‘Thank you, sir, I’ll do as you advise.’ I couldn’t quite believe the remarkable change in his demeanour.
‘Good work, son. Can’t have one of my lads disadvantaged. It’s not the Australian way of doing business. You’ll need more than tomorrow with that contract. See if you can get it back to us by next Wednesday – no, I’m with the Premier at the races then. It’ll have to be Thursday – make it Thursday after lunch.’
I still couldn’t quite believe my ears. This could only be the Charles Brickman Odette was hinting at when she’d protested that he had a good side to him.
‘Will they buy that, sir? I mean all the extras?’
‘Son, you’ll never know unless you ask.’ He dismissed me with a wave of his hand, but it wasn’t an unfriendly gesture. I rose and picked up the chair and turned towards Her Grace’s office. ‘Ask and ye shall receive,’ I heard him chuckle.
I entered her office and placed the chair in its former position. Suddenly she was all smiles. ‘Why, thank you, Mr Koo. And when will we be seeing you again?’ She positively oozed charm. ‘I need to know so I can make sure the chairman is in.’ She reached for a leather appointment book.
‘Thursday afternoon, some time after lunch. Mr Brickman didn’t say precisely.’
‘Let’s make it three-thirty then.’ She wrote this in the book then glanced up with a smile. ‘If there is any change in arrangements, I’ll let you know in plenty of time, Mr Koo.’
Jesus! What’s going on? I thought. ‘Thank you, Miss Grace.’ Miracles will never cease.
Well, between Chairman Meow getting on the telephone to Singapore, and the extras suggested by the chairman added in, and the whole caboodle being carefully scrutinised by Uncle Herbie, the contract I took back to the agency a week and a day later was tight as a squirrel’s bum.
It was returned three weeks later from overseas, neatly retyped with a sentence or two changed, but to all intents and purposes intact. New York and Singapore accepted the deal with the proviso that either party could rescind the contract after a year. The New York office agreed to pick up my salary package for the trial year, and the Wing brothers, if all parties agreed that I should stay on, would foot the bill for the remaining two. I thanked the chairman and added that I greatly appreciated his help. Through a curtain of cigarette smoke, he replied, ‘Just remember, Koo, only a fool prepares a contract where there’s no room to move, and you want to know you’ll not be working for a fool.’
‘No, sir, thank you,’ I replied, somewhat upbeat. We’d become … how shall I put it? Fellow conspirators? Jonas called it working buddies. It was fairly obvious Brickman didn’t think much of the way the Americans were going about getting into Asia. And plainly he didn’t trust the proprietors of the Chinese agency.
‘Now, you look after yourself, Koo. Not everything is what it seems to be. The Chinese …’ He left the final two words hanging in the air.
In addition to all the chairman’s suggestions, Uncle Herbie had added four weeks’ paid vacation (using the American word for annual holidays) outside Asia, with first-class airfares to and from anywhere in the world. Having a captive Koo as family lawyer had its advantages. Charles Brickman made one or two more calls to America, and a week later I signed the contract, now almost nine pages long, and passed it over the desk to Brickman.
He leaned back. ‘Let me tell you something for nothing, son. While I’ve never met the Wing brothers, one of them is smart enough to have negotiated with New York to pay your first year’s salary as well as all the trimmings, including the rent for your pussy trap. If it doesn’t work out – clash of personalities, whatever – they’ve had the benefit of your work and the new business you’ll no doubt attract, and it’s cost them bugger-all. If it does work out, then better still – they pay you two years’ salary for the price of three.’ He looked at me directly then stabbed his tobacco-stained forefinger at me. ‘Find out which Wing brother it is and keep your eye on him. Mark my words, he’s going to try to screw you at every turn.’
My mum, who, as I previously mentioned, had been following the negotiations every step of the way, pronounced herself satisfied. She’d even taken a positive shine to Charles Brickman after I’d told her how he’d personally advised and cautioned me.
‘I want to meet this man,’ she said. ‘I trust him intuitively.’ I’d pointed out that this probably wasn’t such a good idea. Unbeknownst to me she sent him three dozen Queen Elizabeth long-stemmed roses, accompanied by a thank-you note from the Koo family.
The phone rang in my office shortly after eleven o’clock the following day and, before I had a chance to speak, the chairman’s gravel-sluice voice came roaring down the line. ‘What’s going on, Koo? I fucking hate pink roses!’
The 707 landed at Payer Lebar International Airport in the middle of a tropical downpour. As usual, the moment we touched down I checked my watch: 5.03 p.m. precisely on the 17th of September 1966. My mum, clapping her hands, would have exclaimed, ‘Double lucky!’ That’s because 5 + 3 = 8 and 1 + 7 = 8, which, to the Chinese, is doubly lucky because the number eight is the luckiest of all numbers. I’d be lying if I said this thought hadn’t occurred to me.
A uniformed airport attendant stood under a red and white striped beach umbrella at the bottom of the canvas-covered gangway, which was anchored by several sandbags against the effects of the storm. He was dispensing brollies for the short walk across the tarmac to the terminal, expertly snapping the brolly open, timing it so that not a drop of the driving rain touched an emerging first-class passenger.
I accepted mine as I glanced back to see that no such assistance was afforded those who travelled economy, neither a covered gangway nor free brollies. It was my first lesson in Asia – not all are born equal. I was to learn that the primary means of judging your social status was money, and there was no secondary means. For instance, you might be well-born but poor, or highly educated and broke, and you would be regarded as a nobody. The genteel poor were not an accepted category in Asia.
Everything in Chinese society is dictated by visible wealth; face dominates everything. It is the primary cause of suicide and the reason for every ostentatious and vulgar display. In effect, the first-class passengers gained face by being issued umbrellas and those in economy were accordingly deprived of it by entering the terminal soaked to the skin.
God help the neophyte I undoubtedly was at the time. When I think about it now, the Chinese dragon must have been salivating – no, positively slavering – at the prospect of my arrival. I might have achieved the physical anonymity I had always craved, as I was soon to discover, but it was accompanied by a staggering naïvety.
I had been on Singaporean soil for less than a minute when the first incident occurred. Through the sheets of water pelting down I saw a Chinese mother coming out of economy clutching a swaddled baby to her breast with one hand and carrying a piled-up basket in the other. The poor woman was obviously struggling, but none of the other economy passengers attempted to help her. Heavy drops thudded into my nylon umbrella and bounced off as I rushed over, grabbed the basket from her and handed her my umbrella.
She gave me a look of shocked surprise that turned in an instant to fury. Gripping the infant even more tightly to her breast, she collapsed the brolly into a lethal weapon and began to whack me over the head, neck and shoulders, shouting what were undoubtedly curses.
In desperation, I dropped the basket onto the tarmac and brought my arms up to protect my head, stumbled backwards in an attempt to escape her furious onslaught and tripped over a tarmac cone, landing hard on my bum in a puddle. The rain pelted down on my unprotected skull like warm sharp needles as the woman retrieved the basket she must have assumed I was highjacking and stood over me to deliver another explosion of invective, while the rain beat down on her head and poured from her hair into the face of the bawling infant. Throwing the offending umbrella at my feet, she turned and marched off towards the airport terminal, stamping furiously through the silv
er puddles.
Most of the economy passengers, regardless of the downpour, paused to stare, and while no one attempted to help me to my feet, they must have been pissing themselves. Such an hilarious incident was a welcome reward at the end of a long, uncomfortable trip.
By the time the bewildered airport attendant, waiting for the last first-class passenger to disembark, arrived to help me to my feet, I had lost enough face to last for the remainder of my time in Asia, with some to spare, but I had also learned my first lesson: kind gestures to strangers were simply not on.
While we may all have been born equal in the sight of God, He clearly hadn’t told the Chinese or they obviously didn’t believe Him. The chivalrous gesture I’d attempted would have been unthinkable for a wealthy Chinese, and must have been seen as a deliberate provocation. But to everyone’s amusement and perhaps satisfaction, I’d come off second-best, a nabob in first class getting his comeuppance from a woman in steerage.
It struck me then that my wish had been granted: nobody, including the woman with the baby, had seen me as a gwai-lo but as a fellow Chinese. Even so, my outside still belied my inside, and I realised with some consternation that nothing had in fact changed. Whether in Australia or Singapore, I was a European in a Chinese body – wholeness still eluded me.
I had left strict instructions that my mum’s relatives were not to meet me at the airport. My contract stipulated a room at Raffles Hotel for the first two weeks of my stay so that I could get my bearings and find permanent accommodation. Pleading that I would be exhausted from the trip, I had planned to take a taxi to the hotel and contact the family two days later. Now, drenched to my underpants, I was grateful for this precaution. I wouldn’t need to explain myself and no relatives had lost face by witnessing my umbrella incident.
Several wet people standing at the luggage carousel in the customs hall had a go at me in what I recognised as Cantonese, but it was spoken too fast for me to understand. Their meaning was unmistakeable, though, the words delivered in an angry, remonstrating tone accompanied by much finger-wagging in my face. They’d obviously witnessed my vicious, unprovoked attack on the poor woman and her baby. Anxious to beat a retreat, I retrieved my suitcases without bothering to look for a luggage trolley and carried them into customs, where the officers spied the two smart-looking leather Harrods suitcases being lugged about by a short, broad Chinese peasant who was soaked to the skin, and I was done like a dinner. Anonymity was already giving me the shits.
Three-quarters of an hour later, with every carefully wrapped and beribboned family gift from my mum opened and examined, I eventually staggered into the reception hall, where I was immediately importuned by two porters anxious to help me with my suitcases. I told them in no uncertain terms to bugger off, but they persisted, jabbering and pointing at my two cases. I was deeply into my second bout of serious loss of face. In Asia, you don’t even carry your own toothbrush.
I’d read those Somerset Maugham books where, following the afternoon tropical shower, the rain-washed air carries the perfume of frangipani blossom. The rain had ceased all right, and the sky was certainly clear and clean, but the air carried some sort of cooking smell, although not one I’d ever noticed at any of our restaurants. It smelt something like rancid palm oil and garlic.
I headed down the hall for the taxi rank with the two persistent porters at my heels. I would later learn that their livelihood depended on their strong backs and whatever tips they could collect. The introduction of the personal luggage trolley had severely reduced their earnings, and I must have seemed one of the few hopeful prospects.
Right, kid, how does it feel to be an anonymous face in the crowd, alone, confused, soaked to the skin, cut and bruised about the face, carrying two heavy suitcases and conscious that you’ve fucked up big-time within two minutes of landing on foreign soil? Our hero had landed in the real world at last. I told myself firmly that it couldn’t get any worse and I should snap out of my misery. After a shower, a change of clothes and a beer in the bar at my hotel, I’d be right as rain.
But I was wrong. Halfway to the taxi rank I was accosted by two police officers, who placed themselves on either side of me in case I made a run for it. One of them, a sergeant, said something in Cantonese, the gist of which I understood although I pretended not to. What I thought he was saying was that I was wanted for questioning. I placed the suitcases at my feet. They had barely touched the ground before the two porters made a grab for them. ‘I don’t speak Chinese,’ I said firmly in English.
There followed a moment’s pause and then the sergeant said, ‘You come.’ There was no polite ‘please’ or ‘sir’ attached to the demand. Sandwiched between them, I was led away, with the porters following with my suitcases and jabbering happily.
It was at that moment that I saw an extremely attractive young woman in a Mary Quant miniskirt and a Vidal Sassoon five-point haircut, holding up a slate that read ‘Mr Simon Koo’. There is a God in heaven after all, I thought. I simply couldn’t believe my luck. It was unlikely that there would be another Simon Koo at the airport at this precise moment.
‘Hello. I think you’re looking for me,’ I called, stopping abruptly.
The two policemen glanced at the young woman, then the sergeant asked, ‘This one you know?’ pointing at her rudely.
‘It is someone come to meet me from Raffles Hotel,’ I replied, hoping this was correct.
Whoever she was, she seemed to sum up the situation immediately and ran over to where we stood. ‘What is happening, Mr Koo?’
‘I’m not sure I know, Miss. But am I glad to see you.’
She gave me the briefest of smiles, then launched into a rapid conversation in Cantonese with the two policemen, which seemed interminable. She held herself very erect, but her voice was emphatic, whereas the police sergeant kept pointing at my face, which I would later discover sported a cut and a darkening bruise on the left cheekbone. I had been too preoccupied with customs and the like to realise that one of my eyes was almost shut and a line of dried blood showed on the left side of my neck where I’d been whacked under the ear with the brolly. Little wonder customs had hauled me in.
‘We must go with the policemen to the station. It is here in the airport,’ she said at last, then added, ‘I will talk to them.’
In a large office that passed for a police station, I was given a chair while the sergeant made a phone call. The young lady introduced herself as Mercy B. Lord. This didn’t seem like the right moment to quiz her about her somewhat surprising name. ‘Can you tell me, please, what happened, Mr Koo?’ It was clear Miss Lord spoke and understood English very well. A police lieutenant arrived, possibly summoned by the sergeant’s call, and I then began to tell the whole sad, pathetic story, feeling more stupid by the minute. The lieutenant appeared to understand and kept nodding his head, but every minute or so Mercy B. Lord would hold up her hand while she translated what I’d told her for the policemen. This continued for half an hour. An incident in the rain that had lasted no more than two or three minutes was taking an eternity to explain. Seated in my soaked trousers with my underpants pulling against my crotch, I noticed that my eye and cheekbone were beginning to throb. No notes were taken, and at the end of my account, the lieutenant said in almost perfect English, ‘I am satisfied there has been a misunderstanding, sir. You are free to go.’
To my surprise, the two porters were waiting, standing beside my suitcases outside the door. ‘Will you make sure they are generously tipped?’ I asked Mercy B. Lord. ‘I have no local currency. I’ll settle with you later.’
She gave me a brilliant smile. ‘They are much too heavy. You must not carry them, sir.’ She smiled. ‘Welcome to Singapore.’ She extended her hand, head tilted, dark eyes amused. ‘Now we will start again. I am Mercy B. Lord – how do you do? You are still wet and you have cuts and bruises I must attend to.’
‘Thank you, Miss Lord, for everything. I don’t know that I could have managed without you.’ Later, thi
nking about it, I had held her hand far too long, my round face no doubt set in an expression of pathetic gratitude.
She shrugged. ‘It is my job, Mr Koo. Come, I have a car waiting.’
After paying the two porters what I hoped was a generous gratuity, she waited for the chauffeur to load my bags into the boot before joining me in the back of the limo, a big black Buick. We pulled away from the scene of my multiple humiliations and Mercy B. Lord handed me her business card, holding it formally in both hands, forefingers beneath and thumbs on top. I accepted it using both hands as Phyllis Koo, mother and now Chinese mentor, had instructed me to do.
I’d never carried a card in Australia but my canny mother had given me a box printed in the correct manner, where, on the flip side, I saw my name for the first time printed in Chinese characters. I’d taken half a dozen out of the box and placed them in the outside top pocket of my suit. I now reached in to retrieve one and pulled out a small soggy square of card, which I handed to Mercy B. with the same due ceremony.
‘At five o’clock it rains in Singapore,’ she said, accepting the wet card.
I glanced at her own card and saw how her improbable name was represented in print.
Miss Mercy B. Lord
Snr. Residential Settlement,
City Guide & Co-ordination
The Beatrice Fong Agency
200 Orchard Road, 1st Fl. Kwan Fok Building.
Tel: Sing. 86 222
‘Please call me Simon or, if you like, Cookie, which is what my friends in Australia call me,’ I offered.
Mercy B. Lord put her hand up to her lips to stifle a giggle that still managed to sneak through her fingers. ‘Cookie? That is not nice for a man, is it?’
I grinned. ‘You mean if I use it here I’ll lose face?’
She nodded her head vigorously. ‘I think so.’
‘Yes, so I’ve been told. It’s Simon, then, although when you’re angry with me you may call me Cookie.’
FORTUNE COOKIE Page 11