The Women of Waterloo Bridge Read online

  ‘Don’t forget your promise,’ Betty said. ‘Write to me and I’ll write back.’

  Gwen followed Betty into the kitchen; she wanted to get the bath out and filled before the siren. At the door, Betty looked down at the cases and masks ready for the morning. ‘Are you alright now, Gwen?’ she asked. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?’

  ‘You’ve been a great help, Betty,’ Gwen said, the tears starting again. ‘There ain’t nothing more you or anyone else can do.’

  ‘Maybe you could think about getting some kind of work. You know, to keep yourself busy.’

  ‘Oh, Betty.’ Gwen dragged her hands through her hair, pulling out a pin and putting it in her apron pocket. ‘That’s the last thing I can think about right now.’

  ‘I don’t mean this minute.’ Betty stopped Gwen’s fingers short of her sharp teeth and cupped them in her hands. ‘But soon you might have to. Len’s mate left his paper when he came to visit and in it there was a list of jobs for ladies. I couldn’t believe it. Might as well choose something you like the sound of before you get given the dregs.’

  ‘I’ve got enough to be getting on with right now,’ Gwen said.

  ‘You can’t sit around here all day and night brooding. You’ll make yourself ill.’

  Gwen unwound her hands from Betty’s and folded her arms, standing away from the door to let Betty pass. ‘Ta, Bet,’ she said. ‘I’ll get tomorrow over and done with first.’

  The blackouts were drawn and the copper full of water was heating on the stove. Gwen dragged the bath in front of the fire and draped nightclothes and towels over the guard. Will was racing around the sitting room, acting out the flight of a plane from take-off to landing with all the stages and noises in between. She moved in slow motion, fussing over details, trying to hold back the clock. This would be the last time for ages that she would be helping Will and Ruth get ready for their baths. She hated the thought that tomorrow someone else would be in charge of her kids, but she despised herself for not having done this for Johnny.

  ‘What was that noise, Mum?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘Wasn’t it just Will, being a plane?’

  ‘A different noise,’ Will said. ‘From the kitchen.’

  Perhaps George had leave to come home after all, Gwen hoped. But no one was there, although it was obvious Betty had been back because, spread open at the page she had been talking about, was a copy of the Labour Gazette. Ambulance drivers, land army, builders, postwomen; the list went on. Betty meant well, Gwen was sure of that, and she couldn’t want for a better friend so would hate to offend her. She would read the article next week and then be able to tell Betty she had done so. But for now, she folded the paper, tucked it behind a vase on the sideboard and made sure the towels were warm enough to wrap around her children.

  *

  Coming back to an empty house, with rations for two, was one of the hardest things Gwen had to endure. The silence screamed at her. The walls ranted about Johnny and what she should or shouldn’t have done for him, questioned the decision she had made about Will and Ruth, chided her about the lack of kindness between her and George. When she reached the point where she thought she would wail aloud, her hands pinned to her ears, she would escape to Betty’s, or the library, or the park. Then she would have to once more steel herself to unlock the door and step into the abyss of her family home.

  It took two weeks to clean almost every inch of the house and Gwen knew that when she’d finished, she would start all over again. She left the children’s room as it stood, unable to face the toys, books and clothes that lay in the exact positions the kids had placed them. If she moved things, the children’s fingerprints on them would be lost forever; if she left them to gather dust, they would remind her of their last days at home. So best to leave the door closed tight against her eyes, her nose and the touch of her hands.

  Despite that, she came across evidence of them in the least likely places. Right at the back of a cupboard under the sink, she found a jam jar full of brown river water, a couple of inches of green scum on the surface. Will had been sure it was populated with tadpoles, but none had materialised. A button from Susie’s dress appeared in the corner of the stairs on the landing; she tore down and ripped up the football chart that Johnny and Will had filled in without fail every Saturday afternoon; a couple of pieces of Meccano Johnny had searched for to complete an intricate model of a crane were behind the clock on the mantelpiece.

  She sat with each item she found, nursing it in her hands and remembering when she had last seen her child using it, or the outing they had been on when they gathered the stone or stick or leaf. Their faces came back to her in detail. She could picture the way they moved their mouths, their hands, their eyes. Will had a way of blowing upwards so his hair fluttered away from his forehead; Ruth would rub her eyes with her knuckles when she tried too hard; Johnny would tap his fingers while he thought about his arithmetic or drawing or what to make with his construction set.

  One dull afternoon, Gwen could feel her arms and legs heavy with fatigue, as if concrete had replaced muscle and bone; but she could not stop. Moving a bowl, some knitting patterns and a vase from the sideboard, she saw a newspaper fall to the floor. At first, she didn’t recognise it as George’s daily; then she could see it was that Labour Gazette Betty thought she was doing her a favour by bringing round. The sight of it brought back the memory of the day before Will and Ruth went away and Gwen scrunched it hard to use on the fire later. But then the tears began again. Weariness flooded through her and she thought that she would have to sit for ten minutes.

  In George’s chair, she closed and opened her eyes, needing rest but frightened of the nightmares that marred her sleep. She unfolded the paper on her lap and found the page Betty had asked her to read. The list of jobs women could do now spread out over four pages. She took up a pencil from the side table and tried to imagine herself in each of the advertised jobs.

  She put a cross through every job except one: construction. Not that she was keen on that either, but Johnny would be proud to think of her amongst the cranes and spanners and scaffolding. And it was either that or sit here where the quiet could not get any louder, the skirting boards cleaner, or the absent children more vivid.

  3

  December 1940

  Joan

  In the limbo between unconsciousness and waking, Joan imagined her mother nursing her through chicken pox, scarlet fever or some other childhood illness. Mother checking her pulse, Mother stroking her hands, Mother wiping her forehead, Mother stroking her hands, stroking her hands, always worrying about her hands. She was no longer that child, but she sensed that Mother was nearby, assuring herself that Joan’s hands were in perfect order above anything else.

  Then she drifted away again to a picture of herself in Ralph’s study. There, by the window, she saw the three-legged table on which he threw his watch, cufflinks, loose change and other paraphernalia when he had finished his duties for the day. A lavishly inlaid bureau stood against the wall on the left, and Joan could make out the documents waiting to be filed on its open-hinged jaw.

  One afternoon she’d wrenched the door open in her eagerness to see him after a week’s absence and sent the whole lot up into the stratosphere of the high ceiling. Afraid to look at the reaction on Ralph’s face, she’d clamped her hands over her mouth and watched as pages fluttered down around them like sycamore pods. Ralph laughed then and held out his arms to her. In her relief at not having spoiled the reunion, she’d stomped all over the reports and lists settling on the maroon and green patterned carpet.

  He’d patted his lap and she’d nestled into him, her hands tracing the lines of his face: the imperceptibly receding hairline; high, curved cheekbones; his asymmetrical nose, thickened on one nostril by a childhood scar; the dark, coarse moustache above the mouth that she’d heard others in the orchestra describe as malevolent. Snorting, he’d snatched her fingers between his teeth, slobbering over them, teasing them
between biting and sucking.

  Acting coy, she’d withdrawn her hands and buried them between her thighs and his. ‘Now, now,’ she’d said. ‘Can’t you hear Mother?’ And she’d aped her mother’s mantra. ‘Joan. Please, dear. Mind your hands.’

  He’d laughed at that, the warmth of his chest and belly rising and falling against hers. ‘I’d love to tell your mother what those hands of yours get up to,’ he’d said. ‘But shall I help you to be ever such a good girl this time and do as she says?’ And as he’d manoeuvred her to the leather sofa, he’d circled both her wrists with one of his hands and held them stretched out above her head.

  But when she came to, she was in the bedroom that had been hers since childhood and which could not have been more different from Ralph’s study. Mother’s favourite pastels were prominent here on the cushion covers and vanity table skirt, reclaimed from curtains taken down to make way for the blackouts. Putting aside her embroidery, Mother rose from the chair where she had been keeping watch, and Joan felt acrid disappointment rise from her stomach like bile when she saw Mother’s face, rather than Ralph’s, hover into view. Mother reached for her hand, but Joan turned away and let her fingers wilt on the outstretched palm.

  Then pictures of Mother administering the orange juice and castor oil, three days earlier, came creeping back. They broke through the flimsy lines of defence sleep had contrived. Mother had lifted the concoction of tepid syrup to Joan’s lips and instructed her to hold her nose as she gulped it down so the cloying mixture could begin its lethal task before she could taste it and spit it out. ‘Now this, dear,’ Mother had said, encouraging a tumbler of gin to Joan’s mouth as if she were offering her a pre-dinner cocktail. Twenty-four hours later, enfeebled by merciless cramps, Joan hung her limp head over an old pail, clutching it in order to give her a sense of stability. ‘Your hands, Joan,’ Mother ordered. ‘Relax your fingers.’ If she’d had the strength, she would have delighted in hurling the bucket and its contents over Mother’s pristine facade.

  Of course, when Joan had admitted the pregnancy to Mother, the details of her love affair with Ralph had been bullied out of her, too. Joan had expected Mother to be angry; she and Father had, after all, invested hundreds of pounds in her career. Not to mention, which Mother often did, the time and energy and sacrifices at the altar of pursuits, holidays and assets of their own. When Joan reminded Mother that at seven years old, she’d had the violin foisted on her, Mother retorted that Joan had begged to learn to play.

  ‘Of course I did,’ Joan shouted. ‘Little girls always want to mimic their mothers. But you… you never let it go. Not for one minute.’

  ‘No, I didn’t because I have diligence and dedication. Pity you didn’t copy those assets. If I’d had your chances, I would never have given them up for a sordid little entanglement.’

  They’d spent their days arguing. ‘You will be ruined,’ Mother would say over and over, like a scratched seventy-eight record. Mother was petrified for Joan’s reputation, but there was no doubt in Joan’s mind that Mother’s main dread was not for her standing as a young woman, but for her musical career. According to Mother, the only possible thing Joan could do was get rid of the baby. ‘We can put it behind us,’ she said. ‘Look at your hands, Joan. They’re still perfect, aren’t they? That’s all you need worry about.’

  If only that was the case. The absurdity of Mother’s thinking and the dilemma Joan battled with, reduced her mind to a mushy pulp. She hadn’t yet told Ralph about the baby and could not decide if she should. If he knew, he might break off their affair and she would have to revert to her life before him; inconceivable. If she got rid of the baby, with the help Mother persistently offered, then at least she and Ralph would continue as before. That was some comfort – but there was one other possibility. One she almost dare not imagine even though the picture of it would not leave her alone. If she told Ralph now, before it was too late, he might leave his wife for her and the child.

  As each night fell, she and Mother called a truce. They huddled on opposite ends of the sofa in the drawing room, the bickering and squabbles put on hold as they tried to drown out the wailing of sirens and bombing strikes with Mozart or Beethoven on the gramophone. It was war, inside and out. So acute was the feeling of entrapment that Joan often found it difficult to move or take a proper breath. Ralph would have found the indignity of the situation insufferable.

  *

  Sir Ralph Myers’ induction speech to the newly appointed musicians, sitting at the back of the Hall, intimated that he would never tolerate a spectacle. Joan felt childish pride as she imagined his praise was meant solely for her. ‘You’ve done well to get here. Do you know how many talented musicians auditioned for these positions?’

  As one many-headed creature, they shook their heads.

  ‘Come along now.’ He tutted. ‘Please don’t tell me I’ve erred and chosen shy, unforthcoming music-makers after all. The world around us may be rapidly slipping into indecorous chaos but it is up to us, indeed up to you, to counteract that decline and smooth the population’s way back to a more genteel, civilised way of life through the Genius of Harmony and the Soul of Music.’

  He swept his arm behind him to encompass the painted cupola above the stage, his suit jacket splaying open to expose the gold fob chain swinging against his golden embroidered waistcoat. Again, as if their heads were joined and in turn connected to his hand, like puppets to their master, they followed the arc of his elegant fingers. ‘You, young man.’ He pointed to the sandy-haired boy sitting next to Joan, his soft, pale hands spread with vigilance on his knees. ‘How many?’

  ‘Two thousand, perhaps?’ the boy stuttered. Joan cringed for him as she felt, rather than saw, the mortified heat rising from his freckled face. There was a moment’s silence in which the great man waited. Joan nudged the boy and whispered to him. ‘Sir Ralph,’ he shouted out with relief, his discomfort coming to an end.

  ‘Thank you, young man,’ Ralph conceded, but when he tipped his head it was, Joan was sure, to acknowledge her. ‘Now, to put the record straight, there were one hundred and fifty-seven auditions for the places on this very stage.’ He stamped his foot lightly then paused to let the resonance abate. ‘Some of them I sent back to school, as music masters or mistresses, some I steered to regimental bands and a few lucky applicants I encouraged to try again next year. From you even more fortunate candidates, I expect the following: loyalty to the endeavour of creating superb music, loyalty to the Hall, to each other and to me; punctuality, no excuses; decorum in your speech and manner when on duty here for a performance or rehearsal. You will each receive an invitation in your pigeonhole to meet with me in my study sometime during the next fortnight. Rehearsals start at nine o’clock Monday morning.’

  They watched as he walked down the aisle between them and through a row of red velvet seats towards a door at the back of the Hall, stopping to rub a mark from an armrest. Then he disappeared into the warren of corridors that led to his suite of offices.

  ‘Thanks,’ the boy said, delicately running a finger around his collar. ‘He’s ferocious, don’t you think?’

  Joan shrugged. ‘I thought he was commanding.’

  ‘I’ll say. That – and de-manding.’ He held out his sallow hand and they shook, his touch as insipid as hers. ‘What are you?’

  ‘Violin. And it’s Joan. How about you?’

  ‘Hello, Joan Violin. I’m Colin Cello. Do you fancy a drink?’ He motioned to a group of five or six others standing about talking. ‘Some of them mentioned it earlier.’ When Joan hesitated, he said, ‘No rehearsals until Monday, so the smell will have dissipated by then.’

  Joan laughed and pictured Mother’s disapproving face when Joan partaking of alcohol was mentioned; Mother, on the other hand, never turned down a drop. She sighed and decided not to chance Mother’s indignation. ‘I’ll have a cordial. I don’t drink.’ The chance to stay out a bit later pleased her and she could always say the Tube was disrupted or the bus
had to take another route because of the bombing. Besides, Mother would only insist she crack on with her practice the minute she got home and there was enough time for all that over the weekend, stranded alone with her in the house.

  Every evening and weekend had been the same, as far as Joan could remember, since she had first asked to have a little go on Mother’s violin. It was as if Mother was possessed from that moment on: organising lessons, insisting on practice before reading or homework or exploring the garden or skipping rope. Her stomach still tightened into a knot of despondency when she recalled having to turn down an invitation to a friend’s birthday tea because Mother said, ‘No, Joan has a great musical future ahead of her and can’t afford to diverge from her practice schedule.’ Of course the friend never asked again.

  There were many hilarious impersonations of Sir Ralph and William Benson, who was to be their conductor, that night in the pub. Colin surprised all of them, Joan thought, with his aptitude for the theatrical and the ease with which he laughed at himself, making a comic turn of his earlier humiliation. He even managed to draw Joan into the pantomime by getting her to whisper to him again on cue. ‘Next time, though, Joan Violin, I do wish you wouldn’t elbow me quite so hard. You managed to get me right in the spot where I snuggle my beloved Cecilia.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Edward. ‘And when might we get to meet this girl of yours?’

  ‘Monday next. Nine o’clock.’ Colin half closed his eyes and feigned rapture. ‘Cecilia Cello. My one and only.’

  Everyone admitted to the pet names for their instruments, Joan’s being the uninspired Violet. By the time they’d had a couple of rounds they had formed quite a little band, comfortable enough with each other to arrange to meet up again after the first rehearsal. Eileen, a tall girl with cornflower blue eyes set off by dark, arched brows suggested they go to see Top of the World at the Palladium. ‘Let’s book seats then,’ Colin said.