Domestic Soldiers (10 page)

If Edie were given the authority, she would have extended rationing to even more goods than were already officially controlled. She believed that rationing would stave off wasteful behaviour, especially the wild abandon with which the residents in her block of flats squandered bread. A continual complaint of hers was that the English (she was South African) wouldn’t eat day-old bread and that she regularly saw entire loaves thrown in trash bins.

Rutherford supported those who advocated adding bread to the list of rationed items, but, as bread was generally considered a staple for working-class diets, this was such an unpopular move that the government postponed making such a decision until after the war. Instead, it incrementally increased the extraction rate of wheat in flour to 85 per cent, turning the ever-popular white bread into an unattractive shade of brown and resulting in what most people
considered the largely inedible ‘national wheatmeal loaf’. The Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin, pointing to the middle of one such loaf, complained at a meeting of the War Cabinet that the bread was ‘indigestible’, and let out a belch to make his point.
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About 86 per cent of the population, including Rutherford, agreed with Bevin.

As it did with the national loaf, the wartime government sought to make the most out of fabric and other materials destined for the consumer market, with the so-called ‘utility’ products introduced in 1942. Like the National Loaf, Rutherford heartily disliked anything utility. It could be that she, like others, recoiled at the term itself. It was unattractive, it certainly had no glamour to it and, indeed, ‘utility’ seemed somehow to evoke all the gloom of austerity in one word. In utility, fashion took a backseat to thrift: embroidery and appliqué work were forbidden, the widths of hems and sleeves standardized, the number of buttonholes and pockets reduced (a fact that irked many men) and socks were shortened, to name some of the design limitations. In an effort to combat the gloom of style restrictions, the Board of Trade went to respected London fashion designers for smart designs that required little fabric or materials. The same principle applied to the entire line of utility goods, which included furniture, household linens and crockery. Many women, once they got over the initial revulsion of the word, with all its connotations of uniformity and ugliness, found that there was actually a reasonable range of choice and style, as well as quality.

Rutherford, however, was unmoved. To her, utility meant lack of quality, and she did her best to avoid it. Edie rarely held back opinions in her diary, a fact
that M-O seemed to appreciate. When M-O sent a note thanking her for her ‘piquant observations’, she chuckled heartily, as did her husband. ‘Well, I say just what I think,’ she explained and then added, ‘If everyone did, I reckon this world would progress further.’

Indeed, Rutherford was certain that the shoddiness of such products was behind the scene she witnessed in a local shop. ‘Yesterday’, she wrote, ‘I saw something happen which I have up to now only had happen to me in a nightmare.’ Edie was waiting for a woman in front of her to be served, when, ‘Suddenly her pink silk knickers fell on the floor.’ Shocked, the woman shot a ‘wild glance’ around to see who was nearby, gathered up the offending knickers, then stumbled behind the counter and into a backroom. ‘I bet they were Utility pants,’ Edie joked.

During the war, and until 1954 when rationing was finally lifted, the price and availability of food, furniture, clothing and other scarce commodities were as much sources of conversation (and grumbling) as the weather. Irene Grant often wondered where the rabbits she used to buy in the butcher’s had disappeared to, and nearly all the women were regularly indignant about the price of less-than-appetizing produce at the greengrocer’s. Grant, Bridges and Rutherford all worried over how to feed their hard-working husbands on the meagre meat rations. Like most women, their solution usually came down to sacrificing their own rations to their husbands. Five years into rationing, Irene’s daughter Marjorie wondered wistfully, ‘What did we used to eat in the days before the war?’ Her mother responded with a mouth-watering array of pre-war foods: fresh fish, sausages, fresh tomatoes, bananas, mushrooms and fruit. Still, despite the maddening lack of variety,
Irene was thankful for rationing and points; she knew that without them, her family would have starved.

Rationing and scarcity required a great deal of ingenuity and skill on the part of the domestic soldier. Women had to navigate the uncertain food supply and come up with tasty and nutritious meals to feed their families – ideally without letting their families know how frustrating and difficult the task was – and Nella Last excelled at all of it. Her ‘Gran’ had taught her many cookery skills that stood her in good stead amid the austere restrictions of rationing. Nella was so successful at keeping her husband in the dark about her economies that once, at the beginning of the war, he chastised her for seeming to disregard the scarcities. ‘It’s time you realized there’s a WAR on,’ he scolded her after a particularly enjoyable lunch. She only laughed and told him not to worry, as it was well worth the happiness it gave him. His ignorance also proved her skill. Privately, she wondered what she could have done to make the meal any cheaper: two days’ soup, toast with a scrape of marg and some leftover herrings on top, and apples that had been given to them cost her a mere 6d.

Nella was determined to make her home a shelter against wartime conditions and privations for her husband and her sons, when they visited. She saved ‘bits and bobs’, an egg white here or the rare tin of fruit there, for months in anticipation of such visits or other special occasions. Despite shortages and rationing, she made her sons feel loved and special by creating festive pre-war meals with ersatz ingredients, culinary tricks and thoughtful management – and a colourful spray of flowers to complement the experience. Her sons marvelled at her abilities and often praised her
for them – little gems of recognition that lifted her spirit. Their ‘cries of delight’ over her domestic genius were ‘enough to recompense for hours of thought and work’, she told M-O.

While Nella craved the praise and recognition, she also made sure to create a certain mystique about her talents. ‘It does not do to let men know about “domestic economy”,’ she wrote in her diary. At the same time, as more and more women entered the workforce or volunteered more of their time during the war, there was a push to get men to do more of their share around the house. A comment in
Woman’s Own
magazine may have made some consider that their husband’s help in the home was actually a patriotic duty during wartime. The magazine asked:

Yet there was also a palpable sense that letting men in on the ‘secrets’ of women’s work might destabilize the home and women’s position in it – and at the very least, create more work as a result of men’s domestic incompetence.

Comedic Mrs Fusspottle, a feature also found in
Woman’s Own
, famous for her wartime gaffs, such as spreading obviously ridiculous rumours about the IRA ‘pinching our barrage balloons’, related a humorous story about leaving her brother-in-law, Chalmers, in charge of the home for a few hours. It all started when Chalmers told her that women’s work in the home wasn’t difficult. In fact, he said, it was all a lot of
‘female propaganda’ designed to make men feel sorry for their wives, and once husbands found out that their wives in fact did very little, the ‘divorce courts will be working overtime’.

No self-respecting housewife could fail to pick up the gauntlet after such provocation, and thus Mrs Fusspottle left him with a list of the things she and his wife did on a daily basis. ‘You can’, she told him,

But that was not all. After that, Chalmers could,

Mrs Fusspottle and her sister came home to find ‘Chalmers in a sweat, all mixed up with furniture and carpets and brooms and smeared with black lead, swearing to himself, tripping over things’.
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He’d put his broom through a pane of glass, knocked over a lamp stand and smashed the shade, spilt coal dust and ashes over the floor, broken two cups and a glass and plate while he was washing up, fallen over the pig wash bucket, and ruined dinner. So, lesson learned: perhaps it was not a very good idea to let husbands in on their wives’ daily round.

On the other hand, a woman as talented as Last in domestic arts and – especially in wartime – those of scrimping and saving, was obligated to pass such wisdom to other domestic soldiers. She sent advice to Ambrose Heath, a culinary expert on the morning radio programme,
Kitchen Front
, which offered recipes and tips on rationing. Perhaps to enlighten and assist those at M-O, she also sprinkled her diaries liberally with detailed recipes. And certainly, her skills were welcomed among the women at the WVS.

The domestic know-how that helped her feed her family during the difficult inter-war period had once gone unnoticed to all but herself. In the 1920s and 1930s, Nella felt it unrespectable to let neighbours know that she employed what she referred to as ‘dodges’, or economies that saved the family money but did not scrimp on taste or style. In wartime, however, this changed. Under the restrictions of rationing, those ‘dodges’ became badges of honour.

When a colleague from the WVS appeared on her front step in late-August 1941 and asked Last to become an ‘advisory cook’ for mobile canteen units in Barrow, Nella was incredibly flattered. Having worked hard, day in, day out, managing a home and family with little encouragement or praise before the war, Nella slowly began to realize that the same domestic duties that had been taken for granted by her family were actually skills and talents worthy of notice. Indeed, something that she did well, something that defined her life and experience as a housewife and mother, was now flush with value. It was, as Nella might say, a ‘tonic’ to her spirit and a boost to her self-confidence. After Last accepted the offer, and the colleague had gone, her husband wondered aloud at the newfound
vigour exuded by his wife of thirty years. ‘You know, you amaze me really,’ he said, ‘when I think of the wretched health you had just before the war, and how long it took you to recover from that nervous breakdown.’ Nella wasn’t surprised.

For the first time in her life, people recognized her, and with each attempt to contribute to the nation’s fight she found herself more confident and more independent. Her health improved, and the woman who could not, or would not, leave the house without her husband now had an excuse – and a patriotic one at that – to strike out on her own. With each step forward, she found a voice and camaraderie never before experienced. After Will commented on her energy, she thought to herself,

The war gave her an excuse to break free from living within the boundaries of her husband’s expectations, moods, whims and desires. More and more, Nella stood up to Will instead of giving in ‘for the sake of peace’. His ‘petulant moods’ that previously had made her ‘run round trying to get him in a good humour and worry and worry for days’ now only elicited ‘indiffer-ence’ or sharp responses. As a domestic soldier, she was careful to make sure her husband’s morale didn’t falter, but once she ensured his relative comfort she did not have to sit at home and watch him mope. Called out on national service, she lived according to the motto, ‘The WVS never says no,’ and found herself involved in a
number of rewarding projects, meeting a wide variety of people she would have never had the opportunity to know in the past.

Will, on the other hand, seemed content to sit by the fire, vacantly staring at the flames, ageing while she flourished. In December 1941, as the family gathered at home, the table laid with a festive embroidered tablecloth and chrysanthemums, enjoying her expertly engineered delectable Christmas fare that made the rationing scheme fade to the corners of their minds, Last was uneasy. The war weighed heavy on her mind. She thought of the ‘evil’ Hitler had let loose in the world, and tried to assuage her anxiety with thoughts of nearby Coniston Water: the peaceful finger-like lake cutting gracefully through the ruggedly green Furness Fells in the southern Lake District always spoke a placid incantation to Nella’s spirit. But it wasn’t just the war that nagged her.

She watched her husband sitting quietly in front of the fire, knowing that nothing she could do would stir him or move him to discuss anything of consequence, and had to remind herself that he was ‘only fifty-three and
not
eighty-three’. She longed to be back at work, where she had made friends who chatted with her, appreciated her and responded to her efforts to cheer them when the blues descended. As the New Year approached, however, she decided not to grumble about her temporary hiatus. The holiday was almost over and she would soon go back to her wartime routine. She counted her blessings: ‘I’ve broken loose and am free now.’

In total war, everyone was a soldier on the home front, and this fact could be empowering. On the radio, in magazines and newspapers, the British people were
constantly reminded that their individual efforts added up to a massive contribution. Novelist and playwright J.B. Priestley argued in his popular Sunday evening
Postscript
radio broadcasts, which aired after the 9 o’clock evening news, that there were ‘postmen soldiers, housewife and mother soldiers’, and not to leave himself out, even ‘broadcasting soldiers’.
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One
Woman’s Own
magazine article urged women to be careful when they filled their lamps, as one drop of paraffin wasted by each individual in England alone would add up to 37 million drops wasted (or roughly 600 gallons). A simple act such as saving kitchen scraps could, according to one Ministry of Food jingle, eventually save the empire. The most mundane activities of peacetime were infused with patriotism and value during wartime.