‘Well, for at least a few hours.’ Jane shook her young friend’s trembling hand good-bye.
Winston wobbled to his feet, brushed back his bangs, and marched into the fray.
PART III
For dozens of years after their ignominious defeat, the Han were compelled to court peaceful relations with the Xiongnu at the price of gold, silk, and occasionally, even an imperial princess.
Record of the Historian, Shi Ji, Volume 110, by Sima Qian
(ca. 145—86 BC)
Chapter Twenty-five, Tou Liang Huan Zhu
(Replace the Beams with Rotten Timbers)
Was Jane no braver than Winston? Wasn’t it high time she grappled with her own terrors and thrust herself into battle? All the while she Hoovered the living room, she chided herself; Winston and she might be two wimps on a battlefield where the ruthless prevailed, but neither was a total coward.
The time for Baldwin’s ‘chaos strategies’ had ended. Tactics for gaining ground were next.
With the arrival of the new year, her sense of humour had started to revive and she even felt the blossoming return of physical desire. She dusted the window sashes and checked the soil of the daffodil bulbs she’d tried forcing in the refrigerator. Sure enough, she might even have paper whites in February. For the first time, she could imagine leaving Chalkwood Square, her life at the library, and everything that reminded her of the wimpy Jane.
Sammie returned rosy-cheeked from Canada to stay weekends at the square. Before every week at Bella’s, the girl raided Jane’s cupboards of all the snack foods banned from her godmother’s pantry. Rejecting her godmother’s cuisine had revived her appetite for Number 19’s simpler fare. Her cheeks were filling out, plus she was bursting with fresh intelligence: Bella was to broadcast live from a street fair on Saturday afternoon—her audition as spokeswoman for the Free Tibet Campaign.
‘She’s hired a new marketing expert. Mr Robin calls the makeover her paradigm shift. Mr Robin says it doesn’t get trendier than Tibet, what with all these poor monks setting themselves on fire, and Bella’s counting on her monk to make her look more pertinent than some other chef from Ladakh.’
Sammie lathered Nutella on toast and mumbled, ‘She gave me a list of things to prep by Friday night. Pulling little strings of shit off shrimps. Euuuw.’
Jane’s blood simmered, less at Bella’s phoney sympathy for Tibet than her exploitation of child labour.
‘Why you and not Rachel?’
Sammie, her spine crumpled into an adolescent pretzel on the battered wooden chair, licked hazelnut chocolate off her fingers. ‘Rachel is on some kind of strike. She told personnel she wasn’t paid to be a dogsbody at fundraisers. So, this marketing person Mr Robin—and Mum, I use the word person advisably—says the demo will test Bella’s ability to “connect kerbside.” And he’ll go forward with some kind of research poll after the show and, depending on the crowd response, devise a “holistic cradle-to-grave approach” with the right amount of “granularity in order to leverage Bella up his strategic staircase”.’
‘He can’t be serious—!’
‘Well, Mum, Mr Robin, unlike the rest of the universe, is behind Bella “500 per cent plus.” Bella’s been on her mobile all week lobbying everybody to watch her segment.’
Sammie would be Bella’s sous-chef on camera too, so Bella had made her cut school to attend a meeting with Mr Robin. What colour cashmere would look best on video next to Mr Phuntsog robes of maroon and saffron? Which end of the fair’s layout would guarantee the best pedestrian flow? Should Sammie wear an apron or pose as a bystander plucked from the anonymous hordes?
‘Bella doesn’t actually want me on the show, especially after Mr Robin raved about my youthful spontaneity.’
Jane was thinking dark thoughts: Stratagem Twenty-five, Steal the Beams and Change the Pillars had met its perfect moment, but needed a saboteur. She could no longer keep her Eastern inspirations from her only child.
‘You remember at the Chinese restaurant, Sammie, Winston mentioned a tactic he was trying? Well, our teacher gives us a whole list of proverbs, which I’ve been trying to keep my spirits up, you might say. And now you’ve got to help.’
‘God, that’s cool. You’re like some Jedi? You know I promised I’d be your man on the inside.’
Jane pulled out her dog-eared notebook of Baldwin’s lectures and handed Sammie the master list of stratagems, indicating Twenty-five. ‘Now, when Bella isn’t looking . . . ’
By the time an extremely sweet tea had been devoured and the table was littered with crumpled KitKat wrappers, Sammie’s rucksack bulged with sugary bribes and her voluble spirits overflowed with mischief at the idea of being Bella’s House Elf from Hell.
Jane commented. ‘Brainstorming is good for your appetite.’
‘Not brainstorming, Mum. Mr Robin calls it “sharing an idea shower”.’
Underneath the mockery, Jane detected Sammie’s anger—at her father’s blind spot to Bella and thus, at his betrayal of common sense. Jane recognized the girl’s desperation to be more than a powerless onlooker left in the wings of a self-destructing world. Nothing suited her better than this chance to misapply a few Blue Peter skills to the Tibetan fry-up.
Jane set off for Friday night class grinning at what Sammie was up to over at Bella’s.
‘You might call Twenty-five the architectural ploy,’ Baldwin explained. ‘An easy lesson for any of you with builders in. You’ll recognize the pain inflicted when somebody shifts specifications behind your back—’
Keith then dragged the class through horrors inflicted by a Latvian plumber. ‘And not just swapping hot water for cold, but brown sludge for drinking water. He hooked up the sewage pipes to the laundry room—’
‘Keith? We must get on with—’
‘Zelda tossed them out on their arses, but the whole basement needed to be re-piped, re-plastered, and repainted, and don’t think for a minute we’ll get our money back!’
‘Keith, the details during coffee?’ Baldwin wrangled them back to, ‘The hollowing-out strategy and the last of our concealment group—what were the five others?’
Keith: ‘Crossing the sea?’
Dan: ‘Borrowed knife.’
Jane: ‘Clamour in the west, I mean, east, no west.’
‘Hiding the dagger with a smile, and borrowing a route through Yu to attack Nelson,’ Winston shouted.
‘Indeed, Mr Chu. So in Twenty-five, your strategic house looks unchanged, but the content has been secretly swapped, downgraded, sabotaged or in the case of Mrs Phipps’s laundry room, simply bungled, so as to bugger up your enemy.’
‘Would deceptive packaging count?’ Kevin asked, ‘Not that we ever resort to such a thing.’
‘What about the acquisition of a majority stockholding without much fuss, so that the ownership relationships of a company are altered while outwardly the company remains the same?’ Nigel asked.
‘Suppose an old team of managers has to step down from a governing board, could you replace them with a new team that looks different but thinks like the old ones? Oh, wait, maybe that’s the reverse . . . ’ Keith looked muddled.
‘Suppose a shop looks the same, but when the customers go in, they see new services?’ Winston tried.
‘Exactly what Nelson’s done to your Dad’s shop,’ Dan warned.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Winston scratched his head.
Baldwin rescued Winston. ‘Think in reverse, Winston. What are the risks of Twenty-five? How would you prevent it being used against you?’
‘Oh, I’m very good at thinking up what can go wrong,’ Winston nodded. ‘You have to watch your beams and pillars or whatever, while they think you’re looking the other way.’
‘Very good, Winston!’
Nigel chimed in, ‘In a banking negotiation, you’d watch how people quote your statements back to you, check the contract before signing to make sure they haven’t slipped new “beams” into your position.’
Dan hadn’t
said much more than a warm hello to Jane, and already the class was more than halfway to the break. Nevertheless, tonight she felt an electrical buzz between them. And now she knew something that she hadn’t admitted to herself when blow-drying her frizz into a soft cloud, borrowing some of Sammie’s abandoned lip gloss, and pilfering some of Lorraine’s No5 when delivering her Friday night tray with a Nicholas Ray DVD. Without saying a thing, Dan squeezed her hand as they trailed Keith and Kevin to the canteen.
Then he startled her with: ‘I’ve outdone all of you with Stratagem Twenty-five but it took a whole team, and of course I can’t tell the others. How’bout I come over to your place tonight?’
‘Some kind of recce?’
He nodded, ‘If it goes well, no one’s in danger, but tonight’s the night. Your flat is the perfect place to signal the activity we’ve expected for some weeks. It would be a lot less conspicuous that some stakeout in a car or two straight guys sitting in the dark on the benches.’ He winked, ‘A lot warmer, too.’
Dan had spoken already of chemicals, of incitement. Could he be lounging like this in class—and not even sitting up very straight—with a bomb ticking away? He glanced at his watch like a man checking the delay dealing out a late-night poker game. Shouldn’t the police circle the bookstore and arrest suspects? Shouldn’t there be alerts to stay off the underground or buses?
Dan added too politely, ‘Course, you can say no—’
‘No. I mean, yes, all right.’
‘It is all right. I’ll explain later.’
The second half of the class on Stratagem Twenty-six, Point at the Mulberry and Abuse the Acacia, dragged on and on. When Dan and Jane escaped into a thick fog, the headlights of their minicab danced in the mist like beacons picking out a foreign shore. The cabbie favoured sharp curves through the soup with an alarming growl of pleasure. With each turn of the wheels, Jane’s shoulder swung into the puffy cocoon of Dan’s padded camping weskit and flannel shirt. He smelled of coffee grounds, leafy paths, and mossy wool. Jane hadn’t really understood Dan’s plans, yet here they were speeding northwards together through rain-washed streets to the square like an ordinary couple heading home.
She listened to Dan’s mobile conversations with unnamed colleagues. Their cab screeched into the square, Dan paid it quickly, and rubbed his hands with impatience as she let them in. He never once glanced over at the bookshop.
‘Want a drink?’ She held up the sherry bottle and a can of beer before she realized it was a silly question to put to a man on duty. Yet Dan downed the beer with a quick slug and like a well-behaved Scout, laid the empty tin on the draining board. Then he turned on her television, lowered the volume, and sat down in Joe’s big chair at the window, mobile in hand.
Was Jane his hostess, spectator, or co-conspirator? She detected contained excitement in the energetic efficiency of his movements. His impassive expression, his nice-guy thanks to the cabbie, his short nod conveying everything’s all right, as they climbed the stairs—they were more than professional. The electricity radiating off him in the classroom hadn’t been imagined after all, just not meant for her.
‘Television lights are so homey, don’t you think.’ His sure command of her living room had a strangely arousing effect on Jane.
‘So. We just sit here?’ She tried leaning back into the sofa pillows in a relaxed and inviting pose. Dan took no notice. His eyes now stayed trained on the bookstore.
‘Sure. What do you want to talk about?’
She sat up straight again, feeling almost jilted. ‘Well, you were going to explain this, for one thing.’
‘That can wait. How’re things going with Joe?’
‘Fine. He locked himself in the bathroom the other day, trying to spy on me. Well, on us, actually.’ Even this didn’t bring Dan around. ‘Not that there’s anything to spy on, I mean. Joe just thought there might be.’
‘Huh, uh.’ Dan pulled a pair of compact binoculars from his canvas book bag. He circled the room, turning out all the kitchen and hall lights, leaving only the blue glow of the television. Jane was plunged into semidarkness.
‘Uh, Dan, some people might find all this mystery annoying.’
‘Hmm. Sorry. Won’t last long. Then we can have a real drink. Unless I have to go out.’
‘Okay. Mind if I pop up to check on my mother?’
‘Good idea!’ Dan hopped up. ‘Probably better from up there.’ And he bounded ahead of her up to Lorraine’s front door like a puppy delivering a newspaper.
Jane tapped on Lorraine’s door to be nonplussed by another surprise. An elegant stranger opened the door and shook Dan’s hand with Ruritanian formality.
Jane should have been used to Lorraine’s character transformations by now, but she usually got more warning. Her mother’s normally golden hair had been bleached pearl-white and shaped into a bouffant helmet of imperial command. There was a chiselled bump on her newly elongated nose and a swathe of ivory silk wrapped around and around her mother’s neck, all set off by a breastplate of pearls and a white suit jacket, redeemed below the waistband by her poodle-print flannel pyjamas and leopard-fur mules.
‘How nice to see you again, Mr O’Neill. Come in, darlings. Sorry, it’s the latest Alexandra nose, thin and sort of hooky, except where it widens just here,’ Lorraine turned her head from side to side. ‘Not too Mountbatten, I hope?’ Pasted on the dressing table mirror, Jane glimpsed half a dozen Alexandra portraits printed off the Internet by the Googling granddaughter.
‘I’m not sure about the hair,’ said Lorraine. ‘This is from a reception to celebrate some anniversary of The Worshipful Company of Barbers. Now that’s the look I want, kids. All fluffy. I’m not getting enough lift at the back. Maybe the hot curlers aren’t small enough? ’
‘What’s the Worshipful Company of Barbers, Mrs King?’
‘God knows. Road company of Sweeney Todd? Doesn’t matter. That’s not our gig. Do call me Lorraine, sweetie. Now, this is the effect I don’t want.’ Lorraine held up a second snap of the hardworking princess, sporting wings of hair sprayed into spiky horns.
‘Kind of Doctor Spock in Star Trek,’ Dan agreed.
‘I don’t think We were trying that day. One of Our minor appearances.’ Lorraine tapped at the photo. ‘Now this is the best look. Last year’s matinee at my factory.’ She rested on the stool and peered into the mirror. ‘They say blind people hear very well so as long as I get the voice right, no feelings hurt.’
‘You’ll do fine, Mother. You’re going to save the royal bacon. I hope Buckingham Palace doesn’t make a habit of this. You can’t impersonate more than one royal at a time. I’m sure you could do Camilla.’
‘Or that Duchess of Wimbledon,’ Dan joked. ‘Now, Prince Andrew might be a stretch.’ He escaped to the living room.
Lorraine lowered her voice, ‘Sammie says Joe’s having kittens over that guy. Now, what’s he doing standing on my window seat? At least he took off his shoes.’
‘He’s very keen to look out your window.’
‘Attractive build. Still, I wouldn’t waste time on anybody who ignores you like this. Go distract him, darling. I’m tired.’
‘May I help?’ Jane asked him.
‘Shhhh.’
She sat down at her mother’s kitchen table and pretended to read a magazine.
‘What’s happening?’
Lorraine was running herself a bath. Dan was growling into two mobiles at the same time, ‘Lights are still on. Nope . . . maybe, wait. Okay . . . C’mon, c’mon. Lights off.’
‘Dan, I think I’ll—’
Dan wasn’t listening. ‘OK. Sedan’s pulled up. Heeeeeere they go . . . one, two, three, OK, three. Yup, three. Yup, I think it was him. Heavy jackets, I’d say about twenty pounds, not more. They might’ve left some of it behind. Got’em? Okay, Lloyd has picked ‘em up.’
Dan’s head reappeared from the eaves and he hopped down to the rug.
‘Thanks. We can go back downstairs if you want.’ He grinned g
ood-bye to Lorraine, ‘That’s great. Thanks.’ Humming, he sallied out the door to wait for Jane in the flat below.
She cleared Lorraine’s tray of half-eaten minute steak and mashed potatoes with a side order of Virginia Slims from the dressing table. Lorraine thrust a camera into her hands and posed for a snap of Alexandra Five to add to prints of Alexandras One to Four—with and without the Hapsburg nose, wearing a broad-brimmed ivory hat, in and out of various blazers and tailored dresses. Her mother was still a professional through and through.
‘The hat works,’ Jane said, echoing the backstage kid who wanted so much to be helpful, or at least not to be so very marginal.
‘I don’t suppose we’re going to find out more?’
‘About Princess Alexandra?’ Jane counted out three kinds of pills and dropped them into a paper cup.
‘No,’ said Lorraine, stripping off the putty chin. ‘About that Dan stalking around my apartment.’ They kissed goodnight.
Back downstairs, Dan was turning the lamps back on. She poured a sherry for herself. Was he off duty yet?
‘I wouldn’t say no to another brewski.’
They toasted Baldwin’s health, can to crystal, and sitting side by side on the sofa sipped in silence until Dan put the beer down and leaned towards her.
‘Let me thank you properly,’ he said, taking Jane into his arms. He gave her a tentative kiss that grew more wonderful once Jane made no move to stop him. She’d been waiting for the sensation of those arms around her since entering the classroom, and seeing him lift one flirtatious black eyebrow as she entered the room.
The kiss progressed in all directions. She feared knocking over the sherry, getting her jeans drenched in beer, but somehow the drinks scuttled away of their own accord. Dan certainly displayed a powerful appreciation for ten minutes spent watching the square.
Jane realized with happy resignation that nothing happening on her sofa was going to qualify for Rupert’s Bad Sex Prize—quite the contrary. After many minutes of rising warmth and rushing murmurs, Jane relaxed. She forgot she was a leftover librarian. She was a lovely, soft companion of the campaigns of life, a woman ready to accept Dan’s highest form of physical gratitude—unfamiliar in so many ways compared to Joe—but then quite satisfying after so many months alone. It went on and on, these waves of wonderful Dan.
Love and the Art of War Page 26