Expo 58: A Novel

by Jonathan Coe

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr Ellis. ‘So, in effect, what is required is that someone from your office should be on hand – and indeed, on site – to run things. Or keep an eye on them, at the very least.’

  It was very obtuse of him, but even at this stage Thomas could not see where he was supposed to fit into all this. He watched with increasing stupefaction as Mr Cooke opened the manila file beside him and began to flip languidly through its contents.

  ‘Now, Foley,’ he said, ‘I’ve been looking through your file here, and one or two things . . . One or two things seem to rather leap out at me. For instance, it says here –’ (he raised his eyes and glanced at Thomas questioningly, as though the information he had just lighted upon could hardly be credited) ‘– it says here that your mother was Belgian. Is that true?’

  Thomas nodded. ‘She still is, if it comes to that. She was born in Leuven, but she had to leave at the beginning of the war – the Great War, that is – when she was ten years old.’

  ‘So you’re half-Belgian, in other words?’

  ‘Yes. But I’ve never been there.’

  ‘Leuven . . . Not familiar with it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘The French name is Louvain. But my family were Flemish-speakers.’

  ‘I see. Picked up much of their lingo?’

  ‘Not really. A few words.’

  Mr Cooke returned to his file. ‘I’ve also been reading a little bit about your father’s . . . your father’s background.’ This time he actually shook his head while skimming over the pages, as if lost in rueful amazement. ‘It says here – it says here that your father actually runs a pub. Can that be true, as well?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mr Cooke seemed torn between relief and disappointment.

  ‘He did run a pub, yes, for almost twenty years. He was the landlord of the Rose and Crown, in Leatherhead. But I’m afraid that my father died, three years ago. He was rather young. In his mid-fifties.’

  Mr Cooke lowered his gaze. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Foley.’

  ‘It was lung cancer. He was a heavy smoker.’

  The three men stared at him, puzzled by this information.

  ‘A recent study has shown,’ Thomas explained carefully, ‘that there may be a link between smoking and lung cancer.’

  ‘Funny,’ Mr Swaine mused, aloud. ‘I always feel much healthier after a gasper or two.’

  There was an embarrassed pause.

  ‘Well, Foley,’ said Mr Cooke, ‘this is pretty dreadful for you. You certainly have our commiserations.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. He’s been much missed, by my mother and me.’

  ‘Erm – yes, there is your father’s loss, of course,’ said Mr Cooke hastily, although it appeared that this was not what he’d actually been referring to. ‘But we were commiserating with you, rather, on your . . . start in life. What with one thing and another – the pub, and the Belgian thing – you must have felt pretty severely handicapped.’

  Temporarily lost for words, Thomas could only let him speak on.

  ‘You made it into the local grammar, I see, so that must have been something. Still, you’ve done frightfully well, I think, to get where you have since then. Wouldn’t you agree, gentlemen? That young Foley here has shown a good deal of pluck, and determination?’

  ‘Rather,’ said Mr Swaine.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Mr Ellis.

  In the silence that followed, Thomas felt himself sinking into a state of absolute indifference to the conversation. He gazed through the sash window and out into the distance, towards the park, and while waiting for Mr Cooke to speak he had a savage craving to be there, walking alongside Sylvia, pushing the pram, both of them looking down at the baby as she lay deep in a dreamless, animal sleep.

  ‘Well, Foley,’ said the Central Office of Information’s Director of Exhibitions, slapping the file shut with sudden decisiveness, ‘it’s pretty obvious that you’re our man.’

  ‘Your man?’ said Thomas, his eyes slowly coming back into focus.

  ‘Our man, yes. Our man in Brussels.’

  ‘Brussels?’

  ‘Foley, have you not been listening? As Mr Ellis here was explaining, we need someone from the COI to oversee the whole running of the Britannia. We need someone on site, on the premises, for the whole six months of the fair. And that someone is going to be you.’

  ‘Me, sir? But . . .’

  ‘But what? Your father ran a pub for twenty years, didn’t he? So you must have learned something about it in that time.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘And your mother comes from Belgium, for Heaven’s sake. You’ve got Belgian blood coursing through your veins. It’ll be like a second home to you.’

  ‘But . . . But what about my family, sir? I can’t just abandon them for all that time. I’ve got a wife. We’ve got a little baby girl.’

  Mr Cooke waved his hand airily. ‘Well, take them with you, if you like. Although a lot of men, quite frankly, would jump at the opportunity to get away from nappies and rattles for six months. I know I would have done, at your age.’ He beamed a happy smile around the room. ‘So, is it all settled, then?’

  Thomas asked if he could have the weekend to think about it. Mr Cooke looked bemused and offended, but he agreed.

  Thomas found it hard to concentrate on his work for the rest of that afternoon, and when five-thirty came around he still felt agitated. Instead of getting the tube right away he went to the Volunteer and ordered half a pint with a whisky chaser. The pub was smoky and crowded and before long he found himself having to share his table with a young brunette and a much older man with a military moustache: they seemed to be conducting an affair and not making much of a secret of it. When he got tired of listening to their plans for the weekend, and of having his shoulder jostled by a crowd of music students from the Royal Academy, he drank up and left.

  It was well after dark, and already a filthy night. The wind was almost enough to blow his umbrella inside-out. At Baker Street station Thomas realized that he was going to be very late getting home, and there would be trouble if he didn’t telephone. Sylvia answered almost at once.

  ‘Tooting, two-five-double-one.’

  ‘Hello, darling, it’s only me.’

  ‘Oh. Hello, darling.’

  ‘How are things?’

  ‘Things are fine.’

  ‘What about Baby? Is she sleeping?’

  ‘Not at the moment. Where are you? There’s a lot of noise in the background.’

  ‘I’m at Baker Street.’

  ‘Baker Street? What are you still doing there?’

  ‘I popped in for a quick one. Felt the need, to be honest. It’s been quite a day. This afternoon they called me upstairs and dropped a bombshell. Got a bit of news to tell you when I get home.’

  ‘Good news, or bad?’

  ‘Good – I think.’

  ‘Did you remember to pop out to the chemist at lunchtime?’

  ‘Damn. No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, Thomas.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry, it slipped my mind.’

  ‘There’s not a drop of gripe water left. And she’s been bawling all afternoon.’

  ‘Can’t you go to Jackson’s?’

  ‘Jackson’s closes at five.’

  ‘But their boy delivers, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Only if you telephone them to ask. I can’t call them now, they’ll have shut up shop ages ago. We’ll just have to manage until tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. I’m an ass.’

  ‘Yes, you are. And you’re going to be dreadfully late for dinner.’

  ‘What have you made?’

  ‘Shepherd’s pie. It’s been ready for more than an hour, but it’ll keep.’

  Thomas hung up and left the phon
e booth; but then, instead of heading straight for the escalators, he lit a cigarette and leaned against a wall and watched the other people hurrying by. He thought about the conversation he’d just had with his wife. It had been affectionate, as always, but something about it had disturbed him. Increasingly, these last few months, he had felt that the axis of his relationship with Sylvia had shifted. It was the arrival of Baby Gill that had done it, undoubtedly: of course this event had brought them closer together, in some ways, but still . . . Sylvia was so preoccupied, now, with the day-to-day responsibility of looking after the baby, ministering to her endless, unpredictable needs, Thomas could not help feeling that he was somehow being marginalized, squeezed out. But what was he to do? The transient image that had visited him in Mr Cooke’s office – that image of the two of them, pushing the pram together in Regent’s Park – had been vivid enough: but what sort of man was in thrall to such visions? What sort of man preferred a stroll in the park with his wife and baby daughter to the pressing business of getting on in the world? Carlton-Browne and Windrush had overheard him, one morning, talking with Sylvia on the telephone about Baby’s hiccups, and they had given him a terrible ribbing about it for days afterwards. With good reason, too. There was no dignity in any of that, no seriousness. In this day and age, a chap had responsibilities, after all. A role to play.

  It would be madness not to take the Brussels job. By the time he reached the front door of his house, fifty minutes later, he had already decided that. But there was something else, too: he was resolved not to tell Sylvia about Mr Cooke’s proposal. Not just yet. Not until he had made up his mind whether she and the baby should come with him. In the meantime, he would keep it to himself. Over dinner, he told her that the ‘bombshell’ he had mentioned on the telephone was a small improvement in the terms of his pension contributions.

  What’s gone is gone

  When she had fled with her mother from Belgium to London in 1914, she had been Marte Hendrickx. But the English found these names too difficult: her mother had anglicized them both, in turn, and by the time of her eighteenth birthday she was Martha Hendricks. Since her wedding day, in 1924, she had been Martha Foley. For more than thirty years, therefore, her own name had felt like a peculiarity. And now that the man whose surname she had taken was dead, this feeling of self-estrangement was more acute, more insistent than ever.

  Today Martha Foley, if that’s who she was, sat inside the bus shelter and waited patiently for the bus to arrive. It was 11.32. The bus was not due until 11.43. She did not mind having to wait. She did not like leaving things to chance.

  She was fifty-three years of age. Fifty-four in September. She could have made herself beautiful, had she wanted to. But she chose, instead, to dress in sensible, middle-aged clothes, to wear flat shoes, to cut her greying hair in a matronly, austere fashion (rather like the Queen Mother’s) and to eschew all make-up apart from thoughtlessly applied bright-red lipstick and the occasional dab of face powder. She was a grandmother, now, after all. She had to conserve some dignity.

  Martha Foley looked placidly at the ribbon of road stretched before her, at the leafy outskirts of her home town, at the modest contours of the Surrey hills swelling up in the near distance. This morning was as deathly quiet as only an English Sunday morning could be.

  Another six minutes before the bus arrived. Martha stretched out her legs and gave a little silent sigh of satisfaction. She loved this English quiet. She could never get enough of it.

  At five past one, Thomas poured himself some whisky, and topped it up with a quick dash of soda from the siphon in the drinks cabinet. For Sylvia and his mother he poured glasses of nut-brown sweet sherry.

  ‘There you are, Mother, get that down you,’ he said.

  Sylvia came in, patting her hair. She had checked the roast and it was almost done, now. All that was left was the gravy.

  ‘And how are you, Mrs Foley?’ she said, reaching down to kiss her mother-in-law on her powdered cheek. ‘Buses on time this morning, were they? You know, as soon as we get a car, Thomas will be able to run out to Leatherhead and fetch you. Then you won’t have to make that awful long journey any more.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind a bit.’

  ‘It’s good that she keeps her independence,’ said Thomas.

  His mother looked across at him sharply. ‘You make me sound ancient. That’s the sort of thing you should be saying in twenty years’ time, when I’m really old.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Thomas, trying to conciliate, ‘we’re a long way from getting a car yet. A long way. We’ll be paying this place off for years.’

  ‘Well, it will be money well spent,’ said Mrs Foley, looking around her. ‘It’s a beautiful home.’

  After this comment had hung in the air and died down there was a long hiatus, during which the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to be ticking extremely loudly. Feeling himself running out of conversation already, Thomas glanced longingly towards the copy of today’s Observer which he had been obliged to lay aside, only half-read, on the occasional table. It had been an especially thought-provoking edition. A strongly worded article by Bertrand Russell, in support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, had been balanced by a more even-handed editorial on the opposite page, which maintained that in the rush to condemn the proliferation of weapons, people should not forget the amazing benefits that nuclear technology was going to bring them. A potentially infinite source of clean, cheap energy, for one thing. Thomas still didn’t know where he stood in this particular debate and, with the arguments currently fresh in his mind, would have liked to have been able to chew them over with someone. If he had been at work, he could perhaps have taken it up with Windrush or Tracepurcel in the office canteen: but Sylvia, on the whole, was too unsure of herself to offer an opinion about such things. In fact their minds, he sometimes thought, were starting to run on completely different tracks. It was not right. He hardly expected her to be an expert on world politics or nuclear science – he could scarcely claim that distinction himself – but he felt it was important (a responsibility, even) to sustain an interest in these matters. Reading about them, keeping himself informed, was an essential part of Thomas’s daily life. He had to believe that somewhere out there, beyond the silent confines of suburban Tooting, was a world of ideas, movements, discoveries and momentous changes, a world that was in a constant state of discussion with itself; a discussion to which one day he might (who could say?) make his own tiny contribution.

  ‘I’d better start thinking about the carrots,’ said Sylvia, putting her glass down.

  She was about to rise to her feet, but Thomas beat her to it.

  ‘They’re out in the yard, aren’t they?’ he asked, and was on his way before his wife could do anything to stop him.

  Left to each other’s company, Sylvia and her mother-in-law sized each other up warily.

  ‘What a lovely picture,’ said Mrs Foley in a bright voice, after they had both taken a few sips of sherry.

  It was a new photograph of Baby Gill, taken two weeks ago at the little studio on the High Street, and only delivered in its smart beechwood frame yesterday morning. She was sitting up on a sheepskin rug, bright-eyed, wearing a lacy cap which concealed the fact that her hair was currently still on the thin side. It was a monochrome print, but the photographer had artfully tinted the baby’s cheeks with touches of rose-pink.

  ‘She’s going to be a beauty,’ Mrs Foley predicted.

  ‘Gosh. I don’t know about that,’ said Sylvia, lowering her eyes as if it were her own looks that were being complimented.

  ‘She has your colouring, you see. Her skin’s going to be peachy, just like yours. Now if she’d taken after Thomas, we’d be in trouble. He had terrible skin when he was younger. Dreadful. Well, you can still see he gets pimples even now. It comes down on his father’s side.’ This was all stated in a perfectly matter-of-fact way. Ex
perience – of which she had a great deal – had taught Mrs Foley many things, but never the need to be tactful. ‘Sleeping now, is she?’

  ‘Yes. I should go and check on her, really.’

  It would have been a lame excuse for leaving the room. Fortunately, a better one presented itself when the telephone rang in the hallway.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  It was her mother, Gwendoline, calling from Birmingham. Thomas, in the midst of peeling the carrots, popped his head out from the kitchen and hissed, ‘Tell her to call back,’ but she took no notice. It seemed that some serious family news was being imparted, but Thomas did not find out what it was until later, when they were all sitting at the dining-room table and the joint had been carved.

  ‘I’m sorry about the interruption,’ said Sylvia, spooning the vegetables onto Mrs Foley’s plate, ‘but Mother had something rather distressing to tell me.’

  ‘Not too many of those for me, dear,’ said Mrs Foley, keeping a watchful eye on the potatoes. ‘This girdle’s tight enough as it is. I don’t want to be getting stout.’

  ‘Why, what’s happened, darling?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘It’s Cousin Beatrix.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Thomas’s ears always pricked up when he heard Beatrix’s name. She was by some way the most interesting (and least respectable) member of Sylvia’s family, a compulsive romantic adventuress rarely held back by the fact that she had an infant daughter to look after. The pleasure of tutting over the latest Beatrix scandal was one of the few that Thomas and Sylvia could share together: from both of them, her exploits provoked routine outbursts of disapproval and secret pangs of envy in equal measure.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘She’s walked out on that poor old Canadian already and found yet another victim. I knew it wouldn’t last more than a year or two.’