While I wasn’t sure we’d achieved a great deal, or that Mercy B. Lord would agree to be a part of the portrait promotion, should it eventuate, at least we’d taken the first step towards each other by meeting, and, most importantly, she’d initiated it. She’d admitted that she’d missed me perhaps almost as much as I’d missed her, though I didn’t think that was possible. There had been an empty space inside me, a once sunlit room where the shutters were drawn and the door locked on memories that were slowly gathering dust. But now we’d laughed together and she’d cried a bit and there were moments when I’d been pretty choked up myself. Most significantly, the first hopeful steps had been taken, the first rattle of the key in the lock of the memory room had sounded, and I told myself, probably quite stupidly, that we were on the way to a shared life. The thrill was in knowing she still cared, that it wasn’t just old misery-guts carrying the pain of separation around with him.
When I was going through puberty, my mum and sisters would sigh as I slouched in to breakfast, with a good-morning grunt about the best I could manage. ‘Oh dear, here comes old Mr Simon Sad Sack,’ they’d say in unison. At the time I naturally resented them sending me up, wondering how I could possibly have been cursed with this Neanderthal family. But ‘Simon Sad Sack’ was a perfect description of my psyche in the months after Mercy B. Lord left – it was exactly as if I were dragging a hugely heavy sack of memories behind me.
We had a meeting with Texas Tiger mid-morning the next day and I hadn’t quite completed the greased-lightning layout so I went in to work early. I intended calling Molly Ong just after nine to ask if she was free for lunch the following day. Molly liked to be seen at the city’s best watering holes, although with my potential disgrace looming she might opt for a quieter venue or even decide she was busy, though that would have surprised me.
I called Molly, apologised for the short notice and asked if we could have lunch the next day.
‘Oh, lovely, Simon, but I can’t make it tomorrow. What about today?’
‘Great. Where would you like to eat?’
She agreed to have lunch at the Goodwood Park Hotel. I then called Owen Denmeade, the maître d’, and asked for a quiet table. We’d become quite good friends following Dansford’s four-bottle vintage French wine fiasco and his subsequent drunken and very successful performance at the piano. ‘Wine?’ he asked, half-jokingly.
‘Can’t say. Molly Ong’s with me.’
‘Ah, a nice French chablis,’ he said right off. ‘I’ll put a bottle of ’65 Vaudésir Grand Cru on ice. A good blend of citrus, oak, peach, butter, lemon and nectarine.’ He paused for the final verbal thrust. ‘Nice tight acid structure.’
‘C’mon, Owen, cut the bullshit.’ I laughed. ‘And isn’t a bottle, even if it does have a tight acid structure, rather a lot for one lady at lunch? I’ll be drinking beer. She’d probably rather have a couple of martinis.’
‘Trust me, it won’t be wasted, Simon,’ he replied.
In the nearly three years I’d been in Singapore, the place had grown up fast. There seemed to be a kind of electricity in the air, and there was now barely a trace of the sleepy, colonial, far-flung corner of the empire that it had once been. The city state, however undemocratic the conduct of its PAP parliament, was working for the majority and there was a growing sophistication among its so-called cognoscenti, so that French wine at the luncheon table was becoming common and Owen, harking back to his days as head steward on P&O, was brushing up on what he referred to as his ‘oenological frog patois’, which roughly meant his knowledge of French vintages.
I’d been so busy on the layout, and the rickshaw dash with Louie da Fly to Arab Street, that I wasn’t sure what had transpired on Karlene Stein’s program the previous evening. My mind was so full of Mercy B. Lord that I’d neglected to stop the taxi on my way to work to pick up a copy of the Straits Times to see if there were any further developments in the teacup storm. Now I’d need to go straight from the Texas Oil office after the presentation to luncheon with Molly, which would mean I’d still be in the dark.
Dansford, after the initial news of my big win, obviously hadn’t watched the subsequent drama unfolding on TV or read the paper, so he was oblivious to the phoney-portrait fuss. By six o’clock, when Karlene Stein came on the box, he’d have been well into the evening’s carousing; he had admitted to me he’d only picked up the news of the win by seeing it on the box in a bar somewhere. Big Loud Mike would probably be unaware of it, too, no doubt regarding Karlene Stein as much too parochial.
The layout looked okay – in fact, it was rather good. I was becoming a dab hand at drawing and painting tigers, although I wasn’t confident enough to do the final art. I’d give that to Alejandra Calatayud, a Mexican freelance artist who had married an American oil engineer, then divorced him but decided to stay in Singapore and revert to her maiden name. She had the knack of painting a tiger with a distinctly Asian feel. The trick was not to make the tiger too Chinese and so rob the Tiger product of its air of Western technology, but to add a subtle difference – it was more a matter of mood than line. She seemed to understand this and reached a perfect compromise between East and West. It was not something Big Loud Mike would notice, just me being pernickety.
Dansford had the job of telling Michael Johns his tiger piss idea was ratshit. Big Loud Mike was a bit of a sulker and didn’t like to appear to be in the wrong, which meant I’d have to sell the new concept hard. At the end of the year he was due back in Houston, where he was slated for a promotion to head office. ‘Just one more stripe on mah goddamn slope combat fatigues!’ he’d say, adopting the ugly nickname for Asians that had become increasingly popular during the Vietnam War. I’d have to convince him that there’d be one more stripe if he took on ‘Tiger lubrication – greased lightning for ultimate engine care’. I completed the layout with half an hour to spare, so I roughed out a variation on the running tiger idea – what is known in advertising as a ‘back-pocket concept’, a just-in-case-you-can’t-sell-the-one-you-recommend. This one showed the same tiger simply outlined in pencil, with only the sky rendered in gouache and coloured chalk, this time featuring a blazing sunrise and the words ‘Tiger Liquid Gold – your engine’s best investment’. It needed a bit of work – the word ‘lubrication’ or ‘oil’ had to fit in somewhere, also ‘fast action’ or something similar – but gold was an obsession of the Chinese, their safety net when Lady Luck turned against them, and as a concept it had a half-reasonable chance of working. We’d been lucky with Texas Tiger but you learn not to be complacent; sooner or later, your opposition comes up with something, as I had done when Caltex ruled with their ‘boron’ rocket-fuel concept. All it takes is a promise from the competition that appeals to the consumer’s imagination and suddenly you’re dead in the water, a thoroughly drowned tiger.
The previous night’s TV wasn’t mentioned at the Texas Oil meeting, nor was there anything in the morning paper, but Dansford must have said something because Big Loud Mike congratulated me on my win – ‘Hey, Simon, it don’t come as a big surprise, man.’ He pointed at the greased-lightning layout. ‘Any guy who can paint a running tiger like that – be chickenfeed to paint a piece of slope poontang.’
I opened my mouth to give him a serve but Dansford quickly placed a cautionary finger to his lips so that all I could say was, ‘Steady on, Mike.’ It didn’t surprise me that the local head of Texas Oil had been divorced three times. Later I would castigate myself for not having a proper go at him. Racism, the girlie-bar mentality, was common enough among expats, many of whom were hardly God’s gift. The Australians were no better than most, and while there were notable exceptions, many expats were in Asia for all the wrong reasons. It was not uncommon for a local second-in-command to be more intelligent than the expat sent to run the show, and they were often left to do the job while the Western boss arrived late, lunched long and, if he returned, left early to entertain until late.
Though neither Dansford nor the Texas Oil boss
let on at the mid-morning meeting, it was highly likely that Big Loud Mike had been with Dansford the previous night. Dansford had a dangerous habit of ‘softening up’ clients, as he called it, which involved taking them out on the town the night before making a big presentation, his theory being that the client would be too hung-over to be overly demanding the following morning.
Fortunately, Big Loud Mike liked the greased-lightning concept, and I met Molly in the foyer of the Goodwood Park Hotel at a few minutes past one, apologising for being late. If Molly Ong had any bad habits, I’d seen no evidence of them. She was always organised, on time and exceedingly pleasant. She knew her own mind and was nobody’s fool. Giving her a place on the Tourist Promotion Board was a very intelligent move. Apart from more than pulling her weight, she had a knack for getting people to cooperate and could make two blowflies trapped together in a matchbox behave calmly. But she was no purring pussycat, and when roused had a way with verbal darts that seldom missed their mark. Her earlier training as Miss Singapore may have helped, but you got the feeling that Molly had always been like this, the pretty kid who owned the playground through a combination of charm and strength of character. She would have been more than a worthy fourth contender among the female heavyweights at the awards dinner, which was now unlikely to eventuate.
After speaking to Mercy B. Lord, I knew she wasn’t going to come forward as Thursday Girl and that it was completely out of the question that she would attend the awards dinner. This meant Molly’s idea of basing the Singapore Girl concept on the portrait wasn’t going to work, so I was anxious to outline the idea I’d discussed with Mercy B. Lord, almost guaranteeing that everything about the beauty-plus-brains competition would be kosher and that she’d have to win selection fair and square. My primary purpose, of course, was to ensure Mercy B. Lord’s safety.
I wanted to assure Molly that her original idea could still work and was too good to lose. But she didn’t need to be told what the inevitable outcome would be, or that it would provide even greater opportunities for prolonged publicity. Perhaps it was cheating, but I told myself it was in a good cause, a win–win situation whichever way you looked at it. The general public would have had a lot of fun voting, Singapore’s reputation for beautiful women would have been vindicated and the portrait belatedly recognised as genuine.
Owen seated us with a commendable fuss and Molly agreed she’d have wine. ‘Perhaps a chilled white to accompany fish.’
‘Excellent, Miss Ong. We have fresh brown trout, invariably nicer than the rainbow, in my humble opinion,’ Owen smirked, flapping her starched damask napkin and carefully placing it on her lap with a triumphant sidelong glance at me. Then he suggested the ’65 Vaudésir and unashamedly launched with aplomb into his previous ridiculous wine-buff description, though this time omitting the bit at the end about acid structure. Molly agreed it was a splendid choice. I ordered a Tiger beer in honour of the morning’s successful Texas Oil meeting. Menus were opened and, in a surprisingly short time, the chilled wine appeared in its ice bucket.
‘That was quick,’ Molly said brightly.
‘One always tries to anticipate in the hope that someone with exquisite taste will come to luncheon, Miss Ong. Very occasionally, one is rewarded,’ the smarmy bastard replied.
‘One is suitably impressed,’ said Molly with a laugh, not taken in by the sycophantic spiel. Owen removed the bottle to a clatter of ice cubes, napkined it and poured.
‘Nice tight acid structure,’ I noted.
‘Oh, you’ve tasted it, Simon?’ Molly asked.
‘No.’ I glanced at Owen. ‘One learns a bit from one’s friends.’
We ordered our lunch, then clinked glasses. ‘Thanks for agreeing to lunch, Molly. I know you’re busy.’
Molly smiled. ‘Now, let me guess – this is all about that dreadful busybody Karlene Stein and the piece in the paper, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes, but not entirely. Actually it’s about several things – three actually, all of them related.’ I couldn’t mention Mercy B. Lord’s refusal to cooperate with Molly, because she’d warned me that no one must know of our clandestine meeting. I admit, I felt a bit of a fraud when I asked the first question. ‘Have you called Mercy B. Lord, Molly?’
‘Oh, yes, not long after I phoned you.’
‘And?’
‘Well, it was not an entirely successful outcome. I can’t understand the girl. You told me, of course, that the two of you are no longer together, but it seems more than that. She doesn’t strike me as someone who would do something like this out of revenge or spite.’ Molly paused and looked at me. ‘Simon, there was something about her voice. I think she’s frightened.’
‘What, of me?’ I played dumb, just to be on the safe side.
‘No, that’s not the impression I got. But she’s afraid of something, or someone.’
I held my breath, hoping she’d pursue this, but she went off on a tangent.
‘She did say it was your fault for not asking her permission before you entered the painting in the competition. However, I got the distinct feeling that wasn’t why she’d refused. Although, of course, you know the old adage, a woman scorned …’ She paused as if thinking. ‘But I really don’t think so. She explained it was about “face” but wouldn’t elaborate, wouldn’t name names. Awkward, really. I think the Singapore Girl is a good idea, and we need someone like her, with looks and intelligence, someone who knows her way around important people. I’m convinced she’d do a great job.’
‘Well, you may have to think of some other way to promote it,’ I replied. ‘Pity, though. I agree, she’s ideal.’
‘Simply appointing her to the job without the razzamatazz surrounding the portrait – that is, if she’ll accept – isn’t quite the same thing. The Singapore Girl would have made a lovely Tourist Board promotion. The idea was for Long Me and the minister to announce it the day after the awards dinner.’
‘Well, with Mercy B. Lord’s existence in doubt, Hong Kong may want to withdraw the prize. The entry stipulates the subject of the portrait must be real. I guess that could disqualify me.’ I was softening her up nicely for plan B, the back-pocket concept.
Molly looked at me, surprised. ‘Simon, you obviously didn’t see Karlene’s People last night.’
‘No, I was working back at the agency, rendering a layout, and lost track of the time.’
‘Well, an elderly nun named Sister Charity from the St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Mission Orphanage vouched for Mercy B. Lord’s existence and delightfully explained how she got her name. Next to God validating her existence, it doesn’t get any better. Of course the name and the story make her even more charismatic.’ Molly took a sip of wine. ‘No, Simon, the dinner is well and truly on. This morning’s South China Morning Post features your friend Elma Kelly. She must have heard Karlene casting aspersions on your portrait and implying that the subject was possibly a figment of your imagination, and no doubt she’d also seen the article in the Straits Times. Anyhow, she’s waded in and given Karlene a proper serve.’ Molly giggled. ‘Called her “The Television Trollop”! She also had a few well-chosen words to say about irresponsible journalism directed at “Singapore’s leading morning newspaper”, as she terms it. Then she vouched for Mercy B. Lord’s existence, while also lauding your absolute integrity to the high heavens. I imagine that’s all the reassurance the Hong Kong Art Gallery is likely to need.’
Lunch arrived – the brown trout for Molly and a rump steak with pepper sauce for me – and we waited until the waiter had left to talk more. ‘Well,’ I said, leaning back, ‘that’s good to know. I must admit it’s a relief, but it doesn’t solve your problem, does it?’
To be truthful, I wasn’t sure it was a relief. I found myself suddenly experiencing twin emotions – as an artist, I was vindicated; as an ad man with a terrific idea for a promotion, I was defeated. But, much more importantly, it meant Mercy B. Lord wasn’t yet safe. As the Singapore Girl, she would have had quasi-government
protection backed by the promotional campaign. Both would have put real pressure on Beatrice Fong and Sidney Wing not to try anything untoward. Now, with none of this likely to happen, she remained isolated and in a parlous situation, one created entirely by me.
It suddenly struck me that if they decided Mercy B. Lord should go missing, there would never be a better time. In my mind I could hear Beatrice Fong explaining that she simply hadn’t turned up at work, but that she was a big girl with no family to consider, so maybe she had decided to avoid the publicity. My mind ran on feverishly, imagining Beatrice Fong spilling the beans about our affair, which had ended badly, making things quite impossible for her. I could see the evil old bitch cackling to herself after her final querulous complaint that she’d been let down by her ungrateful employee, who had been shown nothing but kindness.
Molly carefully parted the flesh of the trout from its spine and lifted a delicate morsel, holding the fork halfway to her mouth. ‘Yes, it makes things awkward. It’s a promotion made in heaven and I was so sure she’d love the job. She’s certainly made for it. Ten years ago I would have walked over hot coals for the same opportunity. It’s more than an opportunity, it’s a career.’
‘Did you explain it to her?’
‘Of course, but I got no reaction, other than that it was impossible for her to attend the dinner or even make herself known as the model for “Thursday Girl”.’
‘But she didn’t say directly, “Molly, I don’t want your job,” not plainly like that?’
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