Love and the Art of War

by Dinah Lee Küng

Sixteen was one of Baldwin’s favourites because, ‘It embodies the very essence of Chinese philosophy, the constant principles of flux and flexibility between the yin and yang that make for such subtlety in Daoist thought.’

  Exactly how could Jane be sure that something released from her anxious clutches could be reclaimed? She had to gamble, a prospect so unpalatable, she’d fought it off by concentrating all Saturday morning on those dog-eared leaflets, then excavating layers of index cards curling off their push pins.

  She discovered Chris, nose stuck in Black Swan Green, hiding from such library drudgery. He was muttering to himself, ‘Wow! This is so me!’

  ‘I’m leaving for a quick bite.’

  Chris looked annoyed at having to man the desk, so she added, ‘Meeting Joe for a chat,’ at which he nodded, ‘Oh, sorry, Jane, take all afternoon if you have to.’

  On the short walk home, she reviewed Stratagem Sixteen: Always leave a way of escape for the enemy. It mirrored Sun Tzu’s Principle Seven; if you burned your bridges and your troops had no escape, they’d fight with superhuman strength. Although, why push your troops to fight to the death if they had no escape?

  ‘The point being,’ Baldwin had underscored, ‘Cornered prey will mount a final desperate attack. When there is no way out, they stand firm. That’s what you want in your own troops, but it’s not what you want to confront in the enemy.’

  From across the square, Joe stood visible through the tall windows, head over his mail. The sight of his broad shoulders under the battered brown suede jacket stopped Jane cold. That head of tousled brown hair only slightly thinning near the widow’s peak above the familiar brow was no longer hers.

  She hesitated before crossing the grass. It was all so familiar, the traffic noises fading as she rounded the bollards and the flanks of elegant houses with colourful doors like tin soldiers guarding the peace.

  Yet Joe was willing to let it all go. You must let the enemy believe he still had his freedom. His will to fight will be dampened by his desire to escape. When in the end the freedom is proven a falsehood, the enemy’s morale will be defeated and he will surrender without a fight. It seemed a long shot. Oh, what did the Chinese sages know about Joe, anyway?

  Baldwin had said, ‘Use the principle of qi yi, qi fang; to deceive someone by means of his own attitude or cast of mind. Leave your opponent free to remain in reality a prisoner of his own illusion.’

  To recapture Joe, Jane should hide her distress, urge him off, delighted and guilt-free, a prisoner of his own illusion that he’d fallen in love with Bella? That everything he ridiculed had reversed into his ideal? She’d have to swallow her love and worry for him, and just—just—let him go?

  Dan said Sixteen always worked—but that was back in New York: ‘Yeah, this tactic is tried and true,’ he’d told the class after last night’s coffee break. ‘Somebody causes this God-awful traffic accident. If you throw the book at him, he freaks out, calls his lawyer, plays for time, clogs up the legal system. So, you give him a coffee, have the nurse fuss him over while they tow away what used to be his Lexus, wait him out ‘til it sinks in that he’s the asshole that just killed a couple of people.’

  Baldwin nodded, ‘You give his guilty feelings free rein—’

  ‘Yeah, hear the dude out, let him think he’s getting off easy.’

  Nigel spoke up. ‘I can offer a business example.’

  ‘That was a business example,’ Dan shot back. ‘We just happen to be in very different businesses.’

  ‘Sorry, O’Neill.’

  Getting Nigel to apologize was something of a first. It was getting worse than the Bookworms, Jane thought.

  ‘We’re trying to poach a manager from Citibank who has a handle on developing markets. I interviewed him, but didn’t press him for an answer, just let him walk away He’ll reconsider. He wouldn’t have agreed to see us if his present position was good and, if I’m lucky, it’ll get even worse.’

  Arms crossed, Baldwin warned, ‘Just keep in mind, Nigel, your Citibank quarry may be playing the same game with you. Having turned you down, he expects you to raise the stakes, a prisoner of your illusion that he’s worth it.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Nigel looked disconcerted.

  ‘So! More historical references!’ Baldwin passed out photocopies. ‘Always leave an escape for the encircled enemy. That’s from A Hundred Marvellous Battle Plans. Do not press an enemy at bay, from the Battle of Extremity, press forward when the enemy gets relaxed and pull back when it approaches to attack. By and by, the enemy will take its own life, etc. etc.’

  Which is not what we want, Jane reminded herself as she released the latch on Number 19’s front door. Joe waited upstairs, looking like a man under siege—badly shaven, with exhaustion lines cutting down each cheek. His jaw, so often clenched with frustration, hung almost slack.

  ‘Hello, Joe.’ She’d brought some groceries from the High Street and started shelving them, not wasting Lorraine’s lessons in the usefulness of props during a difficult scene. ‘How’s Fergus?’

  ‘Fergus is fine. I went upstairs to say hello to Lorraine but she wasn’t home.’

  Still the decent Canadian son-out-of-law? Why couldn’t he be a complete bastard?

  ‘Probably still at the hair salon or the dressmaker. Sometimes I think the only thing that keeps her going is opening, as she calls it, in her birthday party.’

  ‘How’s Sammie? Could I have her with me next weekend?’

  He’ll use Sammie, too.

  ‘That depends. What’s the head lice situation at Fergus’s?’

  Joe took a long time to reply, at last, ‘Well, I’m not exactly at Fergus’s.’

  So there it was. He wouldn’t have admitted it yet if she hadn’t attacked.

  ‘I see.’

  Jane examined the ingredient list on a bag of corn chips. ‘I don’t know how she did it, Joe. Please explain.’

  Joe attempted some sort of comforting embrace but Jane squatted down to shift all the spaghetti boxes into the deepest corner of the pantry, leaving him swatting at empty air.

  ‘Honestly, Jane, until Italy, I always thought of her as just a friend. Then, well, things changed.’ Joe wore that helpless little boy expression, the one he used when Jane suggested he fold the laundry.

  What changed is that you took off your clothes and bonked each other silly.

  ‘She used to drive us crazy. She was our family joke! I see the joke is on me.’

  Joe turned sullen. ‘I’m surprised you noticed. You were always stuck in some book. Or upstairs dressing and undressing the Star. And by the way, Jane, you lied to me about that evening class. I just saw the receipt.’

  ‘I lied?’ Jane hung on to her spice jars for dear life. If she couldn’t corner him, neither would she play defence. She laughed so she wouldn’t spit in his face, and offered him some corn chips.

  ‘Yes, you! You’re not going to any management class. You’re been getting counselling on how to “decently divorce” me since September.’ He sounded miffed.

  ‘I can’t exactly divorce you, can I? Though no one cares more for you than me. Between devouring bestsellers, of course. No one has watched your disappointments with more pain, when I wasn’t researching more ideas for you to flog, that is. So, now, the problem is that I read too much? Or is it my pathetic three-days-a-week job? My librarian’s devotion to a few dwindling borrowers, that’s the betrayal that herded you into Bella’s bedroom?’

  ‘Well, we’ve been stuck in a rut. You never seem to notice. I’ve been really depressed,’ he argued, ‘And lonely. Of course I expect you find that unbelievable.’

  ‘Not unbelievable. Preposterous!’ Jane yelled. Good thing Lorraine was out. By now Joe had backed into the corner of the kitchen. She felt like crowning him with the reading lamp and sticking choice parts of him into the food processor.

  ‘Bella really understands me! You find that preposterous?’

  ‘So it was my neglect that forced you to screw ou
r daughter’s godmother under the child’s nose?’

  ‘Did Sammie say that? Bella and I were very discreet.’

  This wasn’t good. The cornered tiger was starting to snarl back. Bella must have prepared him for Jane as Medea and Medusa in one—all fury-headed, snakes unfurling, flying at Joe with a Banshee scream and claws bared, the ultimate Snake Women scorned.

  ‘We never intended to hurt anybody, Jane, least of all Sammie. Bella loves her. She’s absolutely terrified that this will turn Sammie against her.’’

  ‘Bella cares only about Bella. That’s why she’s so ridiculously, predictably, ludicrous. Hilarious. Why am I not laughing?’

  Joe had slipped out of the kitchen area into the living room, his back meeting one of the tall windows. If he pressed any harder, the ageing wooden sash might give way, ejecting him, arms and legs akimbo, on to the crumbling Georgian stucco work overhanging the ground floor entrance. Jane retreated to fold the shopping bags with the precision of an origami champion.

  Joe peered forward at Jane with almost morbid curiosity and asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

  Jane reached for a mental image of Baldwin, her sagelike Yoda in worn tweed.

  ‘Do?’ She checked her watch. ‘Fix myself a bite, get back to work. You know, that absorbing life I lead, dispatching overdue notices, has made me peckish.

  Joe’s shoulders dropped two inches. ‘So, why am I here? Well, I guess I’ll get some of my things.’ He opened the closet near the front door.

  ‘Actually, Joe, I’d like you to leave, but one thing first.’

  Baldwin’s advice held her in check like a tourniquet stanching the bleeding of her heart: Deferment must be used with caution. Make sure that one’s troops can afford the delay, even when you have the upper hand. Make sure nothing can happen to change the enemy’s position for the better.

  ‘Actually, it’s why I wanted to see you.’

  ‘Sure, sure. Anything.’ He paused near the front door.

  ‘I’m asking you to be the soul of discretion, at least ‘til Sammie’s exams are over. Nothing official or unofficial, no Daily Mail exclusives, no leaks, no pap photos, no nothing. Bella is a celebrity, a particularly juicy prey. One whiff and they’ll start tracking and tapping your Blackberry as fast as you can say Rupert Murdoch. Sammie can’t afford to be distracted right now by a photo of her father snogging his star in public. Her whole future’s at stake.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. Well, Jane, I . . . ’ He actually looked ready to kiss her.

  ‘And don’t forget your best friend.’ She crossed the living room and grabbed his BAFTA award. She dumped the taunting mask into his arms like a sack of rotten potatoes. He looked startled and about to say something.

  She slammed the front door in his face.

  The sound of clapping came from the bedroom.

  Oh my God, they weren’t alone.

  ‘Jane, that was the most extraordinary performance I’ve ever witnessed, on or off the stage.’ Lorraine struggled to her feet from the depths of the bedroom, reading chair. ‘All these years, I flattered myself as the family actress. But dammit, I haven’t seen such guts since I saw your father do Polonius the same afternoon he got his cancer diagnosis. I wonder, whose genes did you get, after all?’

  ‘I thought you were out! Were you hiding in there the whole time?’

  The old woman waggled her head, basting her lie with overacting. ‘I would never eavesdrop on purpose. I came back after lunch and wanted to have a look at your new library books, especially that Antonia Fraser one about living with Pinter. Joe just let himself in. I couldn’t trust myself not to take a kitchen knife to him. You know, the old Judi Dench double-dagger thing.’ Lorraine crossed her arms at the elbows, holding up Lady Macbeth’s rapiers.

  ‘Wish you had.’

  ‘And miss your performance? It’s so very hard to play against character, don’t I know it? Yet you carried the scene. You convinced me. You have all my respect, Jane.’ She wobbled slightly and took her daughter into her frail embrace.

  And now, how Jane sobbed.

  ‘It was Yu Qing, Gu Zong, To catch something, first let it go.’

  ‘What’s that from, sweetheart? Sayonara? Memoirs of a Geisha?’

  ‘No, it’s from my evening class with Professor Baldwin. It’s not about library management. It’s about Chinese war strategies. I’ve been studying Sun Tzu to keep going. But what if Sun Tzu doesn’t work?’

  Lorraine’s face turned into a white, Empress-like mask of determination. ‘Well, nothing I ever tried kept things together. I could tell you sure shook up Joe. Fix me a gin and tonic, darling, and show me these strategies. Teach this old dog some new tricks.’

  Chapter Seventeen, Pao Zhuan, Yin Yu

  (Toss out a Brick to Attract a Jade)

  ‘I’m afraid our branch has received some very bad news.’

  ‘Why, Jane, dear, what is it? You look so sad. There are circles under your eyes, dear,’ Ruth Wilting’s palsied fingers took Jane’s hand across the reading table, and wobbled it back and forth, as if she could shake Jane’s bad news away.

  ‘Well, for some time, since Florence left us last year—’

  ‘Old people don’t need pretty euphemisms, Jane. Florence croaked.’

  ‘Thank you Carla,’ said Jane. ‘Since Florence died, our numbers have held at just the minimum to keep the library open for these meetings. Of course, the Bookworms could continue to meet at Rupert’s, but that’s too far for some of you, and leaving the library setting makes it less likely we’ll ever attract new members.’

  ‘And they won’t pay for your time at Rupert’s.’ Carla cradled her briefcase of books and reviews to her capacious bosom.

  ‘Carla, I don’t think Jane was ever motivated by overtime,’ Rupert said, as if the word overtime fell in with things like ration coupons or bedbugs—not relevant.

  Carla hove up like a steamer’s bow. ‘Well, somebody has to spit it out. Perhaps we’ve exhausted the potential of this particular group. I don’t really mind. I know perfectly well how to read on my own.’ Her lips tightened into a slash of determination.

  The Bookworms needed Carla to stay, while Carla was waiting for an excuse to move on—exactly what Jane feared.

  ‘Actually, I have a more positive suggestion.’

  ‘Yes, Jane?’ Alma whispered. Without the Bookworms, Alma wouldn’t see Rupert anymore. Rupert and she were of the same generation, but came from different worlds, two whole miles, and several distinct social classes apart. Rupert’s lovely Hampstead villa might as well have been in Moldova as three tube stops from Alma’s modest council flat.

  Alma poked her beaky face towards her friend, ‘Catherine, you don’t want us to break up, do you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Without the Bookworms, Catherine had no further need to stitch up a fresh shirt in Liberty cotton on her vintage Singer.

  Jane watched as Catherine and Alma align their two polished leather handbags on the table in a leathery bulwark against Carla’s briefcase formation. What would Sun Tzu do, leading troops so divided? She would have rallied Rupert for advance support, but he was still sulking over not getting his Bad Sex List.

  Well, my idea was to have a project that would help us play for time and recruit new members.’

  ‘What kind of project?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t know. The Museums, Libraries, and Archives Authority is going to review the minimum service standards set five years ago. There’s a possibility the council will cut our book-buying budget even more, as well as our allowance for overhead costs like this meeting. We have only a few weeks to defend ourselves. There’s a senior civil servant in charge of this review. A Mr Fellowes, a former chief librarian, actually.’

  Rupert read the Authority’s memo over Jane’s elbow, and slapped his forehead in disgust. ‘Listen to the way this Fellowes covers himself, “Public libraries play a vital role in achieving their communities’ social, economic and environmental aspirations
—they are much more than just places to borrow books”.’

  Rupert looked up at the others: ‘Surely it’s not one or the other?’

  ‘Well, you’d think not,’ Jane replied. ‘But the trend is focussed on the young reader glued to the screen, not the page. We’re lending more and more e-books, which is a good thing, I think. But if a library is going to survive these cuts, the pressure is to build up the museum idea and rename the library something like ‘’Discovery Centre,’’ or play up the café image. Tower Hamlets doesn’t even call their branch a library anymore.’

  ‘What do they call it, dear?’ Catherine pressed a hand on her hearing aid.

  ‘The Idea Store.’

  Carla burst out. ‘The word library terrifies Tower Hamlets?’

  Catherine hooted back, ‘I’m not sure I’d spend the afternoon in an Idea Store. It sounds like I have to buy a tea towel or a VDD, I mean, DVD.’

  Alma said, ‘Not a library at all. The first time my mother took me to the library near my grandfather’s. I was, oh, just six. Let’s see, that would have been in—oh, well. A low window was open. I could see the trees outside, shining a lustrous green. The floorboards were polished and reflecting the sunlight. It was so quiet. Then I saw a golden oriole sitting on the sill—’

  ‘Oh, how lovely!’ Rupert clapped his hands together.

  ‘Yes, it was a he, daffodil yellow with that little black marking from his eye to his beak, and two black wings and a black-tipped tail, his head watching the grown-ups reading at the tables. I remember thinking we must be quiet and not disturb the grown-ups. I’m not saying orioles are essential to a library, but in my opinion, no branch should be all hustle-bustle—’

  ‘—Like waiting at the chemists’—’ Ruth muttered.

  Alma sighed, ‘A library should be like a magical door through which you could meet live birds—or dragons and witches.’

  ‘The word “library” should sound like “treasure chest,” or “safe house,” especially for young people,’ Catherine said.

  Jane seized the baton. ‘Well, you Bookworms must prove you can stick up for old-fashioned books and remain socially relevant at the same time. I don’t fancy being the hostess of an Internet cafe. So, we need a book-related project that fits the Authority’s social targets and at the same time waves the flag for seniors and the printed page.’