Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  Agnes represented a lost dream. Agnes was a prickly reminder that he was persona non grata in the Kimberley Club, and that Jews were not particularly welcome in any of those dim rooms where billiards were played, and gin slings drunk, and reminiscences shared between chaps called Biffy and Charles about those dear summer days at Harrow, and those long autumn afternoons in Kent.

  Mooi Klip, sewing, said, ‘Perhaps Joel would be better if he found a wife.’

  Barney spread the rough diamonds out on the dark brown velvet tablecloth in front of him. ‘I don’t know. He used to be so talkative, so friendly. Everything you’d expect from an older brother. But now …’

  Painstakingly, he began to sort out the diamonds again. First, they had to be divided according to colour and clarity. Most of the diamonds, over eighty per cent, were only fit for industrial use, for glass-cutting and engraving tools, and drillbits. These crystals Barney would sell by the sackful to the Capetown Industrial Diamond Company, or to Mr Schultz of Lippert and Company, from Hamburg, who always paid good prices for industrials.

  Then, Barney picked through the stones of gem quality – sorting them by size first. The ‘smalls’ – anything under one carat – went to one side. The larger gems he categorised according to their shapes. Stones, which were unbroken crystals; cleavages, which were fractured crystals; flats, which were thin crystals like fragments of a broken window; and macles, which were twinned stones, and triangular in shape.

  Few diggers could sort diamonds as well as Barney – but then he had listened well to what Harold Feinberg had told him – and in turn he had passed on what he knew to Mooi Klip. He had offered several times to teach Joel to sort diamonds, but Joel had waved him away and said that he would leave the ‘fiddly business’ to those who had the patience for it.

  But sorting paid off. It meant that Barney KNEW exactly what he had to sell, and almost exactly what price he could expect for it, down to the last gold franc. It also meant that he learned to tell the difference between a good stone and an excellent stone, between a very spotted crystal and a slightly spotted crystal. Under his magnifying lens, he could detect the KIND of flaws or inclusions which could easily be bruted off a stone when it was cut, and which would only reduce the value of a gem by a very small amount; and the flaws which lay nearer the centre of a stone, and which would give a cutter real difficulty.

  Sorting by colour was simpler. Most of the browns and the yellows were unpopular, and so they were set aside as industrials, unless they were unusually large, or clear. But greens, or blues, or pinks were much rarer, and could fetch well above the regular price. Reds were so unusual that Barney had never even seen one.

  The whites were more difficult to grade. The finest whites were often called ‘blue-whites’, and when he had first started sorting, Barney had spent hours trying to detect a slight trace of blue in his better gemstones. But he had learned from experience, and from a cynical Harold Feinberg, that ‘blue-white’ was a romantic diamond-salesman’s fiction, rather than an accurate colour grading; and that most of the stones sold to a starry-eyed public as ‘blue-white’ were not even top grade whites.

  Almost all of the whites that Barney and Joel were digging out of claim No. 172 were very faintly yellowish, which meant that as far as colour was concerned, they could only be classified as fourth- or fifth-grade stones. Occasionally, they came up with a fine clear white, but not enough to satisfy Barney that their claim was a good one. And they had yet to find a gem crystal of more than 12·8 carats.

  ‘Have you finished?’ asked Mooi Klip, standing behind Barney and gently stroking his cheek.

  Barney laid down his loupe and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had been working since dawn, and his eyes were blurring. All he could see in front of him on the dark brown tablecloth was a rainbow jumble of sparkling light.

  ‘Almost,’ he told her. ‘Do you want to go to bed?’

  ‘I want to talk, too.’

  He opened a notebook, and carefully scratched down the number and estimated value of the crystals on the table. ‘Seven hundred pounds, if we’re lucky. We should clear £2000 this week.’

  ‘All this money,’ said Mooi Klip. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  Barney stood up, and closed his notebook. ‘I’m going to put it into the bank, like I always do. And then, when he’s ready, and when I’m ready, I’m going to buy up Stuart’s claim next door.’

  ‘I heard a kaffir say Stuart’s claim is no good. They’re down to bedrock.’

  ‘That’s what I hear, too, although Stuart says he’s selling because of the climate.’

  ‘But why should you want to buy Stuart’s claim, if it’s worked out?’ asked Mooi Klip.

  ‘Because I believe a man called Nork.’

  ‘Nork?’ queried Mooi Klip.

  ‘He used to work with Joel. He’s a little strange. A little eccentric. But he thinks the bedrock isn’t bedrock at all, but something called Norkite. He thinks we’ll find as many diamonds in the Norkite as we’re finding in the yellow ground.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I think it’s true. I’ll lose a lot of money if it isn’t.’

  Joel’s bedroom door opened. Joel stood there, dressed in nothing but his cotton combinations, his dark hair tousled, watching Barney and Mooi Klip with his mouth turned down in a disapproving curve.

  ‘Nork,’ he said, ‘is a maniac.’

  ‘Well, he’s a little over-enthusiastic,’ said Barney. ‘He drinks a lot, too. But there’s nothing wrong with his theory.’

  ‘You’re going to throw good money away on a crackpot geological theory? We’re living in a two-bedroomed hovel, dressed in dime-store cottons, eating dried beef and beans, and you’re going to throw money away on a theory?’

  ‘I’m going to invest money in something that sounds like a pretty good gamble,’ said Barney. ‘Now, please, don’t let’s argue again. If you want to discuss it some more, let’s talk about it in the morning.’

  ‘Let’s talk about it now.’

  ‘Joel – I’m tired – so are you – and so is Mooi Klip.’

  ‘Barney, my little son of consolation, I’m never too tired to talk about my future. Or what you’re going to do with our money. Seventeen thousand pounds we’ve got now, festering away in the London & South African Bank. Seventeen thousand inert, useless, pounds. So we can buy out Stuart’s barren claim. How much is that going to cost us? Eight thousand, nine? All right, that leaves us eight or nine thousand spare. What are we going to do with that?’

  Barney put his arm around Mooi Klip’s shoulders. ‘We’ll buy more claims, of course, when we can.’

  Joel, his eyebrows drawing together like black iron filings drawn by a magnet, said, ‘More barren claims? More worked-out land?’

  ‘It’s not worked out. Maybe some diggers think it is, but it isn’t.’

  ‘Because Edward Nork says it isn’t? Riboyne Shel O’lem, Barney, the man’s crazy in the head! I knew him months before you did. Years! I even believed him myself for a time. But he’s a lunatic. They should lock him up.’

  ‘They haven’t so far. And I believe him.’

  Joel raked his fingers through his greasy, unkempt hair. With his mouth so bruised and swollen he looked like a prize-fighter. ‘You won’t take my advice, I suppose?’ he asked Barney. ‘You don’t give me credit for knowing these diamonds fields better than you do?’

  Barney tied up the last of the gemstones in a washleather bag. He did not answer.

  ‘All right,’ said Joel. ‘But let me warn you of one thing. If we hit blue ground, and the blue ground turns out to be barren, then I’m going to take my money out of the bank, whatever’s left of it, and I’m also going to insist that you buy me out of whatever claims we own at today’s price.’

  Barney looked at his brother with nothing but regret. He could not stand to see Joel acting this way: it reminded him so much of his mother. ‘Very well,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Mazel un b’
rachah,’ said Joel, his voice sharp with irony. Because to speak these words, ‘good luck and blessings,’ were the time-honoured way in which diamond dealers sealed their business arrangements. They never drew up written contracts: a man’s word was binding enough.

  After Joel had gone back to bed, Barney went over to the wooden hutch where they kept their plates and their cutlery, and poured himself a small glass of brandy. He drank it in one mouthful, without looking round once at Mooi Klip, who was standing in their bedroom doorway watching him.

  ‘Come to bed,’ she said, quietly. ‘This is not the right time for fighting.’

  Barney turned down the pressure-lamp and extinguished it. He crossed the room by the shadowy illumination of the candle in their bedroom, and held Mooi Klip’s hand.

  ‘I don’t want to fight anyway,’ he said.

  With the door closed behind them, and held by a hasp, Barney unbuttoned Mooi Klip’s dress, and pulled it down from her shoulders. Her nipples showed dark through the fine white cotton of her embroidered bodice. He kissed her, and held her cheek close to his, and felt her curly hair between his fingers.

  He was tired, and so he made love to her slowly, with his eyes closed. It was warm, between the percale sheets, under their patchwork comforter, and he held her hips up close to him with hands that were callused now, and strong with work. Each time he slid into her he felt it was like sliding into an affectionate dream.

  Afterwards, they lay side-by-side in the flickering candlelight with the covers thrown back. Mooi Klip’s lips touched Barney’s shoulder again and again in the lightest of kisses, and her hand cupped him between his muscular thighs.

  ‘How do you think of me?’ she asked him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he grunted. He had nearly fallen asleep.

  ‘I mean how do you think of me.’

  Barney turned his head. ‘I love you. You know that.’

  ‘You don’t think of me as your whore.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But we live together, and we make love, and we are not married.’

  ‘That bothers you?’ asked Barney. He sat up and leaned his head on the sawn-oak bedhead. On the opposite side of the room, on a small table, stood Mooi Klip’s crucifix. Its shadow dipped and danced in the light of the candle.

  ‘If my family knew, they would be very unhappy,’ said Mooi Klip. ‘And I think that I am unhappy myself.’

  ‘You’re unhappy? You’ve never said so.’

  She looked away, picking at a stray thread at the edge of the comforter. ‘It has never been the right time, before. But now I think you have to decide. You cannot live with me, and expect so much of me, and still nurse your dreams of Agnes Knight.’

  Barney said shortly, ‘You’ve learned a lot since we’ve been together, haven’t you? And not just fancy English.’

  ‘I’ve learned that you have a dream, and that your dream is sometimes stronger than you are.’

  ‘Have you learned that I love you?’

  ‘In your way, you do.’

  ‘In my way? And what way is that? Don’t you realise that one day I’m going to drape you in diamonds?’

  Mooi Klip slowly shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. Her eyes sparkled in the candlelight. ‘No, you will never do that.’

  ‘But you want me to marry you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would Jan Bloem give us his blessing?’

  ‘I expect so. He does like you, although he finds it hard to admit it.’

  Barney swung his legs out of bed, and sat up. ‘What I don’t understand is why you suddenly want me to marry you now. Is it what Joel said tonight? Is that what made up your mind?’

  ‘A little,’ she said. ‘But there is something else, more important.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She ran her fingers down his back, and the feeling made him shiver. ‘I think I’m going to have your baby,’ she said.

  He met Agnes a week later, by accident. It was one of those dark afternoons when low cloud hung over the veld like soft grey rags; when the horses were restless, and the noise of the picks and the winches from the Big Hole sounded oddly muffled, like grave-robbers working in a country churchyard.

  The Knights had ignored Barney and Joel every time they came across them in the street. Kimberley was such a small place that it was impossible to avoid them altogether; but Mr Knight in particular was an expert in the social art of ‘cutting’, and he had obviously instructed Faith and Agnes to tilt their noses into the air in exactly the same way. The three of them would bustle past like excited guinea-fowl, all upraised beaks and flustering skirts and contemptuous petticoats.

  But early on that Friday afternoon, when Barney walked into town to find a replacement diaphragm for one of their pumps, he found Agnes alone. She was standing on the boarded sidewalk in a cream linen dress and a wide cream sunhat with a brown silk puggaree tied around it. She looked as if she were thinking, or dreaming; but in any case she did not notice Barney until he was standing beside her, in his wide hat and his shirt with its sleeves tightly rolled up, and his suspenders.

  ‘Agnes,’ he said.

  She turned, and stared at him wide-eyed.

  ‘Barney!’ she said, but then she remembered herself, and stuck her nose up, and closed her eyes.

  Barney couldn’t help smiling. ‘I may be Jewish, Agnes, but I’m not going to bite your ankle.’

  ‘Papa said I mustn’t even look at you. Neither must Faith. We’re under strict instructions, he said.’

  Barney tilted back his hat. ‘Do you really hold it against me so much? That I’m Jewish?’

  She opened one eye.

  ‘If you cut me, do I not bleed?’ Barney quoted.

  Agnes said, ‘You don’t believe in Jesus, do you?’

  ‘Of course I believe in Jesus.’

  ‘Papa said that Jews were almost heathens. Not quite. But almost.’

  Barney looked away, across the dusty street. In the far distance, way beyond the trees on the horizon, lightning flickered like the tongue of an asp. ‘We could have loved each other,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  She twisted the brown silk cord of her parasol around its faux-bamboo handle, but said nothing. The dim light gave her face the soft pastel colours of a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds; full of fancy and sentimentality and gentle allegory. A dust-devil stirred the chaff in the street, and far off to the north-west the lighning forked again. Unsettled times.

  Barney said, ‘I shall always hold you dear, you know. I suppose that’s all I can say.’

  Agnes said, ‘I was supposed to buy Mother some ribbon.’

  ‘Well, you’d better go then,’ Barney told her. ‘But it would be nice if you could at least say goodbye.’

  Agnes turned. To Barney’s surprise, there was a faint sparkle in the corner of her eye, where a tear had formed. She said, ‘I don’t even know why Father is so furious, that you’re a Jew. You don’t even look like a Jew; although he says you do, and that he should have guessed all along. “I invited him to eat at my very table!” he keeps shouting. I tried to argue with him, Barney, I promise you that I tried my best. But he won’t let me see you. He won’t! And Mother can’t understand.’

  Barney took a step forward, and held her hand. Her tiny fawn glove was decorated with fine Brussels lace. Her hand inside it was as warm as a small animal. He took off his hat, leaned forward, and kissed her cheek, unshaved and sweaty as he was, with dust in the curls of his hair, and grit around his mouth.

  She whispered something indistinct, and Barney said, ‘What?’

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I love you. I’ve dreamed about you, ever since I first met you. Perhaps it’s wrong of me, and I ought to feel guilty. But how can anyone feel guilty, when they feel passions as strong as these? Barney, I love you.’

  Barney squeezed her hand. ‘It’s impossible,’ he said. ‘You know it is.’

  Her face collapsed with grief. ‘I�
�ve tried so hard,’ she told him. ‘I’ve tried to do everything that Father thought was best. Faith believes that I should stand up to him, and tell him that I’m going to walk out with you, no matter what. But I can’t, Barney. All I can do is keep my love for you alive, inside my heart, and hope that one day everything will change.’

  She took her hand away, and found her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes; but somehow that only made her sob even more. Barney gently put his arm around her, and led her to an iron bench outside a grocery store, where he sat her down, and sat beside her.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he told her. He was telling her the truth. How could he explain that he had given her up for lost on the day of Joel’s trial, simply because the prejudice of her father and of all of the British colonial goyim seemed utterly impregnable? How could he tell her about Mooi Klip? He knew that his ambitions had deceived him: he had first been attracted to Agnes because she was the right sort of girl for a colonist to marry, pretty and presentable and radiantly Christian. But he was deeply infatuated with her, too; with her face and her figure and the childish wilfulness of her character; and now that he realised that she still wanted him, and still loved him, in spite of his Jewishness, the intense pain of losing her for ever – and it would have to be for ever – was like an amputation. He would think of that word later, for different reasons, but it would always remind him of losing Agnes.

  Agnes said, ‘I’d better go. Mother will be wondering where I am.’

  He said, ‘You won’t do anything foolish?’

  ‘Foolish? There’s nothing foolish that I can do, not here in Kimberley.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, quietly. ‘It should all have been different.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. You had to stand up for your brother. At lease you had the strength to do that.’