Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  ‘Yes,’ Barney told her, with enthusiasm.

  ‘You’re coming to our celebration dinner, of course?’ Sara asked Joel.

  Joel’s eyes flickered sideways, towards Barney. Barney responded by looking sideways at Sara.

  ‘Well,’ said Joel, clearing his throat, ‘I was thinking of leaving for Capetown on Monday.’

  ‘That’s quite out of the question,’ smiled Sara. ‘You must come along on Wednesday night, and dress yourself up like the nob I’m sure you can be, and make a speech, too, telling everybody that we’re married!’

  ‘I’d really like to –’ Joel began, but Sara shushed him.

  ‘That’s quite settled then,’ she interrupted him. ‘Now do come and help me re-arrange some of these pictures upstairs, Barney, my darling. I must have mixed and moved them around twenty times, and they still don’t look quite right!’

  Joel looked at Barney appealingly, but Barney simply shrugged. And at that moment, Nareez came downstairs, slip-slopping in her silk mules, and frowned at Joel so contemptuously, in his scruffy shirt and dirty trousers, that he raised his stick to Barney, said ‘shalom’, and hobbled out of Vogel Vlei as quickly as he had hurried in.

  ‘Shalom,’ called Barney.

  ‘Is that another devil?’ asked Nareez, in her dense Bengali accent.

  ‘That’s my brother,’ Barney told her.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ replied Nareez, folding her arms. ‘Now, Miss Sara, time for your oils.’

  ‘I thought we were going to re-arrange the paintings,’ said Barney.

  Sara blew him a little kiss. ‘Soft skin has to come first, my darling. And Nareez is marvellous when it comes to massage. Anyway, I’m very tired, and I think it will calm me down. Nareez will massage you, too, if you care for it.’

  Barney shook his head. ‘I think I’d rather go out and be trampled by elephants, thank you. What time will you be down?’

  ‘For tea, of course. I’ll tell that cook of yours to have it ready on the back terrace. Now, you will take care, my love, won’t you, and you won’t work too hard.’

  ‘Come along now, Miss Sara,’ said Nareez, taking Sara’s arm. Behind Sara’s back, Barney gave the amah a teeth-gritting scowl that made her gather up the hem of her sari and shuffle up the uncarpeted stairs as fast as she could, all bangles and chiffon and big bustling bottom.

  Barney was sitting in the day-room in his green dressing-gown reading a three-month-old copy of the London Morning Post when Gentleman Jack knocked at the door. It was the day after their arrival back at Kimberley, and Sara was still asleep, her hair in curl-papers, her lashes prettily closed. Barney had come down early for a cup of tea and a dish of Kitty’s chicken livers and onions; and now he was relaxing with a second cup of tea, a basket of fruit, and some stale news from England.

  ‘Jack,’ he said, affably, as Gentleman Jack ventured into the room. ‘It’s good to see you. How are things at the mine?’

  ‘Excellent, Mr Blitzboss, thank you. Absolutely excellent. Since you went away, the average week is three thousand, seven hundred pounds. And some good fine gemstones, sir. One was twenty-three carats.’

  ‘That’s good news, Jack. How did you get on with Mr Joel?’

  ‘No trouble, sir. Very fine. A most amenable relationship, I must say.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief, anyway. Do you want a cup of tea? Kitty has some brewed in the kitchen.’

  ‘No, sir. I just came by to say welcome back.’

  ‘That’s very good of you. I’m pleased to be back. Did we get those new steam-engines yet, for the winding-gear?’

  ‘Two arrived, sir. One damaged. But I believe we can have the first one running in two days.’

  ‘Good, fine.’

  Barney went back to his newspaper, but after a minute or so he became aware that Gentleman Jack was still standing there, in his grey morning-coat and his muddy shoes, and that he was rotating the brim of his hat around and around in his hands as if he had something to say.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Barney, lowering his paper again. ‘Was there anything else?’

  Gentleman Jack let out a short hiss of breath, like a man who is irritated with himself. ‘The truth is, Mr Blitzboss, I am not very sure.’

  ‘You’re not sure? What is it that you’re not sure about?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s to do with diamonds, and God, sir. And who is it who owns a diamond, once it’s found.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Barney. ‘A diamond belongs, in law, to the man on whose claim it’s discovered.’

  ‘No matter who finds it, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’

  There was another awkward silence, and then Gentleman Jack said, ‘If a man owns a diamond-mine, sir; and there’s a diamond lying in the ground in that diamond-mine, and he never digs it up, then who does it belong to then, sir?’

  ‘Jack – whether a man decides to dig up his diamonds or not – they’re still his.’

  ‘Even if he doesn’t know that he owns them, sir?’

  Barney set aside his Morning Post and stood up. He walked across to the doorway where Gentleman Jack was standing, his hands plunged deep into his dressing-gown pockets, and he stared intently into Gentleman Jack’s face. The Ndebele was almost six inches taller than Barney, but he shied back, and gave Barney a foolish, apprehensive grin.

  ‘What’s happened, Jack?’ Barney asked, quietly.

  ‘Nothing, Mr Blitzboss. Everything is absolutely fine. I was just seeking clarification, sir. Legal clarification, you understand, and moral clarification. That’s all, sir. It says in Deuteronomy, sir, that the law requires perfect obedience. And to obey the law, you have to know it.’

  ‘You’re sure nothing’s happened? You seem like you’re unhappy about something.’

  ‘Everything’s absolutely top notch, sir.’

  Barney stared at Gentleman Jack for a moment, and then went back and picked up his newspaper. ‘You know something, Jack, I spent the larger part of my childhood years, and most of my time as a young man, not knowing what it was that I wanted from myself, nor out of my life, nor the people around me. These days, I’m making a great deal of money, and I know exactly what I want to do, and how I want to do it.’

  He folded the newspaper with careful, exaggerated gestures. Then he said, without looking up, ‘I want to own the entire Kimberley diamond mine, personally. I want to be a member of the Kimberley Club – not because it will help me to get on, but because I’m going to be so wealthy and so powerful that they won’t have any option but to admit me. I want to lead a happy married life, with lots of children. And I want to find my religion again, which I lost when I came out here to Cape Colony, and which seems to have been eluding me lately, like a ghost.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Gentleman Jack.

  Barney sat down again. ‘How about you, Jack?’ he asked him. ‘Do you know what you want out of your life?’

  Jack examined his hat as if he expected to find the answer to Barney’s question written on the grey silk hatband. ‘I just want to be a good foreman, sir. That’s all.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘It’s the most that a black man can hope for, Mr Blitzboss.’

  ‘It’s more than most black men can hope for. A whole lot more.’

  ‘I know that, sir.’

  ‘All right, then. As long as you understand. Now, you’d better get back to the mine and get those winding-engines repaired.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Oh – and, sir. There’s a gentleman waiting for you outside, sir, in the hall. Mr Ransome, he says his name is.’

  ‘A white man?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? You mean to tell me you’ve kept a white man waiting all the time you’ve been engaging me in this ridiculous conversation about legal clarification?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Blitzboss.’

  Barney tightened his mouth in annoyance. ‘You’re lucky I don’t sack you on the spot,’ he told Jack. ‘Go out ther
e at once, and ask Mr Ransome to come through. And apologise for keeping him waiting. Do you happen to know what he wants?’

  ‘He didn’t say, sir. But he’s a reverend, sir. The white collar, and the black dress, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Now, go get him.’

  ‘Yes, sir. And thank you.’

  After a minute or two, there was a timorous knock at the door-post. Barney said, ‘Come in!’ and a small shabby man in a clerical cassock stepped into the room, and removed his hat in a visible cloud of dust.

  ‘Mr Blitz?’ he asked, in a voice as uncontrolled as that of a pubescent boy.

  ‘That’s right. Mr Barney Blitz. And you must be Mr Ransome. I’m sorry my foreman kept you waiting. I had no idea you were out there.’

  ‘I, ah, well – it doesn’t matter. Waiting always gives one an opportunity to meditate, don’t you think? Really – you must excuse my dust. It was such a dry day, and I rode over from Klipdrift rather hurriedly.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Barney told him. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘That’s most kind. My throat feels like the Sinai desert must have done, to the Children of Israel.’ He said ‘the Children of Israel’ with noticeable emphasis.

  Barney lifted his head. ‘Are you trying to tell me something, Mr Ransome?’

  Mr Ransome blushed. ‘Please – really. I didn’t mean any offence. I was simply trying to delineate our differences, as it were. I mean, me being an Anglican, as it were, and you, well, being Jewish.’

  ‘That requires delineation?’ asked Barney, sharply.

  ‘I’m not very sure. I just thought I ought to stake out the ground before I told you why I came here.’

  Barney tinkled the brass handbell for more tea. Then he folded his arms across his chest and inspected Mr Ransome with undisguised directness. Mr Ransome picked at a stray thread on the arm of his chair until he realised with some embarrassment that he was pulling apart his host’s furniture fabric in front of his eyes; and then he sat up straight, his fists clenched, and let out an involuntary whinny that reminded Barney of Alsjeblieft on a cold July morning.

  ‘I’ve actually come here to talk to you about Natalia Marneweck,’ said Mr Ransome. ‘I’m not sure why, not entirely. I personally think that she’s better off without you, if you’ll forgive my saying so. But in six years she hasn’t forgotten you, not completely, in spite of having tried. And before she marries her new fiancé, whom I understand you know of, Coen Boonzaier, I thought it worth taking the trouble to ask you if you still harboured any … well, affectionate feelings towards her.’

  ‘Is this a joke, Mr Ransome?’ asked Barney. ‘Because if it is, it’s in pretty poor taste.’

  ‘A joke?’ said Mr Ransome. His ears were very red in the morning sun light, with a tracery of crimson veins. ‘Why on earth should I perpetrate a joke, especially of such a nature, and especially on you, whom I scarcely know?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Mr Blitz,’ protested Mr Ransome, ‘I revere Miss Marneweck. She is not only a young woman of considerable personal beauty, but a character of extraordinary fortitude, gentleness, and religious purity. By most, she is considered to be a fallen woman, particularly since she has conceived and borne a child out of wedlock. But even though she may have fallen, she has risen again, by virtue of her simplicity, her straightforwardness and her love of God.’

  Barney pulled reflectively at the skin of his cheek. He thought, for one kaleidoscopic moment, of all those days he had spent with Mooi Klip in the bungalow; of their nights together in that squeaking brass bed; of their kisses and their whispers and their walks along the dry tracks of Kimberley on those evenings when the sun was magnified by the day’s heat and inflamed by the day’s dust. He thought of their wedding-cake, and of all those days of happiness when Mooi Klip had been busying herself to marry him. He thought of the wedding-breakfast, smashed on the bungalow floor, and he thought of Joel.

  ‘Mrs Marneweck loved me once, Mr Ransome,’ said Barney. ‘But I spent six hopeless years trying to persuade her that I still loved her, and that we ought to get married; and every time she turned me down. I admit that she was hurt by me and my brother, Mr Ransome – hurt very badly. But she hurt me, too. And that’s why I was so suspicious when you asked me if I still felt any affection for her.’

  ‘You still love her?’ Mr Ransome asked, throatily.

  Barney went across to the window, and stared out at the rough uncultivated ground of Vogel Vlei’s gardens. One day there would be flowerbeds here, and gravel paths, and orange trees. One day there would be neatly-clipped topiary to amuse the children. One day there would be children. He turned around to Mr Ransome, and said distinctly, ‘Yes. I still love her. I will probably love her for the rest of my life. But I’m married now. I married more than two months ago, when I was in Durban.’

  Mr Ransome’s mouth opened and closed silently, and he looked around at the day-room as if he expected to see a thunderoulsy vengeful wife materialising out of the upholstery or bursting out of the drapes. ‘You’re married?’ he squeaked and growled, in his breaking voice. ‘I had no idea. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Barney told him. He wished, unconditionally, that the painful tightness that was congesting his chest would go away. He also wished more than anything that he had never found out that Mooi Klip still loved him. She still loved him – after everything she had said, after all those arguments and all those rebuffs, after all those visits and all. She still loved him, after all these years. He felt raw all over, flayed. This stuttering clergyman might just as well have come into the room and lashed him with wire, until he bled.

  He loved Sara, he knew it. But the love he felt for Sara was part of the love he felt for his own career, and his own future. Sara would help him get into the Kimberley Club. Sara would act as the perfect hostess, the wife who knew that ‘don’t you know’ was fashionably pronounced ‘don’t-chi-know’, and that nobody of any breeding said ‘doin’’ or ‘thinkin’’ as if they had ‘g’ on the end. She was also quite aware without having to be told that soup was never helped twice, that gentlemen who called at lunchtime and were invited to join the meal should always take their hat and their cane in to the dining-room, and that a visiting card must be exactly three inches by one-and-one-half inches, and printed in italics.

  She was almost beautiful, too. Her face was well-boned, and her body was trim from all those years of riding. Her hair was soft. Her eyes were extraordinary. Her nipples were like azalea peatals that had fallen into bowls of cream.

  Sara was everything a rich diamond-miner could want; except that she was not Mooi Klip.

  Mr Ransome said, unhappily, ‘I think I’d better leave. I’m sorry that I came.’

  ‘What will you tell Natalia?’ asked Barney.

  ‘Simply that you’re married. You wouldn’t want me to say that you still love her, would you?’

  ‘No,’ said Barney, ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be proper,’ Mr Ransome insisted. ‘After all, whatever your emotions, you have now made a lifelong commitment to your new wife.’

  ‘Thank you, I’m aware of that,’ said Barney.

  ‘I’ll go, then,’ flustered Mr Ransome. ‘My horse could do with a drink.’

  ‘I’ll have one of the blackies take it round to the trough for you.’

  ‘Thank you. And, well, I’m very sorry to have troubled you this way. I thought that my errand was all for the best; but as it turned out, it was all for the worst. I’m sorry.’

  Barney showed Mr Ransome to the door; but, as he opened it wider, he thought he heard the squeak of a sandal on the polished hall floor outside. He looked quickly around to see if there was anyone there, but the hall was deserted. All he could detect was the faintest aroma of musk, and curry, and sweat.

  ‘Nareez?’ he queried. His voice echoed across the hallway. Mr Ransome gave him an uncomprehending smile. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anybody there, Mr Blitz.’r />
  ‘No,’ said Barney. ‘But perhaps when there isn’t anybody there, that’s the time to start worrying.’

  One of the servants came across the hall, a thin-legged Malay with spectacles so thick that they made his eyes look like two freshly-opened oysters. ‘You were ringing, Mr Blitz? More tea?’

  Barney turned to Mr Ransome, but Mr Ransome gave a modest little shake of his head, and raised his hand in an unconsciously Jesus-like gesture of polite refusal. ‘I think it would be better all around if I just went quietly back to Klipdrift, don’t you?’

  That night, when Barney came back to Vogel Vlei from a long meeting with Harold Feinberg, frayed and tired, he found the bedroom door locked against him. He shook the handle once or twice, and then knocked.

  ‘Sara? It’s Barney! Come and open the door!’

  There was no answer, so he knocked again, and rattled the handle more furiously. ‘Sara! Please! What’s going on?’

  He listened for nearly a minute, but still there was no response. He shook the handle again, and finished up by giving the bottom of the door a thunderous kick with the toe of his veld boot. ‘Sara! You must be in there! Open up at once! You’re not still sulking about sharing a bedroom, are you? Sara?’

  He stood in the darkness outside the door and waited. Whatever the reason, Sara was plainly not going to answer, nor was she going to open up. Still, there was a spare key to the bedroom in the butler’s pantry downstairs, and since the workmen had not yet been around to fit sliding bolts to any of the doors, he would be able to open the bedroom up without any trouble. Tired and angry, he stamped downstairs again, crossed the hall, and pushed his way into the kitchen.

  Kitty was still there, slicing beef for tomorrow’s breakfast. So was Gentleman Jack and their new groom John Gcumisa, a laconic, woolly-haired Zulu who had originally cared for Jan Brand’s horses in Bloemfontein. The two blacks put down their teacups and stood to uneasy attention when Barney walked in, and nodded to him in bashful deference. ‘Good evening, Mr Blitzboss, sir.’

  ‘I want the key to the master bedroom suite,’ said Barney.