Nella Last's Peace Page 8

  Sunday, 6 January. I feel very grateful that, as yet, it’s been a mild winter and I’ve not been as bad as previous winters. This evening as I sat warm and relaxed, I suddenly wondered how I’d kept on sometimes, feeling strength was given for war years to all who had to carry on. Now it’s all past, the efforts and sacrifices and anguish and worry, bad and good alike. Now there are anxious spirit-awaking moments – me, I’ve always Cliff in my mind, wondering if he will get a start at interior decorating. There are so many already signing on at the Exchange – men from the Yard – and returning soldiers are finding it difficult. This next demob will be a big one in Barrow alone … Wives and mothers look so anxious when they talk of their men folk being demobbed. There are few who have jobs guaranteed unless it’s teaching, Town Hall or Civil Service. I cannot help wondering, too, what will be the result of plenty of men in industry. Will it kill their dreadful go slow which so many trades suffer from, when men won’t go to work to ‘only pay income tax’, or will the returning servicemen, with individuality stamped on till it’s almost nonexistent, fall in with the rest? I don’t see much happiness in this new world. Problems are plainly increasing, without the white flame which carried us along in wartime. When war was on we all consciously or unconsciously looked forward to when peace came. Now it’s come – with post-war problems of all kinds, few houses for newly weds, Bretton Woods,* and worry over nationalisation, atomic bomb, displaced persons, crime waves, and Europe’s plight and America seeming as if she wants to be top dog and give orders, not doing anything unless she wants, reminding me more and more of Mrs Woods, who ‘would have’ things regardless of whoever else went short.

  Wednesday, 9 January. Such a wild stormy day, wild sleet and thunder. Mrs Cooper came, and the van men for the piano [which she had just sold for £30], so we got the cabinet moved out of the dining room into the front room. I watched the piano go with a strangely lost feeling. It was not a thing of wood and wires, but a large part of the ‘youth’ of the house. Dad bought it for me when I was eleven and could walk without my ugly high boot as a reward for my patience under massage and a wretched harness every night to pull my right leg after the effects of a broken hip and pelvis and its after-effects when I was only five. Perhaps if my teacher had had patience I could have learned. I’ve always loved music, and taught Arthur long enough for it only to cost me a few quarters’ lessons at a good teacher. He had music in him. Cliff, whom I spent pounds on, would never practise. Yet Arthur and several music-loving friends made up for Cliff and I. I felt very dim when I saw it go, knowing that it would belong to strangers now …

  Mrs Cooper did not go till nearly three o’clock, for moving the cabinet hindered us, for I had to empty it to lift it and then put all back. Mrs Cooper is worried, poor dear. Her husband has crawled back to work but looks very ill and the doctor seems puzzled, though on his certificate they put ‘gastric and duodenal ulcer’. Like the rest of us, she worries too about her daughter’s future when she comes out of the ATS.† She is a very good tailoress, has been engaged twice and is only twenty-two and a half now, and announces she ‘will never come back to a dump like Barrow’ and talks of the big money and good opportunities to be had in London.

  The wind howled and my head ached badly. I felt as strung up as the little cat, who raced up and down madly, and then the wild thunder crashed and it seemed to clear the air … The storm wind had made the chimney smoke puff down in gusts, so I burnt wood. I thought, ‘If I have to smell smoke, it shall at least be fragrant’, and chose cherry and oak pieces from my shelf. With four hundredweight each month, I’m thankful I can get wood and firebricks, though I don’t suppose we will get any more of the latter; the firm which supplies them – from Lancaster – has bought a coal business and as they are all eagerly bought I suppose they will go to his coal customers when he delivers coal. Mrs Atkinson is so cross, but as I point out, we have had the advantage all the war years. We should be content; and anyway all the angry things she says only upset her – it won’t alter things.

  Today when she was in, she was full of the talk of the German scientists brought to Barrow. The women of Barrow are very angry. They are housed like valued guests in Miss Heath’s lovely big house, which, as she says, she is glad now she sold just before war finished to the Co-op for a Youth Centre. They say that the Germans have valuable secrets to disclose, but when it’s to the Yard they come, we all feel they will be there for war and future destruction. If they had come to a dye works, plastic or anything like that, it would have been taken better. When they came it was said they would be housed by the Admiralty and it was understood they would be living at the Naval Depot away from people, not in the centre of the best residential area.* We listened to the wireless. Mrs Howson came in for an hour, then Margaret, who seems very down in the dumps lately, and the evening passed very quickly.

  Thursday, January 10. I’m very tired tonight. I’ve had a busy day. I had to go to the bank for my husband and to the library, so went down town early, hoping the oranges had come off the books, but they don’t till Saturday morning. I cannot get wholemeal flour at any shop. I wonder if last season’s milling is due – meal has been impossible to get lately. Last Saturday, shops had whitening† notices to say it was in. Not a scrap of fish, no meat pies or sausage, and I could not hear of any prospects of the latter for Canteen tomorrow, but I got a small case of Spam and I’ll see we have a tin left out for our shift. A neighbour gave me a big bowl of dripping for chips for the Canteen, quite enough for the afternoon, so I felt thankful. If we are as busy as we were last week we will be glad of any help. It rather looks as if Mrs Howson will keep to Clothing for the future and that means with Mrs Higham being ill, at best we will only be three at Canteen. If we have no rush we can manage, and it’s difficult to get anyone interested enough to start Canteen now.

  I called in at the WVS office. Mrs Newall was in alone, but just finishing a chat on the phone. She simpered, ‘That was my silly B—— of a husband.’ I felt at a loss for an answer. I’ve neverdiscussed her matrimonial troubles with her, but she went on. ‘I’m not going to divorce him – not yet at any rate.’ I told her of Flo and her problems, and how from threatening to sell her home over her head if she did not divorce him, he pleaded for her not to get one in view of the fact he would have to marry Connie then! Mrs Newall lit a cigarette and took a deep draw, blew it through her nose, and said, ‘Well, I really wish he would go off and sleep with my successor to his affections. It might bring him to his senses. As it is he is all high faluting and chivalrous, promising me the earth, hating to leave his home, hoping we will still keep being friends – a kind of muddled mental adultery.’ I looked at her good-humoured face. I never knew anyone with such a tolerant and good-humoured approach to life, or imagined anyone who could manage to live at peace with all and sundry who drifted through the WVS office. I’ve never heard her speak unkindly or mischievously or do a mean thing, and know no one who has taken more strays from Canteen, often putting up wives who expected waiting on, and being totally different to the pleasant RAF or soldiers we knew in Canteen. The only thing I could say about her was that her happy-go-lucky nature made her untidy. Her hair so often looked like a bird’s nest, her nose shiny, and lack of exercise and her love of starchy things, sweets and cocoa made her fat. I felt a little sadness for her. She should have had a brood of growing children. The girls would have bullied her into a semblance of smartness and the boys would have adored her.

  It was such a lovely day. I was glad I was going to Mrs Higham’s and walking through the Park. I fried bacon for lunch, heated soup and some beans left from yesterday, boiled sprouts and potatoes and made a dried egg custard sauce to eat with some dried apricots I’d soaked and stewed. I set out before two o’clock, for Mrs Higham had begged me to ‘come early and let’s have a nice long afternoon by the fire’. I met several people I knew, and stopped to chat. One had an adorable new spaniel, so gravely well behaved for he had been partly trained for the gun. I
chuckled at the offhand way its owner said it had cost twelve guineas, recalling the days when twelve pence would have been a matter of consideration for both of us! We walked together through the Park, each looking in the gardens as we passed, amazed to find so many roses and chrysanths yet blooming, marigolds, snowdrops, polyanthus, almond blossom, jasmine and flowering shrubs. I never recall so many flowers in winter. The trees etched their bare boughs and branches against the clear sky. The birds twittered so happily it sounded like singing. And there was that feeling in the quiet trees that they were all ready and waiting, that all their preparations for spring were made – they only wanted the signal to burst into leafy beauty.

  I felt shocked to see Mrs Higham. She looks so very ill and her cough is hacking and shakes her, but her back is quite a lot better. The doctor says she must stay indoors till he gives her permission to go out, however fine the weather may be. We sat and talked. The friend who is staying with her had gone out for the afternoon. I’d taken a bit of sewing but Mrs Higham’s busy hands were idle on her lap. I said, ‘You must be poorly sick’, and she said, ‘I don’t feel I’ve the energy for anything.’ I left before five and walked slowly back. I had to loosen my scarf and take my fur-backed gloves off. I felt it was brewing for a storm again.

  My husband was already in, looking petulant and irritable because tea was not brewed and bread cut, although everything else was ready, including the curtains drawn and his slippers by the fire before I went out. He sulked over his tea and I just left him alone. Moods don’t affect me nowadays beyond a point, and perhaps that point makes him indulge in them less.

  Margaret came in for the evening and brought her knitting. She really wanted some scraps of gay wool for Fair Isle†, but Edith kept all the bits I had when she finished my jumper. I feel sorry for busy-fingered girls and women nowadays who cannot get wool, rug wool (decent worthwhile stuff at a reasonable price) or little cheap remnants of good material to make up into undies or blouses. Margaret is completely worked up. I went and looked through my drawers and box to see if I could find anything and found a green woollen jumper she could unravel and knit up into something. We listened to The Count of Monte Cristo and dined. I made some tea and Margaret had cheese. We didn’t, for we had had it for tea, and I’d some nice wholemeal biscuits I got this week. Norah’s job in the Yard finishes very soon. Margaret has a good one which could lead to a good secretary’s job as she is a very good typist and shorthand writer, and has a pleasant almoner manner. Yet she’s far from happy. I feel she is one of those simple homely girls at heart, the type who are ready for marriage and home making at twenty or twenty-one, all her too-vivid lipstick and nail varnish, her passion for dancing – and cocktails when she is at dances – a very thin veneer. Yet today, when nice ordinary people are wanted so badly, there seems to be everything against them. If they marry there is little chance of setting up a home of their own, of having babies and rearing them simply, pushing their prams out in their own garden or back yard while they do their work. Yet it’s ordinary, simple people who will be the salvation of the world. I wished tonight as so often that Margaret was my girl – it would have been nice to have her bright gay personality around.

  Friday, 11 January. Three of our Polish friends came into the Canteen to say goodbye. Such nice lads. They could not speak very much English when they came and one had such a poor smashed face, which has gradually been repaired and quite a good matching eye put on. The first time I saw it I nearly fainted. I felt a frantic prayer to keep smiling at him and I must have done for he stayed to talk at the counter. It made Mrs Fletcher and Mrs Howson ill so I always served him, poor dear. They brought in each a bunch of violets and shook hands as they said goodbye. I said to Georgy, the boy with the damaged face, ‘My blessing and good wishes go with you my dear and may you find your mother and sister very soon.’ He bent and kissed me and said, ‘I thank you, little mother’ and suddenly I could have howled, thinking that soon all our Canteen friends would go and not need us any more …

  Wherever women are congregated, you hear snatches of argument and talk about the German scientists who have come to work here. While a few have the ‘wipe the lot out’ way of talking, most of the sensible women think as I do myself – if Germany has anything to offer to help build the post-war world, let them by all means do so, but to let men come to a place which only deals in weapons of war, submarines particularly, is a dreadful thing to think. Their help will make our subs more dangerous. Already it looks as if in men’s minds they begin to prepare for another war …

  Arthur’s letter made me lovingly amused. He had read the Honours List and thought his Mom should have an OBE! As others see us – bless his loving heart. He would ‘like to see my work recognised’. No one will ever know, except God Himself, the glory I’ve had, how near I’ve been to ‘hearing anything’ when that tatty little shop was going. To know every ten shillings meant hope and comfort for a POW, to gloat over good weeks, be spurred on to beg (a detestable thing which, for myself, I could NOT do), to get top price for all gifts, even if it meant doing them up, to see a mob of dirty, worn-out soldiers come into Canteen, give them lots of hot water to wash and a cup of scalding hot tea while we dodged up a tasty hot meal, laugh and jolly them and park them off upstairs for a nap by the fire in the old steamer chairs, meet tired women and cuddle little cold babies and change their nappies while their mothers found a spot in the Rest Centre and told you of London’s terror – why, WVS women have been blessed beyond any recognition. It’s like wearing the same old coat that has had a fur lining put in, a lining that is a comfort and joy, however little the wind blows. Still, it’s nice when a loved son feels that way. I am a very blessed woman.

  Friday, 18 January. Mrs Newall came in. She had nothing to come in for, but she likes sympathy and to know we all are sorry for her marriage break-up. She said an odd thing to me the other day – something about ‘Dick should sleep with her – it would soon get over then.’ I thought it a queer cynical remark, but Mrs Fletcher, who knows both Newalls, said, ‘I’d have killed that wretch long ago. He has always been a skirt chaser and has gone back when he has tired. This is the first time he has wanted a divorce and that Dorothy Crosbie is clever enough to insist on marriage.’ Mrs Fletcher said, ‘I’d not divorce him either.’ Mrs Howson was not sure – it would depend how old she was and if she had future prospects, etc. Mrs Whittam and I were ‘nose bitten off’. We would not have clung to anyone who so badly wanted to get free …

  The wind whistled and howled. My chilled toes were grateful for warm slippers. The fire leaped with wood logs piled on the little bed of glowing coal. I felt a great pity for fireless cold people, wondering as often why I should have so many blessings when poor mothers with little children, or old sick ones, had neither warmth or home. Many have no coal in Barrow, but it’s because they have burnt their stock up and the ration doesn’t go far – the Co-op only allow four hundredweight a month. I could not have such gorgeous fires in the evenings if I’d not hoarded in summer, and bought my £2 worth of little logs. I must have been a fire worshipper in the ancient days. Of all inanimate things, I love the sunshine and warm fires.

  Saturday, 19 January. I said to my husband, ‘Have you never thought of leaving me?’ I said it jokingly, but he considered it very seriously and said, ‘No – why should I? I would have everything to lose.’ I said, ‘Tell me then – what do you consider my greatest attraction for you?’ I didn’t expect him to say, ‘Your beauty’, but did think he would say, ‘Because you are such a good cook’ or at least something ‘positive’. Instead he said, ‘Because you are such a comfortable person to live with.’ I felt all flat feet and red flannel – as others see us!

  Sunday, 20 January. I’ve fussed more about food and its values and looks since war finished than I’m sure I did all the war years, and watched over my husband’s health more. Perhaps it’s because so many people I know have cracked up and, if they have not died, have seemed to go all to pieces. This m
orning when the sea birds came over in screaming clouds, he came upstairs and said, ‘You should come and see your pitiful pensioners’, and I said ‘Tip those boiled scraps in the bucket, under the crab-apple tree. If you put it by the rockery the gulls gobble all and the rest don’t get a chance.’ He said, ‘Well, I never thought to see birds fight over boiled potato peelings. They flapped round me head till I felt their wings brush me. I’m glad you don’t like to see things hungry’ – and he smiled at me. I said, ‘Ah well, you said I was “comfortable to live with”. I suppose you referred to me feeding you.’ He said, ‘I don’t know why you feel so snippy about me saying that. I meant to say there was comfort and peace wherever you were, and I think it’s the best compliment that could be paid a woman.’ I suppose it is, but it’s the demanding women who get most fun!

  Friday, 25 January. Mrs Whittam caught the 5.30 bus to her home. She said the smell of gas had given her such a splitting headache. She really amazed me – she whispered, ‘Don’t tell them anything about me killing the pig. Don’t say a word. We killed it ourselves.’ I said, ‘WHAT – and two policemen so near in the village?’ She said, ‘Ah, it’s all right. Whenever a farmer wants to kill a pig he drops a hint and the policeman is sure to be out of the way – and he gets a nice piece always.’ She added, ‘After all, we are not really doing wrong. It’s our pig. We raised it and we don’t draw bacon rations when we have our own flitch.’ I thought of the plenty of all the farmers I’ve ever known, many in lonely farm houses. I thought she would not be the only one to reason like that.