Love and the Art of War Page 4

  That photo now gathered dust on Joe’s desk at the Beeb.

  Baldwin had told the class that the ancient Chinese had a term for the alliances formed in youth, when young scholars wore simple robes of cotton cloth. Jane and Joe had forged a cloth-gown friendship, along with Bella, Fergus and a few others, but their cloth-gown bond lay in tatters these days. Not that her wardrobe had moved from cotton to silk. Come to think of it, maybe her clothes were a turnoff?

  Making her way to the coffee bar, Jane imagined herself with a more youthful spring in her step, an imaginary waist-length braid brushing a damask silk jacket, like a character from a kung fu novel. How did those Hong Kong filmmakers get their heroines springing into the air twenty feet high, twirling a glinting rapier over their heads without cutting off their own braid swinging high, up, up, into the—?

  Someone tapped her shoulder. Startled, she scattered her notes all over the linoleum.

  ‘Oh! I’m—sorry, just wanted to say hello.’ The Chinese boy scuttled around, collecting pages off the floor. Because his father had enrolled him in the class, Professor Baldwin had nicknamed Winston, ‘Chu the Younger.’

  ‘—Rather irritating, that, as there isn’t any other Chu in the class.’

  ‘It’s only a joke, showing respect for your elder.’

  ‘Look, I’ve lost my bibliography already. Could I copy yours, rather than risk another wisecrack from Balding the Sage?’ Winston fumbled for a pen at the bottom of a computer case full of tangled cables.

  ‘Shall I get us something to drink? Tea? Black or green?’

  ‘People always assume I want tea. What I would really like is,’ he grinned, ‘a Red Bull.’

  By the time Jane returned with their drinks, Winston had copied out the titles of five books.

  ‘So you’re Chinese and don’t drink tea?’

  ‘Tea is the least of it. I’m a genetic aberration. Drives my father round the twist. I’m allergic to peanut sauce,’ Winston ticked off on his fingers, ‘Fish sauce, shrimp paste. Just looking at a crab gives me hives. You try getting your kid through a Cantonese wedding saying, “Sorry, none for our little Winston,” for thirteen straight courses. After a while, my parents just left me at home. My poor mother told everybody I was studying physics. Another fantasy. She died hoping I would become some big shot in technology.’

  ‘Anybody can be allergic.’

  ‘To an entire culture? And it’s not just food. I am the least numerate Asian on the planet. Forget the abacus, I can’t even manage a calculator. And you can forget martial arts. At five, I broke my wrist in beginner’s karate.’

  ‘Wow, you must have been enthusiastic!’ It was the first time Jane had laughed outright in weeks.

  ‘No, I caught it in the locker door. You’ve seen how adept I am with my mobile? I froze it trying to program the calendar alerts.’ Winston slipped Jane a business card, reading, ‘Chu Printers, President, Chu “Lucky” Lok-lo.’

  ‘That’s Dad’s card. He says it’s never too late to learn Chinese wisdom, even from a guay-lo like Baldwin. That’s Cantonese for white devil. Dad’s idea is that by learning a few management skills, I catch up with the shining sales figures of my Cousin Nelson. He opened a sub-department in our shop, the “Lychee Computer Corner.” I can’t tell whether Dad likes it or hates it. Probably both.’

  ‘Has Nelson mastered the Thirty-six Stratagems?’

  ‘Doesn’t have to. He read applied maths at Leicester. If you mention something like, say, Audio Hijack Pro, he gets hot. He breathes Voip, Skype, or web cam installations like oxygen. The only music to his ears is an iTunes update. Nelson is everything I’m not. He’ll inherit Dad’s business instead of me and I’ll be out on my arse.’ Winston shrugged, ‘The worst part is, Nelson’s nice. It’s hard to hate him.’

  ‘Maybe you need a knife strategy to use on Nelson.’ She didn’t think Winston wouldn’t take it to heart.

  ‘Exactly!’ Winston exclaimed. ‘If you think of anything really tricky, let me know? And I’ll help you. Why are you here? You’re not a businesswoman.’

  ‘Oh, you know, getting ahead in the library world.’

  ‘Oh.’ Winston paused. ‘Are libraries so competitive? Our Belsize branch is a little redbrick retreat.’

  Jane brushed back her frizz with bravado and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, you can’t imagine, Winston. Lots of bells and whistles to hook the younger readers. We’re talking e-books, now. And there are the book clubs we manage and, believe me, they can bring out the enemy in some readers.’

  Dan O’Neill was approaching their table. On seeing Winston bend his head towards Jane in conspiratorial confidence, the American turned away. Jane felt disappointment.

  ‘Who could be an enemy in a book club?’ Winston asked.

  Jane blurted out, ‘Carla Smythe’ with an indiscreet vehemence that sent Winston leaning back in his chair. Know-it-all Carla Smythe, armed with her formidable pile of reviews, was indeed ruining Jane’s group for senior borrowers, The Bookworms. Ninety year-old Mrs Ruth Wilting was Carla’s favourite target. Mrs Wilting dared not dispute Carla’s pronouncements, much less admit she’d enjoyed a good read. For diversion, Carla might turn on the asthmatic, giddy Alma, or Alma’s best friend, the robust but half-deaf Catherine. Catherine didn’t catch many of Carla’s putdowns.

  Rupert Sitwell was their second-oldest member after Ruth, and the only male. He’d got a First from Peterhouse College, Cambridge University. Carla treaded carefully with Rupert, but as he confessed to Jane, even he felt a bit thick when dissecting inter-textuality with Carla.

  Listening to Jane’s description of the Bookworms, the sympathetic Winston nodded.

  ‘So, Winston, I’m starting to think of Mrs Carla Smythe as a force of totalitarian diktat, sort of Karla, rather than Carla. And I’m no George Smiley.’

  Winston pulled on his pink forelock. ‘Couldn’t any of the other Bookworms be your knife against Carla?’

  ‘Hmm. Rupert does have Carla’s breadth of literary reference but Rupert is too well-bred, like the warden in The Barchester Chronicles, sort of fading in the fray.’

  ‘Well, charge his batteries and boot him up,’ Winston urged. ‘Sharpen him for the cut-and-thrust.’

  ‘He’s so gallant. Perhaps he would answer the appeal of a librarian in distress.’ Jane mused. ‘And what might be your knife against Nelson?’ Suppose he got a better offer? From a rival company? Any around?’

  ‘Maybe Sultana Software, a Malaysian outfit that sells PC’s off the back of a lorry down Havistock Hill. Dad would hit the roof if he thought Nelson was talking to them.’

  ‘Why, Winston. You wouldn’t.’ Jane insinuated.

  ‘Well, not until I took this class,’ admitted Winston. ‘If you use the knife strategy this week, then I will, too. You’re coming back, aren’t you? You’re a very easy person to talk to, Jane. You give me courage.’

  They shook hands on their pact. Jane resolved she would indeed use the knife strategy. And not just on Carla Smythe.

  Chapter Four, Yi Yi, Dai Lao

  (Preserve Your Strength, Await the Enemy’s Exhaustion)

  Baldwin concluded the second class by assigning Stratagem Four, ‘Set the pace, keep the other side tense and preoccupied,’ as homework for the following Friday. This idea was simple—just put your feet up and wear your enemy out with waiting.

  There didn’t seem much pace Jane could set for Joe. He worked late, and anyway, he’d made himself tense and preoccupied for months without Jane’s help. Whenever he did finally thud up the stairs and come through the front door, he dumped his things near the umbrella stand and, without a word, slumped into his chair to stare out the windows. If Joe really did have some woman ‘on the boil,’ it was a miracle she hadn’t spilled over in a froth of frustration at his depression and inertia by now. He cosseted only one item: the BlackBerry aligned next to his placemat over supper, transferred to his nightstand at bedtime, and returned in the morning to watch guard over his coffee. It wa
s a silent succubus draining all his energy without delivering a single ‘yes’ in return.

  He waited from morning to midnight for a producer to call with a commission. Especially welcome would be an assignment from BBC queen bee Camille Harper. His former colleague had promised ‘when she had a mo,’ to review a pitch—an exposé of corporate charity projects going diabolically wrong—that Joe and Fergus had patched together over free weekends and late nights.

  How apt the title for that one, Jane thought, Projects from Hell. They faced another silent evening. Sammie was in bed, sulking over limits to her Facebook time.

  ‘Oh, Joe, put away your Crackberry, please, just for five minutes. Then maybe work yourself up to ten. Add an extra minute every day, like those twelve-step recovery programmes for drinkers.’

  Joe ate his lasagne without savouring the béchamel sauce he used to praise. When had his prairie-wide laugh shrunk to a sliver of Arctic deep-freeze? Where had it gone, that big spirit that once tackled huge issues with confidence and courage?

  She cajoled, ‘How about we go for a walk up Primrose Hill? I’ve read somewhere that a watched mobile never vibrates. You baby-sit that thing like a night nurse in a preemie ward.’

  He actually slept with the wretched device, setting its alarm on vibrate so he could rise at dawn to work on Drunken Grannies, A Shocking Look at Alcohol Abuse Among Respectable Pensioners.

  If only she could get a few seconds alone with it, Jane remained convinced she would find more hidden among Joe’s messages than sherry-bingeing grandmas.

  Idly, she reached for the BlackBerry. Joe’s hand shot out and clutched it to his chest. If Jane hadn’t been so shocked to see the anger knitting his dark brows, she would have felt sorrier for him. She couldn’t resist, ‘Sorry, Gollum. Keep your Precious. Anyway, Camille’s probably shopped your idea to the same geniuses who produced Freaky Eaters or Skateboarding Ducks.’

  ‘You’re right, there,’ Joe brooded. ‘Maybe she already called Fergus and he didn’t tell me. Would he go behind my back with some other producer?’

  ‘Not Fergus. You two go all the way back to Enoch Powell’s deathbed interview.’

  ‘If Fergus double-crosses me, he’ll float down his own river of blood.’

  Joe ate less and less, subsisting on reserves of bitterness that fuelled his spiritless shuttle between the square and The Travelling Kitchen. What with Joe so snappish, it wasn’t easy for Jane to apply Baldwin’s lesson to curb her comments while making no foolish moves. One night he’d almost kicked their cat, Bulgakov, out of his path—and he loved Bulgakov, feeding him choice bits of dinner under the table despite Jane’s protests.

  Waiting for Joe to arrive at exhausted vulnerability might prove impossible—the jumpier Joe got, the greater Jane’s tension.

  It wasn’t exactly homework you could hand in to a classroom of Nigels and Winstons. Jane decided to concentrate on Sun Tzu’s principle of preserving her strength until she knew her enemy’s identity. As she walked out of the classroom the previous Friday, the lanky Sinologist had taken her upper arm very lightly. He intoned, ‘Remember, Jane, when water flows, it avoids the high ground and seeks the easiest, lowest path. Make your enemy tire herself out while conserving your own energy. My assignment to you this week is to flow like water. Lie low. Do not confront or interrogate Joe. Promise me?’

  Instead, she tired herself out at work trying to sort out the new database while all the while fighting off horrific visions of Joe and his unknown beauty twisting their naked bodies into Kama Sutra pretzels. Her nightmares turned lurid and literary. Joe metamorphosed into D.H. Lawrence’s randy gamekeeper Oliver Mellors with an elusive paramour in Lady Chatterley tweeds. Passionate scenes from Flaubert, Ibsen, and Chekhov wracked her in turn. Jane hadn’t yet found hotel receipts in Joe’s drawers or smelled a strange perfume in the Volvo, but while Joe survived on Swedish crackers and gall, her fears fed gluttonously in the absence of hard evidence.

  Fighting without fighting proved very difficult. Whoever her rival was, Sun Tzu commanded Jane sit this woman out. Would all of Baldwin’s lessons require such self-discipline?

  ‘Choose the time and place for your battle, so you know when and where the battle will happen, while your enemy does not,’ Baldwin had said. ‘Stratagem Four is the only one of the thirty-six stratagems that we can trace back to Sun Tzu himself—the others were all developed over the two millennia since his death.’

  Out of the corner of her eyes, like a Len Deighton spy, Jane scrutinized Joe as he emptied his pockets at night, changed into his pyjamas, and said little more than, ‘Thank God the ristafel episode is in the can. The Indonesian chef was so short he had to stand on a crate behind the prep island.’

  Over the weekend she faltered more than once by mentioning one woman’s name or another’s—say, a comely researcher Joe had openly admired, now long departed to the brainier stretches of Horizon. Or that Japanese chef, Madame Norita, he drove all the way back to Heathrow through a chilly pounding rain? Joe showed not a flicker of guilt nor paid any attention. He nodded at Jane’s comments, (mined as they were by the names of sexy acquaintances,) his eyes scanning his computer or BlackBerry for the summons that never came.

  Jane sought distraction in her library chores; during a ‘Love Libraries’ event, it transpired that few borrowers loved the dingy walls of the Chalkwood branch so it now reeked of fresh paint. To avoid triggering Alma’s allergies, Jane relocated Monday night’s Bookworm meeting to Rupert’s Hampstead home.

  After all, why shouldn’t Jane test Baldwin’s strategies on the unsuspecting old dears? It might build her confidence, like all that duelling practice Alexandre Dumas gave his Musketeers. Moreover, she and Winston had a pact. Suddenly she got a wicked idea for using Strategies Three and Four. Before she locked up the library, she made a strategic telephone call . . .

  Walking after work through the frozen dusk to the Northern Line, Jane halted beneath a ladder propped against the corner house that straddled the square and Chalkwood Road. A man in spattered dungarees stood perched on the uppermost rung. He was painting a mural on the long dark window by the light of an electric bulb swinging from a thin cord in the breeze.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to work by daylight?’ she called up.

  ‘I work during day,’ he mumbled with an unidentifiable accent.

  The man had a wispy blond beard, paint-flecked hands, and ripped trainers. On the window, Jane made out an enormous painted wing with feathers in luminescent salmons, peaches and pinks. ‘What’s your painting going to be?’

  ‘A message for them.’ He gestured over his shoulder at the Arabic bookstore facing them.

  ‘What’s that music playing? It’s quite beautiful but eerie.’ She pointed to the boom box perched on the windowsill.

  ‘Penderecki’s Requiem.’

  He worked in silence. Jane moved on, only to experience a stranger encounter at the tube station. Dan O’Neill stood in the ticket queue. His tie was loosened, and although he carried no briefcase, he exuded the relaxed satisfaction of a man finishing a good day’s work. He gave Jane a warm smile. She anticipated some kind of comment about living or working around Primrose Hill, but instead he said, sotto voce, ‘Safest time to ride the subway. Evening prayer time, Salatul Isha.’ He headed off toward the southbound platform.

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ she thought, and descended down the rabbit hole to the northbound platform.

  Rupert lived in a narrow book-lined house overlooking the heath. John Le Carré once lived nearby. Jane liked to pigeonhole London’s nooks and crannies with the delicious knowledge that had she dared, she could knock on a particular author’s front door and one of their characters would answer. You could even play the game on nearby Chalcot Square. Knock on Number 3 and Sylvia Plath’s ghost peered through the front window. Stroll a few metres southward toward Frederick Forsyth’s old digs and bump into the Jackal cleaning his gun in his dressing gown. London was full of authors, the dead ones comm
emorated by blue plaques for mere civilian readers, but still breathing for a librarian. The whole world around Jane shimmered with invisible dimensions, angles, and parallel realities created by writers.

  Rupert’s polished front door stood ajar for his fellow Worms. Jane had never been here before. The entry hall was papered in maroon and gold stripes and hung with nineteenth century engravings. From his worn Melton overcoat hanging near the hat rack to the gleaming hall table and the China-trade porcelain lamp stand, everything was as refined as their host. He’d laid a tray of hot cheese puffs and anchovy hors d’oeuvres alongside a drinks trolley laden with carafes of juice and chilled wine.

  Ruth Wilting struggled up the steps behind Jane, her walker bumping through the doorway and her two solid shoes stepping up behind. ‘Jane, dear, could I have a word with you?’

  ‘Let me help you, Mrs Wilting. You must be winded. We won’t make a habit of this, I promise. The paint fumes will be gone by next week.’

  Jane helped the older woman out of her thin mackintosh and lowered her into a brocaded chair. They swapped her rubber-soled walking shoes for cracked patent pumps. Perspiration reduced Mrs Wilting’s face powder to a sheen. Hampstead was a marathon trek for the old dear. It was a familiar story among Jane’s older borrowers: the Chalkwood Library was constructed in 1961 on a purpose-built ground floor of a small building set in a side-turning off Regents Park Road. Mrs Wilting lived in a sheltered housing block for retirees not many steps away. Many older people with mobility problems shared the sad reality: the daily walk to Jane’s bookshelves was the only outing they could manage independently.

  ‘Oh, this makes a nice change. What nice cheesy bits, as Hilda Rumpole would say. No, I wanted to apologize because I must explain to you, Jane dear, why this might be my last meeting.’