The Women of Waterloo Bridge

by Jan Casey

  Pencil sharpened and ready, Evelyn nodded to a few girls she recognised. None of them were on the bridge, so she wondered where they worked and what they were involved in building. A smart woman, wearing a white coat that gave her the appearance of a doctor, carried the shell of a miniature house into the middle of the room. Her light brown hair was tied back; pencils, pens and a protractor protruded from the top of her breast pocket. Puffing, she placed the model on the table and took it apart into pieces, leaving nothing but the base. ‘There. That’s that,’ she said, clapping the dust off her hands.

  She looked younger when she stood tall and smiled around the circle. Pointing to Evelyn and the girl next to her, she asked if they’d fetch the two boxes she’d left by the door. ‘Shouldn’t be too much for you,’ she said, flexing her arm. ‘Working on the tools all day.’

  The boxes were cumbersome, pieces of what looked like doll’s house furniture rattling around inside them. ‘Just here, girls.’ The woman pointed next to her. ‘Well done.’ She marched around the room, lifting the heavy curtains away from their ornate hanging poles to check the blackouts were secured, turning up the lamps, talking all the while. ‘My name is Cynthia Blackwood. I’m an engineer, or as the chaps like to refer to me, a lady engineer. As if the description is necessary. Never mind. There aren’t many of us so seeing all of you here this evening is heartening. I’m going to be with you for the next five talks. And this,’ she said, pointing to the pieces of replica house, ‘will be with us, too. Come.’ She beckoned with both hands. ‘Move in closer so you can see properly.’

  Evelyn carried her chair forward, forming a tight ring with the others. She felt pleased that Cynthia would be their tutor for the remainder of the lecture series, not that there had been anything to complain about with the previous woman, but in comparison she’d seemed aloof, inaccessible. As if her knowledge kept her apart from her audience. No such barriers seemed to exist between Cynthia and the snug circle; she made them feel they had equal standing in a somewhat secretive society.

  ‘We,’ Cynthia said, ‘are going to build a house. No words allowed like thingamajig, what’s-its-name or ask-the-gaffer. We’re going to use the correct vocabulary as we go along. Where shall we start?’

  ‘Foundations?’ said a girl with fair hair and long red nails.

  ‘All agreed?’ Cynthia asked.

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘Excellent.’ The older woman took a piece from one of the boxes. ‘Spread footings extend beyond the frost line. Good enough for shallow foundations. Deep foundations will need reinforced concrete. Just listen and join in for now. I’ve notes to give you at the end.’

  The door was closed, the room warm, the energy fixated on Mrs Blackwood, her facsimile and the information she was so willing to impart. Within that confined, intimate space, Evelyn felt as though she’d chanced into a limitless expanse.

  *

  No one on the bridge knew about Evelyn’s after-hours involvement in the WES and Sylvie had sworn to keep her cakehole closed for once, or twice counting keeping mum about Stan. So during the following week, Evelyn read through her notes, trying to familiarise herself with the technical terms by referring in her mind to things she saw on the bridge using their correct names. The sides became the facings, the gas was now an acetylene flame, sand and gravel were aggregates, concrete cylinders that agitated both ways were reversing or tilting drum mixers. Wherever she moved around the site, Evelyn made a note of what she saw and the way in which it was being used, how each segment fitted with the next.

  One afternoon, she let something slip about the beamed deck to Olive and a couple of her cronies, who ribbed her endlessly about it. ‘Your training with the gaffer’s gone to your head, girl,’ Olive said. ‘What’s a beamed deck when you’re at home?’

  Evelyn hid her embarrassment by joining in. ‘I haven’t got a clue. Something I heard one of the blokes say.’ She took a deep draw on the end of her cigarette. ‘Thought it sounded good.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Olive said, digging a splinter out of the palm of her hand. ‘You’re a beamed deck, if you ask me.’

  From the north side of the bridge, the grief-stricken moan of a klaxon broke through the constant din of machinery, stopping their banter. Jim tore across the unopened section of the roadway, his unfastened, faded blue work-coat fanning out behind him, three other men with first-aid training joining him on the way to the Somerset end. Hauling equipment and tools from their path, workers flattened themselves out of the way. Traffic noise slowed. In the distance an ambulance sounded, the beating of its bell intensifying before it came to a halt.

  Olive scratched the top of one boot with the toe of the other, scuffing the leather. They stood and watched the cigarette butt Evelyn flicked into the wind hover for a second, then spiral away from them and down over the facings to the Thames. Heavy clouds hung so low, that Evelyn thought she would be able to reach up and squeeze the rain out of them. ‘Best round my lot up and get on,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘Your crew still dismantling?’ Olive asked.

  Evelyn nodded. ‘I swear that old bridge grows bits of itself back overnight. Whatever we take down during the day reappears the next. We’ll never get rid of it.’

  ‘Like one of them lizard things,’ one of Olive’s friends said. ‘You know, if you catch hold of it, it sheds its tail and then hides away till it grows another.’

  Olive looked at her as if she’d gone mad. ‘Where does this happen then?’ She nodded towards Evelyn. ‘On her beamed deck?’

  Olive always had to have the final say and, Evelyn had to admit, it was always witty. ‘I came over looking for Gwen, actually,’ she said. ‘Seen her today?’

  ‘She’s in. But she don’t seem herself,’ Olive said, glancing in the direction of the accident. ‘A bit clumsy. You know, away with the fairies.’

  ‘At least she’s here. I’ll come back across at dinner time to see her. Tell her for me, won’t you?’

  Evelyn descended to the gantry that connected the new bridge to the partly demolished temporary structure. She’d been backwards and forwards countless times but always ran her hands along the railings, knowing how easy it would be to get cocky and lose her footing. Safety had been one of the facets John covered in his training for the new foremen and women, and Evelyn was so aware of hazards and pitfalls now that she had become a bit of a nag. Sylvie and Gwen, when they were with her, suffered the main brunt of her warnings.

  Gwen, in particular, was a worry. Her hands were in a bad way again, ulcerated sores around the cuticles, her nails so bitten back that angry, inflamed patches of skin were exposed to the elements. She was thin and vulnerable, almost scraggy after failing to regain the weight she had lost during her bout of flu. Distracted, too – lifeless and listless. She’d had countless days off: every other day some weeks or two days on, one day off. Jim was doing his best to accommodate her but some of the others were grumbling, wondering why they couldn’t come and go as they pleased, even though Gwen had her pay docked every time she was off without a doctor’s note.

  The girls who worked under Evelyn drained their flasks and stamped on their roll-ups, collected their tools and set to work when she gave them the okay. They were a good bunch: on time most days, easy to talk to, not resentful of Evelyn as she thought they might be. As well as hard work, a lot of singing, swearing and good-humoured teasing went on in Evelyn’s gang. The work was nothing new, though. This is what she and Sylvie had been doing when they started, around the time that photographer had snapped their photo that never did appear in the newspaper. Then they were welding reinforcing rods together, nailing lengths of timber; now the men were taking the steelwork apart and the women were cutting the rods into more easily transportable lengths. As for the huge steel girders, Evelyn thought she heard Jim say they would be used somewhere on the front. Good. Double the war effort from the bridge.

  Evelyn pulled her shield down and watched what each girl was doing in turn, checking the colour of th
eir flames, ensuring there were plenty of empty flat-bed trolleys on which to load the sets of reinforcements. When she was satisfied, she took up her own station and began to score through a steel rod, the molten metal melting away from either side of a clean slash. She’d got what Jim promised her; she was forewoman of a gang of six, but she’d hoped for something more glamorous, though it seemed a strange, contradictory term to use when it came to building work. Sliding her safety shield onto her head, she did a quick round of her group again, giving a thumbs-up to one of the girls who looked up at the same time.

  The job she had wanted was across the temporary bridge, beyond the chasm into the river, over the expanse of the opened half of the new roadway to where gangs of men were working along the far opposite facing of the new structure. At road level, they were fixing reeded cornice bands onto the outer surfaces – a lovely piece of work. Others were setting up fixtures for lighting standards, putting railings in place. Those sorts of jobs required responsibility and the chance to use spirit levels, to read plans, to make decisions. But all of it was being carried out by men. She and the three other girls promoted to forewomen were each given a measuring tape and put here, back where they started.

  Dare she complain to Jim again? She pictured trying to explain her gripe to him, heard herself stumbling over the wrong words, could see his hurt, bemused face. If Jim did understand her grievances and transferred her to head a task on the new bridge, there were no qualified women to work under her. Leading a group of men would be impossible. Besides, her condensed training sessions didn’t certify her to take on those more intricate, specialised duties. She’d have to be a lady engineer to get in there and even then, that might not be enough. Above her, a crane-load of reinforcements swayed, waiting to be guided down. Taking off her gauntlets, Evelyn signalled the rods perfectly, precisely into place. At least she could guarantee the safe, clean, efficient working of her gang.

  *

  Two or three stoic birds sang through the rain lashing against the window. Evelyn could hear Dad talking to the milkman, come for his money, at the door. She rolled onto her back, unravelling her arms from the knot she’d made of her fusty bedclothes, and thought it must be about half past ten. Yawning, she stretched her arms above her head and sat up, taking in the familiar set-up of the room she’d slept in since she was a child. Shelves on the wall, one for her, one for Sylvie; the wardrobe with doors that no longer closed; a washstand, jug, basin; half-sized bookcase, shoes, make-up on the dressing table, knickers drying on the back of a chair. A rag rug between two single beds. The disquieting sight of the rounded hump of Sylvie’s back huddled deep in her sheets.

  It had been Sylvie’s habit, before she met Alec, to languish in bed on weekend mornings then potter around the house in her dressing gown and slippers until it was time to get ready again for another evening out. Now she was up first, more often than not, never mind whether the previous night had been a late one. She seemed to be in a fever most of the time, almost unbearably cheerful in whatever she was doing, chattering away about Alec, looking back to when she’d last seen him or forward to when he would next be on leave. The only time she wasn’t in a heightened state of agitated happiness was when he was with her; then, she seemed to calm down into a lull of contentment.

  There was an exchange of goodbyes from the kitchen below, the banging of a door being closed. Evelyn wondered if she should wake Sylvie and check if she was unwell, but if she was, then she would need to sleep. Leaning over, Evelyn moved the covers away from Sylvie’s face with one finger and a thumb but Sylvie’s eyes, bloodshot and puffy, were open. She snatched the bedclothes back and up, over her head.

  ‘Are you ill, Sylvie?’ Evelyn asked, standing away from her sister’s bed.

  In response, Sylvie felt under her pillow and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, tight writing crammed onto every line. Evelyn’s heart thumped; she felt sick. She remembered another letter sent from a soldier and hoped this one didn’t bear the same sort of news. If it did, she knew it wouldn’t be read with the same sense of relief as the one she’d received from Ron.

  Evelyn meant to scan through, eager to get to the cause of Sylvie’s upset, but the detailed descriptions of exactly how Alec missed Sylvie slowed her down. Supporting herself on an elbow, Sylvie plucked the letter away from Evelyn, turned it over with an indignant huff, then thrust it back into Evelyn’s hands.

  So Alec was going away. Like thousands of other men. On the first of May he was leaving for training in Scotland. From there, the 1st Canadian Army would be embarking to… He couldn’t say; wouldn’t say. Evelyn smoothed the creases out of the paper, folded it and slipped it back in its hiding place. Her sister would need it to be in good condition for what might be a very long time.

  ‘I know it’s hard,’ Evelyn said, stroking Sylvie’s matted hair off her forehead. ‘But he has to go. You know he does. How many times has he said that the Canadians have been stuck here in England for three years doing nothing?’

  ‘They all say that. Those crazy Canucks.’ Sylvie put a pillow behind her head, slumping back onto it. ‘They think they’ve been nothing more than an extension of the Home Guard.’

  ‘Well, you’re very lucky, you know.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’ Sylvie wiped her nose on the sleeve of her nightie.

  ‘You’d never have met otherwise, would you? And you’ve had him here all this time. On leave more than anything else. Able to take you out, stay downstairs, living it up like he’s on his hols.’

  Sylvie laughed. ‘It’s hardly that.’

  ‘Think about all those poor old mares who lost someone right at the start. Olive’s friend whose old man took it on his first day in France. Helen. Her whole family gone. Gwen.’

  Sylvie played with the binding on her threadbare blanket. ‘Oh I know. I’m just feeling sorry for myself.’

  ‘Yes,’ Evelyn said. ‘You are, and you need to stop it. Now. Before Alec starts thinking you’re not the girl he fell for.’

  ‘Alright,’ Sylvie said. She snivelled again. ‘It’s just such a shock.’

  Evelyn patted her hand. ‘Will you see him before he goes?’

  ‘He’ll be here for the last three days of April.’ Her face brightening, she yanked her fingers through her hair. ‘Let’s give him some sort of farewell do on the 29th,’ she said. ‘Something jolly, but not too big. I don’t think it would do to shout about it.’

  Evelyn thought. The 29th. What was happening that day? It took a while for her to remember it was the date of the next lecture. ‘Why not make it the thirtieth?’ she suggested casually. ‘His last day?’

  ‘I’d rather save the Friday.’ Sylvie looked away. ‘For the two of us.’

  She didn’t want to let Sylvie down and although it was disappointing, missing one of the talks wouldn’t matter too much. But then, she realised, it did matter – to her. ‘Let’s think about this a bit more,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘What’s there to think about?’

  ‘Well, perhaps if the leaving do is early on the Thursday, then you and Alec can have that evening and all of Friday to yourselves.’ She tilted her head to one side and hoped she looked encouraging.

  ‘That’s a good point,’ Sylvie said. ‘Although the party might go on and on.’

  Evelyn shook her head from side to side. ‘I won’t let it,’ she said. ‘It’s the WES that night which is sure to put a damper on the evening when I mention it.’

  ‘Yes.’ There was nothing like the thought of a party to cheer up Sylvie. ‘A tea party, then. Let’s start organising it right away.’

  *

  On the Wednesday night, Evelyn joined Alec and Sylvie at the Canuck’s favoured club. Loud to the point of being an overbearing distraction, the music began vigorously and ascended to a frenzy. Forced laughter replaced the usual free-flowing guffaws that came so easily and naturally to the Canadians. Fervent couples groped and slobbered over each other well before the lights dimmed. Too many cigarettes wer
e smoked, too much alcohol consumed, too many promises made.

  With Stan at his posting, Malcolm pinned Evelyn down for most of the dance numbers, stepping with dexterity between her and any other man who approached to offer her his hand for a spin around the floor. She didn’t mind; Malcolm was a great dance partner, and they’d found themselves together so many times when the music started that they were used to how each other moved. They took up their positions for a foxtrot. Evelyn knew where Malcolm’s hands would be positioned and how they would feel, one firmly gripping hers, the other on her waist. Gliding together in aligned symmetry, Evelyn glanced at Malcolm, ready for one of his gags or clever observations.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, broadening his hand across her back. His eyes were the same transparent hazel as Alec’s, but with brows and lashes so fair they seemed to disappear in bright light. He was shorter, too, but had the same muscular build. Always fresh and clean, he looked and smelled as if he’d been out in clear mountain air, under cloudless skies. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘That, as my dad says, is a very dangerous thing.’

  ‘That’s good. I like it,’ Malcolm said. He smiled, his skin pulled tight over his cheekbones. ‘I’ll have to remember that one.’

  Evelyn hoped the flippant exchange would halt what she thought might be some serious admission on Malcolm’s part. She didn’t want him to ruin things now. They’d had fun together, but as far as she was concerned, that was all. She’d already made it clear there could be nothing between them.

  ‘Would you look at those two?’ Malcolm said when they swung around at the corner of the dance floor and faced a different way.

  Evelyn looked over her shoulder at Sylvie and Alec, nestled close and unaware of anyone else.

  ‘They’re always the same,’ she said, keeping her voice casual.

  They completed a circuit of the floor before Malcolm sighed and said, ‘I sure wish I had a girl to write me.’