Brother Fish (114 page)

‘So what you're saying is that you had to find a way to reinforce his own superstition with a message from the abbot of Lantau Island.'

‘Dat abbot, he da big shaman in all China. Big Boss Yu get his message, he know he gonna obey him, dat foh sure.'

Jimmy and I had met a few Chinese in our time as prisoners of war, and in my experience duplicity wasn't unknown among them. I guess the wine had gone to my head a little, because I added somewhat cynically, ‘That is, if he got it.'

‘Oh, but I'm certain he did, Jack,' she replied. ‘I'd left my details, as requested, with the temple, and eight days later I received a hand-delivered note in very businesslike calligraphy.'

“Pavilion of the Four Seasons, Palaces of the Four Winds,
Shrine of the Dragon Mother, Hollywood Road,
Hong Kong, 7 a.m., Thursday.”

‘The coming Thursday was two days hence. I should explain that the Shrine of the Dragon Mother is one of Hong Kong's best-known temples. Every morning its courtyard is crowded with early-morning worshippers anxious to burn joss sticks on their way to work. Many grab a hasty breakfast from the food carts that stand against the walls of the shrine. Vats of steaming rice porridge bubble away, there are salted eggs, roasted peanuts and custard tarts. Most Chinese have a sweet tooth, and there are dozens of other dishes on offer to feed the hungry crowd.

‘I was keen to allow myself plenty of time to get to the shrine, as I had two trams to catch to reach my destination. On a whim I decided to wear my mother's pearl earrings to bring me good luck, although a moment's reflection would have told me it was too late to affect the outcome of anything. That's when I discovered one earring was missing. I'd been so relieved to find that the prison guard hadn't stolen my money on the night of my escape that it hadn't occurred to me to look for the earrings. And then, of course, I thought it may have been stolen in the hospital. I knew it was pointless making a fuss – I couldn't prove anything anyway – but I confess I wept at the discovery of the loss. I only tell you this because the fuss of discovering the earring missing caused me to miss the first tram, and so I had to hurry. I finally got off the tram from Causeway Bay and took a short cut through the Central Market, which was already throbbing with early-morning preparation.'

The Countess stopped talking. Jimmy had ordered another bottle of wine, and to my surprise she held out her glass. ‘Allow me briefly to paint the scene of the Central Market. Even in Shanghai the markets were never as exotic, and by taking a shortcut I was rewarded with a sight few people, even those who lived in Hong Kong, would have experienced – walls of glass tanks filled almost to overflowing with live fish, eels and crabs of literally hundreds of varieties; baskets of squawking poultry stacked to the roof-beams; carts of freshly butchered meat, offal and bones dripping trails of blood as they trundled loudly over the cobblestones; and the squeals of live pigs, who seemed to know their imminent fate, cutting through the tremendous cacophony, adding to the mayhem. This was no place for a sensitive western stomach, and the rubber-booted workers stared at me as I dodged the carts and the carelessly spraying water hoses to find my way to the crowded ladder street that led up to the lower end of Hollywood Road.

‘Inside the shrine, the crowd was fighting to reach the feet of the Goddess seated on the dragon throne. The interior was in permanent twilight as huge coils of incense, some the size of a small wagon wheel, choked the shadows with smoke. Pigeons in their hundreds strutted the rafters and, like the market I'd just passed through, the shrine was a confusion of jostling, shouting people seeking just enough luck to see them through the day.

‘I had visited before at a quieter hour and knew that behind the shrine, through a moon gate, stood five pavilions, one for each of the four winds and one located in the centre. It was too early for sightseers, and the central pavillion was empty but for a slight figure, a Buddhist nun, wrapped in a saffron robe. She approached me without hesitation and I could see from her face that she was a woman in her middle age, or perhaps a little older. Her saffron robe was old and faded, and she wore scuffed sandals on her broad feet. She bowed to me in the manner of a Buddhist devotee, and I noted the triangle of three small scars on the crown of her shorn head – part of her initiation into the realm of pain, where three small cones of incense are placed on the scalp, lit and left to burn down to the bone in a process that takes an hour, during which showing any sign of weakness is forbidden. These scars were her badge of office and they commanded respect in any company – even a dragonhead would not dare to dismiss her from his presence.

‘“I greet you,
tai-tai
,” she said, showing me the respect of a married woman of status.

‘“I greet you,
seal jeh
,” I replied, giving her equal status as a single woman.

‘“I am a disciple of Wang Po, Abbot of Po Lin. I have visited the one intended and now have for you, on the instructions of my abbot, the master of wind and water, a second copy of the scroll I delivered to Yu Ya-ching.”

‘“It is not necessary – the abbot gave me his word,” I replied, though I confess I was secretly thrilled at this apparent confirmation of Wang Po's promise. From her begging bag she removed a scroll and handed it to me with both hands, bowing as she did so. I accepted it in the same manner and saw that it contained the monastery's chop or seal, which was absolute confirmation that the scroll was genuine. With trembling hands I broke the seal to unroll the narrow piece of parchment, only to be confounded by the ancient characters of its text, which were quite beyond my ability to read. Immediately to the side of the final character on the scroll was a second seal acting as a “forbidden mark” or, in western terms, a full stop, so that no other words may be added. As custom would have it, the second seal is also the personal chop of the sender of the message – in this case, the most revered Abbot of Po Lin.

‘The nun had been expecting my confusion and, smiling, took the scroll from me. In a quiet, even voice she began to read.

‘“He who is known as an ‘immortal' and is the master of wind and water, the sage who reads the palaces of the moon and who interprets the twenty-eight constellations that foretell the affairs of mankind in an ancient almanac, the commander of the five elements, Wang Po, the ancient and venerable Abbot of Po Lin, sends Yu Ya-ching this message.

“I have heard, in the wind and over the trembling water, of a
jarp jung
girl-child who alone holds the key to your future life and fortunes. If harm should come to her by your own hand or by those who obey you, then a hideous fate awaits your lineage, and your ancestors face eternal damnation. This fortune-bringing child must be given all the privileges afforded to a male child of your direct lineage. In exchange your health and longevity will be assured and the Gods will smile upon you, and the good fortune of your house and clan will be assured.”

‘The Buddhist nun came to the end of the reading, bowed and handed me back the scroll. I thanked her and asked permission to ask one question. She nodded, agreeing with a smile. “Was there anything peculiar about the office of Yu Ya-ching?” I asked.

‘She smiled again, immediately realising the reason for my question, but showing no offence. “There is no deceit,
tai-tai
– it was I who delivered the message to Yu Ya-ching, the one with the many ticking clocks in his office, each with a different time on the face.”'

The Countess took a small sip from her cup. ‘So there you have it, gentlemen – I had my confirmation. There is simply no way she would have known about the clocks had she not been in Big Boss Yu's office.' Coming to the end of her anguished story, she sighed deeply. ‘I shall never see my precious daughter. Nor know which of the two men fathered her. But I am certain that my donation to the monument to honour Abbot Wang Po, the “immortal”, is the most important investment I have made in my life.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dr Whisky

I guess the time has come to tie up the bits'n'pieces that have gone into this rather ramshackle story. The path a life takes inevitably meanders, and in the telling of its story some elements are seen as important, and others not. I've talked about the events I thought might be interesting, leaving out the subject of ‘earning a living' – that day-to-day grind that earns us all a crust. Not that the thirty-two years building Ogoya Seafood Company into one of the nation's biggest fishing fleets, with canneries the world over, wasn't an interesting time or immensely rewarding. As Jimmy often says, snatching a few bars of an old number and altering the final word, ‘No, no, they can't take that away from us.'

The near-wreck of the
Janthe
was an early warning that life on a fishing vessel is never easy or predictable, but, of course, I always knew that. In the early years of Ogoya we had our good times and bad – but then, who doesn't? Looking back I couldn't have wished for better. I married Wendy a year after the three of us went into partnership. With me spending most of the time at sea, it was a bit of a struggle at first. I imagine it must have been a lonely time for a young bride who hadn't been brought up in a fisherman's family, and so didn't know what to expect. As was the case for all young couples at the time, there was precious little money about, and our first few years together was a time of rented accommodation, second-hand furniture and scraping and painting, most of it by Wendy, who could make something pretty out of something I saw as junk. She would tend to a battered old chair and before you knew it friends would be saying, ‘Where'd you get that great-looking chair?'

Wendy has put on a pound or two – or kilos, as it is today – but she's still the most beautiful creature I ever laid eyes on. I often stop to watch her moving about, bringing in flowers from the garden or simply stacking the dishes in the dishwasher, and I shake my head in wonder that she chose me, Jack McKenzie, the freckled kid from the Queen Island family that wasn't worth a pinch of the proverbial. Can you imagine what might have happened if, standing at the bus stop in Launceston, I hadn't suddenly realised that Jimmy was going to be the number-one big-time romantic hit on the island, and had not rushed across the road to buy condoms from the chemist? That day, the day I first met Wendy, was one of the most fortunate of my life.

Most couples have their problems, yet I can honestly say ours have never been too big to be solved by a kiss carried over to the other side of the bed and the cuddle that invariably results. But you can't have everything and, although we tried, no kids came. I had all the tests, as did Wendy, but the results were inconclusive. Perhaps with today's technology and know-how they'd find the reason.

Jimmy hasn't married, although there were a few kids on the island with very impressive year-round suntans. He looked after all of them, and their mums have never gone without. Most of his kids were eventually accepted into university in Hobart, and have made something of their lives. One of them became the youngest skipper in Ogoya's fishing fleet. That was the thing about Jimmy – even the island blokes who married the girls who'd had one of Jimmy's kids loved him. If the subsequent kids of these couples were bright enough, they too went on to further their education at Jimmy's expense. To have had one of Jimmy's children was considered a status symbol, because it had evidently taken some planning. In the early days some smart-arse fisherman whose sister was proudly pregnant to one James Pentecost Oldcorn might have a go at him, and Jimmy would flatten him. They'd have a beer, discuss the perfidy of a woman determined to become pregnant, agree that the guilty party's offspring would be looked after and be mates forever.

Now, about the fishing, canning and export business that today forms Ogoya Seafood Company Pty Ltd. Left to our own devices, Jimmy and I would never have made it past owning the
Janthe
and making a reasonable living from the sea. If Nicole had simply bought the boat and left us on our own I'm not sure what might have happened – certainly nothing like what did. Jimmy might have taken the business further – remember the tomatoes, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter? He was an organiser and he had plenty of ideas, whereas I was a details man, so maybe we'd have ended up a bit more than a couple of fishermen with a good boat. But it was Nicole's business acumen, developed in China while she worked for Big Boss Yu, that enabled us to build what some people refer to as ‘a vast seafood and fishing empire'. And while Jimmy and I can hold our own in any boardroom in the world today, she taught us most of what we needed to know to get started.

For the first few years Nicole and Wendy ran the business onshore and Jimmy and I took care of the
Janthe
– and then another boat, and another, and another, and so on, as the business grew under Nicole's direction and with Wendy's organisational ability. In those days not too many women ran a business, and main-island and mainland suppliers – salesmen, fish wholesalers and suchlike – thought a couple of women in charge would be a pushover. The good-looking sort, she'd be the bimbo – after all, pretty women are stupid, aren't they? The older one, well, c'mon, she was a music teacher and a librarian turned bloody journalist – what would she know? We had to laugh. Mike Munday was far from the last guy to walk out of the office ruefully shaking his head, wondering what the hell had happened.