‘Yes. He may have good reason to stay there.’ I was beginning to believe that he had discovered many reasons – paper ones in the local currency. ‘But it would be good to be sure.’
He opened the brown bag and took out a white-dusted custard tart. ‘Do you mind if I…?’
‘Go ahead.’
He took a bite and icing sugar coated his lips. His words puffed out drifts of powder. ‘As his lawyer, I can make enquiries.’ He shifted his bottom lip forward to retrieve a fleck of pastry that was threatening to drop. ‘Perhaps, Mr Cross, you will come back tomorrow at this time and I shall tell you what I have discovered.’
I looked at my watch as I stood up. ‘At 10am?’
‘Yes. At ten.’
11
There’s no doubt about it, Nancy accepted as fact that Western men invariably thought she was one of the most beautiful women they had ever met. To her, it was a tired routine. As they said it, she waited for one of them to be honest and insert the word ‘Chinese’ as a qualifying adjective. It was no surprise to her when Luis Escobar said it and it affected her evidently less than he hoped. Was she to fall at his feet because he was a ‘man of the world’ from Europe and he had complimented her?
She attracted compliments from western men because she didn’t look typically Chinese. She was thirty years old when Escobar came to Ipoh and, unlike many Chinese women he would have bumped into, she was tall and slim. In the privacy of her room she was proud of her curves. It wasn’t part of her culture and certainly not in her upbringing to flaunt her body, but she found nothing wrong in dressing modestly in clothes that made the most of her figure.
When Nancy was in her early teens, her mother had taken her to see The Flower Drum Song at the movies; the scene in which Nancy Kwan sang I Enjoy Being a Girl had been a formative experience. It was then that she decided if she ever needed an English name it would be Nancy.
Despite her exceptional beauty, or perhaps because of it, she was still single when she met Escobar. Maybe it was her intelligence that scared away eligible men of her own kind. In Nancy’s experience, many Chinese men adhered to the ancient proverb: ugly wives and stupid maids are priceless treasures.
So, she was, back then, in her own words, ‘a little part lonely’. But she had compensations: a serviced apartment in KL and a good job with responsibilities. She worked in the training department of Malaysia’s largest bank. She had won awards for being the top salesperson on the counter in the main branch in Negara Maybank during the 1980s and, at the end of the decade, was transferred to sales training so she could pass on her skills.
It was only when she visited her home town of Ipoh that she played the part of her father’s dutiful daughter, and duty called late in 1990 when she was enjoying a relaxed Sunday at home.
‘Lai Ping, I need you here.’ Her father always used her birth name.
She answered in his language, Mandarin. ‘Has anything happened? Is it Mother?’ Her mother was unwell with suspected breast cancer. Nancy was expecting a diagnosis anytime.
‘No. The doctors have everything under control. Nothing is wrong.’
He continued breathing into the mouthpiece and she waited for more news of her mother’s illness but he coughed, snorted back phlegm, and said, ‘I have a job for you. It will only take a few days.’
‘A job? What sort of job? Why me? What about all the employees there you could choose from?’
‘I’ll explain when you come. This needs a woman with education. One who knows the world. They may be as common as rats in KL but here in Ipoh there are not so many to choose from. Just you. When did I last ask you to help me with business?’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘And you can visit your sick mother.’
What he didn’t need to say was that he had paid for his daughter’s expensive education, initially in the English school in Batu Gajah, where she had first used her chosen name, and then at the polytechnic in England.
He required a small favour in payback and he knew she couldn’t refuse, even though the word ‘business’ gave her a shiver of apprehension. Her father, Lee Song Yong – known to the locals as S Y, ran the Leeyate hotel chain that boasted properties in all thirteen Malaysian states. The Lee family was spread across the country and involved in many industries: palm oil, rubber, entertainment, import and export. The government’s legislation to restrict the Chinese dominance of commerce had begun to bite and Nancy knew that the family would take any measures necessary to maintain its power.
One of the things Nancy liked about returning to Ipoh was that her beauty was not incomparable there. The city was famed throughout the Peninsula for producing tall, beautiful Chinese girls just like her. She no longer stood out. She was thinking as much in the car as it travelled along the North-South Expressway the day after her father’s call. She slumped in the back seat watching the roadside plantations whizz by while Lang-ren drove.
Lang-ren was her minder in KL. He received his orders direct from S Y and kept his boss up to date regarding Nancy’s affairs. Lang-ren and Nancy had known each other since they were children and for a short time, when they were teenagers, he was her secret boyfriend. When she realised that his highest aspiration was to work as a chauffeur for her father she finished with him. It was lucky for him that her father never found out.
Lang-ren’s birth name was Ng Cho Sui but he was called Lang-ren shortly after he was born because he had one milk tooth already in place and a full head of dark hair that ran all the way down his spine and across his shoulders. Lang-ren is Mandarin Chinese for ‘wolfman’.
As they approached the Ipoh city outskirts, Nancy shrank further down into her seat while Lang-ren sat taller. In the city, he would be afforded the courtesies due to one of S Y’s henchmen. She was the daughter of a man of the old school who still held to the saying, unmarried, a woman obeys her father.
The car pulled onto the forecourt of the Leeyate Plaza Hotel and Nancy waited until a uniformed flunky had opened the door before she stepped out into the immediately stifling heat. She hurried past the doorman who saluted and said, ‘Welcome back to Ipoh, Miss Lee.’
She left Lang-ren behind to sort out her luggage, hurried across the cool lobby to the private lift and punched in the access code. The doors opened straight into S Y’s office on the eighth floor. Her father stood waiting. He had watched her arrival on the security feed from the foyer camera. ‘Daughter, welcome. Thank you for coming.’
They hugged.
‘I’ve put you in one of the suites on the seventh floor. Lang-ren has the number.’
‘Thank you, Father. What’s all this about?’
‘Awah! When did you become so western? Always straight to business. Say hello to your mother first.’
Nancy nodded and strode along the inner corridor, to her mother’s room. Her mother lay prone in bed. A nurse sat reading and looked up smiling. Nancy looked past her. A machine delivered what Nancy assumed was a morphine-based drug through a cannula into the old lady’s claw-like hand. Her face was grey and still as if carved from granite. She didn’t respond when Nancy kissed her cheek.
Nancy turned to the nurse. ‘How long has she been like this?’
The nurse frowned and cocked her head, ‘Your father—’
‘Forget it!’ Nancy hurried back along the corridor her heels tap-tapping her anger on the marble floor.
‘Why didn’t you tell me!’ she demanded as her father looked up from his desk.
‘I didn’t want to—’
‘You must have had the diagnosis weeks ago. Why didn’t you say?’
S Y shrugged and whispered, ‘She didn’t want to have chemotherapy. You know what your mother’s like. She doesn’t trust western medicine. She was worried you would have insisted… so she said not to tell you until you needed to know.’
‘You could have ignored her.’
‘And over-ridden her request in favour of you?’ He shook his head. ‘I fear she is failing fast. She left it very late before she told anybo
dy and by then it had spread.’
‘I don’t think she was awake enough to even know I was there.’
‘The doctors say it’s weeks now rather than months.’ He looked down as if the floor would help him come to terms with the prognosis.
Nancy’s insides felt hollowed out. She loved her mother. Who doesn’t love their mother? But she had never felt warmth or respect. Her attachment to her was no more than if she had been a family retainer – the nanny who had nurtured her but always under the command of the ruler in the house. After all, the full proverb that her parents both lived by was, unmarried, a woman obeys her father; married, her husband.
Nancy stretched her neck to ease the tension and fiddled with the coil of hair at her nape. ‘But this – mother’s illness – isn’t why you called me?’
‘No, we have a… situation.’
‘What sort of situation?’
A man from Europe checked in yesterday. Supposedly he is on holiday.’
‘Supposedly?’
‘Yes, he asked the concierge if he could arrange for a driver and guide to show him around Ipoh.’
‘You have any number of people who could do that.’
‘Yes, but he particularly wants to see the Kellas House – Kellie’s Castle’ – he spoke these words in English – ‘as he calls it.’
‘Why?’
‘I had one of the Filipina girls – ‘meet’ him after dinner and make sure he had a lot of drinks. He told her his family owned the castle and all the plantations around it before World War Two. He wants to see his family home.’
‘Is he from Scotland?’
‘No. This is a strange thing. He is from Lisbon in Portugal. His name is Luis Escobar.’
Nancy had a natural affinity for intrigue. One of her boyfriends had once called her a ‘drama queen’. He hadn’t lasted long afterwards. She felt a flush rise behind her make-up. There was something significant in this moment. This man from Lisbon had been in Ipoh fewer than twenty-four hours and her all-powerful father was troubled enough to have her hauled in from KL. There must be more to it than a simple enquiry to see the house. ‘What has he been doing today?’ she asked.
Her father smiled. ‘Well, first he had to lose the girl. That took most of the morning! He had brunch and asked the concierge about his guide. He’s been told that there’ll be somebody to help tomorrow. Somebody who can speak excellent English – as he does.’
‘Me.’
‘Yes, you. He’s been kicking his heels around the city. We had him tailed. The usual tourist stuff.’
‘And you want me to take him to the house and find out what he wants?’
‘You have a very quick grasp of business, daughter. You’re a credit to that expensive English education.’
‘What has he been told?’
‘Nothing more than that his guide, Nancy Lee, no less than daughter of the owner of this fine establishment, will act as his driver and guide while he stays here. You are to be in reception at 10am tomorrow. I’ll have one of the white Mercedes ready for you.’
12
I imagine that the first thing that struck Nancy about Luis Escobar was how tall he was. The top of her head barely reached his breast bone. The second thing was the smell of him. Chinese men smoke. Awah! How they smoke. She expected the reek of tobacco to cling to them like a miasma, but she had never noticed it so strong on a European before. Despite this, Nancy smiled her sweetest smile as they shook hands. She delivered the line she had practised, ‘Mr Escobar. I am your guide. My name is Nancy Lee. We are to converse in English, I understand.’
His eyes were all over her, sweeping from head to toe and back again like a radar scanner. She knew that he would be happy with what he saw. She had dressed to suit the occasion in a white, crisp, cotton shirt with a demure neckline. It was tucked into black ski pants and, in the cool hotel interior, covered by a black cashmere cardigan. The loops of her pants disappeared into matching flat shoes. She held a coolie-style hat at her side.
His cream linen suit was crumpled and his brown sandals, which he wore over pale socks, were scuffed. His teeth were nicotine-stained. He offered her a cigarette and put his own back in the packet when she declined. ‘It’s very nice to meet you. Should I call you Nancy?’
She cast her eyes down and nodded, conscious of acting a part. ‘It is allowed in private if that’s what you wish, Mr Luis. But if other people are with us it is correct to address me as Miss Lee.’
‘If I can call you Nancy, you must call me Luis.’
She nodded, knowing that she wouldn’t drop the ‘Mr’. ‘Which attraction should I show you first? Come, my car is outside.’
It was already over twenty-five degrees despite being only mid-morning. The white Mercedes was waiting with its engine running. She would leave her cardigan on. The Malay doorman followed them from the hotel entrance and ushered them into their seats, first the passenger side for the European, while Nancy waited. The boy skittered round, careful not to run, and held the driver’s side door to allow Nancy to lower herself into the seat and swing in her legs.
‘Where to?’ she said, glancing across to Luis’s crumpled form, jack-knifed into the seat with his long legs stretching away under the dashboard. She had a momentary vision of his shattered kneecaps and compressed femurs following a head-on collision. She fussed with the rear-view mirror to wipe it from her mind.
‘I’d like to see Kellie’s Castle,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘Open your window a little to let the smoke out,’ she said. ‘Kellie’s Castle – the Kellas House – is on the road to Batu Gajah. The house is worth a look but nothing else to see in that direction.’
He put a lighter’s flame to the end of his cigarette and blew the smoke through a narrow slit above the lowered window. ‘The house has an interesting story, though. Do you know it?’ he asked.
They had already left the city centre behind and Nancy turned onto the main Batu Gajah road. ‘I grew up in Ipoh. The story of Kellie’s Castle is well known. It’s romantic. Young girls swoon when they hear it the first time.’ Her eyes were on the road but she sensed that he had turned to study her. With his window open, the car’s air conditioning was struggling to keep the temperature down and she wished she had taken off the cardigan.
‘The man who built Kellie’s Castle was my grandfather.’ Luis opened his window wider and flicked the unfinished cigarette out as if to punctuate what he had said. He pressed the button to close the window and settled back in his seat waiting for her to respond.
‘But you are not English – Scottish,’ she said.
‘No. I’m from Lisbon. If you know the story, you’ll know that my grandfather died there. His daughter, my mother, had already met my father. He was a Lisboeta.’
She nodded and turned the car off the road into a piece of cleared scrubland. ‘Here we are.’
Although Nancy had been to the castle before, the broad sweep of its shadowed façade always made her shiver with apprehension. A solitary crow lifted from its perch on top of the circular tower and cawed its reluctant welcome.
She donned her hat and led the way, knowing that Luis would be admiring the view. It gave her pleasure to know that men couldn’t stop themselves responding to the way she looked.
They crossed a wooden footbridge over a sluggish stream. The sloping path led them up beneath the sandstone wall. It was two storeys high for most of its length and boasted a tower at each end. The one furthest away, where the crow now circled in a proprietary way, finished level with the roof, whereas the square tower to their left extended upwards a further two levels. The dead-eyed windows – there were at least thirty of them – looked as if they had been copied from a Rajah’s palace. The building was forsaken rather than derelict.
‘Wow! It’s impressive. But it’s not the Scottish castle I was expecting.’ Luis took a compact camera from his jacket pocket and clicked a snapshot that was followed by the characteristic sand-clogged whir of the autom
atic film-winding mechanism.
Nancy removed her sunglasses and turned to face him. ‘I hope what you see is not disappointing you.’ She didn’t know why she was playing up to him. It wasn’t as if she found him in any way attractive. ‘Some say it’s like film set. There is hardly nothing behind this frontage. None of the rooms is finished. There is the old building that was completed and lived in – the original Kellas House – but most of it was pulled down by the Japanese.’
Luis stood on tiptoe to look through one of the windows. ‘It is just a shell.’
‘The story is that it was nearly finished when your grandfather died. Local people looted the wood panelling and flooring soon afterwards. It’s a rumour that many homes in Ipoh and Batu Gajah have panels and floorboards that were taken from this house. When the Japanese invaded, they needed stone and took what they wanted by destroying the older house. The sandstone of this house was not strong enough for what they wanted.’
They turned left, followed the wall under the square tower and turned into the building through an incongruously narrow doorway. Nancy pointed to the tiled floor. ‘Be careful not to trip. The tiles are loose.’ She pointed left. ‘This leads to rooms – empty rooms, walls only.’ She swept her hands in front of her. ‘The grand staircase up to the top floor was here.’
Luis now had his camera’s viewfinder up to his eye at every turn. Click and whir. ‘What happened to it?’ He strode to the gap in the ceiling where the landing would have been. Before she could answer, he turned to his right. ‘What’s this?’ He peered into what seemed to be a brick-walled cupboard and craned his neck round to look up. ‘It goes all the way to the top.’ Another photograph, this one of the tower’s roof three storeys above.
‘It’s where the elevator would have been… the lift. It was never installed.’
‘The elevator from Lisbon… hmm.’
‘We go along here—’ she pointed to the corridor ‘— and up to the next floor using the servants’ stairs in the round tower at the other end. That way you see everything in one round trip.’
Once upon a time in Chinatown Page 8