‘Oh, please don’t! I saw this coming, but I want to reassure you, you’re an important part of our discussions. Without you, Catherine and Alma might get discouraged.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Ruth fished her copy of The Great Fire out of a canvas tote bag. “I suspect Catherine just comes for Rupert’s cakes. She never gets even halfway through the books and just reads the last few chapters on Sunday night. And I think Alma would come if we read the gardening column from The Telegraph. She has a little crush on Rupert, you know. Well, she’s young.’
Just then, Alma, seventy-five years young, could be overheard twittering over Rupert’s ornithological watercolours in the library beyond.
‘You mustn’t let on. Alma would be mortified to think we’d noticed.’’
‘We must make it more worthwhile for you, more than cakes and Rupert’s charms. Why did you join?’
‘Oh, the library’s home service was perfectly nice, but Mrs Goodchild—my home help, you know—she saw I liked to read and write. She said I should get out once a week, have a bit of a stroll, see other people, get my hair seen to—’
‘Yes, I like the way they’ve done it.’
‘I want to look nice for the club. Yes, well,’ Ruth gathered her forces, ‘As I said, I don’t like to name any particular person but—’
‘Well, let me spit it out for you. You aren’t looking forward to Carla’s lectures. I’ve spoken to her but as the librarian, I really can’t exercise censorship. Still, she is such a killjoy—’
‘That’s it, Jane! All my life I’ve loved to read, ever since I borrowed The Little Princess. Now each book is spoilt by anticipating how that woman will ruin it. Why does she poison every meeting, Jane? It’s as if every volume she picks up is a weed that needs uprooting, until there isn’t any lifeblood left in it and there’s no opinion still standing but her own. If she doesn’t enjoy what she reads, why doesn’t the silly cow take up knitting?’
They took a few hors d’oeuvres off the tray. Ruth added, ‘You know, I would have liked discussing that Safran Foer boy—’
Carla’s voice boomed up from the steps. ‘Oh, you couldn’t possibly mean that, Ruth. A clever-clever sixth-former playing with his word processor fonts.’
‘It’s original, do admit.’
‘Do admit. Hah! Don’t use that Mitford slang with me. I don’t admit any such thing. So many of these younger writers think that cutting and pasting e-mail on to the page is literature. Well, is everyone in there? Let’s get on with Shirley Hazzard.’
At first, it seemed, everyone had enjoyed The Great Fire.
Catherine said, ‘I admire the eloquence of that quiet death of the worn-out POW! And the Japanese soldier’s suicide, the two deaths juxtaposed—oh, clumsy me, sorry.’ She plucked a crumb of salmon-and-cress sandwich off Rupert’s Persian carpet. ‘These are yummy, Rupert. Did your lady make the mayonnaise by hand or blender?’
Alma tried to raise the bar above nibbles. ‘Her language was lyrical. I’ve tried writing poetry but it’s so hard not to over-egg it—’
Ruth nodded. ‘I’ve written a bit myself and—’
Catherine wasn’t interested in Ruth’s senile scribbles. ‘Rupert, did you find Hazzard’s prose too feminine to represent Aldred’s point of view?’
Alma asked, ‘Yes, what do you think, Rupert? As a man.’ Her bird-eyes darted to their host sitting on his padded footstool. He’d left the battered leather sofa to the broad-hipped ladies. Jane caught the vestigial flirt in Alma’s ageing features folding in and out of themselves, like a cushion of soft, powdered flesh. Mrs Wilting was right—the septuagenarian Alma was in love.
Rupert said he thought Aldred’s rescue of Helen was in keeping with the times. Robbed of his youth by war, Aldred was attracted to Helen’s innocence. ‘Otherwise, it might have felt wrong, their age difference—’
Carla snorted. ‘Well, thank you, Rupert! At last! Aren’t the rest of you tippy-toeing around the obvious?’
Carla leaned forwards, freezing Catherine mid-air in a grab for the last sandwich. Catherine’s husband had left her for a much younger woman. ‘Didn’t you find it shocking, Catherine? A thirty-two-year-old preying on a seventeen-year-old?’
Alma gave her friend a supportive pat but Catherine only shrugged, ‘As Rupert says, a lot of men lost their youth during the war, and wanted to catch up. And didn’t Shirley Hazzard do war work at sixteen? I bet she knew someone just like Aldred.’
‘Well, it bothered quite a few reviewers. This was no Transit of Venus. It was a big disappointment to many.’ She shook her sheaf of clippings.
‘They always are, aren’t they?’ Ruth Wilting murmured.
‘What do you mean by that?’
Rupert argued, ‘You’re too harsh, Carla—’
‘—John Banville! Won the Booker in 2005!’ Carla hooted down her bosom at him. ‘Banville says, “Hazzard’s elliptical style will try the patience”.’
‘Well, Banville’s wrong.’
Carla stared down at Rupert. ‘Phwf! Strip this story down and it’s just a Harlequin romance!’
‘Closer to Rilke than Barbara Cartland.’
‘Well, that’s just your opinion, Rupert.’
‘Actually, it’s not. It’s from The New York Review of Books.’ Rupert batted his sparse lashes. ‘The Guardian said, “A very fine novel.” The Observer called it gravely beautiful and utterly attentive.’
Ruth Wilting was grinning.
Jane jumped up, ‘Right, we agree it’s just one stroke short of a masterpiece. Bravo, Ms Hazzard. Next week, The Tiger’s Wife.’
Carla sputtered and banged shut her copy of The Great Fire, but the others bustled past, cleaning up the battlefield of napkins and crusts. All but Jane trundled out the front door, a woollen octopus of extending umbrellas, capes, hats and scarves, their greying heads comparing bus timetables.
Jane exclaimed, ‘Brilliant, Rupert! You pulled the sting right out of Carla’s “stilted.” I thought Ruth would crow with happiness.’
‘You used me Jane, and I enjoyed every minute.’
‘Too bad we can’t do her in every month, but she’d twig soon enough.’
‘I don’t think she suspected our little plot tonight. Was I all right? Not too brutal?’
‘Carla deserves it. She called my senior manager this week to say my reading choices weren’t good enough.’
‘Stabbed in the back?’
‘Indeed. So I thanked Carla by phone after I faxed you those reviews. I asked her to give a close reading of Ulysses, A Suitable Boy, and Byatt’s Frederica trilogy—to see if we might benefit from her judgments.’
Rupert passed a hand across the parchment skin of his brow. ‘Jane, that must be at least two thousand pages. You’ll wear the woman out.’
‘It’s a tactic, so that I can relax for at least a week,’ Jane said. An exhausting read it would be, if she could count on Carla’s literary hubris to force her through all the volumes in time.
As he said goodnight to a triumphant Jane, Rupert’s wireless spectacles on his small, white face gleamed as sharp as a knife catching the overhead lamp. She had used the knife strategy twice over—if you counted Rupert’s expert at The Times as one knife, and Rupert himself as another. Wearing Carla out was Stratagem Four.
Flush with martial confidence in Sun Tzu and his disciples, Jane strode back to the Hampstead tube station. The rumble of the train pulling into the Northern Line platform sounded like a drumming roar in her ears, a call to the battlefield. For one whole week, she’d taken her ease and preserved her strength.
The night air coming off Primrose Hill promised a wet winter. She crossed paths with a breathless pair of lovers descending from the view at the top of the Hill of the lights spreading from St Pauls’ all the way to Canary Wharf. Joe and she used to do that.
She braced her shoulders as she marched down Primrose Road towards the bollards at the top of the square, that perfect enclave, empty and peaceful. The spatte
red painter in the shaggy cardigan had retired and his ladder rested on the grass below the window.
He had started a painted angel. After finishing the two wings, he’d filled in a Renaissance face framed by yellow ringlets. The bottom half of the figure was missing, but there were two muscular shoulders and sleeves of sapphire blue and shimmering emerald green spanning the twin panes. Jane recognized the features of a fierce Michael guarding the square. His hair might be curled, but his eyes weren’t gentle and the mouth was clenched tight.
Jane hurried to the warmth of Number 19. Lorraine’s blue television glow spread on to the roofs outside the dormer window.
Her mother’s watchful silhouette retreated from the window as Jane crossed the square. Lorraine worried, Jane knew, not only about her daughter’s safety in the metropolis, but also about Sammie, about their loving quartet. Jane wanted to reassure her mother that if Baldwin were right, the roiling waters would settle at some tidemark of emotional ease. Her sharp suspicions of Joe’s meandering had given way to days of unfocussed doubt.
The evening’s success in diminishing Carla’s force gave Jane a surge of capability. She didn’t have to defend all of heaven like that angel, just this little corner of a square in NW1, but she too was preparing for battle over her small patch of peace. She had been girding her loins for the moment of exhaustion, looking for the opening for attack.
She knew what she had to do. Wait for the moment. Bide her time. And when Joe was totally exhausted, her forces would seize a hostage.
She was going to kidnap his bloody BlackBerry.
Chapter Five, Chen Huo Da Jie
(Exploit the Fire to Commit Robbery)
‘Number Five! The vulture strategy! Sun Tzu teaches us that when your enemies are confused or weakened, we must swoop down at the first opportunity and seize them.’
Baldwin rubbed his long palms together as though preparing to strip the bones of the six work-weary adults slumped in front of him. Jane admired the enthusiasm of his style, but with that long nose, high forehead, and bony shoulders, he looked a bit too vulture-like right now.
He’d hinted at a stint of teaching at Hong Kong University but those times had ‘changed for good.’ He’d returned to London after the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to Beijing’s control. Before that? That was one story they couldn’t coax out of him. In England, he’d found a home of sorts and a teaching position. So why did the forceful, hawkish Baldwin strike Jane as so vulnerable? Perhaps it was because he so obviously needed students—not as groupies for his ego—but as fellow enthusiasts. Timeless in those droopy tweeds, almost weightless, he gave off the whiff of an absent pilgrim ‘returning’ to find an England more foreign than the ex-colony he’d left.
Jane pondered as to which author would have created Baldwin; he was too brisk for a brooding Brontë, but not quite aristocratic enough for one of Trollope’s Pallisers. Leonard Woolf? Cervantes? There was an Asian reticence to his pedantry and formality. As he struggled to engage their tired imaginations, Baldwin appeared in Jane’s imagination in long black silk robes, fraying around the edges, topped by a scholar’s cap shiny with wear. Anyway, when not animated in lecture, his expression seemed scarred by some honourable defeat in some intellectual marathon with the powers that be.
He wore no wedding ring. Yet Jane had detected no leanings towards the boys. Quite the contrary, after only two classes, he’d singled Jane out as the object of a dusty gallantry. You could imagine Baldwin like an English version of Van Gulik’s detective Judge Dee, hiding in his study from his four gracious but managerial mandarin wives. He lived for the old tales.
‘ . . . Suddenly, the states of Qin, Wei, Zhao and Chu were all embroiled in a war over the Han—’
‘Sorry, but are we expected to remember all these Chinese names for the final?’ Nigel asked.
‘It would be nice, Mr Deloitte, but for my purposes, it’s the tactics that count. Here’s a story from that Chinese classic, The Three Kingdoms . . . ’
‘My father used to tell me all these Monkey King stories, but I preferred Curious George,’ Winston muttered to Jane.
‘That’s why your father sent you to this class,’ Jane whispered.
‘ . . . SO, Mr Chu, in order to foil the monks’ plan to burn the Monkey King and steal his magic robe at night, the monkey stays awake and gets a fireproof blanket—’
‘Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak!’ chimed Kevin.
‘Similar, yes. He calls up a strong wind to fan the flames that devour the entire monastery and the evil, greedy monks. But the Mountain Demon sees the chaos, and steals the magic robe when the Monkey King isn’t looking.’
Kevin was confused, ‘I don’t get this. The Mountain Demon won? The Monkey King lost his friend’s fancy dressing gown? Isn’t the monkey supposed to be the hero? I can’t lose our Christmas bathrobe order.’
‘Yes, could we get to the business models, please?’ urged Nigel. He had closed his bank-issued notepad minutes before.
‘The moral of Strategy Five is: When the enemy country is beset by internal conflicts, when disease and famine ravage the population, when corruption and crime are rampant, then it will be unable to deal with an outside threat. This is the time to attack. So, Kev, imagine you’re walking the shop floor. Two tipsy shoppers start arguing over a dress. Suddenly, they realize their handbags are gone. Got it? You, Keith, give us another.’
‘Two hot salesmen in a branch office keep slagging each other to the boss. The quiet guy waits until they’re really over the top, makes his move, and gets the big transfer upstairs to headquarters. Easy.’
‘Now last week’s homework, Three or Four. Nigel?’ Baldwin’s bird-of-prey eyes zeroed in on the banker.
Nigel Deloitte had his example of Borrowing a Knife at the ready, a description of many months’ snarky conniving. Long-frustrated at the refusal of a small but feisty analysis house to come in under his bank’s umbrella, Nigel had arranged a bogus offer from a sister bank at an irresistible price. The little company’s board voted to sell and take their profits, at which point Nigel’s secret allies yanked the rug out, leaving no other suitor but a leering Nigel, his low-ball offer the only thing left on the table.
‘We not only used a knife, but we twisted it, because we strung out the talks until the founder’s marriage was on the rocks,’ Nigel said.
‘Oh, nice touch, Deloitte,’ said Dan O’Neill. He shook his head and glanced at Jane.
Jane confessed how she’d armed Rupert with a sheaf of reviews to sap Carla’s domination of the Bookworms. This drew a satisfied verdict from Baldwin, ‘Very original.’
Winston’s stab at Number Three had gone wrong. When Chu the Elder heard Sultana Software was wooing Nelson, he challenged Nelson, who of course denied any dealings with the Malaysians. Old Mr Chu had lost so much face, he’d given Nelson a raise and more floor space for his Lychee promotions.
‘It helps if your knife is more solid than a concocted story,’ Baldwin said. ‘And Nelson used tonight’s Number Five on you Winston, whether he knew it or not! The country beset by internal conflicts was your own father-son relationship. Nelson saw your father was embarrassed and knew it was the ideal moment to make his move.’
Baldwin continued, ‘Don’t get discouraged, Winston. Try to see all your situations from an Eastern point of view—in constant change, without stasis, wu chang. No defeat is permanent—’
‘So no victory is permanent,’ Dan said.
‘Unfortunately, also true,’ Baldwin nodded. ‘Your plan should not look so much like a linear chain of cause and effect,’ he drew a straight line across the board, ‘as a cycle in endless flux, where you try to obtain as many advantages as possible.’ He drew a rolling spiral from left to right.
‘Oh, Lord. We might be in this classroom forever,’ Kevin quipped, weaving his torso back and forth, ‘in a state of endless flux.’
‘Well, you certainly will, Kevin, if you don’t contribute more. You’ll tell us your homework after the
break.’
Jane noticed that Dan’s repeated comments prevented Baldwin from asking the American to serve up his own homework. She found Dan an odd combination of congeniality and opacity. She was more used to Americans like Lorraine’s visiting stage buddies—personalities as legible as the poster billings they craved.
Dan asked her to share the break with him. From the canteen’s corner, Jane and he watched Keith and Winston swallowed up by the Sane Marriage matrons and Polymer engineers. Dan was a Gulf War I vet who now worked for the New York City Police Department. He was in London for professional consultations, ‘to keep an eye on opportunities for the NYPD over here.’
Dan was a welcome change from the hapless Winston. He wasn’t tall or photogenic like Joe, but rougher around the edges with an easy confidence that Jane found sexy despite herself. Dan said nothing more about his liaison work, but asked Jane a slew of questions. Perhaps police interrogation technique had contaminated his talent for small talk, but he was a good listener to Jane’s work problems:
‘ . . . Becoming more of a social centre than a library, if it keeps going like this. At least, that’s the fear of some library campaigners. They’re planning to cut our book budget again.’
‘Who’s they? Aren’t the librarians in charge?’
‘For policy, they is the Museums, Libraries and Archives Authority. And the local council’s in charge of money. Of course, there’ll always be some readers. And the independent bookstores are putting up a good fight . . . ’ Dan’s eyes wandered across the crowd.
‘Do you live around that tube station?’ he said, suddenly turning back to her.
‘Not far. Chalkwood Square. Yourself?’
‘I told you, a service apartment near Oxford Circus. How long have you lived up there?’
‘Forever. When Joe and I first arrived, the square was derelict. The railings were still gone, torn up for scrap during the war. Garden a ruin. Now look at it! Chockablock with the chattering classes.’
‘Chattering classes? Funny phrase. Like my sixth grade class with Miss Gravelstein. Anyway, it’s a very, very nice neighbourhood. I jogged the other evening on Primrose Hill. That’s one expensive butcher.’
Love and the Art of War Page 5
