Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  ‘Great-Uncle Tee,’ protested Sara, setting down her cup.

  ‘I do apologise, my dear,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘I’m always doing that. I forget that the more sanguinary details of medicine make other people squeamish.’

  After tea, Sara walked Barney down to the gate. ‘I’ve been greatly encouraged,’ said Barney. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll be staying in Durban for a while, until your brother is better?’

  ‘As long as necessary.’

  ‘What about your diamond mines?’

  ‘They’ll have to wait.’

  Sara smiled. ‘You really do strike me as a most straightforward and determined person. I should very much like it if you could come to supper one evening. I shall do what I can to persuade Papa.’

  ‘Your father doesn’t object to Jews?’

  ‘Why on earth should he? My mother’s mother came from a very aristocratic Jewish family in Russia. You’ll have to meet my mother. She’s so beautiful, and quite adorable.’

  ‘Qualities which you seem to have inherited in full measure,’ said Barney.

  Sara Sutter made a funny little face, and then giggled. ‘I love to be flattered,’ she said. ‘One gets so few compliments, out heah.’

  ‘By the way,’ asked Barney, touching the nameplate on the gate, ‘what does Khotso mean?’

  ‘It’s Basuto for “peace”,’ said Sara. ‘I suppose you would say “shalom.” ’

  Barney took her hand. ‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘I would say shalom.’

  Barney spent Christmas Day alone in his suite at the Natalia Hotel. On Sunday morning, Christmas Eve, four black porters from the Durban Military Hospital had arrived with a stretcher and carried Joel away, so that he could be examined and bathed and prepared for his operation. Later that day, a messenger had come round with a letter for Barney written in an almost unintelligible copperplate, and this informed him that Sir Thomas was to operate the day after Boxing Day, Tuesday, and that he had high hopes that Joel would be walking again within two or three months, given that his internal injuries were not too serious. And, by the way, a merry Christmas.

  Most of Christmas Day, Barney spent dozing on his bed, or reading. He even read the First Book of Samuel again, from the Bible which The London Missionary Society had left on his bedside table. ‘The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich; he bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory.’

  At lunchtime, the management sent up on a tray a traditional Christmas lunch, with turkey and sausages and roasted potatoes. There was even a sprig of holly on the side of the plate. Barney ate his meal in silence, sitting on the end of his bed. He had never celebrated Christmas at home, of course, and out at Oranjerivier it had only been marked by Monsaraz getting drunker than usual. But even though it was not a festival that meant anything to him religiously, or in his memories, the whole of Durban was celebrating today, the church bells were ringing out across the rusty corrugated-iron rooftops, and echoing from the forested hills, and he could not help feeling more lonely than ever. He had celebrated Chanukah somewhere in the mountains, by whispering prayers to himself as he lay in his blankets. He was beginning to feel the need of his God again, and of his religion, and he was also beginning to miss Mooi Klip.

  On the writing-desk under the window was a dried-up pot of ink, and a small sheaf of writing-paper with the printed heading ‘Natalia’. He lifted up a sheet of paper and touched the word with his fingers. Natalia. Then he laid it down again. The Lord bringeth low, and lifteth up. Oh Lord, he prayed, lift me up. Oh Lord, lift me up.

  At five o’clock, he decided to go for a walk. But he was just crossing the foyer of the hotel when the deputy manager called to him from the registration desk, and held up a small brown-paper parcel.

  ‘For you, Mr Blitz. It was left only a few minutes ago.’

  Barney took the parcel across to one of the leather armchairs, sat down, and untied it. Inside the brown paper was a red leather-covered box, and inside the box was a silver penknife, with the initials BB engraved on the side.

  A small card was tied to the penknife. It read, ‘To Mr Barney Blitz, wishing you the best compliments of the season, Sara Sutter.’

  A knife was the most appropriate gift she could have sent him. That Christmas Day, she cut him to the bone.

  Joel told him later that the pain he had suffered crossing the Drakensberg mountains had been nothing compared with the pain that Sir Thomas Sutter inflicted. But Sir Thomas Sutter had to break his leg and his hips again, and cut away all the superfluous bone that had formed, and reset everything as best he could. The ribs were all right, since the ribcage had formed a natural splint, but the collarbone had to be re-broken and reset, and there was a severe rupture of the groin. When Barney was first allowed to visit Joel, on Wednesday evening, Joel was lying in traction, his face white, his senses still blurred by morphine, and all he could say was, ‘How’s Mama?’

  Sir Thomas Sutter was waiting outside with two of his assistants. ‘Your brother will live, God willing, and he will walk again; though never without a stick. I must say it was a most interesting and difficult case. It hardly ever happens in England, you see, that a man so seriously injured is brought to surgery so late as six weeks after his accident.’

  ‘I’m very thankful,’ said Barney.

  ‘Well, I’m thankful to you for bringing him in,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘All this has made a very recreational end to my holiday, if you’ll forgive me talking about your brother’s misfortune as a recreation.’

  ‘That’s probably the right word,’ Barney told him.

  ‘Well, excellent,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘And you must come out and have a meal with us this evening. My grand-niece absolutely insists, and so do I. I expect they’ll be serving cold turkey again, but as a matter of fact Gerald was so extravagant that he shipped in a turkey the size of an ostrich, and we’ll be eating it as curries and croquettes until March, I shouldn’t wonder. Well, the family will. I’m sailing back to London the day after New Year’s.’

  ‘Do I have time to change?’ asked Barney.

  ‘My dear chap, of course. I’ll pick you up at the Natalia at six, when I’ve finished here. There’s a frightfully interesting case upstairs, you know. An orderly from the 24th Foot was stepped on by an elephant. It’s a miracle he’s still alive.’

  Barney walked back to the Natalia Hotel between lighted storefronts and decorated restaurants. There was a sea-breeze blowing, and up above him the sky was prickled with stars. A half-caste woman called out to him from the shadow corner of Commercial Street, but he shook his head without even turning her way. He could smell spicy East African food on the wind.

  Sir Thomas was wrong: the Sutters did not serve up cold turkey that evening, but noisettes of lamb, and turtle soup, and a whole array of decorative moulds and jellies. Mrs Sutter, Gerald’s wife, turned out to be just as beautiful as her daughter had described her – dark-haired, slender, and tall, with an endless white neck, and she immediately made Barney feel at ease by laughing at herself for forgetting what she had ordered the servants to cook that night. ‘I was so sure that it was going to be fish,’ she said, ‘that my palate is quite disappointed at the prospect of lamb.’

  The interior of Khotso was as pristine as its gardens. The dining-room was laid with a shining floor of polished English oak, and surrounded by mirrors. The drawing-room, to which they withdrew when the meal was finally over, was decorated in blue watered silk, and furnished in elegant turn-of-the-century mahogany. Mrs Sutter sat on a small French sofa, rising from the white satin petals of her evening-gown like the stamens of a flower; and Sara sat next to Barney, her hair drawn back and secured with strings of pearls, her dress as vivid and orange as the coral-tree blossoms which herald the South African spring.

  Both Gerald Sutter and Sir Thomas were dressed in starched white shirts and white tie
s, with tailcoats; and Barney felt distinctly uncomfortable in his day suit, dark and well tailored as it was.

  ‘Uncle is wonderfully pleased with your brother’s progress,’ smiled Mrs Sutter. ‘I must say that we’re all delighted.’

  ‘Thought you had something of a nerve, to begin with,’ said Gerald Sutter. ‘But things have worked out rather well, don’t you think? Uncle’s had something to amuse him; your brother’s on the mend; and Sara’s found herself a new chum.’

  ‘I was wondering if you’d like to ride tomorrow,’ said Sara, touching Barney’s sleeve.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have a horse. Nor riding clothes, either.’

  Gerald Sutter grunted in amusement. ‘My dear boy, we have something in excess of twenty first-class mounts here, apart from a collection of harmless hacks. You can borrow any of them you have a mind to. And, as for clothes, we must have enough to fit out the whole Zulu army.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘It would be nice to see those blackies decently dressed for a change.’

  They all laughed, and their servant Umzinto, who was dressed up for the evening in a yellow and white footman’s costume, with a white pigtailed wig, leaned forward to pour them all some more coffee.

  The following day, Barney and Sara took out a grey and a chestnut, and rode as far as the beach where the Umlazi River flows into the Indian Ocean. It was a humid, misty morning, and as Sara rode ahead of Barney through the sloping shallows, she was silhouetted against the pearly mist, tall and upright on her mare, her riding hat tilted fashionably forwards, her skirts carefully arranged side-saddle. They reined in their horses for a while, and listened to the foaming of the surf, and the occasional whistle of a mail-packet approaching Port Natal through the haze. Then Sara swung herself down into the sea, and led her mare back towards the beach, her cream-coloured skirts trailing in the water. Barney rode after her, and when he reached the beach, he dismounted, too.

  ‘Sometimes this feels like the most distant, remote corner of the whole Empire,’ said Sara. Her face was framed by the triangular space between her mare’s chest and jaw.

  ‘You’re lonely? asked Barney.

  Sara looked at him. ‘Aren’t you?’

  They had a chaperone with them, of course – an eLangeni woman who had brought up Sara since she was nine years old. She had stayed at a suitable distance all the way from the house, fat and very black, and perched on a shaggy pony so precariously that Barney had found himself looking back at her every now and then to make sure that she was still mounted. But now, the eLangeni woman found the surf so absorbing that she climbed down from her pony and gave the waves her unshakeable attention.

  ‘This is wrong, you know,’ said Sara, in a tone that gave away her feeling that she was glad that it was.

  Barney said nothing, but released the reins of his horse and put his arms around her and held her near to him. In her riding-boots, she was almost as tall as he was, but everything about her was feminine and giving and warm. They kissed, and he tasted her perfume. They kissed again. Then he was clutching her so tight, so close to him, that he prayed he would never have to let her go. He closed his eyes and he could hear the ocean seething up the beach; he opened them again and he could see Sara’s eyes in close-up, their dark brown irises folded like coral.

  ‘You’re so strong,’ she said. ‘You’re weak. I can see you have weaknesses. But you’re so strong, too. And that’s what makes you so attractive.’

  He pressed his forehead against hers, his hands linked behind her slender waist. ‘Where can this possibly lead?’ he asked her. ‘I have to go back to Kimberley soon.’

  She gently touched his lips with her finger. ‘How can you think about the future? Tomorrow, the Zulus might rise and we’ll all be dead. Assegaied in our beds.’

  ‘What makes you think they’re going to rise?’

  Sara kissed him. ‘They must do. It’s in their blood. Everybody has to do what their destiny compels them to do.’

  He let go of her, and turned away. His horse was tugging at some wild seagrass with its teeth.

  ‘I’m not asking you to love me,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I know. But right now, I think I could do with somebody to love.’

  It was late February before Joel could walk again. Barney would go to visit him at the Durban Military Hospital every afternoon, and each afternoon Joel would gripe and sweat and swing himself around the ward on his walking-stick, before sitting down next to Barney in a thick sweat, his chest rising and falling with effort, and his hands trembling like an old man.

  ‘I’ll walk, just you wait and see.’

  ‘Sir Thomas said you’d always have to carry a stick.’

  ‘You think so? That shows what a gonif Sir Thomas is.’

  ‘A gonif? And he’s fixed you up so well?’

  Joel leaned over to Barney and grinned at him. ‘One day, my little brother, you’re going to learn what life is all about. Life is all about taking, and not trusting. You live it any other way, and you’re crazy.’

  ‘I trusted you with our diamond claim.’

  ‘And what happened?’ gibbed Joel.

  ‘I don’t even know how you can look me in the face after what you did,’ said Barney. ‘And all that money. You must have been out of your mind.’

  ‘It was the greatest poker game ever. I could have won fifty thousand. Then you wouldn’t have argued.’

  ‘But you didn’t win, did you?’ said Barney. ‘You lost everything. And you lied. You told me you were going to put that claim fifty-fifty in our joint names. You never even went to the Diggers’ Committee to re-register it, did you? You momzer.’

  ‘Barney,’ protested Joel. ‘You’re my brother.’

  ‘Sure I’m your brother. And most of the time I wish that I wasn’t.’

  Joel gave an uneasy laugh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure that I blame you.’

  Barney rubbed his eyes, and sat forward on his bentwood chair with his chin cupped in his hands. ‘It’s too late now, anyway. We’ve lost the claim and we’ve lost all of our savings and that’s it. Mechuleh. Finished!’

  The afternoon light fell across the parquet floor of the hospital ward. In the nearest bed, a British soldier with an amputated leg lay on his bed playing a board game called ‘Lord Chelmsford’s Revenge’.

  Joel said, ‘Sometimes I think I’m going mad.’

  ‘For God’s sake, you’re not going mad.’

  ‘But I do, Barney. Sometimes it feels like the whole world’s pushing in on me from all sides, and all I can do is try to trick my way out of it, before I get caught. It was like that in Kimberley, when we were living with Mooi Klip. There was you, and her, and this everyday routine of getting up and digging the claim and sorting the stones, and I felt like the whole thing was crushing me to death. Every pound we put into the bank was like another brick in my tomb. Do you understand what I’m saying? The whole thing was crushing me, and the only way to get free was to throw it all away.’

  Barney would not look at him. ‘I should have let you die,’ he said, bitterly. ‘The only trouble was, you wouldn’t.’

  Joel was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘No, I didn’t die. And I don’t intend to.’

  He swung himself upright on his sticks, and pivoted himself away down the ward for another agonising exercise walk. Out of the corner of his eye, Barney watched him; and when Joel reached the end of the ward and suddenly cried out, ‘Ah! Barney!’ Barney was already out of his chair, and hurrying to support him.

  He saw Sara two or three times a week. Usually, they went riding, with the Sutter’s conveniently ill-sighted chaperone teetering along behind them; but occasionally it thundered, and then they would sit in the morning-room and talk, or play ludo, while the tropical rain clattered against the glass of the French windows, and the stone lions in the garden stared mournfully out across the lawns with drips on their noses.

  They kissed as often as they could, and embraced. But there was no d
oubt that Sara considered herself a young lady of correct upbringing, and that the idea of going to bed with an admirer before marriage was quite out of the question. She was twenty and two months old, and a virgin, and the only reason she had not married before was because of the isolated life she led out at Khotso, wealthy and mannered and bored to distraction, a true daughter of the British Empire. When he talked to Sara, Barney was frequently electrified by her unshakeable certainty that whatever the British did was the work of the Lord, and that the Zulu and the Boer were nothing but clumsy mischief-makers who might one day upset the just and equable Scheme of Things so much that they would have to be Taught A Lesson. That was a phrase Barney heard time and time again since he had come to Cape Colony: they will have to be Taught A Lesson. The British seemed to regard the administration of the world as nothing more than an extension of their public-school geography classes.

  For the first time, Barney began to understand the thinking of Cecil Rhodes.

  By early March, his sabbatical ended, Sir Thomas Sutter had sailed back to London on the steamship Agamemnon, and Joel was limping around with the aid of a single stick. Barney was almost in love with Sara, to the point where he found it hard to go through a day without seeing her, or sending her a message; and when he did see her, and go riding with her, he would return to the Natalia Hotel in a mood that was half satisfaction and half frustration. One evening he came back from Khotso, went into the bathroom, and rubbed himself furiously until semen shot over his hand. He could have gone to a whore, but he did not want to. He did not feel like talking to any other girl but Sara. But he lay back on his bed afterwards feeling empty and resentful, and staring at the geccoes which ran over the ceiling in their own upside-down world where guilt and loneliness were unknown.

  Then the money ran out. Sir Thomas Sutter had only charged 150 guineas for his surgery and after-care, but Joel’s hospital fees had now topped £200, and the bill for Barney’s suite at the Natalia Hotel took care of the rest. Barney had to go to Khotso on the morning of 11 March and tell Sara that he was returning to Kimberley.