Nella Last's Peace Page 3

  Yesterday I got a wee ham shank for a present from someone my husband knew. I simmered it till tender and minced and it did for my husband’s tea with a little salad, and made a nice packet of sandwiches for Doug and us to take, and I packed two flasks of tea, cakes, tomatoes and apples. I had soup enough for lunch. The remains of yesterday’s kidney casserole was the base, with shredded cabbage and tomatoes cooked in it to make out – very nice too. I scrambled two fresh eggs and served them on toasted wholemeal bread, and made custard to pour over a bit of stale cake and sultanas and bake under the grill for a little sweet.

  My husband was so grumpy that Doug was coming. It emphasised in my mind the real need I’d have to look for outside contacts when my war activities are over and finished. He grows more mumpish and averse from company, and alas I’m much less patient, or perhaps more awake to the fact that my ‘nervous breakdowns’ were due to ‘repressions’ as Dr Miller said. I felt cross. I thought of all the women I knew who could please themselves more – go out alone to a whist drive or to pay a visit, invite people, not feel a criminal when not in for meals. He has got into the way of saying he never feels well on Saturday morning – wonders if it’s with having to have his tea by himself on Fridays. I was a bit curt today. I said, ‘Well, considering you had only to brew your tea and cut bread and butter, I don’t think you were so badly treated.’ It’s no use. His idea of love is for a person to always do the things he thinks, to have no ideas of their own. I’ve noticed men are attracted by qualities they admire – gaiety and fun, an independent spirit, etc. – and then proceed to alter and change the very things they admired. Doug came early. He told us the fire was out on the Empress of Russia but he said he feared the hulk was a total loss.

  It was such a lovesome autumn day and we went on the Tops above Morecambe Bay, behind Greenodd, past Gran’s old farm. I wandered off and left them and sat perched on an old stone wall, feeling the years slip away, feeling Gran very near, when I saw a little old woman bringing in a horse off the high field where I’d often gone with a lump of sugar to bring in old Tedder. Far off the Coniston hills showed on my right hand, the placid sea of the bay on my left. There was no sound but the buzz of bees and insects, and the sound of wood pigeons in the coppice. When the high mournful ‘hoy, hoya’ of a lad calling the cows came echoing, it sounded more primitive and more a part of the quiet hills than ever, and the quiet gentle beasts padded past, with only a glance at me. I felt thoroughly lazy and detached. I didn’t care whether I got any blackberries or not but my husband and Doug were energetic and got the biscuit tins we had taken full of lovely ripe fruit.

  Sunday, 9 September. Going by the date of the month, it’s just nine years since we came to this house. Time has certainly passed quickly and a great deal happened. I had a rest till lunch time, rose and had a bath and wished I hadn’t – it was a bit too warm and made me feel sick. Lunch was soon prepared – soup, cold meat, lettuce and mint jelly, stewed blackberries and custard. My husband was in rather a mood. He didn’t seem to care whether he went out or not, but I packed tea and partly to cheer him and partly for a little celebration we had been in the house nine years, I took a tin of fruit salad off the shelf and tomato sandwiches, cake, two flasks of tea and a little slab of chocolate, and we went as far as the lake side and sat by the foot of the lake. Charas from Leigh and Blackpool, Morecambe and Lancaster, began to roll by on their long journey back home. The people looked tired but happy; the country was very lovely in spite of the grey sunless day. We did not stay long. My husband had a few letters to write and 7.30 found us home. So I baked some bread. It only took a few minutes to knead and set to rise. I wrote out my grocery order and planned out next week’s work – think I’ll wash all the curtains next week, except the dining room. I’ve ordered the sweep. My husband seems to be unwilling to say whether he will do it or not and I must know. Sweeps are very busy people. I have to wait till 12 October, but it will be clean for the winter anyway. It’s begun to puff down in spite of the fact I’ve burned two 6d patent chimney cleaners from Boots. I found a few tidying-up jobs to do and then made supper and came to bed. The neuralgic pains have left my head and face, but they have left a little twitch in a nerve over my left eye – in my eyelid really – and I feel I wink at times, unpleasant but not painful.

  Tuesday, 11 September. It poured heavily at our usual closing time and everyone lingered till it was a dash to lock up and catch the last bus before the workmen’s buses started. I can hear of many being paid off, some transferred to other towns to work, some just on the dole. The Australian sergeant pilots who were going to work in the Yard, and in office as accountants, etc. till they could be gradually taken home, are going off in a bunch after all. I’m glad. It has not made things better to see other lads found jobs to occupy their time when complaints of our own townsmen of ‘having nothing to do at all’ come by every post to wives and parents. I fear there will be trouble if demobbing is not speeded up. If we have to let America have trade barriers reduced as return for help over Lend Lease, it will be a bad thing. The country will be all supplied before our lads get back into their jobs. Whatever plans were made in the past, I fear things have so changed. We are in a worse plight than after the last war, and with the discovery of the atomic bomb, every future preparation for industry as well as security will have to be taken with one eye on its possibilities. When I think of Europe’s demobbing problems, my head reels, and I wonder will we ever get straightened out? America again has emerged unscathed, her people at home unaware there has been a war, except for a little rationing and of course those who have had men in the Forces.

  I fried bacon and sweet apples cut in thick slices and there was wholemeal bread and butter, raspberry jam and plain cake. I got out Cliff’s shirts and settled to unpick and tack new neck bands on, and repairing them where necessary, ready for machining. There is no real hurry to do them, but I like to finish off one job before I start another and put it away. I’ll be able to settle down to my dollies† without having to feel that guilty feeling of a more important job. I’ll be glad when a few ‘features’ come back on the wireless – Monday Night at Eight O’clock, for one. I don’t know what I’d do without the wireless when I’m sitting sewing, when my husband has his moods, and conversations on my part peter out after vainly trying to interest him or rouse him. If I was sitting alone, my thoughts would be free to roam and wander, but it’s different when manners alone make me want to interest a person sitting and glumping.

  Thursday, 13 September. I rose early. I had to make a special trip to town to pay the Canteen bills, with it being early closing and not opening the Centre till 1.30. If things get any worse in the food line, I cannot see it being worthwhile to open the Canteen. There seems absolutely nothing to buy when there is no fish but tinned pilchards, no meats for sandwiches, and lettuce and tomatoes ‘passing’. I could not get one tin of biscuits or potato crisps, no tinned beans in tomatoes, and short supplies of dried eggs and dried milk. It was such a heavy grey day, but oranges were in the shops in plenty and the string shopping bags full, and open baskets lit up the grey streets like little golden lamps. I’d not time to go to my greengrocer’s, but there are plenty. I’ll get them tomorrow. I hear grapefruit too are to be in next week, so I’ll make some real good marmalade.

  I got really beautiful fish – lemon sole filleted – and the shopkeeper, a bitch of a woman who has insulted people terribly in the war, was so polite I felt embarrassed! I’d never have gone in her hateful shop again, but there was no queue when I passed, and my husband dearly loves filleted sole or plaice and I can so seldom get it for him. I asked for 3d of the heads I saw, thinking they were at least a pick for my little cat. She wrapped up half a dozen – in her own paper!!! – and didn’t charge me, said it was a PLEASURE!!! By Gad, I hoped when I came out feeling dazed that I’d looked it!! Nasty wretch. When things are plentiful I bet she doesn’t get much custom. I know I’ll never spend a penny in her shop. I spent the sweet coupon out of
my book. I could not get any till now beyond peppermints, and I can make good ones myself out of dried milk, etc., better than any bought ones. No cigarettes on the shop shelves, and by what I made out, few under the counter. Soldiers stopped me several times, hopefully thinking I might know a shop where they could get them. It’s high time this barter business stopped on the Continent. I know people who have sent hundreds of cigarettes to soldiers, sons and husbands and got cameras and cheap jewellery – I’ve yet to see anything worthwhile.

  I saw an amazing sight – a tall overblown rose of a woman, that sallow complexion that seems to follow a lifetime of coffee drinking, a heavy greasy Veronica Lake style of hairdressing; and her clothes – a jaunty smartness and perky hat, but never have I seen such shoddy material, and on her fat calves she had a pair of knitted red turnover socks, gartered below her huge dimpled knees, from which her full skirt swung. Her costume was black, and her black hat had an upstanding red quill, and she carried an awful-looking bag made of the same red string as her socks. Her shoes were of a heavy cloth with wooden soles. She seemed to be asking the way and when I appeared the two women seemed to make her understand I would help her – WVS seem universal aunts. Then I saw her dog, a dirty woolly French poodle, clipped like a boulevard doggie, and his bright clown eyes sparkled from under his dirty top knot. He was a pet. I’m stupid with any language, but oddly enough can always get by, and I somehow understood she wanted the railway station, and off we went. The dog liked me and came quite happily and we did attract attention! I think she must have been Dutch or Belgian, for when the train came in two heavily built Merchant Navy men got off the train. One spoke English and thanked me for ‘looking after Therese’ – and I was not sure whether it was the girl’s or the dog’s name. He seemed the most pleased to see the latter! He was very sad. I gathered he had been somewhere to identify a body washed off his ship and swept ashore by the tide …

  My husband does worry me. He grows more and more detached and really I often feel I’m not a good influence for him. When he is tired out I always feel so sorry for him and do every little thing to comfort him, but at times I wonder if it would have been better if I had nagged and stormed him out of his moods. I looked at him tonight as he sat – he surprised me by a remark he passed, and I thought I knew them all. I’ve been looking forward to going into the aerodrome on Saturday when it’s open for inspection when our big Savings push opens. A bus runs up to within a mile and a half. We could take the car and go nearer. Granted it’s a cold windswept spot, and it would be tiring walking round, but it’s a chance we will not get again to see anything like it. He spoke of a bad cold he had coming on, the need to go to Ulverston, how tiring it would be, and all the people who would be there, and we would have to stop and talk to them. I had that irritable feeling at myself for my weak streak when I heard myself say, ‘All right, if you don’t feel like going, we will go to Ulverston and then on to Spark Bridge to see Aunt Sarah.’ I felt angry with myself when I saw the look of relief open over his face. I thought, ‘Now why couldn’t you have said, “All right, you go to Ulverston and I’ll go with the Atkinsons and see the aerodrome”?’…

  The first chill of autumn makes me think of winter, and of winter in Europe, making me wish that America had had more of a share in war than she has. She shows very plain signs of her old grab and brag. The word ‘peace’ will have little meaning for them who have no shelter or warmth. The jaunty smartness, the fat unwholeness of the woman in the red stockings I met today, came back to me. She was one of the lucky ones. Diet and right food will bring down her puppy fat. Her courage showed in her eyes, her attempt to look fashionable and her shaven poodle. I thought of the old ones, the little children, the displaced people who may be suffering for others’ sins and do not deserve that they should be turned adrift, back into a homeland that does not want them. I see so little signs of the brotherhood that seemed as if, when it flowered in wartime, it would come to fruit when peace was signed. Arthur’s words come back to me. He said he would ‘like to retire to a desert island with a handful of congenial souls’. I feel at some time, in some former life, I’ve been a nun – sought the cloistered life – or maybe I’m the type who seeks it. I feel as if I withdraw within myself more and more in my mind. I feel so useless and little, my efforts so futile and feeble. Nothing I can do or think or say can really help the poor ones. My heart’s ease and feeling of being worthwhile in the scheme of things passed when our dear tatty Red Cross shop closed its doors. When I could gloat over the week’s taking, thinking, ‘So many poor men made happy for a little while’, it was always like oil in the lamp.

  Maybe I’m war weary and a bit debilitated. Certainly things have rather got me down lately, try as I may. People seem to come too close to me, bruising my mind, tiring me inside. Little things annoy me. My worries go to bed with me, sleep lightly, wake at a touch and are ready when I rise to keep pace with me all day. In spite of all my gay chatter and nonsense, I have no one with whom to talk things over. Come to think of it, the only one I can let me back hair down with is Arthur. We grew up together, poor kid. He helped share burdens from a very early age. Letters are not satisfactory. Beside, it’s not fair to worry him with formless little worries and fears. He has his own. My husband’s health, little half-formed worries about Cliff, a vague mist of fright and fear, a feeling of chaos all round, fret me when I sit quiet. I feel a feeble lifting up of my hands rather than words when I pray, a feeling that God just knows how I feel and any help would be received with gratitude by me – renewed faith, a chance to help, serenity of mind that seems to have fled me for the present.

  One great feeling though – I can read a book, taking interest and losing myself. The Herries books to me are always a delight, beyond their style, bringing alive the places I love in the Lakes, peopling them with what could be the family of Rawlinsons instead of Herries, tracing resemblance and thinking of our old ones lying quiet in Hawkshead churchyard, who lived when the Herries folk lived, feeling akin.* It is a blessing when I can read. I do my duty writing and then read on into the night, when I don’t sleep, and if I wake restless, put on the light and read awhile, blessing my room to myself, the fact I’ve not to lie staring into the darkness, afraid of disturbing my husband, who needs his sleep when he has to work so hard.

  Friday, 14 September. I felt exhausted when we were going home, but it was my own fault. I’d only had a very little lunch and nothing but cups of tea. The flies seemed to be over the food and the sink smelled till I went out and got some disinfectant. I felt annoyed when I had to pay 1s 6d again – really mad. I thought, ‘I bought this and I’ll use it’, so poured nearly half down the sink, some down the staff lavatory, and gave a sailor the rest to use in the men’s lav – then found out the pong came from the pig tub rather than the sink! I rested and ate some bread and butter when I got in, thinking of the announcement that the WVS will go on for another two years. When we have got through all the material, and Matron’s work at Hospital Supply, we will close down, but there remains still the clothing to bale and pack and dispatch to the Red Cross Headquarters – garments sent from the American Red Cross. Then there is Canteen, and when Hospital Supply closes I will do more there if necessary, but none of us will agree to be exploited in any way. We have worked constantly and uncomplainingly all the war years, but we will not blackleg or do work someone else would be paid for doing.

  Tonight as I sat I thought of six years ago when Cliff went off in the second lot of Militia – such a lifetime ago it seems; so many who went about then will never return. I had a sadness at the utter stupidity of war, and the blindness and complacency which allowed us to look on while Hitler armed and prepared, chuckling at his antics as we would at those of a clown’s, telling ourselves silly things like ‘the rolling stock of Germany is so outworn it could never stand any big strains’, shutting our eyes to the huge strategical arterial roads being made. My dad was an ardent admirer and disciple of Lord Roberts, never trusted the Germans,
and after the last war worried over the muddled peace. It’s a terrible thought that so much can hang on the way things are handled now, what dreadful results could and may come in another twenty-five years.*

  Thursday, 20 September. The years slipped back to six years ago, when war had only started and we were sewing cloth rugs, in very spare moments. When our minds were half crazed with fear for the future I loved talk. Men were being called up. Now it’s over, the fighting and killing part, but it’s dreadful to read of the food and fuel shortage and the winter coming on. Poor gay Vienna again facing famine, and all the Balkan states, which are only a name in the paper to us. Greeks, French, Dutch – all the same, hungry and cold. I’ve had to pinch and scrape at times, economise the rest, to make things go round, but have always managed to serve a tempting meal if it had only been baked potatoes and herrings, when the boys rushed in ‘simply starving, Dearie’ from school. There has been always a fire to welcome them home, a door to shut out the worries and hurts of the day, a bed for tired heads to sleep and wake refreshed.

  When I think of those poor women who suffer twice – once for their families and then for themselves – my heart aches. I’m rather glad that Mrs Woods has not been with us all these last weeks. Today she jarred on us badly when she said that half of Europe should die out including the treacherous French who had ‘let us down and didn’t deserve help in any way’. I thought as I looked at her, ‘Well, after all, if we all got our deserts you might be in prison for bribing shop girls to give you extra rations and buying everything you could in the black market.’ She thought Mrs Higham and I had ‘no sense of proportion’ when, in answer to some girl about sending the baby bundles which might be used for a traitor French baby, I said there was no such thing as a traitor baby and Mrs Higham said if there were a thousand bundles and she knew they were going for German babies it would be all the same! I felt a row was very near. We don’t think alike on a lot of subjects and Mrs Woods has that hateful air which many teachers have – that ‘Be quiet, silly ignorant child, don’t you hear me speak?’