FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  The dreaded moment finally arrived and the chief curator climbed the steps to the stage. A murmur of excitement rose from the guests as the ballroom doors opened to welcome the media, a contingent of some twenty people armed to the teeth with Nagra reel-to-reel recorders strapped over their shoulders, microphones in hand, and cameras and TV film cameras. Karlene Stein, with cameraman and sound guy in tow, was there, as well as a camera crew using 35-millimetre film and bearing the Saw movie empire logo, Golden Future Films.

  I knew that Molly would have responded to my invitation whether it had been business-related or not, but it was unlikely Long Me Saw would have done so. Nevertheless, he could easily have left the whole thing to the very capable Molly Ong, so his agreeing to come was a personal compliment, one of which Chairman Meow could never have imagined her son worthy. But, to be truthful, when all was said and done, he’d essentially come for the sake of Singapore. Mercy B. Lord’s presence and her association with the portrait was to be a grand kick-start to a very big promotion, and he, as well as Molly, would want lots of footage for the publicity to launch the Singapore Girl. Both Molly and Long Me had hinted that there was something else of importance in the pipeline that would involve the promotion.

  It was clear that an immediate crisis loomed. With Mercy B. Lord missing, the Singapore Girl concept and the promotion depending on it would not happen. The television crew he’d arranged, probably at personal expense, would be wasted, and he needn’t have been present. Long Me Saw wasn’t the sort of man you disappointed. Monday at the agency promised to be a rough ride. Long Me had every right to be furious about Mercy B. Lord’s absence. Molly Ong would have egg on her face as well.

  I glanced at them both in turn, but neither seemed unduly worried. I’d mentioned the note to Molly at the cocktail party, warning her it looked as if Mercy B. Lord would be arriving late, but she seemed unperturbed. ‘Oh, I’m sure it will be fine, Simon.’ I remember thinking I hadn’t the courage to explain that Mercy B. Lord might not appear at all. I was packing it, big-time! There seemed to be trouble on all sides, but the idea that something might have happened to my beloved was the worst of the looming disasters.

  The slightly effete curator Elma had mentioned on a previous occasion, acting as the master of ceremonies, made a speech that now, in my rising anxiety, I barely heard. He then called on the governor to award the prize. Sir David Trench now stood at the podium acknowledging the crowd’s applause. Shit, shit, shit – concentrate, Simon! He’s going to call you up at any moment. Smile!

  The governor of Hong Kong made a short witty speech about the views he’d earlier expressed to me on beauty versus craggy character, much to the delight of the dinner guests, then added that all daughters should be painted at twenty-one and not, as usually happens, when they are perhaps past the first flush of beauty, while all men should be painted at the age of forty before they lose the capacity to attract the interest of a twenty-one-year-old woman. (Laughter.) He then drew everyone’s attention to the splendid new facilities for the arts and called me to the stage. I looked over at a beaming Chairman Meow and I think she was about to burst with pride as the entire room applauded. Elma, Mrs Sidebottom and Molly seemed just as pleased for me.

  I cast one last wishful glance at the ballroom door in the hope that a miracle would occur and Mercy B. Lord would appear as if by magic, then arranged my mouth into a fixed smile (more a rictus than a smile) and tried to prepare myself for what was to come. The applause ended as I reached the podium and stood beside Sir David Trench, with my back to the beautiful Chinese screen that concealed my own inadequate effort.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, as governor of Hong Kong and chairman of the Arts Council, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Singapore artist Mr Simon Koo to the stage to receive his gold medal and cheque as the winner of the 1969 Hong Kong International Portraiture Prize,’ the governor announced, then he nodded in the direction of the bandstand. A sustained drum roll began as the beautiful Chinese screen somehow folded into a single piece and lifted off the stage and was pulled up into the ceiling. How this was done I shall never know, so great was my shock. My portrait hung suspended no more than a foot above the stage, and next to it was a peacock-tail chair identical to the one I’d painted. Seated motionless within it was Mercy B. Lord, wearing the black cheongsam and red shoes, mirroring the pose of the portrait.

  The guests started to yell and clap and leap to their feet, and the media rushed forward as I stood like a stunned mullet, sudden tears welling then running willy-nilly down my face. The orchestra struck up a fanfare of some sort as Mercy B. Lord rose slowly and walked towards me, smiling and with her arms outstretched. There must have been at least 300 people in the ballroom, all cheering, but I was oblivious to the cameras, flashlights, the media, the guests, and even Sir David, as I took her into my arms and kissed her.

  I don’t remember much about the rest of the presentation. Sir David handed me a medal and an envelope, and I gave a short, sniffingly tearful speech, no doubt making a perfect fool of myself, although people would later say it was enormously moving – not the speech, but the tears and sniffs and my obvious love for Mercy B. Lord.

  What followed was a media scrum where questions were hurled at us from all sides, microphones were shoved into our faces, and cameras rolled. I tried to field the questions, while Mercy B. Lord just smiled graciously, answering in monosyllables – that is, until the Saw Golden Future camera crew approached, whereupon she was suddenly animated, answering questions as one soon to be known as the Singapore Girl might be expected to do. Molly had picked the right girl. Mercy B. Lord was tailor-made for the role. For Karlene’s People, she fielded some difficult questions and some very personal ones, and was far more gracious than I would have been in the same situation. The press then scattered and headed for the various dignitaries, my table with Long Me Saw being a prime target. Someone must have alerted the reporters to the mysterious artist’s mother. Protesting her embarrassment (ha ha), Chairman Meow was soon surrounded by reporters and camera crews.

  When Mercy B. Lord and the boy hero finally made it back to the table, Chairman Meow aka Mum burst into tears. She stood and embraced Mercy B. Lord, clasping her to her bosom, and in between the blubs she kept repeating, ‘Oh, oh … You came from behind Little Sparrow’s screen!’ which made no sense to anyone but me. She was, of course, referring to the time Little Sparrow sat behind the screen during the banquet to recount Ah Koo’s dream to the Triad Dragon Master in Sydney, nearly a hundred years previously.

  Three bottles of vintage Cristal miraculously appeared on the table with nine clean champagne glasses, and Dansford lost no time popping the corks. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Long Me Saw got to his feet, a tribute to his constitution, as the bottle of cognac was now two-thirds empty. He’d been fairly quiet for most of the evening but now, with everyone’s glasses charged, he stood and said, ‘I should like to propose a toast.’ Then, lifting his glass, he continued: ‘Here’s to great beauty, and to those who have the gift to translate it onto canvas so that the gift remains forever young and wonderful. Simon and Mercy B. Lord, we wish you both a long and happy life.’ Male cheers and female tears followed, and Cecil declared he hadn’t been as moved since the completion of his first all-steel bridge.

  But the evening proved far from over. The orchestra was waiting for the governor’s party to depart when Dansford suddenly upped and crossed the ballroom on his bare feet, sat down at the Steinway and began to play and sing. He opened with ‘Lovesick Blues’, the honky tonk number by Hank Williams. The governor remained seated, which meant the guests were obliged to do the same. The orchestra happily joined Dansford while he performed what was a truly varied and amazing repertoire, from honky tonk to comic opera, including, for the benefit of the Brits, ‘The Major-General’s Song’ from The Pirates of Penzance. Judging by the ovation after each number, remaining for the impromptu concert hadn’t proved to be an inconvenience for the guests.

  An h
our later the governor’s party left, but not before Sir David had come over to the bandstand microphone to congratulate Dansford, noting that he’d seldom enjoyed an official engagement as much and offering to buy him a pair of shoes out of the government house maintenance budget – ‘I’ll put it down as “Running Repairs”,’ he said, to much laughter. Dansford Drocker had pulled it off once again. The guests left smiling, obviously having very much enjoyed his spontaneous performance.

  With Mercy B. Lord at my side, my life seemed complete. In fact, I couldn’t recall any time when I had been so happy, elated, content or wonderfully at peace with myself. It also allowed me now to do something I’d planned all along. Much to the joy of ‘she of the signs and portents’, the inestimable Chairman Meow, who’d finally stopped sniffling over the screen incident or coincidence, depending on how you looked at it, I gave the tiny box containing the gold chisel to Mercy B. Lord. Then I handed her my winner’s cheque. ‘Mercy B. Lord, this is yours to give to Sister Charity at the St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Mission Orphanage with my sincere thanks for nurturing and raising the single most beautiful woman I shall ever have the joy of knowing.’ Tears flowed from all the women, with even Elma allowing a tear or two to escape.

  I can’t say it had been an easy evening, though it had certainly been a momentous one, and later Mercy B. Lord, realising what I had been through, apologised in the nicest possible way by waiting until Chairman Meow was asleep in our three-bedroom suite, then tapping softly on my door. In bed, she explained how Molly and Long Me Saw had arranged to meet her to discuss the needs of the promotion, both having arrived on the flight before the one we’d taken. ‘Simon, they promised they’d let you know, but Long Me Saw insisted that he wanted the surprise to be caught on camera, so he didn’t want me to leave a note for you. He promised he’d leave one himself.’ She looked up at me solemnly. ‘Darling, I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault. Knowing how you would feel, I should have had the courage to insist you were told I’d arrived in Hong Kong!’

  I hugged her to me, forgiving her instantly. ‘I can think of nobody in Singapore except for Lee Kuan Yew who would be sufficiently game to go against Long Me Saw’s wishes.’

  We made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms, and, somewhat to our mutual embarrassment, were awakened by the sun streaming through the curtains and a beaming Chairman Meow aka Mum standing over us holding a tray bearing a teapot, milk, sugar and two cups. ‘I’m about to order breakfast, my dears. What do you fancy?’ she asked, with a would-be mother-in-law smile I’d never seen her wear before.

  Chairman Meow returned to Australia and Mercy B. Lord and I returned to Singapore. The Hong Kong Sunday papers did a special Sunday supplement on the awards dinner, the South China Morning Post declaring ‘The Barefoot Maestro’s Concert’ a wonderfully fitting end to a momentous evening. The paper’s art critic also commended the chief curator for his brilliantly subtle and innovative example of living contemporary art – ‘Naked Feet in Evening Dress’. There was also a special insert about the guests, featuring at the centre the portrait with the living subject posed beside it. It would be used in all the regional newspapers for the next week, and even made the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Australia, and eventually Tatler and The Times in the UK.

  Karlene’s People devoted the entire Monday-night show to the awards dinner and asked me for a live interview, but I’d had enough of KS and her entire carry-on, as well as being the centre of attention, so I declined. Molly, sensing the opportunity to get Mercy B. Lord great exposure on nationwide TV before the announcement, couldn’t let the opportunity slip. She’d decided, for obvious reasons, to appoint her initial Singapore Girl without the competition, although she intended to have one a year later to select the next girl. The grand finale of the show (the tear jerker and Molly’s idea) was Mercy B. Lord presenting the portrait prize cheque to Sister Charity for the St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Mission Orphanage.

  I must say, we both thought this somewhat on the nose, or as Chairman Meow might have remarked, ‘lacking in good taste’. But there’s the rub. As an ad man, had the same thing happened to someone else, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take the opportunity, pretty well regardless of any of the personal feelings of the participants. This was ‘what’s good for the goose is good for the gander’ stuff. I hated to admit it, but this was top-notch thinking. It ticked all the boxes and possessed all the ingredients for prime-time TV – the orphan who had grown up to be a stunningly beautiful young woman, the grizzled old Irish nun who had found her on the doorstep and named her in that wonderful exclamatory way, the artist who fell in love and painted her to win an international prize for her portrait and then gave her his winner’s cheque, which she gave to the orphanage as a token of her gratitude to the nuns who had raised her.

  While we both realised it could be seen as publicity-seeking self-glorification and therefore in poor taste, I’d been well and truly hoist with my own petard. All I could do was refuse to be involved personally. In fact, all I wanted to do was find a quiet place to hide away from the limelight. While beautiful women belong in front of a camera, tree stumps don’t.

  Of course the presentation of the cheque to Sister Charity turned out to be a tremendous tear-jerker, one of those seminal TV moments people recall months or years later. Overnight, Mercy B. Lord became the toast of Singapore. Karlene Stein had a moment in the international spotlight, and the Hong Kong International Portraiture Prize received brief coverage on the weekly BBC art show. Some weeks later, we received, care of the Tourist Promotion Board, a letter on Vatican letterhead personally thanking us for our donation.

  If it did nothing else, the media flurry placed Singapore in the minds of millions and clearly demonstrated the enormous emerging power of television. The ‘Ong-trepreneur’ was perfectly set up for the launch of her Singapore Girl promotion and Molly consolidated herself as a publicist of extraordinary ability. If the whole thing was in doubtful taste, one really good thing did come out of it. Mercy B. Lord was, by virtue of her immediate fame, someone the Fong and Wing conglomerate couldn’t just expunge without some very severe repercussions in very high places. Singapore wasn’t a country where you shat on your own doorstep and hoped you could get away with it. Both Fong and Wing, I felt sure, had much too much to lose to contemplate doing her any personal mischief.

  I returned to work the Monday after the awards dinner, but only to wind up my accounts and prepare to hand over to my replacement. Sidney Wing had returned from Florida and Beatrice Fong from Kuala Lumpur, and Mercy B. Lord went back to work, but simply to wind up her job with the Beatrice Fong Agency before taking on the role of the Singapore Girl. She would become the new face of Singapore, a young woman who would promote tourism and business conventions for a year.

  Mercy B. Lord, whether defying Beatrice Fong and Sidney Wing I can’t say, moved in with me permanently, transferring her possessions to my flat the day we returned to Singapore. But, alas, despite the prospect of her new job, she insisted Thursdays remain sacrosanct. Quite how Molly Ong would arrange her schedule I didn’t know, but she was obviously prepared to work around those two days. Clearly Molly was very impressed with her choice of Singapore Girl, and the publicity and enormous public approbation following Mercy B. Lord’s appointment probably made it worth allowing her to take two days away from her duties each week. Through Molly’s government-backed inquiries, I now knew Mercy B. Lord flew to Thailand each week, however, inquiries about the contents of the briefcase were less successful. The minister in charge of customs and excise simply informed her that the information was officially unavailable.

  In a quiet moment at the awards dinner Molly had told me, ‘Simon, I daren’t take it any further. This is not a matter of corruption in high places – it’s something more than that. The warning was very explicit. I was hauled up in front of the minister and told in no uncertain terms to keep my nose clean. I daren’t make any further inquiries.’

  I was now more than a
little confused. What in the name of Christ was going on? Was the woman I loved someone I didn’t even know, concealing a secret life I could never be part of? Suspicion is ghastly. It erodes confidence, trust and belief while giving rise to nefarious speculation. Mercy B. Lord had never lied to me, but had instead simply forbade any questions. There had been no denials, no confrontations, no explanations, simply silence. I was effectively shut out of everything for two days a week – nearly a third of her life. I loved her with every fibre of my being, I wanted her forever, but how could I accept these conditions? Plainly it was impossible and she must have known this. Why then did she continue to say she loved me? Why had she now ostensibly defied Beatrice Fong and Sidney Wing and moved in with me, but still insisted on keeping Thursdays sacrosanct? Perhaps I should have kept her at arm’s length, told her that unless she came clean it was all over, but I loved her too much. And I had become convinced that whatever she was involved in as a courier, it wasn’t a decision she could make herself. The only thing that could be said about the entire ghastly scenario was that she obviously wasn’t with me for the financial gain. She now knew about my family’s great wealth, and yet even that made no impression on her determination to control her own life. I had on only one occasion suggested that we might one day be married. She hadn’t objected or explained but had simply ignored the suggestion and taken me to bed. I had long since learned that Mercy B. Lord was a very strong-minded woman, but this silent refusal to budge was clearly non-negotiable.

  Suspicion takes one into dark corners, and I began to wonder if there was some other agenda going on, if Mercy B. Lord was part of a conspiracy involving me. Perhaps my family’s wealth had been known all along and I’d deluded myself that, until recently, I’d been incognito, just some shit-kicking creative director with a bit of ambition spending time in Asia, trying to build his career. Which was true enough. What was it Elma had said? ‘The Chinese mandarins keep a close eye on the wealthy, wherever they originate.’