Love and the Art of War Read online

  ‘Conceal your real objective, disguise your course, camouflage your purpose,’ Baldwin intoned. ‘Sneaking about in the darkness or lurking behind screens only attracts suspicion. To lower an enemy’s guard, act in the open, hiding your true intentions behind everyday activities.’ The professor took in the half-circle of tired expressions. Dan O’Neill’s five o’clock shadow looked closer towards midnight. ‘Any business examples come to mind?’

  The stiff businessman raised his hand.

  ‘Yes, you’re Mr Deloitte, I believe?

  ‘Maintaining “business as usual” with a target company, but using a third party to buy share parcels? The third party might be an outside bank, perhaps Swiss, certainly never your house bank—to avoid driving up prices—until you’ve got control?’

  ‘A very good start, Mr Deloitte.’ Baldwin straightened the packet of registration cards on the desktop. ‘Coffee for ten minutes outside, toilets at the end on the right. We’ll resume with Stratagem Two at ten past.’ Amid the scraping of chairs, Baldwin turned his bony frame in Jane’s direction. ‘Now, Mrs Gilchrist, what’s troubling you?’

  ‘I signed up for Mending Marriage, Sane Separation, and Decent Divorce. I don’t think your emperor has much to offer me.’

  Baldwin fished Jane’s registration card out of the stack. ‘Ah. My class is China’s Military Genius for Maximizing Management. Mouthful, isn’t it? I suggested The Warlord Way to Waging Profit.’ He wiggled his wiry eyebrows in jest, ‘But there we are.’ He glanced into her rueful eyes, ‘And here you are.’

  ‘Quite. I was very clear at registration.’

  ‘Yes, the room number’s mine, but my code is 96E, not F.’

  Jane gathered up her satchel. ‘I’ll go back and sort it out—’

  ‘I’m sorry about this, but, well, perhaps you might take my class?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, why did you sign up for this?’ He snapped her card with disdain.

  ‘Really, I can’t bother you with—let’s just say I’m a part-time librarian whose mate is straying. Or in danger of straying.’

  ‘And you think a class of discarded wives can teach you how to mend your marriage?’ Baldwin leaned back against the edge of his desk. If Jane expected a hand extended in gracious farewell, she was disappointed: ‘You’ll find no solutions next door—unless you’re looking for bridge partners!’ He braced his narrow shoulders. ‘My class could save you. I think. Plus,’ he tossed a glance at the six empty chairs, ‘the teacher-student ratio is a lot better here.’

  ‘But isn’t this a management class?’

  ‘Well, that’s only how I’m forced to package it and as you see, still not much turnout. Not quite the old days at Hong Kong University. The point is, in my class you won’t learn anything particularly decent. You’ll learn how to win.’

  ‘I don’t want to fight.’

  ‘That’s not what I said. Oh, I see. You think training up for the competition would be, what? Vulgar? Well, competition is a natural response to danger.’ His expression softened. ‘You are in danger?’

  ‘Well, I’m quite upset. I’m sure the other class will give me advice I can use, some degree of . . . control.’

  Now the tears broke through in full force. Embarrassed, Jane blinked up at the holes in the cork ceiling and then searched Baldwin’s polished black shoes through a wet daze. ‘I’ve never done anything like this without Joe knowing. When I switched from the television research department to get my librarian degree, whenever I tried something new, it was Joe who egged me on. He rallied my courage. Oh, sorry—’

  ‘A good blub might be a healthy start,’ he smiled, ‘Although, Mrs Gilchrist, as my students go, you’re pretty wet.’

  Baldwin fetched a roll of paper towelling. ‘We don’t cry in my class. Emotion clouds reason. It gives your enemy a damaging weapon against you.’

  ‘Joe? The enemy? Oh, if you only knew him! He’s worked all his life for the underdog—’

  ‘How noble. I’m not saying he’s wicked. It might be like in doctors’ families—children all runny noses, spouse shattered with exhaustion? And yet somehow Dr Do-Good never notices? People can love us, but still be so galvanized by their higher calling, well, maybe they forget not to hurt us. I mean, a hero can be so busy saving the entire world, he doesn’t realize he’s just wounded the person standing right next to him.’ He paused. ‘So we won’t let him. You’ll win without Joe even realizing what you’re doing for his own good.’

  ‘You mean, not even explain about this class? Trick Emperor Joe into crossing the sea?’

  ‘For starters.’

  ‘I suppose . . . I could say it’s a management class.’

  ‘Yes, a class in Managing Joe. You might have a knack for this. Just add the skill of Sun Tzu. You’ve heard of him?’

  ‘Um . . . ’

  Baldwin sighed. ‘Sun Tzu was a Chinese general who lived during the Warring States Period around 400 BC. This little book, The Art of War, is the sum of a lifetime’s experience winning fame and power for his warlord. Applying his principles two centuries later, the Emperor Qin Shihuang united China for the first time. Mao Zedong used Sun Tzu to defeat Chiang Kai Shek in 1949, as well as the Thirty-six Stratagems based on Sun Tzu’s principles over the centuries to the benefit of everyone from Sony Corp to General Schwarzkopf.’

  ‘Well, Joe’s hardly Saddam Hussein,’ Jane sputtered.

  ‘So China’s greatest warlords have nothing to teach you?’

  ‘Well, I’m trying to keep a family united, not all of China.’

  Professor Baldwin took a deep breath. ‘But all of Cathay isn’t as important to you as that family.’ He cocked his head. ‘Here come the others. Just remember Sun Tzu’s warning: Battles are dangerous affairs. He who struggles with naked blades is not a good general.’

  He fixed Jane with steady, grey eyes: ‘You know, each autumn, I take on a batch of men whose aim is to nab the corner office from the wally in the next cubicle. What a fresh challenge—to transform this dormouse of a librarian into a fearless warrior woman! To gird your loins, forgive the expression, with powerful weapons and to array you in the silken protection of the Thirty-six Stratagems. Under my tutelage, the advantage will be yours without Jim ever guessing. He mustn’t know you even suspect him of cheating—’

  ‘Joe.’

  ‘You’re a librarian? Trust the Written Word.’ Baldwin had located Jane’s soft spot.

  A natty fellow leapt back into the classroom and struck a kung fu pose. Keith Phipps, a reinsurance salesman, introduced his friend, the ginger-haired Kevin Filgrove, a sales manager at Marks and Sparks. The over-tailored Nigel Deloitte worked at a bank so private that when he mumbled its name like a secret incantation, no one dared ask him to repeat it.

  ‘Coffee, Mrs Gilchrist? Watery and tasteless!’ Keith handed Jane a polystyrene cup and swizzle stick.

  ‘Well, we’ve all made friends,’ Baldwin observed. ‘Now, Number Two. Encircle the Wei Kingdom to Rescue the Zhao.’

  ‘Take that, Swiss Re!’ Keith gave his chair a karate chop.

  Dan O’Neill wiggled his eyebrows, and with a gallant bow, offered Jane one of the wooden chairs.

  Chapter Two, Wei Wei, Jiu Zhao

  (Encircle Wei, Rescue Zhao)

  Joe didn’t ask why Jane snuck under the duvet well after ten. His Friday had been fraught enough; The Travelling Kitchen’s razor-toothed celebrity, a Zubatec fish known as the ‘King of the Adriatic,’ had missed his ice-cushioned flight from Dubrovnik. PA Rachel Murty had rushed to the fish wholesalers to buy a last-minute understudy. Unfortunately, the best she could find was a tuna with glaucoma. They’d managed to shoot around his whitened stare, but it pushed their taping well into overtime.

  Now Joe was recovering with a long Saturday lie-in, while Jane welcomed the dawn from his wooden swivel chair next to the tall windows overlooking Chalkwood Square.

  This was the throne of Joe’s understandable discontent from which he drafted his
memos begging transfer to a news programme. His pile of script proposals lay on the desk next to her, their pages stained with coffee rings. Yellowing business cards fringed his blotter and curling Post-its festooned his dog-eared pitches: Al Qaeda’s Women, Sudan’s Secret Swiss Fortunes, Sons of the KGB… each a failed effort to ditch cuisine for Current Affairs. Meanwhile Bella—The Travelling Kitchen’s queen bee—racked up successes with her effortless stir-fries, apron freebies, and spice-house endorsements.

  The three of them had travelled far since Joe won his big award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts as Panorama’s coming man. The BAFTA made him, momentarily, London’s favourite Canadian. His congenial persistence and broad shoulders carved a spot in the media circus. Jane had been his adoring researcher earning her librarian credentials part-time. And Bella? She’d been a mere secretary with unkempt dark curls who was always wearing shoes that outran her budget.

  Joe and Jane had paired off. Bella had moved up to personal assistant, then program announcer. Trapped in perpetual singlehood, Bella had been Jane’s choice for Sammie’s godmother, but in fact, Bella was never exactly forlorn. With a curious deftness at spotting the main chance, she’d grabbed a stint as front girl for an early evening chat program and finally, stardom as a domestic goddess. Manolos replaced Russell Bromleys.

  And how those shoes had marched Bella’s ambitious feet so many social levels above Joe and Jane! She’d worked hard for her celebrity glow. Unfortunately for Joe’s career, at this stage she represented more a black hole. Bella brooked no defections beyond her gravitational pull. The program’s budget included allowances for cashmere twin sets, book tours, podiatrist, and masseuse. Even her guest chefs, foreign kitchen studs The Financial Times had tagged Bella’s ‘unique selling proposition,’ travelled whole continents just to fricassee at her side. Even if her exotic food adventures never left the BBC’s set or her privately installed Battersea studio kitchen, Bella kept a watchful eye on her franchise, her producer included.

  If Joe intended to survive Bella now, he must stay supine until his escape hatch from her mother ship was primed.

  Jane sipped her milky coffee and checked the postmark on a card from cameraman Fergus in Kabul, just the sort of location shoot to rankle Joe mired in the salt mines of The Travelling Kitchen while Fergus slung satellite dish kits on and off Heathrow luggage belts.

  How still the square was this morning! The Georgian window frame leaked a cool draught. Jane curled her toes into Sammie’s woollen coat, and pulled out Baldwin’s handout. After all, it wasn’t as if reviewing the Second Stratagem committed her to continue with his class. In 374 BC, the state of Wei laid siege to the weaker state of Zhao. Zhao appealed to the Zhi kingdom, which enjoyed the counsel of Sun Bing. Sun Bing, not Sun Tzu? She must keep those straight. Except, who cared? Jane would switch class next Friday.

  Jane stared north towards Primrose Hill. The weekend was starting: a dark-haired young man in a long white tunic and trousers unlocked the shuttered religious bookstore at the upper corner of the square. A fish lorry sped up to Odette’s, a lunchtime trysting spot for media couples. Saturday shoppers hurried between the bollards marking the square’s dead end from the High Street beyond as they headed to catch the Northern Line.

  Each year the commuters dressed better but acted less neighbourly. In the old days Jane and Joe could only afford No. 19’s attic flat, but at night they gazed across the grey rooftops towards London Zoo in Regent’s Park. Lorraine had the attic now, and insisted the stairs were nothing to a gal who had once partnered Astaire in a black-and-white television special. ‘Fred said I was better than Cyd Charisse,’ a mantra that Sammie always mouthed behind her grandmother’s back.

  Everything seemed so normal on this chilly morning, everyone on the right pillow, the breakfast tray almost ready for Lorraine and the library’s Saturday routine waiting. Suddenly her suspicions of Joe seemed unthinkable. Perhaps he’d have a perfect explanation for it all. A man who kept a secret in order not to upset you only ended up upsetting you by acting secretive. True, they hadn’t had sex for quite some time, a month or two, perhaps even three?—but only because The Travelling Kitchen was filmed three nights a week before a live audience smirking at Bella’s double entendres with her chefs. Joe didn’t get home until Jane was fast asleep, book in hand and tucked in by her fictional friends.

  Jane battled her creeping discomfort with the courage of a mouse donning cat’s armour. She busied herself by dusting off his BAFTA award with a corner of her bathrobe.

  ‘What are you doing with that, honey?’

  She hadn’t heard him pad in. A Casanova flush with illicit lust didn’t jive with this sight of good old Joe in checked flannel. You could take the hero out of Winnipeg, but his hunting-lodge PJ’s came with him.

  ‘Just dusting it. There’s coffee.’

  ‘Yes, I need a jolt.’ he said, rubbing his bristles. ‘I want to finish something before lunch.’

  ‘James Callaghan’s Political Grandsons?’

  ‘No. Mothers of Death, Seeds of Jihad—Don’t give me that stern librarian look.’

  ‘Sounds more Roger Corman than Jeremy Paxman.’

  He replaced the BAFTA mask on the shelves above his desk. ‘I put a World Service researcher from the Urdu section on it. Poor child, she thinks television is “more the thing” than Bush House.’ He booted up his laptop.

  ‘I’m sure you told her television is the graveyard of promise, the shoals on which great talent flounders and the abyss where good ideas become clichés.’

  ‘I told her it could be a worthwhile career if she works hard and wants it enough. And I still believe that, Jane.’ There was always another memo flying off to a documentary chieftain or Current Affairs warlord, another interview to hang tight for, another excuse, like the latest cut in political programming for more humiliating reality shows. Joe’s reality was humiliating enough without Big Brother.

  ‘How was your night class?’ He scanned his e-mail.

  Jane started with, ‘You wouldn’t believe it, but—’ when Baldwin’s voice popped into her head: Stratagem One. Disguise the course. Don’t tell Joe.

  ‘Wouldn’t believe what, sweetie?’

  She hesitated. Could she lie to Joe? ‘It was surprising, actually.’

  ‘Library management, surprising?’ He fished around his briefcase.

  ‘Yes.’ She buttered toast for Lorraine’s tray. ‘Um, new inventory . . . reader databases . . . reservation systems for borrowers, oh, and an online network for housebound borrowers, summer schemes for early readers, that sort of thing.’

  She held her breath, waiting for his swift detection, but he only nodded, ‘Always good to have new skills.’ He checked the news pages online. ‘You never know when things might change.’

  Jane shifted Lorraine’s tray to her hip. ‘What might change, Joe?’

  He hitched up his pyjama bottoms. ‘You might want a promotion, or more responsibility, or even a transfer—’

  ‘Not while Sammie’s such a handful.’ This sounded like a conversation Jane didn’t want—a conversation about her becoming more independent, about change. She left with Lorraine’s tray.

  Lorraine wasn’t an invalid. At seventy-nine, she could shop on the High Street, cook and bathe herself, but years of dressing room suppers and breakfasts to be delivered no earlier than noon had locked Jane into caregiver habits. She set the tray outside the front door on the attic landing, knocked, and left the ancient hoofer-turned-Shakespearean-hack to her snooze under the eaves. While Joe grabbed the bathroom before Sammie, Jane returned to her class notes with a guilty level of renewed interest.

  After their coffee break last night, Professor Baldwin had resettled his bony hips against the edge of his desk.

  ‘Strategy Two uses an ally, perhaps a second company, to distract your competitor. Virgin Atlantic succeeded in taking on British Airways where bigger airlines had failed because Virgin used the brand recognition of their recor
ds and Cola products to launch a multi-pronged assault from entertainment and food markets—where British Airways had no ready defence.’

  Jane hadn’t noticed any battle between British Airways and Virgin. Nor did she recognize the Starbucks case trotted out by Nigel Deloitte. The banker was certainly keen, but Jane found Baldwin’s ravaged good looks and penetrating instruction more riveting. And through her puffy-eyed discomposure during the second part of Friday night’s class, she’d at least retained: The enemy can’t be superior in all things. When he’s too strong to be confronted head-on, attack something he holds dear. Find the gap in his armour . . . ’

  ‘The Achilles Heel approach?’ Nigel had interjected.

  ‘Precisely, Mr Deloitte.’

  Joe interrupted her reading with a shout, ‘Jane? This bathroom latch is looking pretty wonky—’

  ‘They stopped making them in 1910. Sir Bernard says our doors are worth a fortune.’ Sir Bernard, knighted for designing a museum and a railway station, lived next door.

  Joe emerged in damp terry cloth, drying his hair. He lowered his voice, ‘You know, Jane, I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t it be better for Sammie to try boarding? Those GCSE’s were a disaster.’

  Jane faced Joe. He cast a dark silhouette against the autumn daylight now shining through the tall windows.

  ‘Send her away? Sammie needs us more than ever, Joe. She’s so thin and stressed.’

  He rubbed his stubble. ‘There’d be fewer distractions. Just a thought. Working today?’

  ‘As always.’

  ‘Well, that’s my point. Sammie might do better with more supervision.’

  Only later, after a morning spent on a ‘stock workshop’ with Chris, did Jane recall Joe’s words with alarm. Weirdly, the previous evening Baldwin had urged: ‘Attack the relatives or dear ones of the enemy to weaken him psychologically.’

  Joe couldn’t be serious about Sammie boarding. Their back-talking, spiky-haired girl-woman had always been Joe’s darling and her grandmother’s outright pet, and these days, Jane felt she was almost the last person Sammie turned to for advice or affection. Of course, girls that age tended to reject their mothers and favour their dads. Was Joe planning to remove Sammie to isolate Jane? Was he preparing to dismantle their household by incremental stealth?