The Women of Waterloo Bridge

by Jan Casey

  *

  She waited for Cyril in one of their usual backwaters off Trafalgar Square, pressing herself into the dark away from the door of the club, avoiding a patch of sticky beer on the pavement. Big Ben chimed and she checked her watch against the eight tolls. She poked her head out and looked up and down the street; it wasn’t like Cyril to be late. G#, F#, E, B for the quarter-hour, variations on a theme for the half-hour and quarter to. She stood motionless and listened to the cycle repeat itself da capo al fine.

  Groups and couples came out who had noticed her as they went in; a man in a brown trilby said something to the woman he was with as they walked away, then they both turned, looked her up and down and burst into laughter. She waited until the hammer struck the Great Bell ten times before catching the Tube home and creeping into her room; she didn’t want to chance Hazel hearing and dragging her into the sitting room for a chat with Mummy. Under the bedclothes, fully dressed, she hugged herself tight.

  Joan was sure Alice must have put two and two together and realised Cyril had thrown her over when she’d given his dodgy dealings the push. After all, Alice wasn’t daft, as she’d told Joan a few months earlier. The younger girl didn’t say anything, though, going along with the vague notion Joan mentioned about her and Cyril tiring of each other. A couple of times Alice made to comfort her by saying, ‘I felt the same before I came here when…’ or ‘In Old Sodbury there were…’

  But Joan stopped her short each time. ‘No need to feel sorry for me,’ she’d say. ‘I’m more than glad to be out of that situation.’

  Alice would adapt the embrace she’d been aiming for into a pat on the back and say, ‘That’s proper, then.’

  *

  During the following weeks, Joan’s upset and humiliation turned into anger. She so wanted to give Cyril a piece of her mind, practising what she would say if only she could locate him. His wife, if she opened the door when Joan called at Cyril’s unknown address, would hear every dirty detail and Joan would make damned sure she understood that Cyril had been voracious for every bit of her. Cyril, if she could corner him, would be made to hear how contemptible he was and she would threaten him with the police. ‘Who do you think they’d believe?’ she’d snarl at him. ‘A poor, innocent girl or a middle-aged spiv like you?’

  She asked questions and found out that he was training crane-handlers on the docks, but she couldn’t find him no matter what time of day she wandered past the locks and quays. Hoping to see him, she regularly hung around places she’d heard him mention: betting shops and drinking pubs, Petticoat Lane and Smithfields, but he continued to elude her. She took to skimming faces and heads in crowds, quickly examining shoes and the cut of trousers, glancing over silhouettes in profile. He must be lying low or skirting around the perimeters of human existence like a rat. A few times she thought she spotted him and made to follow, but was thwarted when the suspect showed himself to be an innocent stranger.

  At finishing time on a fresh and breezy early spring evening, Joan and Alice surged with a hundred or so other workers onto the south side of the river. Joan was pursuing her habit of scrutinising passers-by while listening to Alice relating something Olive had said about what she wore under her bib and braces. And there, disappearing around a corner, she caught a glimpse of the familiar stride of a straight leg, the confident flapping of an overcoat vent, shoes polished to a lustre.

  Cyril’s brisk, jaunty walk filled her with rage; she was sure she could hear his thin whistle, spewing out some cheap music-hall number above the noise of the crowd. How dare he be so sure of himself, she thought, so carefree. Ignoring Alice’s shout, she shoved and elbowed her way to the side street he’d disappeared down. Coming out of the dark alleyway, she caught sight of him again and raised her hands to frame a bellow of his name. Then he bounced across the road, waved to a tall woman holding a little girl’s hand and bent to kiss both of them.

  Joan stared, her hands dropping to her sides. Don’t be wet, she told herself, now’s your chance. She watched as he took his child’s hand, draped his arm around his wife’s shoulder, led them along the street and opened the door of a café for them. Let him go, she thought; he’s not worth the effort. And you, Mrs Ware, are welcome to him.

  10

  April – July 1943

  Evelyn

  Dad found it difficult to understand Evelyn’s interest in the WES and had no hesitation in telling her what he thought every time she mentioned attending a meeting or a talk. He looked at her with uncharacteristic suspicion and asked, ‘What is it again? This thing you’re going to?’

  ‘The WES. I’ve told you so many times already. There’s a lecture on technical terms for unqualified building workers.’

  ‘Wes. What does it stand for? Wesley someone?’

  Evelyn composed her features into the sort of disappointed glare she might once have turned on a trying child in her classroom.

  ‘It’s the Women’s Engineering Society,’ Sylvie said, sitting next to Dad at the rickety kitchen table.

  ‘Women’s.’ Dad rubbed his chin. ‘That’s the bit I don’t get,’ he said. ‘Women’s?’

  ‘I wish now I’d never said anything. I thought you’d be pleased, like you were when I was teaching.’

  ‘Your attitude’s a real turn-up for the books,’ Sylvie said, tearing a mouldy corner off her slice of toast and waving it in Dad’s direction. ‘We never thought you were so old-fashioned.’

  ‘Give over, you two.’ Dad held his hands up in surrender. ‘Stop ganging up on me.’

  ‘How does Alec put it, Sylvie?’ Evelyn said. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ She raised an eyebrow and scraped her chair in Dad’s direction.

  ‘No, sir, you haven’t,’ Sylvie said, following Evelyn’s lead and inching her way towards Dad until they’d trapped him between the table and kitchen cupboard, his back against the wall. There they both attacked his armpits with their nails until the three of them were laughing hard and the atmosphere was back to its usual unclouded amiability.

  Kissing Dad’s forehead, Sylvie picked up the remainder of her toast and said, ‘Right. I’m off.’

  ‘See you tonight, love.’ Dad mopped his eyes and nose with a handkerchief.

  ‘And I’ll see you later on the bridge,’ Sylvie said. ‘If the ogre allows you out.’

  ‘Oi, enough cheek from you,’ Dad called after her.

  Evelyn added her dishes to Sylvie’s in the sink, leaving them to be washed after tea, when enough had amassed to justify boiling a kettleful of water and using a pinch of their precious three ounces of soap flakes.

  When Dad got his breath back, he said, ‘I’m sorry, love. I don’t want you to think I’m behind the times, but I suppose I am.’

  Evelyn sat to face Dad over the table. ‘What are you worried about, Dad?’

  Dad let out a weary sigh that culminated in a rapid flapping and slapping of his lips. ‘I don’t know, love. What don’t I worry about? That might be easier to answer.’

  Evelyn grasped Dad’s knotted fingers, rubbing the rough spots, caressing the callouses. ‘Haven’t we done okay, Dad? Aren’t we good girls, like Mum wanted us to be?’

  Dad nodded. ‘So far. But I worry about that sister of yours. I don’t want her to get herself, you know.’ He pointed to his round belly and whispered. ‘Pregnant. Not even by Alec. Not before there’s a ring on her finger.’

  Evelyn smiled. ‘Alec’s an honourable man,’ she said. ‘There, is that old-fashioned enough for you?’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Dad scooted a teaspoon across the table, then back again. ‘But honour isn’t always enough to stop people getting up to a bit of how’s your father. Not when there’s a war on.’ He pinched Evelyn’s cheek, brushed a loose curl behind her ear. ‘I’m a foolish old bugger,’ he said.

  ‘You certainly are,’ Evelyn said. ‘But we’ve grown rather fond of you all the same.’

  ‘It’s just that… everything’s changing so quickly. I am getting left behind.’ Dad w
orried at a mark on the tablecloth. ‘I know I am.’

  ‘Not you, Dad,’ Evelyn said. ‘You know more about what’s going on than men half your age. Whenever we’re talking at work about this campaign or that raid, everyone asks what you think and what pointers you’d give Winnie.’

  ‘Do they?’ Dad sat up a bit straighter, his eyes widening.

  ‘I can’t imagine why, though. Being as you’re such a barmy old geyser.’

  ‘That’s the side of me I only show to you lot. But this engineering lark you keep on about…’ He shook his head.

  ‘It’s just an interest. There’s no harm in it. I could be doing a lot worse.’

  ‘But it’s all women. However will you meet a husband like that?’

  Evelyn laughed aloud, but couldn’t bring herself to tell her father that what she found funny was the idea that the only thing to aim for was finding a husband. That and not getting pregnant by your husband -to-be until he was your husband.

  Dad’s fleshy, lined face fell. ‘Mum used to say kids and a home were what made women happy. And a good man.’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t wrong. And she found one of the best, didn’t she?’

  ‘We got along okay,’ he said. ‘I’d like some of the same for you.’

  Now, Evelyn thought, might be the perfect time to tell Dad about Stan. The way things were going between them, she would have to introduce him to her family soon. And it would allay Dad’s fears about her missing the boat as far as men and relationships were concerned. But something held her back and instead she said, ‘There’s plenty of time for all that. And you’re right: things are changing. I wouldn’t mind betting that before too long women will be able to have a proper job and be married both at the same time. Even teachers.’

  Dad groaned, his head in his hands. Evelyn covered his tea with a plate and put it on top of a saucepan of water. ‘Start it off twenty minutes before you want to eat.’ She blew him a kiss. ‘See you tonight.’

  *

  Holding tight to the safety pole on the packed bus, Evelyn forced herself to think about Stan rather than the WES and the bridge. Despite herself, she smiled when a picture of him came into her mind.

  Of all the glamorous places she could have met someone – a late night club, a bar with dimmed, hazy lighting, a hotel restaurant that served high teas, a shared taxi ride – she had met Stan at a bus stop. It had been late; a cold wind was blowing and her feet hurt from dancing when she tagged onto the queue waiting for the last bus. The catch on her much-loved patent handbag was tricky and she was rather more brutal with it than she should have been.

  ‘Careful,’ a deep voice said. ‘You’ll ruin the whole mechanism going at it like that. Not to mention your good looks by grinding your jaw.’

  Evelyn was not in the mood for banter, but when she looked up it was to see the face of a young man in RAF uniform grinning at her. Despite herself, she smiled.

  ‘Stan,’ the young man said in a low voice. ‘Here, would you like me to have a look at that for you?’

  Without missing a beat, Evelyn said, ‘Good luck.’ And handed over the bag.

  Stan studied the intricacies of the catch, looking at it first from one angle, then another. Evelyn studied Stan. ‘Ah,’ he said, peering at her through long eyelashes. ‘Do you see this minute pin here?’

  She looked to where he was pointing and their heads almost touched over the open interior of the bag. ‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well,’ Stan turned the bag so they could see the clasp from the other side. ‘The same thing should be here, but it’s missing so the two parts won’t meet and click together.’ With one hand he held the straps and the other he placed with great care underneath the bulging material and handed the bag back to her.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said and sighed. ‘I suppose I shall have to give this one up, more’s the pity.’

  ‘A favourite, I’m guessing?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ she said. ‘We’ve had many a good night out together.’

  ‘Then don’t be too hasty,’ Stan said, the smile never slipping from his face. ‘How about we cut a bargain?’

  Evelyn grinned, her eyes wide. ‘I’m always on the lookout for a good deal,’ she said playfully.

  ‘If you and your handbag agree to meet me for a dance next Friday, I’ll bring the small part and fix it for you on the spot.’ He held out his hand. ‘Shake on it?’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ she said, and his dry, well-manicured fingers were firm to the touch. ‘This is mine.’ She pointed to the bus moving towards them and felt an unsettling moment of disappointment to be saying goodbye.

  ‘Friday evening, then,’ Stan said. ‘Shall we say seven? Outside Tottenham Court Road station?’

  ‘Yes.’ Evelyn nodded. ‘Thank you. I’ll look forward to it.’

  ‘And me,’ Stan said.

  The bus pulled into the kerb and Stan took her elbow and guided her toward the open door, but her heart sank when she became aware of his limp; she doubted he’d make a good dance partner. Evelyn wished she hadn’t accepted his invitation quite so quickly and wondered what she could offer as an excuse to save his embarrassment.

  She thought Stan must have been aware of her quandary because he said, ‘Do you like riddles?’

  Evelyn tilted her head to one side and was about to ask what he meant when he carried on. ‘Most people do, so here’s one for you. How does an RAF mechanic with a rather pronounced limp dance?’

  Evelyn laughed and repeated the question back to him, like she’d done with riddles as a child.

  ‘Give up?’ Stan asked. Then without giving her a chance to answer he said, ‘Very well indeed.’

  That made Evelyn laugh yet again. ‘I think I’m going to hold you to that.’

  ‘Good. I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy being held to things by you.’

  As the bus pulled away, they waved to each other and Evelyn watched Stan limp back towards the queue, his half-smile still in place.

  They had spent quite a few lovely evenings together since then. Evelyn had been asked to have tea with his mum, dad and younger sister above the ironmonger’s shop they owned in Sidcup. It had been very nice and they had made her welcome, but their quiet affability lacked something that she couldn’t, at first, describe to herself. Thinking about the afternoon later, she decided that they didn’t display the fun that she associated with her own family. Or perhaps she hadn’t given them a chance before coming to that conclusion. After all, most families were on their best behaviour when someone new was in their midst. Well, families who didn’t have Sylvie amongst their number.

  There was also something about their quiet assumption that Stan would take over the running of the shop and that any woman he married would be happy to help in an assistant’s capacity, as his mum seemed to have been. That grated on her in the same way as the old, overridden law that women had to give up teaching when they married. And unequal pay. And the fact women couldn’t readily take up any career they wanted. It was all so unfair, she wanted to stamp her feet in frustration.

  Stan hadn’t seen any action, but had been based at RAF Abingdon near Oxford, fixing planes like he’d mended her handbag until some piece of machinery had mangled his foot. When it healed as much as it was going to, he had been sent back to the airfield to work in the stockrooms. So, it had not been difficult to see him when he was home on leave and then to carry on going out with Sylvie and the others when he was posted.

  Something inside her had pulled tight and she’d felt a pang of guilt and pity for Stan when she’d introduced him to Sylvie and Alec as her ‘friend’. For a split second, she had noticed a look of disbelief pass over his face as when they were alone, they were becoming more and more intimate. When they were next by themselves, Evelyn expected Stan to say something about their ‘friendship’, but he didn’t address the situation, so neither did she.

  But Evelyn could not figure out why she had asked Sylvie not to mention Stan to Dad yet or to
any of their friends on the bridge other than Gwen in passing. She always looked forward to seeing him. At this very moment, wedged amongst others on the clammy bus with one woman’s muddy raincoat brushing her legs and another’s shoes dangerously close to her toes, she smiled when she thought about him and wondered which dance hall they would end up in tonight. Perhaps, she thought, she liked him so much that she wanted to keep him all to herself for a little longer, like a secret bar of chocolate you know you should share but can’t quite bring yourself to do so. Yes, it wasn’t that she didn’t think enough of him, it was that she liked him too much. And there was, after all, so much about him to like.

  *

  The same ten girls, including Evelyn, were present at this second talk in a series of six. For the opening lecture, they’d sat in two rows facing the front and listened to a lady architect talk about blueprints – those oily, waxed sheets of paper she’d seen being thrown about and pored over in Jim’s hut. She showed them how one page layered over another in a typical house plan: foundations, exterior elevations, detailed floor charts, sewerage, electrics, piping, interior walls, staircases, utilities, roofing. After the break, she ran through a basic list of symbols and abbreviations that accompanied the plans and how to read the scale. All of that in an hour and a half.

  This time, the chairs were arranged in a circle around a small wooden table. Evelyn took a seat and opened the notebook she’d brought with her. Lecture notes hadn’t been provided last time and she’d felt self-conscious sitting and listening while everyone around her was scribbling furiously. More to the point, the only thing she’d been able to remember when she left the WES Club Room empty-handed and empty-headed was that on a blueprint there is one eighth of an inch to a foot of constructed material. She’d have to do better than that.