Expo 58: A Novel (7 page)

Anneke’s cheeks flushed crimson.

‘I meant –’ Thomas stammered, ‘– I meant that I’d like to see you in ordinary clothes.’

‘Yes.’ Anneke tried to laugh, but she was still blushing. ‘I know what you meant.’

There was a long final pause, before she said, ‘You’re going to miss your flight,’ and then a long, fervent, final handshake before Thomas broke away and hurried inside. He glanced back at her one more time. She waved.

Calloway’s Corn Cushions

Over the next few weeks, Thomas’s error, perhaps, was to make his excitement at the prospect of leaving for Brussels just a little too obvious. It should have been no surprise that Sylvia began to resent him for it; and her previous cheerful, resigned tolerance of their imminent separation began to harden into something more tight-lipped and melancholy.

On the Saturday morning of the weekend before his departure, Thomas was propelled by one of Baby Gill’s more vigorous bouts of screaming out of the house and along the street in the direction of Jackson’s the chemist, in search of yet more of the gripe water for which she seemed to have developed an insatiable need. There was a sizeable queue at the counter and, resigning himself to a wait of at least ten minutes, he was not best pleased to find that the customer in front was Norman Sparks, one of his next-door neighbours. Mr Sparks, a bachelor, shared his home with his sister and was, in Thomas’s eyes, a crashing bore of the first water. Shortly after their arrival in the neighbourhood, Thomas and Sylvia had been invited round to the Sparks’ for dinner: an experiment which had not been repeated, for it had been a long and arduous evening. Mr Sparks’s sister, Judith, was a sickly woman of about thirty who barely said a word to anybody (including her brother) and retired to bed shortly after nine o’clock, even before pudding had been served. As soon as she had gone, her brother proceeded to describe to his guests, in the most intrusively intimate detail, the nature of his invalid sister’s many ailments, which between them, he lamented, kept her more or less bedbound for most of the day. The tactless, bantering way in which he handled the subject had confirmed Thomas’s already growing dislike of his new acquaintance; a dislike further strengthened by the feeling that Sparks had spent much of the meal regarding his wife with what could only be described as a leer. Since then, all the same, he had kept up a reasonably polite front towards his neighbour. By nature, Thomas was not inclined towards antagonism. He would mutter a civil, ‘Morning, Sparks,’ if ever they passed in the street, and indulged him with the occasional idle chat across the back garden fence in sunny weather. None the less, he had not forgotten those hungry glances thrown in Sylvia’s direction over the dinner table.

‘Morning, Sparks,’ he said to him now. ‘How’s that poor sister of yours keeping?’

‘Oh, no better, no worse,’ Mr Sparks replied, with his accustomed breeziness. ‘Bed sores – that’s the latest thing. Big red ones. All over her
b-t-m
. I’ve been rubbing cream on them every day for the last two weeks.’

Thomas stared at him. ‘Really,’ he said, as flatly as he could. He was acutely conscious that every customer in the crowded shop was being made privy to this dialogue, and felt that a swift change of subject was called for. ‘Still, you’re looking well, at least. No troubles of your own, on the health front, I assume?’

‘Spoken too soon,’ said Mr Sparks, shaking his head with a rueful smile. ‘Corns. I’m a martyr to them. It’s my feet, you see. The awkward size of my feet.’

Thomas glanced down. There was nothing unusual about his neighbour’s feet, so far as he could see.

‘You astonish me,’ he remarked.

‘I’m a three-quarter size,’ Mr Sparks elaborated. ‘Eight and a halves are too small. Size nines are too big. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m a unique specimen.’ There was a note of quiet pride in this conclusion.

‘So they either rub, or pinch, I suppose,’ said Thomas, sympathetically.

‘They rub, or they pinch. Precisely. I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.’

‘Can’t you get a pair made specially?’ Thomas asked – in response to which, Mr Sparks burst out laughing.

‘D’you think I’m made of money, old man? I couldn’t afford anything like that. Not possibly. Why, I can barely keep me and Judy going as it is. No, those little beauties’ – he pointed at a shelf behind the counter, where there was a pile of little boxes bearing the label
Calloway’s Corn Cushions
– ‘those are my only salvation.’ Suddenly it was Sparks’s turn to be served, and with a lamentable attempt at a flirtatious smile for the girl on Saturday-morning duty, he said: ‘A packet of Mr Calloway’s finest, please, my lovely. And another tube of that wretched ointment – for the relief of the tender nether quarters of the unfortunate Miss Sparks, if you would.’

After this, to Thomas’s annoyance, Sparks waited for him outside the chemist’s shop, with the clear design of their walking back together. A further conversation was inevitable: Thomas managed to steer it gently away from Miss Sparks’s physical complaints and towards the less distasteful subject of football. Then, when they reached the gate of his own little front garden, a further misfortune presented itself: Sylvia was outside, trowelling the soil in their tiny flower bed, getting ready to plant a few rows of bulbs. She straightened up when she saw them, a hand on her aching back, and said: ‘Good morning, Mr Sparks. I put the kettle on only two minutes ago. Would you care to join us for a cup of tea?’

Frowning, Thomas followed his wife and his neighbour indoors. He knew exactly what was going on here: his imminent departure was weighing on Sylvia’s mind and, subconsciously, bestowing unnecessary attentions upon Mr Sparks was her way of punishing him for it. ‘I’m sure you like it strong and sweet, don’t you, Mr Sparks?’ she said, bringing the teapot in from the kitchen, and bending over him much too closely while she filled his cup. Sylvia had quickly regained her figure after giving birth, and even improved upon it: the breasts from which she fed the baby were fuller and more rounded than before, a fact which could scarcely escape Mr Sparks’s notice as he inclined himself slightly but eagerly towards her, his nose almost brushing the neckline of her dress, obviously breathing in her scent. ‘Milk and two lumps, please, Mrs Foley,’ he said hoarsely, looking up and holding the gaze of her hazel eyes for several moments too long. Thomas looked on with indignant surprise.

‘I must say, Foley’, Mr Sparks said, after Sylvia had returned to the kitchen to cut some slices of walnut cake, ‘that you’re a damned fool, if you want my honest opinion.’

‘Why so?’ Thomas asked, pretty sure that he wanted nothing of the sort.

‘Leaving the little woman all by herself while you swan off to Belgium, of all places. If I were you I wouldn’t leave her alone for more than ten minutes.’

Thomas stirred his tea, masking his irritation.

‘I don’t quite see what you’re driving at, old man,’ he said.

‘Well, after all, six months is a deuce of a long time,’ said Mr Sparks. ‘Aren’t you worried that she’s going to miss you?’

‘How considerate of you to think it,’ said Sylvia, coming back with the cake. ‘But I believe that aspect of it hardly troubles Thomas at all.’

‘Well, I don’t think it at all gallant of him.’

‘I shall be coming back at weekends, you know,’ said Thomas. ‘Some weekends, at any rate.’

‘And I suppose there are such things as letters, and telephones.’

‘Of course there are. We shall maintain a passionate correspondence.’

‘All the same,’ said Mr Sparks, ‘there are some . . . routine little tasks that only a man can carry out. And I would just like you to know, Mrs Foley, that if you ever have any requirements in that direction, I am always at your disposal. Just one ring on the doorbell, and I shall come running.’

‘Why, Mr Sparks, whatever can you be suggesting?’ asked Sylvia, with a delighted smirk.

Mr Sparks blushed to his roots. ‘Oh – I only meant,’ he mumbled, ‘that if you were to need a light bulb changing, or a shelf putting up, or anything in that line . . .’

‘I see,’ Sylvia replied, allowing herself the remains of a smile as she sipped her tea. ‘Well, that is very kind of you. What do you think, darling? Isn’t that a handsome offer of Mr Sparks’s?’

Thomas gave her a glassy stare, and merely observed, after a few moments’ pause: ‘Sparks was telling me that he’s a martyr to corns, these days. Almost prostrated with them, he is. He was limping like nobody’s business on our way home.’

If this remark was intended to dampen the sympathy that seemed to be developing by the minute between Sylvia and Mr Sparks, it actually had the opposite effect. Sylvia flashed him a look of sincere concern, and said: ‘That’s dreadful. Corns can be a terrible worry. My mother’s suffered for years. And her mother before her. It runs in the family.’

‘Does your mother use these?’ asked Mr Sparks, and produced his packet of corn cushions. ‘They stick over the affected area, you see, but with a hole in the middle, so that –’

Thomas had heard enough. Letting out a contemptuous sigh, he took a large bite from his cake, and then went to answer the telephone as soon as it started ringing in the hallway. On his return he found that the medical demonstration had run its course, and Mr Sparks had, instead, resumed his campaign of promising devoted assistance to the abandoned bride.

‘You might feel yourself rather confined here,’ he was saying. ‘Of course, if you need me to drive you anywhere – the station, for instance . . .’

‘You mean to tell me that old banger of yours is still running, Sparks?’ said Thomas (who was not yet able to afford a car). ‘I thought it fell to pieces ages ago.’

‘Who was that on the telephone?’ Sylvia asked.

‘Nobody. Just a bit of crackle at the other end of the line.’

‘Oh. That happened to me earlier today, while you were out.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. And twice yesterday.’

It was time for Mr Sparks to leave, and to apply his ministering hands to his sister’s afflicted regions. Thomas made a point of escorting him to the garden gate, to make sure that he really was leaving the premises. When he returned to the hallway, Sylvia was standing by the telephone, the receiver to her ear.

‘Insufferable ass,’ Thomas muttered, not entirely to himself. And then, to Sylvia: ‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes. I was just a little worried about the telephone.’

‘Is the dial tone there?’

‘Seems to be.’

‘Then it should be fine.’

‘I’ve been noticing these funny noises, that’s all. Ever since the engineer came.’

On his way towards the kitchen, Thomas stopped and turned.

‘Engineer? What engineer?’

‘A man came from the GPO, on Thursday morning. He was here for about half an hour, fiddling with the wires.’

‘Really? Why didn’t you tell me?’

Sylvia didn’t say why she hadn’t told him, although they both knew the reason: because they had barely been speaking to each other all week.

‘Did he just turn up on the doorstep,’ Thomas asked, ‘without any warning?’

‘No. The two gentlemen told me that he would be calling.’

‘Which two gentlemen?’

‘The two gentlemen who came the day before.’

Thomas began, slowly and glimmeringly, to understand what must be happening.

‘I see,’ he said, grimly. ‘And I suppose they told you they were from the GPO as well?’

‘Yes. Why? Nobody would tell a lie about something like that, would they?’

Sylvia followed Thomas into the kitchen and they sat down together at the table. She began to tell him, in full, the story of her strange encounter with the two nice men from the General Post Office on Wednesday afternoon. They had arrived at about three o’clock, she said, and told her that they were investigating a series of complaints in the area, relating to crossed lines, interrupted calls and general interference and unsatisfactory conditions on the local telephone service.

‘And that’s all you talked about?’ Thomas wanted to know. ‘Nothing but telephones?’

‘Why yes, of course,’ said Sylvia. ‘I told them that we hadn’t had any problems in particular – none that I could think of – but they said that an engineer would call the next day anyway, just to make sure, and to carry out some . . . routine maintenance work. And then they asked me to fill in a form –’

‘A form?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, name, address, that sort of thing?’

‘Yes. And there were some other questions, like . . . I don’t know, funny things like if I belonged to any political parties, and where I’d been on my holidays, and things like that.’

Thomas sighed, and said drily: ‘They wanted all that information, just to mend the telephone?’

‘Yes, I did think that was a little odd.’ She looked up at him, deferential, trusting: ‘You don’t think there was anything . . . queer about it, do you?’

Thomas rose to his feet. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘Probably just making sure everything’s ready for the new long-distance calls, or something.’

He was touched by the look of relief that lit up Sylvia’s face. Her naivety could sometimes be frustrating; but it was also capable of moving him, or at least making him feel powerful and necessary – which, if truth be told, he found a pleasant sensation. As for his growing suspicion that someone would most likely be keeping a careful eye on the daily comings and goings during his absence, that too, in its way, was strangely comforting.

The remainder of the weekend passed quietly enough. That night they went to the pictures – at the suggestion of Mrs Foley, of all people. ‘It’s your last Saturday evening together for a while,’ she said to her son. ‘For Heaven’s sake do something special. Give your wife a treat.’ Sylvia had been shocked, initially, by the thought of abandoning Gill for a whole evening, but Thomas’s mother had reassured her, and offered to sit with the baby herself. ‘I shall enjoy it,’ she had insisted. ‘It will make a change from sitting at home by myself. And what is the point of you having a guest room, if nobody ever sleeps in it?’ Thomas and Sylvia had taken the tube to Leicester Square and limbered up for his immersion in European cuisine by going to an Italian restaurant for lasagne and Chianti. After that, they had argued over the choice of film. Thomas wanted to continue the Italian theme by seeing
Cabiria – Her Nights, Her Men
, which was playing at the Continental: a suggestion which Sylvia vetoed firmly as soon as she learned that it was an X-certificate film, and that the main character was a prostitute. Her preference was for
Peyton Place
, which Mrs Hamilton at the Post Office had already seen four times, and which she could not recommend too highly: ‘The way they live . . .’ she had sighed to Sylvia the last time she had come in to cash a postal order. ‘The way they live in America. The great big motor cars, and the big wide roads. The beautiful houses, and everything in colour, and the men so handsome. There’s one actor plays the schoolteacher, and he’s such a good man, and has such strong principles, and at the same time you can just imagine him, with those wide shoulders, in those wonderful well-cut suits, taking you in his arms and . . .’ She had tailed off, dreamily, before thumping Sylvia’s postal order with her rubber stamp and handing over her two shillings and sixpence. Thomas, hearing this conversation repeated over zabaglione, remained unconvinced. Many years ago, without realizing it, he had acquired from somewhere the deep-rooted conviction that America was a shallow, vulgar, uncivilized place. He understood the allure of the image it was at pains to present to the world – a bold, insistent image, projected in Technicolor and VistaVision – but he was immune to it. Something within him rebelled against the idea of seeing a film which celebrated this way of life, even in the guise (hypocritical, he was sure) of a lurid melodrama which purported to expose its cracks and fault lines. So they ended up, by way of compromise, going to see
Chase a Crooked Shadow
, a British picture starring Richard Todd and Anne Baxter. It was filmed in black-and-white and, although most of the action took place in a Spanish villa, Thomas found some of the exterior shots to be curiously evocative of Hertfordshire. There was a twist at the end which wrapped the plot up neatly, and gave them something to talk about as they lit up their cigarettes on the tube home. It was a tidy, comfortable little film which left them both feeling dissatisfied, and it ended this valedictory evening on a note of anticlimax.