Once upon a time in Chinatown

by Robert Ronsson

  ‘Where is it?’ I said, stalling for time, handing the photograph back. Was this the time to say something?

  ‘That’s the point. I don’t know. I found it going through some of my dad’s old papers. “Family land”…’ he made the rabbit’s ears sign with his fingers ‘… it’s intriguing, don’t you think?’

  I shrugged, perhaps a bit too theatrically. ‘You think it’s your family land?’

  ‘Could be. Dad once said something about us having a branch of the family in the Far East.’

  ‘And you’re showing it to me, because?’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know. The cinema is up and running. All very smoothly thanks to you. I’m thinking I need something new… maybe get away… travel. I remembered this picture, looked it out and now…’

  ‘The Far East is a big place. Don’t you know any more?’

  He shook his head and considered his half-empty glass. ‘Not really. But what would you say if I took off? Would The Factory be okay—?’

  ‘Hell! You don’t need to worry about The Factory. Look, why don’t you sleep on it. You’ll need to make some sort of plan. You can’t just head off to “the Far East” on your white charger like Panzo Sanchez.’

  Mick straightened himself up and threw back the last of his pint. He held his fingers close to my face. ‘One, it was Don Quixote who rode the horse. Two, it was a decrepit old black horse called Rocinante. Three, Quixote’s squire was called Sancho Panza. And four—’ he put his fingers to his temples ‘—and four… are you sure the cinema will manage if I go off gallivanting?’

  ‘We’ll be fine.’

  Mick stood to leave. ‘I know how it looks. I’ve got too much money and itchy feet. But I genuinely feel I should go to the Far East and find out what this picture is about. But I’ll only do it if you think the cinema will be okay.’

  I replayed the conversation and its possible ramifications as I tried to sleep that night. Mick’s revelation about the family land in the Far East almost certainly confirmed that he and I were related. I had missed the opportunity to reveal everything I knew; I resolved to say something the next day.

  4

  I imagine Mick felt vulnerable as he tottered along Vineyard Passage towards the town centre and his converted loft apartment in Water Street. His shadow leapt ahead of him as he passed in and out of the protection of each streetlamp’s glow. It was an hour after the midsummer sunset and he could hear furtive giggles and snuffling noises from behind the larger tombs where groups of lads had collected to sniff glue and quaff strong cider at the night’s close.

  He looked at his watch. The screening had finished and his customers had either dispersed to their cars, walked across to The Duke’s Head for a nightcap or were following him down the alley towards the town. He turned and, sure enough, there were three couples walking down, holding hands or arms linked, from the top of the alley.

  The thing with the photograph had gone well. He had introduced the idea of taking off somewhere. He didn’t want Steve to think he was bored with what they had built together even if it was a little bit true. He had discerned that Steve needed The Factory more than he did and the last thing he wanted to do was upset the life that was running smoothly. But he craved adventure. He had happened upon the photograph in his father’s old paperwork and the idea of finding the land had seeded itself into his unconscious and germinated the need to act. Was it that irrational? The family land was out there – who wouldn’t want to know what it meant? Admittedly, he couldn’t fly off to the first country in the ‘Far East’ that took his fancy. He’d have to be more scientific than that. But if he could pin it down to one country why not do something crazy? He could afford to travel first class all the way if he wanted, thanks to Kellie’s.

  As he trudged thoughtfully homeward he considered the life that the micturition business had brought him. He had more money than he knew how to spend but he was single again, because he had put his work before his marriage. He was a partner in a cinema that was making enough to cover its running costs. His loft apartment had a balcony that, if he leaned out far enough, allowed a partial view of the river. A seldom-driven, restored Alpha Romeo Series 2 Spider occupied his space in the basement garage.

  Why the hell would he want to literally chase a dream to ‘the Far East’? Then again, why the bloody hell not? It was the family land and family was the one thing he didn’t have.

  I imagine Mick was proud of his apartment that (very nearly) overlooked the river. He furnished it minimally and didn’t sully the effect with curtains. Shortly after 7.30am, when the first light entered his bedroom space through the floor-to-ceiling windows and crept across the bare boards, he lay with his eyes tight shut trying to recall how many beers he had drunk the previous evening.

  The radio alarm that had woken him now recounted news reports about the alleged mass killings by Serb soldiers in and around a supposedly safe United Nations area called Srebrenica. He had tried to follow the conflict in Yugoslavia because, when he was a boy, the family had taken a summer holiday there in a resort town called Poreç. However, his attempts to make sense of the different factions and the fragmented, illogical geography of the various ethnic groupings made his head hurt on the best of days. He reached out gingerly and pressed the off button.

  He twisted out of bed and strolled across to the window wearing only boxer shorts. His top floor apartment – he liked to call it a penthouse – was level with the roof of the building on the opposite side of the lane and his balcony floor obscured him from prying interest. He contemplated stepping outside but was deterred because of the light summer drizzle that pricked the puddles in the cobbled street below.

  During some half-hearted stretching, he remembered talking about the photograph that sparked his idea of going to the Far East. Despite the effects of the previous night blurring his thinking, he could see that the proposed trip based on the photograph alone made limited sense. But if he could pin down the location…

  In the kitchen area, he brewed coffee in a Moka pot, put two croissants in the oven and spooned out a measure of jam onto a plate – all without conscious thought. His mind was still turning over the idea of travel.

  It was not as if he had ties. He should have ties. It was his own fault that he didn’t. He went over the excuses for his wife’s decline into into addiction. They’d married too young. He’d spent all his time on the road building sales, creating the growth that led to what should have been their fortune. If they hadn’t broken up she could have shared in it. Maybe she wouldn’t have felt so alone if they’d had children but neither of them… with him away so much… latterly it was him fighting the vodka bottle for her attention. He was never going to win that one.

  He munched the thickly jammed croissant, keeping the creeping fungus in his head at bay with mental jogging. Married at twenty, divorced at thirty and here he was nearly forty. He shook his head to suppress a thought that was rising like a molehill in the otherwise pristine lawn of his contemplation. Perhaps it was time to put some effort into finding a life-partner. Was he thinking that he’d like kids? If it was what he was thinking he’d have to find a permanent relationship with a woman who was still young enough.

  And to even think that he might want children; where did that come from? If his future was a choice between fatherhood and the madcap trip east, the latter seemed like a sensible course of action. Time for a shower.

  5

  The venue for the monthly management meeting had recently been switched from the Starbucks in town to the new coffee shop on the corner opposite The Film Factory where the newsagent’s used to be. It should have started at 10.30am but, as usual, I was ten minutes late. From behind his morning paper, Mick said, ‘I’ll have another Americano.’

  ‘Will do. Sorry I’m late.’

  We had a set agenda for these meetings, I would give a brief overview of the financials, size of the houses, net receivables, costs, and then a review of the relationship with the agency
that helped set the programme and organised the courier delivery and collection of the reels.

  We moved on to discuss the forthcoming screenings and my ideas for the ‘clubhouse’ programme. Mick, who didn’t know his John Huston from his John Boorman, was always happy to nod through my suggestions.

  ‘Anything under AOB?’ he said.

  My dreadlocks had fallen forward and I flicked them back behind my shoulders. ‘No. It’s all on-plan.’ I put the spreadsheets back in my shoulder bag. ‘You okay, Mick?’ I said, ‘You seem a bit down.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s like I was saying last night. Maybe I’ve got itchy feet. Everything with The Factory is going so well, thanks to you but I need… I don’t know… just to get out of Richmond would be a start.’

  The time had come. I took a deep breath. ‘So, you’ve decided. You’re offski to Saigon or wherever?’

  He nodded. ‘It looks like it. I’ll probably throw a dart at a map and see where it takes me.’

  ‘And another when it lands in Bognor!’ I said.

  ‘Bugger Bognor!’ he exclaimed in basso profondo.

  ‘Now!’ I said. ‘You know that photo you showed me last night – the one that was meant to be a relative of yours from the past? He was on a horse?’

  Mick’s cheeks flushed. ‘It’s what started me thinking.’

  ‘Well I found something. It was in this travel magazine, a special about Malaysia, and on one of the pages I saw your name—’

  ‘Mick?’

  ‘No, you plonker. Kellie. Not just any Kelly but spelt ‘ie’ as in your weird name. Did you know there’s a big house in the north of Malaysia called Kellie’s Castle?’

  Mick leaned forward. ‘Okay. Now I’m interested.’

  ‘This—’ I mimed speech marks on either side of my head ‘—castle was built by somebody called Kellie-Smith, though. Do you know of any Kellie-Smiths, not just plain Kellies, in your family?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Anyway, this article was about beach resorts in Malaysia and this castle place was in the side bit. It had a picture and everything.’

  Mick straightened and shifted forward in his chair. ‘Have you got it with you?’

  My bag was by my feet and I leant down, took out the magazine and flipped it onto the table with an imagined ta-dah! ‘Have a look at this and I’ll get another coffee.’ I needed to be away from him. My armpits were pumping.

  As I stood at the counter, I watched Mick flick through to the correct page and start reading. The article was about a resort island called Langkawi but one of the quirky pieces in a box to the side was entitled The Castle of Doomed Romance.

  I put the coffees on the table. Upside down I could see the the ruins of the building and the paragraphs that described how William Kellie-Smith had built Kellie’s Castle as a grand romantic gesture for his wife who, because of his death, had never even seen it.

  Mick looked up and tapped the page. ‘Have you read this?’

  I nodded feigning nonchalance. My knee was in spasm and I gripped it with my right hand.

  ‘It says here that the man who built the house, William Kellie-Smith, originally came from a small hamlet in Scotland called Kellas. He named his first house after it. I don’t know much about my grandfather, Kenneth, but one thing I do know is that he was born in Scotland. William and Kenneth could be related. It could be another branch of the family.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it is.’

  He looked at me askance. ‘What do you mean?’

  I took a sip of coffee. ‘It’s something I should have told you right at the start. I kept this magazine because my father’s name was Kellie K-E-L-L-I-E Smith—’

  ‘But your name is Cross and you’re…’ he pointed at my hair.

  ‘Cross is my mother’s maiden name. You’re right, yes, my mother was mixed race. My father was white. They never married because he was killed in the war. He was with his uncle when he died. His uncle was Kenneth Kellie-Smith. When you told me about your family business being founded by your grandfather – Kenneth, I put two and two together. We’re related. We’re cousins.’

  Mick’s mouth opened but no noise came out. I wasn’t sure whether he’d taken in all I’d said. He snapped open his wallet and slipped out the black and white image. ‘What you’re saying is that this is Kenneth Kellie-Smith, my grandfather, and he’s related to you and this is Malaysia? Hang on. I can’t get my head round it.’

  ‘No. The man in the picture is probably the man who built the castle. He’s my grandfather William Kellie-Smith. If I’m right, he’s your grand-uncle, although I think the proper word is great uncle like in Great Uncle Bulgaria.’

  Mick looked up, his brow furrowed.

  ‘Sorry. Never mind,’ I said and pretended to study the photograph closely, glancing between it and the image in the article. ‘Look!’ I pointed to the smudge on the tree-line in the photograph. Couldn’t that be the tower there?’ I pointed to the end of the building in the magazine picture. ‘Your photograph could be the castle from the other side of the plantation. It shows the extent of—’ I did the finger thing ‘—the family land. The man on the horse is probably your father’s uncle. It’s the Kellie family land. It’s your great uncle’s land. It makes us cousins.’ I jabbed a finger at the picture. ‘This is where you should go.’ I waited. My heart was thudding.

  Mick took the photograph and held it alongside the magazine. ‘Mmm. It could be, I suppose. He turned the photograph over. ‘Why the bloody hell couldn’t they have written Malaysia on the back?’ Wide-eyed he shook his head. ‘And this makes us cousins? How long have you known?’

  ‘I suspected it right from the start because of the name on the factory, but I didn’t want to say anything because it would have complicated the whole pitch to get you to accept the cinema idea. Then, afterwards – I don’t know – I was happy that I knew you were probably my cousin and it was enough.’

  He seemed to take what I’d said at face value and re-scanned the article. ‘Look, it says this place in Scotland, Kellas, where William came from, is only a hamlet. Maybe I can find out there whether he and my grandad were brothers. Rather than going on a wild-goose chase to Malaysia, I should go there.’ He nodded. ‘Thanks, for this, Steve. Yep! That’s what I’ll do. I’m going to Kellas.’

  He was immediately preoccupied by the land thing and the prospect of a trip to Scotland. He was already making plans. If he had asked me to go with him I knew I would have had to decline because one of us had to stay behind for the Film Factory. I had still wanted him to ask me, though.

  6

  As soon as Mick had returned from the coffee shop, I picture him taking a magnifying glass to the photograph of his great uncle and, sure enough, spying the top few feet of what appeared to be the square castle tower over the tips of the trees. It was merely a ghost of a smudge and he marvelled at how I had been able to make out such detail.

  He checked his AA Book and found Kellas in north Scotland. The name marked an area of green that didn’t have even a speck of grey to denote habitation. The nearest town of any size was Elgin and next morning, Mick called to book a room in the Laichmoray Hotel.

  He drove up in the Alfa Romeo at the end of the same week. It took the best part of fifteen hours including breaks and, after checking in, he unlocked the door to his room and fell onto the bed in one movement. Later, in the small hours, he roused himself sufficiently to change into his pyjamas and brush his teeth before snuggling under the duvet.

  Next morning, after a full Scottish breakfast, he drove out to the hamlet and discovered that it consisted of a few bungalows strung along a country lane with a sign at each end bearing the legend ‘Kellas’. Despite driving up and down the deserted road twice he couldn’t find anything or anyone to help him.

  The nearest habitation he could see on the map was a village called Dallas, and after driving in that direction for three miles, the main road took him between two terraces of one-storey stone houses. Signs by a war m
emorial pointed him south to Bridge of Lossie and St Michael’s Church. The bridge was an unprepossessing structure crossing a tame rivulet that didn’t seem worthy of special mention on the road signs, but it did lead to St Michael’s Church, which, though only four walls and a roof, lifted Mick’s mood. It promised answers. It was set back from the road behind a square cemetery with neat rows of gravestones separated by grass paths. He pulled the car into the lay-by opposite.

  The drizzle that Mick had cursed during his drive was turning into sleet as he ducked inside the porch and tried the door. It opened. Mick didn’t frequent churches but he was immediately struck by the absence of a centre aisle. The pews were set in three blocks separated by two aisles so that neither led to the middle of the altar. The smell of freshly applied emulsion paint hung in the air and, when Mick paused and looked up, he saw that the buttercup yellow on the ceiling was fresh. It contrasted with the cracked and flaking distemper that covered the walls. He was approaching the rood screen along the nearest aisle when he was stopped by the sound of a door opening behind him.

  A young man emerged from a doorway opposite where Mick had come in. The clergyman was dressed in a black cassock. Shined black toecaps flashed at the hem of his skirt. ‘Can I help you?’

  Mick cleared his throat. ‘I don’t know. I’m trying to trace some relatives who came from round here. From Kellas to be exact.’

  ‘Then you’ve come to the right place. This parish covers Kellas. It’s a very small place.’