FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Molly, it’s a great idea. I’d be lying if I said any different. Singapore Girl will make a great campaign, but …’

  ‘You don’t like it?’ Molly cut in.

  ‘No, no, like I said, it’s a great idea. Spectacular. But I don’t think Mercy B. Lord will agree.’

  There was a silence at the other end that seemed to last an eternity. When Molly spoke at last she sounded shocked. ‘Simon, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. There can’t be a young woman in Singapore who wouldn’t give just about anything to do this – first-class air travel around the world anywhere and everywhere, and at the end of twelve months an education and a career! You can’t be serious.’

  It was time to come clean. ‘We’re not together any longer, Molly.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. You’ve broken up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘Your fault?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Simon, it’s always complicated – she’s a woman. May I talk to her?’

  ‘Molly, it’s been months.’

  ‘And you haven’t spoken?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hmm. But you don’t mind if I do?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And if she agreed, you’d work with her?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No bad blood?’

  ‘Not from me.’

  ‘Tell me, Simon, do you still love her? You two were gorgeous together.’

  ‘Yes … with all my heart.’

  ‘Ah! That makes it difficult,’ Molly said.

  After she’d hung up I put my elbows on the desk and clutched my head in disbelief. By winning the painting prize I’d created one almighty fuck-up. Then I realised I still had Louie da Fly’s envelope in my hand. It looked familiar, and it was. My own note to Mercy B. Lord had been returned. I opened it.

  I started to laugh, not funny-ha-ha, but in spite of everything. At least it was a tangible response, the first in months. I called over to Louie da Fly, who came in. ‘Louie da Fly, what happened to the pink roses?’

  ‘She don’t want, Simon. Give me back.’

  ‘Right, and then?’

  ‘My mother, I give my mother.’

  I opened my hand and held it out towards the dispatch boy. ‘Okay, hand it over, you little shit.’

  He reached into his pocket, produced two one-dollar notes and placed them in my hand.

  ‘And the rest!’

  He dug into his trouser pocket again and produced another dollar. ‘That’s all, boss.’

  ‘Louie da Fly, you’re either insulting my intelligence or you’re stupid. What’s it to be?’

  ‘Not stupid, boss.’

  ‘Righto, hand over the rest.’ He produced another two bucks. Louie da Fly didn’t like anyone to think him stupid, even if it cost him money.

  ‘Okay, but next time I expect more. They cost me twelve bucks. You sold them for half price.’

  ‘Buyer’s market, boss. No fucking time, must come back work!’ he grinned.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, sure.’ I stuffed five bucks in my shirt pocket and handed him one.

  He looked disdainfully down at the crumpled note in his hand. ‘Maybe next time I give flower to my mum,’ he said in disgust.

  ‘Maybe next time I kick your arse. Now vamoose!’

  Catching out Louie da Fly looked like being the only win of the day and it was, to say the least, a hollow victory. I looked down at my note with the one word, ‘BASTARD!’, scrawled across it. What was I thinking? It was another total defeat. The word itself was written by someone whose hand was shaking badly. Mercy B. Lord must have been very, very angry.

  And I had yet to phone Chairman Meow. I decided to leave that pleasure for last. She was probably out shopping, anyway.

  Louie da Fly was back again with the afternoon mail, a single letter for me. He seemed reluctant to leave, standing at the open door.

  ‘What is it, Louie da Fly?’

  ‘Why you send pretty flower to bad old lady, boss?’

  ‘Old lady? What do you mean, mate?’

  ‘Very old, two stick.’ He hunched over almost double, pretending to be supporting himself on two walking sticks, his neck stretched out in the manner of an old crone. ‘Very cross, shouting old lady.’

  ‘You gave the roses to an old lady at the Beatrice Fong Agency?’

  ‘Ja, ja, the switch for the telephone, she tell me wait. Then she take me, we go upstair into room same size like your. Also desk, but Chinese dragon leg and …’

  ‘Carved?’

  ‘Ja, ja, much carve, also chair, not carve.’ He pointed to my swivel chair. ‘New one like your. Room dark, only one light on desk, small one. She tell me wait, then comes old mother, very old, maybe 100 year, clop … clop … clop … clop … two stick, very, very slow.’

  Louie da Fly obviously possessed a strong sense of the dramatic. ‘Chinese?’

  ‘Ja, ja, she sit very slow in chair. Much pain, I think. Old bone. Switch girl, she help and take her stick, she tell I must give flower and letter.’

  I spoke Cantonese better than Louie da Fly spoke English, but he liked to show off and I usually indulged him. But this was an unexpected turn of events and I was suddenly impatient. Louie da Fly’s English was tediously slow as he searched for words. He was from a poor Straits-Chinese family and had obviously attended a local Chinese-language school – the family was probably too poor for him to complete his education, but he was a bright kid. I was anxious to hear the rest as accurately as possible. ‘Tell me in Cantonese,’ I instructed.

  Louie da Fly looked hurt. Nothing unusual in that – he was an actor from way back. ‘My English, you don’t like?’

  ‘Louie da Fly, your English is very good but I’m in a hurry.’

  He then told me in Cantonese how the old lady had taken out a magnifying glass and instructed the switchboard girl to open the envelope and then the note and place it in front of her, directly under the table lamp, where she read it carefully. She’d then called for a calligraphy brush and ink and slowly written BASTARD! across my note, whereupon she’d knocked the roses from the desk onto the carpet and turned slowly in the swivel chair, pointing to the fallen roses, her face now almost completely in shadow. Louie da Fly reverted to English. ‘I can see much gold in tooths and the eyes, very shine,’ he said. Then, speaking again in Cantonese, he explained that he’d picked up the roses while she instructed the switchboard girl to fold my note, replace it in the original envelope and hand it to him. ‘ “Tell the one who sent this letter he is chusheng!” she spit.’ Louie da Fly looked at me and asked once again in English, ‘Why you send very bad old lady flower, boss?’

  I sighed, pretty shaken by the whole description, but trying hard not to show my emotion in front of a kid of fifteen. Chusheng means ‘animal’, and telling someone they are born from an animal … Well, there are few worse insults in Chinese. I reached into my shirt pocket and fished out the five dollars I’d previously confiscated and added a further five from my wallet. ‘Buy your mother some roses, kid,’ I said in English.

  He accepted the notes in the customary manner with both hands. ‘Thank you, boss.’ Then, ingenuously, he added, ‘Maybe I tell lie before. Maybe my mum, she dead long time.’

  I tried to grin. ‘Scram! Beat it, kid!’ I said, waving him away with a flick of the hand.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh with relief or cry from a mixture of frustration and dismay: relief because it was Beatrice Fong and not Mercy B. Lord who had scrawled the crude reply on my note; frustration because I was no nearer to reaching her; and dismay because she was obviously under the direction of or captive to others and may well have been all along. Patently, Beatrice Fong was involved and it seemed certain now that Sidney Wing was implicated. Whatever it was had been going on a long time. What could it be? Mercy B. Lord wasn’t some compliant, weak-willed, dependent young female. She knew her own mind, was resourceful
, even stubborn at times, and she certainly had a will of her own – she was nobody’s fool. They, whoever ‘they’ might be, had something over her that was sufficiently powerful to control her life, something almost certainly to do with disappearing Thursday. The portrait win had obviously set the cat among the pigeons, which was putting it much too mildly if she was in danger. Then I realised that, for now at least, because of the publicity surrounding the prize, she was probably safe.

  I had no doubt whatsoever that the press – in particular, Karlene Stein – would eventually find her. Molly Ong most certainly would. The Singapore Girl concept was hers, and it was a good one and fitted perfectly with the portrait award. There were people who claimed Molly got the job with the Tourist Promotion Board simply because she had been Miss Singapore, but they were wrong. She had a very good mind and her ideas were invariably sound. The Singapore Girl idea was extra good and she wasn’t going to let it go in a hurry.

  Sidney Wing would know that if Mercy B. Lord disappeared there would be a huge ruckus and the publicity would spread well beyond Singapore. It was just the kind of incident the PAP government tried to avoid, and they’d almost certainly become involved. Associated as she was bound to be with the winning portrait, Mercy B. Lord would automatically became a high-profile missing person, and that would wreak havoc on tourism in Singapore, quite apart from anything else.

  At Dansford’s pink hair cocktail party, Molly Ong had taken a particular shine to Mercy B. Lord, as had Long Me Saw, who reputedly knew a beautiful woman when he saw one. Even the minister had seemed captivated by her charm. Having initially endangered her with the portrait win, paradoxically I had probably now ensured her safety. Nonetheless, it didn’t make things any better, knowing I had placed her in a very difficult position and compromised her privacy. Any hopes I’d hitherto harboured of having Mercy B. Lord back in my life were now well and truly gone. I felt a fool. I was a fool.

  I opened the letter that had come in the mail. It was from the Hong Kong City Hall Museum and Art Gallery and was dated three days previously. Delivery was usually next day in the new Singapore, but these things happen, I guess. It announced my win and the prize of 5000 Hong Kong dollars. I only wished I could have been happy about this or given it to Mercy B. Lord. Additionally, the letter invited me to the awards dinner in two weeks’ time – ‘lounge suit preferred’ – at which I had been allocated a table for eight personal guests as well as myself and my partner. Finally, it offered to pay for two air tickets from Singapore and overnight accommodation – a suite, compliments of the Peninsula Hotel, where the awards dinner was to take place. I couldn’t help imagining how all this might have been different, with Mercy B. Lord on my arm in the black cheongsam and red patent-leather stilettos, the portrait brought to life.

  I spent the remainder of the afternoon returning telephone messages from local and far-flung places in South-East Asia, even one from The Age in Melbourne, and I began to sympathise with Molly Ong on the subject of repetitious questions. Imagination is not a quality that appears to characterise many in the media. It was after five when I finally phoned Chairman Meow, who was staying at the Hong Kong Hilton. I expected her to be a bit cranky about waiting all day for my call. As a general rule, she didn’t take kindly to waiting for anyone, unless she’d allowed for it in her plans. She was prompt in returning calls, either business or personal, and procrastination wasn’t one of her faults. Moreover, unlike my dad, she’d never been wholly enthusiastic about my desire to become an artist, so I doubted she’d be thrilled by my win. Chairman Meow ran on one track when it came to her only son and, as far as she was concerned, that track led directly to the chairman’s office. But I was quite wrong.

  Hearing my voice, she went directly into rapture mode. ‘Darling, congratulations, I’m thrilled!’ she almost trilled. ‘Wonderful, simply wonderful! Imagine! I’m here for a few days’ shopping before coming over to see you, and I open the South China Morning Post at breakfast in my suite this morning and there you are! My son! My famous son!’

  ‘Mum, it’s not such a big deal,’ I protested.

  ‘No? Only the front page! Only the first Asian ever to win! What are you talking about? I picked up the phone and ordered the hotel limo to take me directly to the gallery. Not a big deal! There was a queue a hundred yards long waiting for it to open. Simon, your mother stood in a queue, can you imagine that? Not only a queue but also for half an hour! There’s a banner stretched across the whole outside of the front of the building that reads “Simon Koo’s Thursday Girl”.

  ‘Oh my God, and the girl! I stood transfixed for an hour. I looked into her eyes. I just stood there and looked. Simon, she’s got everything we need! I can tell.’

  I felt a sudden pain as my stomach muscles clenched. ‘No guanxi, Mum.’

  There was barely a pause. ‘I don’t care! I can tell she’s the one! In my bones, my blood! And to think you’ve been hiding her from me all this time!’

  ‘Mum, listen!’ I pleaded.

  ‘Simon, I’m catching the plane tomorrow. I know it’s a day early, but I can’t wait. I must meet this glorious creature!’

  ‘Mum, listen, please listen – she’s not mine.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A TABLE FOR EIGHT guests for the awards night presented an immediate problem: I knew three strong women, Chairman Meow, Elma Kelly and Mrs Sidebottom. The latter, since she’d been fitted with dentures, was no longer a shrinking violet (the scam at Raffles should have alerted me), and had emerged as a garrulous and forceful character in her own right. With sweet breath and a constant smile, Mrs Sidebottom now attended the frequent Tourist Promotion Board meetings, which allowed me to be absent from time to time. Apart from writing excellent copy, she also contributed sound and original promotion ideas. The newly ‘indentured’ Sidebottom was no longer backward in coming forward and held her own in the company of Molly Ong and Long Me Saw, both forceful people not short of an opinion. Long Me Saw, who possessed a wicked sense of humour, privately referred to her as ‘Full-frontal Sidebottom’, while Molly Ong happily teamed up with her to demand that the woman’s point of view be introduced into the tourism platform.

  Somewhat unfortunately, she gave all the credit for the transformation of her life to me. While I insisted Cecil had been solely responsible and should be given the credit, he didn’t help matters by maintaining that without my encouragement – in fact, he used the word ‘permission’ – he could not have made the decision on his own. Previously beholden to his wife, Cecil was now completely under the thumb of the diminutive Sylvia with the arctic-blue eyes.

  I only mention this because Mrs Sidebottom had assumed the role of my surrogate mother. While all three of the older women in my life were very different, they all in their own ways exhibited strong proprietorial feelings towards me. My mum packed twice the punch as both Chairman Meow and my actual mother; then hard on her heels came the avuncular (why is there no female equivalent?), singular Elma Kelly, all guns blazing; and now the new Full-frontal Sidebottom had added herself to my growing list of mother figures. All expressed concern for my lovelorn state, Elma Kelly and Mrs Sidebottom because they knew of Mercy B. Lord’s departure from my life, and Chairman Meow, aka Mum, because her matchmaking attempts had all been stymied. But now, consumed by the beautiful woman she had seen in the portrait, my mother seemed determined to secure her for her only son. All three believed they would be the one to ameliorate my unhappiness.

  My immediate concern about the awards dinner was that all these women would come together for the first time at my table. Even worse, to the three forceful women would be added an inebriated Dansford, Cecil, the chain-smoking mouse, and possibly Long Me Saw and Molly Ong. Molly was not exactly a wallflower herself, while the movie mogul, now in his sixties, wasn’t accustomed to taking a back seat even with presidents and royalty present. I took some comfort from the fact that he was very unlikely to attend.

  If Long Me were to accept my personal invitation, hi
s only possible reason would be a whimsical one. The Saw brothers were generous patrons of the arts in Hong Kong and elsewhere, and the committee would have sent them an invitation to sit at the governor’s table. Nevertheless, it seemed only polite for me to invite him. If I had been truly Chinese, inviting him to be a guest at my table would have been seen as extremely dangerous. If he refused, as seemed certain, then I would lose enormous face. Conversely, if he accepted, I would gain in equal proportion. But the chances of his accepting were very small, and for most Chinese the risk of refusal would have been too great.

  Money is in almost all cases the sole arbiter of social standing and importance amongst the Chinese, but there are a very few instances where, in addition to wealth, there exists undisputable status in its own right. If extreme wealth allows you to sit at the table of your peers, the status of tai-pan entitles you to be seated at its head. Only royalty, presidents or, in a British colony such as Hong Kong, the governor would take precedence.

  The Saw brothers were both tai-pans, and although our family wealth, had they known about it, would probably have gained my dad a seat at the far end of the banquet table, the Saw brothers’ influence in Asia and their guanxi were such that there would have to have been a very specific and additional reason apart from mere wealth for someone like Chairman Meow to be included in their social stratum.

  The fact that Long Me Saw sat on the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board was a feather in the board’s cap and not his own. His presence gave Singapore added importance in the world of entertainment and travel. The further fact that he took the role seriously and worked at it, rather than simply appending his illustrious family name to the letterhead, was an indication of his character. He certainly stood to gain nothing in influence or power and needed no favours from government.

  The Long Me Saw I knew from board meetings was a nice bloke: he listened, was polite and his opinions on ad campaigns and promotions were always worth considering. But my presence in his life was purely coincidental and it would have been foolish to think otherwise. I was simply the creative ad guy who attended strategy meetings. I admit that while it was proper to invite him, given the already potent mixture at my table, I would have been hugely relieved if he refused, as seemed certain – never mind the loss of face. On the other hand, if he accepted, I feared my bowels mightn’t be entirely trustworthy.