Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  Michael came out of the stables and took Jupiter’s reins and Barney told him to fetch four or five of the boys to look after Alf Loubser’s oxen. When they were pulling a full-sized eighteen-foot waggon, oxen could manage to plod only at an average of five miles a day, and they usually needed a day’s rest after a long haul. It was just as tiring for the driver: a full waggon and its team could stretch 120 feet from the first oxen to the last wheel, and it could easily and frequently be halted by mud or sand or rough ground.

  ‘It’s a hell of a place you’ve got here,’ said Alf Loubser, as his team were released from their yokes and led around to the side of the house to graze and drink.

  Barney looked around at the dung-strewn driveway. ‘You haven’t done much to improve it, though, have you?’

  ‘Although he was trying to be fierce, Alf Loubser could not help laughing. ‘Don’t you know that gravel needs fertilising, man, just like anything else?’

  ‘One day, the Afrikaner sense of humour will penetrate my thick Jewish skull,’ said Barney. ‘Come along inside. Oh – and you can leave your gun with Horace.’

  Alf Loubser frowned at Horace, who was standing attentively by the door and then turned back to Barney. ‘I can’t leave my gun with him, man. He’s one of your boys.’

  ‘You mean you came here with the intention of shooting me?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I shoot you, the way you left Louise? You see this poor girl, three months after you left her belly was out here, and nine months after you left she gave birth to a baby girl.’

  Barney looked first at Alf Loubser, with his red sweating face and his eyes as pale as a bleached blue workshift; and then at Louise, who was still pretty in a white, transparent kind of a way, but who had not improved in the years since he had slept with her. Her figure was slipping under that cheap gingham frock, and there were purplish circles under her eyes. Her ankles were thickening, too, and there were dark blue veins in her legs. In a year or two, she would look like any other hard-worked Dutch farm woman on the Koup.

  ‘The baby was yours, Barney,’ she said. ‘I didn’t go to bed with anybody else for a month before, or a month after.’

  ‘Give Horace the gun,’ said Barney. ‘I’m not going to talk about this while you’re waving a loaded game-rifle at me.’

  Reluctantly, Alf Loubser handed the rifle over, and Horace took it with a solemn nod of his head. ‘Come inside,’ said Barney. ‘I’ll have some tea and cold meat sent up. Are you hungry?’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Louise, but her father shushed her, and gave her a glare.

  Barney led the two of them into the drawing-room. To Barney, it seemed silent and inhospitable without Sara; but Alf Loubser and Louise looked around it in awe, at the blue moiré-silk on the walls, at the ormolu clock with its flying cherubs, and the spindly-elegant French furniture. Barney went to the windows and opened them wide so that a warm breeze could blow in from the back of the house.

  ‘So, you’re trying to tell me that I’m a father, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s no question,’ said Alf Loubser. ‘She even looks like you. Dark, with curly hair.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Nearly nine. She’s a pretty young girl, too, and clever.’

  Barney stared across the fields towards the trees. ‘Was it really nine years ago? I don’t know whether it seems longer or shorter.’

  ‘We call her Heloise,’ Alf Loubser told him, not without pride. ‘Me and my wife, we’ve been raising her like our own daughter. Everybody in Beaufort believes she is. She’ll be a good worker!’

  ‘Did you bring a picture of her?’

  ‘A picture?’

  ‘Well, how do I know that she actually exists, unless I see a picture?’

  Alf Loubser pouted out his lower lip. ‘What do you mean, how do you know that she exists? Of course she exists! I kissed her myself in Beaufort, not two months ago!’

  ‘That’s scarcely proof. The kiss will have dried by now.’

  Louise touched her father’s arm, and said, ‘You have the birth certificate. It’s in the Bible box, on the waggon.’

  ‘All right,’ said Barney. ‘I’ll have Horace bring it in.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ put in Alf Loubser. ‘That blackie of yours could just as easily take it and burn it, and then you’d say that we didn’t have any kind of a claim at all. Louise – you get it.’

  Louise left them, and Barney indicated to Alf Loubser that he could sit down. The sheep-farmer squatted awkwardly on the very brim of a small gilded chair, his thighs wide apart, and folded his arms over his chest.

  ‘I suppose you’ve come here for money,’ said Barney.

  ‘Well,’ said Alf Loubser, most of his ferocity abated. ‘I wouldn’t have pursued you for it normally. I know that Louise has had a man or two, although not so many these days, and I suppose babies are one of the risks. But I do believe that Heloise is yours, and now she’s growing up the child needs clothes, and shoes, and we’re trying to give her some schooling. So, when Simon de Koker said that you’d found that ruddy great diamond, well … you can’t blame me, can you, for thinking that it was worth asking for a small contribution?’

  Barney rubbed his eyes. ‘I see. So I’ve got my old friend Simon de Koker to thank for this, have I? When did you last see him?’

  ‘Two months ago, just about. But that was the first time for years. He hasn’t worked as a guide since ’70, or maybe ’71 at the latest.’

  ‘What’s he doing now?’

  Alf Loubser pressed to his lips a stubby finger, stained with sheep-dip. ‘Hush-hush, man. Mustn’t say.’

  ‘Something secret?’

  Alf Loubser shifted his chair an inch or two closer, and leaned his cropped head forward confidentially. ‘Between you and me, man, he’s a secret agent. Would you believe that? He works for the old Pretorius government people in the Transvaal. Trying to overthrow the British, you see, and restore the independent Boer republic. But don’t tell anyone I told you.’

  Barney shook his head. ‘I won’t tell a soul. But what was he doing all the way down in Beaufort, when he’s working as a secret agent in the Transvaal.’

  ‘Don’t ask me! What he does, that’s hush-hush. He won’t even tell you what colour hat he’s wearing these days. All I can tell you is that he came past the farm two months ago, and he had a little English fellow with him – a little mannikin, not much taller than Heloise, but smart-looking, a good suit, if you know what I mean. They were on their way to Kimberley, they said, to see about some business, and that was all.’

  Horace came in, and Barney ordered tea. ‘I thought you said that Simon de Koker told you about my diamond?’ he asked Alf Loubser.

  Alf Loubser shrugged defensively. ‘They were downstairs in the kitchen, talking till twelve o’clock at night. I went down to see if they wanted anything, that’s all.’

  ‘And you accidentally overheard what they were saying?’ said Barney, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘It’s my house!’ protested Alf Loubser.

  ‘Of course it is,’ agreed Barney. ‘You had every right to listen. So, tell me, what did you hear them saying?’

  ‘They didn’t say much. Simon de Koker was worried about the weather. But then the little English fellow mentioned your name, and said something about this diamond you’d found, and how much it was worth. He didn’t say anything else about it, and after a while they went to bed. But in the morning I talked to the pastor at the church, and he said he’d read in the newspaper about the diamond, so I knew that what the little fellow had said must be true. I talked it over with mevrouw Loubser, and we thought I ought to pay you a visit in Kimberley and ask for something to help bring up Heloise.’

  Barney stood up, and walked to the open French windows. Then he stepped right out on to the patio, with Alf Loubser watching him uncomfortably from inside the drawing-room.

  ‘You won’t tell anybody that I told you?’ Alf Loubser called out, anxiously. ‘Some of the
se Boer snipers, they’re very promiscuous with a gun!’

  Barney shook his head, although he did not know if Alf Loubser could see him or not. He was thinking too hard about what the sheep-farmer had just told him. If Alf Loubser had seen Hunt in the company of Simon de Koker, and Simon de Koker was now an agent for the Boer resistance in the Transvaal, then it was highly unlikely that Hunt was still working for Government House in Capetown, as he had claimed he was. All those stories about Sir Bartle Frere tangling up the Union Jack on the lawns and raw young diplomats being forced to choke down whole ostrich eggs were almost certainly fictitious, dashes of invention that Hunt had put in to add believability to his story about wanting the diamond as a glittering diversion from the Zulu war. He had probably hoped that they would irritate Barney, at the same time.

  Now that Barney could think about it more logically, the odds against Hunt still being employed by the colonial service were slight. After all, there had been several changes of Governor since Barney had first met him, and Hunt had probably lost his job years ago, when Sir Philip Woodhouse had returned to England. Apart from that, his homosexuality would always have made his career in the foreign service precarious: especially since most of the public school chaps who staffed Government House were very dull, and straightforward, and were not the sort of chaps who cared to be caught inside some other chap’s mosquito-net with their ducks around their ankles.

  Barney had no proof of it, but it seemed more than likely that the Natalia Star had been acquired for the Boers – either as a provocative symbol of their independence, and their rights in West Griqualand; or as a means of financing an armed rebellion against the British – or both. Perhaps Hunt had never intended to pay for the diamond at all. Perhaps the ‘consortium of businessmen’ was all invention, too; and he had come to Vogel Vlei with his extravagant offers of ‘a million-four’ simply in order to find out how difficult it was going to be to steal the diamond out of Barney’s safe. If that was so, Hunt must have found Sara’s discontent and Joel’s simmering anger to be gifts from Heaven.

  Louise came back into the drawing-room with the birth certificate. She offered it to her father, but he indicated with a wave of his hand that she should take it outside to Barney.

  Barney took it and read it while Louise stood by his side, occasionally pushing her wind-blown hair out of her eyes. It announced simply that a female child had been born to Louise Stella Loubser at Beaufort West, and that the child had been baptised in the Kleine Kerk in the names of Heloise Petra Loubser. Barney folded the paper up again and handed it back.

  ‘Do you really think the child was mine?’ he asked Louise.

  ‘I always hoped it was,’ she told him.

  He looked at her for a while, so young and pale and unsmiling – a girl who lived in a world that was mostly fairy-stories and simple dreams. She had remembered him after all these years, although she probably saw him as somebody quite different from the broad-shouldered diamond digger that he really was. She was the kind of girl who saw stars even on cloudy nights, and who could make a prince out of a kopje-walloper.

  ‘I’ll give you some money,’ Barney told her. ‘I can’t admit that the child is mine. My lawyers would burst a blood-vessel. But I’ll give you a hundred pounds a year for five years to take care of her clothes and her schooling, and that’s just because I like you.’

  Louise gave a vague, pretty smile. ‘I look at Heloise sometimes and I can remember your face exactly,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll take care of her?’ Barney asked her.

  Louise nodded, and then reached on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek.

  Alf Loubser came outside, his hands firmly pushed into his pockets. ‘You’ve seen the certificate? What do you think?’

  ‘I’ve already told Louise that I’ll give her some money. Not much, because even a birth certificate isn’t convincing proof that the baby was mine. But enough to make sure that you can educate her, and keep her well fed.’

  Alf Loubser scanned the grounds of Vogel Vlei, his eyes wrinkled against the bright sunlight. ‘I came up here feeling angry,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m sorry. You’ve behaved like a gentleman. I thought I was going to have to frighten you into helping Heloise. But it wasn’t necessary. I feel like a bit of a pig, and I just hope that you’ll shake my hand on it.’

  He took one hand out of his pocket, and held it out. Barney shook it, and then smiled. ‘Why don’t you stay here the night?’ he asked. ‘There are plenty of empty rooms.’

  ‘You live in this huge place all by yourself? No children?’

  Barney shook his head. ‘You know what children are like. They have a way of growing up, and leaving you.’

  He took Louise Stella Loubser’s arm, and escorted her back into the drawing-room, where Horace had spread a crisp pink cloth on the side-table and was laying out plates of cold tongue, and cold salt beef, and potato salad. Alf Loubser rubbed his hands hungrily, and gave Barney a wink of approval. Neither he nor Louise knew how desolate Barney felt, just at that moment, nor how much he appreciated their simple, unaffected company. Louise leaned her white-blonde hair against his shoulder and Barney touched it the way a child touches anything irresistibly silky.

  Later that evening, while Alf Loubser and Louise were having their supper in the small parlour at the back of the house, Barney held a meeting with Harold Feinberg and Edward Nork in the library. Harold was not feeling at all well: his little froggy girl had been upsetting him by threatening to take another lover, and with the discovery of two new pipes at Dorstfontein, the market price of diamonds was looking what Harold always called ‘distinctly tremulous’. The sooner the South African diamond industry became a monopoly, Harold grumbled, the better it would be for all of them. Then they could turn the flow of diamonds on and off like a tap, and control the price down to the last farthing.

  Edward Nork was somewhere between yesterday’s hangover and tonight’s bender, and he kept blinking and coughing and wiping his spectacles on his shirt, and excusing himself to go to the lavatory.

  ‘Sara’s out this evening?’ asked Harold. ‘What is it, crochet circle? Drama group?’

  Barney took off his coat and hung it over the back of his chair. ‘That’s the whole reason I’ve asked you to come here.’

  ‘What is?’ Edward frowned. ‘You want us to take up crochet, too?’

  Harold coughed, clearing a barrowload of phlegm from his throat. He looked pale and unhealthy these days, as if part of him had already started to die. Barney was not at all surprised that his French girl was thinking of taking another lover, although it would not be easy for her to find anyone who could so regularly supply her with her favourite contraceptives.

  ‘You’re thinking of selling the diamond, is that it?’ he asked. ‘Leopold and Wavers have finally come up with an offer that you can’t resist? You have that kind of look on your face.’

  ‘Really, Harold, I don’t know why you’re so nervous about Barney selling this stone,’ Edward put in. ‘He’s got to dispose of it sooner or later, and later is going to be just as bad for diamond prices as sooner. You should be pleased that he’s going to sell it through Feinberg, and that you’re going to get a healthy commission. Supposing he took it to Manny Greene?’

  Harold slapped his hand on the leather arm of his chair; the same chair in which, only a few days before, Hunt had sat with his legs prissily crossed and proposed a purchase by his ‘consortium of British businessmen’. He snapped crossly, ‘It’s the wrong time to sell. And, besides, I think Barney’s original idea of having the diamond cut first, before we put it out to auction, is much better. It will give all of us experience of handling a big stone, all the way along the line; and it will increase our profit three hundred per cent. And don’t talk to me about Manny Greene, that shnorrer.’

  ‘You’re so cautious,’ Edward retorted. ‘If Barney doesn’t act quickly on the offers that Leopold and Wavers and all the rest of them have already tabled, he might end up with a stone
that’s worth three times as much that nobody’s actually prepared to buy.’

  ‘Why don’t you stick to your geology?’ Harold barked at him. ‘What do you know from diamond dealing? Most of the time you’re shikker.’

  Edward sighed, and took off his spectacles to prod at his eyeballs with his middle finger, as if he were testing plums to see how ripe they were. ‘You Jews exasperate me,’ he said, with his eyes still tightly closed. ‘A chap only has to disagree with you, and you break out into a rash of incomprehensibility.’

  ‘Shikker means drunk,’ said Barney, in a quiet voice. ‘And, in any case, there isn’t any future in you two arguing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Edward. ‘We always argue. It’s good for our livers.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Harold. ‘I’m talking world diamond prices, and he’s talking offals.’

  Barney said, ‘It doesn’t matter any more. The diamond’s gone. It’s been stolen.’

  There was a curious silence, interspersed only by Harold’s laboured breathing. Edward put on his glasses again and peered at Barney like Galileo trying to distinguish through his foggy seventeenth-century telescope whether the planet Saturn had rings around it, or ears; and hoping for the sake of his sanity that the evidence would not favour ears.

  ‘It’s been stolen? My dear chap! But how? Didn’t you have it locked in your safe? I can’t believe it!’

  Harold said nothing, but let his chin drop forward on to his chest. His breathing sounded as harsh as the old harmonium bellows in the strooidak church in Klipdrift.

  ‘I had a visit from someone I used to know in the colonial service at Capetown,’ said Barney. ‘He made me an offer for the diamond, saying that the British wanted to present it to the Queen. What I didn’t know then, but what I’ve found out now, is that he probably no longer works for the colonial service, and hasn’t done so for years. He’s working in co-operation with a Boer scout called Simon de Koker, who apparently acts as a secret agent for the resistance in the Transvaal.’

  Harold raised his head, his eyes protuberant with shock and shortness of breath.