European Journey 1953, Part One – Brussels

A cold east wind, blowing in short, stinging gusts all the way from the Russian steppes, swoops down over Brussels.

It sets all the gilded weather-cocks spinning madly, that boisterous wind. It slaps the cheeks of the flower-women where they squat defiantly, swathed in shawls, under their striped umbrellas in the Grote Markt. It nips the very blossoms of early roses and carnations they offer in chilblained hands.

Then it scampers off, this lunatic March wind, to play more senseless tricks among the few cafe tables that have ventured outside.

And Brussels philosophically turns its collar up — or, rather, buttons its duffel-coat a peg or two higher. (For the ubiquitous “le duffel” is everywhere, in every colour and shade and style and cut. A typically British utility garment worn over here with a Latin dash and swagger that suggests D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers.)

They pack into steam-heated cafes, sipping innumerable “cafes filtres,” and wait, phlegmatically, for the spring, which is just around the corner.

That spring, which is already showing itself furtively in the first sprigs of lily-of-the-valley thrust under your nose outside the Bourse, in the windows of the department stores along the Boulevarde Anspach, which have given themselves over to a display of solemn-eyed angelic children going, all in virginal white, to their First Communion; in the freshly painted roundabouts and swing-boats of the travelling fairs, parked, ready and waiting, in every side street.

And if spring should happen to be a little late this year — well, the Belgians are good at waiting. They have had plenty of experience. The small commercial hotel where I am writing this — its romantic address is Number 15, Street of the Crusades — is not much more than 100 years old. But these windows, plastered with advertisements for Artois and Guinness and Cinzano, have watched five invading armies pile arms on the cobbles outside.

Generations of waiters — of which this pale-faced, impassive Pierre, who has just served my breakfast with slender hands which should have been an artist’s, is the true lineal descendant — have taken orders from a military clientele whose accents over the years spoke loudly of Lyons and Rotterdam and Frankfurt-am-Main and Manchester, Lancashire, and Manchester, New Hampshire.

And what to do but smile politely and retire into that almost Oriental calm? So long as the colour of his money is good, what matters the colour of his uniform?

After all, “Toujours passant.” Here to-day and gone tomorrow. A more practical motto — though not so high-sounding — than the “Union is Strength” you find slung under the national coat of arms. It is a philosophy of life that goes deep. Small wonder that most Belgians are realists from the cradle.

So the housewives shove their way sturdily through the chain stores with shopping bags full to bursting; elbowing past hillocks of ham (at a shilling a quarter), and fillet steaks (at five-and-six a pound), and juicy cotes de veau; past mountains of cheese and butter (at 6s. a pound), and fresh eggs (at 3s. 6d. a dozen), and oranges and coffee; and every sort of vegetable from chicory to cauliflowers; and boiling fowls and biscuits, and those sticky pastries, oozing cream, that no Bruxelloise could live without.

Enough food, and in such variety, to make the hard-pressed queue-haunted British housewife turn dizzy with delight. Here it is. Take it. As much as you like. So long as you can pay for it. Food in abundance. Take it — while it lasts.

While it lasts. There’s the rub. So the Belgian housewife, who has breakfasted on coffee and rolls, and nibbled a “rhum baba” by way of lunch, deliberately shuns the cheap cuts and picks a fine rump steak for the family dinner.

Ten francs a pound more? Perhaps. But it will make a meal worth remembering. And who knows how long there will be meals worth the remembering?

“Here today and gone tomorrow.” There you have it again. Improvident? To enjoy life while you can? The Belgians think back to the lean years of acorn coffee and rotten horsemeat, to the hideous nightmare of the Black Market, and smile, like children wise beyond their time.

Improvident? To eat, drink, and be merry when tomorrow…? What’s life but a mixture of good and bad, monsieur? Just now the times are good. Nobody knows why. Nobody cares.

Bon appetit, monsieur!…

I took the tram to Laeken, a pleasant, wooded suburb only 20 minutes from the garish neon of the Place de Brouckere.

King Baudouin lives at Laeken. So do the Vermeerschs. On the third floor of a new block of flats. So new that the workmen are still hammering away in the flat below and the plaster is still damp.

The Vermeerschs, Paule and Jean, are young, gay, charming, and very Belgian.

Paule is 27 and blonde. She is Brussels-born and bred. Jean, a year older, is slim and dark; a Flamand from Bruges. So together they represent the two halves of this complex, bilingual country.

Both work in the Palais du Midi, the offices of the Brussels Town Council; Jean as a draughtsman in the Department of Public Works, Paule in the Department of Public Assistance.

They have been married just two and a half years. (And of course I had to see the album of wedding photographs. Jean and Paule sitting, a little apprehensive, while the plump, frock-coated mayor read the civil marriage ceremony. Jean and Paule leaving church. Jean and Paule toasting each other in champagne. Jean and Paule, free of convention and all smiles, on honeymoon at Cannes.)

They still work at their old jobs. And they have every intention of going on working. They are quite frank about it. Without Paule’s £34 a month added to Jean’s £36 they couldn’t afford to live as they do.

The rent of this three-room apartment, even with all its modern conveniences, is £15 a month. (They got it cheap because the landlady is a friend of the family. And, of course, since they take almost all their meals — even on Sunday — with Paule’s parents, it helps quite a bit. Nothing in hand: but we pay our way. They tell you these intimate details with a candour that is as refreshing as it is Belgian.)

“So we manage,” says Paule. I would have said they manage very well. The flat is comfortably furnished in excellent taste.

The showpiece on the sideboard is a bit of Royal Doulton, brought back from a visit to London last year, which I should love to possess but certainly couldn’t afford. They dress well.

There is no television as yet in Belgium — which may be a mixed blessing — but they own the latest thing in record players and spend more than they care to admit on long-playing records made in England. Nothing there which even hints at “utility.”

At an age when most English couples have settled down into a rut that will carry them uneventfully into middle age, the Vermeerschs appear to be enjoying life with a zest as keen as ever it was in their courting clays.

Their working hours — 8 to 5 in the winter, with two hours off for lunch; 7 to 1.30 in summer — leave them plenty of time to play. It’s true, four nights a week they have to attend night school. For the Belgian Civil Service is a Jacob’s ladder of annual examinations.

But they can still find time for a theatre and a cinema each week. There is the annual holiday abroad to plan for (last year it was a trip round the West Coast of Scotland on auto-cycles). And, of course, there are those delightful little parties — “Just a few friends, you know. Interesting people. There is always something to look forward to, monsieur.”

“Always something to look forward to!” Such as what, I asked. A baby, perhaps?

And I could have kicked myself. For obviously I had mentioned the unmentionable. (But, after all, how was I to know? We had all been so frank and candid until then.)

There was a moment of awful silence in which the laughter suddenly died out of that happy room like a light suddenly snapped off.

Paule looked as though she was going to cry. Until Jean, the perfect host, made a long arm for the record player and switched over to Louis Armstrong.

As for me, I pretended to be very involved in lighting my pipe. And when I looked up again you’d have sworn nothing had happened.

“No, monsieur,” said Paule, very calm, very much mistress of herself again. “Not a baby. First a little car. Then, perhaps — who knows? — a child. But not here. There would be complaints, for one thing. And anyway, I must go on working. Later, perhaps, when we are earning more money and we can afford a good crèche for the child or a daily nurse to look after it while we are at work.”

“But first things first, monsieur. Let us be practical.”

So we nodded and smiled and hummed the “St. Louis Blues” to Armstrong’s trumpeting; and sipped another glass of liquor d’Anvers.

And everything in the garden was lovely. Or was it? For I believe that unconscious faux pas on my part had let me see a little of what goes on behind that mask. A mask worn with great assurance, with superb nonchalance. But a mask just the same.

Hard? Artificial? Cynical? Oh yes, they are all these things, the Belgians. On the surface, that is. They have all the answers pat.

“War? Time enough to talk about war when it’s a fact.”

“European Defence? An insurance policy with a heavy premium and no bonus.”

“National economy? Don’t make me laugh! The more we earn the more we spend.”

“The future? Come back in 100 years and I’ll tell you all about the future.” But how much of it do they really believe?

Reproduced with permission
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Jerry F 2024