‘Bella! Where’s Sammie? What’s wrong?’
‘Jane, I have something to show you. And I want to hear from your own lips, immediately, what you intend to do about it. I have loved Sammie like a daughter, but I don’t welcome any child into my home, the centre of my life-to-work balance, just to nourish a little viper. Not with the pressures I face—’
Rachel giggled, ‘She has nooooo idea.’
‘I found this in Sammie’s school bag.’
Bella thrust a dog-eared piece of paper into Jane’s face. It was none other than Baldwin’s stratagems issued on that fateful first night of class. Shown to ‘Your man on the inside’ before the Burmese conspiracy, Sammie had scribbled the reverse side into a tangle of maths solutions, manga-style lettering, caricatures of Bella as a terrifying crone, and most heart-breaking, a four-line stanza dedicated to ‘Mum and Dad’.
Jane thought fast, Feign madness, play dumb. ‘Sammie draws well, don’t you think? Look at this shading. I had no idea she could—’
‘It’s not the cartoon that bothers me. I worked out all that evil stepmother stuff at Kabala class. Look! There! What’s that? A shopping list for substitutions she made on my Burma show. Oh, foolish me, I forgave it as a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment teenage prank. But it was all premeditated. Look, look, right here? Number Twenty-five, something about beams and pillars?’
‘Sammie?’ Jane called. Her daughter must be somewhere in that halo of the blinding spots and ‘babies’ illuminating the cooking island.
‘Leave her out of this. She’s busy getting crabs ready. This is between you and me. Your handwriting is on the front of this list.’
Jane wouldn’t accept blame without a fight. Turn the guest into host. ‘Bella, aren’t you to blame for Sammie’s hostility? She was ready to swallow the seduction of her father, even without the help of Kabala, but using the child as your weekend sous-chef, mop-up girl, factotum and all-round mule! Okay, it was a fun excuse for a few weeks, but even she realizes it’s hurting her exams and her future. Which is more important than yours, Bella. Don’t you think all this scrubbing the hearth might have been the last straw? It’s something out of Cinderella.’
Nobody had ever nailed Bella yet for her crimes and got away with it. ‘That’s a lie. I’ve been kind and generous and–and—inclusive. I trusted her to be a team player. This is your revenge. To sabotage my career—’
Jane sniggered, ‘Sabotage?’
‘You trained her to use these tricks on me, didn’t you?’
Jane hid her dagger behind a rueful smile. ‘Bella, if only I could get Sammie to do anything. You know what problems Joe and I have with her. She wouldn’t listen to me. She’s completely besotted with your fame, your glamour, your generosity, your everything. I don’t have a chance. But you do overwork her. Maybe she’s just tired.’
Droplets of sweat broke through the make-up coating Bella’s upper lip. ‘You’ve played a really good game with me, haven’t you, Jane? So accepting. So resigned. Pretending you understood what Joe and I have found together, acting like all you cared about was Sammie’s welfare and shagging that American copper. Why, perhaps a little, and I do mean a little, of Lorraine’s talent rubbed off on you after all. You probably arranged that whole kidnapping thing, just to get Joe’s attention.’
Rachel mumbled. ‘Try a plane crash next time, Jane.’
‘It’s really sad, you know? Bella grabbed Baldwin’s stratagems and waved the paper in Jane’s face. ‘I’m going to show this to Joe. He’ll see how pathetic you are, you and your kung-fu tactics. Whatever misgivings he had—oh, poor Jane, so kind, so selfless, she only lives for books—wait ‘til he sees this.’
Muddy the waters. ‘Bella, I know you’re paranoid but Joe already knows everything . . . ’
‘Paranoid?’ Bella rounded down on Rachel, cowering at her feet. ‘Phineas, am I paranoid?’ she shrieked at one of the grips. Shielding his chest behind a coil of cables, Phineas scuttled past.
Jane spotted Sammie in the circle of light illuminating the show kitchen’s work island. She was kneeling on the floor next to a plastic bin full of swarming blue crabs. Her small hands were slopping around in rubber fisherman’s gloves. The crabs clawed her while she fumbled at their string bindings with poultry scissors and a pair of foot-long tongs.
The Sri Lankan chef stood at her side, his limpid black eyes observing Sammie’s struggle. Wearing an immaculate apron, the enigmatic Mr Rajapaksa was a stunner with black curls oiled into a long ponytail. He was gorgeous enough to hurry thirteen hours straight from his tropical redoubt to stardom in Battersea, but too mindful of his debut to risk splashing crab muck on his toque.
Sew discord. Jane asked, ‘Rachel, didn’t I tell you I was taking an evening class? Didn’t I show you this list?’
Rachel nodded. ‘At the Greek restaurant. You said they were coping mechanisms.’
Bella peered closer into Rachel’s ghost face. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She seized the empty whisky bottle. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! This is for the Padré Duck!’
‘I have done my job. The duck is just as pissed as I am.’
Bella shook the empty bottle. ‘But that was only Duck One! Where’s the rest for Duck Two?’
Rachel flapped her hands a little and wobbled to her feet. ‘It doesn’t matter. Duck Two can go free. I’m free. You’re free. Nobody is going to see this show. You are cancelled.’
‘What?’ Bella grabbed for Rachel but missed. The PA teetered away on three-inch Jimmy Choos. Bella headed pell-mell after her.
Now was the moment: watch tigers fight, commit robbery while the house burns, and lead the sheep away, in short, get Sammie out of this madness. Rachel and Bella had circled around to the microwave and were yelling at each other while Sammie stared at them from the other side of the island. Various production staffers fell back in retreat, removing headsets, and putting down clipboards as they hurried past Jane. Mr Rajapaksa disappeared in the direction of the toilets. Rachel rounded the island and headed back towards Jane, seeking safety in the foyer Jane had passed through. Bella soared past, yelling, ‘Does Joe know? Who signed off on this?’
Jane ran to Sammie. ‘Honey, take off that apron and come home. For good.’
‘Oh, Mum, I have to stay here. I’m your man on the inside, remember?’
‘Not any more.’
‘But then I’ll hardly see Dad anymore.’ Sammie’s anguished expression spelled out how hard it had been. Jane was just searching for an honest reassurance about the future, when she heard Rachel scream.
‘What is going on down there?’ a voice roared from the director’s booth hanging above them.
‘She’s got a KNIFE!’ Rachel returned from the reception area and shouted towards the booth. She skidded and stumbled around the studio, the broken strap of one Choo slapping the floor. Bella followed, one manicured hand wielding a Kobe beef knife.
‘Did you give this list to Sammie? Are you plotting against me with them? You’re why my show is cancelled, you alcoholic cow! You tell me what Joe said or I’ll use this!’
‘Bella, put that down, for Chrissake!’ The Travelling Kitchen’s chief gaffer roared. He was a weekend rugby player when he wasn’t doing Bella’s electrical set-ups. He moved to tackle the star. In petulant surrender, Bella flung the razor-sharp knife straight across the set. To Jane’s horror, it sank with a squishy thunk into a watermelon-sized jak fruit only inches from Sammie’s ear.
In instinctive defence, the teenager slung her crab tongs straight back at Bella who winced at the glancing blow and lunged for her. ‘You pimply little fiend!’ She managed to grab Sammie’s huge apron, which dragged across the island’s surface. Melon ballers, rambutans, mallets, and paper towels went rolling and clattering in all directions.
With her mother pulling her in the other direction, Sammie jerked herself right out of the apron, and grabbed a colander to protect her face from Bella’s blows. She hopped once, twice, and then sank a formidable kick into B
ella’s stomach. Grandma’s expensive ballet lessons had finally paid off. But the force of her violent kick combined with Jane’s anxious pulling pulled Sammie off balance.
She tripped and overturned the crab bin.
Gallons of salty water gushed across the studio floor. Phineas and his team raised the alarm. Like whirling cyclones, they ripped up the duct tapes webbing the studio floor as the sloshing tide threatened to short-circuit a fortune in equipment. Two dozen panicked crabs scuttled this way and that.
Jane pulled Sammie back to her feet and they flew towards the foyer, but not before an entire batterie de cuisine, including a tenderizing mallet and an eggbeater, whizzed past their temples. Bella’s launch of dangerous missiles suddenly stopped with an unholy scream: ‘AIIII! GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF!’
Jane grabbed the doorframe of the foyer to catch her breath and they looked back at Bella clinging to the edge of the island. She was jerking her right leg back and forth like a Thai boxer doing a warm-up on meth.
Two vicious blue crabs dangled from her ankle.
‘I’LL GET BLOOD POISONING! GET THEM OFF!’
But unfortunately for Bella, union men have higher priorities. They were busy sandbagging the bank of mains with flour bags.
Just then Chef Rajapaksa sauntered back from the men’s room and noticed Bella.
A panting Rachel stumbled into the foyer. ‘The crabs got her.’ Jane and Sammie held Rachel steady and the three of them listened to the industrial lift rising slowly to their rescue.
‘I will get water,’ Rajapaksa shouted with reassuring authority to the studio at large. ‘We will immerse her ankle to release their claws.’ He filled a spaghetti pot with water and poured it all over Bella. Even through her hysteria, Bella smiled and turned and batted her lashes at her handsome rescuer.
Ah, Thirty-one, The Beautiful Woman Ploy. Creaking down in the lift to the sanity of the street, Jane kicked herself for forgetting that one.
Chapter Thirty-six, Zuo Wei Shang
(If All Else Fails, Run!)
‘Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m truly thrilled. I’m a real admirer.’ Clumsy as a Stage Door Johnny, Baldwin wrestled with his umbrella. ‘She once did a Christmas special on the telly—oh, sorry, excuse me—’ A coven of ancient chorus girls jostled Baldwin in their rush to greet the Birthday Dame—‘Though it was so many years ago, perhaps it wouldn’t be tactful to mention it?’
‘It’s her eightieth birthday. As long as it’s all about her, mention anything.’
Little Monica Chu helped Jane extricate Baldwin from his shabby mac. Glancing at himself in the entrance mirror, he patted down strands of loose hair. ‘I’ve got your practice exam in that briefcase.’
Jane blushed, ‘Oh, dear.’
‘It was delightful to evaluate. I did yours after wading through Nigel’s disheartening take-over tactics and merger machinations. You’ll pass beautifully.’
‘It’s more important what I learned—that if I had had the right tools all along, I wouldn’t have spent half my life shying away from every challenge. I would have lived my life facing forward, defending what matters—without fighting. I only learned it too late.’
Sammie bounced in. ‘You’re Professor Baldwin, aren’t you? Will Winston pass his exam?’
‘By a pink hair, if he concentrates on prevention ploys,’ Baldwin said. ‘And Jane,’ he turned her by the shoulders away from the shrieks and greetings behind them in the living room. ‘I want to confess something. I’ve felt guilty about it for so many weeks. Now, as you’ve done so well in the course, I don’t feel so, well, duplicitous.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You recall how passionately I argued that first night that the Thirty-six Stratagems could save your marriage? Well, they didn’t work and I’m very sorry about that.’
‘Oh, that’s not your fault.’
‘Well, it is, in a way. You see, I suspected they wouldn’t help.’
‘But you were so persuasive!’
‘For my own selfish purposes, Jane. The truth is, if I couldn’t register six students to my class, the absolute minimum, I’d be out of work.’
‘Like my Bookworms!’
‘Quite. Don’t think the irony of that didn’t strike me more than once. Just before you came into the classroom that first evening, I was preparing to tell the others that I’d have to cancel. Then you walked in.’
‘I was the sheep that crossed your path. The serendipity stratagem, Number Twelve?’
‘Exactly. But how to hold the sheep? Stratagem One. To save my job, I had to convince you to board the boat while concealing my true battlefield. If you had known how much I needed you, you might not have believed my lessons could solve anything. You’d realise I couldn’t even use them to help myself.’
‘You tricked me! Well, I’m glad you did. Now, there’s Lorraine, over there.’
Baldwin looked relieved, ‘Of course. I would have known her anywhere. Who’s the tall man chatting her up?’
‘Oh, that’s Joe,’ Jane said, a trifle drier.
‘A very handsome opponent,’ Baldwin said a little grudgingly; he still carried the bones of a once dashing figure.
‘Joe was never really my enemy.’
She caught Baldwin admiring her reflection in the mirror. She saw an attractive middle-aged woman in a low-cut black dress looking straight back at her, taller by three inches in high heels. The dress had a white satin deep-V collar matched by French cuffs on the long sleeves. If not for the plunging décolleté, it called to mind the elegance of a Chinese scholar’s gown. She looked not only sophisticated, but a quality rarely linked to Jane, chic.
The Christmas earrings from Joe set off her burnished curls, but the jade bracelet from Dan complemented her manicure. Dan wasn’t there tonight. He’d flown back to New York to close the file with the New Jersey authorities, and then got sent to the Interpol headquarters in Lyon for another week to discuss the surge in female suicide bombings. Jane and Dan had bid each other Godspeed in the way two knowing and healthy adults enjoy. There was just enough time for Dan to give his final version of the hijacking nightmare: the scrambling trail of police work and delayed signals from Gilbert that got the police team set up in Bermondsey with only minutes to spare, the sad follow-up with New Jersey Javed’s confused and bereaved parents, and the apologetic regret of the helpful imam who had never been able to set wayward acolytes free of the intoxication of death.
Dan might return to England sooner than officially planned, with no official cover this time but a declared and deepening interest in Jane. He’d suggested that she might visit him in the States. Sammie might even come over and join them between school terms. But somehow that particular hint had glanced off Jane the wrong way. The memory of Joe standing vigil with their daughter at Number 19 during the long hours of the kidnapping barricaded her thoughts like a sentry preventing passage into the future with Dan.
When Jane had begged for a little time to think, a frown of doubt crossed Dan’s brow. ‘If you’re waiting for old Joe’s blessing, you and I will never get anywhere,’ was the American’s warning when kissing her good-bye.
‘So Joe is passing around canapés,’ Baldwin observed. ‘Do I detect détente?’
‘Oh, no, he’s just here for Lorraine. Although, the night we got out safely he pretended—for ten whole minutes—that he wanted to come back. I saw that for what it was.’
Baldwin lifted an eyebrow.
‘Just the sort of dramatic sentimental gesture you’d expect after a brush with death.’ Or giving birth, she thought, remembering Joe’s proposal in the maternity ward so many years ago. ‘Nothing more than theatrics.’
‘Oh, dear, dear, dear, my lessons have failed. You didn’t seize his offer? Grab the sheep that passed your path? ’
‘How could I? It’s as if all the false fronts and feints, cover stories, and stratagems got mixed up into a huge stew of confusion. If I won someone’s heart back, it would have to be more t
han just sliding into a compromise. You know Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale about the Snow Queen? I’ve felt all year like Gerda, wandering far and wide, searching for the boy I once loved, and all the time I could do nothing to melt the chip of ice blinding his eyes to the Snow Queen’s enchantment.’
Baldwin slipped his long arm through Jane’s. Together they braved the noisy throng.
Lorraine was holding court in the far corner of the living room where Joe’s desk usually stood. Framed against the tall window curtains and surrounded by a flock of wrinklies, she relived her terrors stretching from a basement cell in Bermondsey to the reassurance of a hospital drip. Out of her stuffed wardrobe, the old dear had resurrected a cheetah-patterned caftan, and added false eyelashes and a necklace of heavy amber stones. If she’d pulled Portia out of nowhere on that rainy street a few days ago, today she was one hundred per cent Hello, Dolly!
The party was up and running. Some fifty thespians trained to project to the back of the house were gathered together just to celebrate being alive. Despite all the bad reviews, upstaging understudies, tyrannical directors, heartless producers, botched entries, drunken exits, these footlight warriors were still strutting—or shuffling and rolling—across the stage of life.
Jane ushered Baldwin past the wheelchairs and walkers into a safe corner of the kitchen, where she could keep an eye on the flow of drinks.
‘Joe’s still a wonderful father and I still love him. But as long as Bella’s in the picture, I want to be as far from it all as I can. I’ve come to terms with it, but I’m thinking it might get easier with more distance and time.’
‘Ah, ha! You’ve tumbled to the positive use of Number Thirty-six.’
‘Oh, I think I knew that one before taking your class.’ The librarian in Jane couldn’t help preening. ‘Don’t laugh! Agatha Christie wrote it down in one of her notebooks: “Of all the ways of avoiding disaster, running away is best”.’
Love and the Art of War Page 38