Once upon a time in Chinatown

by Robert Ronsson

  My cousin’s office was on the first floor and evidently the only access was through the sun-filled open doorway at the far end of the corridor.

  The spiral staircase vibrated with each step and I wasn’t confident that the fixings held it fast to the crumbling rear wall of the building. The paved courtyard was enclosed on all sides and the walls, despite being hidden from general view, were ornately tiled in geometric patterns that created a disturbing 3-D shimmering effect. This, added to my concern about the stability of the staircase, brought a strange enervation to my legs. Holding tight to the metal rail, I heaved myself onto the upper platform and re-entered the building into a corridor corresponding to the one below. This time there was a murky-paned window at the far end. This would have looked out over Rua Sao Julião but for its impenetrable grime.

  On my left, there was a brass plaque polished to a high sheen. The doorway on my right carried three yellow Perspex oblongs with black wording, Agência de Investigação Escobar. Should I knock? I took a deep breath and walked in.

  It was a large room with two desks. The first was unoccupied and arranged to intercept visitors. Beyond it, at the second, a man sat in a wooden, leather-seated, tilt-and-roll chair. He stood to reveal his height – possibly approaching 7 feet. His head almost touched the beams that spanned the room. ‘Mr Cross,’ he said. ‘You are very prompt. Please. Come in. Sit.’ He pointed to a chair in front of the desk. He didn’t wait for me to answer but continued, ‘I’m not going to offer you a drink.’ He nodded towards the empty desk that I hadn’t yet walked around. ‘As you can see, I am alone and this is a spartan office. Let us discuss the matters of a more personal nature and then perhaps we can adjourn to a bar for an apero.’

  His words came out in an even tone. They were fluent but staged, as if he’d been rehearsing and I wondered whether the act was something I should be wary of. Or was he merely nervous like me? After all, this wasn’t the usual client-needing-his-help meeting that was his quotidian experience. (Although, given the shabby and untidy nature of the room, I wondered how much detective work actually came through the door.)

  I shimmied around the guard desk and took my seat in the high-backed chair provided for clients. It was lower than I’d reckoned and my backside hit the seat hard. From this lowly position, I had to look up to my cousin, sitting tall in the saddle. Taking a tip from Mr Thurslow, I placed my Panama hat deliberately between us on Escobar’s desk. However, the desktop was strewn haphazardly with files, typewritten sheets and two volcanically overflowing ashtrays so I’m not sure this had the desired effect.

  Slightly behind me and to my right, a printer squatted on the floor alongside a computer station. The base had a port for a 5-inch floppy disk drive. Scotia had updated our computers to read 3.5-inch disks at least five years before.

  ‘Well, Mr Cross. Or should I call you cousin?’

  ‘Why not? For as far as I know, that is what we are.’ While I told Luis about my discoveries I again searched for physical evidence of our shared antecedents. He was of a similar age to me, perhaps a few years younger. His dark hair was receding and his forehead high-domed. He sported tortoise-shell-framed glasses and when he smiled his snaggled teeth were stained by smoking. There was nothing to link him to me or the picture of my father.

  Towards the end of the story, Escobar picked up a packet of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head. He lit up and took an exaggerated draw. I had nearly brought him up to date and finished with how Thurslow’s agency had traced Luis’s mother, Helen, to Lisbon and the discovery of her son. ‘That’s you, Luis Escobar.’

  He smiled. ‘Just to think if you had not seen your baptismal certificate naming my uncle as your father we would never had known the other existed. It is most exciting, yes? To find out that we are cousins; it is most exciting.’

  I was surprised that he accepted my evidence so readily. ‘My mother wouldn’t have made the declaration for the certificate lightly, I’m sure. For her, a statement to a vicar would have meant more than testifying in court.’

  He nodded. ‘I am sure that you are right.’ He sat back and steepled his fingers against his lips. ‘I know about Anthony… your father… he was my uncle and he died in the war. As you say, a bomb.’ He pronounced the last ‘b’. ‘But my mother did not mention that her brother was ever engaged to be married.’ He spread his hands. ‘But, then again, why should she? It was a long time ago.’ He tapped his cigarette against one of the overflowing ashtrays, took another long drag, and pounded the stub into the mound that was already there. I shuddered as he flicked days-old ash from his fingertips. ‘It is most interesting for me, Mr Cross, that you come here with this information about my family. You are filling gaps in what I knew. But I suspect that for you it means more – because you knew nothing of us – of my family. You thought you were alone. But didn’t your mother have family – a history?’

  I smiled and nodded. ‘It’s very perceptive of you, Luis. May I call you Luis?’

  He nodded. ‘Of course, and I will call you Steve.’

  ‘You have your memories of family and I have nothing. Sadly, my mother was given up for adoption when she was a baby. She never knew her mother. No stability, no history.’

  ‘And history repeated itself in your mother, in a way.’

  ‘Not exactly. My father — your uncle — they would have married but for the war… and my mother didn’t leave me on a doorstep.’

  He held up an apologetic hand. ‘Yes, of course.’ He leant forward. ‘But one thing is troubling me and I don’t know how to say it. I don’t want to be rude but—’

  ‘But I don’t look like somebody who could be related to you?’

  He spread his hands in apology. ‘Yes. I hope you—’

  ‘I totally understand. My mother was mixed race. She believed that she was abandoned because her father was black. My hair, some of my features are from her.’

  ‘I understand. Okay. This is what I suggest. We go for apero now.’ He stood up. ‘Over a drink, I will tell you about my family — your family. Perhaps we go on and have dinner later. You are alone in Lisbon, yes?’

  I drew my hat back from his desk. It was done. Luis had accepted my story without demur. Only my instinctive reserve held me back from hugging him. Instead I beamed my widest smile and he responded with what looked like genuine affection. I turned towards the door so he wouldn’t see me wipe away a tear.

  Five minutes later, we were sitting in the sunshine outside the Café da Prata on the corner, yards from Luis’s office. In the brighter light, I could see that his cream, cotton jacket was crumpled and frayed at the cuffs. He had a five o’clock shadow. This might not have been slovenliness. Men with his colouring probably had to shave twice a day. He had clipped dark-lenses over his glasses.

  He had ordered without asking and two schooners of pale sherry sat in front of us. The sun floundered at the bottom of each glass radiating a warm glow. The drink’s initial taste as we toasted each other ‘To cousins!’ was bitter and like a ball of blotting paper in my mouth. I wasn’t sure I could finish it.

  ‘Of course, I am my father’s son first,’ Luis said. ‘Jose Escobar was a toolmaker. He worked in factories — actually, small engineering works — in the Bairro Chinês. This was an area on the river to the north of Lisbon – you would call it a shanty town – where people coming from the countryside lived to be close to where they worked. He was one of them, an incomer. He met my mother in a Fado bar. You know Fado?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I will have to take you to see. Proper Fado. Not touristic. It is a music style of only Portugal. My mother came to a touristic bar where my father played the guitar as an accompany to the singers. They met before her father died… 1926. My father was ten years older than her. He died when I was twelve. The Fado bars – he had been a big drinker – I’m not sure my mother was happy with him in the later years after they came back to Lisbon.’ The harsh sunlight made shadows in the creases at the sides
of his eyes.

  ‘When were you born; do you mind me asking?’

  He took a sip of his drink. ‘1950’.

  According to Mr Thurslow, Luis’s parents had married in 1927. ‘That’s twenty-three—’

  ‘Yes. You have a good head for figures. My parents were married for over twenty years before I was born. My mother was 46.’ He shrugged. ‘I was a mistake? She thought she was too old to have a baby perhaps? I don’t know.’

  I studied my glass, wondering whether to risk another sip. ‘And you’ve always lived in Lisbon?’

  ‘Yes. They moved to England to marry, but didn’t settle there… then the war came. When they returned, there was no need to go back to Barrio Chinês. The money after my grandfather’s… he was your grandfather too, right?… the money from his death was so much that my dad did not have to work in the factories no more. They had enough from his playing to get by. But his… boozing… is this the right word?’

  I nodded and raised my glass. I took a tentative sip. The drink had warmed up and was less harsh.

  ‘Yes… boozing… meant that there was nothing left when they died. It had all gone.’

  ‘This was Kellie-Smith money?’

  ‘Yes. From the plantations. From Malaysia.’

  I recalled Thurslow telling me that my father had been born in Malaya but I had inferred nothing from it. ‘Plantations’ meant horizon-stretching swathes of land, an army of labourers producing… something, money, riches. ‘I’m sorry I know nothing about this. Can you start at the beginning?’

  He finished his drink. ‘Let us meet up for dinner. Not to be fancy. A little place around the corner from my apartment. This will be better, I think.’

  I took another sip of sherry but left the majority as a pretext to stay at the table. I had a lot to think about. ‘I have no plans. Yes, let’s meet later.’

  Luis paid the bill and left a scribbled note with the name and address of the restaurant and a rough map of how to walk there from my hotel. The breeze was now cooler and the table exposed. I regretted not bringing a jacket but I wasn’t uncomfortable enough to move. It had been interesting to learn about my Aunt’s marriage to a (presumably) tall, dark Fado guitar player.

  Luis had implied that Helen’s money was a problem in his parents’ marriage. Was it so much? Plantations in Malaysia, he had said, plural. Had Luis’s grandfather — our shared grandfather — made a fortune out there? If he died in 1926, as Luis said, it meant that Anthony would have been alive to have had a share of an inheritance as well. Where had that gone when he died? Was it this money that paid for the house in Aquinas Street? But who had been around to make sure that Mum was helped financially? Were there other Kellie-Smiths neither Luis nor I knew about?

  7

  The restaurant was cramped, barely bigger than my front room. Luis was already sitting at a table, the size of a large tea-tray, by the window. The others were all occupied. Had I not been in Portugal I would have said that the background music was Spanish – lots of guitars and sung con vibrato. The room smelled warmly as if one of Mum’s fish pies was cooking. For a moment, I was there, in her kitchen. She in her housecoat spooning the mash over the golden-centred roundels of hard-boiled eggs, ‘I’ve made your favourite.’

  As I approached, Luis stood and we shook hands, He poured me a glass of red wine from a decanter. ‘I knew you would be prompt,’ he said. ‘My powers of detection.’

  ‘Deduction.’ Immediately, I regretted correcting him. His forehead lined with disappointment. It wasn’t a good start.

  ‘Detection is good,’ I said. ‘But we would normally say, ‘powers of deduction’ like Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘Ah, yes! The great detective of Baker Street. I have read all the books.’

  ‘You were right, you haven’t been let down by your powers of deduction—’ we smiled agreement ‘—I like to be on time. It’s an important courtesy.’

  He sipped his wine and offered his pack of cigarettes. I held up my hand and he slipped the packet back into his pocket. ‘And you would prefer it if I didn’t smoke – especially at the dinner table.’

  What could I say? I merely nodded.

  ‘So, this is a restaurant for local people, Lisbon people. We live in small homes and eat out very often. It is very cheap here. The cooking is good. I especially recommend the Dorada. Grilled simple with potatoes and salad.’ He made no sign but the owner came to the table and took the order.

  ‘Now it is time to tell you what I know about my family – your family—’ he chuckled ‘—our family!’

  I raised my glass. ‘Let’s drink to that. To the Kellie-Smiths!’

  Luis responded and the other diners turned to look.

  ‘It all starts with William Kellie-Smith,’ he said. ‘He was Scotch. Our grandfather. He was only a young man when he went to Malaya to seek his fortune. He invested the money he earned into land that he turned into palm oil plantations. This was in Northern Malaya. Soon he was very rich—’

  ‘Your mother told you this?’

  ‘Yes, from my mother. She used to tell me bedtime stories about when she was a child in Malaya. The big house in the sunshine, the rainfalls, the animals in the jungle. She told me about her father William like he was a prince and how he married the princess Agnes, who was his sweetheart in Scotland, and my mother was born quickly – in Malaya. Her year she was born was 1904.’

  ‘Eleven years before my father.’

  ‘I don’t know it complete but she remembered taking care of her baby brother, so yes.’

  ‘Sorry, go on.’

  ‘William, our grandfather, wanted to live in a grand house on the plantation and he set about to build a copy of a Scotch castle. I remember my mother would always start her bedtime stories, “Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a castle”.’

  ‘A Scottish castle in Malaya. Crazy!’

  ‘Yes. A Scottish castle. He started building and the First World War is going on in the rest of the world but not touching Malaya. Your father had been born by now and the building is a slow job and it is still not finished ten years later. By then Anthony, your father, has been sent to school in Scotland and his mother is there with him. In 1926 William and my mother travel to visit Agnes and Anthony but come first to Lisbon because he wants to order elevator equipment for the house.’

  ‘Why Lisbon?’

  Luis shrugged. ‘You have seen the elevador Santa Justa?’

  The restaurant owner appeared carrying two plates. We picked up our knives and forks to make room and started in without ceremony. I was pleased to see that Luis treated his fish with reverence. He made a precise incision along the mid-line and separated the muscle segments either side of the exposed spine. It was surgical and exactly how I liked to operate on my fish. The white flesh tasted of the sea.

  ‘Hmmm! Delicious!’ I said. ‘Elevador what?’

  ‘Elevador Santa Justa. It is a big touristic attraction. You must visit. It was built in 1902. We are very good at elevators. Maybe we had the right companies to build such things. Perhaps this was why our grandfather came to Lisbon. While he was here, he caught the influenza and died. My mother had already met my father and fallen in love. She married him—’

  ‘And you came along twenty-three years later!’

  ‘Exactly so. But we are now ahead of ourselves. We should go back.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I interrupted.’

  ‘When William died, Agnes his wife inherited everything but she could not bear to return to Malaya so she sold it all.’

  ‘Do you think that your mother would have had some money from her father when he died?’

  Luis laughed as he pushed his plate away. ‘It is a detective thing in Portugal when we try to solve a crime to say, “follow the money”. You are being a good detective, Steve.’

  I held up my hands. ‘Guilty as charged. I’m sorry I was being rude.’

  He shook his head. ‘I was having the joke with you. No problem. Ther
e was an inheritance but it came later, I think. Not big monies. It came when my mother’s mother died.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know. Sometime after the war, I think. I was still not born, remember. Maybe the money comes at about same time as me. I know things not the same between my parents after the money.’

  It made sense. When William died, his widow Agnes inherited the fortune. If my father died before her, my mother wouldn’t have any right to it because they never married. Perhaps the money for the house in Aquinas Street had come from Agnes as some sort of recognition of me being her grandson. ‘It’s sad that your mother inheriting the money may have led to your parents’ difficulties.’

  Luis shook his head. ‘I think maybe my father already tired of being in marriage after twenty years. Perhaps there were too many temptations for him when he was back in Lisbon. Then either me or the money happen or both… and my father stayed out of duty not because of love.’

  After the meal, we walked around the corner to Luis’s apartment. As soon as we were inside the small living room, Luis went to the kitchen area at one end and poured tooth-glass sized tumblers full of dry sherry. He had persuaded me to come back to see the view from his roof terrace. We accessed it using a narrow stairway, hardly more than a ladder, fixed along one wall. We pushed out through a Hobbit-sized doorway and there we were.

  The sky was everywhere. Perhaps it was the poignancy of Luis’s story about his parents or the strong perception that the light piercing the inky satin was from long-dead stars; either way, I had tears stinging my eyes as I looked around that Lisbon sky.

  The roof was the highest in the immediate vicinity and there was a clear view south all the way to the river shimmering in the moonlight. Luis pointed in the direction I was looking. ‘There on the right, you can see the top of the elevador Santa Justa. Do you see the lights?’

  He was right. A lattice of metalwork resembling a pollarded Blackpool Tower peeped out over the surrounding rooftops, electric lights guttering like candles as they swung in the breeze. ‘Yes, I see it.’ William Kellie-Smith must have travelled on the Elevador, examining its operation like a potential buyer. Have you ever thought about going there?’ I asked.