The Women of Waterloo Bridge

by Jan Casey

  Hazel longed to hear the combo playing together, but refused to ask a neighbour to sit with Ivy and let Alice take her to a club, or to let Alice stay with Ivy while Joan escorted her to Soho and back. ‘You are the sweetest girls,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t leave Mummy, especially not in the evening.’ So Alice nagged until Joan arranged for the group to hold a practice in the hostel.

  As the blackouts had been taken down, washed and stored away and the afternoon consisted of a sprinkling of showers and sunny patches, Hazel felt justified in leaving the front windows of the house wide open, the white nets billowing in and puffing out. Not that there was anyone passing by, tucked up in the corner of the terrace as they were, to hear when the trio started up.

  For the occasion, Hazel wore a turquoise jumper and cardigan with tiny pearl buttons, a matching string around her neck. The skirt she had on must have been at the back of her wardrobe for years; it fell to below the knee, widened at the hip and released a whiff of mothballs every time she moved. Two beautiful mother-of-pearl combs held wiry curls off her face. Her cheeks were rouged, her lips painted. Ivy, too, had been done up. A locket on a chain fell against her lace-collared cream blouse, and the red Hazel had painted on her thin, sliding lips filtered into the delta of lines around her mouth. A syrup loaf had been baked, teacups set out, sherry bottle unstoppered. The sight of the two older women, and the trouble they’d been to, made Joan turn away and concentrate on applying rosin to her bow with vigour.

  When Colin arrived, navigating his new double bass down the hall and through the tight sitting-room door, Hazel clapped her hands with delight. He bobbed his head in turn to each of the women, except Joan, and kissed their hands with a brush of his lips. Joan he patted on the back and said, ‘Hello there, Joan old girl.’ And surprise grated on her like the screech of a flat note when she registered disappointment at being excluded from his show of charm. Reaching for her violin, she fumbled around for something to play and settled on a section of a string quartet by Beethoven.

  ‘Something livelier,’ Hazel said.

  ‘Give me a minute, Hazel,’ Joan answered. ‘I’m just tuning up.’

  Colin took off his jacket and put it on the back of Ivy’s chair, loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. ‘Hear, hear,’ he said. ‘I’m with Hazel.’

  Joan looked at him, hands on his hips, a loose curve of wavy hair resting on his forehead, egging her on with a smile and a raised eyebrow. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘How about this?’

  She picked out the tune to ‘Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive’ and the bow skimmed over the strings as if it were the wing of a dragonfly, gliding across a still pond.

  Hazel squealed, clapping her hands again. ‘We know this one, don’t we, Mummy?’

  Joan stumbled over a few notes, her jaw knocking the chinrest as she laughed out loud, raw and raucous.

  ‘I loves it, too,’ Alice said, tapping time on Ivy’s delicate, gossamer-fine hand.

  ‘We all do,’ Colin said. ‘Especially the way Joan plays it.’ He bowed from the waist and put his hand out to Hazel. Together they waltzed in circles around the furniture in the crowded front room.

  Bernie arrived, was introduced and handed a sherry. The party had begun.

  *

  Now though, the novelty of waiting for a big break was beginning to wear off and there were long hours, which Joan knew were unhealthy, when she wasn’t playing or practising or promoting the combo. She renewed her library pass, ran errands for Hazel, walked, met Alice during her dinner break and tried to untangle the tight knots she’d formed in her mind about her life.

  Sitting on a bench in the sun, Joan rested Hazel’s shopping next to her and watched children playing with a ball and stick, dogs chasing birds, sunlight sifting through laden trees. Alice had been on her break when Joan called at the greengrocer’s. ‘Out with another girl,’ the shop owner said. Evelyn, Joan supposed.

  She had hours until she needed to go back and get her clothes and violin ready for tonight. Breathing in and out slowly, she felt the peace around her. Although there was plenty of evidence lying around to suggest nothing much had changed, Joan sensed a newness, an altered state. Not a new creation; nothing pristine or untouched. More of a make-do-and-mend project. Like the country’s vote for Attlee, it was a time for getting rid of what was hackneyed, letting go of the past that was dragging down the present and holding things back.

  To begin with she’d felt euphoric, as if everything was happening for her at the right time. Work on the bridge finished, the war ended, she was playing again. She thought that would be enough to allow the way she’d lived and the events that had happened to slip away from her cognisance and bury themselves deep under the rubble. And some of them she had reconciled: the way she’d demeaned Alice, the black market, skulking around, hiding in sly shadows, creating a hardness around herself; Ralph and Cyril. But there was one person who refused to be dealt with in the same way: Mother.

  Joan was able now to admit, with some reluctance, that Mother had been somewhat right in her summation of Ralph, but the fact remained that a large part of the reason Joan took up with Ralph in the first place was to get away from Mother. And as far as the violin was concerned, well perhaps Mother really did want what was best for her. But why did she think it necessary to be so single-minded and overbearing about the whole thing?

  Joan shook her head; it kept coming back to the violin, as it always had. Not to the innocuous lump of wood itself, fashioned to make exquisite sounds, but to how she’d been forced into making it her whole life. Or thought she had. Of course, there was no doubt she’d been encouraged to the exception of everything else; pampered and mollycoddled and kept well away from other influences.

  But if that hadn’t happened, she wouldn’t be so pleased to have picked up the instrument again, even if it was to play in an entirely different fashion. That had been her decision and she was proud of it. Perhaps Mother and all her nagging had merely facilitated that conclusion. She began to wonder if she’d been too cruel. But harshness had seemed necessary to make her point. Mother had needed to know her ambition for Joan was damaging her, but perhaps she had taken it too far and had ended up wounding herself in the process. She’d seized on that one injustice to excuse whatever she did, justify her selfishness and give credence to her lack of accountability.

  Newly available time led her to indulge in a series of elaborate conversations she held in her mind with Mother. In these scenes she was enraged but articulate, calm and to the point. Mother weak with shock at her eloquent coherence, stunned at the effect of her actions. Then Mother begged her forgiveness.

  She mentioned to Alice that there were certain things she’d like to say to a certain person she was no longer in touch with. ‘Write to them,’ Alice said. ‘Tell them what you thinks.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Joan said, but wasn’t convinced she could see it through. ‘I’m not so sure though,’ she said. ‘It would be so hard, to put it all down in writing and then imagine the hurt when she opened it.’

  ‘Or write the letter then reads it to me.’

  Joan considered that idea; it sounded as if it might be cleansing.

  ‘Or say the words aloud in your room then throw the letters in the bin.’ Joan felt Alice watching her. ‘Is it your ma? Sorry, your mother?’

  Joan nodded her head and left it at that.

  It was hard to imagine all of her confused thoughts coming out in a letter, or face to face. She and Mother would probably end up tearing each other apart.

  A lady wearing surgical stockings and sturdy walking shoes strode past, eyes straight ahead, sidestepping people walking the other way without varying her pace. Joan followed her progress and thought: there’s a woman with somewhere to go and something to do. She needed a job; a proper one. One that would take her out every day at the same time, keep her occupied for eight or nine hours and end as the evening was beginning, so she could carry on playing with the group. That’s w
hat Colin and Bernie did, and so should she.

  The shillings and pence were getting a bit tight, too. The few pounds they made for a night in a club didn’t go far when split three ways, and some of that had gone on equipment and advertising. It was lucky she’d put a bit by from her wages on the bridge. But, she could feel the heat rising when she thought of it now, she’d only been able to do so because she’d had that dirty money coming in. Any little job would do now, really, while she kept her eye on the bigger goal. Something like Alice had or – she examined her knuckles, turning her fingers towards her to scrutinise the nails – if she didn’t want to get her hands mucky, something in an office.

  There was a growling rumble in the distance that a few months ago might have been the start of a bombing raid. No one flinched or started like a spooked rabbit. A man and woman walked past, about the same age as her and Colin, their arms lightly caressing each other’s waists, their faces close together. Whispering, giggling, holding their palms up to catch the first drops of rain. She wondered what it would be like to walk with Colin in the same way. But the time when anything good might have happened between them had passed, as it had done with Mother. She collected up her things and ran for home, making it indoors before the first knife of lightning serrated the sky.

  The storm was to last all night and into the early hours of the next morning. Hazel was terrified, but her nerves became a bit steadier with someone to talk to and a tumbler of sherry. When Alice came home, she said she would stop in so Joan could get off to her gig.

  Is this the way our lives will go, mine and Alice’s? thought Joan, changing for the evening in her room. Caring for Hazel and Ivy, and eventually Hazel on her own, as Hazel cared for her mother? It was a revealing yet unsettling notion, and one Joan didn’t care to consider too carefully.

  ‘I were telling Hazel,’ Alice said when Joan stuck her head around the door to say goodbye, ‘that the man from the shop next door poked his head in the greengrocer’s this afternoon and said the storm were God showing his displeasure for us pushing Churchill out and voting Attlee in.’

  ‘Oh dear me,’ Joan said, laughing. ‘What nonsense. We need someone new now, someone with different ideas.’

  ‘I know,’ Alice said. ‘But he says we did the wrong thing and we’ll pay for it.’

  ‘Poor Winnie,’ Hazel said. ‘He must feel as though he’s been put out to meadow like an old nag.’

  ‘This isn’t his time,’ Joan said. ‘He’s done his bit.’

  As she gathered her outdoor things together in the hallway, she could hear Alice talking to Hazel about Beveridge’s Five Giant Evils and how the new Labour Government had pledged to eradicate them with the Welfare State.

  ‘Oh, did you hear that, Mummy?’ Hazel said. ‘Attlee’s lot says we’re to have no more wickedness. What are the five nasty things he’s getting rid of, my sweetheart?’

  ‘I think they was disease, want, ignorance…’

  Joan sighed and, huddling under her umbrella, made her way through the storm to the Tube.

  *

  Welfare system or not, no one was going to pay Joan enough to sit around all day waiting for the combo to be discovered. She joined the long queue of women at the Employment Exchange; the window serving men standing empty for most of the time she was there, as they got first grabs at all the jobs going now they were coming home. Holding her head to one side, the woman behind the counter stretched her mouth into a weak, sympathetic smile. Her fleshy bosom rested on the counter while she fiddled with the strap of her watch, trying to ease the pressure points that cut into her wrist.

  ‘Can I sign on for work, please?’ Joan asked.

  ‘Of course,’ the woman said, picking up a pen and a form. She took down Joan’s details. ‘Now, experience? Previous employment?’

  ‘My war job was on the Waterloo Bridge. So construction, I suppose. Building. The tools, the girls used to call it. But I…’

  ‘Lovely piece of work,’ the woman said, twiddling the pen between her stout fingers. ‘Made my journey to and from this place much easier. My friend and I were wondering what it’s made from. You know, on the sides. It’s much lighter than the other crossings.’

  ‘Portland Stone,’ Joan said. ‘It’s self-cleaning. That’s why it stays that pale colour.’

  ‘How does that work then?’

  Joan shrugged. ‘I’m not entirely sure. But I heard someone say it cleans itself every time it rains.’

  The woman leaned back and chuckled. ‘If only the same could be applied to the house. And the washing. And mending.’

  ‘Yes, if only,’ Joan said. ‘As I was saying, I really don’t want…’

  ‘And even if you did, there’s nothing going for women at all in that line of work.’ She made a few notes. ‘What about prior to that?’

  Before Joan said a word, she knew how incongruous her answer would sound. ‘I played the violin in an orchestra.’

  The woman looked at Joan’s hands, then added something a line below what she’d already written. ‘Two very different occupations,’ she said. ‘That’s happening more frequently now, what with the war having interfered with careers. But I do believe musicians have their own employment office. And union.’ She opened a drawer and scoured through the contents. ‘I think I have the address here.’

  ‘I’m already playing in a band,’ Joan said. ‘But I need a day job to keep me going.’

  ‘In that case, we have a number that might suit. Do you have any preference for which service area?’

  ‘One that’ll be easy on my hands. If possible.’

  ‘Well, there’s catering. Office or shop work. Telephonist?’

  *

  Joan decided on breakfast and lunch waitressing at the Strand Palace. The work was hard and she was used to that, but her legs and feet throbbed with fatigue by the end of a shift. She had to wear a black dress, a white apron and a funny little hat.

  The crowd she worked with was nice enough, always ready for a laugh or a moan when not in front of the customers. A busboy named Sid had a scathing remark about everyone whose table he cleared, mimicking accents, turns of phrase and gestures with cutting precision. He reminded Joan of Colin, in that respect, although Colin’s impersonations were softer. They had to do more with genuine affection and fascination with people than the edge of contempt in Sid’s performances. As she watched Sid taking off an elderly Lady Someone-or-Other, wrinkling his nose in distaste and crooking his little finger, she thought about how Colin had her in stitches imitating Bernie. He’d shake his head, rub his hands over his hair, shake his head again, close his eyes, enthralled by the saxophone he tilted towards the ceiling, then open them wide, blinking rapidly as Bernie did at the audience.

  The wages from the hotel were reasonable, about the same as the bridge, but with the bonus of pooled tips. All gratuities had to be handed over to the room manager who wrote the amount in a notebook. On Saturday afternoons, after the lunch house was cleared, he sat down and divided it unequally between his staff. He took a clean ten per cent off the top for himself, the two headwaiters were each allotted ten per cent of the remainder, waiters the next cut, waitresses after them, until finally the porters and busboys were tossed the last few pence.

  It was usual for a hierarchy to exist; that was the same everywhere. But she was peeved that all the waiting staff didn’t get the same reward. It would have been much more reasonable for each individual to pocket what was left on the table by the customers. While she was on the bridge she hadn’t thought much about getting paid less for doing the same job as a man. Evelyn had kicked up a fuss about it, or tried to, but it never came to anything. It was more keenly felt now, when hands were held out and she could see the difference between the coins in her palm and those in the gnarly masculine one next to her.

  Joan stuck it out for three weeks, and during that time she looked for any excuse to hand in her notice. The unjust division of tips could have sufficed, as could a fear of cutting her fingers on
broken crockery, or the dread of developing varicose veins. Those reasons weren’t quite enough to substantiate another visit to the Employment Exchange, but one afternoon the perfect pretext presented itself in the form of Mother.

  Three-quarters of an hour into the lunch shift and the restaurant was filling up. Nine of Joan’s ten tables were occupied by groups of ladies, couples, businessmen, RAF and Army officers, two families with school-age children; some had been handed menus, others had given their orders and were enjoying an early drink. As Joan pushed through the swing doors from the kitchen to the dining room, pad in hand, she looked up to gauge numbers standing in the queue behind the reservations desk. From the middle of a group of immaculately dressed women, Mother caught her eye and reddened. Joan stood inert, ignoring customers’ raised fingers, and watched as Mother touched the sleeve of one of her companions, whispered in her ear and turned away.

  The colour in Joan’s cheeks was a match for Mother’s as she swung back into the kitchen, reported sick and never returned. She hoped that her share of that week’s tips would help everyone out a bit, Sid in particular.

  Filing for a firm in Baker Street was monotonous and repetitive, and – surprisingly – harder on her hands, working with all that paper, than carrying plates and cups. Every morning she was faced with a mountain of paperwork to store away in metal cabinets; by the evening the pile had diminished only to re-materialise the following day. It could have been demoralising, but she didn’t mind the work, routine as it was. No one bothered her and she didn’t have to kowtow to anyone. She could think or hum to herself while she slotted documents into alphabetical order. Perhaps she was best suited to lying low, secreting herself away.

  Sitting alone in the canteen a week after she started, Joan brought a spoonful of lukewarm oxtail soup to her mouth and listened to the discussion at the next table.