Love and the Art of War

by Dinah Lee Küng

  ‘The whole time, Fergus’s telephoto focussed on that log pile she was chopping into firewood. Her axe, so dainty, as if every stick was her husband’s scrawny neck. Brilliant. Wait. I think we should have turned back at that green pub sign.’

  ‘I know the way, Jane. So . . .you had that lunch with Bella.’

  The sun dipped behind a rain cloud.

  ‘She told me she never heard such gossip-mongering. I’m silly to be jealous over a broomstick like Rachel.’

  The old Volvo navigated through drizzle along an unfamiliar lane riddled with muddy potholes.

  ‘How much did this startling revelation cost me? Bella hasn’t paid for a lunch in years. God, Jane, it would have been much cheaper to believe me. Rachel is a gormless nonentity. It should be here, somewhere . . . ’

  Forty minutes later three stalwart hikers, gave directions to the Soggy Dog as, ‘Back a ways, turn at the green pub sign.’

  At least each revolution of the engine carried Joe farther from Bella. Jane prayed it wasn’t too late to forge her secret path back to Joe’s heart.

  That evening, even before dinner, as the wintry winds blustered outside, they made love. Married love-making, where the timing was well-synchronised, there were no embarrassing bloopers, and nothing that made the cylinder roar loud enough to disturb anybody in the next room. Yet it bestowed a welcome relief. Lying afterward in the claw-foot tub, Jane actually believed their life could fall back into place. Everything seemed to be slipping along the path to Restorationville when Joe paused in admiration of his apple confit in pistachio filo.

  ‘Bella should do this guy’s stuff on the show. I expect East Sussex doesn’t qualify as travelling too far but the chef is French. Maybe I should give her a tinkle.’

  Pulling away from the kerb of Chalkwood Square, Jane had resolved that his first reach for his Blackberry would be her clarion call to arms. Battle banners snapping in the wind now shot up along her emotional horizon. She must launch the rest of Number Eight and March to Chencang.

  ‘I’ve got an idea, Joe.’ She laid both her palms on the polished table. ‘It’s been what, four years now? None of your pitches has found a home, because each one is totally news-pegged with a short shelf life. And they don’t fit it in with the cooking thing you’re doing—’

  ‘Temporarily. Always temporarily.’

  ‘Four years is not temporary. You’re dealing with a whole new team of producers who don’t remember the old Joe Gilchrist. They hear Gilchrist and think “Gilchrist, food, boring.” So, I suggest you take the aikido approach—’

  ‘The what?’ Joe wrinkled his nose.

  ‘From a new book we got at the library. Aikido, the Asian defence strategy.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ Joe frowned, ‘Like judo, right?’

  ‘Harnessing the energy of your opponent in the direction you want, by seizing the momentum. You seize the shaft of your enemy’s weapon and flip the spearhead around on him.’

  Joe trailed down Jane’s path, his large brown eyes warming to her in the candlelight.

  ‘I’m amazed neither of us thought of it before. If you’re stuck with this cookery label, spin it into something meaningful! Work up an idea about food price inflation or famine or aid problems. The destruction of crops from global warming and climate change? Rice shortages? Ethanol eating up corn production? New arguments about genetically modified foods? Parlay your cooking contacts into the kind of thing you really want to do. Do you still have the card of that woman who works for the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome? Get on to her.’

  ‘Frame the food story my way? So some department head can assign it to his flavour-of-the month producer.’

  ‘No, Joe, here’s the hook. You pitch it as a Special, go around the heads of regular programming. Only you can bring in the chefs to make it a sort of humanitarian celebrity road show. Time it for a one-off, a G20, any kind of summit.’

  ‘You mean, don’t run it by Camille?’

  ‘Bella’s queered your pitches with Camille and everybody else on that floor, Joe. She damns you with foodie praise.’ Jane’s path to Chencang narrowed. ‘Bella doesn’t want to lose you.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You turned The Travelling Kitchen around. She’ll derail anything that distracts you. Make sure she doesn’t get wind of this.’

  She had launched her frontal attack over that silly Rachel Something Out of Nothing and lured Joe down her Secret Path to Chencang.

  How easy it was, being strategic—or deceitful? So far, all her lies had been little ones, and it was so simple because, after a lifetime of being straight and nice, no one expected Jane to be devious.

  Driving home Sunday afternoon through rain glistening on the windshield, Jane and Joe chatted about which chefs might do an exposé on the collapse of the food chain. Exhausting that topic, they chatted about Lorraine’s futile hopes of landing Sir Brian as guest at her February birthday bash. Joe promised to spend time going over Sammie’s maths. He agreed now, shunting Sammie off to boarding school was premature. He couldn’t recall where the idea had started.

  Jane had now guessed the answer to that, but Bella’s plan to remove Sammie was thwarted.

  The sun broke through as they turned into the square. Jane felt as warmed as the foliage rustling orange and yellow opposite their front step. She might even apologize to Carla for imposing that reading marathon. She’d go to the Chu family print shop to order save-the-date-cards. She looked forward to Stratagems Nine and Ten. The Warring States Period couldn’t have been so very bad if everyone managed as adroitly as this. She hopped out of the Volvo and hurried upstairs to put on the kettle.

  Unfortunately, she missed Joe’s secret scrutiny of missed calls on his phone.

  Chapter Nine, Zuo Shan, Guan Hu Dou

  (Watching Tigers Fight from the Mountain Top)

  ‘They’re at it again!’ Lorraine shuddered. ‘Do they have a permit to block off the end of our street like that?’ She tottered on the window seat and leaned dangerously over the dormer windowsill.

  Jane turned down the heat under Lorraine’s casserole of ground beef, cumin, sour cream, black olives and tortillas, the South of the Border recipe the teenaged Lorraine cadged from the ancient screenwriter Anita Loos.

  Together, they peered over the clogged gutter and across the square. October’s melting frost turned the leaves to rotting muck. Beyond the northern railing, three rows of praying male bodies doubled over in prayer, filling the end of the street right up to the bollards on the kerb and bowing somewhere in the direction of Mecca, via the dubious sanctity of Camden Town. In the sunny centre of the grassy park, two yummy mummies on wooden benches advertised their indifference.

  ‘The Chorus Line from Kabul again. Why do it here?’ Lorraine whined.

  ‘Sir Bernard says the bookstore owner moonlights as a preacher,’ Jane explained. The architect next door had called the police. A wary officer on duty said the situation was ‘In hand, Sir.’ Not only long-term residents had weighed in. The OBE rock star remodelling the lavender house facing south had ‘expressed concern’ to a local councillor only to get limp assurances that ‘things would probably taper off.’ The result of such phone calls was in evidence. Three Bobbies stood expressionless at attention in front of the bowing white figures.

  ‘I don’t envy those policemen,’ Jane said. ‘They must feel ridiculous, presiding over prayers they can’t even understand.’

  ‘As foreigners, they should show more respect to local ambiance.’

  ‘Foreigners like yourself, Mommie Dearest?’

  ‘But I assimilated! I worked for years to fit in! And I did them one better! Remember my As You Like It? Didn’t The Times call my Rosalind a breath of fresh air? I certainly don’t recall the words “immigrant travesty” on my West End billing.’

  ‘Don’t pretend you did it all alone. I was there. I heard Jack coaching your diction late into the night. Lorraine, why don’t you ever give my father so
me credit?’ These angry words slipped from Jane’s lips without warning.

  Lorraine turned slowly, doing her stage pivot with the lifted eyebrow. Jane had seen even polished actors falter in the middle of a climactic speech when Lorraine aimed this slow-motion laser on them.

  ‘Give Jack King credit?’

  ‘He paved your way. He corrected your accent. He purged the tap-dancer from your entrances. He sold you on the boards decades before Jerry Hall or Kathleen Turner tried it. You rarely share the credit with anybody but never with my father.’

  ‘Well, I gave Jack something to work with, didn’t I? I embraced the local culture. I’m practically the senior poster girl for American theatre imports. This is my neighbourhood now. Those guys down there treat me like I’m some kind of trespassing infidel.’

  Lorraine clambered off the window seat and fetched a cigarette from her kitchen table. Jane’s spirited summoning of Jack’s ghost had raised her old hackles, like Hamlet’s father strolling in through the door. Jack had turned his Broadway hoofer into a Shakespearean hack—a novel swerve in her career path (or a novelty act, depending on the critic). Jack’s months of training had carried Lorraine through that difficult middle stage of an ageing thespian’s life. Only offstage, Jack soon found other ‘protégées.’ In retaliation, Lorraine had tested her husband’s patience by helping Caliban ‘with his lines’ once too often.

  The chanting out on the street subsided. Lorraine puffed hard on her cigarette and muttered, ‘Maybe that angel has something to do with it.’

  ‘What angel? Your last angel bailed you out of the Homage to Fred and Ginger disaster.’ Jane checked their meal. ‘Oh, you mean the angel painted on the window.’

  ‘Of course that’s what I mean. Oh, hell, my bladder’s giving out again.’

  From behind the bathroom door came much rustling and grunting. Returning to the kitchen, Lorraine threw Jane a game smile. ‘You know they can make you a new bladder? I saw it on ITV. They take your cells and grow them on an armature in the lab. I’ll give mine a name, Bill the Bladder, and I’ll visit him in his little crib ‘til he’s ready,’ Lorraine warbled, ‘Because he’s just my Bill.’

  The trip to the loo had worn her out. Daughter helped mother remove various pieces of outerwear. Jane served up the casserole and set up Lorraine for an evening with Irma la Douce.

  They heard shouts outside. Lorraine mounted her sentry post again, bare heels digging deep into the faded cushions, her head sticking out of the roof. ‘Whoops, the cops are breaking it up! Look, they’re taking down IDs. Leave the casserole on warm, Janie. I’m not missing this!’

  It wasn’t much of a scuffle, the worshippers being too full of grace or just anxious to get their own dinner.

  Back downstairs, Jane watched Sammie sulk her way through a chop and microwaved potato.

  ‘Why can’t I spend the weekend with them?’

  ‘Because I’m tired of hearing from your teachers about your unfulfilled potential. Because I’ve never met these people. I’ve never even heard of them.’

  ‘You don’t know any of my friends anymore. You’re always at the library or looking after Grandma. You never go shopping with me or let me fix your hair.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my hair? Don’t answer that. What happened to your old girlfriends? You just mope around and you don’t eat enough. Are you depressed, honey? Where’s May-lin? I bet she’s studying.’

  ‘She’s so wet.’

  ‘Amy?’

  ‘As if. She had an alcoholic coma. Her parents are making her pay off the ambulance fee.’

  ‘Could you at least take out those earphones while we eat? I can hear that buzzy sound from here. You’ll go deaf. ’

  ‘Anyway, I’ll take a gap-year teaching in Malawi. Natalie’s Googling all the best options.’

  ‘Your mother is a librarian but you’re too lazy to research your own gap-year? Why Malawi? You’ll be sorry when you come home with malaria, yellow and shaking with fever. ’

  ‘—Or some other place, then. I’ve got time. Speaking of time, where’s Dad?’

  Jane shrugged. ‘Friday-night wrap-up drinks.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sammie slowly sliced her potato skin into miniscule threads, a bit of stage business worthy of her grandmother.

  ‘You’re going to your evening class, Mum?’

  ‘That’s right. Will you do the washing-up, for once? I’ve got to run an errand before class.’

  This earned an indifferent shrug. Still, the girl had queried Jane’s plans. She was keeping tabs on her parents with her little searchlight heart, tapping along the walls of pregnant silences for cracks, taking soundings. The kitchen lamp’s light reflected off Sammie’s shiny chestnut hair. Wonderful how young girls’ hair shone. Jane gazed with love unobserved, not just at her daughter’s soft mane, but the pimple medicine smeared near the hairline, the eyeliner gone wonky, and a smudge of ordinary pencil lead on the earlobe. Sammie was a svelte sophisticate in comparison with the teen Jane who once waited for Lorraine backstage, but she was much thinner than Jane had been at that age. How had the child lost so much weight without anyone noticing? But then, perhaps Lorraine had worried as she watched her ugly duckling Jane surface, not as a swan, but just a smarter, quieter duck?

  Her A-Z in hand, Jane headed off to find Chu Printers. By the time she’d rounded the square, she’d resigned herself to teenage girls yet again. It was a Sisyphean task, because every time Jane rolled the boulder of hope for Sammie’s future to the heights of a place at a decent university, the child kicked it over the precipice. Then Jane would soften. It was bound to be a bad season, with Sammie’s academic insecurity made worse by girlfriend sagas of shifting loyalties and betrayed alliances worthy of Henry II’s court.

  She cinched her mac tighter against the wet wind whistling off Primrose Hill. Reaching the far corner of the square, she stopped to look up at the Window Angel, his colours aflame from the lamplight within.

  His wingspan caught a pinkish gleam and his cornflower hair was now flecked with gold. Despite these baroque flourishes, he looked Miltonian—a hardened survivor of celestial showdowns. Gaunt lines segmented his cheeks—a few brushstrokes had added a decade. Worse, the angel’s Roman nose and soft lips were now disfigured. Painted blood trickled from his calloused feet.

  A mutilated angel—what did it mean? Ageing the angel over the passing days recalled The Picture of Dorian Gray; instead of corruption and evil surfacing from a seductive facade, the beautiful angel had morphed from youth to war vet.

  A door latch clicked. A young man emerged from the bookstore across the street. He looked like all its customers—dark-eyed and swarthy despite a close shave and wearing a white tunic covered with a cheap windbreaker over a pair of jeans.

  ‘Nice evening for a stroll.’ he said. Jane felt pinned down.

  ‘I was just admiring the angel.’

  ‘St Michael? His body is covered with fine hairs, each one of them like a tongue, imploring the Mercy of Allah on behalf of sinners.’

  He smiled and headed southward. That was that, disconcerting Jane, as if it were he, not Jane, who belonged there at night, watching the square, identifying who was passing, and offering cultural explanations to the passing English tourist. Who was the interloper?

  Jane had passed Chu Printers without seeing it, dozens of times. London was full of immigrant shops you only noticed when you needed them. The air inside the jangling door reeked of machine oil, seafood takeaway and stale jasmine. A red and gold Chinese shrine hung on the wall next to the counter facing the entrance alongside a free calendar from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Inside the shrine’s shabby niche, tangerine rinds bristled with nubs of blackened incense sticks interred in a sand-filled bowl labelled Moggy.

  Winston waited behind the counter, right on cue. Enemy Nelson was bent over his table in the ‘Lychee Corner.’ The evil genius was conducting an autopsy on the bowels of a laptop. Nelson didn’t look anything like a millennial threat to t
he future of the Chu dynasty.

  ‘May I help YOU?’ Winston plunged across the counter at her.

  Jane suppressed her laughter. Nelson’s eyes stayed fixed on his electronic innards.

  ‘I need this card printed out right away,’ she ordered. ‘Heavy paper with embossed lettering.’

  Winston flipped his pink spikes towards the darker recesses of the shop. ‘No problem,’ he shouted too loud, ‘Mei you wen ti.’ They both could have used some of Lorraine’s acting tips. The audience for their little theatre piece, Chu Patriarch, was a scrawny man just visible between hulking printing presses and copiers as big as refrigerators, way at the back of the shop. His right hand snapped the beads of a rackety abacus up and down, column by column, while he smoked. He took no notice of Winston’s new customer.

  Jane played to the gallery. ‘I know it’s Friday, but could you have them ready for pickup early Monday morning?’

  ‘MonDAY? Waaaah, short notice! We’re so busy!’ Was Winston so eager, he’d blow it by pulling the pre-printed invitations out from under the counter, right then and there?

  ‘Oh, no! It has to be Monday, or I won’t place the order. No other shop can do it. It’s a very, VERY, important event, involving a lot of busy people who need tons of advance notice.’

  ‘Okay, lady, let’s see what I can do.’ Winston spread out a battered ring binder of samples from which to select the spongy paper, fancy typeface, and various borders. Jane fought the urge to laugh. She’d decided all of this a week ago. Winston calculated the price of paper, coloured ink, gold edging, and Sunday overtime.

  ‘BIG Job, but I can do it, special for you!’

  ‘Oh, you are a prince! I’ll recommend you to all my friends from Hampstead to Sloane Square.’

  As Jane fished out the cash deposit, Cousin Nelson detached himself from his surgery. Inching the weedy Winston off centre stage, he leaned towards Jane. Nelson was taller and far better looking than poor Winston, who was all spotty stubble and flakes of hair gel. They were related through their mothers; Nelson’s sire was quite different from the wiry abacus-clacker. Poor Mr Chu conjured up one of those downtrodden peasants in The Good Earth, while Nelson’s smooth brow and shoulder-length mane of glossy black hair inspired the erotic Dream of the Red Chamber. There was no denying that when the ancient dikes of the Yellow River flooded the paddies and Chu Senior was swept clinging to his hoe into the muddy torrent past a powerless Winston, Nelson would breaststroke against the raging currents to retrieve his uncle on his powerful shoulders.