‘And that gets you off the hook? You save face?’ Mercy B. Lord was starting to look relieved.
‘Maybe, although people love dirt more than anything.’
‘But wouldn’t that mean the Tourist Promotion Board encourages cheating? Hong Kong is going to howl!’
‘Well, yes, of course. Normally they wouldn’t have a bar of it. In fact, it will be important to castigate me publicly, show official disapproval and so on.’
‘Simon, you’ve lost me, where from here?’
‘Think laterally. The emotional trigger isn’t a disgraced artist, who, by the way, is no longer from Singapore but is just an Australian con artist. The emotional trigger is that the media have speculated that the woman in the portrait is too beautiful to be real, to actually exist in the flesh.’
‘Simon, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, the answer is no. I told you I can’t, I simply can’t make a sudden appearance, solve the whole messy business in a single stroke. I left you because I couldn’t reveal a part of my life and I still can’t. God knows I wish I could. Every bone in my body aches for you. Besides, I’m not beautiful, not like that. I saw your portrait on Karlene Stein’s show and it’s breathtaking.’
‘Oh, but so are you!’
‘Simon, don’t talk nonsense, that’s enough! No!’ The strong-minded Mercy B. Lord was back.
‘No, no, you’ve got it wrong. You don’t have to make a public appearance, right the wrong, vindicate me – nothing like that, sweetheart.’
She ignored the endearment I’d slipped in. ‘Go on then, Simon. I’m intrigued.’
‘Well, Molly Ong, ex-Miss-Singapore, makes an announcement. They are going to conduct a competition to find the Singapore girl or girls who are, in their own particular ways, every bit as beautiful as the painting. The winning girl will promote tourism, and travel overseas as a travel ambassador. Entrants dress identically to the girl in the portrait, pose in the original peacock-tail chair for a photograph by Harry “Three Thumbs” Poon and a TV camera records each entrant’s portrait. Then the day’s entries are run on TV that night on Karlene’s People and the shots printed the following day in a special supplement in the Straits Times, with viewers and readers voting for each day’s winner, who gets a prize of some sort. At the end of a month, the public vote for seven to go into the semi-finals, then three into the finals.’
‘Which by sheer coincidence is won by me?’ Mercy B. Lord said, clearly appalled. ‘Simon, that’s cheating!’
‘No, that’s simply not true. You enter under precisely the same conditions as everyone else and the judging is all above board. Whoever becomes the Singapore Girl will have won fair and square.’ I shrugged. ‘If you lose, you’re off the hook; if you win, you can be sure you’ve won on your own merits, and there’s been no malarkey.’
‘But I told her – that is, Molly Ong – that I couldn’t come to the Hong Kong dinner or ever see you again.’
‘Did she ask you why?’
‘Yes, of course, but I told her it was a matter of face. Too many people would lose face. She’s Chinese, she understood. “What about Simon? What about Simon’s face, his reputation?” she asked, twisting the knife.’
‘That’s tough. Let me ask you a question.’
‘I’m not sure, the last one was —’
‘No, nothing like that,’ I interrupted her. ‘Mercy B. Lord, all things being equal, would you like the job she described, the role of Singapore Girl?’
‘Oh, Simon, you must know I would. Any girl in Singapore would die for it.’
‘But, as you said, for private reasons you can’t accept her direct offer because of … well, we know why … past associations?’
‘Yes.’
‘But if you win, you’re suddenly a high-profile identity and a public servant under state protection, which means you’re safe. Secondly, I’m not directly involved, except as a professional, a creative director for the Tourist Promotions Board, a Samuel Oswald Wing account, and even that’s only until my contract ends.’ I grinned to reassure her. ‘After that I become a disgraced painter of beautiful women. But there’s just one catch – you have to win fair and square by public vote.’
‘Molly Ong called this morning. I saw last night’s TV program and that horrid insinuation in the Straits Times this morning. It was clear that if I didn’t make myself known, you were going to be disgraced, when all you’d done was the honourable thing and refused to reveal my name.’ Mercy B. Lord burst into sudden tears. In a plaintive voice she said, ‘I told Molly when she mentioned you losing face that it was your problem, not mine, that you shouldn’t have done what you did; you should have asked my permission. But that’s so cruel! Oh, Simon, I’m so sorry.’ She wept. ‘I feel so guilty that I’ve betrayed you – that I’ve been the cause of your disgrace. It’s such a brilliant portrait – you thoroughly deserved to win.’ She looked up at me and sniffed, knuckling back her tears and then tossing her head and sniffing again. ‘That’s when I decided to see you tonight, to … to try and explain. My office upstairs looks out onto the street and I’d seen Louie da Fly sitting at a window of the tea-house across the road, watching for me to come out.’
‘Whoa, steady on, girl. I brought this whole thing on myself, remember? You haven’t betrayed me. On the contrary, I betrayed you by not seeking your permission to exhibit the painting. I won’t have you feeling in the least guilty. I did the wrong thing and I have to cop it sweet, whatever the consequences of my action.’
‘It just doesn’t seem fair! But truly, Simon, there’s nothing I can do to change it.’ She looked me straight in the eye. ‘It’s not only for my own sake.’ She paused, continuing to give me a meaningful look. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Simon?’
‘You mean if we’re seen together? Like this?’
She nodded and I recalled Ronnie’s first warning nearly three years previously and then Sidney’s furious ‘She’s mine!’ I avoided asking the obvious next question and simply nodded back, knowing she wouldn’t or couldn’t elaborate. She was plainly implying that I too was in danger if we were seen together. It was an awkward situation – she was warning me but there was no possible reaction except to keep it light and play it down, hoping the nod would tell her I understood. ‘Is that why you’re wearing the burqa?’ I asked. ‘I must say, the world is a poorer place without your pretty face.’
‘Oh, this,’ she said, touching the scarf. ‘I sometimes wear it when I travel.’
It was a tiny slip and I wondered if it was deliberate. Mercy B. Lord wasn’t careless and was highly conditioned to be discreet. It was yet another question to be put aside for consideration later.
I had always known that she travelled beyond Singapore island on her Thursday absences. She’d get home at just after six on Friday, and it took almost exactly thirty minutes in the rush hour to get back from the airport. My enquiries had revealed that a plane from Hong Kong and another from Bangkok landed within five minutes of each other at around the right time on Friday afternoons. All the other flights were intercontinental or ones that had taken longer than six hours from takeoff. She only ever carried hand luggage, a small overnight bag and a briefcase, so she could walk straight out of the airport to a waiting Mohammed in the big, black Beatrice Fong Buick. The limo was another giveaway. If her Thursdays were spent locally, why would she use it? There was also something else. She’d bring the briefcase home on Wednesday night but it was never with her when she returned on Friday evening. While I worked back at the agency until around seven most nights, on Fridays I’d leave at five, pick up dinner on the way home – Peking duck, her favourite – set the table and, when she arrived, pour her a glass of white wine, wine being a new and, I must say, pleasant habit we’d acquired from Dansford.
On one such occasion just after we’d started to live together, I’d laughingly pointed out that she’d left her briefcase behind in the Buick. She smiled then said it was the office briefcase and Mohammed took it back with him on Frid
ays. She usually locked it in a drawer in her side of the wardrobe when she returned home from the office on a Wednesday evening, but once for a couple of minutes she’d left it on the kitchen bench while she went to the bathroom for the compulsory female wee before departure early Thursday morning. Despite having checked on those incoming Friday flights, I wasn’t really much of a snoop, but I couldn’t resist and picked up her briefcase and was surprised how heavy it was. I tapped the leather lid, then pressed against it and realised that the casing under it was definitely metal. I tried thumbing one of the very professional-looking combination locks, my heart beating surprisingly fast, ears pricked, listening for the toilet to flush, but the lock didn’t budge. I shook it but there was no movement within. Whatever it contained was packed tight or was completely solid.
Mercy glanced up. ‘Simon, I don’t feel pretty. Not since …’ Without completing the sentence, she changed the subject. ‘I must say, Louie da Fly is persistent. I first noticed him around one o’clock and at six he was still waiting in the tea-house.’ Mercy B. Lord laughed. ‘I can’t imagine how many cups of chai he must have consumed.’
‘Don’t worry, he’s a born operator. He will have come to some sort of arrangement with the owner.’
‘Well, naturally I guessed why he was there and also why he hadn’t come upstairs to the office after the last incident with Beatrice. She told me gleefully what she’d done to your letter before returning it.’ Mercy B. Lord looked at me, her pretty head to one side. ‘I’m awfully sorry about that, Simon.’
‘I can’t say it wasn’t a smack in the mouth.’ I grinned. ‘But I guess I’ll recover.’
‘When I decided to see you following Molly’s call, I had to find a way of leaving the office without being noticed.’
‘You mean you can’t just walk out?’
‘Well, no, not without Freda Chong – the switch girl – reporting my absence to Beatrice. Those two are thick as thieves and, knowing Beatrice, Freda’s being paid off or threatened with dismissal if she doesn’t monitor all my phone calls. When you called after we first parted, none of them were put through to me. She was instructed to simply wait a few moments then give you the answer you invariably got.’
My hands shot up. ‘No more apologies or I’m going to break down and blub. I can’t tell you how awful those first weeks were, with my boomerang flowers appearing in the agency foyer and my letters returned marked Not at this address.’
‘Flowers? Letters? I had no idea, Simon. Please believe me, I was in a terrible emotional mess myself, and for the first month I was being followed wherever I went. Then, thank God, it seemed to stop.’
‘That’s when I finally gave up sending flowers and letters begging you to come back to me.’
‘Oh, Simon, please don’t think it hasn’t been the same for me. These last months have been the hardest of my life. But after Karlene’s People and the article in the Times I simply had to see you, but there’s been a guy two doors down from the tea-house who hasn’t moved all day. I was pretty sure I’d be followed.’
‘Not much of an operator if he’s that obvious,’ I remarked.
‘On the contrary, it’s important that I see him following me. It’s all a part of the warning not to stray in a certain direction. Anyhow, I keep this burqa in the office and, as you know, we have the top two floors – the ground floor is occupied by Hizbul Muslimin, the Pan-Malayan Islamic Party’s Singapore office.’
‘No, I didn’t know that. Remember, I was under a certain young lady’s explicit instructions never to visit her office.’
‘Oh, of course, but you do understand there were reasons?’
‘Yes, Ronnie Wing warned me.’
‘Let’s not speak of that,’ she said quietly. ‘Let me tell you about Freda Chong. She has this beehive hairdo plastered with enough lacquer to glue two buildings together, and wears much too much make-up, so she spends a good half hour in front of the toilet mirror preening before she leaves each evening. She has a night job working as the receptionist at the China Doll. I think she thinks she’s Lily Ho, the Saw brothers’ biggest movie star.’
I couldn’t quite see where this was leading, but I said, ‘Ah, the China Doll, yet another Beatrice Fong and Sidney Wing connection.’
Mercy B. Lord ignored this last remark. ‘So, with Freda in the toilet, I switched on my office light so that anyone watching from the street would think I was working back late. Beatrice always closes her office door between six-thirty and seven to burn incense and pray at her personal shrine to Tsai Shen Yeh, the god of wealth, then, at precisely seven o’clock, Mohammed comes to pick her up. So I grabbed the burqa and slipped on a pair of flat shoes I wear when I have to do a lot of walking with a client, and snuck down the back stairs, stopping to fix the burqa to cover my head and face. Then I simply walked out through the Hizbul Muslimin front door.’
‘Not just a pretty face, huh?’ I grinned.
Mercy B. Lord smiled at the compliment. ‘A covered face, more to the point. Then I crossed the street to confront a very surprised Louie da Fly, who, after recovering from the shock of being accosted by a strange Muslim woman, gave me your gorgeous orchid and very kind invitation to the Hong Kong dinner. I told him where I’d meet you and paid for his lunch and afternoon tea.’
‘Cheeky bugger! I gave him money. I’ll give him a good kick in the arse for that.’
‘Then I went home, had something to eat and came on here to The Ritz to wait.’
I mimed clapping. ‘Clever girl! By the way, what did Mrs Mohammed say to you when you revealed your face in front of me?’
Mercy B. Lord giggled. ‘She said it was shameful for a Muslim woman to remove her burqa and show her face to an infidel. That the Prophet would be very angry.’
I’d been scoffing chicken curry throughout our conversation. While this may not seem an important detail, there had been a few times when I – we – had come close to breaking down, and there’s nothing like eating as you talk to help you regain your self-control. But now, with the curry dish empty and only a few scraps of net bread left, Mohammed was banging pots and pans together in the kitchen to make it clear that it was time for us to leave. He’d probably stayed open an hour later than usual, and I guess after Mercy B. Lord’s facial defrocking in front of the Chinese infidel, Mrs Mohammed wasn’t all that enamoured of us either. The meal cost eighty cents, and even though I gave her a dollar and apologised in Cantonese for keeping them back, instructing her to keep the change, it wasn’t sufficient to get a single word out of her; I could only imagine the curl of her lip behind her burqa.
‘One final thing before we leave, Simon. Did you, I mean, have you discussed this Singapore Girl competition with Molly Ong?’
‘No, I promise you, I haven’t – at least, only superficially. I guessed you wouldn’t come to the Hong Kong dinner and I understand why. I always knew I had Buckley’s.’
‘Buckley’s?’
‘An Australian expression – it means there’s no chance of something happening. Anyway, I reckoned you’d also refuse her invitation to become the first Singapore Girl, based on my portrait. It’s a damned good idea but under the circumstances it wasn’t going to work. So I thought up the promotion. It was something Sidney Wing couldn’t refuse as he has the tourism account, and if he did, the government could fire him or exert pressure. Besides, it was kosher, legit, and added to this is the fact that I’m leaving the agency. I’d be gone by the time the promotion runs. So I’m not a factor. No doubt he will secretly enjoy my public disgrace while fearing it might lead to them losing the tourist account, so such a promotion would reassure him.’
‘And the competition wouldn’t be rigged in my favour?’ Mercy B. Lord asked once more.
‘I can’t guarantee that. It wouldn’t be in my hands and, of course, there is an obvious bias; you are the portrait and that could affect the result. But it isn’t a lookalike competition. There are three finalists, the three most beautiful girls according to the pu
blic’s vote. The final decision will be made after interviewing all three. The interview will obviously involve factors other than looks, so, yes, there’s an element of chance.’ I shrugged. ‘If you make the finals, well, what can I say? You’re likely to top the interviews.’ I hesitated. ‘But even that’s not absolutely guaranteed.’
Mercy B. Lord moved towards the street. ‘We really should go, Simon.’
‘I’ll walk you to the mosque. You’re sure to get a taxi from there.’
‘No, I’ll go out first – you just never know. The mosque isn’t far and I can make my own way. Wait a couple of minutes or so, then walk in the opposite direction when you leave.’
Mercy B. Lord looked at me, then gave me a peck on the cheek and quickly adjusted her burqa so that only her eyes now showed. Reaching into her bag, she produced the small plastic box that had originally contained the orchid. Placing it on the table, she unpinned the magnificent bloom and replaced it in the box. ‘I wish it would last forever,’ she said softly. Then, without a further word, she turned and started to walk towards the door.
‘Will you at least think about it? May I talk to Molly about the promotion?’ I called after her.
‘Yes,’ she called back in a tearful voice.
I’d phrased the two questions carelessly, running them together. Yes, what? That I could call Molly or that she’d think about entering the promotion? ‘May I see you again?’ I called out once more. But there was no answer as Mercy B. Lord opened the door and disappeared into the night.
I waited three minutes with Mrs Mohammed hovering at the door, anxious to see the last of the infidel. Then I finally walked outside and turned in the opposite direction, the smoky air biting at my nostrils. One thing puzzled me. Mercy B. Lord hadn’t once brought up the subject of Thursday.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AFTER WE PARTED, I was too excited to get much sleep. The last couple of days had been pretty full on, and the thought that I didn’t have to deal with Chairman Meow for a week and a bit was a terrific relief. I wondered briefly how she’d cope with her son’s status as disgraced artist, but I confess it wasn’t one of the factors that kept me near sleepless. I spent the night hugging myself over what seemed to be the start of a reconciliation with the girl I loved, and tossing and turning in fear that she would decide not to come back to me.
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