The Women of Waterloo Bridge

by Jan Casey

  ‘Well, he’s right there,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘There are a lot of ladies on the tracks as it is, cleaning, repairing, taking tickets. I’ve heard there’s to be a couple of women guards, believe it or not.’

  ‘Of course I believe it.’

  ‘But no drivers.’

  ‘Bit like us then.’ Evelyn couldn’t stay off the topic of the bridge for long.

  ‘I suppose so, but some that wanted to are working the cranes now.’

  Evelyn sat up and sprinkled the dregs of her lukewarm tea over the ground. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she said, ‘I wanted to.’

  ‘I know,’ Gwen said. ‘But Jim said you’d be chosen next time, didn’t he?’

  He had, and that had appeased her a bit, but now it had been brought up again she felt herself bridle. There was always something she couldn’t do for one reason or another. Irritation spread through her like a nasty infection. It was the company’s prerogative to select who they wanted, she supposed, but surely it would have been fairer to say there were so many places available and ask for those interested to come forward. There was no way of knowing the factors involved in making the decision to ask such a one and not another.

  Take Joan; from her speaking voice it would be presumed she was well educated. So was that why she was chosen? Evelyn knew she didn’t speak half as nicely as Joan, but she’d been educated; she’d been a teacher for a while, after all. But other women chosen didn’t speak like they were reciting Shakespeare, so was the decision based on the grounds of their hard work? If that was the case Gwen should have been asked. Her nose was to the grindstone from the minute she started until leaving-off time.

  ‘Anyway,’ Gwen was saying. ‘It’s all over bar the shouting. We’re tarmacking the top.’

  ‘Only two lanes out of six,’ Evelyn said. ‘There’s a fair bit to do yet.’ Portland stone facings, the railings, light standards, the steps. Finishing off. ‘Then there’s the temporary bridge. It’ll have to be dismantled, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh well.’ Gwen sighed. ‘I don’t know about all that. I just do what I’m told.’

  A tiny sparrow hopped towards the crumbs left on their plate, eyes bulging and dilated with panic, its head twitching from side to side, alert to any danger. ‘Looks like a warden on the prowl for a light,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘We can’t put that one out,’ said Gwen, pointing to the ball of sun, stark in the deep blue sky. ‘Come on, we won’t hurt you.’ She clicked her tongue softly and edged the plate towards the skittish bird.

  Something about the way she did it made Evelyn ask, ‘Have you heard from the kids?’

  ‘A letter came from each of them yesterday.’

  ‘Are they getting on alright now?’

  Gwen nodded. ‘Having a great time. I’m worried they won’t want to come home.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. Course they will.’

  ‘I’ve left them out for you. The little notes.’

  ‘Let’s go back then,’ Evelyn said. ‘So I can read them.’

  They ate the lovely tea Gwen had prepared. Tongue sandwiches, fudge made with carrots, a baked apple with a splash of condensed milk. All diffidence gone, they talked as if they’d known each other for years until Evelyn took a deep breath and told Gwen she wasn’t going to stay. ‘I’ve had another invitation,’ she said, not wanting to fib.

  ‘Oh.’ Gwen looked interested. ‘A date?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Evelyn said. ‘She got to her feet to make her point. ‘But you never know. It might lead to one.’

  Evelyn thought Gwen would protest but she looked no more than a little disappointed. ‘Well, I have had such a lovely day. That fresh air did me the world of good. I ain’t going to be long before I get my head down.’ She walked Evelyn to the door. ‘Have a good time and mind how you go.’

  That was easy, Evelyn thought. Perhaps that’s the way to play it from now on, so we have the best of both worlds. Or maybe Gwen is on the mend at last.

  *

  One evening in June, Sylvie and Alec took Dad to see Song of the Islands. ‘It was great,’ he said. ‘Especially that Betty Grable.’ He let out a low whistle and fanned his face. ‘What a cracking pair of legs. It was a good story, to boot. But I enjoyed the Pathé more.’ He went on to explain how the whole newsreel had been about the RAF thousand bomber raids on Cologne. ‘On the Chin! it was called.’ With clenched fists, Dad and Alec uppercut the air, swiping short of each other’s jutting jaws.

  ‘Watch it, you two,’ Sylvie said. ‘We don’t want an injury.’

  ‘Would that be classed as a war wound?’ Alec said, dancing around Dad with his dukes up.

  ‘Maybe in a roundabout way,’ Evelyn said, laughing. ‘Silly buggers.’

  Dad collapsed into his chair, puffing and holding his hands up in defeat. ‘That was the catchphrase,’ he said. ‘Air Marshall Harris kept repeating it. “Let them have it, right on the chin.”’

  ‘And our guys did,’ Alec said. ‘There’s nothing left of Cologne to talk about.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Dad said. ‘And we’ll keep giving it and taking it right here.’ He pointed to his lower lip. ‘Until there’s nothing jerry-rigged left.’

  As the weeks went by without any news from Jim, Evelyn remembered that slogan and meant to let Jim have it on the chin the next time an opportunity presented itself. She practised what she would say. One day it was, ‘Excuse me, Jim, I thought you were going to get back to me soon about doing something with more responsibility.’ The next it was, ‘I’m very cross, Jim, about the way this whole crane-driving business has been handled.’ And then, ‘What about me? When will it be my turn?’ Until at last she mustered herself, thought of Air Marshall Harris and the RAF bombers and knocked on his office door.

  Lifting his eyes from a mountain of documents he and a circle of men were scrutinising, Jim said, ‘I’ll be about five minutes, Evelyn. Can you wait?’

  Evelyn looked at the wall clock, hanging crooked and covered in dust. She had ten minutes of her break left. ‘Yes. Alright,’ she said.

  The men huddled over the papers, shaking out large transparent sheets covered in an oily sheen and laying them one on top of the other. Turning the drawings upside down, pointing to small smudged sections, they frowned, nodded, grimaced a maybe. Evelyn wondered which part of the bridge was having its fate decided.

  She looked out of a grimy window, where muck slowly gathering in the corners of the glass put her in mind of a greasy egg timer. Half of the workforce was on a break, but still there were countless numbers swarming over the site, each a resolute grafting ball of energy. Olive’s wiry frame was evident and her voice would probably hit them full force, too, if Evelyn opened the door. Sylvie was scurrying along a walkway with a load of piping on her shoulder.

  Books and newspapers were scattered on a small table next to the tea urn, as if they’d been thrown there from a distance. Evelyn picked up a copy of the Illustrated London News and looked at the photographs of the Baedeker Raids on Canterbury. She scanned the rest of the pile; nothing interesting until she came to the bottom of the heap and saw a journal from the Institute of Civil Engineers. Flipping through the pages, she started on the articles with relish, but lost heart a couple of paragraphs into each piece. She didn’t understand a word.

  Sighing, she glanced down the inside cover of the periodical still in her hand. Acknowledgements were made to various people with trailing sequences of letters after their names: CEng, FCIOB, PhD, MSc.Eng, FREng, MCIOB, PEngMSPE. Thanks were also given to The Society of Engineers, The Institute of Structural Engineers and the WES. The Women’s Engineering Society. Engineering. It had never been mentioned to Evelyn as a possibility. She’d been thrilled when she came top in her last year in the Juniors, the well-thumbed book she was awarded at prize-giving a treasure on a shelf in the sitting room. When the headmaster said she was able enough for the Seniors and to go on further than that if Dad agreed, the careers she was pointed towards were few and voc
ational. Nursing, teaching, veterinarian assistant, personal secretary, nursery nurse. That was about it. But the girls who belonged to this society must have been given engineering amongst their choices.

  The men were folding their papers along well-creased lines, sharing a joke, shaking hands. Evelyn memorised the address of the WES, then threw the journal down with the others.

  ‘Evelyn,’ Jim said, turning towards her. ‘What a coincidence. I was about to call you in.’

  He scratched the top of his head leaving a pink welt pushing through the few strands of hair he had left. He smiled and pulled up a wooden chair to sit with her. She did so want to believe him, so let him go first.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten your query,’ he said. ‘But at the moment…’ His arms floundered and flapped. ‘There’s nothing on the cranes.’

  ‘But there is still a possibility?’

  ‘There’s always that,’ he said. ‘It depends on which men join up and when. Might you be interested in being foreman, sorry, forewoman, or should it be forelady, of a gang of six? That could be on the cards.’

  For a minute, Evelyn balked. Saying yes to something specific was one thing, but agreeing to such a vaguely named position was another. It could be fixing the formwork or some such thing. Something she knew nothing about. But she wasn’t about to let an opportunity like this get away. ‘Would there be training?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jim said. ‘We’d make sure of that.’

  ‘Alright then, please consider me.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he said, looking relieved.

  They sat in silence for a couple of seconds, Jim drumming his fingertips on his leg. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Was there something else?’

  ‘Oh,’ Evelyn said. ‘No, nothing. That was it.’

  ‘Righto, then,’ Jim said, rubbing his hands together. ‘I’ll get it all sorted.’

  *

  Over the following month, while she waited for Jim to arrange the training, Evelyn again thought of Dad’s new motto and took herself to the WES Reading Room on Regent Street. She’d expected something grand and formidable like the National Gallery or University College Hospital. Instead, number 20 was nothing more than a large shop-front blending in with all the others along the road. The brass plate next to the door told her she was in the right place but she held back, not sure herself why she’d come or what she would say when she ventured in. She could try: I mix concrete, cut girders. Or perhaps: I navvy on a building site. She could explain that she’d read about the society in a journal and wanted to know more, keep it simple and to the point. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open and tinkled a polished handbell on the reception desk.

  ‘Can I be of help?’ A plump woman in a fitted charcoal suit appeared from a room behind the counter. Evelyn was surprised at how ordinary she looked; she could have been anyone’s mother or sister going about ordinary women’s business.

  ‘I…’ Evelyn didn’t want to lose her nerve. ‘I’m interested in finding out what you do here.’

  ‘We’re the WES.’ The woman indicated a black and white monogram in a frame on the counter. Inside the octagonal shape, what looked like a leather belt and buckle encircled a monolith entwined with a vine, the lettering WES transposed on top. ‘Are you an engineer?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘How have you come to hear about us then, my dear?’

  ‘I’m on the tools.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Your war work.’

  ‘Yes, but…’ Evelyn wanted to say her job seemed to be more than that now, but didn’t want to sound lame.

  ‘Please. Go on,’ the woman said, sounding as if she had all the time in the world to listen.

  ‘I’m curious to know more. About the whole procedure. How it all happens.’

  ‘You have an enquiring mind, then. Good.’ The woman looked satisfied as if assured she had made a sagacious observation. I hope she doesn’t test that theory, Evelyn thought.

  ‘What you need is right this way. Sign the visitors’ book and follow me.’

  They walked through a maze of cubbyholes and archways, writing desks, armchairs and tables, up two narrow flights of stairs to a set of double doors with a sign reading ‘Library’ above them. Rows of bookcases were packed into the dark, high-ceilinged room, the windows having been replaced with wood for safety. Rests were angled on long tables, books, magazines and drawings propped against them while five or six women took notes, lines of concentration on their faces. ‘You can’t check any books out today, but do take all the time you like,’ the woman whispered. ‘I’ll give you a copy of our periodical when you leave.’ She turned and closed the doors behind her.

  Intent on their research, the other women didn’t pay any attention to her. Feeling like a complete fraud, she tiptoed to the nearest fusty gangway and hid herself behind the stacks. She plucked random volumes from the shelves, pushing them back into their vacant slots when she came across the same unfathomable vocabulary she’d tried to make sense of in Jim’s journal. It might as well have been hieroglyphics or Oriental symbols. She couldn’t start somewhere in the middle, it had to be the beginning and these books had gone beyond that point.

  Not wanting to have to make excuses to the woman downstairs, who had so much faith in her intellect, she found a chair wedged in an airless corner away from view and fell asleep.

  ‘Did you find that useful?’ the woman asked her as she signed out.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘I’m glad we could help. Will we see you again?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a trudge for me,’ Evelyn said. ‘And then I work shifts.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ She handed Evelyn a copy of The Woman Engineer, a smiling girl in dungarees and turban holding a spanner on the front cover.

  Evelyn chuckled. ‘That’s me when I’m on the job,’ she said. ‘We all dress like that.’

  ‘Not very fetching, but wholly practical.’

  ‘I should be honest with you,’ Evelyn said, swiping the air over her head. ‘That up there was way above me.’

  The woman didn’t seem too disappointed in her, as Evelyn thought she might be. ‘Start with the journal then,’ she said. ‘It might begin to make some sort of sense if you plough through. Perhaps you’d like to come along to our conference? It’s next door in Dorland House in September. With a dinner afterwards at the Forum Club.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I have to be a member?’

  ‘You certainly qualify, if you do that.’ She pointed to the cover girl. ‘Would you like to join? It won’t take a minute.’

  ‘Yes, I would. If you’re sure.’

  ‘Have a bit of faith in yourself.’

  Evelyn filled in the form she was given and thanked the woman for her help.

  ‘Stick with it,’ she said. ‘An interest’s all it takes. This war can’t last forever and then we can do whatever we like.’

  Evelyn wished she could be so sure on both counts.

  8

  August – November 1942

  Gwen

  Tuesday 11th August 1942

  Dear Will,

  Thank you for your newsy letter. I enjoyed reading it and I showed it to Dad, Betty, Len and Evelyn who I’ve told you about. Do you remember? She works with me and likes to hear all about you and Ruth. We’re hoping she’ll be able to meet you before too long.

  You asked if I would be amazed to hear that your football team won the summer tournament over the local lads and I must tell you that I am not surprised at all. I would have been shocked if you had lost as any team with you playing for them is bound to win. How exciting that Marty scored the deciding goal and you set it up. I could picture the ball being passed to you and you kicking it with all your might to Marty who headed it into the net. Did you hear me cheering from here when I read that bit? Millwall will definitely want a pair of chums like you when we get back to normal. I think it was very good of Mr Gwilt to go along and watch the final match.

  So the village b
oys didn’t want to call you by any of the names we thought up for your team? Not even The London Lads? I suppose once they got The Vacies into their heads they couldn’t get it out, but it’s good they’re not mean to you anymore.

  Yes, I did hear about Marty’s dad. I know that he must be feeling very sad but it’s good he’s got you to share a room and play football with. I’m glad you remembered what Betty said about Johnny and that you can now tell Marty that his daddy is a hero, too.

  I’m glad you liked the picture card of an engine that Dad sent you. He sent me one with flowers on the front. He likes having to go away because he feels he is doing more to help win the war than when he was stuck here in London.

  Today I had the whole morning off to go and watch the first part of a bridge being opened. You know I can’t tell you the name of the bridge as I tried to once before and you received my letter with a big hole cut out of the middle of the page. Two lanes of this bridge were ready today and people were very excited because it will be easier for them to get from one side of the river to the other.

  A man named Charlie Barnard opened the bridge. I can’t for the life of me think why he was chosen – he’s only a steel fixer. He lifted seven red flags out of their weights and a load of men pushed aside some barriers. We thought that was that until a race started up without any warning. There was a bus, two taxis, a horse and cart and even an American jeep. But a boy with long, lanky legs was the first to make it to the north side, you know, where all the big buildings are. I’ve never seen anyone pump so hard on a pushbike. His name is Leonard Mitchell, he is sixteen years of age and I heard someone say he lives in Balham. Everyone clapped and cheered for him. It was great fun. I told my friends that you would have beaten him if you’d been there, as I know you are as fast as lightning. Betty came with me to watch and she agreed.

  It’s hard to believe that Dot has grown into such a big dog. She was a tiny puppy and I thought she’d stay quite small. Is she eating Auntie Peggy out of house and home?