’t they be proud?” I looked at her smiling face, feeling she was the first person to look as if she really cared about the new baby.’
On the evening of 16 November the phone rang at home, and it was Harry, Will’s brother, calling to ask for Cliff’s address so that he could write and congratulate him on his success.
To hear him talk of how glad he was Cliff – Arthur too – had made good, how he had always realised the frustrations and repressions of my life and admired the way I’d reared the boys, had given life to them, never ‘cling’, etc. etc., made me feel if I’d not been kneeling with one knee on the little hall chair I’d have fallen flat, but when he said, ‘You’re a grand little person, Nell old girl’, I did squeak, ‘WHAT?’, wondering quite bitchily if there could possibly be a snag. He said, ‘I’ve been sitting by the fire, thinking of bygone Xmas times and preparations, and suddenly thought, “I bet Nell is up to her neck in preparations already.”’
Tears washed down my face as I thought suddenly of something I’d once said when my husband complained peevishly of all the fuss I made. I did used to be gallant and gay in those so far-away days. However my back ached, I put up paper decorations and let the boys do every room in their own thought-out décor. That year I’d not been well. It was just after I’d had a bad nervous breakdown that had taken the use from one foot and made it drag. I would see the strings of little blossom flowers I was making for festoons and hear myself say, ‘When I don’t make a fuss over Xmas, you can begin worrying, for I’ll be dead.’ I felt the words echo through the hall. The moon that we have seen so rarely flooded through the lead lights of the window, bleaching my hand as it held the phone. I felt my gay words so true. Some part of me is dead.
Nella often went to Walney on Wednesdays to visit Mrs Whittam, as she did on 17 November.
Wednesday, 17 November. The rain had stopped but it was so gloomy a day. Shops were lit up, and the flowers, piles of oranges, and gay-coloured Xmas oddments made a bright note. On the Channel, as the bus ran along its muddy side, flocks of seagulls looked for food left by the tide, and fished in the little pools on the sand. Their black backs looked in harmony with the dreary, mist-covered land and sea. I’d got Mrs Whittam’s shoes, and some stockings she had liked and changed her mind about getting after reaching home. I thought I’d call at one of the girls’ houses first – she will be sure to want company on a dreary day like this.
All was strangely quiet and when Olga opened the door, her face was strained and white, and I saw Mrs Whittam, whose fingers were flying over a gay-coloured rug, looked sad and worried. I said, ‘Where’s Ena?’ and they said, ‘Gone to the hospital to see Billy’ (her husband). ‘He was rushed to the hospital in the night, with tetanus – lockjaw, you know.’ About a fortnight ago he took the end off a finger while chopping turnips. He has had it dressed and kept covered but they are a slap-happy family, and last week when I said Billy should go to the doctor when it didn’t heal after a week, they pooh poohed the idea. Billy has worked like two men all summer. He wants to make this little farming venture a big success, and with not being too used to animals, has had to learn. He has gone in for stock feeding, bringing young animals to graze on the salt flats, bred pigs, looked after newly cultivated fields, and started a hawker’s business for two days a week to sell his own produce, as well as going to market two mornings a week. He has had to rely on part-time workers all the time for any help too, and has looked so pulled down lately. He was all right last night and went to the pictures in Barrow, and jokingly began to help them when they got the rug frame out on their return – they have had a real turn-out of unwearable torn clothes that had been pushed in cupboards and a drawers, and wanted to finish the little gay woollen runner-rugs to put on the children’s bedroom floors before winter came. Ena took the dog for a little run and when she came back Billy was a shaking, jerking wreck, unable to speak. When Ena phoned the doctor and gave his symptoms, he said, ‘Little use my coming. He needs hospital at once. I’ll have the ambulance there in a few minutes.’ He is dreadfully ill. They cannot bring down the abnormal temperature, in spite of every injection and drug they are using.
Anyone can go in at any time. Ena was asked if she would like to stay all night and had come home while I was in to change her clothes and shoes into something more suitable than her best ‘new look’ clothes. I felt a slight shudder as I looked at the sombre black coat and hat she had chosen with only a blue ostrich feather to relieve the gloom. It hung over the brim, damp and lank, and added its little note of sorrow. How Billy hated that rig-out, and how he swore in his rage he has always seen Ena in gay colours, which suited her flamboyant bulk. I said impulsively, ‘Don’t go in that rig-out again, Ena’, and added a bit weakly, ‘You mustn’t make it shabby going out in the rain and then sitting round in it if it pours.’ She was going out in an old pale one, with a shabby rose-coloured dress under it, and I said, ‘Put your coral earrings on, Ena. Sick people are fanciful, and you look so nice with them on’ …
I always chuckle at the appearance of Wilf, a policeman friend of Billy’s who loves pottering round – at times he can be quite a good help. Dressed in his smart uniform as a mobile policeman, he looks like a film star. He has the features of a Greek statue, the poise of an aristocrat. Anyone would say, ‘There goes a leader of MEN.’ Tousle his hair, put him into an open-necked shirt, tattered jacket and pullover, baggy pants tucked into old rubber fishing boots – and hear his uncultured, boyish vocabulary – he is a different person.
Thursday, 18 November. I had a little rest after I’d washed up, but set off early for Mrs Higham’s and walked slowly through Cros-lands Park. The sun shone so brightly, giving beauty unexpectedly to everything, even the wet, sodden leaves underfoot, where it touched highlights of lovely brown and sullen yellow in the soggy mess. It gave the fields a spring-like green, any berries on the trees a gayer scarlet. It was Mrs Higham’s birthday. I looked at her presents and realised the suspicion that had sometimes crossed my mind that Mrs Higham, left strictly alone, had not very good taste became a certainty! She is fifty today, and growing very plump, yet her fancy had been taken by a vivid tomato-red twin set of thin, clinging woollen material, and she had asked her husband to buy it. She had chosen a bright, gaudy tartan umbrella and a harsh lime-green blouse, and a pair of most peculiar spotted fur gloves as presents from her sister and parents, and an apron of about the deadliest pink plastic I’ve seen. She has had two rooms decorated, and I politely admired them, but my taste doesn’t lie in very panelled walls for small living rooms. I
’d tire of their cut-up look, and prefer plainly papered effects …
We listened to the discussion ‘Do we do enough for old age?’ I’d got interested before my husband came through from the other room, where he had been putting up wages.† As usual, I felt a short wireless programme merely scratched the surface, and little allowance was made for individuals – or perhaps it’s my lot to meet odd ones out of old ones. Someone once persuaded Aunt Eliza to go to a pensioners’ club afternoon – there was a very good social effort in Barrow before ‘Old Pals’ and ‘Over Seventy’ afternoons began. The person who took her had extolled the pleasures of these afternoons, and I too said, ‘You go, Aunt Eliza. I’m sure you will enjoy it.’ She went – once – and when I asked how she had enjoyed it, she lifted her hands and then dropped them; she had curious expressive gestures and shook her head and said, ‘Dearie, it was awful, a big room full of musty-smelling old people who SANG when they were TOLD to do, and beat time and tapped their feet, and a patronising fat woman with a silly hat put numbers in a hat – everyone had a number on the ‘resister’ – and drew out thirty-six numbers and gave them round, and they were tickets to go to a free picture matinee. She couldn’t have been more “grand” in her manner if it had been bread tickets.’ I said soothingly, ‘Never mind, next time you go it might be different’, and got a withering glance from her lovely grey eyes that said plainly there wouldn’t be a next time.