Love and the Art of War

by Dinah Lee Küng

  Monday morning they returned to work in a state of frozen politeness. Jane felt an unusual serenity as she unlocked the front door of the library branch.

  The downside of Stratagem Seven was that Joe assumed Jane was eaten up with rumours about the gawky PA, so his phone conversations with Bella grew more blatant. He dragged in quite late both Monday and Tuesday evenings. Only on Wednesday morning did Jane dare resume the attack over Nothing Rachel. ‘Well, if it’s nothing more than a crush The Murty has on you, I’ll still have to deal with it for my own peace of mind. I think I’ll lunch out on the subject.’

  ‘Oh, you do that, with my bloody blessing, if it gets you off my back. I haven’t seen la femme fatale Rachel for more than five minutes all week. She’s late again with the planning schedules. And in the unlikely event that she’s struck down by the lightning of a genuinely decent programme idea, kindly jot it down on a napkin.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not lunching with Rachel. I’m going to ask my old friend and ally Bella for advice. I’m not the first wife dealing with a seductive PA—’

  ‘Bella—? Why Bella?’

  ‘Who would know better how to deal with a clingy PA on the make? After all, she graduated from that school magna cum laude.’ The Lotus of Revenge narrowed her gaze. ‘And there’s another rumour, Joe. This one you might want me to check out. Bella might quit The Travelling Kitchen.’ If Stratagem Seven worked so well, why not double the dose?

  Joe dropped a trainer on the floor.

  ‘I read it in a woman’s mag at the dentist’s. Marketing men and those demographic gurus they interview are saying that no matter how exotic the show, people turn off the tube and then go cook Delia Smith. Mee krob out. Elderberry compote in.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. She would’ve told me.’

  ‘If you’ve spent the last six months trying to ditch her sinking ship, why wouldn’t she?’

  Jane enjoyed knowing that Joe would spend all morning at the studio listening to Bella’s explosive denials.

  Jane had whipsawed Joe for four straight days with Somethings from Nothing. She had really put her back into Stratagem Seven. She left Joe sitting in the kitchen quite still, staring unseeing into Bulgakov’s piss-fresh gravel box.

  ‘Why wouldn’t she tell me first?’ He looked pierced by an invisible spear thrown expertly from a blind angle. The Lotus of Revenge was ready for the next skirmish.

  Chapter Eight, An Du Chen Cang

  (Openly Repair the Path, Secretly March to Chencang)

  Reality at the library didn’t so much bite that week as gnaw; by Thursday Jane managed to finish the autumn stocktaking without Chris, in bed with flu. Finally he returned to do the little ones’ reading session, half of them queasy themselves with the same plague.

  ‘One of the Rhyme-Timers just lost her yogurt.’ Chris bore off the Series of Unfortunate Events placard for a quick rinse-off in the gents’.

  ‘Don’t worry. That’s what is meant by an unfortunate event.’

  As usual, Baldwin had given his class two different strategies for that week’s homework, but Jane had no time left to test Stratagem Eight, the Secret March to Chencang. She looked in the washroom mirror and saw new wrinkles on her upper lip erupting with a sore red spot. She hadn’t had a pimple since John Major held office. She felt closer to Mrs Wilting than the Lotus of the Revenge.

  Of course the previous Friday, Baldwin made Strategy Eight sound as easy as, well, mooncake: ‘Number Eight is the normalcy strategy. You tie up the enemy’s main force with a frontal attack he expects, while you move in by a secret detour.’

  ‘I can’t attack my cousin Nelson, not head-on,’ Winston protested. ‘I’d rather short-circuit all his soundboards by dead of night. He thinks I’m his biggest fan. Last week I suggested we team up on tutorial classes for customers. He’d do software and I’d demonstrate printer installation, the maintenance of ink cartridges, whatever I could. He apologized. Turns out he’d already got a class going already, every Friday night. My father even leaves the keys with him so he can lock up.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Keith grimaced with pity. ‘Nelson’s got a set of keys.’

  Winston’s pink spikes were wilting. ‘Even Mum never got her own keys.’

  Baldwin’s beetle eyebrows shot up. ‘So, Mr Chu, repair any bridges you burned in retreat while planning your backdoor attack. Remember, the direct and obvious attack for which the enemy prepares his defence.’ Baldwin’s marker swooped across the board, ‘And the second, indirect and sinister attack,’ his pen skittered delicately from a second direction, ‘Which causes the enemy to divide his forces and energies, so, voilà! Confusion and disaster.’

  Nigel wrote in caps, ‘Confusion. Disaster,’ and drew a rectangle around them.

  Dan raised a beefy hand. ‘How about Operation Fortitude, the diversionary preparations for the Normandy landing which made the Pas de Calais the obvious site for the Germans to prepare for defence?’

  ‘Excellent, Dan, a very famous example, but of Stratagem Six rather than Eight because the Germans put their Panzers there, but no one landed. No frontal attack tied them up.’

  ‘How’s this, then? You have a situation you might think is criminal.’ Dan paused. ‘You round up a few of the gang for questioning. That’s a genuine frontal attack.’

  Baldwin nodded.

  ‘And while the leaders are doing their damnedest to find out if their members are spilling the beans under questioning, you step up the activity of the informer you planted inside their operation.’

  ‘Much more subtle and absolutely correct. You’ve made two attacks, one overt and one secret.’ Baldwin moved on to Kevin. ‘Does Marks and Spencer’s have any enemies?’

  Nigel interrupted, drumming his fingers. ‘Wait a minute. I don’t see much difference between Noise in the East and this Repairing The Bridge business.’

  ‘Very perceptive. They’re both examples of shang bing wu bing, or indirect attack, more typical of Eastern than Western warfare. I expect you like board games, Nigel? Chess as we play it today demands direct attack, rather like establishing a line of fire and then pulling the trigger, while the Chinese game of Go depends on indirect attack. The player surrounds the opponents’ pieces to win.’

  ‘I still don’t see much difference between Six and Eight,’ Nigel pouted.

  ‘Ah, well, in Six we threatened a false attack to make the enemy look the wrong way. In Eight, the emphasis lies on two genuine attack points, the second using very unorthodox means or downright impossible routes while the competition is actually defending the orthodox path.’

  It was now time for Stratagem Eight over lunch with Bella who’d booked a table at a Malaysian eatery. Joe didn’t know their ladies’ lunch was a long-standing appointment but even so, Jane was making good on her threat to test the waters. If Bella felt a scrap of guilt over trying to poach Joe or if Joe had warned her to cool off, Bella was too clever not to be on her guard against an orthodox attack. Either she’ll expect me to play dumb, which is the easiest defence, or she’ll be ready to hide her play for Joe, if she thinks I have the guts to probe her. I must think of something totally different. I’ll do a frontal attack but not the one she fears. Meanwhile I’ll build my road to Chencang . . . Wherever that is.

  However, Jane found it hard to sharpen her mental weaponry when riding to lunch in a cab through a London that seemed one vast panoramic postcard documenting years shared with her erstwhile friend. It was in the zoo café that Jane had confided that she was pregnant with Sammie. Bella had begged to be godmother. There was Mayfair where the two women had passed a tipsy afternoon at Harry's Bar and swaggered over to Thomas Goode's to register chinaware for Bella’s coming five-star wedding—Farm Street Jesuits and Orangerie in Holland Park, Bermuda honeymoon and all—just days before she caught her betrothed in bed with his Lexus mechanic. Of course, Ms Crawford apologized to her guests for the cancelled nuptials but kept the Spode.

  Jane overheard the headwaiter’s general alert, �
�The Ego Has Landed,’ and looked up to see you-know-who checking in her coat. Bella waved hello to Jane across the dining room and brushed her long, dark curls off her shoulders with just a dollop of insouciance, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

  Watching her weave her hips in jeans of cherry velvet between the closed-packed tables of the Hill Station Café, Jane longed for the old days, when Bella was amusing or at worst, an irritation and merely an exercise in forbearance. Was it possible to fear and revile someone without losing some stubborn affection for them? Jane couldn’t bear the idea of Joe sleeping with Bella, but it was almost too late to change her basic opinion about Bella—that she was a silly who couldn’t help herself.

  Heads turned, eyelids dropped, and glances moved sidelong with murmurs acknowledging that the celebrity was garbed in the latest. In her rattan chair, Jane squirmed, wearing the earliest. Jane was a dab hand at deciphering the waffle of a book publicist’s blurb, but wondered if her fashion dyslexia at the footnote of a new shoe heel prompted Bella’s secret scorn. Their fellow diners must think them an incongruous pair—Daily Mail diva and dowdy librarian.

  ‘Bella.’

  ‘Jane, darling.’

  Bella had contracted the ‘darling’ from a Sotheby’s tapestry expert circa 1998 and never found a cure. The two women air-kissed and then paused. Bella scanned Jane’s face for a second and sighed. Jane searched for traces of guilt or guile. She detected only faint lines fanning out from the ends of two large black-lashed eyes under a bat-like brow. It had been almost nine months since they’d seen each other to discuss Sammie’s birthday present, so what was so ageing that Botox couldn’t freeze it into submission?

  Of course Bella came armed, as was obvious once the waiter had taken their orders. Her defence was a flow of Godmother Natter, making Sammie the focus. Jane played along, chatting about Sammie’s horrendous exams in such trigonometric detail, irregular French hilarity, and Ciceronian period length that Bella began to glance left and right, desperate for the distraction of more than chicken rendang. But she didn’t dare shift into any subject that might steer them closer to Joe. Unfortunately that also ruled out the one essential topic that riveted her attention—herself.

  Having gauged with what Herculean endurance Bella was determined to prolong the Sammie marathon, Jane launched her frontal attack before dessert. Joe would have warned Bella that Jane was planning to accuse Rachel of on-set shenanigans. What she was about to say wasn’t in anyone’s war games.

  ‘Bella, I want to talk to you about Joe.’

  All sympathy, Bella nodded. ‘Tired-looking. I know, I know.’

  ‘I’m worried about him.’

  ‘A bit off, but probably just worry over the programme.’ Bella said. ‘He’s told you, I suppose, that our ratings are slumping like a collapsed soufflé?’ She paused, ‘Why, darling? What else could be the trouble?’

  ‘He’s restless. You know the show isn’t really him.’

  Bella reared back with mock astonishment. ‘Why, Janie, you’re usually such a loyal girl! I wasn’t expecting you to confess his Dark Secret to me.’ Another giggle. ‘You think I don’t know about his secret pitches to Panorama? They won’t have him. He’s Yesterday’s Man. But I’m not going to hurt him. I appreciate his talent.’

  ‘You’ve talked to the other department heads about Joe?’

  ‘All the time, darling.’

  The bitch. All these months, Bella had been queering Joe’s hard-wrought pitches with a few well-aimed words of faint praise. Jane readied her thrust for a direct attack with greater conviction. ‘When I said restless, maybe I should have said discontented.’

  ‘Same difference.’ The television star picked with her camera-ready manicure at the chenille fringing around the rattan chair’s chintz pillow. ‘Discontented how, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, not what you think—’

  ‘Jane, you’re not worried about my poor little Rachel—?’ Bella shoved her grilled mangoes with caramel sauce aside, ready to parry Jane’s frontal attack on the normal route.

  ‘Oh, I know about her little pash, Bella. That’s not it. Joe’s handsome, and kind to people, and what’s more, he’s still determined to make television count for something. Being a crusader only adds to his sex appeal. Lots of women fancy Joe.’

  ‘Do they?’ Bella’s nose shot lower down to the trail, zigzagging like a hound, hunting and sniffing the conversational minefield.

  ‘He’s been watching other chefs, not other women.’

  ‘Well, the show always needs fresh meat, ha, ha. We’ve had to call in that nouveau sushi git four times now, “by popular demand.” He’s done the same meal each time and still, nobody understands a word he says.’

  ‘I think,’ Jane paused, twisting her dessert blade in the air to admire its glints bouncing off the restaurant lighting, ‘Joe is looking at another lady cook.’

  ‘As my guest?’ Bella pursed her plump lips, ‘Oh, that would alter the dynamic too much.’

  ‘That’s not ex-act-ly what I mean.’

  ‘Well, that’s just cobblers! Joe wouldn’t do that to me. He couldn’t. Apart from the fact that we’re a team, I mean old mates and all, he can’t! I AM The Travelling Kitchen. When Chadwick took over the department, I got him to hire Joe—not the other way around. I don’t mind reminding you, it was a favour to you both to rescue Joe from Obituaries. I raised him from the dead!’

  ‘Well, no one can stay grateful for ever . . . unless there’s something else he should be grateful for?’

  Jane deflected the sparks of alarm flashing across the table with: ‘It’s not about cooking skills, Bella. Joe says it’s about incandescence.’

  ‘I’m not incandescent? I see. What about Transcendent? Fluorescent?’

  Jane warned, ‘It’s about country food now, quick cooking, you know, plain old English food.

  ‘You mean what people out there really eat?’ Bella waved a perfect manicure towards Kensington High Street. ‘Space Raider crisps, banana Nesquik—’

  ‘Jamie hoeing his allotment. The Ministry. 30-Minute Meals.’

  ‘So, Joe doesn’t like my Norwegian Christmas idea? Not even with more close-ups of my tongue in slo-mo saying I loooooovve the taste of aquavit in Christmas pud? I just crave huskily evocative aniseed threaded through the oranges in my stocky? Oh, and some soft-focus of me nipping down to the kitchen for a late nosh, my boobs peeking out of a satin negligee?’

  ‘I admit your male viewers don’t complain.’

  ‘No, Jane, I’m not going any farther down that road. Anyway, I’m not stranded on some foreign food island. Remind Joe that I was on the cover of Olive last month. Bloody hell, I’m designing my own kitchen scales for the BellaBrand.’

  ‘No. Really?’

  ‘Oyster with optional turquoise. Fifties retro with the “BCs” in black. My initials, no one else’s. Unless Joe can find another star with the initials BC.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘You tell him I need streaming Internet video, like Xanthe on the Telegraph site. He won’t listen to me.’ Bella tucked her blouse tighter across her ample bosom. ‘And they’d better not mention reality television to me one more time. Gordon can humiliate failing restaurants, but look what’s happened to him.’

  Jane repositioned. ‘I know, I know.’ There was a pause so deep and pregnant between the two old friends, it begged for a sonogram. Was Bella trying to reconcile this unsettling warning with her secret pursuit of Joe?

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Bella rounded on a hovering waiter, ‘Take this away!’

  ‘The chef sends his compliments—’

  ‘It’s totally fierce, cutting-edge,’ Bella favoured the sweating boy with a set of gnashers gleaming so white, he floated away in a trance after which her beam shut down faster than a power grid failure. She was seriously unsettled. She had come to betray Jane over her entrée and even before Jane’s lemon grass sorbet with almond jelly had wilted under its mint, Jane had disclosed th
at Joe might betray her.

  Jane added absentmindedly, ‘It might be a passing idea.’ She slashed up her jelly like so many Tang dynasty foes. ‘I’ll talk him out of it. Knowing your career depends on it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll think of something, darling,’ Jane said with a vague and very unconvincing shrug. She wasn’t about to retire her weapons that easily. She hadn’t forgotten Stratagem Eight. Bella would waste her afternoon phoning around while Jane prepared her Secret Way to Chencang.

  A worried Bella broke her heel on the doorjamb as they made their exit to the kerb, hailing separate taxis. Jane realized that her old friend was the only person she’d never assigned an author because Bella was such a changeling, her narcissism propelling her from gauche and servile nobody to nose-in-the-air chef. Perhaps Charles Darwin was the appropriate choice, including an evolutionary chart showing Bella rising from a badly dressed knuckle-dragging assistant to fully upright Celebritipithicus Pain-in-the-Neckus.

  Joe was warier now, too. He finally made good on his long-delayed promise to take Jane back to a B&B that had played a large part in their courtship. Jane would have preferred Devon, with all its Agatha Christie connotations of scones buttered with literary murders, but their personal history dictated otherwise: one of Joe’s political shoots of yore had coincided with their first ‘dirty’ weekend. Hence, it would be again East Sussex, which to Jane conjured up nothing sexier than Rudyard Kipling and Winnie-the-Pooh.

  Jane mused, ‘I wonder if our room has changed much?’

  ‘Let’s just hope they changed the sheets.’

  ‘Even the lampshades were damp! Remember how that MP didn’t bother to show up for your interview?’

  ‘So, I turned the camera on his wife and she Told All. Every bribe, every mistress. The Times fell on it like ravenous dogs.’ Joe bucked up at the memory of an ancient triumph.