Crooks and Straights

by Masha du Toit

  “No!” came the answer. “Why?”

  Gia spotted Minou sunning herself on a windowsill and scooped her up, and tucked the cat under her arm before going through to the kitchen, where Mandy was folding laundry.

  “No reason, just wondering,” she said.

  “I’ve got a question for you, Miss,” said Mandy. “Have you been taking things out of that rat’s cage?”

  “What? No, why would I?”

  “Nico’s been going on about it since he got back. He put some biscuits in there yesterday, and is convinced that somebody stole them.”

  “Poepie probably ate them.”

  Mandy shrugged. “That’s what I told him, but he just shakes his head. Anyway, your father said for you to go down to the studio. Meeting,” she said, significantly. “You go get changed out of that uniform, and come right back down, you hear? I’m also going.”

  “Alright,” said Gia. She’d have to be quick, then.

  Minou allowed herself to be carried up the stairs to Gia’s room, a slight twitch of her tail the only sign of protest.

  A quick glance told Gia that the haarskeerder was nowhere in sight. She put the cat down in front of the box and stood back, watching.

  The white cat looked about her with interest. Then she saw the box. She stiffened, and sniffed. Took a step closer, whiskers fanned out and ears forward. She lowered her nose to one of the dishcloths that lay on the floor near the box.

  The hair rose on her back. She sniffed intently. Then she scanned the room with wide, round eyes, a low moan throbbing in her throat. Gia watched, holding her breath, but after a few seconds, Minou relaxed and dropped her nose to the floor and sniffed again. When she’d satisfied herself that there was nothing in the box, she jumped on Gia’s bed and sniffed at the window. Once again, she scanned the room.

  At last she jumped down and walked, slowly at first, then with increasing confidence straight to the milk-crate shelf, and disappeared behind it. Gia heard a peremptory “miaow” and looking behind the shelf, saw that Minou was crouched down and pawing at a gap between the wall and the floor.

  Of course! thought Gia. This room can’t be the entire attic, it’s far too small. There must be more space behind that partition. The thing must have gotten through there, somehow.

  “Gia!” came Mandy’s voice from below. Gia pulled off her uniform and quickly got dressed in a t-shirt and jeans.

  As she dressed, she saw that her paint-box had been moved and was standing wide open, and the jar that held her feather collection was on the floor, instead of on the shelf where she’d left it. A quick check told her that some of the smaller feathers were missing.

  She sighed in exasperation.

  Nico again.

  Drat that boy. Always nosing around in her things. Or could it have been the haarskeerder?

  She could imagine the haarskeerder taking feathers, but it could not be strong enough to have moved that paint-box. That had Nico written all over it.

  She looked around the room again.

  Was it still there, behind the wall in the rest of the attic? Or had it gotten completely away, outside?

  She was disappointed that the creature was gone, but it was also a relief. It was just one more complication she did not have to worry about.

  “Gia!”

  “Coming!” She went to pick up Minou, but the cat had ideas of her own, and was already disappearing down the steps. Gia followed her down.

  -oOo-

  When she got to the studio, she found her father at the cutting table. The pattern he was working on had been cut out of fabric, and he was joining the pieces, basting them together by hand with quick, deft stitches.

  Saraswati sat at the other end of the table, with a pile of files and notebooks in front of her, and Nico on her lap.

  He was squirming about a bit, and Saraswati smiled gratefully as Mandy took him from her.

  “Come sit here next to me, on a chair like a big boy,” said Mandy, fishing a pen and piece of paper from Saraswati’s collection. “Why don’t you draw something while we talk, then you won’t get bored.”

  “Thank you, Mandy,” said Saraswati. “Karel, shall we start?”

  Karel stuck the needle into the fabric and spat pins into his palm. “Sure. Gia, get a chair.”

  He waited until Gia was seated. “Good. Gia. Mandy. Just a quick meeting, we’re all busy so we won’t waste time.

  “Gia, we want to include you in our business meetings from now on. We’re going to be relying on your help a good deal more in the next few months. And not just to do the odd little thing here and there, like you’ve been doing up to now. We need you to take on more responsibility. To do that, you need to know what’s going on.”

  There goes my free time, thought Gia. But the thought was without bitterness. It was flattering to be treated like a full member of the team.

  “Mandy will be helping us as always, of course.” continued Karel. “But for the moment, we cannot afford to employ any of the part-time ladies— which means that some of the work will be repetitive and boring.”

  He waited for Gia’s nod.

  “Now in the past, Gia, you’ve worked very well with Mandy, but I want to say it here so there can be no misunderstanding. As far as you are concerned, Mandy is in charge, as much as me or Saraswati. There will be times when we’ll need you to do more creative work, but for the moment, you are Mandy’s assistant.”

  Gia nodded again.

  “We’ll make sure that the work does not interfere with your school work, of course,” said Karel. “That is the most important thing. Now. Saraswati— ?”

  “I’ll start with a quick report-back of our financial situation.” Saraswati pulled a file away from Nico’s exploring hands. He seemed to have forgotten about his drawing, and she tapped at it. “Nico, you haven’t put any armour on that dragon. Shouldn’t it be protected from the knights?”

  When Nico was safely drawing again, she continued. “We’re better off than I’d feared, Karel. We’ve received the final payment from the sale of the house, and I’ve managed to get us out of having to pay another month’s rent on our previous studio premises, despite our breaking the lease a month early.”

  “That’s lucky,” said Karel. “Or maybe not just luck. You could sweet-talk a cave-troll. That landlord did not stand a chance.”

  Saraswati smiled. “We’ve had a lot of luck, when it comes to that. The fact that we were able to buy this house so cheaply has made all the difference. But it all depends on the next few months, if we can hang on to our old clients, and attract new ones. Which brings me to the point of this meeting.”

  She looked seriously at her daughter. “Gia, what we're about to tell you is in strictest confidence. We can not afford for this news to be spread about.”

  “Sure, I understand,” said Gia, wondering a little at her mother’s intensity.

  What on earth is this about?

  “We’re going to be designing and making Kavitha Pillay’s wedding gown,” said Karel.

  Mandy gasped, and Gia laughed. Karel smiled back at them.

  “Apparently Luxulo is set on turning the wedding into what he calls a ‘showcase of South African talent’ and we’ve been chosen for the fashion side of things.”

  “And Luxulo?” asked Saraswati. “Do you know yet if we're designing his suit, Karel?”

  Karel pulled a face. “No. I tried to convince him, but he’s got some other guy working on that. Would not say who it is, but I’ve got my suspicions.”

  “Hmm,” said Saraswati. “Well, it’s quite enough work to keep us busy as it is.”

  “It’s a fantastic opportunity,” said Karel. “There’s the money of course, but this thing is really going to put us on the map. La Femme International will do a photo shoot of the wedding party. And the American media are interested too.”

  “And that’s another reason why we have to be so careful about this news,” said Saraswati. “Karel tells me that Kavitha’s mother, an
d Luxulo Langa too, are both incredibly paranoid about publicity. They’re convinced that there’s some kind of media conspiracy against Kavitha, so they're keeping everything about the wedding preparations top secret. It’s essential that none of this gets out. No one, Gia. Not even your friends.”

  “Yes, Mom, I do understand,” said Gia, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice.

  Then her parents turned to discussing the logistics of dates and timetables, and Gia stopped listening.

  That’ll be a challenge, she thought. Fatima’s going to kill me when she finds out I’ve been keeping this secret from her.

  Kavitha Pillay and Luxolo Langa were rapidly becoming the best-known couple in South Africa, and there was hardly a day when they were not featured on the cover of magazines and newspapers. President Langa was immensely popular both locally and overseas— especially in America— so his eldest son and future daughter-in-law were automatic celebrities. But Gia knew that Luxolo was famous in his own right, although she was fuzzy on what exactly it was that he did.

  With the upcoming referendum there were posters of his face on every lamppost, and his voice was constantly on the radio or television news.

  “Gia!” When she saw that she had Gia’s attention, Saraswati continued. “I’m going to meet Kavitha and her mother tomorrow afternoon, so I need you to come along to help me. Apparently they won’t be coming here like our usual clients because of all the secrecy. We’re being picked up and taken there, so I need you to be here and ready to go at three tomorrow afternoon.”

  Saraswati was on her feet. “Mandy— I’m going to take Nico out to the park and I thought I’d do a grocery shop afterwards. Could you finish off the rest of that tailored jacket that’s hanging up in the workroom? You’ll see what needs to be done. And then the bodice of the lace dress needs to be unpicked again. Just the side-seams, on both sides from the bottom of the armhole to the waistline.”

  “Okay,” said Mandy, getting up. “If you are doing a shop, you need to get some Handy Andy. And bags for the vacuum-cleaner.”

  Gia was off in her own thoughts again.

  I’m going to meet Kavitha Pillay!

  -oOo-

  When the door closed behind Saraswati, and Mandy had disappeared into the workroom, Karel turned to Gia. “Want to see how this one works?” He nodded at the pieces of dress that lay on the cutting table.

  “Yes, please,” said Gia.

  Her father loved showing off his designs, and she was always happy to watch him work.

  Karel spread each piece of the dress on the table, flicking the slippery fabric so that it lay without a wrinkle.

  “This was a really tricky one,” he said. “Wait, let me show you the map.”

  He opened the large envelope that Gia knew held all the pattern pieces, and slid out a sheet of paper. This was what her father called the “map”, a scaled-down plan of the way the pattern pieces fitted onto the fabric. Fitting each piece on the cloth in such a way as to minimise wastage, and aligning each piece to the grain of the fabric was time-consuming work. The map made a useful record in case the pattern was ever used again.

  “These two pieces are the front sleeves, right and left, you see, over here,” he pointed at the relevant marking on the map, “And this long piece is this special waist panel that wraps all the way around and then folds over at the back in a pseudo-bustle effect.”

  The light suddenly dimmed, and there was a shout from the workroom.

  “Power’s out!” called Mandy.

  Karel sighed, and went over to the door to look out. “Looks like it’s just us,” he said. “Gia, do me a favour and go see if the caretaker’s in? It’s probably a fuse or something but I don’t dare touch the wiring in this place.”

  “The caretaker?”

  “Oh, of course, you’ve not met him. Useful guy, kept helping me out when I was setting up the studio. He looks after this whole row of houses. If you go up the street to the left, you’ll see his door at the end of the row. Down some steps. Number— I don’t know the number, but you can’t miss it.”

  It was easy to find after all, a door at the bottom of a short flight of steps, below the level of the pavement. It must be some kind of basement level.

  There was no knocker, and no bell either, just a little plaque with the words “The Caretaker” painted in neat black letters. There were no wards either, Gia realised, or none visible. Feeling suddenly nervous, she knocked on the door and stepped back, unsure what to expect.

  After a few seconds the doorknob rattled and the door opened.

  “Yes?”

  Gia found herself looking at the front of a white shirt, old and shabby but very clean. She had to look up to see the man’s face.

  His skin was so dark that only the whites of his eyes were visible in the shadow of the door. He opened the door a little wider, and she could see him more clearly.

  He was an old man, so tall that he had to stoop slightly in the door. His build, and blue-black skin, made her think he might be from one of the northern countries, Ghana or Kenya, but his face had that high-cheekboned shape of a Bushman.

  He looked down at her with calm amusement, and she realised she’d been staring.

  “Um, our lights just went out,” she said. “My father asked if you could come have a look?”

  He gazed at her for a while. Then he gave a nod. “Number five.”

  “Yes!” said Gia with relief. “We’re at number five. Can you help us?”

  He inclined his head in seeming agreement, but then stepped back and closed the door gently in her face.

  Gia blinked in surprise, and after a few moments, walked back to the studio, not sure if she was supposed to wait.

  Her father looked up as she came in.

  “You find him?” and seeing Gia’s perplexed look, he laughed. “Odd sort of a guy. But just magic with anything mechanical. Been living down there forever, apparently.”

  A few minutes later the caretaker appeared, ducking his head a little as he came through the studio door. He lifted a hand in silent greeting, and walked through to the back where, Gia guessed, the fuse box must be. He’d pulled on a faded denim jacket over his shirt, and carried a toolbox like a small metal suitcase.

  The lights came back on, and then the hum of Mandy’s sewing machine.

  The caretaker came back into the studio.

  “Blown fuse?” asked Karel, but the caretaker just shook his head. He stood by the table, looking at the pieces of fabric spread there and after a moment, reached out and gently stroked one finger over the silky cloth.

  Then, without another word he left, closing the studio door silently behind him.

  “Strange guy,” said Karel, watching him go. “I wonder how old he is.”

  Haunted Lights

  “Gia Grobbelaar, you most certainly won't find the answer outside the window,” said Mrs Kemp.

  Gia sighed, picked up her pencil again, and tried to concentrate on the maths problem. Her mind was full of the appointment with Kavitha Pillay. Not only would she be meeting the bride-to-be of the president’s son, but she would be going as her mother’s assistant.

  Up to now she’d often helped in her parents' business, but it had been small jobs, working when she had the time or inclination. The past few months she’d done more, helping her mother and Mandy at the old premises while her father set up the new studio. There had been some late-night sewing marathons, but mostly it had been odds and ends, and she never worked directly with the clients.

  This was different.

  She was part of the team now, thrilled and nervous at the thought. None of which helped her focus on her schoolwork.

  Sonella, who shared Gia’s desk, twisted a wisp of white-blond hair as she worked her way through the exercises. Gia wished that she could tell Sonella her news, but that, of course, was impossible.

  Everything about Kavitha Pillay was top secret.

  The murmur of conversation told her that the rest of the c
lass were nearly finished. Mrs Kemp did not seem to mind, as long as the noise level stayed low.

  What kind of dress would Kavitha want? Something traditional, or more modern? It would have a full skirt, maybe, cut on the bias so that it draped like this—

  Gia’s pencil left the columns of numbers and moved across the page, drawing a series of smooth, softly curved lines.

  The bodice would have a modest neckline—

  A few more lines, and the possibility of a dress glimmered among the sums.

  “That’s so pretty,” said Sonella, and sighed. “I wish I could draw like that.” She drew a finger along the swoop of the skirt.

  “Could you make a dress like that?”

  “Yes, I guess,” said Gia. “But I’ve never done one completely on my own. Just helping my parents. They’re both fashion designers.”

  “I know,” whispered Sonella. “Carlo Gotti.”

  She smiled at Gia’s surprise.

  “All the girls know Carlo Gotti’s your father. They’re all dying of envy. And Saraswati is your mother. She made that beautiful peacock dress. I think I’ve got a picture here.”

  She opened her diary. Gia had noticed it before; it was covered in a collage of pictures from fashion magazines, and the pages were fat with clippings. Sonella paged to a picture that Gia knew well, of a heavily beaded and embroidered ball gown.

  “That’s right, isn’t it? Your mom made that?”

  Gia nodded. “It took her ages.” She turned the page, and then another, looking through the clippings.

  “I collect them,” said Sonella a little self-consciously. “But I only get old magazines. The new ones are so expensive and my parents don’t really approve. They don’t say anything, but they think it’s all just a waste of time. Girly stuff, you know.”

  Sonella’s parents were academics, lecturers at the University of Cape Town. Gia thought they sounded hopelessly stern and intimidating.

  “You know,” said Gia, “we’ve got tons of magazines lying around. My parents get just about all the magazines you can possibly think of. Once my father’s worked his way through them, he just piles them up in heaps. Drives Mom crazy. I could bring you some. Or maybe you should come for a visit, choose what you want yourself.”