The Women of Waterloo Bridge

by Jan Casey

  Evelyn felt her partner inch imperceptibly closer. A cloud scuttled, leaving their stark, inky shadows melded together across the concrete deck.

  *

  Dad was reluctant to let them loose again, although he did concede that they couldn’t stay cooped up with him every evening. The radio and papers told him that the Germans were concentrating their efforts elsewhere: the Atlantic and Soviet Union. ‘We saw those Jerries off,’ he said. ‘They’ll never get London.’ But still he was wary. The Bismarck sank the Hood, the Navy sank the Bismarck. Dad and Uncle Bert went to the pub to celebrate, Evelyn and Sylvie to the West End. The Strand was buzzing and they were glad to be back, roaming from pub to club and finally settling on the Palace, elegant and airy with a seamless, polished dance floor, throbbing to the resident band’s rendition of Judy Garland’s ‘You Made Me Love You’.

  They stood near the curve of the bar, the brass foot-rail reflecting the light from the chandelier as flickering flakes hewn from precious stones. Evelyn looked at her naked ring finger, flanked on the right by a lovely marquisette cocktail ring, which she thought much more attractive than her engagement ring had ever been. Two burly hands, wires of black hair sprouting along their backs and into khaki cuffs, rested on Sylvie’s shoulders.

  ‘Hey,’ a voice said, drawling and languorous. He twisted Sylvie around and looked into her face. ‘Remember me?’

  Sylvie examined the man, his hands rubbing her shoulders gently. So did Evelyn. He filled out his tan uniform nicely, his broad shoulders and arms pushing against the sleeves adorned with three insignias: a black flash embroidered with SASK.L.I. (M.G.) CANADA in yellow, a red patch, a single striped chevron. His eyes were a pale hazel, striking against his weather-beaten complexion and thick russet hair. Creases appeared around his eyes when he frowned and there were two deep lines framing his grinning mouth, which wore a smile wide enough to challenge Sylvie’s.

  ‘No,’ Sylvie said, widening her eyes. ‘I don’t think I do.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ He gave her a little shake. ‘Sure you do. It’s Alec. We danced together a while back.’

  Evelyn giggled and turned away. That wasn’t narrowing it down much.

  ‘Well, hey. Never mind,’ he said congenially, as if he really didn’t. ‘Can I get you ladies a drink?’

  ‘Gin and It, please,’ Sylvie said. ‘Evelyn?’

  ‘The same for me. Thanks.’

  ‘Consider it done. If you take this,’ Alec said, producing a folded khaki cap from his pocket and handing it to Sylvie, ‘and go sit at that table over there with my buddies, I’ll bring you your drinks.’

  Evelyn hardly needed the seat she took possession of, twirling and whirling through the evening with anyone who asked. She didn’t pay much attention to Sylvie until later in the evening, when she noticed that every time she passed her sister on the dance floor she was with Alec. She’d never known Sylvie to stick with the same fellow for an entire evening. Alec’s fingers were splayed territorially across the hollow of Sylvie’s back and she played with the place where his starched collar met his neck. Their movements were fluid and relaxed; they looked good together. From then on, Alec turned up wherever they went. Evelyn was reminded of that passage from A Christmas Carol that she read to her class before they broke up at the end of the year: Wherever she went, there went he.

  But Sylvie was having none of it. ‘Oh, him,’ she said when Evelyn asked how keen she was on Alec. ‘He’s a bit of a laugh, that’s all, with his “Hi, guys” and “You’re welcome” chat.’

  One warm, clammy Sunday in July, Evelyn took the bus to Holloway to have tea with a friend. As the bus slowed to a stop at the gates to Finsbury Park, Evelyn wiped the window and peered out at the hopeful families – picnics, flasks, bikes and umbrellas in tow – making their way across the swathes of wet grass. She was drawn to a couple sitting on the other side of the iron fence on a tartan blanket. The woman was wearing a dusty pink jacket, very like one of Sylvie’s most prized garments.

  Evelyn wiped at a fresh layer of mist that had appeared where her breath hit the window. The jacket not only looked like Sylvie’s, it was Sylvie’s, and the man with his arm wrapped around its shoulders was Alec. Evelyn banged on the window to wave. The conductor rang the bell and the bus lurched forward. Alec glanced around, as if aware that someone was trying to get their attention but Sylvie, her head leaning on his expansive chest, looked as though she didn’t have a clue what was going on around her, except that she was with him.

  Slumping against the back of the seat, Evelyn felt stunned. Not that Sylvie had met someone who made her gaze at him in that spellbound way, but that it had happened so fast. She looked out at the streets she barely recognised on the once-familiar route and wondered at how quickly things could change, in the flare of a bomb or the flash of a smile.

  5

  August – November 1941

  Gwen

  George would be furious with her if he knew, having forbidden her from entering the house until it was finished and he’d given the okay. But she needed to dare herself to step over the threshold and test whether the hush of missing children still screeched at her, or if she could feel at peace in the comfort of personal objects and smells and noises in her own home. George was on the late shift, so was spending the day diligently shoring up the hole in the kitchen. She couldn’t see him from the front of the house but she could hear the rhythmic scrape of his shovel on concrete. It was like a subdued version of the sounds on the bridge; the harsh clash of hard materials coming together to create something solid and substantial, ready to be knocked down in an instant.

  She found her key and turned the chilly piece of metal over in her hand a couple of times, wincing when it caught on a shredded cuticle. Then, with one more glance towards the steady din in the garden, Gwen slipped into the narrow hallway, the echo of her sigh whispering around her.

  A coat had fallen from the line of pegs and lay crumpled on the floorboards. They’d talked about repapering the green flowery walls, but that had been months ago. It hardly mattered now. She walked around the sitting room, picking up their wedding photo, fondling the porcelain bell George had surprised her with on her birthday, smoothing the chair backs over the places where their heads rubbed dark, shiny spots onto the fabric. She brushed a few stray cinders into the grate, then sat and closed her eyes, willing some warmth from the past to penetrate the chill.

  Even though it was cool for August, she could smell from where she sat the layer of drying mud that George had loosened, releasing with it the earthy scent of turned-over vegetable plots and late summer picnics. She remembered Mudchute Park two years ago when the war was a rumbling undercurrent, unimaginable as they looked out at the heat haze shimmering over their little corner of Cubitt Town, rows of houses and factories safe and intact. Johnny had come racing across the grass, threatening them with his dirt-encrusted palms, Will not far behind. He’d knocked a toddling Ruth off her feet and made straight for Gwen.

  Screaming with terror, she’d shouted, ‘Help me, Dad, save me from the big, bad, mucky monster!’ George had jumped to his feet and grabbed Johnny under his arms, swinging him round and round until they dropped to the ground, exhausted with laughter. Had it really been that easy to be so happy? She hadn’t understood it then: simple satisfaction, good fortune, contentment. It was only when she looked back that she knew she’d experienced those things. How sad, to only know happiness in retrospect.

  She shivered and wondered if George would be so intent on his task that she could get away with going into the kitchen. She thought better of that idea, but her eyes were drawn back to the wall separating the hallway from the stairs. She crossed the passage quickly, hoping George wouldn’t choose that minute to stretch and look about.

  She manoeuvred around the floorboards she knew would creak and groan beneath the red strip of worn carpet. Powdery grime covered the landing, swirling in a vortex as she unsettled it with her movements, taking in the mess: an abandoned sl
ipper, a hairbrush on its side where she’d thrown it the night they took the packet. She’d have her work cut out when they could move back in. There was a clatter beneath her followed by, ‘Bugger. Bloody thing.’

  Before she could change her mind, she turned right and shoved open the kids’ bedroom door. The curtain dividing Ruth’s side of the room from the boys’ side was pulled back so all three beds were in full view. She remembered washing and ironing Will and Ruth’s bedclothes, smoothing them into place and tucking them around the mattresses so they were fresh and crisp, ready for when they came home. But she had no recollection of straightening Johnny’s covers or shaking his pillows. Betty had wanted to strip the bed and get rid of it, go through all his things and give them to the WVS for children who’d been bombed out, but Gwen had said she wasn’t ready. So Betty must have come up here during a quiet moment and tidied Johnny’s bed. She couldn’t imagine George would have done such a thing.

  Putting her spectacles in her pocket and throwing her coat on the little chair that all the kids had sat in as toddlers, she lay face down on Ruth’s bed and breathed in. There was the smell of the copper and boiled linen, a good drying day, a trace of smoke from where the sheets had been finished off around the fire. Will’s was the same. She hesitated next to Johnny’s bed then threw herself down, clamping his pillow to her face and inhaling until her lungs felt distended. She breathed in and choked and sobbed. Thank goodness Betty hadn’t gone ahead in a frenzy, washing away all that was left of her boy; she still had the smell of him.

  Rolling over, she grabbed his dressing gown, hanging from a hook. She smothered her face in it, taking in the sweet, boyish smell mingled with the first suggestion of saltier grown-up sweat. Carrying it with her, she found his Christmas book and stroked the pages, feeling for the imprint of his fingers. She brushed a clump of dried mud off his worn football, retrieved countless times from Betty’s garden. How she’d nagged him about that and his spellings and taking his shoes off without untying the knots. She couldn’t believe she’d ever been so stupid, so petty.

  There was a sudden, unnerving quiet from below. Then Betty’s voice carried up to her. ‘Is she not home yet?’

  ‘Haven’t seen her,’ George answered.

  ‘Perhaps she’s doing a spot of overtime.’

  A grunt from George. Gwen imagined him shrugging and looking impatiently at his repair job, waiting to get on.

  ‘Why don’t you take her to the pub tonight?’ Betty said. ‘Or the pictures. It’d be…’ Her voice trailed off, as if she’d turned the other way.

  George must have moved to face her because, although she strained, Gwen couldn’t hear his reply. George took Len to the pub that evening instead, allowing the older man to lean on his arm for support, while she sat in with Betty.

  *

  Gwen cut through the steel rod on first one edge, then the other. Evelyn caught the discarded ends and threw them into the waste. Each time a length was finished, Evelyn signalled to a banksman who would signal in turn to a crane driver who swung the load out over the river, then across to where it would be used to bring on the south side of the bridge. She and Evelyn were supposed to swap places every hour, but they rarely bothered, both of them more content with things this way around. Gwen could keep her goggles and shield over her face and concentrate on the small space in front of her, the cutting flame, the length of steel. Evelyn could chat away to her and she wouldn’t be expected to acknowledge or answer. The men preferred Evelyn’s quips to her silence, too. Mind you, Evelyn wasn’t half the flirt her sister was, although Sylvie herself had calmed down a bit lately.

  Gwen was glad the gaffer hadn’t separated them when they’d been sent to help patch up the temporary bridge – and he’d kept them together when it was reopened in the middle of September and all hands were back on the tools up here.

  The pierce of a whistle cut through the hum of machinery. The noise ground to a stop and Evelyn put her fingers to her lips and nodded to a crowd of women gathering next to a hut. Gwen waved Evelyn away. ‘You go on,’ she said. But Evelyn put her arm through Gwen’s and almost dragged her along.

  Olive was holding court, singing the first verse of ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ over and over again until there was no fun left in the barrel to bother about. ‘Who’s for a quick one a bit later?’ She was so loud.

  ‘I’d rather have a slow one,’ a pretty girl said, blowing smoke out through plump lips.

  ‘Wish I could think that fast,’ Evelyn said. ‘How about it, Gwen? Do you fancy a drink when we knock off?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d bother with the local,’ Gwen said. ‘Thought you’d be up town dancing.’

  ‘That’s later. There’s a crowd who go to The Hero of a Saturday afternoon for one or two.’

  Gwen thought about the looks she’d get if she went home with beer on her breath. It was alright for the younger ones, and those like Olive who seemed to do whatever they wanted, but it wasn’t for her. ‘Ta for asking, but I’ll have to be getting home.’

  A girl with very red cheeks and her partner, whose name Gwen thought was Joan, joined them. ‘I told her it were The Hero and not that other one.’

  Everyone laughed, poking fun at the way the girl spoke. It was strange; Gwen had never heard anything like it. She sounded as though she must be from the country and she looked as though she would be at home there, too, milking cows or bringing in the harvest.

  ‘Say it again, Alice,’ Joan said, who enunciated each word perfectly as if she’d been born in a bay window. ‘What were it you told me?’

  Alice shook her head. ‘No. But I’ll try to say it like you does.’ And there was more laughter as Alice rolled the words around in her mouth and spilled them out in an upper-crust voice.

  Gwen pointed vaguely in the direction of the cloakroom, then scuttled through a canvas-covered doorway and down a sloping tunnel of stifling tarpaulin corridors, held back by crisscrossed planking. When she was level with the river, she made her way across a couple of wooden walkways to a place that she thought of as her own. Here the concrete arches were complete, and she sat under a miniature scaffolding tower that looked as if it had been abandoned. The structure wobbled precariously as if it might topple, leg by leg, rod by rod, into the dirty water that lapped beneath her, and embed itself in all the other junk discarded on the river bed. No one would miss it.

  She closed her eyes and felt it sway above her. A good gust of wind and perhaps she’d go over with it. She imagined herself being pulled away from the noise and light, boots dragging her down. Perhaps her head would smash against the pier or her sleeve become entangled in a bit of the scaffolding and she’d thrash around, suspended there like a forgotten item of worn clothing pegged to the line, until her lungs burst. She pictured her spectacles floating away, her turban loosening, the few coppers she had spiralling down, unlucky coins in a mocking well. Sodden fags and matches in her pocket. A grab for the envelope that arrived yesterday.

  Voices rose to shouting pitch behind her followed by the grinding of gears, then a lull; indistinct cursing, relieved laughter. They were pouring concrete into the arch that she and Evelyn had been working on. She shivered; it was colder than ever down here, the underside of the bridge untouched by the weak autumn sun. She watched the water slap the pier, a green tidemark already established on the concrete. She took her locker key from her pocket and carved initials in the concrete: GG, GG, JG, WG, RG, encircling them with a chalky heart. Now all of her family was here with her.

  Reaching into her bib she pulled out an envelope and took a little postcard from it, turning it over to look at the picture on the front: a puppy outlined in thick black pencil, drawn with diligence and a heavy hand. It looked like a cotton ball with scrawny legs and startled eyes, its tail pointing upwards in a wag. Two figures stood watching, a girl in a pink checked dress clutching a doll who was dressed in identical clothes. She was holding hands with a long-limbed stick-woman. All three had red, crescent-shaped smiles o
n their round faces. Her first reaction had been that Ruth didn’t own a pink dress so the drawing couldn’t be of her. Then she read the back:

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  This is me and Auntie Peggy with my new puppy. Uncle Bryn gave her to me for my own. In the picture I am in my new frock made by Auntie. I am learning my lessons. Here are three kisses, one for Mum one for Dad and one for Betty. XXX

  From the start Ruth’s cards had been much the same. Nice things seemed to be happening to her: lovely walks, bread-making, bedtime stories. From time to time there was a longer letter from Peggy telling Gwen about Ruth’s life in more detail, and although she was pleased to get them she found them difficult to read, part of her jealous that this other woman, kind as she sounded, was enjoying what was rightfully hers.

  Next, the letter from Will. Although he and Ruth had been separated, their letters always arrived in the same envelope and his were written on almost transparent paper – to save money on postage, she supposed. His hand was coming on. She could read all of it except the bits where the ink blobbed; she could picture him, gazing intently into the distance searching for the right word, unaware of the stain his pen was making while it rested on the thin paper.

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  Do you remember the road I told you about that nothing ever goes down except horses and carts? We used to play football there every day after school but now it’s dark in the afternoons me and Marty don’t have enough time after we finish our chores. Our team, the Vacies, won five games to four over the lads who live here. Vacies is what the boys round here call us but we just give it them back like Dad told me and Johnny. Don’t start it but make sure you give as good as you get. Me and Marty go to bed early and sometimes we can hear Mr and Mrs Morgan talking and laughing downstairs with their David and Jane, but we don’t mind because we have an oil lamp and our comics. Please send some more as we have passed the last ones back and forth and they are torn now. Can you send some stamps and another pair of socks as I have put my toe through the ones I’ve with me? Sorry. I look out for Ruth at school.