The Two Sisters of Borneo (2 page)

The hundred-year-old Immaculate Conception was a jewel of a church, with its glistening black-and-white checkerboard floor flanked by white granite pillars and under soaring arches. The gleaming wooden pews were filled with guests dressed in their finest, and Amanda’s expansive silk and chiffon gown swished as she walked down the aisle with her father, Jack Yee, by her side.

Ava had made the same walk just thirty seconds before, keeping her eyes locked onto the altar straight ahead. She thought she heard some whispers and murmurs, but it was all indistinct. When she took her position, she found it a struggle to remain calm. She couldn’t help but glance at the front pew where her father, Marcus Lee, sat next to his first wife, Elizabeth. Ava had never seen, let alone met, her father’s first wife, but she knew it was her all the same. Elizabeth Lee was staring at Ava, as were the other women around her, and Ava quickly turned away.

As May Ling had implied, Amanda’s choice of Ava as her maid of honour was full of controversy and the subject of much gossip in Hong Kong. As the daughter of a second wife, Ava was officially considered illegitimate, so her prominent role in the wedding party was more than some people could bear. She had heard rumours that Elizabeth’s four sisters were thinking of boycotting the wedding. Ava had no idea if they had, and truthfully didn’t care. She was there because Amanda, backed by Jack Yee, had insisted on her presence and participation. Michael had agreed to present the idea to his father and mother. Marcus expressed no opinion; it was his wife’s reputation that was at risk, so the decision was hers. To everyone’s shock, she had gone along with Amanda’s wishes.

Ava looked to her right. Michael and his brothers were watching Amanda as she approached. When she was about five steps away, Michael turned and looked at Ava. He raised his eyebrows ever so slightly and then smiled as if to say,
Who would have thought this day would come?
She smiled in return and felt her anxiety start to ebb.

The ceremony went off smoothly, and after the official papers were signed the wedding party walked back down the aisle to applause and cheers. Ava, her arm looped through that of her half-brother Peter, Michael’s best man, kept her eyes locked straight ahead. As they left the church, the bride and groom walked under a red umbrella that was meant to symbolically ward off evil spirits. It had the added benefit of protecting them from the rice the immediate family and the rest of the wedding party were sprinkling on them. Their only concern was a light shower of confetti.

Earlier that morning, as was the custom, the groom and his party had gone to the house in Sha Tin to collect the bride. Michael and Amanda climbed into the Bentley that had brought her from Sha Tin; Ava and the bridesmaids got into one Mercedes, the groomsmen into another. The cars then drove in convoy to the Grand Hyatt, where the reception was being held.

At the hotel, Amanda and the bridesmaids went directly to their adjoining suites to freshen up. Amanda would wear a traditional red Chinese wedding dress for her initial entry into the ballroom and for the tea ceremony. After that she would change dresses several times. The dress that Amanda would wear for the early part of the evening was already laid out on the bed. The evening gown and the cheongsam she would wear later were hung in the closet. Ava wished she had something — anything — to change into, but she was stuck with the lavender dress.

The evening’s activities were being held in and around the Hyatt’s Grand Ballroom. When Amanda and her bridesmaids finally arrived, Michael, his brothers, and both sets of parents were standing in a casual receiving line. The instant Amanda made her appearance, the line disappeared. Michael rushed to her side and led her into the ballroom and onto the dance floor, where two chairs were placed in preparation for the tea ceremony.

Peter walked over to Ava. “We need to go inside right away as well,” he said. He led her to a small table to the right of the chairs, where hotel staff had laid out teacups and pots.

“Have you done this before?” Peter asked.

“No, but I have seen it.”

“Quite simple, really. Our job is to keep Michael and Amanda supplied with fresh cups of tea.”

“I think I can manage that.”

A crowd had gathered around the perimeter of the dance floor. Jack Yee and his wife stepped forward to sit in the chairs. Peter poured two cups of tea and gave one to Ava, and they walked side by side over to Michael and Amanda, who were standing directly in front of the chairs. They took the cups from Ava and Peter and turned to face Amanda’s parents. They knelt, bowed their heads, and held the teacups high. The Yees accepted the cups and sipped from them. Then they leaned forward with broad smiles on their faces. Jack Yee put Michael’s hand on top of Amanda’s, said something quietly, and then passed a red envelope to them. Ava knew this was the first of hundreds of red envelopes, or pockets, that the couple would receive that night, but she doubted that any of the others would contain quite so much money.

The tea ceremony was a traditional way for Amanda and Michael to show respect to their elder relatives and very close family friends. There was a set order. The parents of the bride would be followed by those of the groom, and then the other relatives, in descending order from the oldest, would take their places on the chairs.

Marcus and his first wife moved onto the dance floor. As they walked towards the two chairs, Ava felt discomfort at seeing her father with a woman who wasn’t her own mother. It was one thing to know Elizabeth Lee existed; it was another to see her on Ava’s father’s arm.

Then there was Elizabeth’s appearance. She was dressed in an ankle-length cheongsam of gold and green brocade. It had a vase collar, exposing a long, slender neck adorned with a green jade necklace that matched her drop earrings. The cheongsam had full-length flared sleeves that flowed over her hands. The dress was slit on one side from the ankle to the knee, exposing a slim calf. The cheongsam, Ava had always thought, was a difficult dress to wear. It accentuated any physical shortcomings, suiting neither the too skinny nor the mildly plump. On Elizabeth Lee it looked like perfection.

Ava knew she was about sixty, but it was still a surprise to see that her grey hair was verging on white. Wealthy Chinese women did not usually succumb to nature so easily. Her hair, cut fashionably short, framed a long, slim, fine-featured face. She was about five foot four, Ava guessed, and in heels came to just above her husband’s shoulder. She had a beautiful walk, slow, almost languorous, and certainly elegant.
She moves like Maggie Cheung
, Ava thought, and was startled by the comparison. Her own mother was often compared to the Hong Kong movie star, and some years ago, speaking about her father and his wives, Uncle had remarked that Marcus seemed to like one model of woman and just kept trading up for a new one.

Marcus and Elizabeth passed by Peter and Ava on their way to the chairs. Elizabeth smiled at Peter as she and Marcus took their seats, and then she glanced at Ava with dark brown eyes that were not the least unkind. Ava averted her own eyes as she stepped forward with the cup. The Lees sipped their tea, offered their words of wisdom to the bride and groom, and passed over their red pocket.

For the next half-hour a parade of aunts and uncles and friends made their way to the chairs. Ava knew none of them. Peter identified those who were associated with the Lee family, including his mother’s four sisters and brother. The sisters shot Ava murderous looks when she approached with the cups of tea, and turned away when she handed them to Amanda to pass on.

After the second of his aunts snubbed Ava, Peter said, “I apologize for my aunts. They thought it was disrespectful to my mother for you to be invited to the wedding at all, and when they found out you were to be the maid of honour, well, it wasn’t pretty. There was even talk of their not coming.”

“I heard that rumour.”

“I’m glad they were more sensible than that.”

Ava saw no reason to reply.

“You do have to admit, though, that from their point of view it is a bit of an unusual situation,” he went on.

“I’m not here as our father’s bastard daughter. I am here as a friend of Amanda.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said quickly.

Ava looked into his face and saw no malice. “You didn’t,” she said.

The end of the tea ceremony signalled the time for Amanda to change into the red dress. As Ava and Amanda left the ballroom together to go back to the suite, Ava could sense the aunts’ eyes on her. She hardly knew any of the guests. Hong Kong wasn’t home, and neither her mother nor Uncle ran in the social circles that filled the ballroom. The only people Ava knew, aside from the wedding party, were Simon To, Michael’s business partner, his wife, Jessie, and May Ling and Changxing Wong. Ava then realized she hadn’t seen May Ling since before the ceremony.

“Did you see May Ling?” she asked Amanda.

“No,” Amanda said distractedly, as she applied the finishing touches to her makeup.

When they returned to the Grand Ballroom, the noise level had increased and the room was completely filled. They made their way to the head table and settled in for a meal that had taken hours of debate to decide upon; it would cost Marcus Lee close to US$700 per person — almost $700,000 in total. And that was just the food cost. Ava had no idea what the French red and white wines they were serving or the open bar with nothing but premium alcohol brands would add to the bill. The wedding guests would have expected nothing less. They were among Hong Kong’s elite and understood that Marcus Lee would never risk losing face at his eldest son’s wedding.

Unlike most Western weddings, it was the parents of the groom and not the bride who bore the wedding costs. Ava knew from Amanda that Jack Yee, wealthy in his own right, had gone to Marcus and offered to pay half. She had no idea how the two men resolved the matter. The sign at the Hyatt’s ballroom door welcomed the guests on behalf of both the Lee and Yee families, and the place cards at each table welcomed them to the union of the Lees and Yees. Ava suspected that Jack had increased his daughter’s dowry and paid for some of the pre-wedding events, while Marcus had looked after everything else.

The men were all dressed in designer suits, most costing more than $2,000. Some were custom-made by Jay Kos in New York or H. Huntsman in London. The ties they wore were as distinctive; at one table Ava could pick out a Gucci, Fendi, Hermès, and Armani.

However well dressed the men were, the women who accompanied them were made up and coiffed to the extreme. They wore a range of luxury gowns and platinum jewellery studded with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and jade that ranged from bright green to white and everything in between. No one dressed down. They had money, or their husbands did, and they weren’t reluctant to wear it. These were first wives, mainly an older crowd, given their relationships to the Yee and Lee families, but unlike Elizabeth Lee, they didn’t make any concession to age.

On the way back to the banquet, Ava and Amanda had passed Jamie and David Lee, Michael’s youngest brothers, who stood by two tables decorated with pictures of the bride and groom. On each table was a box covered in white silk. As the guests filed in, they stopped to slip a red pocket into the box. Amanda guessed the couple might collect as much as HK$5 million in gifts. Whatever it was, it would be enough to give them a solid financial footing as they began their marriage.

Ava and Amanda took their seats at the head table, which was directly in front of the dance floor, the other tables spread out to the right and left. The nearest on the left was occupied by the Yee family, and to the right were the Lees: Marcus, Elizabeth, and her sisters and brother with their spouses. The sisters had their eyes fixed on the head table — fixed on Ava. She tried to ignore them, but her gaze kept drifting back to their table and her discomfort kept growing. Ava looked over their heads, searching the room for friendlier faces, but her attention was inevitably drawn back to the Lee family’s table, where the aunties continued to glare.
They want me dead
, Ava thought.

Ava lowered her head, trying to shut them out of her mind. When she looked up, she saw that Elizabeth was speaking to them and motioning towards the head table. Then she stood up and walked onto the dance floor. She moved with the same measured gait with which she had approached the tea ceremony, and Ava was again struck by her elegance. Elizabeth stopped in the middle of the dance floor as if getting her bearings, and then turned and walked directly towards Ava.

A hush fell over the room. Ava thought she could hear her heart beating.

Elizabeth stopped about ten metres from the table and then said in a voice that carried, “Ava, could you come here, please.”

Ava felt Amanda stiffen and heard Michael say, “Mother . . .”

She pushed her chair back and began to rise. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Marcus start to get out of his own seat. She looked at him and shook her head.

It was five steps from the head table to the dance floor. Ava took them slowly, trying to look casual when all she could feel was utter embarrassment. As she neared Elizabeth Lee, she could hear murmurs and whispers.

“Ava,” the older woman said, extending her arms at waist height, her hands open, palms up. Ava froze. Elizabeth moved forward and grasped Ava’s hands with her own. “I want to apologize for my sisters’ behaviour,” she said.

Ava’s face flushed, and when she tried to speak, all she could muster was a slight stutter.

“None of them understand what you have done for the entire Lee family.” The older woman pulled back and cocked her head to one side. “Michael told me you were pretty, and for once he understated the facts. You are a stunning young woman, perhaps a bit too much like your father for my liking, but what can we do about that?” she said, and smiled.

“You are very kind.”

“Now, Ava, we are not going to be friends — I’m too old-fashioned for that. But I am pleased that you are friends with Amanda and Michael, and perhaps that can also be true for some of my other sons.”