As Shannon had anticipated, Hal had been unable to get away, although she doubted he’d tried very hard.
‘I’ve been out of the picture for years now,’ he’d said. ‘I’m happy to leave it all to you.’
They had their discussion in a room with big windows looking out at the sea. There were plenty of chairs and everyone sat where they liked. It was pleasant to do this and avoid the formality of a boardroom meeting where everyone sat around a long table and looked serious. Shannon liked the casual approach much better. It was more in the nature of a conversation than a meeting but this did not prevent them from making the decisions that had to be made. By the end of the meeting, several things had been agreed.
Mr Tan was pulling out, his health giving him no choice.
The assets of both groups would be professionally valued and transferred to a holding company whose shares would be allocated to the families on the basis of the valuation.
Shannon would become CEO, making use of the divisional heads they already had.
Madeleine would resign to join her husband, Clement Soong, who had been invited to Beijing to carry out research on the voyages of the great Chinese navigator Cheng Ho and the possibility they had extended further west than anyone had previously suspected.
Jess, Erica and Andrew would join the board.
‘It will be up to you to decide where the consortium’s headquarters should be,’ Mr Tan said, ‘but I would suggest that a group whose future is likely to be focused more closely on Asia might be better served by having its base in Asia rather than Proserpine.’
Shannon thought about it. The sugar division would obviously stay where it was but, where the group’s other assets were concerned, there could be no argument. Singapore would be a far more logical hub. But she wasn’t prepared to commit the others without talking it over with them.
‘I’ll get back to you on that,’ she said.
Mr Tan was confined to the house but that night Shannon, Jess, Andrew and Erica went out for a meal at an up-market restaurant in Holland Village. They had chili crab and a little wine and then some more wine and then a little more. Everyone had a great time and it was quite late when the four of them got back to their hotel.
The next day Shannon and Jess flew to Hong Kong. They sat next to each other. They did not talk about the previous day’s meeting with Mr Tan or about business at all but chatted and gossiped. It was great to have the time to do that when they were mates as well as sisters who did not see each other as much as they would have wished. When they parted at Kai Tak airport Shannon asked the question she always asked at the end of conversations like the one they’d just had.
‘How’s the love life?’
‘Spasmodic,’ Jess said. ‘Very spasmodic.’
Jess
On Friday 10 November 1978 Jess took a weekend off. Apart from the visit to Singapore, it was the first time she’d been away from the restaurant since it opened.
She went to the floating restaurants at Aberdeen where she picked the one she fancied and had a meal in the company of a French naval officer whom she’d met by chance the previous evening at the Lotus Flower. The Frenchman’s name was Louis Durand.
‘Louis is the name of many French kings,’ he said.
‘I thought the best-known French king was Napoleon.’
‘Napoleon was an Italian. An Italian and a fraud.’
He was very fierce and nationalistic about it and she thought he was cute.
‘Why a fraud?’
‘He lost his last battle and died on St Helena. He did much damage to France. He was a complete fraud.’
He allowed her to order for them, which was unusual for a Frenchman, because he said that, being in charge of a Chinese restaurant, she must know more about Chinese cooking than he did, which was even more unusual for a Frenchman, or indeed any man.
She ordered five dishes, all of which were delicious. Afterwards she went back to her place off Cotton Tree Drive, where they made love.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked before taking off her clothes.
He stared at her in amazement. ‘Of course I’m sure. Why ever not?’
‘Because I am fifty-one, not twenty-one.’
‘A mature woman has much to offer,’ he said.
He must have thought so because they spent a mutually enjoyable evening which they repeated the following day. The morning after that he went back to his ship and she to the Lotus Flower, feeling pleasantly relaxed and eager to get back to work.
But during the day her mood shifted. She’d had a good time with the Frenchman but had not expected to see him again or think of him beyond a few pleasing memories, yet now she found herself thinking of him. She felt lonely and wished she knew of some way to contact him. Or, better still, for him to contact her, because, if he did, she would definitely know he wanted to see her again.
He could find her at the Lotus Flower, if he wanted to, and she kept an eye out for him all evening but he didn’t come.
Two days later, when she’d more or less written him off, he turned up.
1982
Shannon
The lift swept Shannon up to the Shaw Centre’s twenty-fifth floor. There was no one else in the lift, which made it easier for her to concentrate on what she was planning to say at the forthcoming meeting. She had summoned it at short notice as soon as she had heard from Beijing and was convinced it would prove to be not only her swan-song but one of the most significant developments of her career.
Madeleine Tan had flown in the previous evening, as had Jess. They would be joining Andrew, Erica and herself in the executive suite with its views over Singapore’s rapidly expanding skyline. She had tried to get Hal to come to the meeting but he had declined, as she had known he would.
‘But you should be there,’ she’d said. ‘You have a huge financial stake in the business.’
‘I’ve been out of it for years. I have absolute faith in you, as you know. Whatever decisions you make will be fine by me.’
Following the discussion with Madeleine’s late father back in 1978, they had moved the group’s head offices to Singapore in 1980. She had never regretted the move but, as she grew closer to the end of her career, she found herself spending more and more time back in Proserpine. Soon it would be time for the next generation to take over. Hal had told her he planned to step down whenever the premier called the next election and she had promised him, once again, that she, too, would retire when she reached sixty-five.
One year to go. It was a sobering thought.
At least, with this latest news, there was a good chance she would go out with a bang.
The lift sighed to a stop. The doors opened. Shannon stepped out into the tastefully decorated foyer of the executive floor.
‘This is not a council of war,’ Shannon said. ‘Call it rather a council of adventure, of the future. Madeleine through her contacts in Beijing and in her capacity as chair of the Tan Family trust, has come up with this opportunity. The rest of you – Jess, Andrew and Erica – are the future. And it is the future that we need to think about now.
‘Eight years ago, I made the decision to invest in Hong Kong. I took a calculated risk. If things had gone wrong with Golden Phoenix it might have jeopardised the entire group, but things didn’t go wrong. They went, and are still going, very well indeed.
‘Aaron Davies, the man who persuaded me to invest in Hong Kong, always regarded it as our first step into Asia. I share that view. If circumstances permit, I think now is the time we should consider taking the second step. Madeleine has arranged meetings with some of the top officials in Beijing. Handle things correctly and we may have an opportunity given to few: to help China develop her potential and at the same time profit not only ourselves but the whole world. By all means let us consider the problems and benefits, but at the end of it, unless someone comes up with an insurmountable objection, I shall be asking each of you to commit to that vision. And, since you are the future of this group, I
shall want you all to accompany me to China when I go there.’
The flight from Singapore arrived in Beijing at nine-thirty in the morning. Two official cars were waiting to whisk them through streets crowded with bicycles to their hotel. Buildings were rising everywhere Shannon looked and the city hummed with energy. That afternoon they were taken to the first of a number of exploratory meetings with government officials, who read significance into the fact that Shannon, Jess and Andrew were Australian, Madeleine and Erica Chinese. They made much of their approval; co-operation between East and West was clearly flavour of the month in Beijing.
The officials talked of a vibrant future, of vast developments planned, of the need for foreign expertise and capital. They spoke of plans to form what was to be called the Hong Kong Nuclear Investment Company.
‘Which makes your experience in power generation of great interest to us,’ the chairman of the meeting said. ‘Also in hotel construction and management. Hotels bring tourists and tourists bring money.’
At a reception they met a senior minister who spoke about a new era of co-operation between China and the outside world.
They were taken on conducted tours to the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City, before flying to Shanghai and Shenzhen, where vast industrial development was planned.
A whirlwind tour indeed. At each venue Shannon explained that, while she was for the moment the CEO of the group, she was planning to retire in a year’s time and future negotiations would therefore be conducted by Jess, Andrew and Erica.
‘The next generation,’ she said.
And not before time, Shannon thought. By the time they got back to Singapore she felt a hundred years old.
Shannon celebrated Christmas with Hal, in Proserpine. It was a quiet affair, old fogies smiling at each other across half a century of loving, lovely memories. There was just the two of them, with Abby off with her folks in Wiepa, Andrew and Erica were in Singapore and Jess apparently once again with her Frenchman.
‘That’s an on-again, off-again relationship, if there ever was one,’ Hal said. ‘How many years has it been?’
‘Four. She says he’s retired from the navy and wants to marry her, but he won’t agree to an open marriage.’
‘Quite right too,’ said Hal. ‘She should be faithful to her husband, if she marries him.’
‘Like men are?’
‘Some are.’
‘And some aren’t. Anyway, it’s their affair, not ours.’
‘We’ve had a card from Lydia,’ Shannon said.
‘I saw it. A very florid affair. Probably all she could get in Paraguay. Did she write?’
‘A short note. She says she’s coming to terms with Asuncion.’
She hadn’t offered to show him the letter. He was a wise man and knew that if she’d wanted him to read it she’d have given it to him. She was grateful to him for his understanding because the letter wasn’t short at all and said things that Hal might prefer not to know.
I am so glad you persuaded me to come back to Lyle. I am sure it is much better for both of us. Asuncion is a much nicer city than I expected. It’s one of the oldest cities in South America and is called The Mother of Cities for that reason. It is hot, wet and humid for much of the year, but one gets used to that. Social life is enjoyable and I have even met President Stroessner whom I found delightful and not at all the monster he’s supposed to be. Lyle and I jog along. I have recently become friendly with a major in the Paraguayan army. He is utterly charming and helps to keep me amused. Lyle says nothing. What can he say, after all? A scandal would hurt him more than me and I am still useful to him on the social side. Married to the job: isn’t that what people say?
Well. Utterly self-absorbed, not a word about anyone but herself, even bragging about what was almost certainly a torrid affair with the Paraguayan major. Lydia would never change.
We all have our paths to find in life, Shannon thought. Darling Hal found his in politics, I in business, Jess in the kitchen, Andrew and Erica in each other. And Erica says that now they’re settled in Singapore they’re going to try for a baby. That’ll please her parents, both still resident in Beijing. Crowded and a horrible climate, but it seems to suit them.
All nicely settled, she thought. Retirement beckoned, and she was content that it should be so.
Two days after Christmas she had a phone call from her lawyer to say that Charles Green island, the last unconquered frontier of her life, might be on the market.
1983
Shannon
‘Charles Green island,’ Jess said. ‘I’ve sown the seed with Dermot Black. Now we’ll have to see if it produces any results.’
The line was clear. She might have been in the next room instead of six thousand kilometres away in Hong Kong.
‘I wonder if I should try and contact him myself,’ Shannon said. ‘I’m the one wants the wretched island, after all.’
‘I wouldn’t do that. You’ve got to remember: he’s a strange bloke. A regular hermit. I think any suggestion of a meeting will have to come from him.’
‘We can’t afford to hang about,’ Shannon said. ‘The Hennessys have given me only ten days to improve on Woodcock’s offer.’
‘He knows that. He knows you’re coming to Hong Kong, too.’
‘He understands it’s a routine visit? That I come every month?’
‘I’ve told him. Don’t worry. If he wants to do something about Woodcock I reckon we’ll hear from him in a couple of days.’
‘You think he will want to?’
‘He’s like us. He hates to be beaten.’
‘But what can he do?’
‘That’s the million-dollar question,’ Jess said.
The following day Jess phoned again.
‘We’re on. He says since it’s you who wants the island it makes sense to talk to you. See if you can figure out something between you.’
‘Good news,’ Shannon said. ‘Well done.’
‘When are you coming?’ Jess said.
‘Soon as I can get on the plane.’
The car collected them from the Golden Phoenix: everything as normal.
Jess had briefed Shannon on what Dermot Black was like and how he would probably behave.
‘To begin with he comes across like the creature from the black lagoon but he’s OK when you get to know him.’
As they went up in the private lift Jess asked whether Shannon had ever met him before.
‘I don’t think so. Why d’you ask?’
‘He said something once that made me think you might have known each other some time.’
‘As far as I know I’ve never set eyes on him and he doesn’t sound the sort you’d easily forget,’ Shannon said.
She took a good look at him, all the same, when they went into the apartment, but was no wiser, with his features hidden by the shadows in which he sat.
He waved his hand at two upholstered chairs placed conveniently close to him. They sat down. He had not spoken a word. Silence could be as compelling as speech but Shannon was unperturbed; it was a technique she’d often used herself. She sat and waited, hands folded patiently in her lap.
‘Peter has told me about you.’ His voice creaked. ‘His impression was favourable. He believes we may be able to do business together.’
Peter Hatch, who piloted his own helicopter.
‘I hope so,’ Shannon said.
‘Perhaps you could start by telling me why you are so interested in this particular island.’
‘Personal reasons,’ Shannon said. ‘I could ask you the same question.’
‘I too have a personal reason. As Jess was kind enough to point out to me the other day.’
‘Which is why we’re talking now,’ Shannon said.
‘Indeed. But why does this particular island interest you so much? There are other islands.’
‘This is the one I want. For personal reasons. As I said.’
Dermot must have pressed an unseen bell. A
discreet knock and a Chinese woman wearing a maid’s uniform came in.
‘Coffee for three,’ Dermot said. ‘Or perhaps you would prefer something else? Jasmine tea, perhaps?’
‘Coffee will be fine.’
The maid vanished as quietly as she had come.
‘She is employed by the hotel,’ Dermot said. ‘But I pay her also. Naturally that makes her devoted to me. I find money solves most problems, don’t you agree?’
Shannon saw he was not expecting an answer so said nothing. This was clearly a man who liked to demonstrate his power. Whether over a person or a situation didn’t matter: it was power for its own sake that mattered, and showing others he had it. That might have seemed strange in a hermit but was simply an extension of what Shannon had thought before: that eccentricity, like silence, could be a powerful weapon.
The maid brought the coffee: an antique silver pot on an antique silver tray. Wealth, too, demonstrated power. She filled the cups and went out.
‘We both wish to prevent Harley Woodcock from acquiring the island,’ Dermot said. ‘An island for which you are willing to pay five million Australian dollars.’
‘But no more,’ Shannon said.
‘Woodcock has offered eight. How do you propose to bridge the gap?’
‘Not financially,’ Shannon said.
‘Then how?’
‘I am here at your request. Charles Green is the island of your choice, as well as mine. You wouldn’t have wanted to meet me unless you had a reason. What do you suggest?’
‘I want access to a small portion of the island to erect a tented resort with up-market facilities. I suspect Woodcock would not be willing to let me do that and in any case my customers wouldn’t be interested in camping next to a housing estate. But I do not wish to own the island.’
‘Why not?’
‘Like you, I have my reasons.’
Impasse?
Shannon didn’t think so. So far she had sat tight and said little. Now that would change.
White Sands of Summer Page 37
