Once upon a time in Chinatown

by Robert Ronsson

  The first lesson he learned at school was that he ran a high risk of being disappointed if he followed his dad’s example and envisaged a future replete with benign opportunities. He was a gap-toothed, big-smiling five-year-old skipping on sturdy legs to keep up with his mum as she hurried him to the arched entry marked Boys.

  But being perfumed, carrying the smell of the factory about him, made him different and difference is, of course, shunned. One of the boys at the sand table commented on the exotic scent that Mick Kellie brought with him. A moment later, the boy’s synapses connected, his eyes gleamed with joy and a light of discovery beamed out to cast a shadow that would blight all of Mick’s schooldays. ‘Smelly Kellie!’ He puffed out his chest and encouraged another boy to join in. ‘Smelly Kellie. Smelly Kellie!’

  Mick stood, fists clenched, with tears dripping from his trembling chin, bewildered by a world that had put him in that place, at that time, with those boys, when, for so long, he’d been dreaming of school as the place where he would find his very first friend.

  Thanks to the same boy, who also passed the eleven plus, the nickname ‘Smelly’ followed him to grammar school. The boys would have said that they used it affectionately but, when one of them shouted, ‘Oi, Smelly!’ across a crowded bus, it didn’t feel that way to Mick.

  When his teenage face erupted in pustules, he suffered further abuse, his only consolation being that the violence was verbal rather than physical.

  Mick’s father, Robert, persuaded him to join the company as soon as he could leave school and started him at the bottom in the packing shop. That occasion had been the first when his dad had mentioned the family’s business motto handed down by his father: ‘There’s money in micturition’.

  Grandfather Kenneth had spotted the business opportunity in overpowering the “stench of men’s pish” and had moved south from Scotland to start a company called ‘Kellie’s Perfumed Tablets’ in the early 1900s. He had bought the livery yard with its black-cobbled harnessing area separating the stable buildings on either side. Kenneth converted them into the two factory shops: one for mixing and drying, the other for pressing and packing.

  Even Kenneth couldn’t have predicted how demand would take off during the First World War when wives and mothers included Kellie’s lavender-perfumed tablets in the parcels that shipped over to the trenches in their millions. The women believed that the scent of lavender would aid their loved ones’ restful sleep. Their menfolk hoped that the tablets would deter lice and rubbed them into the seams of their uniforms. When this didn’t work, the tablets were their only weapons in the war against the stench of the trench and they sent home for more.

  Mick’s dad, Robert, had joined the business from school and took over from his stepmother, who ran it after Grandpa Kenneth died some time during the Second World War, another conflict in which Kellie’s tablets played an unremarked role.

  Luckily for Mick, his dad was an inspired businessman and he was spared being the third generation to run the company. One brutally hot afternoon in 1973 Robert came into the office, tossed his jacket across the back of the easy chair and announced, ‘I’ve had enough of this, Mick. Look at the sweat on me.’ He raised his arms. Dark patches were soaking both sides of his shirt from armpit to belt.

  Mick leaned back in the swivel typist’s chair. In the confined space of the office, a man of Robert’s bulk, sweating as he was, would have given off a repugnant fug but here Kellie’s perfumed products conquered all.

  ‘I’m killing myself, Mick. Look at me. I’m 51. I spend my life in that damned Cortina and I drive up and down every High Street in Greater London and beyond getting orders. I must know every bloody corner-shop from Luton to Leatherhead; from Southend to Slough. There’s got to be a better way.’

  This started a conversation that continued into their traditional Friday after-work drink across the road in The Duke’s Head pub. It culminated with Robert’s decision that the future direction of Kellie’s would be ‘business to business’. ‘I’m going to go nationwide, selling only to people who can buy in bulk. No more piddly, one-carton orders. We’re going to sell to supermarket chains and local authorities. It’s still micturition, Mick. But it’s bulk micturition from now on.’

  Within two years, perfumed blocks were flying out the factory as fast as they could make them, working twelve hours a day. They’d expanded the line to include new perfumes: lemon and pine. Mick decided it was time to take the initiative one early winter’s evening in The Duke’s Head as they huddled in the snug at the table nearest the open fire. Their faces glowed in the warmth of the flames and from the effects of the first beer of the day.

  ‘We can’t go on like this, Dad. The old works is busting at the seams. Everybody’s suffering. If anybody gets sick we fall behind. The machines are over capacity. When we stop over Christmas we’ll need to get everybody in Saturday and Sunday afterwards for two weeks to make up. We need new machines, maybe even a new factory.’

  Robert drew his palm back across the top of his thinning hair, flattening the stray long strands into place across the dome of his head. ‘You’re right, Mick. I’ve been thinking the same. We’re too big for this place. Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do. The last thing we need now is more orders. I’ll scout around and see what I can find.’

  The strong order book and the capital that had accumulated over the years enabled them to build a purpose-fitted factory unit in Reading. Mick’s parents moved into a new four-bedroom house not far from the river in Maidenhead and Mick and Mary, his wife of three years, moved from a rented flat into the house where he had grown up. Even though the old factory was redundant, other than as storage space, it held too many memories for them to sell it.

  There was room for expansion in the Reading premises and business kept growing. When Robert began to slow down, he assumed the role of Managing Director. The works manager took over the day-to-day production and Mick, who was 26, became Sales Director. He was now the one on the road.

  The business-to-business formula meant that Kellie’s was immune to the demise of the corner shop. The firm had relationships with buyers for the major supermarkets and the decision-makers responsible for supplying the lavatories in every type of public building; schools, hospitals, offices, transport terminuses, restaurant and pub chains: everywhere. At that time, if you were the sort of man who liked to aim at something in the urinal, the chances were one in three that it was a Kellie’s block you were pissing on.

  Mick realised that the business couldn’t stand still; he became an innovator in the field of urinal accessories. He designed the first disposable trap with integral perfumed tablet. The company manufactured the moulded plastic containers and completed the whole assembly process. They argued long afterwards about which of them had designed the tri-corn trap (as Robert called it) that fitted snugly into wall-mounted urinal basins. With this wider range of products, they became Kellies Janitorial Supplies and had the major share of the specialist market.

  Having established Kellie’s as the top brand that now boasted the perfumed, anti-spray, plastic mat as its latest innovation, Robert was ready to retire and hand the business over to Mick. However, a multinational, with interests in everything from cake-mix to drain-cleaner came along with an irresistible offer and the Kellies decided to call it a day. The company name survived as another brand in the conglomerate’s stable but Mick was made redundant.

  He would always remember the scene, in The Duke’s Head, when his dad told him how much was being deposited in the bank for his share of the sale. His smile was as wide as a motorway bridge, ‘What did I always tell you, Mick? There’s money in micturition.’ The moment had added poignancy because Robert was spared no time to enjoy the proceeds. When he had his massive stroke and died, Mick, who, by now, was single again, inherited everything.

  He’d looked round half-heartedly for another job but couldn’t find anything that interested him. Maybe he needed those two years of doing nothing for his s
kin to lose the taint of lavender, lemon and pine. He acknowledged that he was drifting as he tacked his laminated letter to the Judas door, hoping that whoever responded would be able to come up with a project that would give him a new zest for life.

  After turning the key in the padlock, Mick crossed the road in the direction of Vineyard Passage and turned to look back. He could hardly see the old place through his brimming tears.

  3

  I wrote to Mick Kellie at the address on the notice, suggesting that we meet over a cup of coffee in the new Starbucks in Richmond. He called me two days later and we made the arrangements. I went to the library and read a book called, How to Run a Successful Independent Cinema.

  A cappuccino and a chocolate muffin sat untouched on the table in front of me. When I ordered them, I had told the server my name and that I was waiting for someone. I positioned myself where I’d be the first person Mick would encounter after collecting his drink.

  He breezed in with the swagger of a man wearing a £10,000 watch – which, I later discovered, he was. He wore a dark business suit over a soft-collared shirt with no tie. He engaged the barista in conversation as she made his coffee and, when she pointed in my direction, he turned and smiled. He held up a hand to signify he’d join me shortly. I searched his face for a family resemblance. His eyes were very blue, the polar opposites of my brown.

  My own appearance worried me for a second. Since I had left Scotia, I’d abandoned business suits but, not wanting to throw away perfectly good clothes, had developed the practice of teaming the jackets of one suit with the trousers of another. That day my jacket was dark blue and the trousers striped grey. Perhaps my scuffed trainers were a bad choice. Should I have smartened myself up? But I looked everything I wanted him to think I was – a film nerd who had once been in business.

  As Mick approached the table, his eyes were fixed on my hair. I had allowed it to twist into dreadlocks and for the meeting had bunched them together into a thick ponytail. I could see that this disconcerted him. His hair was sandy, short and well-groomed. The contrast between us worried me. I skulked in corners; he commanded the room. Me dark and unkempt; him pale-complexioned and dressed to make deals. Me hunched and stocky; him straight-backed and lean.

  I’m not sure whether it was during that meeting or later, but I developed the theory, from the scant Eastern philosophy I’d picked up in the sixties, that I was the Yin – the shadowed, negative, while Mick was Yang – the sunny, positive. Rather than putting us in opposition, our differences made us complementary. If he took up my idea, this reciprocity of the opposites would work to our advantage. We could make a dynamic team.

  I stood and we shook hands. We exchanged a few pleasantries before he said, ‘Okay, then. About the premises. What’s your idea?’

  ‘Yes.’ I licked at the foam on my spoon. ‘I only came to Richmond to look at the burial ground by Vineyard Passage. You may know it.’

  Mick tapped his fingertips on the table top.

  ‘I was looking for a tomb. An artist from the beginning of the 19th century. He was an engraver who—’

  ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The artist – engraver.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You saw the premises when you came out of Vineyard Passage.’

  ‘Yes. I saw the premises.’

  ‘And you saw its potential as what?’ He clearly wanted me to stop dithering.

  ‘Let me tell you a bit about myself first and you’ll see where I’m coming from.’

  He looked at his understatedly expensive watch – this was no surreptitious wrist turn as if he was straightening his cuff. ‘I don’t want to be rude but I’m afraid the letter on the factory door has attracted lots of time-wasters. Why don’t you tell me about your project and then we’ll go into the backstory? If the idea appeals we’ll keep talking. Is that okay?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Here it is. I see your premises as a two-screen multiplex cinema showing the latest movie releases on one side and arthouse cinema on the other. A new local independent cinema to serve the residents of Richmond. A cinema to walk to.’

  Mick stroked his chin as if he was testing the closeness of his shave. ‘Mmm. Well at least it’s different. It isn’t sheltered accommodation for old people, a women’s refuge, or a needle exchange and drug-abusers’ drop-in centre which are the best I’ve had so far. Tell me more.’

  I told him that I had been in finance but had become disillusioned and was looking for a new challenge as I approached my 50s. I wanted to do something different with my life. I said that I had always been a film enthusiast and, embroidering the story somewhat, added that I had been looking for work as a projectionist or independent cinema manager. ‘It’s a pretty small field with hardly any vacancies, so I was giving up hope when I came upon your building and had my vision in The Vineyard.’

  He laughed. ‘Have you any idea how much it would cost to convert the premises?’

  ‘None at all, I’m afraid. But I do know that, with cinemas being up-graded into mega-complexes, auditoriums are getting smaller and there’s a lot of furniture stock – seats and stuff – going cheap.’

  He waved a hand. ‘Money’s not an issue if it’s an idea that appeals. Something that gets my blood racing. Do you know about Kellie’s?’

  ‘No,’ which was a lie because I had looked up details of the business in the library’s reference section.

  ‘It was an old family firm that made the scented blocks you find in public toilets? Kellie’s developed and patented most of the hygiene innovations that you’ll have ignored in forty-odd years of peeing in public urinals. My dad sold the business two years ago. He died not long after.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He waved my condolences away. ‘I took the old factory here out of the company’s assets for sentimental reasons. I grew up in the house. I’ve been waiting for somebody to come along with a good idea. Yours is the best yet – different… positive. Let me have a think about it.’

  It took a year. We set up a 50/50 partnership. I put no money in, only expertise and manpower. I argued that he was being too generous but, as he said, both he and the premises would have fallen into decay if I hadn’t come along. We commissioned an architect and applied for planning permission. Everybody agreed that a cinema was better for the area than a factory.

  True to his word, Mick didn’t scrimp. Despite the availability of second-hand cinema seating in perfectly good condition we went for the most luxurious cinema seats available (they came from France) and even put in a two rows of sofa seats at the back of the smaller auditorium.

  Mick had his bachelor pad by the river and the house attached to the factory stood empty. Once it was refurbished, originally with the idea of letting it out, he persuaded me to sell up and move in there, rent free. We both saw the advantage of being able to live over the shop and avoid late-night trips home.

  I became an expert in the theory of cinema projection. My financial spreadsheets included the employment of a full-time projectionist but before he or she could start, it was my responsibility to see that we had the latest equipment. Films arrived from the distributors on reels but we invested in the latest platter system that allowed continuous screening without needing two projectors, one switching to the other when the first reel ran out. Mick and I both remembered the hoots of derision and cat-calls directed towards the projection booth when the screen went blank in the middle of a film and the embarrassment (for the cinema) when the new reel spooled through the lead stills.

  When we opened for a dry-run to an invited audience of local residents, we showed Forrest Gump in the main house and The Smallest Show on Earth on the arthouse screen. We were lucky to find one of the few prints of this old monochrome Peter Sellers film on up-to-date film stock. Its grainy, benignant images reflected the affection we both already held for The Film Factory.

  There’s no doubt about it, at some level the Kellie name over the door of t
he premises before we converted them had been part of my motivation for writing to Mick. Almost every morning in those early months, while we were busy developing the site and then running the cinema, I would wake thinking that this is the day when I would talk to Mick about our possible family connection. I imagined that he would be sceptical at first, but as I described how my father had died in London with his uncle, Kenneth, which was Mick’s grandfather’s name, he would accept that we were cousins. It wouldn’t affect The Factory but we would learn to treat each other as family rather than business partners.

  Two things stopped me: I didn’t want to expose myself to rejection and I had the memory of Luis. His death had set the black dog on my heels and, though rationally I couldn’t envisage anything that might put Mick in danger, I feared that history would repeat itself. Despite steeling myself almost every day with the thought that today’s the day, I said nothing until early 1995 when he showed me the picture of the man on the horse.

  We were in the The Duke’s Head having our last pint before I had to go back to The Factory to close up. I placed two pints of Young’s bitter on our usual corner table. ‘You said something about a photo?’

  ‘Yeah. I’d like to see what you think,’ he said, holding out a playing-card sized, black and white photograph. I wiped my fingers along the seam of my jeans before taking it. It showed a man sitting astride a horse that stood in a dried-up river bed. A metal pipeline rose from beneath what, in times of flood, would have been the river’s surface and disappeared into the sandy bank like a burrowing animal. In the background, a line of trees smudged the far horizon. It was a hot day; the man wore a straw hat and a thin shirt. He was shading his eyes from the sun.

  I turned the picture over and read the inscription – The family land. My knee trembled involuntarily and the beer in my stomach soured. Flipping the picture again I could see in the far background – too indistinct for a casual observer to notice – the parapet of square tower. It was the castle where Luis had died. I recognised it from a picture in a travel magazine I had bought after Luis’s death because of its special feature on Malaysia. Among the articles was a panel about the romantic story behind a ruined castle near Ipoh.