by Kevin Kwan
“Astrid? Never, lah! Su Yi is so old-fashioned, she would never leave that house to a girl! She might just as well leave it to her own daughters!” Mabel insisted.
“Then if it’s just the boys, my bet is on Eddie. I hear that he’s really been working overtime to be the number-one grandson. He apparently won’t leave her side!” Cassandra reported.
“I’m not sure it will be Eddie. Su Yi told me herself that she can’t take him seriously,” Jacqueline said.
“Well then she’s running out of contenders. No way she would ever let one of the Leong boys get ahold of the house, but maybe one of the Aakaras?” Mabel wondered.
Cassandra snorted. “That would be too ironic for words! Would she really spite Philip and Nicky—the only true Youngs left—in favor of those foreign grandsons getting Tyersall Park? I think not.”
“Maybe she’s had a change of heart, then. Don’t you think Nicky might have been reinstated?” Jacqueline said.
“Definitely not. He’s still banned from the house! My sources tell me that he goes over there every day groveling on his knees, hoping to see her, but he still can’t get in. Why would she suddenly give him Tyersall Park now?” Cassandra argued.
Mabel scrunched her face. “That stupid boy. Giving everything up for that ugly girl.”
“Come on lah, Mabel, she’s not ugly. She’s quite pretty, actually. She’s just…not the kind of beauty one would have expected for Nicky,” Jacqueline remarked diplomatically.
“I know what you mean. Rachel is pretty, but in a very conventional way. Her lack of style doesn’t do her any favors, either,” Cassandra said.
Jacqueline smiled. “I wish I could tell her that she needs to grow out her hair by another four inches. That medium-long length is just so American.”
Cassandra nodded in agreement. “And her nose is a bit too rounded. Her eyes could be a bit bigger too.”
“And have you seen the way she sits? So frightfully common.” Mabel sniffed.
“Uggh! I can’t bear to listen to any more of this!” Lucia shrieked in anger, pushing her chair back dramatically. “You’re all talking about Rachel as if she was some kind of show dog! What does it even matter what she looks like, as long as they love each other? Uncle Nicky gave up everything to be with her. I think that’s sooooo romantic! I can’t wait to meet her. And you’re all wrong—I know what’s going to happen to Tyersall Park, and it’s certainly not what any of you think!”
“Shut up, Lucia! Stop making up stories!” Mabel scolded.
“Ah Ma, you and Auntie Cassie just chatter on and on about so much rubbish but none of you have a clue what’s really going on! Do you ever listen to what Grandpa and Daddy talk about?” With that, Lucia stormed out of the breakfast room, the ladies staring openmouthed after her.
“What utter nonsense!” Cassandra scoffed.
Mabel shook her head gravely. “Can you believe how rude that girl has become? I knew Bedales would be all wrong for her—those teachers do nothing but keep encouraging her confidence! My goodness, back in my day at the Convent,*8 if I had talked like that, the nuns would have beat me blue black with a wooden ruler! Neh kor suey neui moh yong, gae!”*9
Jacqueline’s eyes narrowed. “On the contrary, Mabel—I don’t think she’s useless at all. I think you have a very smart little girl on your hands. Smarter than I ever realized…”
* * *
*1 The interiors were given a marvelous face-lift in the mid-1990s by David Mlinaric, coinciding with Mabel’s own (much less marvelous) face-lift.
*2 Cantonese for “fish porridge.”
*3 Cantonese for “This half-breed granddaughter will be the death of me.”
*4 Cantonese for “so crazy.”
*5 Hokkien slang for “contacts” or “connections.”
*6 Cantonese for “so shameful.”
*7 Malay slang for “mates” or “buddies.” Although, should you really be calling the cheating scoundrels who try to screw you at every mah-jongg game your buddies?
*8 Mabel, like many other well-born women of her generation, attended Singapore’s venerable Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. These days, the nuns have long since retired, and by most accounts, corporal punishment is no longer practiced.
*9 Cantonese for “This lousy girl is useless.” (A refrain heard by Cantonese daughters since the beginning of time.)
CHAPTER FIVE
PULAU CLUB, SINGAPORE
Godfrey Loh, the esteemed Supreme Court justice, could not believe what he was hearing in the stall next to his in the men’s room of the Pulau Club.
“Yeah, that’s so hot. Fucky fuck! I need a close-up. Send me a close-up, pleeeease.”
What in God’s name was happening?
“Wait a minute. The pic is still downloading—Wi-Fi’s terrible in here. Oh my God…I’m looking at it now. Phwoar! So…fucking…sexy!”
Someone is looking at dirty pictures on his phone right next to me! But who is it? Sounds like a Hong Kong accent. No wonder, all the men in Hong Kong are perverts. That’s what you get from a country when you can buy filthy magazines right in the airport!
“Looks like it’s dripping wet. It’s so beautiful I want to lick it all over! Come on, come on, I’m ready for it now!”
Is this creep actually engaging in phone sex in the next stall? Godfrey had heard enough. He emerged from the cubicle hurriedly and went over to the sink, washing his hands furiously with twice the amount of soap he would normally use. He felt dirty all over just listening to that heavy breather in the stall.
“I want to slip my whole foot inside.”
He wants to do WHAT with his foot? This man should be arrested. Godfrey banged his fist against the stall door and said loudly, “You are a degenerate! A complete disgrace to this esteemed club! Take your dirty business elsewhere! Not in our toilets!”
Inside the cubicle, Eddie looked up from his phone, completely mystified. “Sorry, I have no idea what that was about. Some ranting weirdo—Singapore’s full of them. Anyway, when will this last coat dry? Stop teasing me, Carlo. I need these shoes now!”
“Just a few more days. We are waiting for this latest coat of varnish to dry, and then we’re going to add one more. Once the patina is perfect, we can overnight them to you in Singapore,” Carlo replied.
“My uncle Taksin—you know, he’s a Thai prince—I can’t wait for him to see me in these. Taksin started wearing bespoke Lobbs when he was five years old. Nobody else will appreciate them like he would,” Eddie said as he gazed longingly at the picture of his new custom-made Marini shoes. These tasseled loafers were glazed a deep lapis blue, a process that took up to four weeks to achieve in Marini’s Rome atelier, and the shoemaker, Carlo, had been sending him teaser photos of the progress all through the month.
“You will have them by this weekend,” Carlo promised.
Eddie ended his call, pulled up his pants, flushed the toilet, and walked back to the Lookout—the casual eatery with sweeping views of the nature reserve where Singapore’s oldest and most exclusive country club was situated.* Returning to the table where members of his extended family had gathered for a luncheon hosted by his aunt Felicity, he asked his wife, Fiona, “Did you order me the beef satay and the chicken rice?”
“No one’s ordered yet,” Fiona replied, giving him a strange frown. It was then that Eddie noticed that no one at the table was talking, but all eyes were on Felicity. Her eyes were red and swollen with tears, and his mother, Alix, was busily fanning her with a menu.
“What happened? Is it Ah Ma?” Eddie whispered to Fiona.
“Hiyah! Ah Ma’s fine, but Auntie Felicity just received some news that’s quite upsetting.”
“What news?” Eddie asked, irritated that he had only been in the toilet for barely ten minutes and somehow missed the whole first act.
His auntie Cat was now s
peaking in a low, soothing tone to Felicity. “If you ask me, this is all much ado about nothing. It’s a slow news week, and the press just had to pounce on something.”
“Just watch, Felicity, this will all blow over in a few days,” Taksin agreed.
Eddie, who was seated in the middle of the long table, cleared his throat loudly. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
Alistair handed a cell phone over to him, and Eddie eagerly scrolled through the paparazzi pictures of Astrid and Charlie Wu in India, feeling his pulse begin to race. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. His always perfect, goody-goody cousin had really stepped in shit at long last! What would Ah Ma think when she found out? One by one, all his cousins were falling from grace, and he was the last man standing. He stared at the hundreds of comments left by viewers of the leaked photos:
Wah! So beautiful. This is my dream engagement!—AngMohKioPrincess
What a fucking waste! Outrageous that CRAs spend this much on one day when 75 million Indians still don’t have access to clean water! —clement_desylva
Astrid is babelicious. Charlie Wu is the man of the hour!—shoikshoik69
Suddenly, those words sparked something in Eddie’s mind that hadn’t quite occurred to him until this moment. Man of the hour. Earlier in the week, his grandmother’s lawyer, Freddie Tan, a senior partner at Singapore’s most prestigious law firm Tan and Tan, had paid an unexpected visit to Tyersall Park. Aside from Bishop See, he had been the only nonfamily member allowed into the private sanctum of his grandmother’s bedroom, and the distinguished white-haired gentleman had arrived with a smart-looking Dunhill briefcase and spent a rather long time behind closed doors with Su Yi. At some point during their meeting, Professor Oon and his associate doctor were summoned into the bedroom. Could they have been witnesses to the signing of a new will?
Eddie naturally hovered around outside her bedroom like a dog eager for scraps, and when Freddie Tan emerged, he studied Eddie from cravat to wing tips and said, “You’re Alix Young’s eldest boy, right? I haven’t seen you since you were a teenager, and now look at you—man of the hour!” Freddie then proceeded to spend the next ten minutes chatting with Eddie, asking after his wife and which schools his children attended. At the time, it didn’t occur to Eddie why a man who had never paid him any attention before was suddenly chatting him up like he was his biggest client. But now it dawned on him…did his grandmother make him the heir to Tyersall Park? Was this why Freddie was calling him the man of the hour?
As this epiphany was still settling in Eddie’s brain, he suddenly heard Alistair saying, “You know, you really can’t blame Astrid for this. How would she know that the paparazzi would be there? I’m sure she meant for this to be a very private moment.”
Fucky fuck! Eddie thought irritatedly. What the hell was Alistair doing defending Astrid? Didn’t he realize that they all needed to play this to their advantage, especially now when he stood to inherit the whole kit and caboodle. Eddie quickly cut in, drowning out his brother. “Auntie Felicity, I am so sorry you had to be put through this horrible scandal. What a disgrace!”
Alix scowled at her son, as if to say, Don’t make this any worse than it is!
Victoria spoke up. “Actually, I rather agree with Eddie. This is a complete disgrace. I can’t believe Astrid would be so careless.”
Felicity pulled another piece of tissue out of her Jim Thompson silk pouch and sniffed into it dramatically. “My hopeless daughter! We have spent all our lives protecting her from the press, spent so much money protecting her from unwanted attention. And now look how she’s repaid us!”
At the other end of the table, Piya Aakara whispered into her husband’s ear, “I don’t understand what the big deal is. Her daughter just got engaged, and the pictures look wonderful. Shouldn’t she be happy for her?”
“I don’t think Auntie Felicity approves of this fellow. And my family just doesn’t like to see themselves in the press—ever,” Adam explained.
“Not even Tattle?”
Overhearing Piya’s comments, Victoria suddenly piped up, “Especially not Tattle. My God, that ghastly magazine! You know, I wrote a few pieces for them back in the 1970s. But then one day the editor said my stories were too ‘cultural’—yes, I believe that’s the word he used. He said to me, and I’ll never forget it, ‘We don’t need any more stories on emerging Chinese artists. We thought you were going to write about your relatives. That’s why we hired you.’ And that’s when I gave my notice!”
Eddie continued to fan the flames. “It’s one thing to be in Tattle or Town & Country—I’m featured in those magazines all the time. Full disclosure, Piya—Fiona and I have been on the cover of Hong Kong Tattle once, and I alone have been on the cover three times. But it’s another thing to see Astrid’s photos popping up on these cheap gossip websites. As if she’s some actress or, even worse, a porno star. Like that Kitty Pong girl Alistair dated for half a minute.”
Alistair was indignant. “For the millionth time, Kitty was not a porn star! It was some other girl who just looked like her!”
Eddie ignored his brother and kept on talking. “The thing I can’t believe is that Astrid would dare to leave Singapore when Ah Ma is so sick. I mean, here we all are, spending every precious moment we have with her.”
“She was supposed to be in Malaysia, representing us at Prince Ismail’s wedding. I can’t believe she deceived us like this! Running off to India, of all places. Getting engaged on an elephant! Who on earth does Charlie Wu think he is? A maharaja?” Felicity sniffed angrily.
“So vulgar. Those Wus are all the same—they haven’t changed in all these years.” Victoria tut-tutted, shaking her head. “Did you know that that horrid Wu woman tried to steal Mabel Shang’s seamstress? Imagine the cheek! Thank goodness Mabel rescued that talented girl from her clutches! She made me several nice silk jacquard blouses, perfectly copying the style of this Liz Claiborne blouse Lillian May Tan brought back for me from America. I gave one to Mummy, which she loves, and didn’t I give you one too, Cat, when I came to visit you in 1992?”
Catherine looked like a deer caught in headlights for a moment. “Oh yes, that’s right…lovely!” she said, remembering that she had immediately passed on the hideous blouse to one of her maids.
Eddie furrowed his brow and tried to sound terribly concerned. “I saw Charlie Wu at Davos. You know, he didn’t even have the decency to wear a proper suit and tie to the most important conference in the world! My God, what if Astrid and Charlie are on their way back to Singapore now? What if she wants him to meet Ah Ma? Or worse, to introduce his mother to Ah Ma? Can we risk upsetting Ah Ma when her condition is so fragile?”
“She wouldn’t dare bring that man to Tyersall Park! Or her seamstress-snatching mother!” Victoria sniffed.
“She’s not going to have the chance. I’m going to make sure that girl doesn’t show her face anywhere near Tyersall Park!” Felicity angrily decreed.
Eddie tried to hide his satisfied smirk by looking at the view of the golf course for a moment. Nicky was banned from Tyersall Park, and now his biggest ally Astrid was banished as well. Things could not be working out any better if he had planned it himself. And let’s not forget, his sexy-as-fuck bespoke Marinis were on their way too.
* * *
* If you assumed that Eddie did not wash his hands, you would be correct.
CHAPTER SIX
PORTO FINO ELITE ESTATES, SHANGHAI
The fountain-blue Bentley Mulsanne pulled up by the front steps and a bodyguard jumped out of the passenger side to open the back door. As Araminta Lee Khoo emerged from the car in a sculptural ballerina-pink silk strapless Delpozo dress with a contrasting oversize yellow bow and pink sequined miniskirt, the paparazzi began clicking away furiously at her showstopping look.
“Araminta! Araminta! Look over here!”
“Can we have a fashion pose, please, Arami
nta?”
Araminta paused for a moment, pivoted expertly toward the photographer with one hand on her hip, her other hand showing off her exquisite Neil Felipp Suzy Wong minaudière, before proceeding up the red-carpeted steps.
Waiting at the freshly lacquered front doors of their mansion were Kitty and Jack. Kitty wore an explosion of powder-blue feathers courtesy of Armani Privé, and chose this occasion to debut her new diamond and antique Burmese cabochon sapphire earrings from Chaumet. Jack squirmed uncomfortably beside her in skinny black jeans and a shawl-collared white tuxedo jacket by Balmain that was made-to-measure but looked two sizes too small.
“Minty! You made it!” Kitty leaned over and gave her an air kiss, as another set of photographers stationed by the front doors clicked away.
“My yoga retreat is practically right next door to you in Moganshan, so I thought it could do no harm to sneak away for just one night!” Araminta replied.
“I’m so glad you did. And now you finally get to meet my husband. Jack, this is my best friend from Singapore—Araminta Lee, er, I mean Khoo.”
“Thank you for coming,” Jack said stiffly.
“Fabulous to meet you! I feel like I know you already!” Araminta tried to give Jack an air kiss, but he tilted back reflexively as he saw the glossy red lips coming at him. Kitty prodded him sharply with an elbow and he quickly straightened up just in time to collide heads with Araminta.
“Aiyoh!” Jack groaned. Araminta appeared to see stars for a second, but quickly recovered and laughed it off.
“Please forgive my husband. He’s just excited to meet you—he gets excited whenever he’s around famous supermodels,” Kitty gushed apologetically.
Araminta moved along into the house, while Kitty shot daggers at her husband with her eyes. “Don’t you know how to do a perfect Euro-fashionista triple-cheeked air kiss? You almost gave her a concussion!”
