Expo 58

by Jonathan Coe

  He looked it at for a long time. God, she was beautiful, when you saw her like this: deep in her trusting sleep; naked; oblivious to the webs of deceit and betrayal that were being woven around her. It broke his heart to think that he had allowed her – however inadvertently – to be used in this way; and it broke his heart to think that he would never see her again; that the night they had spent together, the night that was receding faster and faster into the duplicitous shadows of memory, could never be relived.

  What’s gone is gone . . .

  While he was looking at the photograph, Mr Wayne and Mr Radford glanced at one another, nodded their agreement, and quietly (tactfully, one might even say) rose to their feet and withdrew. By the time Thomas raised his eyes – now filmed with mist – rubbed them with his knuckle and looked around the restaurant car, the two men had disappeared.

  Much later (many years later, in fact) he would find himself wondering why he had agreed to their terms, why he had let himself be cornered so easily. It would have been simpler, quicker and cleaner to tell them both to go to hell. Was his marriage really worth saving, at such a high price? Because the thing that struck him as most mysterious about his adventures at Expo 58 was not, after all, the improbable intrigue in which he had become embroiled, but the proven fragility of his loyalty to Sylvia during those weeks. As he grew older, it seemed to him more and more likely that he had done a cruel thing, not by marrying her, but by staying married to her. That was the real pity of it: that he had condemned her, through vacillation, to a lifetime of unrest.

  Hollahi hollaho

  On Sunday, 19 October 1958, the Brussels World’s Fair came to an end. There was a final display of fireworks at ten-thirty in the evening, and the gates were closed to the public for the last time at 2 a.m. After that, from Monday morning onwards, only those with official passes could enter, and the lorries, tractors and removal vehicles arrived to begin the long task of dismantling the buildings. They were dispersed all over Belgium and, indeed, all over Europe. Some were turned into schools, some into temporary and then permanent housing. The Restaurant Praha from the Czech pavilion was taken apart and reassembled in Prague’s Letna Park, where it was used first as a restaurant and then as an office building. Few structures remained on the Heysel site itself, although the Atomium continued to stand there, still open to the public but falling inexorably into neglect as the years went by.

  On Monday, 20 October 1958, Thomas handed in his notice at the Central Office of Information.

  On Monday, 1 December 1958, Thomas began working as Public Relations Officer for Phocas Industries Ltd in Solihull, Warwickshire. Shortly before Christmas that year, he, Sylvia and Gill moved to an address in Monument Lane, on the Lickey Hills on the outskirts of Birmingham.

  In May 1959, Sylvia gave birth to a son. The boy was named David James Foley, after his two grandfathers.

  On 30 June 1960, less than two years after the close of Expo 58, the Belgian Congo achieved independence. Today it is known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  On Monday, 26 March 1962, a new pub called the Britannia opened at 41 Townwall Street in Dover, Kent, on the site of a former Wine Lodge. According to the East Kent Mercury (23 March 1962), it was modelled on ‘the famous pub of the same name which was specially constructed at the World’s Fair in Brussels four years ago’. Included in its decor were many exhibits from the original Britannia, purchased at an auction in Birmingham some years before, one of the most prominent being the scale model of a BOAC Britannia aeroplane. It became only the second pub in the United Kingdom to serve Britannia bitter, as created by Whitbread in 1958 especially for the World’s Fair.

  In 1963, Thomas travelled to Bratislava in Czechoslovakia as part of a business delegation from Phocas Industries. It was the first of many trips he made to Soviet bloc countries throughout the 1960s and early 70s.

  On 13 January 1967, the East Kent Mercury reported that the Britannia in Dover had become ‘one of the most famous public houses in the world. Every year thousands of overseas visitors visit the Britannia to see the unique collection of nautical prints and models.’

  In October 1970, Mr Edward Perry became the new licensee of the Britannia, inheriting the job from his father. Five years later, his own son took over as landlord. In 1980 the Dover Express noted that Townwall Street, the road on which the pub stood, was now ‘with its dual carriageway, six times wider than its predecessor’.

  On Friday, 4 May 1979, Margaret Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

  Thomas and Sylvia’s daughter Gill married in 1983, at the age of twenty-six. She had two daughters, Catharine (born 1984), and Elizabeth (born 1987).

  On Thursday, 9 November 1989, the government of East Germany announced that all GDR citizens could henceforth visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans started to cross the Berlin Wall, which was broken up piece by piece over the next few weeks, and destroyed for good using industrial equipment in 1990.

  In 1996, David Foley and his wife Jennifer (from Melbourne, Australia) had their only child, a daughter called Amy.

  By the late 1990s, the Atomium was still standing on the Heysel plateau outside Brussels, but, according to the official guidebook, ‘a lack of maintenance had reduced the building to a pitiful state.’

  On Tuesday, 15 May 2001, Sylvia Foley died, at the age of seventy-seven, of complications following a stroke.

  On Friday, 3 October 2003, there was a launch party at the Britannia in Dover, which was under new management, to celebrate the opening of its restaurant and family bar. The new landlady said that from now on the pub would be welcoming children because ‘it adds to the overall atmosphere’.

  In October 2004, the Atomium was closed to the public for the first time in forty-six years, while a two-year programme of restoration took place. The main task was to replace the faded aluminium sheets on the spheres with stainless steel. The Atomium reopened on 18 February 2006, with new features including exhibition spaces, a fully restored restaurant and a futuristic dormitory for visiting schoolchildren.

  On 17 November 2005, the landlady of the Britannia in Dover announced that she was planning to introduce regular pole-dancing nights in the New Year. She insisted that they would not be sleazy and told the press that ‘people who would object to exotic dancing in Dover need to wake up. It exists all over Europe.’ She also added that there would be no sexism because she would employ both male and female dancers. The Dover Express asked a number of regular customers how they felt about the plans, and found the majority had no objections. However, one local resident, aged fifty-three, argued that it was a sign of things going downhill and said, ‘Where do they think we are, Thailand? This was a decent town once.’

  In the spring of 2006, Thomas reluctantly moved into an annexe of his daughter Gill’s family home in Oxfordshire.

  On Sunday, 8 October 2006, Sylvia’s younger sister Rosamond died alone at her house in Shropshire, at the age of seventy-three. The official coroner’s report gave the cause of death as heart failure.

  On Thursday, 30 November 2006, the Britannia in Dover opened for twenty-four-hour drinking.

  In 2008, celebrations were held throughout Brussels to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Expo 58. Among other festivities, 275 Belgians born between 17 April and 19 October 1958 were invited to an evening reception at the Atomium, a series of commemorative postage stamps was issued, and a number of exhibitions and films were displayed in a new building called the ‘Pavilion of Temporary Happiness’.

  Also in 2008, the Britannia pub closed its doors for the last time. The premises were bought by the local council and stood unused for three years. In April 2011, the building was finally demolished. The site it once occupied currently stands empty.

  On Wednesday, 4 November 2009, Thomas Foley, now aged eighty-four, was awoken at six-thirty by his radio alarm clock, tuned to the Today
programme on Radio Four. He sat up at once, aware that he was going to do something special today, but unable – temporarily – to remember what it was.

  Then he recalled that he was travelling down to London. He would connect from Paddington to King’s Cross stations and then take the Eurostar to Brussels. It would be mid-afternoon by the time that he arrived. After checking into his hotel, the Marriott on Auguste Ortsstraat, he would walk to the Central Station, taking a train to Antwerpen-Berchem, then a taxi to the suburb of Kontich, where he had his dinner appointment.

  It was a busy schedule, in other words. But it felt good to be doing something, for a change. He had been too much prone to idleness lately.

  Gill drove him to the station, and stood with him as they waited for the London train to arrive.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Dad?’ she said. ‘You’re getting on now, you know. Not many people your age still travel by themselves.’

  ‘Do I look like an invalid?’ he said.

  But Gill was right. It was a foggy day in Brussels and the streets were damp and slippery. On his way from the hotel to the Central Station, walking up Infante Isabellastraat, he had a fall. Luckily he did nothing worse than graze his elbow, and there were two young women – American tourists, as it happened – close at hand to help him up again; but still, he took it as a warning sign. He was getting very old. Too old to be travelling alone, perhaps.

  Why had she chosen Antwerp, for God’s sake? Why this unlovely suburb of Antwerp, in particular? She still lived in Londerzeel, he knew that, so why could they not have had dinner at the Atomium? It would have been much closer, for both of them, and of course it was the obvious location for a sentimental reunion. He’d not seen it since the restoration work was finished, and now he was going to have to make a special trip there tomorrow morning, before going back to London.

  And a Chinese restaurant, too . . . Why come all the way to Belgium to eat Chinese food?

  Dusk was just beginning to settle as the taxi stopped and started its way down Koningin Astridlaan. It was five-thirty and traffic was heavy. Very early to be having dinner – but again, that had been her idea, and old people, he supposed, got set in their ways and no doubt she was in the habit of eating early. Chicken chow mein, however, was the last thing he felt like right now.

  The taxi driver was confused; possibly lost. He kept consulting his GPS and had already driven back and forth along the same stretch of road three times. Thomas shivered in the back of the car and wiped some condensation from his window, peering out into the blue-black light, punctuated at regular intervals by the misty amber coronas of the streetlights. Fog was beginning to gather. Finally the driver let out what Thomas assumed to be a volley of Flemish swear words, and swung the car violently off the main carriageway to the left. They had now entered a forecourt in which perhaps half a dozen cars were parked. The taxi came to a halt and Thomas clambered out, paying the driver thirty-five Euros, which included a generous tip to assuage his guilt for bringing him to this remote part of the world.

  Then he stood uncertainly on the forecourt, looking at the building ahead of him, an imposing wooden structure which bore the name of the Peking Wok restaurant. Should he go inside, and wait for her there? He was a few minutes early, and it would do him good to have a calming drink before seeing her again.

  Just then, however, the decision was made for him. From one of the parked cars ahead of him came an unmistakeable signal: the headlights flashed on and off, and for an eerie moment Thomas was transported back through the years, more than half a century, to an evening in the summer of 1958, the twilit street just outside Josaphat Park, when he was being manhandled by that idiot Wilkins, and the driver had been waiting for them, in that absurd little Volkswagen Beetle. The same flashing of headlights . . . The sense of déjà vu was dizzying, at first, it was enough to paralyse him and hold him to the spot. But then the car-door opened and a woman stepped out, closed the door, and began walking towards him. And there she was: quite unmistakeable, practically unchanged, even after all this time: Clara.

  They kissed each other on the cheek, three times, the Belgian way, and held each other in a close, friendly hug. Both were wearing thick overcoats, so there was little sensation of bodily contact. Clara held the hug for rather longer than Thomas did. When she eased herself away, she turned and gestured towards the dark, looming building which, although only twenty yards away, was already becoming indistinct, half-shrouded in fog.

  ‘So, what do you think?’

  Thomas did not know what to say. This place seemed to hold some significance for her which he could not fathom.

  ‘You don’t recognize it? But you’ve been here before.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at him with that smile, that slightly too beseeching, slightly too needy smile which he remembered so well, and said: ‘Doesn’t it look a little . . . Bavarian to you?’

  Recognition dawned, and suddenly the wide, low angles of the roof, the long balcony running the full width of the upper floor, the amiable Germanic heaviness of the whole design, took on a staggering familiarity – despite the fact that the word ‘WOK’ was spelled out at the apex, in gigantic pseudo-oriental calligraphy.

  ‘My God,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s the Oberbayern!’

  ‘Of course,’ said Clara, her eyes sparkling with pleasure at the surprise she had sprung upon him. ‘After the Expo, they brought it here, lock, stock and barrel, and here it’s been ever since. It has had many uses. This is only the latest. Shall we go inside?’

  The lighting inside was dim, but good enough to see that the interior bore little resemblance to the space in which, fifty-one years ago, Clara, Tony, Anneke and Thomas had sat along a crowded trestle table, draining German beer from quart-sized tankards and raising a toast to ‘cheer and good times’ while the orchestra pounded its way through a medley of Bavarian drinking songs. The tables were laid mainly for four, and the decor was clean and angular, with low ceilings, a multitude of pot plants arranged on shelves and in alcoves, and a self-service buffet counter running alongside one wall. They seated themselves close to this, and took off their coats.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Thomas,’ said Clara, when they were settled.

  ‘You too.’

  She had emailed him a few months earlier, having tracked him down easily enough through an internet search engine. Her motive for making contact had been quite simple, and in her characteristic direct way she had made no secret of it: she wanted to know if Thomas had stayed in touch with Tony Buttress. Did he know what became of him? Thomas replied that he had not maintained close contact with Tony after Expo 58, but they had sent cards to each other every Christmas until 1998. And that year, the card had been signed by Tony’s wife alone, and contained a note with the news that he had died in the autumn, only a few months after a diagnosis of lung cancer. ‘That is sad,’ Clara had written back. ‘My own husband died last year. I must admit that I was hoping your friend was still alive, and perhaps widowed. I was fond of my husband but I never forgot Tony, never for a single day. It would have been pleasant to spend my last years with him.’ There had been no mention, up until this point, of Anneke. But Thomas could wait no longer to find out, and in his next email had asked if Clara knew where she was. ‘Alas, she too is no longer with us,’ she replied. ‘She passed away five years ago. I would tell you more, but it would be easier to speak in person. Do you ever find occasion to come to Belgium? It is so easy now, to get here by train.’

  So, that had been the bait with which she had drawn him towards her again. Further information about Anneke. But she seemed to be in no hurry to impart it, this evening, and in the meantime, Thomas had to admit that it was pleasant to see her again, to bathe for a while in their pool of shared memories. Clara would be in her early seventies now, he supposed, but she wore the years lightly. Of course, even in her twenties, she had never look
ed especially young: there was something curiously ageless about her, which had worked to her disadvantage then, and worked to her advantage now: her short, reddish-brown hair looked no different, either in colour or in styling; her figure remained robust and stocky; the few wrinkles sat easily around her unflinching brown eyes. Thomas found himself warming to her, this evening, and feeling comfortable with her, and this had never really been the case – if he were to be honest – back in 1958.

  ‘That night, you know – the night we came . . . here –’ (she gestured around the restaurant) ‘– it was so important to me. I knew that you wouldn’t understand at the time, none of you, so I didn’t try to explain. But you have to imagine what it was like for me and my family, after the war. We lived in Lontzen, in the East Cantons of Belgium. This part of the country has a very difficult history. Until the end of the First War, it was part of Germany. And then in 1940 the Germans took it back again. The people who lived there had very mixed feelings about this. Some of them felt more German than Belgian. At the end of the Second War, in 1945, many people from the East Cantons were accused of collaborating with the Nazis. And, of course, some of them had: but most of them hadn’t. But we were made to feel ashamed of our language, ashamed of our culture. There was a movement to “de-Germanize” us. And for my own family, it was even worse when we came to live in Londerzeel. Many of the people in Flanders hated us; they ostracized us. They thought that we were the enemy. So that night at the Oberbayern . . . To see so many people gathered together, from so many different countries, having such a wonderful time, so happy together, singing German songs, eating German food . . . It felt as though the nightmare was over. It felt as though I was being accepted again. It was one of the happiest nights of my life.’