No doubting it, tall and skinny Kitty was a beauty; a model scout had even invited her to Paris once, but Kitty wasn’t interested in being the empty smile in front of a camera; her big dream was more gung-ho – she wanted to be a warzone documentary maker, and was seldom without her digital camcorder.
Joe Blue chose Earth No.6, Clay Red, for the highlights in Kitty’s hair. As he filled in the colour, he wished he could wrap his arms around that sweet girl and hold her and tell her how much he adored her and that everything would be okay. His heart always hurt a bit when he thought of Kitty.
The phone had been ringing all morning. Pretending to be Elsa, Kitty had spoken to five clients, including a British Lord who had hired Felix to follow his anorexic Lady and her suspected lover, the owner of the Constantia Valley Pharmacy. There had also been three calls from an Italian mother, heiress to a fashion empire, who employed Felix to keep an eye on her son’s glamorous but acquisitive girlfriend.
“Just a moment,” said Beatrice, changing from Lingala to English with a voluptuous French-South African accent. She pushed the receiver into her apron-clad chest. “What should I say, Kitty? It’s another one of Monsieur Bleu’s clients.”
FWOOSH! The sound of Miss Basoko’s voice swirled down Elsa’s ear canals, but Elsa registered it only as one would the faintest of breezes. She could not pull her eyes away from those of Felix on the picture – such beautiful dark eyes, she thought, so kind. She kept expecting him to walk in and ask her: “Would you like some coffee, my lovely?” He was a coffee addict. A scent-memory of his skin passed through her nostrils: warm sandalwood and homemade corn-bread.
“Madame! There is a man named Reginald Pong on the telephone. Should I tell him what happened?”
Pong – the name was familiar to Kitty. She’d seen it on one of her Dad’s files. Pong, she recalled, was a Camps Bay jeweller. Son of a multi-millionaire Hong Kong marble dealer.
Joe Blue chuckled as he drew Reginald Pong, who as it happened was named after and looked like Reggie Pong, a sweet-natured, always-broke photography student, one of Joe Blue’s best friends at art school.
Reginald Pong was famous for his taste in Eastern-bloc models, his artistry with diamonds and his round-sterned teak junk powered by four Rolls-Royce engines, which was one of the finest vessels moored in the Alfred yacht basin. Kitty felt far too young, too confused about what had happened with her dad to deal with all of these files and too ingenuous to have to take on the likes of Reginald “three-blondes-at-a-time” Pong.
But what choice did she have? Her mother was in a kind of trance of grief and tranquillisers, special tablets prescribed by the doctor to stop her from crying. All Elsa did was cry and watch soap operas and drink coffee and eat buttermilk rusks like Felix loved to do. Meanwhile Felix’s business was in crisis.
Kitty’s dad had started Agency Blue with money he’d scraped together working as a car guard in Kloof Street and moonlighting as a bodyguard for an entrepreneur art dealer named Zachary Ellis, a fine fellow, a rare man among men.
Here Joe Blue added a panel with a fabulous portrait of Zachary Ellis the Benevolent, smiling and handing out cash.
Felix had turned Agency Blue into a thriving business. So even if they could afford to close the agency down, the money wasn’t the point; Agency Blue was Felix’s life and his big dream.
Kitty studied Miss Basoko’s concerned face. Miss Basoko was also a refugee from the DRC. Years ago, like Felix, Elsa and Kitty, she had escaped the soldiers and the bodies strewn in the streets, and fled with no money and no identity papers.
Joe Blue drew in all those bodies and the bloody ground around, then he shaded the scene in Sun No.3, Red Paradise Sunset.
At that time Felix had been an archaeology Masters student. After a month of walking with almost no food, they found their way across the border of Paradise and down to the Coast of Good Hope. Kitty blinked, she could hear his voice again saying as he did every morning when he looked out and saw the mountain: “This is Paradise, Kitty.”
And if he thought he was in Paradise … “Why this, now?” wondered Kitty, not realising she’d spoken her thoughts out loud. SIGH! “He’d never do it. I can’t believe it.” She blinked, hoping for tears, but she had not been able to cry; she still could not believe what had happened to her dad.
Miss Basoko was staring at her. Miss Basoko and the indomitable girls of the African Kids’ Comic Club were Kitty’s best friends in all of Africa, in fact in the whole world and even the universe. Felix had once mentioned a half-brother, a retired Oxford professor who lived in Cairo, but Kitty had never met her Cairo Uncle Barré. She didn’t even know his first name. Joe Blue drew pyramids and the sphinx and filled them in the colour of Earth No.5, Desert Sand.
In a series of deft strokes, Joe Blue drew Kitty looking at the holiday picture of her parents.
She loved the story of how her mother and father met at a curry and spice stall near a flower market, both buying real vanilla pods. After the moment he promised to share his secret recipe for vanilla-honey pudding, Elsa and Felix were inseparable. They only stopped talking to laugh, to kiss and to eat, Elsa had told Kitty. The night she was due to fly home to Canada, Felix proposed marriage with a bunch of basil flowers and a round tin of chocolate fudge. They were huddled beneath a blue moon and a leaking umbrella. It was the ides of October.
Joe Blue made the moon Sky No.9, Morning Blue, and he filled in the basil leaves in Edible Green No.7, Lightly Cooked Peas.
“You better speak to the gentleman,” said Miss Basoko, handing the phone to Kitty. “He’s very angry.”
Kitty made her voice sound stern and grown-up. “Monsieur Pong, Elsa Bleu here, there’s something you should know …”
“Woman, don’t interfere,” said the betel-chewing voice on the other end. SPLORTCH! He spat out a wad of watery gunk, coloured with Sun No.3, Red Paradise Sunset. “Where the hell is Felix?”
The way Pong used the word “woman” when addressing her mother irritated Kitty. It was the first time in two days that she had felt anything. Despite her fury, she was grateful to this horrible Mr Pong for ousting her from a state of emotional paralysis.
“Here’s how it is, Mr Pong. I am taking over your case regarding …” She flicked open a file marked Pong Diamonds. “… the Baron and Baroness de Botton.”
“Impossible. I’ll try Felix’s mobile.” Reginald Pong ended the call.
BZZZZ BZZZZ! On the desk a sheet of paper began vibrating and Mozart’s famous composition Exsultate, Jubilate issued forth. Miss Basoko reached out to answer. As she leaned forward her striped undershirt showed between the buttons of her overall.
The stripes were filled in Sky No.4, Violet Before Moonrise.
“No. Wait, Beatrice,” said Kitty, thinking of all the things she’d overheard her father telling her mother about this man Pong. “I’ll answer.”
She let it ring several times before answering, and when she did she said: “In my experience, Mr Pong, few things are truly impossible. Who would imagine, for example, that a fisherman from Macao might find his boat blown off course and end up in Persia, where he discovers a vast and unknown string of quarries, source of the finest marble in the world? Some would have laughed if that fisherman ever predicted that he would become one of the wealthiest
