‘Joe?’
‘Jane! Open this door, will you?’
Jane turned the bathroom knob but the door didn’t budge. ‘Pull the bolt!’
‘The knob broke off. I can’t get it to budge.’
‘Joe, nobody’s used that bolt in years.’
In the old days, they’d made happy, if awkward love in the bathroom, the only room where they could barricade themselves from a child curled up in their bed Sunday mornings. Then Sammie had learned to knock, the passion for love behind the shower curtain had waned, and the bolt had warped and rusted.
‘I did not intend to lock myself in, Jane.’
‘Well, find some tool to push it back.’
‘Thank you, Miss Goodall, but I passed the chimpanze-and-tool test years ago. I’ve broken two toothbrushes and a nail file.’
Jane went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. She felt powerful. She felt perverse. She boiled water for tea.
‘Jane! JANE?’
That impotent bellowing reminded her of somebody locked up to feed someone revenge? Or course. Edgar Allan Poe’s Cask of Amontillado. ‘The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge . . . Montresor, luring his enemy to view a precious liquor in the dank wine vaults . . . walling in Fortunato, brick by cold-blooded brick. What was the family motto again? Nemo me impune lacessit. No one assails me with impunity.
Funny how Jane could recall Poe while fetching milk for her tea. She poured some into Bulgakov’s bowl and scratched him under the chin. The cat cowered, his ears pinned back against Joe’s howling.
‘Jane? Goddammit, where did you go? JANE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’
Jane was sipping her tea. She hadn’t lured Joe to any danger. Baldwin was always urging his class to trust the wisdom of the written word. Was it tempting to imitate anything just because it was printed? Here she sat, enjoying her soothing drink, while Joe shouted for help. Were the stratagems disconnecting her from her better self? There might be downsides to identifying with Poe’s protagonist. Being Montresor was delightful, but after a few minutes, rather creepy. After all, Montresor was a madman and worse, at least from a librarian’s point of view, an unreliable narrator.
She would liberate Joe . . . eventually. He’d inflicted a thousand injuries on her, or at least a thousand minutes of imagining him rolling around Bella’s designer sheets.
‘It’s all right, Joe, I’m coming,’ she called. She slid a roasting skewer through the narrow crack under the door.
‘Too soft. Get something harder.’
Jane slipped him a knitting needle and a frosting knife.
Joe had a brief eureka moment when he tried a fingernail clipper to unscrew the whole latch head off the door but the aged screw threads just turned in circles.
‘Can you please call a carpenter?’
While any London locksmith would leap with glee at an overtime job, Jane discovered London carpenters were a sleep-loving tribe.
Am I going to spend the night in here?’ Joe screeched. Jane slipped him some Swedish crackers.
‘Where are all the towels?’
‘In the dryer.’
‘How am I supposed to sleep without any pillows or towels? I suppose you think this is proof there is an avenging God.’
‘Why are you in my bathroom, Joe?’
‘You would ask.’ She heard him lean against the door in resignation.
‘Does it have to do with Sammie?’
‘If you must know, I came to snoop for clues of how far you’ve gone with that American. I heard Lorraine singing on the stairs. I didn’t want her to find me rooting around your things, so I ran in here, locked the door, and broke the bolt. I shouted for her to get me out but she’d gone upstairs. I think the old dear is ready for a hearing aid.’
Jane started to laugh and couldn’t stop. She slumped down on the carpet against the bathroom door. They sat back to back divided by oak, like an estranged and disenchanted Pyramus and Thisbe. Did Joe’s paranoia about Dan feed on love or guilt over Bella? Whatever Jane had hoped to gain using Stratagem Twenty to muddy the waters, she’d never imagined turning Joe into a stalker.
‘You can’t have it both ways, Joe. You left me more than a month ago. Longer than that, by some accounts.’ She rubbed at the discoloured carpet pile but the fluff stayed flat and stiff from a thousand damp treadings. ‘Let me go.’
‘It’s not easy. You’re a part of me, Jane. I worry about you. A lot. I know it sounds crazy, but I still feel like your mate, your protector, your—I know I should stay away. So people tell me.’
‘Starting with Bella. You know, she wants to have lunch with me? I put it off until my birthday. A cleansing ritual to put the New Year on a different footing.’
‘You don’t have to see her.’
‘Isn’t that what sophisticated London ladies do?’ Bitterness crept into her voice. ‘Parade my insouciance to the whole world?’
‘Nobody’s that nice, not even librarians.’ Joe’s sardonic laugh came from under the door. ‘I’ll tell her to leave you alone.’
‘Having lunch is the least of my problems. Besides, we both know her. Of course, you so much better now than I.’
‘Bella can’t imagine a world where she can’t get everyone ‘round to her way of thinking. She’s like a terrier that way.’
‘Which is why you left me for her.’ Jane drove the thief into the corner with no escape. Now was the moment to get at the truth, no matter the pain, to hear Joe say it; I love you but I’m in love with Bella. Jane had to stop living from hour to hour on hints from a daughter full of wishful thinking that her father would come to his senses.
But Joe didn’t say anything. He was ransacking the standing cupboard crammed with expired medicines and abandoned beauty treatments for a towel to soften his makeshift bed. Jane wished him goodnight.
Around midnight, Joe’s BlackBerry chirped the Beach Boys’ song, ‘I Get Around,’ which was hardly an improvement on the Goldfinger theme. The phone was still tucked into Joe’s carryall, dumped behind the front door. It rang at intervals of ten minutes for the next hour or so.
Jane let it ring and ring. She could have answered it and put Bella out of her misery, but Joe was right—even librarians weren’t that nice.
After a while, the Wilson brothers gave up and Jane heard Joe’s snores echoing off the bathtub tiles. She couldn’t help thinking it was a lovely sound before wetting her pillow with tears.
As an ennobled architect of global renown, Sir Bernard could pull strings as tautly in the sleazy underbelly of London’s construction circles as Bill Sykes. After a few phone calls from the home office of Number 17 next door, Windsor Design and Restoration sent a Polish carpenter to Jane just before nine. Even so, negotiations with Jurek took some time, as the hardened professional insisted on cash in advance.
Listening to their haggling outside the bathroom door, Joe exploded when he heard Jurek’s estimate: ‘Tell him only Nureyev got paid gold in advance!’
This pleased Jurek. ‘Yes. This is it. I am the Nureyev of carpenters. This door is valuable. I will not harm her.’
Twenty minutes later, the obstinate hinges were loosened and the door lifted away without a scratch. Desperate for a chance at the bathroom herself, Jane left Joe to his tea and toast with Jurek, who hinted that he wouldn’t mind a boiled egg alongside.
‘One thing I do not understand,’ Jurek said, wiping the corners of his mouth with slow majesty. ‘You could have just gone out the window and crawled along the balcony to come in here through this window. Thank you. I appreciate it.’
The Pole lathered more fresh butter on to his whole-wheat. The stupidities of an estranged couple preferring a night of chilly separation to a careful crawl of two metres along a Georgian balustrade were of less interest than another pot of coffee.
Joe and Jane avoided each other’s questioning look. Why had that not occurred to them? Joe quickly recovered his satchel and
embraced Jane very formally, both of them aware that the most casual gestures carried new significance.
‘I know we have to sort out the money and stuff, but please don’t do anything crazy, Jane,’ Joe murmured. Jurek yelled from the kitchen, ‘Toast is burning!’
Joe dragged Jane to the doorway, out of Jurek’s hearing. ‘You haven’t contacted a solicitor or anything?’ he asked.
‘Not until her exams are over. For Sammie’s sake, you can trust me to keep things civilized.’
‘Well, please don’t do anything precipitous. I worry about you all the time.’
‘Hardly enough.’
‘You mean I never loved you enough. I’ve been thinking about you, worrying a lot.’
Was this just remorse fuelled by heights of passion with Bella that he’d never experienced with Jane?
Was she confusing jealous possessiveness with renewed affection?
Why were they whispering as if they had something to hide?
Jane flushed with the urgency of his good-bye—her morsel of triumph mixed with indignation at the patronizing edge to his apology. Joe’s ability to hurt her seemed diminished. He was jealous, worried and wounded while her battle wounds were starting to heal.
She hurried him out the door. Stratagem Sixteen said, to catch something, first let it go. It was the sunny twin of Stratagem Twenty-two’s sinister lesson: If they succeed in escaping, be very wary of giving chase. She was learning Baldwin’s lessons well.
Too well. She had to talk to Baldwin—alone.
Chapter Twenty-three, Yuan Jiao Jin Gong
(Befriend a Distant Enemy to Attack One Nearby)
Baldwin’s sighs filled their tiny classroom. ‘Keith, my dear boy, how do you always manage to get the wrong end of the stick? If the Qin Emperor had attacked the weaker states, their powerful neighbours would have been alerted and rushed to their aid.’
The professor scratched his brow for a clearer explanation. ‘It’s a question of taking it in stages. It’s far better to forge scattered alliances with distant states and thus allay the fears of your larger rivals. So when the Qin did attack their nearer neighbours, the small states didn’t interfere.’
Keith waved his list of Warring States in frustration. All of Baldwin’s visual aids, time charts, and case studies were so much, well, Sinology to him: ‘I get so confused with the Qin, the Qi, the Chu and the Wei kingdoms. I only remember the juicy bits, like that jealous concubine Lady Zheng, the one who told her emperor that his latest girlfriend didn’t like his smell, so the emperor cut off the new girl’s nose?’
‘There’s a Top Shop buyer who acts just like Lady Zheng,’ Kevin said. ‘She’d cut off my nose if she could.’
By way of explanation, Baldwin chalked a constellation of small and larger states around a central circle.
‘Looking at this diagram of Stratagem Twenty-three, please give Keith an example, Winston.’
Chu the Younger turned as rigid as an undefended deer facing imperial headlights. Jane had just about given up on him when he burst forth with, ‘I know! I’ve got one! Microsoft!’
They all waited for more. Was this cryptic reference all Winston could muster?
‘When Microsoft was developing its X-boxes, it started working with small, independent software manufacturers. Why did they do that?’ Winston asked. ‘Microsoft could have squashed those independent developers like so many little bugs. But putting out a wide choice of games meant Microsoft could compete with the giant enemies like Sony and Nintendo for market share! They even sent out development kits to small companies for free. So, Microsoft made alliances with small states to attack the nearby strong states.’
‘Wow!’ Kevin applauded, ‘Winston, you’re hot tonight. I don’t see why your father won’t let you run things.’
‘Not bad,’ Dan agreed. ‘All I could think of was Mao using Nixon to offset the Soviet threat. But then, you wouldn’t describe the US as a small state.’
‘Well, actually Nelson told me all about it—’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Baldwin broke him off. ‘You, not Nelson, spotted the application and that’s what counts.’
Bella and Joe were certainly Jane’s nearby enemies. Where were her small, distant allies?
During the Tuscan food shoot, Rachel had proved more a bumbling enemy enabler than any ally. Joe’s brother in Canada, Sterling, loved Sammie and had always approved of Jane, but the heir to the small Gilchrist lumber company lived so far away. He’d never left Canada for so much as a week in Florida. Jane knew childless Sterling would love to hear from them. She felt guilty that Joe hadn’t kept in closer touch.
Even if there were a distant state slightly closer than Canada, the very idea of roping in marginal allies seemed like, well, exploiting innocent people. There was someone . . . but she hesitated. Jane had never been a ‘user.’
It was one of the things she put to Baldwin during the break.
‘Here you give us all these stratagems guaranteeing we win whatever we want, but they tempt us to do anything. What do you do when you’ve thought up a stratagem, but it goes one step too far? As if you’re about to stretch some moral restraint past breaking point? Supposing one day, you wake up, look in the mirror, and realize you’ve become good at this, you’ve become a real winner, but a totally amoral shit?’
Baldwin smiled. ‘You’ve thought of a small ally in your struggle against Joe? But you don’t want to take advantage of someone? To draw them into a battle that isn’t their own? Is that it?’
Keith and Kevin were ribbing the cash register ladies. Their loud laughter bounced across the expanse of empty tables. Baldwin led Jane to a quiet corner in the canteen so dark that a sad, brave glow of a single string of Christmas fairy lights over the buffet queue reached only the upper strands of his steel grey hair. His long, narrow features stayed in deep shadow. Jane couldn’t read what he thought of her question. She hoped questioning the morality of the ancient tactics didn’t offend him. She wasn’t suggesting he was immoral.
‘The ally you made me think of is hardly a small state, certainly not by her lights. She’s at the BBC and always turning down Joe’s programme ideas. Light-years ago, when I worked at the Beeb, she used to like me—or at least respect me. She’s distant in the sense that she’s removed from the Bella landscape and, what with all these cuts in library services, I need to start hunting for a new job. I was thinking of asking her for a job in television.’
Baldwin seemed perplexed as to the immorality of what sounded like a perfectly inoffensive plan.
‘Immoral, because it crossed my mind that if I were back at the BBC I would be in a position to screw up Joe and Bella’s project for a new series. Oh, I have the right! It was my idea in the first place. I thought it up to help Joe. Now, I might use Camille’s help to ruin things for Bella.’
‘It might rebound on you, if it were too obvious,’ Baldwin warned.
‘Oh, you’ve taught me a lot. I could use a borrowed dagger, or sacrifice a plum for a pear or openly repair the path and march all the way to Chencang and back before anybody suspected simple little Jane. But if it worked, how would I live with myself? It’s hardly the Christmas spirit.’
‘Christmas spirit never troubled the Lady Zheng.’
‘That’s my point. Do you think the stratagems can turn you cold or evil until you confuse winning with revenge for its own sake? These lessons can seem so calculated, so unethical, or underhanded.’
Baldwin buttered a muffin with precision. ‘Jane, the Confucian philosopher Mencius puts it very well: All cleverness and wisdom are in vain if you do not know how to use your situation, just as the plough and the axe achieve nothing if they aren’t used at the right time.’
‘But you might get carried away and cut off somebody’s nose, like Lady Zheng.’
‘Well, that’s true. An axe can be a very lethal weapon and you have been betrayed by the people you trusted most.’ He ate with care and wiped his chin. Jane’s question was something he w
anted to take time with. ‘You know, I live alone and I’m something of a chef myself.’
‘Sorry, I don’t follow.’
‘Even I watch cooking shows. And when I watch Bella Crawford, I see a desperate woman, offering herself to everyone, in her kitchen and in her audience.’
‘Oh, yes, she’s famously sexy.’
‘Sexy? There’s a difference between meeting an attractive woman at a dinner party and being collared by a stranger swinging from a lamppost, murmuring “Hello, sailor.” That kind of aggression invites a defence. No? I haven’t convinced you that moral people have to strategize? More coffee? Wait here.’
She watched Baldwin cross the room. What made him such a lonely figure? He had regular features, nice hair, tall stature, but it all seemed to be in the process of crumbling on the frame, like the veneer of an old sculpture flaking off.
He brought back fresh cups for both of them. ‘I know, I know, it’s a vile brew, but I forgot my thermos. Perhaps next semester, we’ll install an espresso machine.’ He shot his cuffs, ‘If I still have a class, that is. Returning to our moral dilemma, I’ve noticed you’re very good with quotes, Jane, a skill honed among so many books, no doubt. Who said this: “Be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves”?’
‘Machiavelli? No, that can’t be. He wasn’t innocent. Severus Snape?’
‘Here’s a clue,’ Baldwin winked. ‘It’s a very seasonal citation and it will answer your question once and for all.’
‘Seasonal? Hum. The Queen’s Christmas speech? Oh, I give up.’
‘Jesus Christ, Matthew 10:16. Even Jesus warned us that cunning was a morally neutral instrument, like a car that can kill or speed you to the hospital. You know how we divided the thirty-six stratagems into groups of six?’
Jane recited: ‘The Winning Strategies using concealment, the Enemy-dealing Strategies using disclosure, the Chaos Strategies using confusion, the Proximate Strategies to gain ground using simulation, and the Defeat Strategies—which we haven’t got to yet, and I don’t want to know about anyway.’
Baldwin laughed with her, ‘Very good. But they can be grouped another way, into four types. One, damage stratagems, like those used by white-collar criminals where the destructive, egotistical element prevails, or two, destructive stratagems which only lead to short-term results. A third set could be called merely service stratagems, where honest opportunities are exploited, or four, light-hearted joke stratagems like the harmless humour in clever advertising that captures the intelligence.’
Love and the Art of War Page 23
