FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  Cecil Sidebottom, the third, almost invisible male at the table, said very little and fidgeted constantly with the starched wing collar of his evening shirt. It was obviously too tight, and every minute or so he inserted his forefinger down beside his Adam’s apple and cleared his throat. The rasping glottal sounds were to be his major contribution to the conversation until much later in the evening, when, sufficiently pissed, he allowed me to convince him to remove the stud and loosen the offending collar. It sprang open as if grateful for the release and, held by the stud at the back of his neck, a glossy wingtip rested on either shoulder. Mrs Sidebottom’s pursed lips whenever she glanced at him didn’t augur well for later, when they were alone in their hotel room. A Sidebottom did not let down the side.

  Sylvia Sidebottom, flashing her new teeth, had greeted me with ‘Lovely, lovely, Simon. We’d never have been invited to a posh do like this when we lived in Hong Kong. Just a notch or two above our reach.’

  ‘Mine too,’ I confessed.

  ‘Oh, I can’t believe that. Your mother seems completely at home,’ which was, of course, an accurate observation. Chairman Meow hadn’t taken a backward step, and, while dressed in the best possible taste, she was a highly noticeable shimmer among the glitterati.

  Thus, at the artist’s table at the grand start to the evening were: Mesdames Battle Cruiser Kelly, the diminutive Full-frontal Flashing Fanged Sidebottom, the Elegant Chairman Meow aka Mum, and the pretty one-time Miss Singapore – Molly the Ong-trepreneur, as Long Me Saw had appropriately dubbed her. Of the men, one was drinking brandy on an empty stomach, one was pissed and barefoot, and one was slowly choking to death but staving off his premature demise with ice and water as a lubricant. This left two potential non-combatants, Mercy B. Lord and myself. Except that she was missing from the action.

  Chairman Meow had arrived on the afternoon plane from Australia on the pre-ordained Thursday, and by the time we left for Hong Kong on Saturday morning, a tailor in Orchard Road had delivered a single-breasted evening suit with all the trimmings; two dress shirts, both with starched fronts, one of them with detachable wing-tipped collar, the other with a normal turn-down collar; two bow ties, one tied, the other not; hose and patent-leather evening shoes. She’d also brought a set of my dad’s tiny gold-nugget shirt studs and cufflinks, and just in case I objected to wearing so ostentatious a display, she’d handed them to me with the comment, ‘A gift from your dad. Count yourself lucky, Simon. I had to stop him from giving you the de Beer’s specials, the ones set with diamonds with matching cufflinks and signet ring.’

  Hong Kong Chinese women of wealth are seldom overweight and even in their sixties carry few wrinkles. The majority are among the best-dressed, most sophisticated and good-looking guests it is possible to gather en masse under one roof. Discounting for a moment the heavyweights in body, mind or spirit, like Elma Kelly, the governor’s wife, Lady Trench, and a clutch of the other top British colonial civil service wives – all, with few exceptions, less than resplendent in weary satin evening dresses – the foyer contained a turnout far worthier than any I was entitled to expect. But it was meat and drink for Chairman Meow’s naturally competitive nature and very much to her liking.

  She wore the Dior gown she’d previously described on the phone and flashed more diamond points than a gang of kids carrying sparklers on Guy Fawkes night. If I’d managed to conceal our extreme wealth from everyone since coming to Singapore, my cover was finally and irretrievably blown. This was one slim, elegant, attractive and sophisticated woman, and the number of carats she wore would not be lost on the audience, most of whom assessed their social equals, inferiors or betters by the outward display of their wealth. The fact that the tai-pan Long Me Saw sat at our table would, according to Elma Kelly, undoubtedly add to her credit as a woman of influence and become an instant passport to acceptance. Elma had called me aside. ‘My dear boy, you have been hopelessly trumped by your mater. This is Hong Kong and I’m afraid the mysterious Phyllis Koo who speaks Cantonese with an Australian accent is going to be the centre of speculation all night.’ She drew her head back as if examining me in an entirely new light. ‘I say, Simon! How on earth did you manage to conceal all this from us? Particularly the Chinese mandarins, who keep a close eye on the wealthy, wherever they originate.’

  I laughed. ‘One look at me should answer your question, Elma. The first time I entered Sidney Wing’s office, he said to Johnny in Cantonese, assuming I wouldn’t understand, “He looks like a Chinese peasant,” to which Johnny replied, “And that’s the way we’ll treat him!” ’

  Elma laughed. ‘More fool them. Well done, Simon. No spoilt little rich boy, eh? You’ve taken the Wings on the chin, served out your time and now you can tell them to sod off! I can’t tell you how pleased I am we are friends. Your lack of presumption is what attracted me to you in the first instance, but had I known your family background I would probably have avoided you. How foolish, but one is always rather wary of people one believes were raised with the proverbial silver spoon stuck halfway down their oesophagus. I count myself fortunate not to have made so gauche a mistake.’

  It was quite the nicest compliment. Elma then went on to say, ‘The press is being allowed in for the official unveiling, and it wouldn’t surprise me if your dear mama doesn’t upstage us all. That canary diamond dragon brooch she’s wearing simply defies description. But I can see she’s not simply la grande dame but a woman of real spunk as well.’ She smiled. ‘After all, she raised you, dear boy. I shall enjoy getting to know her.’

  With my cover blown, it at once became obvious that the 1969 Hong Kong Museum of Art International Portraiture Prize wasn’t going to some impoverished painter taking his first step out of an impecunious lifestyle. Alas, there had been so much media speculation since the morning Elma had called to congratulate me that I was pretty worn down by all the kerfuffle, not to mention by the Mercy B. Lord difficulties that had ensued, so that little personal excitement remained for me. My most ardent wish would have been to rise from the table when I was called to the podium to receive the prize and turn to Mercy B. Lord seated beside me, taking her hand and lifting her to her feet. Then we’d walk onto the stage together. I’d rehearsed the scene in my head a dozen times. Her surprise, perhaps reluctance, the little assertive tug it might take. Now that fantasy only added to my disquiet: I’d submitted the painting without Mercy B. Lord’s approval, I’d embarrassed her and compromised her, and it looked as if Chairman Meow would steal the limelight that rightly belonged to my beloved, who should have been the centre of attention and who wasn’t even present.

  When we’d arrived at the Peninsula on Saturday morning, instead of Mercy B. Lord waiting for us, having arrived earlier, we found a note in our suite addressed to me recording an earlier telephone call from her. I had immediately become concerned. The neatly typed note was obviously dictated over the phone and contained no endearments:

  Dear Simon,

  I have been unavoidably delayed on business, but hope to be in Hong Kong in time for the awards dinner.

  Mercy B. Lord

  It didn’t sound a bit like Mercy B. Lord. I hadn’t told my mum about our reconciliation, wanting to save the surprise for when they met face-to-face, so when she questioned me about the note I replied that it was excellent news. Mercy B. Lord had sent a message to say she hoped to be at the awards dinner and to keep a place for her at the table.

  ‘Oh, Simon, how lovely. I shall greatly look forward to meeting her. I brought the diamond pendants just in case.’

  ‘Mum, promise not to fuss, I told you …’

  ‘Yes, yes, dear, I know you two are not together. I’ve had several days to get over that particular disappointment. But she’s a beautiful woman, she honoured you by allowing you to paint her, and she deserves to wear diamonds, if only for one glorious and forever to be remembered evening.’

  ‘Mum, I’m not at all sure she’ll agree. She may not even be able to make it to the dinner.’ I waved
the note. ‘It says she’ll try to be there.’

  ‘But why, my dear? What could possibly be sufficiently important to keep her away? Surely for a young woman this is an occasion that could well be the most important she’ll ever experience? One she’ll recall in her dotage.’

  ‘Mum, I can’t answer that. The note – and it’s only a telephone message – says that she’s delayed on business. I simply have no idea where she is or why.’ I smiled. ‘Let’s just hope she gets here.’ I moved over to a wastepaper basket situated under a genuine (or, if not, a bloody good imitation) antique Louis XV–XVI transition writing desk. Tearing the note into tiny pieces, I dropped them into the basket.

  ‘Mum, all I know is that once a week she travels beyond Singapore. I don’t know where or why, but she’s obviously been delayed and has very courteously let me know.’ So far I’d navigated around the note without having to fib. Looking Chairman Meow aka Mum in the eye required a pristine conscience or I’d register on her PSS – Prime Suspect Sniffometer, as we’d called it as kids.

  The dinner part of the evening was all but over, with only the presentation to come. On our table it had been a rowdy affair, and it was apparent that the four women had taken a great deal of pleasure in gathering intimate details about each other that, had they been males, might have taken months or years to accumulate. At any given time, two conversations were taking place at once. Women have an extraordinary knack of listening to two disparate conversations simultaneously and partaking of each, dipping in and out without losing the drift of either. In the hour it took to serve and finish dinner, the list of topics discussed by the women was, in no particular order, as follows: hippies, long hair, beards, sideburns (everyone agreed they looked awful, neither one thing nor the other), ghastly bellbottom pants, tie-dyed shirts, marijuana and LSD. They then moved on to husbands, sport, dancing, quilting, recipes, cooking, diet, animals, servants, lemon juice for cleaning jewellery, fashion, make-up (face powder was on the way out), the end of the beehive hairdo, dressmakers, mothers who had once darned socks, children, and youth going to hell in a hand-basket. What was interesting was that Elma and Molly were single, and Mrs Sidebottom confessed that she and Cecil had tried but failed to have children, although the way she said it suggested that the trying was in fact very trying and after a while they hadn’t really bothered. Only Phyllis Koo could claim any experience of parenthood. But they’d still discussed in an animated way all these topics, and if they could not draw on personal experience, they had observed friends or relations. The conversation seemed to serve as a means of establishing backgrounds, states of mind, experience and points of view, and functioned as the introduction to a deeper dialogue. Nor did I sense that any one item was more important than another – that is, until they reached the subject of men, whereupon the level of animation increased noticeably.

  Conjugal bliss received short shrift. Elma’s sailor boy bobbed up and then disappeared under the waves, and while there was no comment on Cecil’s efforts, Mrs Sidebottom’s sniff at the very mention of male contributions to life said it all. Molly Ong claimed that, while she’d known ‘a few’ men in her time, she could only remember enjoying, present company excepted, two in particular: a Frenchman and an Italian, but she didn’t elaborate. Chairman Meow admitted she’d enjoyed making kids but said very little more about my dad’s contribution to her nocturnal activities. There then followed a discussion about the pill and how the present generation of young women would be a lot better adjusted now that they possessed the ability to train their male partners as to their needs without the spectre of marriage or the fear of pregnancy. Elma, predictably, had the last say on the topic. ‘Splendid idea, lots of jolly good bonking before marriage makes Susan a wiser and happier gal, what.’

  By far the most interesting topic turned out to be the inadequacy, incompetency and downright stupidity of men outside the bedroom. There were numerous examples given of all three characteristics but the interesting part was hearing the basis for them. This discussion was the only one that interested the men at the table, and despite Long Me’s cognac bottle reaching the halfway point, he, in particular, seemed fascinated by this rarely expressed female point of view. It was a revelation few males could ever have heard, and was possibly due to the champagne the femmes were steadily imbibing.

  Elma told of being a prisoner of war and how, as a woman, she could make demands on the Japanese commandant that the British male prisoners were either too frightened, too proud or too racist to make or even consider making.

  Mrs Sidebottom described how women were able to break the German and Italian secret codes simply by understanding how the male brain worked. As she pointed out, it wasn’t a very sophisticated process and she could never understand why the Germans, Italians and Japanese hadn’t employed women to create their codes.

  Molly talked about the beauty pageant industry and how the men in charge treated the girls like bovine creatures and toys, pretty dolls. ‘In bed by nine unless in bed with them’ was how she wittily put it. How they, the male minders, were constantly being hoodwinked, sometimes unknowingly dancing with their charges, who, with a change of make-up and a blonde wig, could dance away the night in the same nightclub until two in the morning.

  But it was Chairman Meow who stole the show on this topic, when she explained the principles behind negotiating with men in the boardroom, pointing out that all men by their very nature are competitive animals and so likely to disagree on just about anything. By listening to every point of view and taking from it what was cogent, then reformulating it into a policy of her own that she could then get her husband to deliver, she’d almost always get her own way. ‘It’s like panning for gold – you have to discard a lot of male rubbish while trying not to damage their egos in the process.’ She’d concluded by saying, ‘With men it’s always about “face” gained through innovation; with women it’s always about “about face”, doing it by looking first at the result you want to achieve and then working backwards to implement it.’ According to Chairman Meow, women understand that originality is almost always dangerous in business. It is far better to find a successful example that has worked previously and then improve on it than to rush ahead with some male-inspired brainwave. At the conclusion of her speech, Long Me Saw invited her to sit on the board of Golden Future Films, the movie company he ran with his brother Long Long Saw.

  While all this was going on, and excluding the discussion involving the inadequacies of men in general, the four men at the table discussed the 1968 Ashes tour, and the qualities of Hennessy XO cognac and why it was the brand most wealthy Chinese preferred. Long Me expanded on this at some length and, I confess, told us more than I personally needed to know about brandy. For instance, did you know that the best cognac is made from a blend of over forty eaux de vies (the product of the second distillation of wine) from various regions of Cognac in France? The wine itself tastes awful, but when boiled and distilled and given a few years of age in French Limousin oak, the end product is spectacular. XO (Extra Old), the cognac Long Me was drinking, must be at least six years old and is usually matured for fifteen years. We also discussed why golf was becoming increasingly popular among the wealthy Japanese and Chinese businessmen, and Dansford, who even when drunk was seldom boring, for once bored us – or me, anyway – to the bootstraps with a long diatribe on why baseball and not cricket suits the American psyche, although, come to think of it, he had to sit through what was for him equally tedious stuff about cricket.

  I guess I may well have been more interested in the men’s conversation had I not been distracted. Throughout dinner I kept an eye on the entrance to the ballroom in the vain hope that Mercy B. Lord might suddenly appear in her black cheongsam and red shoes. The idea of walking up to the stage to receive my award from the governor was beginning to fill me with dread. One fundamental question was beginning to preoccupy me: if Mercy B. Lord was missing and didn’t turn up and if she hadn’t returned home when I got back to Singa
pore, how was I to find her? Where would I begin to look? I’d barely touched the food on my plate and had drunk only a solitary beer, yet my stomach was churning and I felt ill with anxiety.

  I glanced up at the stage for the umpteenth time, my hand going to my jacket pocket to feel the tiny leather case that held the gold chisel. Patel & Son had done a splendid job and the result was exquisite. My portrait had been suspended on two wires that dropped some fifty feet from the ceiling and then concealed behind a beautiful screen comprising four frames or sections, each representing a season. The section nearest our table represented autumn – a painting of migrating cranes flying high above an autumnal Chinese landscape that was far superior to anything I could ever hope to paint. When they removed the screen to reveal my portrait, this visual feast would, paradoxically, become at once a famine. I wondered if anyone in the audience would sense the irony. I cringed inwardly at the thought of standing beside my painting while the flashlights popped and the television cameras rolled, and thereafter making a short speech expressing my gratitude, while all I could think about was the whereabouts of the living subject of that misbegotten picture.

  My imagination was beginning to run riot. With Beatrice Fong in KL and Sidney in Florida, what better time was there for Mercy B. Lord to appear to have absconded while, in truth, she’d been captured and held against her will? The note had been too offhand, too deliberate. The very least she would have done was to have ended it with a simple endearment … love, missing you, even looking forward to being there, not just the unadorned ‘Mercy B. Lord’. After listening to the women’s conversation around the table, I became convinced the note had been composed and delivered by a man.