FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Oh, mate!’ I said, shaking and zipping up quickly. I would have hugged him, but you can’t hug a bloke who has his donger dangling from his strides. ‘I’m glad it’s all worked out.’ It wasn’t a lot of comfort, I know, but I wasn’t sure what else to say.

  ‘Damned stupid of me … apologise, all a bit much, that’s all.’ He sniffed and zipped up.

  At the neutral washbasins I ventured a compliment. ‘She looks great, Cecil. I’m glad it’s over, and she seems completely recovered from the accident.’

  ‘Not just that, old boy, we’ve recovered our lives. Couldn’t have done it on my own. Needed your support. Bloody grateful.’

  Chairman Meow had been invited to the dinner party, but when she’d heard it was in honour of Mrs Sidebottom and why, she’d declined, saying she wouldn’t change her travel plans for a woman whose sole claim to fame was to have acquired a complete set of dentures, which she referred to – deliberately, I think – as false teeth. I must say I was relieved, as I wasn’t at all sure it was the right time to present Mercy B. Lord.

  After our first glorious night together we’d been jumping into bed at every opportunity, but afterwards she would always insist she had to go home. It felt wrong, immature, redolent of the shagging you did as a uni student when your girlfriend shared digs with several other students and you were what was known in the vernacular as a wombat – eats, roots and leaves. Only this time it was Mercy B. Lord who had to get dressed and take a cab home, often very late, and often when she had to be up to meet someone at the airport in the morning. I felt strangely guilty that I was the one able to stay and crawl back into a warm bed after I’d put her in a taxi and watched its red rear brake lights disappearing into the night.

  With my own flat at home in Australia, it had been years since I’d either been a wombat or required my lover to leave after we’d made love. Here in Singapore I had a luxury flat where Mercy B. Lord would be totally at home, but she’d rejected it for reasons she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, explain.

  I’d like to say I’d finally persuaded her to move in, but that was not the case. One evening she simply said, ‘Well, then, I suppose you’d like me to move in with you, Simon?’

  ‘You serious?’ I asked, not sure she wasn’t pulling my leg.

  ‘There’s one condition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thursday night.’

  ‘What about Thursday night?’

  ‘You have to promise never to mention it.’

  ‘You mean to someone else?’

  ‘No, between us – you must never bring it up.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  She looked up, holding my gaze. ‘If you do, I’ll leave. Simple. No discussion.’

  I nodded. ‘Just one more question: is what you’re doing on your night away safe?’

  ‘What, are you asking if I’m in danger?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Simon, I’ve never been threatened or assaulted, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Mercy B. Lord, I don’t know what I mean – your life, your person, your wellbeing, your job … ?’

  ‘I really think you should leave that to me. I’ve been a big girl for some time now.’

  It wasn’t the unequivocal answer I was hoping for, but there wasn’t any more I could say without forcing her to tell me where she went on a Thursday and why. ‘Okay,’ I said, which was a pretty dumb rejoinder, but what else could I say? I was desperate to have her in my bed, my flat and my life.

  So, with Mercy B. Lord living with me, I knew that on my mum’s next visit I’d have to introduce her. This wasn’t a problem from my side – it would be a delight and a privilege – but it meant answering a whole heap of questions from Chairman Meow and I didn’t have the answers I knew she’d demand. Although she’d agreed to stay, Mercy B. Lord hadn’t agreed to anything else.

  Chairman Meow, like Elma Kelly, believed that blitzkrieg was the best method of dealing with most things. To carry the military analogy further, if Elma was a Sherman tank, my mum was a polished and perfectly presented cruise missile. Both brooked no opposition and both shared the absolute conviction that what they decided was correct for whomever they’d decided should be the recipient of their overweening attention.

  Years of childhood practice with my mum was probably what allowed me to maintain the relationship I now enjoyed with Elma Kelly. The trick was to see such women for short and intense periods of time – Elma for lunch once a month, my mum for three days at a time every three months (evenings only) – and then to escape before either of them made a takeover bid on my life, with the singular purpose of correcting my clearly misdirected intentions. Any attempt to keep my mother out of Singapore for the three years of my contract would patently have been futile, however much I might have wished to try.

  In Chairman Meow’s mind, my coming to Singapore wasn’t about forging an independent future for myself. Plainly, this was impossible. My independence was simply not a concept she could grasp – why would her son want to leave such a comfortable and superior nest? At best, she might have accepted that my time in Singapore was three years spent flapping my wings to strengthen them for when I finally needed to fly on behalf of the family’s businesses or fortune. Her plans for me had always been crystal clear: I was to return to Australia, whereupon my father would retire and I’d take my rightful place as chairman – with her riding shotgun – after I’d acquired a Chinese wife sourced from a family with an excellent pedigree and possessing good guanxi.

  Most fortuitously, her role as surrogate chairman of our various enterprises kept her busy. Mum had to be on sentry duty beside my father so that several designing uncles on the board couldn’t get up to any mischief, which meant she couldn’t spend prolonged periods away from head office. She’d come for a week, see me for the three allocated evenings and visit her relatives for the rest of the time, no doubt conspiring with them over my nuptial future. But then, thankfully, she always had to get back to Sydney.

  I know this all sounds pretty ungrateful, but my mum, as you will have gathered, only knew one speed: foot flat to the floor – and frankly, three evenings in a row every three months was enough. Chairman Meow was clearly the boss of the family and everything that concerned its welfare, and she saw me as part of that, a big part. But, to mix my metaphors, she juggled a dozen or more balls in the air at any one time and clearly she was intellectually superior to the rest of the extended family. With a veritable family empire to run, there was never much time for small talk.

  Under her ultimate direction the older companies had been hugely successful and several new ones had come into being. One of them in particular, White Lotus Funerals, an offshoot of the original Blue Lotus Funerals, was now a hugely successful all-female funeral parlour chain, headed by a cousin who had graduated with honours in law.

  My father, whom doubtless my uncles privately dismissed as a feckless drunk, was smart enough to realise that my mum as chairman was head and shoulders above him or any other male family member. He didn’t regard her having her role as surrogate chairman as a dereliction of his responsibilities. On the contrary, he considered that by abdicating in her favour, he was, in fact, exercising those responsibilities effectively.

  I recall one of the very few occasions when he’d been unexpectedly frank about my mother. This occurred when I was in my final year of Commerce at uni. We were returning from Leichhardt Oval around sunset on a Saturday afternoon, and I was driving. He was pretty pissed and somewhat morose. The Balmain Tigers, his beloved rugby league team, had been trounced by their mortal enemy, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Possibly to avoid talking about the game, he started to talk about company affairs and my mother’s involvement in the business. He’d always appeared to accept that I wanted to be an artist and that I was only doing my Commerce degree to be a dutiful son. On this occasion, I concluded he’d had a bad week at work and, what with the Tigers losing and putting paid to their premiership chances, was simply letting off st
eam. But then when I thought he had finally finished what I foolishly regarded as a bit of a whinge, he suddenly said, ‘Don’t you worry, son, she’ll get you. Nothing more certain.’

  This statement, from someone who had always encouraged me to be myself and whom I’d come to regard as an ally against my mum, came as a huge shock. Even pissed, my dad was seldom if ever indiscreet. He fell silent for a couple of changes of traffic lights, his tie pulled down and his chin tucked deeply into his loosened collar. I kept my eyes on the road directly ahead, the engine of the Rolls Silver Cloud purring. Finally, my heart recovered its rhythm and I hoped he’d dozed off. But as we passed the stadium at Rushcutters Bay and I was about to change gear to go up Edgecliff Hill, his head suddenly jerked up and he placed his hand on my arm. ‘And when she does, take my advice, son: do it her way, always her way. You’re a smart kid, Simon, but she’s smarter than all of us put together. She’s the fire-breathing dragon. As long as she’s guarding the cave entrance you’ll be fine.’

  I’d previously advised Peter and Henry Kwan not to mention Mercy B. Lord to any of the other members of the family, and they’d been as good as their word. For the first eighteen months, whenever Chairman Meow arrived on a lightning visit, I prepared for the onslaught: a nightly interrogation that, after three repeats, left me exhausted. I’d protest that I was too busy at the agency and simply lacked the time to escort the carefully chosen ‘possibles’ selected for me by her female cousins, no doubt working on a very strict brief from you-know-who.

  Chairman Meow had the ability to switch from a corporate persona with a mind like a steel trap to an injured and helpless uncomprehending mother. A typical confrontation might go like this.

  ‘Simon, I can’t believe you’ve remained celibate!’

  ‘Mum, I’ve been awfully busy.’

  ‘Why, at the flat above the garage you had girls almost every night. The cleaning lady was always finding frilly lace panties tucked under pillows or left in the bathroom.’ An exaggeration, but one calculated both to flatter and accuse. Chairman Meow was in attack mode.

  ‘Mum, I honestly haven’t had time for a serious relationship,’ I fibbed. Not entirely a lie, because Mercy B. Lord was still in her ‘not yet’ stage.

  ‘Simon, don’t treat me like a fool!’

  Deep sigh, shrug. ‘I’m flat-out at the agency. I honestly haven’t got time to scratch my bum!’

  ‘Don’t be crude.’

  ‘Okay, then … this is Singapore. I have an arrangement.’

  ‘What? A prostitute? A Chinese prostitute! Lowborn Chinese women are ruthless! They’ll stop at nothing!’

  Not only lowborn Chinese women, I thought. ‘It’s not the same here. That’s not how it’s seen … regarded. It’s a convenient —’

  ‘Simon! Don’t you tell me how it’s regarded! She’ll trap you – or give you something nasty. There’s a VD strain coming out of Vietnam they can’t cure!’ Her carefully manicured fingers flew to her face as Chairman Meow turned back into my panic-stricken mother. ‘Oh my God! Have you been to see a doctor?’

  ‘Mum, she’s not Chinese, she’s Thai,’ I replied foolishly.

  ‘Thai? Bangkok! That’s America’s major base outside Vietnam. They use it for R&R. Simon, are you mad?’ Chairman Meow was back.

  I thought of kind, attentive Veronica at the Nite Cap, who had so often relieved my pain after Mercy B. Lord had denied me. ‘Mum, she’s a very nice person and, medically speaking, completely safe! I pay her for her services and there are no complications.’

  Chairman Meow shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this, and from my own son. Medically safe – you know this for sure, of course? You’ve been to a doctor regularly after every …’ she couldn’t bring herself to say it. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Well, no, but I take all the proper precautions!’ This wasn’t the kind of conversation one has with one’s mother, in either of her personas. I was getting pretty agitated myself.

  ‘They deliberately put holes in those things!’

  ‘Mum! I’m over thirty years old! I’m not stupid. I supply my own contraceptives.’

  ‘And then don’t see the doctor.’

  ‘Okay, Mum, what am I supposed to do? All those precious little China dolls your cousins select for me – no doubt to your specific brief – are hardly going to allow me a test run in bed, are they?’

  ‘Don’t be crude, Simon! Of course not! They’re well-bred young ladies!’

  ‘So what then?’

  ‘You choose one of them to marry, of course.’

  ‘But what if I’m not ready to marry? Or have kids. What if I don’t like any of them?’

  ‘Tch! They’re all nice girls. They come from good families. How could you not like them? Besides, it’s high time you settled down.’ She paused, then returning to the attack, she spat, ‘I can’t believe it, a Chinese peasant!’

  ‘Thai.’

  ‘The same, but worse!’

  ‘Mum, you started this by saying you couldn’t believe I was celibate. That implied you believed I wasn’t. Then when I said I had an arrangement you had a conniption about lowborn Chinese women stopping at nothing. By the way, just for the books, may I remind you Little Sparrow was a lowborn Chinese woman?’

  The words had hardly escaped my mouth when I realised it was the wrong thing to say. My mum might have been feeling emotional, but the Chairman Meow mind was always waiting in the wings, ready to spring the goof-trap. ‘Ah! I’m glad you brought that up, Simon. Ah Koo went through all the correct channels. He sent a clear and very specific brief to the village elder, telling him exactly what he needed. Not looks, not material prospects, a good woman who was capable of giving him male children. Very sensible and traditional and, if I may say so, with a very successful outcome.’

  ‘Yes, but can’t you see, he made the decision himself.’

  ‘Of course he didn’t! The village elder made the decision, and he, very sensibly, accepted.’

  ‘As I see it, Ah Koo didn’t have a lot of choice. He couldn’t exactly send her back, could he? He was forced to take what he got. But I’m not! And what about love?’

  Chairman Meow sighed, or perhaps it was my mother – the emotional and the rational were both in evidence now. ‘Love? What about it? Forget love, darling. Simon, can’t you understand? We are one of Australia’s richest families. You can have anyone you want. You’re a prime catch. You can offer a lifetime of every indulgence any young woman could possibly imagine. You’re not just a young man looking for a wife, settling for some girl he enjoys groping in bed, or … what’s the expression? Oh yes, a young man sowing his wild oats. You did that in Australia and I said nothing. Do you think I didn’t worry when I saw a female shape silhouetted against a lighted window in your flat? Listen to me, darling! You are heir to a vast fortune. You, with your sisters, will inherit the largest shareholding, 55 per cent of the Koo commercial empire. What am I supposed to do? Stand by while you catch an incurable strain of venereal disease from a Thai whore who says she loves you?’

  ‘Mum, that’s the whole point! I don’t want you to play village elder. I won’t marry a bar girl. I don’t want someone who turns out to be a clever gold-digger. I simply want a girl who will fall in love with a reasonable guy with good prospects who makes a decent but not ridiculously big salary as the creative director of a Singapore advertising agency. I’ve started but haven’t come close to completing a painting and it’s been a long time, but eventually I hope to be an artist. And I don’t want to be an artist living on his family’s money. I can ultimately do the things I want to do right here, where Koo isn’t a name that’s picked out in diamonds on a tiara worn by a Chinese princess who’s been minutely scrutinised and sanctioned by my mother!’

  ‘The tiara, it would be too, too terribly gauche, darling.’ Chairman Meow and my mum both laughed at the concept of the diamond tiara name badge.

  I’m sure by now you get the idea of a fairly typical ‘Chairman Meow and Mum�
�� three-day blitzkrieg. But of course this all happened before Mercy B. Lord moved in.

  So, with Mercy B. Lord living with me but at this stage committed to nothing further, I was faced with quite a different set of Chairman Meow problems, but more about that later.

  Mercy B. Lord’s presence in my life, and thankfully also in my bed, naturally spelled the end of my relationship with Veronica at the Nite Cap girlie bar. I guess I owed the little Thai bar girl nothing. I’d always paid the mama-san for her services and then given Veronica a generous personal tip before I left. I was aware of the usual warning to expats ending a relationship with a bar girl: don’t fall into the trap of feeling sorry. When it’s over, don’t even say you’re leaving, simply disappear into the night.

  Bar girls who sold their sexual services were experts at putting the hard word on clients. They all had hard-luck stories: some of being sold into prostitution at the age of fourteen by their impoverished parents so that their families could own a small patch of arable land or build a house; some of being raped at thirteen and having to support a child; others of working for money to buy their brothers an education and so break the cycle of poverty.

  The received wisdom amongst the men using the bar girls was that it was all a scam the girls would work on their sucker expat customers time after time. It was said that some of the better con girls owned property, and it was often claimed that several actually owned the girlie bars they worked in, selling their services while they were young and pretty and by doing so creating their own future or dowry for when they were older and could become mama-sans or housewives.

  Frankly, I wouldn’t have blamed them if all of this were true, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close to the truth. The truth was horrible. It had existed for a very long time and would continue as long as poverty and misery existed and women were powerless and valued only for the purse they carried between their legs. Sex trafficking brought about by poverty, misery and despair most often begins in rural areas. More than two-thirds of the world’s countries are involved in some way in human trafficking, whether they are countries of origin, transit or destination. It is patently impossible for impoverished girls, most no more than twelve or fourteen, to have the means to obtain a passport and thereafter organise any sort of work for themselves in a foreign country. It is also obvious that the various governments involved turn a blind eye to sex trafficking – it would be easy enough to stop issuing passports or work permits to teenagers without very detailed checks. The trade depends on a permissive attitude from the very top down, and often corruption from the bottom up. In Singapore at the time, prostitution from girlie bars was against the law. This was easily overcome by having the client pay a bar fee so that he could take the girl to other premises, often next door, the fee representing only her drinks, hence a single beer or Scotch could cost as much as the girl’s service fee. In theory, she was agreeing to have sex for nothing or whatever she could get from a drunk or generous client.