FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  Mercy B. Lord pointed upwards. ‘See the bigger windows? That’s the penthouse, that’s the one. Your painting room has a view across the river and you can see across the harbour and out to sea.’

  ‘Looks great.’

  I was even more impressed once I was inside the flat. The large windows had shutters to keep out the heat and ceiling fans everywhere, and while it was furnished in an over-elaborate Chinese style, this turned out to be purely for display purposes. The penthouse was brand-new.

  ‘I think it will make a nice home for you, Simon.’ Mercy B. Lord then proceeded to show me around, turning on and testing every tap, even the shower, and every light, including the bedside lamps. ‘See, everything works!’ she exclaimed. Then she jumped impulsively onto the double bed, bouncing several times on her knees at the centre of the elaborately embroidered multi-coloured floral silk bedspread. ‘What do you think?’ she cried. Then, before I could answer, she fell backwards so that she now lay at the centre of the bed, her hands behind her head, grinning happily.

  ‘Think? I think you are the most beautiful woman in dirty bare feet I have ever seen, Miss Mercy B. Lord.’

  She shot bolt upright. ‘Oh my God! I’m so sorry, Simon. I’ve shown you over the flat in my bare feet. I have been too familiar. I must wash my feet and put on my shoes!’

  ‘Whoa! That’s not what I meant. Now, as you were, please, I have something to say.’

  ‘But still, it is not right, not professional.’

  ‘Oh dear, I shall have to report you to Miss Beatrice Fong.’ I grinned.

  It was a clumsy mistake. At the mention of her employer’s name, Mercy B. Lord looked up sharply then immediately down at her hands folded in her lap. She remained seated in the centre of the bed with her feet now tucked under her. ‘What is it, Simon?’ she said quietly. It was one of those images you snap and have forever in your mind; the soft light from the bedside lamp gleaming on a beautiful woman in a black cheongsam sitting on a brilliantly coloured bed of flowers.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to seem casual, looking directly at her and attempting to keep my voice calm, the beginning of a grin on my face that would either widen with acceptance or disappear with rejection. ‘Mercy B. Lord, I’m awfully afraid I’ve fallen head over heels in love with you.’

  She remained silent, eyes downcast, then slowly looked up. ‘You are not like the others, Simon. They all try; most expect I will, that it is part of my job. I have not felt that with you; you are different.’ She paused. ‘This is very dangerous, because I feel the same way and know I must not – cannot.’

  ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Is there someone else?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Then?’

  Mercy B. Lord’s dark eyes welled with tears and I thought for a moment she was going to cry in earnest. ‘I cannot say,’ she whispered. Then, brushing away her tears, she said, ‘Simon, if you wish you can kiss me, but that is all. You must promise.’

  ‘Forever?’

  ‘I cannot say,’ she repeated. Then she moved towards me and I took her in my arms.

  Oh God, I couldn’t bear it if this is all it is ever going to be. I held her tight, wanting to be able to recall the feeling of her body against mine. ‘I promise,’ I said, then lowered my head to kiss her.

  The thought of possibly not seeing her again was too awful to contemplate, and as she was preparing to leave and I was about to accompany her downstairs to see her into a taxi, I said, ‘Mercy B. Lord, I am regarded as a passably good painter. Would you allow me to do your portrait? Sit for me? Just the way you are tonight?’

  She smiled. ‘Simon, I’d like that. I’d be honoured.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  AND SO TO THE arrival of Dansford Drocker, chief executive and senior vice president, or managing director as the position was called in Singapore and Australia. While my office was the size of an expanded foot locker, his was considerably larger, but still only half the size of Sidney Wing’s.

  It was just as well I met him at the airport with Mercy B. Lord because he was clearly drunk, although admittedly still pleasant and not slurring his words or falling over. It was fortunate that Sidney, no doubt using his considerable guanxi, had organised for Dansford to pass through the airport without any of the usual checks and paperwork. His passport had been taken by an airline official as they landed and was returned to him as he entered the airport building. By some mysterious Chinese sleight of hand his luggage appeared on the baggage carousel before anyone else’s, and in no time flat we had him walking towards the parking lot. Fortuitously, the exceedingly long flight from New York via Los Angeles and Honolulu landed mid-afternoon, and the plan was to take him directly to Raffles, where he could bunk down early for a good night’s sleep.

  It was apparent at once that he was a nice guy. The first thing he said after shaking our hands in the arrivals area was, ‘I would take it most kindly if you folks always address me as Dansford.’

  As we were walking to the Buick he looked around vaguely and said, ‘Hey, what’s the smell?’

  ‘It’s the smell of Singapore,’ I explained. ‘Very distinctive.’

  ‘It’s mostly rancid cooking oil, smoke and the open drains in some of the outlying kampongs. Add the tropical heat, rotting vegetation, mildew and, of course, the polluted river and it’s … Well, as Simon says, it’s distinctive,’ Mercy B. Lord added, cleverly establishing her authority as his guide, if not at the same time enhancing his opinion of the city.

  Dansford grinned. ‘It isn’t the way they described it to me in the States, honey. Tropical paradise, palm-fringed beaches … I guess you get the picture.’ He fanned the air in front of his nose and declared, ‘I think I need a drink. What’s the time here in Singapore?’

  I glanced at my watch as we reached the car. The driver, Mohammed, a short, fat Malay, stood with the back door open. ‘Just after three-thirty.’

  Dansford’s expression brightened. ‘Say, that’s practically the cocktail hour, Simon. It would give me great pleasure to buy you both a martini.’ He turned to face the airport building. ‘Is there a bar here at the airport?’

  Quick as a flash, Mercy B. Lord said, ‘The martinis are famous at the Long Bar at Raffles, sir.’

  Good girl! It would get us away from the airport, linked forever in my mind to my dramatic loss of face. The last thing we needed after my own pathetic entrance into the country was a drunken public scene with the new chief executive of Samuel Oswald Wing Asia, who’d been extended every courtesy and privilege on arriving. I decided I would encourage Mercy B. Lord to go home and I would stay with Dansford Drocker, fervently hoping that the flight from LA had taken its toll and he’d opt for an early night.

  If you live with an alcoholic all your life, as I had with my dad, you develop an instinct for spotting other alcoholics. I knew within minutes of meeting him that Drocker had a drinking problem and that his grog-laden breath wasn’t simply a case of one or two too many to kill the boredom of a long plane trip. He held himself together well, as my father usually did, with a particular deportment that’s easy to recognise but difficult to describe: it has a rigidity and deliberateness that’s unmistakeable to the practised eye. My father, who had remarkably few illusions about his fondness for the bottle, referred to himself as a practised drunk. This is what I saw in Dansford Drocker and my heart sank. My first three months going it alone against the Wing brothers had been tough. In my mind I’d already imagined us as collaborators – Dansford Drocker and Simon Koo ranged against the Three Wing Circus. Of all the things I didn’t need, it was a lush to partner me in the boardroom.

  We were to learn that Drocker’s drinking problem needed constant attention from noon onwards. He attended to it diligently by never returning from lunch. In fact he would become the Singaporean version of a legend in his own lunchtime. If ever there was a match of environment to man, it was Dansford Drocker and the mysterious, accommodating and indulgent East.

  But I’m get
ting ahead of myself.

  After visiting the agency the morning after his arrival to meet the three Wings, he was, as I had been, handed over to the care of Mercy B. Lord. They had spent the first day together, or rather the two hours left of the morning, looking for an apartment, but Dansford Drocker was indifferent to his future residence and more interested in returning to Raffles for a pre-luncheon drink. Fortunately, Mercy B. Lord had tossed up between two penthouses for me, and now she showed him the second. They’d spent a cursory five minutes looking at it before he told her he’d take it. ‘Go ahead and furnish it, honey, and send the bill to Mr Wing at the agency.’ Then Dansford changed tack and asked, ‘When do the bars open?’

  She’d called me at the agency, explaining what had happened then saying anxiously, ‘Simon, I know nothing about him. How can I choose his furniture?’

  ‘Well, my guess is he’s an alcoholic, or giving a damn good imitation of one. When you left us – after we’d returned from the airport – he drank solidly till one in the morning, when he finally toppled over. God knows how much he consumed on the plane, but he had at least nine hours of steady drinking. When he finally passed out I had to carry him upstairs to bed from the Long Bar.’ I laughed. ‘I hoicked him up over my shoulder, but his hands were almost dragging on the floor behind me and his toes were dangling above the carpet in front of me. He must be well over six foot, and I’m only about five foot eight.’

  ‘What’s him being an alcoholic got to do with choosing furniture?’ she asked, clearly not amused by my graphic description.

  ‘Well, drunks don’t notice stuff like furniture, so just choose anything.’

  ‘Simon, that’s not very helpful!’

  While finding apartments was part of her job description, furnishing them wasn’t. Foreign men coming to Singapore to work were, in most cases, followed shortly afterwards by their wives, who took over the task of nest-making. But it was difficult to refuse our new American chief executive, who, like me, was a bachelor.

  Mercy B. Lord had kindly agreed to supervise the furnishing of my flat, including soft furnishings, linen, towels, kitchen utensils and all the paraphernalia required to make an empty space seem like home, and she was anxious to help Dansford as much as possible. The Beatrice Fong Agency required her to attempt to please her clients in every way that didn’t involve lying on her back. She told me that when a client put the hard word on her she would smile sweetly and say, ‘Thank you, sir. I’m afraid that is not an item in my job description. If it is a service you require, the agency will supply an escort for 250 US dollars a night. Her excellent and strictly confidential services will then be billed to your account as a banquet for important government officials. We will even issue a receipt from the China Doll Restaurant.’

  ‘A fictitious restaurant, very funny, clever too,’ I remarked when she’d told me how she neatly sidestepped a client’s amorous approach.

  ‘No, a real one. It belongs to Beatrice and Sidney Wing.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘No, really, it’s very nice. It’s where the client meets his escort. That way he pays for an outrageously expensive dinner as well.’

  Ronnie had mentioned those two, Beatrice and Sidney, in the same breath the first time we’d had lunch at the Town Club, when he’d warned me it was hands off Mercy B. Lord. Perhaps this appropriately named restaurant was the connection. I wondered if they also shared the commission from the escort’s fee.

  ‘Hmm … sounds interesting. Shall we dine at the China Doll some evening?’ I’d teased.

  ‘No!’ Mercy B. Lord had said, not amused. ‘All the high-class whores go there!’

  When we’d been looking for furniture we’d visited several Chinese carpentry shops and I’d picked out more or less what I liked, on the ‘keep it simple’ principle. ‘Perhaps you could do for Dansford what you did for me,’ I suggested tentatively.

  ‘It’s not the same, Simon. With you it was an adventure. I loved it and you taught me so much.’

  Clearly the search for Dansford Drocker’s furniture was not going to be as much fun as ours had been. As I mentioned earlier, I have some knowledge of antique furniture, and I’d enjoyed explaining to Mercy B. Lord the mix of modern and period furniture I’d envisaged for the flat. Here we were in a place where you could have anything you wanted, or a pretty close copy anyway. All you needed to do was show the Chinese or Malay cabinet-makers a picture and they’d make what you required, and do it beautifully.

  ‘Okay, so here’s what you do. We’ve chosen the stuff for my place, so just tell them to double up on the order. I don’t care and he won’t know. Simple.’

  ‘You sure?’ Mercy B. Lord sounded doubtful.

  ‘Sweetheart, it’s just a pad where he’ll fall into bed in the early hours, probably with his shoes on.’

  If I’d solved one problem, Dansford Drocker was able to provide several more. ‘He doesn’t want to be shown around Singapore. He’s only interested in the location of drinking places – “watering holes”, he calls them.’ Mercy B. Lord sounded exasperated. ‘He’s not like you, Simon. I don’t know what to do. Beatrice will still want our agency fee and she’ll blame me. Besides, I have to do a report on him for her and Mr Wing.’

  I was jolted by this last remark but managed to keep my voice calm. ‘I’ll talk to Ronnie and get back to you. In the meantime, double up on the furniture, then use the next eight days to find him a damn good housekeeper who doesn’t mind his drinking. In return for a commensurate rise in her salary, she can clean up after him and get him going in the morning.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, Simon.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I am. My dad’s an alcoholic. They need someone to mind them constantly. We’ve had a lady called Dolly Maloney, who refers to herself as “The Very Well-Paid Maid”. Her husband was a hopeless alcoholic who died when he fell off a platform in front of a train. She claims that she loves the job, but it may be the pay and the security.’ I laughed. ‘She also says she has a recurring nightmare in which my dad decides to go to AA.’

  I spoke to Ronnie about Mercy B. Lord’s problem and he took over the familiarisation work with Dansford Drocker. I would have to get a lot closer to Mercy B. Lord before I could ask her about the report she wrote on each of her clients, what she included, in how much detail, and, more importantly, why she’d been asked to write such reports. It was clever espionage: a pretty and charming young woman sufficiently intelligent to write a detailed report on any person with whom Sidney Wing was going to be associated. After two weeks in the company of someone who is astute but only asks apparently normal questions, anyone would give away a fair bit about themselves. It was very Chinese and also, I was beginning to realise, very Sidney Wing. The Chinese cherish any information they have obtained secretly about you, stuff they might later use to their advantage. Come to think of it, I suppose we all do.

  Now the job of escorting Dansford was in Ronnie’s hands. Whether or not he wrote a report, the task of accompanying Dansford soon proved too difficult even for a talented elbow man like Ronnie. After three days of pretty solid drinking from mid-morning to midnight and often beyond, Ronnie gave up and brought his chief executive in to the agency to start work.

  Ronnie would later confess to me that once Sidney had ascertained that Dansford Drocker was a benign drunk and, even when inebriated, didn’t disparage his work or his Chinese partners, he was secretly delighted. His American director would be a cinch to control and wouldn’t be snooping around or asking awkward questions. It would be business as usual. Moreover, the Yank was unlikely to be interested in the creative process, so I would be isolated, on my Pat Malone.

  But he was wrong in at least one respect: despite the damage the grog was doing to it, Dansford Drocker had a good mind and was exceedingly conscientious about those international brands he’d brought with him from New York and was required to service. Pepsi-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Goodyear Rubber & Tire Company and Wild Turkey Bourbon were a
formidable and, in advertising terms, demanding line-up, all of them clients that required expertise of one kind or another.

  I hesitate to tell the unfortunate story of what happened to Dansford the first time we went to Bugis Street on the obligatory night out on the town, but thankfully he managed to get into trouble all on his own so neither Ronnie nor I was implicated. Before I go on, perhaps a few details about the common set-up in a girlie bar are in order, but first, a description of the notorious Bugis Street and its environs. The street was in the heart of Xiao Po (Little Slope), the red-light district where, between Victoria Street West and Queen Street, the serious drinking with the visiting ang mo, the term used for Westerners, took place.

  The night would begin respectably enough, usually at Bill Bailey’s, a bar and grill said once to have been owned by the original Bill Bailey, although there’s nothing to suggest this was true. Because I’m a nut about times and dates, I worked out that when ‘Bill Bailey’, the song, was composed by Hughie Cannon in 1902, the Singaporean Bill Bailey would have been about thirteen years old. Nobody seems to know with certainty when the bar opened but its original name was Bill Bailey’s Coconut Grove Bar, although for as long as anyone could remember, it had been referred to as Bill Bailey’s.

  Nevertheless, Bill Bailey’s was the top spot in Singapore for a feed of Shanghai eels, shredded and cooked in a thick peppery sauce. Ronnie insisted that it was a dish guaranteed to set you up for a long evening of drinking, the oily eels miraculously warding off drunkenness by a couple of hours. In other words, the stop at Bill Bailey’s was an essential prelude to the long night that lay ahead.