‘I’ve seen.’
‘I assume that’s your Alfa parked opposite.’ He nodded towards the south wall as if he could see through it.
‘Yes.’
‘Nice car. Have you driven far?’
‘I came up from London yesterday. Stayed in Elgin.’
‘Good. Come back here and we’ll look at the books. Tell me, if I find your relatives in our register would you mind letting me have a quick spin in your motor? Just up the lane and back.’
‘What about the insurance?’
‘Don’t worry about that. The only police hereabouts are in Lossiemouth. Who’ll know?’
Mick was tempted to say, God will, but stopped himself. He didn’t want to antagonise the man.
The vestry was a combined changing room and office. There was a monitor on the desktop wired into an IBM personal computer set on its side in the knee space. The priest saw what Mick was looking at. ‘Sadly, I haven’t been able to even think about transcribing our records onto a computer.’ He pointed to a bank of red leather-bound registers. ‘That’s where we’ll be looking. Our past clergy kept records of all the births, deaths and marriages in the parish – members of the church or no. Any idea of what date you’re looking for?’
Mick had worked it out before he left Richmond. ‘Births around 1870, I think.’
‘Well, it gives us a starting point. And the name?’
‘Kellie-Smith.’
‘And are you a Kellie-Smith?’
‘We only use Kellie now. It’s Kellie I E not Y.’ He held out his hand. ‘Mick Kellie.’
The priest’s handshake was dry and firm. Mick was reassured that, should he allow the priest to go for a spin in the Alfa, it would be in safe hands.
‘Fine good it is to meet you, Mr Kellie. I’m Rodney Sullivan. Call me Rod.’ He took down one of the ledgers, June 1863 – February 1874 and flicked though to six months into 1869. The vicar at the time had meticulously entered the details of every event in date order, births, marriages and deaths mixed together. Mick wasn’t sure how big an area was covered but the population couldn’t have been large because the events came at a rate of one or two a month. Some months nothing happened.
They found what they were looking for on the first page of entries for 1870. Kenneth Kellie-Smith and William Kellie-Smith had been born on the same day, 1st March. They were registered in the book seven days later.
After copying out the entry word for word and watching as the vicar returned the book to its place on the shelf, Mick tossed his car keys into Rod’s hand. ‘Be careful.’ He followed Rod to the porch and they both paused. The sleet was feathering down in soft-edged, heavy drops.
Rod looked up. ‘I’d like to take the roof off if it’s all the same to you.’
On the drive back to Richmond, broken by an overnight stop in a hotel outside Edinburgh, Mick recalled his parting conversation with Rod as they sat in the car after it had been spun up and down the road mostly at something like 70 miles an hour with the top off and the sleet skidding over them.
Rod had asked whether he intended to visit the Kellas House Farm – the address given as the Kellie-Smith residence. Mick admitted that he was going back to Kellas in the hope of finding it.
‘I wouldn’t trouble yourself,’ Rod had said. ‘The original Kellas House was pulled down forty or so years ago. The existing property is modern thing.’
Drinking a nightcap whisky in his Edinburgh hotel room, half watching a film on television, Mick went over what he knew: everything pointed to the family land being in Malaysia. The twins, brought up on a farm in a sleepy little hamlet, had spread their wings and done so well. His grandfather, Kenneth, had gone south and founded the factory in Richmond; his grandfather’s twin, William, had travelled to Malaysia and made his fortune.
There were two branches to his family; he was on one side and strangely, his business partner, Steve was on the other. He wasn’t ready to get to grips with what this meant for them and The Factory. He needed action and his path was clear. He would follow his great uncle William to Malaysia and the city called Ipoh.
On the night of his return from Scotland, I imagine Mick slept fitfully. He woke often and his first thought was always of the house and the land. He reached into the recesses of what he knew about the family to make a connection. Robert, Mick’s father, had schooled him on the timelines of their company’s product development from simple lavender-perfumed blocks to anti-splash, fragrance-infused, plastic mats but hardly anything about the family origins. He vaguely remembered being told that his grandfather, Kenneth, founder of the perfumed-block dynasty, had died in an air raid during the Second World War. Or was this merely prompted by what Steve had told him?
His mind a pre-dawn jumble, Mick put in place the few jig-saw pieces of his family tree. His trip had placed William and Kenneth, twin brothers, alongside each other at the top. Each had a main stem and on Kenneth’s side there had been a mysterious ‘aunt’ Siobhan who was Kenneth’s second wife. She had run the business in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death until Robert was old enough to take over, which would have been around 1960 – when Mick was five and starting school.
As far as Mick knew, there had been no communication between the two arms of the family after his grandfather died. He and his father, Robert, were only children; he was the only Kellie on Kenneth’s side.
He knew that Kenneth’s twin, William Kellie-Smith, was married because, according to the magazine article, he had built the castle for his wife. They may well have had children. Steve had said that one of them was Anthony, Steve’s father, who died alongside Kenneth. But wouldn’t Robert, his own father, have told him if he knew there was family somewhere? All he had was the photograph of ‘the family land’.
He had no reason to doubt Steve’s father was Anthony Kellie Smith. If he accepted it, Steve – the strange, mixed-race, film enthusiast with unkempt hair and mismatched clothes – was his cousin. He could accept it as a theory – a genealogical fact even – but what did it mean? Should Steve mean something more to him because they shared their grandparent’s DNA? He attempted the calculation. Twenty-five percent or maybe half of that. It’s not a lot to have in common.
A week later, Mick sat in the business-class lounge at Heathrow Airport waiting to join the flight to Kuala Lumpur. Assured that The Film Factory would survive without him, his only concern was how he would use his time during his fourteen days away. The travel agent had arranged for him to spend the first two in KL, as he had learned to call it, and booked nothing for the rest of the time. Mick planned to travel north by rental car on the third day and find a hotel in Ipoh, the city nearest to the castle. He was then in the right part of the country to head to the coast for a ferry to Langkawi where he could start a beach holiday. The big question at this stage was whether the three novels he had brought with him would last two weeks.
He had enjoyed spending the money. He had told the travel agent that he wasn’t constrained by cost and was already pleased with his decision not to fly economy. There was something calming about the lounge where his companions dressed in business attire and studied broadsheet newspapers and magazines. The business centre was equipped with computers so that they could contact their offices by e-mail and he even spotted one passenger ostentatiously holding one of the new wireless telephones to his ear and talking into its built-in microphone.
After the first in-flight meal, Mick consulted the menu of films and chose Groundhog Day and, it was only when the woman who sat next to him nudged his elbow, he realised that he had been laughing out loud. She too was wearing headphone; he mouthed an apology.
She signed back that she wanted to know which channel he was watching.
Half-looking at the screen he removed an earpiece and waited for her to do the same. ‘It’s Groundhog Day,’ he said. ‘You know, Bill Murray.’
‘I love that film,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see it on the list. How long has it been on?’
�
�Only about twenty minutes…’
She twiddled with the handset control and nodded vigorously at him with her eyebrows raised as she replaced her headphone. For the next hour or so, Mick was aware of her right arm trembling in unison with his laughter.
At the end of the film, Phil Connors woke and, miraculously so it seemed, it was the day after Groundhog Day. He had accomplished the perfect 24 hours. How many hundreds of days had the weatherman committed to achieving contentment? Life was more random than that, Mick thought. Perhaps his fate – his happiness – could be determined by something as arbitrary as… he glanced to his left, as arbitrary as the allocation of business class seats by Malaysian Airlines.
The woman’s hair was pulled back tight from her scalp and scrunched into an extravagant ponytail that fell over her shoulder and down her chest. She was wearing a loose, pullover top and pale, cotton trousers. Dressing for comfort rather than style was the hallmark of the seasoned traveller, he thought.
He turned to her. ‘I’m sorry about earlier. I’ve seen that film over and over and I still find it hilarious.’
‘Me too,’ she said, and proffered her right hand, her elbow crooked awkwardly into her waist. I’m Amy.’
‘Mick.’ He wanted to say more but his mind was blank. When he was in the perfumed tablet business these conversations could be so excruciating
‘What takes you to KL, Mick?’
It was such an obvious conversational gambit; why hadn’t he thought of it? It was a relief simply to say, ‘It’s a sort of holiday.’
‘In KL?’ Her eyebrows added the question mark.
‘Not exactly. I start there – just for a couple of days. Then I head north and probably end up on a beach in Langkawi.’
The hum of the engines that underscored the conversation made them watch each other’s lips as if they were hard of hearing.
‘Lucky you.’
‘And you? Why are you going to KL?’
‘Work, I’m afraid.’
‘What sort of work is that?’
‘It’s a funny old job, actually.’
He settled his backside deeper into the seat. It was comforting to find the other person being evasive about what they did for a living. He smiled. ‘Sounds interesting.’
The lights in the cabin dimmed and they were illuminated only by the screens that showed the progress of the plane somewhere over the Middle East.
She frowned and a movement of her head indicated that she’d summed Mick up and decided on an action of some sort. Or was this wishful thinking on his part? ‘I’ll show you.’ She leant down to a briefcase by her side and rummaged through the contents. When she sat up again she was holding something in her closed fist. ‘I shouldn’t really share this with you – with anybody. It’s so totally a secret. If you tell I’ll have to kill you.’
It was a joke, but she was going to share a business confidence. This much was clear. It implied complicity and who knew where it might lead? He turned on his seat’s reading light. Amy had handed him a plastic figurine of a woman with an impossibly inflated bust and tightly corseted high waist. Her solid plastic hair was jet-black and rolled down to her shoulders like breakers on a rocky coast. Her hyper-long legs, which must have been as anatomically impossible as her bosom, were covered in a purple, swirling skirt beneath which flashed the white of a petticoat. ‘You make these?’ He immediately regretted how negative he sounded.
She pulled away from him as if he had raised a hand.
‘Sorry. That came out wrong. She’s… I’m sure little girls will love her.’
‘We hope so.’ She held out her hand and took the doll back. ‘Boys too. It’s top secret. You mustn’t tell anyone but I work for a company that does Happy Meal promotions for McDonalds…’
She was evidently waiting for a signal of recognition. He knew what McDonalds was, everybody did. But where did this grotesque figure fit in?
She sighed. ‘The company I work for designs the Happy Meal promotions. You know, the box packaging and the free gifts.’ She held up the figurine. ‘Esmeralda here is part of our big Disney-linked promotion for the middle of next year. I’ve got Quasimodo, Captain Phoebus and Judge Frollo in my bag.’
‘I get it. Sorry! I’ve been so thick. The Hunchback of Notre Dame.’
‘Exactly! The McDonalds promotion runs alongside the release of the next Disney blockbuster.’
‘And your company designs all the freebies. Brilliant!’
‘It’s not exactly making the world a better place.’
‘It is for the kids who go to McDonalds. Why KL, though?’
‘It’s my job. I go around the world to all the franchisees to let them know the details of the promotion. They have to keep it under wraps until the release date.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I must be tired. I shouldn’t have told you all this. You will keep it under your hat, won’t you?’
‘Of course. What an amazing job. Where do you go?’
‘All over. Wherever there’s a McDonalds – even Moscow and Beijing.’
‘Wow! This is the first time I’ve flown like this – business class. If you do this all the time, you’re very lucky.’
‘It’s like everything. You get used to it and it becomes –’ she shook her head ‘– everyday. And it’s not exactly what I had in mind when I left college.’
‘We all make compromises.’ He was unhappy that this, apparently confident business woman had such a low opinion of her worth. ‘You’ll never guess what my company did,’ he said. And for the next hour they discussed the relative merits of perfumed urinal tablets and Happy Meal toys as far as the advancement of mankind was concerned, each taking the other’s part. They only stopped when one of the cabin staff squatted by their row and said that the other passengers were complaining about their loud conversation and could they tone it down, please?
When the attendant had gone, they shrugged and scrunched up their faces like children who’d been discovered doing something naughty. They wished each other goodnight. She turned away from him, let the seat-back fall almost flat, pulled up a blanket and was soon making the regular breathing noises of sleep.
The morning brightness of the cabin and the calm efficiency of the breakfast serving made Mick feel foolish about the encounter of the previous night and he was sure Amy felt it too. The vagaries of Malaysia Airline’s booking system had forced them into a conversation that was perhaps more familiar than either intended and now they looked set to resume their separate lives.
They barely acknowledged each other. He was tempted to start up a conversation along the lines of how much he’d enjoyed sleeping with her, but knew this was ill-advised. But what should he say? There was something about last night’s darkened cabin that encouraged indiscretion. The magic had been driven out by the dawn.
After the plane landed, as they scrabbled together their possessions, they said a perfunctory goodbye and he wished her well with the Disney promotion’.
‘Have a lovely holiday,’ she said and, lugging her sample briefcase over one shoulder and dragging a wheeled suitcase with her free hand, she disappeared from his life. Why hadn’t he asked for her business card at least?
7
I imagine Mick would have found it difficult to sleep even without his scrambled sense of time. His body clock told him that it was early evening but his watch said three in the morning. Four hours earlier he had turned off the air-conditioning because its roar stopped him from falling asleep. Now he tossed in the sweat-damp sheets, his head bursting with the repercussions of his encounter on the plane.
The only way to find Amy would be to contact McDonalds when he was back in London. But she didn’t work for them; she worked for a consultancy company that worked for McDonalds. Even if he could trace her company, he didn’t know her last name. ‘Amy who does the travelling with the Happy Meal promotion stuff.’ How lame did that sound?
‘Why do you want to speak to her?’ he asked himself out loud.
‘Because I met he
r on a plane and now I want to ask her out,’ he admitted. He sounded like a stalker.
He rolled over, pummelling his head deeper into the pillows, praying for sleep. Unbidden, Amy’s unadorned night-flight face with the freckles each side of her nose appeared in front of his closed eyes. Her hair was now jet black and obscured a cantilevered bosom. He groaned and rolled out of bed.
The cold from the floor tiles leached deliciously into the soles of his feet as he padded across the tiled floor. The mini-bar fridge cast a beam of light across the room as he reached in for water. He stood, his naked body glowing in front of the open door, and drank from the bottle. He reached to the window and pulled the blind’s wooden slats apart to look outside. The twin spears of the Petronas Tower, which, when finished, would be the tallest building in the world, pierced the purple, night sky half a mile away. He caught his reflection in the glass, noticing that his hair was snarled and spiky. The pallor of his skin emphasised dark circles around his eyes. He decided that maybe a swim would help.
Emerging from the lift on the top floor, Mick was pleased and mildly surprised to find the entrance wasn’t locked. He made his way up the stairway and his feet, still bare, were prickled by the resistant tufts of the Astroturf in a way that heightened his anticipation of the cool water. When he reached the roof, the fresh zing of the chlorine fumes wiped Amy from his mind.
The sky was a dark canopy pegged to the white walls surrounding the pool. Pinprick stars burned their ancient energy alongside a moon that glowed with the luminosity of a paper lantern. Mick could make out the craters on its parchment-like surface. He stood awed; they don’t have moons like this in England.
The lamps at the bottom of the pool created an arc of brightness that flooded into the warm air. As he swam he floated at the misty margin that marked the mini-horizon between the liquid below and the humid air above. His arms chopped into the water without tearing its surface; the drips from his hands sparkled as if he was swimming through mercury.
The meeting on the plane with Amy, the magic of this rooftop swim were auguries – what did they portend?
Once upon a time in Chinatown Page 15
