Love and the Art of War

by Dinah Lee Küng

  ‘Did you see the price of Hampstead Heath Honey in the Melrose and Morgan window? It’s all right for Jude Law. We shop at Tesco.’

  ‘Interesting bookstore.’

  ‘Bookstore? Primrose Hill Books?’

  ‘No, I mean the other one.’

  ‘Oh, that one! They don’t sell many English-language books. Chris—he’s my colleague in charge of our community outreach—he asked them once if they wanted to do a cross-cultural event with our branch.’

  ‘No takers?’

  ‘They were polite but no. On the other hand, the Primrose Hill Books people are really lovely. They lined up Alan Bennett for us.’

  ‘Did they.’

  ‘The playwright? He lives in St. Marks Crescent, so it was just a stroll for him. Look, don’t be offended, but you don’t remind me of a typical American cop. You make me think of a watcher,’ Jane blurted out. ‘You know . . . listeners and forgers, something, something, how does it go? Couriers and watchers and seducers, and something, something balloonists, and, oh yes, lip readers. That doesn’t mean anything to you? It’s Le Carré. Sorry, I always stick people into books. Or pull them out. Occupational reflex.’

  ‘Put me in Ed McBain.’ Dan tossed their empty cups into the bin.

  ***

  When Jane opened the front door that night, she found Joe stretched across the sofa, his mobile stuck to one ear.

  ‘No, I don’t think we could rear our own calf on location, no matter what they do on River Cottage.’ It was only Bella. Joe looked pained. ‘The show has to stick with foreign food. No foreign, no show. You’re not Delia Smith.’ He chuckled, ‘Luckily. Oh, hi, sweetie. Nice class? Uh, uh. Look, Bella, I have to hang up now. I know, I know . . . No, it’s not a problem, go on . . . I know, I know, I know.’

  ‘You know a helluva lot,’ Jane giggled from the kitchen.

  Joe nodded, ‘I know . . . Bella, do you think this could keep ‘til tomorrow?’

  But he kept listening to the whinging running into his ear, creasing his brow, and emerging out the other ear.

  Poor Bella. It was hard to grudge her Joe’s time. How many romances had she gone through now, and yet there she was, still alone at nights. It was typical Bella to expect the Gilchrist ménage to be there for her, night and day. Yet surely she had enough moments during the day to cry on her producer’s shoulder. It was hard to draw a line when they were all such old friends. Bella was like one of the family, descending on Sammie with godmother gifts that were always OTT, carried off to school next day for showing off to friends and rivals.

  This particular conversation must have been going on for hours because Joe’s baritone had worn down to a lovable growl, drowned by Lorraine’s hairdryer whining down through the ceiling boards. This ballooning gold lame headdress was a contraption that Lorraine pulled on over a Medusa’s head of curlers and earphones plugged into Stephen Sondheim or Leonard Bernstein.

  As she emptied the dishwasher, Jane admired Joe’s patience. Well, better Joe spent his evening listening to Bella’s complaints about the guest chefs, the menus, the publicity department, than pining after Rachel Murty, the goggle-eyed redhead who trailed around with a clipboard of continuity notes. Rachel had re-surfaced as Other Woman Suspect.

  Hercule Poirot’s phantom features hovered over the can of scouring powder on the sink counter. ‘Oui, my little grey cells tell me, Jane: the youthful fumbling Rachel, this one has the means, she has the opportunity, and most of all, my friends, she has the motive. This ageing Joe, he can help the helpless Rachel, is it not so?’

  Joe was forcing things to a close, ‘Look, I really have to say goodnight,’ when they heard a scream from the attic floor.

  ‘Jane! JOE! HELP!’

  Joe ran up the twisting stairs, three steps at a time. Through a blur of smoke, Jane saw Joe jump full on top of a choking, coughing Lorraine, now screaming under his thick torso muffling the burning bonnet. Jane ran to the bedroom and grabbed a blanket. Joe wrapped it around Lorraine and pounded at the orange flickerings in Lorraine’s chiffon night. Ashy flakes floated and drifted into the shag carpet.

  Lorraine rolled back and forth, open-mouthed with fright. Jane emptied Lorraine’s rubbish bin on the floor, and filled it with water. Joe dowsed Lorraine and lifted her clear of the smouldering headgear. The three stared at the blackened gunk pooling into the rug.

  ‘Oh, oh, my God,’ Lorraine sobbed, her hands flailing at the back of her head. ‘The heat—’

  ‘Bend over, let’s check the damage.’ Jane pushed aside the bristly curlers. Underneath the singed hair, a scorched patch of skin was turning purplish at one end of her nape and translucent white at the other side.

  ‘I’ll go get ice and disinfectant,’ Jane said. ‘Luckily the curlers absorbed most of the heat but you’ll have to trim that bit off.’

  ‘Oh, dammit,’ her mother exploded. ‘Christ, what if I get a part?’

  It was so typical of Lorraine to worry about an audition call-up.

  ‘Why didn’t I buy those fire extinguishers?’ Joe said, scraping at the sticky, black plastic.

  Jane ran downstairs to her ice trays. ‘What if I get a part?’ she muttered to Bulgakov who’d already claimed the sofa warmth left by Joe. She was banging ice chips into a salad bowl, wondering at the aged person’s ability to live in the past, when she caught sight of something blinking under the coffee table.

  Joe’s BlackBerry lay like prey, its code opened and its secret innards exposed. Jane heard them upstairs—Joe’s measured reproof, then the old-lady refusal to take the blame for clinging to a twenty-year old hairdryer with frayed wires.

  ‘I’m not a complete idiot, Joe. It could happen to anyone. Oh, God, look at my hair!’

  Jane was alone downstairs. Joe’s BlackBerry lay there, beckoning to her, winking, coy and impish from behind a table leg.

  The temptation was too great. Laying the ice to one side, Jane approached the instrument with stealth. She punched ‘messages,’ ‘inbox.’ Like the Mountain Demon’s swift move on the magic robe, her theft wouldn’t take more than an instant. The Monkey King need never know.

  And there they were, (oh, foolish Joe!) all his received messages stacked up, one after another. Most of them were ‘call me’s,’ but others were ‘miss you’s,’ ‘can’t wait’s,’ ‘don’t hold out,’ ‘act on our feelings,’ and the very worst, ‘For her own sake, tell her things have changed!!!!!’ Really, five exclamation points. How old was this girl? She probably dotted her i’s with little hearts.

  With seconds remaining to her before Joe became suspicious, Jane ran her eyes down his caller list. She checked Rachel but there was no match. Anyway, Joe’s seductress must be a worthier foe than the gauche Rachel.

  She heard Lorraine upstairs fluttering back and forth between her bathroom and tiny sitting room. ‘Where’s that ice?’ Joe yelled down the stairwell.

  Jane’s thumbs punched and hovered, checking numbers against names, running through Beeb regulars, Fergus, Olivia, Phil, his brother Sterling in Winnipeg, their Polish ex-housekeeper—she still there?—Bulgakov’s vet, Sammie’s orthodontist, the Volvo garage and even that old standby, department head Camille Harper—though why should somebody so obviously giving Joe the professional finger say in her next breath, ‘I dream of your body?’

  She heard Joe stomping down the stairs, seconds from finding her with the Blackberry in her guilty hands! But before she could toss it back under the coffee table, his footsteps continued right past their open doorway, carrying Lorraine’s charred negligee down to the rubbish bin.

  Desperate, she punched the BlackBerry one last time, asking for ‘details.’

  It spread into a mocking grin, its window a luminous green eye expecting her horrified reaction. The person sending Joe all those panting love pleas read out in five horrible little letters: BELLA.

  Chapter Six, Sheng Dong Ji Xi

  (Noise in the East, Attack to the West)

  Why would Bella steal Joe, old Joe, past-h
is-prime-Joe, waist-deep-in-mid-life-petulance Joe? Why would any celebrity, even one dumped by a Parisian fusion chef via the pages of Vanity Fair, look at Joe?

  Perhaps someone stole Bella’s mobile and sent those messages?

  Night after night, rigid beside Joe on their well-worn mattress, Jane stared sleepless at the wall. She trod to the library in a daze. She set Lorraine’s dinner tray in a trance. Through a fog of numbness, she coached Sammie for her A-levels. She wanted to cry, but she’d done that. Sheer incredulity bricked up any tears.

  From the earliest days at the Beeb, Bella had distanced herself from the chorus line of assistants and researchers hoping to get on the box. Her amorous ambitions aimed well beyond the middle-class hunting grounds of Shepherd’s Bush to the lusher expanses of dinner parties in Mayfair and weekends in the country.

  Bella had never bothered with Joe. Joe wasn’t wealthy, famous, chic, or edgy enough. Jane recalled Joe’s own derisive, ‘Bella greets every producer with open legs.’ Had he been hiding pique?

  Eaten up with professional anxiety, Joe now looked a seedy, under-shaved has-been, a wraith of wasted self-sabotage. What could he possibly offer Bella at this late date but acrimony, maintenance headaches, and package hols?

  It couldn’t be sex. Bella boasted she could get enough of that whenever she wanted. Jane gnawed her way out of her shock to get at the truth of why Bella’s flame was licking at Joe’s toes.

  ***

  ‘There can never be too much deception in war.’ Baldwin pulled a ping-pong bat from his battered case. ‘China’s national table tennis team uses Stratagem Six in major tournaments. Watch carefully.’

  He tossed the white ball to within an inch of the ceiling, then slammed it through the air over their heads against the back wall. It rebounded, smacking the back of Nigel’s ear.

  Winston sniggered, ‘Good shot.’

  ‘Sorry, Deloitte.’ Baldwin now stood next to Keith, three yards from where he’d tossed the ball. ‘Did any of you notice me dart over to the window?’

  Returning to the board, he traced four ideographs in swooping lines with a squeaky felt pen. Sheng dong, ji xi. Give it a go, Mr O’Neill?’

  ‘Noise . . . East, well, I guess that would be something like, make a noise in the East and launch an attack in the West.’

  ‘Very good,’ Baldwin said. ‘Now all of you were too busy watching the ball and smirking at Nigel’s misfortune to see me shift position. Stratagem Six looks a bit like Stratagem One. In both tactics, you mask your preparation for the real attack, but Six is less passive. You attack where there is no defence, stage an alert in the east, but strike in the west. Pretend to be weak or soft, withdraw without warning, be incomprehensible, and force the enemy to make wrong preparations.’

  ‘Like shoplifters!’ said Kevin. ‘One kid pretends she’s going to throw up if she isn’t shown the loo, while her friend pockets a necklace.’

  Nigel spoke up: ‘Last month our so-called partner set a lot of conditions that turned out to be a complete distraction, nothing to him at all. Meanwhile, he screwed us on a currency technicality that cost us fifteen per cent.’

  Baldwin smiled at Jane. ‘Make sure your enemy finds himself or herself attacked where she didn’t expect it. The element of surprise gives overwhelming advantage.’

  Later, lying in bed listening to Joe’s snores and snorts, Jane wondered how she could surprise Bella. Bella had surprised her. How could Jane distract Joe any more than he already was? Bella was working on him in the office by day and via BlackBerry by night.

  In the pre-dawn hours, Jane’s shock fed most avidly on her ballooning fears. In her imagination, Bella’s celebrity lips, glossed up for the camera, turned vampire-like. Her coiffure spread wilder and her nails turned a deeper scarlet, always stirring, picking, and shelling Joe like a fresh prawn.

  Jane would drag herself exhausted from their bed at dawn. Coffee mug in hand, she stared out at the chilly, grey square, its familiar railings more a prison enclosure than a sanctuary. It was small comfort that one of the glimpsed text messages implied Joe had yet to succumb! Bella knew Jane’s weak points, especially her inability to change Joe’s fortunes. At least Bella was only the face of The Travelling Kitchen. Had she been the assignments editor on Newsnight, Joe might have stripped off his compunctions along with his trousers and socks at her bedside months ago—just for a chance to produce, what was it now? Oh yes, Underground Iran.

  Baldwin had lectured, ‘Sun Tzu takes this tactic further; Not only make one false move to lull the enemy. Repeat the false move as genuine.’

  Yes, to feint, not faint. Keep on pretending you know nothing. Keep on pretending, pretend, pretend.

  Jane would focus on setting the date for Lorraine’s eightieth birthday party and agreeing on a guest list. Lorraine believed her fan club numbered more than one hundred and fifty ‘luvvies.’ She handed Jane a list that Leporello would have tripped over. It would be impossible to produce half that many actual bodies for her mother’s shindig. Many resided in a home for ageing theatre people, but the manager haggled over the staff needed to haul them to NW1. The more dogged of the remaining candidates were taking supper theatre to outposts like Singapore and Johannesburg, or ‘resting’ between jobs in private digs Jane couldn’t locate. Some were too plain gaga to recall Lorraine King or their halcyon days playing the Porter to Jack King’s MacDuff.

  Worst of all, Lorraine had listed Sir Brian MacKelling at the very top. He was neither gaga nor gone. Sir Brian not only going strong. Sir Brian was ‘huge,’ filmed and fêted from New Zealand to LA. MacKelling! Why not bring back Olivier and Gielgud from their graves? What the hell! Hamlet’s murdered father, let’s not forget him!

  Sammie mimicked her grandmother as she helped Jane clean Lorraine’s flat. ‘Just call his agent, darling, or run down to Lime House. Tell him he looks buff, and he’ll be your slave. Eeeyew. Look at this ashtray. Disgusting old bat.’

  ‘Sammie! She’s your grandmother.’

  ‘I love her absolutely, but look at this!’ Sammie kneeled on the carpet. ‘Is this a dead spider? Oh, yuk! It’s one of her false eyelashes, all gummy. Did you see the cigarette scorches on her bedside table? That hairdryer explosion was just a foretaste of the Last Inferno. I hope I’m not still living here when she burns down the whole house. She’s a menace.’

  ‘I’ll remind her. But not the same day I tell her that Sir Brian can’t come.’

  ‘Grandma says it was Grandpa Jack’s supporting role in that production of, oh, whatever it was, that made Sir Brian’s career.’

  ‘Nobody made Sir Brian but himself, by hard slog.’ Jane turned off the Hoover just in time to hear Lorraine’s steps coming up. A lifetime of dance warm-ups and a sturdy banister was keeping her mother upright and steady.

  The old gal entered, rosy-bright with cold, the veins of her pert nose slightly the worse for a life of Green Room cocktails.

  ‘Mother, did you walk to the butcher and back without a coat?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t expect to be so long. I couldn’t find it. Joe left it at the cleaners.’

  ‘It’s right here, Grandma. Why don’t you wear your glasses? A trip to the High Street isn’t an audition.’

  ‘LIFE is one long audition, child. Be prepared to go on at all times. I only got chilled because I was held up. There’s some iman giving a performance outside—’

  ‘Mother, you mean imam. Iman is Mrs David Bowie.’ ‘Well, look out the window and you’ll see who I mean.’

  The three of them crushed together on the window seat and looked across the roof. Blocking the cul-de-sac at the top of the square were half a dozen neat rows of rear ends turned up to the darkening sky.

  ‘Pretty tight choreography for amateurs,’ Lorraine said. ‘I’ve seen more ragged chorus lines in the West End.’

  ‘Why are they in our square?’ Sammie demanded. ‘Shouldn’t they pray at the mosque over on Park Road?’

  ‘They’re on tour,’ Lorraine said. ‘A m
atinee arranged by that religious bookstore.’

  ‘Listen to them chant,’ Sammie said.

  ‘I couldn’t cut my way past their holy heinies, they were crooning so loud. I just stood there behind the leader, clearing my throat, you know, really projecting that kind of meaningful cough you aim at the back stalls. The preacher gave a cue and they all dropped to their knees and one of them did a pratfall right across my trolley. My eggs are probably scrambled already.’

  ‘Just so long as they don’t do more than pray,’ Jane said.

  ‘Or make me wear a headscarf.’ Sammie tossed Lorraine’s coat over her head, arms outstretched, chanting, ‘I’m pure. I’m a virgin! I can’t breathe!’

  A key turned in the lock downstairs. Jane steeled herself. Did she have the courage to execute her feint tonight?

  After Joe, Jane and Sammie had eaten their defrosted stew together, Sammie retreated to do her ‘graphs and functions.’ Jane put on a pistachio kimono she’d picked up from a Camden stall. The swaying sleeves lent a willowy feeling. Curling seductively into the sofa cushions, she gazed at Joe hunched over his papers.

  Time for Stratagem Six.

  ‘Joe, let’s talk for a minute.’

  ‘What about?’ He shuffled his pitches into two piles: rejected and to-be-rejected. He didn’t notice Jane’s slinky robe.

  ‘About Rachel. I know, Joe, about you and Rachel.’ She forced conviction and hurt into her tone.

  He didn’t even swivel to face her. ‘Rachel Murty?’

  ‘You two are having a fling, aren’t you?’ She tried to sound hurt, playful, and superior all at once.

  Now, Joe looked straight over at Jane. ‘Rachel? What’s there to know? She’s Bella’s assistant and so . . . ’

  At the word Bella, Joe’s eyes dropped down to his story pitches.

  ‘You know, I haven’t entirely lost touch with the old crowd. You should be more careful. Things don’t stay secret for long. There’s always some frustrated biddy at the Beeb who thinks she’s doing you a favour pulling the proverbial wool away from your eyes. I’d have thought you’d been around long enough to know better.’