Authors: Jonathan Coe
Tooting Common
Thomas stood beside the dark oak table in his dining room, looking out over the back garden, a cup of sweet, milky coffee in his hand. It seemed unreal to him that he was back at home. His memories of the last few days were so vivid that they gave the suburban normality of Tooting the quality of a daydream. The drunken night at the Bolshoi ballet; the blindfold trip into the countryside in Wilkins’s car; the incredible revelations of Mr Radford and Mr Wayne; his evenings out at the Restaurant Praha, with Anneke, and the Grand Auditorium, with Emily: how could these bizarre adventures exist in the same universe as this neat vegetable patch, this disused air-raid shelter, this spectacularly tasteless goldfish pond now decorated (courtesy of Mr Sparks) with a fake bronze statue of an overweight cherub pouring water out of an urn?
It was eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, and Sparks had already paid a visit, to nose around and find out how he was getting on.
‘Morning, Foley,’ he had said, coming into the sitting room, where Thomas had been reading the newspaper, and plonking himself down on the sofa without even being asked. ‘How’s Belgium been treating you, then?’
‘Very nicely, thank you,’ Thomas answered, without putting the newspaper down.
‘Been reading about the Expo in the newspapers from time to time,’ Sparks continued. ‘Sounds like it’s all happening over there. Royal visits one day, movie stars dropping by the next. Sometimes I show the clippings around at work and say, “My next-door neighbour’s over there in the middle of that lot, you know.” Bit of reflected glory. Never did anybody any harm.’
‘Yes,’ said Thomas, drily and non-commitally, as he flicked through a few more pages. The British news stories he was reading – nothing but party politics, labour disputes and petty crime – seemed trivial beyond belief. Did he really live in this country?
‘Of course, it’s been very quiet here in the meantime. I dare say you consider it quite a backwater now, compared to Brussels. When are you going back? Tomorrow evening, is it?’
‘Monday morning.’
‘Really? Well, I’m sure Sylvia will be happy to have you for the extra day.’
‘Look, Sparks,’ said Thomas, putting his paper down at last and leaning forward emphatically. ‘I’m very grateful for the attention you’ve been showing to my wife. I’m sure you’ve been a great comfort to her. But please don’t worry yourself on her account, or indeed mine. She told me only this morning that she’s been coping perfectly well on her own. So kindly attend to your own concerns – looking after your sister, for instance, who I’m sure needs your company much more than Sylvia does.’
Thinking about the conversation now, he wondered why he had felt compelled to be so rude. Really, Mr Sparks was not such a bad sort, and besides, it was the sheerest hypocrisy to be worried about what Sylvia was getting up to at home, while Thomas himself had been spending so much time (however innocently) in the company of other women. If only he could talk to her about his Belgian adventures; if only he could tell her of the strange turn things had taken lately, and the delicate role he had been chosen to play. But the whole business was shrouded in such secrecy, and it was this, he was sure – this inability to discuss with Sylvia the most important things that were preying on his mind – that created this confounded distance between them. This coldness and lack of communication that had been evident since the moment he had crossed the threshold.
‘Did you have plans for today?’ Sylvia asked. She had entered the dining room silently behind him, and was now standing at his side.
‘Not really.’ He made an effort, and mustered a smile. ‘Perhaps there are some odd jobs you’d like me to do, while I’m here?’
‘There’s no need,’ she answered. ‘Your time is your own.’
The day dragged on, solemn and interminable. Thomas’s mother arrived at about five o’clock. She had an overnight bag with her, and was also carrying, rather to his puzzlement, a small leather satchel which was battered around the edges and worn with age. He took the overnight bag upstairs and then showed her into the sitting room. She refused his offer of a glass of sherry (five o’clock was far too early to be drinking alcohol, in her book) and watched in disapproval as he drained his own glass in two large gulps.
Unable to bear the thought of a dinner consumed in silence, Thomas brought the wireless in from the kitchen, set it up on the sideboard, and tuned it in to an orchestral concert on the Light Programme. Gill was awake, by now, so Sylvia sat her up in a high chair at the table, opposite Mrs Foley. She served out helpings of steak and kidney pudding, mashed potato and runner beans for the adults. Thomas poured himself a glass of red wine, but the women would not join him, and drank water instead. While they ate dinner and listened to the music, Sylvia fed Gill mouthfuls of mashed potato and gravy with a teaspoon.
Afterwards Sylvia drew the curtains in the sitting room, to keep out the evening sunlight as they all started to watch
Television Music Hall
on the BBC. Thomas would once have allowed himself to be mildly amused by the antics of Richard Hearne as Mr Pastry, but this evening he was feeling less tolerant. And after a few minutes watching Jack Billings (‘
With the dancing feet’
) and Claudio Venturelli (‘
Italy’s singing star
’) he found he could not bear the inane cheerfulness of the programme any longer, and left the sitting room without saying anything. He stood out in the garden and smoked two cigarettes, tipping the ash vengefully into the urn carried by the overweight cherub at the edge of the goldfish pond. Then he went back into the hall, picked up the telephone receiver and dialled a number he had been keeping with him on a folded scrap of paper.
‘Ealing four-double-nine-three,’ a familiar voice answered.
‘Tony?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Thomas here. Thomas Foley!’
‘Thomas! By Jove, it’s a clear line from Brussels, if that’s where you’re calling from.’
‘I wish that I was, old man. But I’m in Tooting.’
‘Tooting? What the devil are you doing there?’
‘Home for the weekend. Come to see how Sylvia and the baby are getting on.’
‘So the prison authorities at the Motel Expo gave you compassionate leave, did they?’
‘Something like that. But look, what happened to you? Why did you just up and leave?’
‘Got my marching orders. You heard about the ZETA fiasco, did you? They couldn’t get that replica home fast enough.’
‘But aren’t you coming back?’
‘No. They terminated my contract. Two days later I was back at the Royal Institution, pushing papers around my desk. I say, though, how’s Emily shaping up? Have you seen her?’
‘Yes, I saw her the other night. Took her to a concert as a matter of fact.’
‘Did you, begad? Well, you haven’t wasted much time. You could have allowed a bit of a cooling-off period, you know.’
‘Oh, it’s not like that at all. She’s pretty sorry you’ve gone, if you ask me.’
‘Ah, she’s a nice girl all right. But there was no future in it anyhow. I’ve no intention of upping sticks to the United States. And besides, in my absence, this new secretary has arrived at the RI, and she’s an absolute corker! In fact I’m taking her to the flicks tonight.’
‘Really? Well, it doesn’t sound as though you’ve wasted much time either.’
‘Oh, you know me – easy come, easy go.’
‘Ah well, I was going to ask you out for a pint tonight, but it sounds like your hands are full.’
‘I hope they will be, before the evening’s over, yes. Sorry, that would have been nice, but – on this occasion, no can do.’
‘Oh well. Keep in touch, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will, old man. Of course I will.’
After he had replaced the receiver, Thomas sat at the telephone table in thoughtful silence, until he became aware that someone was standing in the gloom of the hallway behind him. He turned round. It was his mother. Beneath her arm she was clutching the old leather satchel.
‘Can we speak for a few minutes?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Weren’t you enjoying the programme?’
Without answering, she led him back into the dining room. They sat down opposite each other at the table.
‘Your wife is not happy,’ said Mrs Foley bluntly.
Thomas, taken very much aback, could think of nothing to say.
‘She is lonely, she misses you, and now that you are home for a short time, you behave badly towards her. Don’t try to deny it.’ (He had been about to protest.) ‘What is going on? Why are you treating her this way?’
‘I don’t know . . . It’s nothing, I’m just finding it hard to adjust. Everything at the Expo is so different, so much . . .
bigger
than here.’
‘You’re running around with other women in Brussels?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Not really?’ She reached out and touched his hand. ‘Tommy, you’re a good boy. Always have been. Everybody likes you. Don’t turn into your father.’
‘I won’t, Mother. Is that what you brought me in here to tell me?’
‘No. I brought you in here to show you something.’ She began to open the satchel, while Thomas looked on curiously. It was made of smooth light-brown leather, but this had clearly become very worn over the years: it was scored with scratch-marks and mottled with darker stains. Given that it appeared to be many years old, it surprised him that he could not remember ever having seen it before.
‘Is that yours?’ he asked.
‘Of course it’s mine,’ she said. ‘This is the bag in which I used to take my books to school when I was just a child. I never showed it to you before. Grandma kept it until she died, and since then, it’s been in my bedroom all these years.’
Opening the satchel, she revealed that its contents were sparse: just a handful of papers, postcards and photographs. Thomas reached across and picked up one of the postcards. It showed an impressive cathedral-like building in the Late Gothic style, with highly detailed corbels and statues in canopied niches. The photo
graph had been taken in black-and-white, clearly, but then colourized
by an artist. There was no handwriting on the back of the postcard: just a printed caption which said ‘LEUVEN, STADHUIS’.
‘That is the famous town hall,’ said Mrs Foley. ‘I don’t know how we came to have that postcard. These were the few things that my mother managed to collect from the house and take with her on the night that we escaped. Here.’ Now she handed him a tiny, creased and indistinct monochrome photograph. ‘This was our house. The house where I grew up.’
Thomas looked closely at the picture. It was hard to make out much detail. He could see a farmhouse and a number of other farm buildings clustered neatly around a central courtyard. The roof of the main farmhouse appeared to be thatched. Behind the farm buildings could be seen a row of trees, beneath a grey sky which loomed heavily over the steeply sloping roofs: the picture had been taken from a low angle. To the far left of the photograph was what appeared to be the edge of a field, in which you could just about glimpse the heads of two cows.
‘It looks . . . not how I’ve always imagined it,’ he said. ‘It looks tidy. Well kept. Prosperous.’
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Foley. ‘My father was a successful man. He made a lot of money from that farm. He worked hard and employed many people in the area. You cannot see it,’ she continued, pointing at the photograph, ‘but just behind these trees was the river. The Dijle
.
It was not a big river, at that point, more like a brook or a canal, but it was where we used to go and play, when we were children. Come on, I’ll show you.’
She unfolded another piece of paper. It was an old map, the colours so faded, and the creases and folds untouched for so long, that it could barely be read. Mrs Foley started to trace a path along the paper with her finger, following the ribbon of light blue that curled and wound its way through the centre of the map.
‘So,’ she said. ‘This is Wijgmaal, which in those days was just a small village. Maybe it is much bigger now, I don’t know. This village was where I used to go to school. There is a bridge . . .
here
, and from that bridge, you used to be able to walk down to the footpath beside the river. I used to walk along this path every day, to school in the morning and back home again in the afternoon. Coming home, you would follow the path for about ten minutes, about half a mile, and then you saw these trees – the ones in the picture, these great big sycamores, you see them? – on your right. Just after those trees, there was a beautiful field, which in the summer was full of buttercups – tall ones, meadow buttercups, I think they are called. A whole field of brilliant yellow. All you had to do was walk across this field and that brought you to the back of the farm.’ Her forefinger rested on a point on the map where someone had marked a cross in pencil. ‘Right there. This was where we used to live.
‘I came to London with my mother – Grandma – in 1914. I think it was late in September when we got here, when we started to feel safe again. We left my father and my two brothers behind at the farm in Wijgmaal. I did not learn what had become of them for some months. Every day Grandma used to tell me that Papa would be joining us soon, and that Marc and Stefan would be with him, and we would be all together again. But I waited and waited and nothing happened. It was Papa’s brother Paul who came and told us in the end. Mama sent me out into the street to play – we were living in the East End in those days, in Shadwell – and she heard the whole story from Uncle Paul that afternoon but she didn’t tell me everything. Not then. I was only ten years old. But I did learn that I wouldn’t be seeing my father and brothers again. It seems the Germans were closer than we thought when Mama and I made our escape. Another few hours and we would have been too late. They killed Papa and they killed Stefan. Marc managed to escape but he died too, later in the War. They looted the farm and took everything of any value, and anything they could eat or drink, and after that they burned it to the ground. Uncle Paul said there was nothing left of it any more. Not a single beam or a single brick.’