Expo 58

by Jonathan Coe

  Thomas was reading these words two days later, sitting up on his bed in the cabin at the Motel Expo, killing the half-hour before he was due to go for dinner with Anneke. He had bought his hardback copy of From Russia with Love the day before, at an English-language bookshop on Rue Sainte-Catherine in central Brussels.

  He found the passage troubling, to say the least. Were things really so ruthless in the Soviet Union? He could hardly believe that anyone as witty, ingratiating and hospitable as Mr Chersky could be party to such matters. It was tempting to dismiss Ian Fleming’s novels – which were beginning to enjoy a considerable vogue in Britain – as pure fantasy. And yet, at the same time, he appeared to be writing with great authority. Hadn’t he worked in military intelligence himself? Thomas seemed to remember an article about him in one of the newspapers which had gone into his background. Quite a considerable personal experience of espionage, apparently. So there was a good chance that the man knew what he was talking about.

  He had read enough, for now. There was no point worrying, or even thinking too hard, about what he was getting himself into, because he had committed himself to helping Mr Wayne and Mr Radford in their tortuous scheme, and there could be no backing down. Why he’d agreed to it was difficult to say. There had been an appeal to his vanity, certainly: it was pretty flattering, after all, that someone should want to cast him as the bait in a romantic mousetrap. If they really saw him as that sort of fellow – the irresistible romantic hero type – who was he to argue? But he was also, to some extent, acting upon a residual, unexpected sense of patriotism: Thomas had been more than dimly conscious, these last two days, of a certain heroic glow at the thought that he was stepping up to the wicket now that his name had been called, and doing his bit for Queen and country. And then there was also the bonus (although he would never have admitted this to himself) that a number of hours, or perhaps even days (or perhaps even nights) spent in Miss Parker’s company was far from being an unpleasant prospect.

  He put the book face down on his continental quilt and continued to think, staring up through the skylight at the idly drifting summer clouds. Altogether it was going to be a very delicate affair. First of all, he would have to choose his words carefully when telling Anneke what he had been asked to do.

  Mr Radford and Mr Wayne had, to his surprise, shown considerable tact when approaching this side of things. They fully understood the difficulties of his situation. Thomas must, they said, explain everything to Anneke fully and clearly. She was a lovely girl: naive, guileless and entirely trustworthy. They had given her a careful vetting, of course, but there was nothing in her family background to cause any alarm. Given the closeness of the friendship (they put it no stronger) that had developed between Thomas and Miss Hoskens over the last few weeks, they felt that he only had one honourable course of action: to tell her the whole truth about Mr Chersky, Miss Parker, and the important task he had agreed to undertake, so that she might understand why, for the time being, he would be spending so much time in the American girl’s company. It was not going to be an easy conversation, they realized that: but they implored him to be candid, to answer all her questions, to conceal nothing from her. To behave like a gentleman, in other words. They suggested that he talk to her over dinner; and made a booking in Thomas’s name, for this purpose, at Praha, the restaurant of the Czechoslovakian pavilion – generally considered to be the best restaurant on the Expo site, and one which Anneke herself had expressed a special interest in visiting.

  So much for Miss Hoskens. Mr Wayne and Mr Radford had been less tactful, he thought, in dealing with the other matter he had raised: the question of Sylvia. At first they had misunderstood him. On no account, they cautioned, should he mention to Miss Parker that he had a wife and child back in London. That would be a grave mistake. And if she already knew about this, through her conversations with Mr Buttress, Thomas should invent a pretty convincing story to explain it away. Tell her that you’re separated, they said. Tell her that the marriage broke down some time ago, that you never see her, that there isn’t the smallest prospect of a reconciliation. Thomas listened to this advice, and agreed that he would follow it, but then explained that he had been thinking of a different problem altogether. He was a married man, after all, and was not sure that, even in the execution of this important mission, he would be prepared to betray his wife, physically, with another woman.

  Mr Radford and Mr Wayne had exchanged embarrassed glances. This question, it seemed, lay well outside their area of expertise.

  ‘Well, look, that’s entirely down to you, you know.’

  ‘We can’t very well help you with that one.’

  ‘These are deep waters, after all.’

  ‘Deep waters. Dangerous currents.’

  ‘All we would say is . . .’

  ‘Well, the pleasures of married life . . .’

  ‘. . . which we know you are awfully keen on . . .’

  ‘. . . they haven’t exactly held you back, so far, have they? . . .’

  ‘ . . . they haven’t seemed to weigh very heavily with you . . .’

  ‘ . . . in your relations . . .’

  ‘ . . . your dealings, we should probably say . . .’

  ‘ . . . with Miss Hoskens.’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand us, of course . . .’

  ‘. . . don’t take offence . . .’

  ‘. . . but our impression is . . .’

  ‘ . . . that you seem to play . . . pretty fast and loose . . .’

  ‘ . . . have a fairly flexible interpretation, as it were . . .’

  ‘ . . . of the rules and regulations, and all that.’

  ‘On top of which . . .’

  ‘ . . . moreover . . .’

  ‘. . . your good little woman back in Tooting . . .’

  ‘ . . . from what we understand . . .’

  ‘. . . not that we want to spread gossip, or anything like that . . .’

  ‘. . . or sow the seeds of mistrust, Heaven forbid . . .’

  ‘. . . but there does seem to be a small possibility . . .’

  ‘. . . if our information is correct . . .’

  ‘. . . that she and your next-door neighbour . . .’

  ‘. . . are becoming pretty . . . intimate . . .’

  ‘. . . taking that word in its broadest sense, of course . . .’

  ‘. . . in your absence.’

  Mr Radford and Mr Wayne had delivered themselves of these sentiments with an air of great discomfort, and then left Thomas alone for several minutes to ponder them. At the end of which, his feelings on the subject were no less conflicted than before. And even now, he found himself quite unable to see his way out of the moral labyrinth into which the bizarre developments of the last few days seemed to have led him.

  He picked up the book again. How would James Bond have acted in this situation, he wondered? It seemed to Thomas, from everything he already knew about him, that the differences between himself and Fleming’s hero were probably too great for any meaningful comparison. There was no way that Bond, for instance, would ever have got himself tied down to married life in Tooting, with a nine-to-five office job and a baby daughter, up to his ears in bills, domestic chores, nappies and gripe water . . .

  He sighed and got up from the bed. In just a few days’ time he was supposed to be going back to London for the weekend: his first trip home, away from the fair. He already sensed that it was not going to be an easy visit. No wonder that he looked forward, with a certain nervous pleasure, to tonight’s dinner with Anneke, and after that the rendezvous with Emily Parker that had been arranged for two evenings’ time.

  The last two days at Expo 58 had been declared Czech National Days: Czech films had been shown in the cinemas, Czech music performed in the concert halls, and bookings at the already popular Restaurant Praha had reached a record high. When the doorman admitted Thomas
and Anneke at nine o’clock that evening, the buzz of conversation in the restaurant was uncomfortably loud, and there did not seem to be a single place free at any of the thirty or forty tables.

  This, however, was merely the less exclusive of the two main dining areas: the Restaurant Pilzen. A waiter escorted them briskly between the crowded tables towards a door at the rear. Perhaps, then, Thomas thought, we have been booked a table in the Restaurant De Luxe: in which case, Radford and Wayne were really pushing the boat out on their behalf. But even on this point he was mistaken: for he and Anneke were ushered reverently into a private room, containing only one table, dominated by an enormous silver vase filled to overflowing with flowers, and laid out with a variety and volume of cutlery which suggested that this was going to be a very long meal.

  ‘Sir – madame,’ said the waiter, showing them to their seats. He then presented them with two menus, in stiff white card thickly embossed with gold lettering, and withdrew from the room discreetly, leaving them in a situation of far closer intimacy than either of them had been expecting.

  Anneke looked at Thomas shyly, her eyes round with surprise, and the first thing she said was: ‘Can you afford all this?’

  Now, perhaps, would have been a good moment to say that the bill was in fact being picked up by a little-known department of the British government; information which would have led on, naturally enough, to the difficult subject which Thomas was obliged to broach with her this evening. And indeed, he almost said it. Almost, but not quite. Instead he gave a worldly smile – one might almost have called it a smirk – and murmured: ‘Of course.’

  Neither of them had ever had a meal quite like this before. Finding themselves unable to choose from the menu, even using the English translations, they asked the maître d’ to make a selection for them. The courses came in rapid succession, in dauntingly large portions: but every taste sensation was so unfamiliar, and so delightful, that they made much better headway than they would have thought possible. There was beef tartare Kolkovna, served with garlic toast; a clear beef soup called hovězí polévka; wonderfully savoury pancakes (bramboráky); a lamb hock braised in red wine, served with rosemary potatoes; a beef stroganoff; chocolate soufflé; apple strudel; and more pancakes to finish – this time with cream yoghurt and blueberries. They began the meal with a bottle of sparkling Bohemian Sekt, and were then offered a deliciously sweet Gewürztraminer, followed by a rich, plummy Pinot Noir from Moravia. Finally, they drank brandy from giant snifter glasses, which had been specially designed, the waiter told them, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the famous Moser glassworks. The designer, he said, had classified humanity into six different types and created six unique snifters to express them. Thomas’s was called the Long Face; Anneke’s, the Slim Lady. The brandy warmed them both with a deep, satisfying liquid flame.

  As for the conversation which accompanied their meal, that too was free-flowing, if a little one-sided. Thomas did not have a huge experience of talking to women. A meal out with Sylvia, for instance, would typically be punctuated by long, difficult silences, as the two of them quickly exhausted every topic and struggled to dredge up new ones. And at work, there was a strict but unspoken orthodoxy which required that Thomas took lunch with his male counterparts rather than the secretaries. It was a new experience for him, that evening, to be addressed by someone like Anneke in such a spontaneous, confiding way: telling him stories of her family life, her wayward elder brother and over-protective father; explaining how, from a very early age at school, it had become obvious to everybody that she had a gift for learning languages; how as an infant, she used to pore over the leather-bound atlas they kept at home, and how she had never lost her fascination for foreign countries or eagerness to travel, although so far she had been no further south than Paris, or further north than Amsterdam. Thomas chipped in occasionally, usually to make more general remarks: wasn’t it interesting, he observed, that despite the acknowledged excellence of Britain’s public schools and grammar schools, it was still hard to find an Englishman capable of speaking a foreign language when he went abroad for a holiday? But he could not help noticing, at such moments, that Anneke was not really concerned to discuss what he would have called the broader picture. She liked to talk about things from a personal, subjective point of view, so for the most part all he could do was listen; drifting off, occasionally, to wonder how and when he was going to broach the sensitive topic of Emily, and his strange new assignment.

  Still on the subject of her yearning for travel, Anneke at one point asked him: ‘So, you never got to see the pavilion of the Belgian Congo?’

  ‘Not yet, no. I was planning to visit some time in the next few days.’

  ‘But you can’t,’ she said. ‘They’ve gone home.’

  ‘Who’s gone home?’

  ‘The natives from Africa. Hadn’t you heard?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, I read in the newspaper that they were complaining about the way that some of the visitors were treating them. They were sitting all day in their straw huts, working on their . . . native crafts, and so on, and apparently some of the people were shouting bad things at them, and sometimes they were trying to –’ (she giggled) ‘– feed them bananas, and things like that. They said they were made to feel like animals in a zoo. So now most of them have gone home and the huts are empty.’ Anneke frowned. ‘I thought there was something wrong about it, the first time I went there. It felt somehow . . . not kind, making them sit and work like that while all the Europeans just stood and watched.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas, ‘I thought so too, when I heard about it. On the other hand – perhaps it’s not so different from what Emily has to do in the American pavilion.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Anneke, doubtfully. ‘Only it doesn’t seem quite the same . . .’

  ‘Talking of Emily . . .’ Thomas began, taking this opportunity to engineer a smoothish change of subject, ‘there was something I wanted to tell you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going to be taking her to a concert on Thursday night. Tomorrow is the start of the Swiss National Days and their orchestra is giving a performance in the Grand Auditorium on Thursday. I’ve managed to get myself a pair of tickets.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Anneke. She drew back, visibly surprised. ‘And you’re taking Miss Parker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  So now there was nothing for it but to plough on. He drew a deep breath, and explained to her, in detail – just as Mr Radford and Mr Wayne had insisted that he should – the nature of the difficulty he had been called upon to resolve. He told her that, for the next few weeks, he would be spending a good deal of time in Emily’s company. He told her that, despite the impression she gave, Emily was actually a very naive and politically unsophisticated person. He told her that the American secret services had been monitoring her friendship with Mr Chersky, and were terrified that she was soon going to succumb to his persuasive charms, and follow him back to Russia; and that they had called in their British colleagues to find a way of obstructing the burgeoning romance; and that he, Thomas, was the person chosen to attempt the task. He told her that he had no choice, as far as he could see, but to do whatever he could to help.

  How had he been expecting Anneke to respond, exactly? Somewhere deep in his psyche, he had imagined something like the wide-eyed, trusting, admiring gaze that Tatiana Romanova, the girlish young Soviet spy, was forever fixing upon James Bond in the pages of From Russia with Love. He’d been quietly convinced that she would be impressed by his self-sacrifice and unassuming heroism. But, oddly enough, it wasn’t really like that at all. She looked more and more downcast as the explanation went on.

  ‘It’s not what I would have chosen to happen, of course,’ he insisted, and began to wonder if it would make things easier if he tried to make light of the situation, turn it into a joke. ‘Really, the entire rigmarole seems rather
absurd. But these are the sorts of games that these people like to play, so I suppose . . . Well, anyway, I’ve agreed to go along with it.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound absurd to me,’ said Anneke. ‘It all sounds rather dangerous.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to take it all that seriously. I mean, you’ve met Mr Radford and Mr Wayne, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, didn’t they strike you as somewhat comical? With their trench coats and their trilby hats. Like something out of a cheap novel. The way they talk . . .’

  ‘How do they talk?’

  ‘Well, for instance, whenever they’ve finished saying their piece and putting me in my place, do you know what they always say? “This conversation never took place.” I didn’t think anybody really used that phrase. Smacks a little of . . . too much theatricality, don’t you think?’

  Anneke nodded, but without much conviction, and for the next few minutes she was very quiet. Before long she announced that the hostel where once again she would be staying the night closed its doors at midnight, and she would have to rush back if she was not going to find herself locked out. She thanked Thomas very much for a lovely evening. It was something she would remember for a long time. And she hoped that they might run into each other again before long – certainly before the Expo was over.

  After that, she excused herself and went to the ladies’ room for some little time. Thomas checked with the maître d’ that the bill had already been settled, and then, when Anneke returned, he walked her to the Porte des Attractions. It was a close summer evening, and the crowds were still thronging La Belgique Joyeuse and the Parc des Attractions. Thomas and Anneke said goodbye at the gate, with a quick, functional kiss on the cheek.

  He stood and watched her retreating figure as she receded into the darkness. Then he sighed and scratched his head. Well, that had been awkward. Decidedly awkward. Perhaps Tony had been right, and the girl had rather been more stuck on him than he’d thought. But he had this one consolation, at any rate: there had been no deception. At least he had told her the truth.