“What a lovely home you have,” I exclaimed, as she led us into the living room, and I meant it. It could so easily have been overdone, but the room was huge, and it was decorated with impeccable taste. Furthermore, I loved the mixture of periods and styles. A lot of my clients want a particular look right down to the last detaiclass="underline" Victorian, Tuscan farmhouse, Provence, Georgian, whatever. I am, of course, always glad to sell it to them. But for myself, perhaps because I travel so much and like so many different things, I prefer a rather more eclectic mix of objects.
The living room was an antique dealer’s dream. There were priceless objets almost everywhere you looked: stone carvings, Khmer-style wood carvings, antique textiles, and silver. There was more of the gold nielloware I’d seen in my bedroom; mother-of-pearl inlay on half the furniture; exquisite coromandel screens; gilded lacquer furniture; Chinese Shang bronzes along with artifacts from India, Cambodia, and Laos. Surprisingly, a lot of the furniture was European in design but covered in silk. There were a pair of wing chairs in a lovely pale green silk, a couple of Queen Anne side chairs, and in a corner, that most Western of instruments, a grand piano.
While most of the art was Asian, there were two oil portraits, the kind you’d expect in an oak-paneled hall of some baron’s estate: the family ancestors on display, over a lacquered side chest.
“Thank you,” Wongvipa said. “I’m honored that someone who knows so much about antiques and antiquities would be so kind in her comments about our home.”
“My wife has done all the decorating herself,” a man said, coming forward to greet us. “It is her aesthetic alone that has made this place what it is. I am Thaksin,” he said, “and it is a pleasure indeed to meet Miss Jennifer’s stepmother.” There it was, that odious word again, the one Clive kept taunting me with. It wasn’t the step part I objected to, it was the word mother. I wasn’t her mother, I was her father’s partner, that’s all.
Khun Thaksin was not as old as Jennifer had implied, but he was, I’d say, at least seventy-five. His obvious status in the room would indicate that I should wei, but I’m never sure if it’s appropriate. There is something often referred to as the foreigner’s wei, a sort of halfhearted effort where the palms are brought up just below the chin, but there are so many conventions associated to whom and when one should wei, I usually just stand there wondering what to do with my hands. My discomfort was over in a second, though, because he reached out and shook my hand, then signaled for a waiter to bring me a glass of wine.
“This is Prapapan,” he said, as a girl of about five or six dashed by. “We call her Oun. In English that would be Fatty,” he added. “That is because she was so tiny when she was born that we worried about her. We named her Fatty so she would grow big and strong. As you can see,” he said, as the little girl stuffed a handful of peanuts into her mouth, “we succeeded. That’s enough now, Oun,” he said indulgently. “I consider myself most fortunate at my age to have a little daughter,” he said to me.
Chat was there, in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. A lovesick puppy expression came over his face the moment he cast eyes on Jennifer. Rather than standing beside her, he remained where he could just look at her. It was rather sweet. He caught sight of me watching him and blushed.
“This is our son, Dusk,” Khun Wongvipa said, presenting a young man of about seventeen or eighteen. Dusit was rather pouty, if not borderline surly, but at a glance from his father, he spoke a few polite words of welcome and then went back to playing something on his handheld computer.
Yutai, the family secretary, came over to say hello and to ask about my day, before I was introduced to another couple, Sompom and his wife, Wannee, a rather large woman in a silk sari, and their daughter, Nu. A young woman named Busakorn was introduced as a friend of the family. She was rather plain, it must be said, but she looked very nice in a red and gold version of the phasin, much like Wongvipa’s. She was accompanied by her father, Khun Wichai, a rather handsome man who I gathered was a business associate of Thaksin’s. All, even little Fatty, spoke English, to my great relief.
Dinner was at a table set for twelve, but which could easily have accommodated twice that number. The table was low, Asian-style, but with an artfully concealed depression beneath, which allowed us to sit Western style, something for which my middle-aged bones were most grateful. We sat on gold silk cushions, with mon kwang, or pyramid-shaped cushions, also in gold silk, as arm- and backrests. An antique silk runner in red and gold ran the length of the table, on which were placed banana leaves, each topped with a single red lotus blossom, with orchids and gardenias strewn about the bases. Sprigs of jasmine had been twisted in little chains, which served as napkin rings. The places were set with brass rather than silver flatwear, gold-rimmed crystal, and china in a lovely red, green, and gold Bencharong. The rim was decorated with a stylized lotus blossom, really lovely, and it was all I could do not to turn one of the plates over to read the manufacturer in hopes of finding some to import for McClintoch Swain.
“I see you are admiring the china,” Yutai, to my left, said. “It is designed by Khun Wongvipa herself. The pattern is called Chaiwong, and for the use of the family only.” So much for the shop, but I did think Khun Wongvipa and I just might be able to do business if this was the sort of thing she came up with. “She also did the floral arrangements herself this afternoon.”
“Khun Wongvipa is obviously an extraordinarily talented person,” I said. I was quite envious really, of everything: her obvious talents, her home, her antiques, her life of wealth although obviously not leisure. So enchanted was I by everything I saw, it took me a minute or two to notice that Khun Wongvipa and Busakorn matched the table. I’m all for the perfect table setting, but this, if deliberate, and I was reasonably sure it was, was over the top, and there was something vaguely unsettling about it. Busakorn was seated in an honored position at Khun Thaksin’s right, and next to Chat, while Jennifer was down the length of the table from her beau, seated between Sompom and Wannee. Wichai, Busakorn’s father, had the other position of honor, to Wong-vipa’s right. Jennifer seemed to have recovered from her earlier stage fright, however, and was talking in an animated fashion to Sompom. I was seated to Thaksin’s left, and while Busakorn sat across the table from me, she rarely spoke to me. Indeed, she rarely seemed to speak at all.
Yutai sat on my left. “How long have you worked for the family?” I asked him, as my opening conversational gambit, prosaic though it might have been.
“Eight years,” he said. “I worked as a clerk at Ayutthaya Trading at first, but Khun Wongvipa discovered me, I suppose you might say, and offered me the office manager’s position at Ayutthaya, and then later the position here. Khun Wongvipa is most generous and kind, as are the others, and I feel I am treated almost as one of the family.”
“I don’t suppose the name William Beauchamp means anything to you,” I said.
There was a perceptible pause before he answered. “I do not believe so,” he replied. “Should it?”
“Not really, I suppose. It’s just that he rented space from Ayutthaya Trading, but when I went to his shop, it was closed. He is a fellow antique dealer from Toronto, and I was hoping to drop in to see him while I was here. I was wondering if there was any chance you would know where he’d moved.”