Expo 58: A Novel Read Free Page B

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