Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  Barney had hoped that once they arrived at Vogel Vlei, he would be able to curtail Nareez’s influence, and to assert his authority as Sara’s husband and lover. He had planned weeks ago that Nareez should be assigned the smallest bedroom in the east wing of the house, which looked towards Kimberley and the Big Hole. The main bedroom suite took up most of the upper floor of the west wing, and faced out over the scrubby acreage which was Vogel Vlei’s garden.

  ‘If you don’t tell me what’s wrong,’ said Barney, ‘I can’t possibly put it right.’

  ‘I thought you would have known what was wrong,’ said Sara.

  ‘I’m not a mind-reader. Maybe you should have married a mind-reader.’

  ‘There’s no need to be ridiculous; nor offensive, either. I was simply saying that I expected more sensitivity from you, and perhaps a little more savoir-faire.’

  ‘I don’t happen to know what savoir-faire is. I’m American, not German.’

  ‘Savoir-faire is French, as a matter of fact, and it means knowing how to do things properly.’

  Barney lifted his hands in resigned acceptance, and let them drop back to his knees again. ‘Okay, I don’t have any savoir-faire. Now, what in particular makes you say that?’

  ‘Well, the bedroom,’ said Sara. ‘The arrangements. I’m a lady, after all, and yet you seem to expect me to spend my entire life in your personal presence.’

  Barney looked at her for a moment, and then said, ‘Yes, I do. Isn’t that the whole point of getting married?’

  ‘But Barneh,’ she said, clasping her hands together like an exasperated little girl, and exaggerating her English county accent so much that, for the very first time, it made Barney wince to hear it. ‘A lady has to do so many private and intimate things … things that she can’t possibly do in front of her husband. I mean, good Lord, you don’t expect to see me at my toilet, do you, or dressing? A woman should be the perfect mystery … that’s what mother always said … she should appear as a vision of prettiness without ever giving away the little secrets which made her so. And, besides, it’s embarrassing.’

  ‘You’re embarrassed I should see you dressing?’

  Sara blushed, and lowered her head so that the brim of her hat obscured her face. Barney cupped her chin in his hand, and raised her face towards him again, frowning into her eyes in disbelief.

  ‘How can you be embarrassed, if we’re married?’

  ‘Barney, my darling, that’s part of being a lady.’

  ‘But you’ve never said anything before. You weren’t embarrassed on our wedding-night.’

  ‘I didn’t undress in front of you on my wedding-night. And, in any case, I was embarrassed.’

  ‘You were embarrassed? Embarrassed by what?’

  She turned her head away from his hand, and presented him with a profile that was as classic as a sculpture by Donatello, and equally cold.

  ‘I can’t talk about it,’ she said. ‘It isn’t proper.’

  ‘Between husband and wife, it isn’t proper to talk about love? Between husband and wife, it isn’t proper to talk about sex? If it isn’t proper between husband and wife, then when is it proper?’

  Sara licked her lips with the tip of her tongue, as if the actual words that came out of her mouth were distasteful to her. ‘Men discuss it in clubs, and in the polo changing-rooms.’

  Barney, was so stupefied that he felt as if someone had punched all the breath out of him. He stood up, and walked across the bedroom floor, and then turned around on his heel and came back to the window again.

  ‘In clubs? And in the polo changing rooms? Is that what your mother told you?’

  ‘Barney, my mother brought me up to be a complete lady. To ride and to sew, to speak French and to play the piano, and to run a household. She also instructed me in marriage, and what any normal husband would expect from me. She wasn’t a prude. Her lessons did include the duty of sexual intimacy, and in some detail.’

  ‘Sara,’ said Barney, gently, but with great intensity, ‘sex isn’t a duty. It’s a pleasure, and the best way there is of showing somebody that you truly love them. It’s one of the greatest joys of marriage.’

  ‘You seem to have forgotten that sex is mainly for the purpose of bearing children. I will have your children, Barney. I won’t fail you that way. Nor, I hope, in any other way.’

  ‘Sara – I don’t think you will. But you have to understand that I don’t only want to see you when you’re dressed up, or when you’re bathed and ready for bed. I want to see you the way you really are. I want to see you night and day, whether your hair is combed or uncombed, whether you’re wearing evening-gowns or underwear, with or without powder, in or out of make-up.’

  Sara tittered, but without much amusement. ‘That’s nonsense,’ she said. ‘My parents never shared a bedroom. How could we possibly share a bedroom?’

  ‘We shared a bedroom at Khotso.’

  ‘That was our honeymoon. Of course we shared a bedroom on our honeymoon. But now we’re talking about normal life.’

  ‘Normal?’ expostulated Barney. ‘You call it normal, a man tip-toeing down the corridor with his slippers in his hand, every time he wants to make love to his own wife?’

  ‘But, Barney, we can’t share a bedroom. What about Nareez?’

  ‘Nareez? What in hell does Nareez have to do with it? I married you, not Nareez!’

  ‘Nareez is my amah, Barney. She bathes me, and dresses me, and does my hair. She brings me water in the night if I’m thirsty. She sits up and talks to me if I can’t sleep. She rubs my forehead if I’ve got a headache. It can’t possibly work out, the three of us in one bedroom. It’s just not the thing.’

  Barney stared at her. ‘Oh,’ he said, flatly. ‘It’s not the thing. Why didn’t you tell me in the first place? If I’d only realised that it wasn’t the thing, that would have saved us all of this squabbling. For the love of God, Sara, what are you talking about? This is our bedroom, yours and mine – husband and wife. Do you seriously think I built this bedroom so that you could share it with some fat greasy Indian woman, while I sleep in another bed, in another room, without even the consolation of being able to hold you and kiss you whenever I so desire? The thing! If sleeping apart is the thing in England, then I’m not surprised they’re all so damned eccentric!’

  ‘The English are not eccentric and Nareez is not fat and greasy! How dare you!’

  ‘I dare because it’s true, and I dare because you’re talking like a middle-aged spinster, instead of a passionate young wife. And I dare most of all because I love you, and I’m not going to sleep without you.’

  Sara sat rigidly upright, not moving. The sun had moved around the house so that it was shining through the window in which she sat; and her hair with highlights of red and bronze. But the brightness of the light behind her also concentrated the shadows on her face, so that her eyes, already dark with tiredness and displeasure, grew darker still.

  When she next spoke, she was back to her airy patronising again. ‘You will realise, Barney, when you’ve had longer to acquaint yourself with the habits of society, that there is a time and a place for everything. Passion included.’

  ‘What a smart girl you are,’ Barney told her, his arms hanging by his sides as if he were exhausted to the point of collapse.

  ‘There are times when affection can be properly expressed, and times when it is better held in check. There should be just as much etiquette between man and wife, after all, as there is between friends or strangers.’

  ‘Did your mother tell you that, or did you read it in one of those twopenny books on manners?’

  ‘Barney! You’re being so unpleasant!’

  Barney loosened his necktie and dragged it out from under his collar. Then he wound it around his fists like a garotte. ‘I seem to remember a time on the lawn at Khotso when you weren’t so worried about etiquette,’ he said.

  Sara said, ‘You’re very bad-mannered, to remind me of that, especially now that I’m so upset.
But just because I believe in doing everything the proper way, that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, or that my feelings towards you aren’t passionate.’

  Barney glanced at her. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘if that’s the way you truly feel about me, Nareez can stay where she is, in the east wing, and you and I will share this bedroom. If you like, I’ll have a bell installed so that you can call Nareez if you really need her. But you might remember that I can fetch water, just as competently as Nareez; and that I can talk to you, when you can’t sleep, and without a Bengali accent, too; and that I can rub your poor aching head if you’re suffering from the neuralgia, just as soothingly.’

  ‘And what about my toilette?’

  ‘We have a private dressing-room, and a private bathroom. You can close the doors of both, if you really don’t want me to see you in your corset-cover and your hairpins.’

  ‘I don’t wear a –’ Sara began, with indignation, but then she realised that the subject was indelicate, and she angrily got to her feet, and stamped. ‘You’re impossible! Why are you insisting on being so impossible? Why do you have to be so piggish about telling everybody where they might sleep, and where they mightn’t?’

  Barney came over to the window and held Sara’s arms, so tightly that she gave a little cry. ‘Barney!’ she begged him.

  He smiled at her, but there was no softness in his voice at all. ‘I’m being impossible because I have a right to be. This is my house, and you are my wife, and like any good bride, Jewish or Christian, you are going to do what I tell you.’

  ‘And if I defy you?’

  He kissed her, first on the cheek, then on the lips. His kisses were quick, and light, but they betrayed his urgency. ‘You won’t defy me,’ he told her. ‘You love me too much.’

  He tried to kiss her more deeply, on the mouth, but she plucked her face abruptly away and said, ‘No!’

  The echo of that ‘No!’ was heard in ten rooms at once, and even downstairs, where four kaffirs were sweating and grunting as they carried in through the front doors the huge solid-mahogany marriage bed.

  Joel appeared, unshaven, hurriedly dressed in a pair of grubby twill trousers and a mud-splattered shirt. ‘I didn’t know you were going to come back so soon,’ he said breathlessly, limping after Barney across the hallway. ‘I didn’t expect you back until the middle of next month, at least.’

  Barney directed a kaffir to carry a gilded French chair into the dining-room. ‘Neither did we. But the way the weather was, we decided to set out as soon as we’d gathered the bulk of the furniture together, in case we were caught by the rains. We still need more furniture, of course, but this will get us started. At least we’ll be able to entertain.’

  ‘I wish you’d sent a message on ahead of you,’ Joel complained. ‘I’ve decided to leave for Capetown on Monday.’

  ‘Capetown? What for? I need you here.’

  ‘Well, I know you do.’

  ‘Then stay. You don’t really need to go to Capetown, do you? The journey will half kill you, in the middle of summer. Besides. I’m having a special dinner next Wednesday night, and you must come to that. Even Rhodes is invited.’

  Joel snapped his fingers at another kaffir who was carrying a chair on top of his head into the day-room. The kaffir set the chair down on the floor, and Joel perched himself on the edge of it, his aching back kept straight, his weight supported on his cane. ‘The truth is, Barney, I’m going to to try to find myself a companion, among other things.’

  ‘But you’ve got plenty of friends here in Kimberley. And servants. And by the way, we’re going to have to train up a butler, no question about it. Maybe we can find a digger with domestic experience. And Kitty’s going to need some more kitchen staff, now that we’re moving in properly.’

  ‘As long as their principal qualification is that they don’t know how to cook pot-roast, then I quite agree with you,’ said Joel. ‘But to go back to what I was saying – I’m going to look for a wife.’

  Barney had been beckoning frantically to a lone kaffir who was wandering around with a bronze statue of a dancing cherub, looking for somewhere to put it down. But now he turned around and stared at Joel, and said, ‘A wife?’ as if Joel had suddenly announced that he was geshmat. ‘You want a wife? With all the girls here in Kimberley?’

  ‘Girls are girls, Barney. What I need now is somebody who’s going to look after me. I’m getting older, my leg and my hip give me agony most of the time. I want somebody to share the rest of my life. That’s all. A true companion.’

  ‘There’s nobody here in Kimberley?’

  ‘The decent girls are married; and none of the indecent girls are Jewish. Besides, I don’t want a wife who’s had as many diggers shovelling away at her as the Big Hole. I want somebody quiet, don’t you know. Respectable. Zaftig.’

  Barney said, ‘You’re really serious? You want a wife?’

  ‘Why do you sound so surprised?’

  ‘I’m not surprised. I guess I’m just pleased. And in any case, that’ll make two of us.’

  Joel’s expression altered with such subtlety that only someone who knew him very well could have detected the difference. But the lines in his face, which had bitten deeper into his skin since his accident, like acid into a steel engraving, grew straighter, and tenser, and more pronounced. It was as if he had aged five years in the time it took for the sun to brighten as it came out from behind a cloud; or a lammergayer to wheel on the wind.

  ‘What happened in Durban?’ he asked, with corrosive quietness.

  Barney had not expected him to react so sharply. ‘What happened? Can’t you guess what happened?’

  ‘Tell me what happened. I want to hear you say it.’

  ‘Well …’ said Barney, defensively. ‘What happened was, I got married.

  ‘You got married? You just went to Durban and got married?’

  ‘Have you any objections?’ snapped Barney.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s done. What’s to object about? It was that Sutter girl, I suppose. You’ve been having polluted dreams about her ever since you visited Natal the first time. Either her, or some nigger.’

  Barney retorted furiously, ‘What the hell gives you the right to say something like that? I did marry Sara, as a matter of fact. She’s my wife. And if you’ve got anything smart to say about it, you’d better be ready to have your other leg broken.’

  ‘Or to be shot at,’ said Joel, dryly.

  ‘She’s a beautiful, gentle girl,’ said Barney.

  ‘Sure. And she’s a shikseh.’

  ‘After all the whores you’ve paid for, you can say that?’

  Joel pulled a face. ‘At least I didn’t marry any of them, did I?’

  Barney slowly rubbed his cheeks with his hands. ‘All right, Joel,’ he said. ‘Let’s stop arguing about it, shall we? Whatever you say, it’s not going to change the fact that Miss Sara Sutter is now Mrs Sara Blitz, and that you have yourself a new sister-in-law. Neither is anything you say going to divert me from asking you to join us on Wednesday night for our celebration dinner.’

  ‘I’ve arranged to leave on Monday, with Henk van der Westhuizen.’

  ‘Why can’t you leave next Friday? You could go with Harold Feinberg, when he takes his diamonds down.’

  Joel looked around at two kaffirs carrying a ponderous carved wardrobe through the polished hallway, like two black ants shouldering a matchbox a hundred times their size. ‘Well,’ he said, uneasily, ‘I just think I’d prefer to go with Henk, that’s all.’

  ‘What difference are three days going to make?’ asked Barney. ‘You’re going to catch a wife, not a train.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joel.

  ‘Well, I do,’ Barney told him, slapping his shoulder. Joel closed his eyes in pain. ‘I know that you’re going to stay and have a really good time. Look – here’s Sara now.’

  Sara came down the curved stairway in a pale green day dress and pearls. On her left breast she wore a darker green ost
rich plume, and an array of diamonds, an engagement present from Barney. Her dark hair was fashionably plaited, and arrayed with turquoise combs. Barney went across to meet her at the foot of the stairs, and take her arm. ‘Come and say hello to Joel,’ he said. ‘You haven’t seen him since he was in hospital.’

  Joel painfully forced himself to stand, and took Sara’s hand. He dropped his head forward and kissed her fingers, and then he turned her hand around, palm upwards, and traced the tip of his finger lightly along her line of health, her line of heart, and her line of life. She watched him with a little curiosity, a little pity, and a little repulsion. He looked more twisted and haggard these days, and he smelled of stale whiskey. But he still had a little of his old charm about him, and he was still able to flatter a woman with his old sense of fancy.

  ‘You have a long and wealthy life ahead of you, I see,’ he told her.

  ‘I didn’t know you read palms,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t,’ smiled Joel. ‘But I like stroking any pretty woman’s hand, and I’m not so stupid that I can’t tell that any woman who marries into one of the largest diamond companies in Kimberley is going to be ridiculously rich for the rest of her life.’

  ‘You’re teasing me,’ said Sara. ‘Barney, your brother is teasing me.’