Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Joel, with hopeless jocularity, ‘get Nareez to hug him to death?’

  ‘Nareez is my companion,’ Sara reminded him, sharply. ‘She didn’t ask to be dragged halfway across Africa, and she’s been very brave.’ She hesitated, and then she said, ‘I’m going to shoot him.’

  ‘What with? You don’t even have a pistol.’

  ‘De Koker has a rifle. That will do.’

  ‘He sleeps with it. He carries it around all day. When do you think he’s going to give you the chance to take it away from him?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Sara.

  There was a distant mumble of thunder, and lightning illuminated the sky behind the mountains like the scenery of a cheap opera. After a few minutes’ pause, the rain began to fall even more heavily than before, and water foamed down the rutted track and sprayed around the wheels of the waggon.

  Simon de Koker called, ‘Yip! Yip! Yip!’ and at last the waggon’s back wheels reared out of the rutted track, and the whole rig rolled forwards six or seven feet, its wet canvas top wobbling on its frame.

  ‘There’s just one problem,’ Joel whispered to Sara, as Simon de Koker and Nareez came across to help him back over the tailboard. ‘If we kill de Koker, how do we find our way to wherever we’re going?’

  ‘The road’s easy from here,’ said Sara; and then realising that Simon de Koker had overheard her, she smiled, ‘Isn’t it, Mr de Koker? Quite easy?’

  Simon de Koker picked Joel up as roughly as if he were a broken scarecrow, and with Nareez holding his one remaining leg, which made Joel tilt unnervingly sideways, they carried him over to the back of the waggon.

  ‘The road to Lourenço Marques from here is very difficult,’ Simon de Koker said. ‘I don’t even know it very well myself – which is why we pick up extra guides at Wesselstroom. On purpose, we’re not going the easy way. If the British catch us, and take the diamond, it will be years and years before we can afford to fight for our independence again.’

  ‘It’s easy to get to Durban from here, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Durban?’ asked de Koker, suspiciously, beckoning to Hunt to let down the tailboard.

  ‘I used to live there,’ said Sara, smiling as attractively as she could with a wet canvas kitbag on her head.

  Simon de Koker grunted, and rolled Joel into the back of the waggon. Hunt, his wet hair stuck to his face, the shoulders of his coat stained dark with damp, locked up the tailboard and said, ‘Let’s see how far we can get before we have to do this all over again.’

  They drove in silence for another four miles, crossing into Natal and descending into the Sand River Valley towards Ladysmith. The rain at last began to ease off, and dissolve into a fine grey fog, which gave the mountainous landscape the silent and eerie quality of another world. Simon de Koker sat up in front of the waggon, driving, with Nareez sitting beside him in her Indian shawl. Joel lay in the back, his head resting against a flour sack, snoring. Hunt and Sara faced each other across the waist, saying nothing, but continually addressing each other with their eyes. Hunt would give Sara a provocative, questioning look; and she would either stare at him with feigned disinterest, or turn away.

  ‘When are you thinking of getting rid of …?’ Hunt asked her, as they rumbled noisily down an incline beside the Klip River.

  Sara frowned, but Hunt vigorously nodded his head towards Simon de Koker’s hunched-up back.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Sara.

  ‘Of course you know what I’m talking about,’ Hunt replied, with a teasing smile. ‘Tomorrow morning, we turn north, to Ladysmith, and then to the Wakkerstroom, and then in three weeks we should be in Lourenço Marques. This is where the road divides. This way, Lourenço Marques; that way, Durban. Come on, Mrs Blitz, I’ve seen your mind ticking like a carriage-clock. All those cogs going round, all those jewelled mountings! I’ve seen you muttering to Joel, too. You’re not going to let the Boers get away with your precious diamond, are you? Especially when they’re going to use it to fight the British. De Koker may have judged your perfidy exactly; but he’s forgotten about your patriotism. A fine colonial lady like you. Capetown’s teeming with them; so I should know.’

  The noise of the metal-rimmed tyres was just loud enough to prevent Simon de Koker from hearing what Hunt was saying; all his years in the colonial service had given Hunt a particular talent for gossiping about people only two or three feet away from where they were standing, without arousing their suspicions. He liked to call it the ‘embassy murmur’.

  Sara glanced at Joel, sleeping with his cheek pressed into a sausage-like fold, and his mouth hanging open. ‘I have been considering alternatives,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. Just like de Koker must have been, too.’

  Sara pressed her hand over the gazelle-skin bag which was now hanging around her neck, tied to her gold and diamond necklace. ‘He’s going to have to kill me first. Surely he knows that.’

  ‘I’m quite certain he does. I’m not really sure why he hasn’t killed all of us already.’

  ‘I think I know,’ said Sara. ‘He’s one of these men who needs a moral justification for everything he does. It’s quite common among Calvinists, and political enthusiasts. They can’t act unless they believe that they’ve been wronged. They’re stern people, the Boers – very stern, but also very religious. And that’s why Simon de Koker won’t try to get us out of the way until we make the first move.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hunt, pursing his lips, ‘it’s an interesting theory.’

  ‘I only hope that it’s a theory that works,’ replied Sara. ‘And I hope that when we do make the first move, we make it effectively enough for Mr de Koker to be rendered incapable of retaliation.’

  ‘Um, what do you have in mind, in particular?’ asked Hunt, with a smile.

  Sara looked towards Joel, still snoring on his flour sack. ‘That’s what he wanted to know.’

  That night, they drew their waggon off the main road and tied up their horses by a stand of evergreens. It was still foggy, and when they lit their campfire to make tea and cook up a pan of salted beef and beans, the flames were blurred by a smudgy orange halo. They were ten miles short of Ladysmith, and the turning which would take them north to Newcastle and Wesselstroom, and eventually to New Scotland and Lourenço Marques, but the horses were exhausted and shivering, and Joel had been bawling complaints to Simon de Koker for almost an hour about his leg. At last, taciturn and reluctant, Simon de Koker had said, ‘We halt here,’ and jammed back the waggon’s ironwood brake-handle.

  They hardly spoke over their meal. They were all exhausted and cold; and since they had crossed the summit of the Drakensberg a noticeable feeling of mutual suspicion had settled amongst them. Simon de Koker sat well away from the rest, his rifle propped against a sapling close beside him, humourlessly stripping the skin from a weinwurst with his clasp-knife.

  At last, Joel said, ‘I’m tired out. Nareez – will you get me my blankets?’

  The amah made a show of finishing her tin plateful of beans before getting up and bringing Joel’s bedding. She considered herself nobody’s servant, except Sara’s; and even to Sara she was more of a mother than a hired woman. Hunt went to find his own bedroll, and made himself an elaborate little tent under the branches of the trees with the canvas flap which usually covered the boxes and barrels that hung from the sides of the waggon’s hull. It was not long before only Sara and Simon de Koker were left by themselves, sitting ten feet apart from each other on opposite sides of the campfire in wary silence. The fire crackled and spat in the damp air, and all around them there was nothing but slowly settling silver, like the particles on a photographic plate, until Sara began to feel that this was the only existence there was, here in this suffocating and unfocused world of fog, and unseen mountains, and ghostly trees.

  ‘I think soon that I will take charge of the diamond,’ said Simon de Koker, without looking up.

  S
ara raised an eyebrow. ‘You think so?’

  ‘Jaha. It’s for safety. A woman shouldn’t carry anything so valuable.’

  ‘I think I’m quite capable of looking after it myself, thank you,’ said Sara. ‘I was brought up in Natal, after all. I know my way around.’

  ‘Well … that’s what I’m worried about,’ said Simon de Koker, cutting off another piece of sausage, and pushing it into his mouth from the blade of his knife.

  ‘You’re worried that I’m going to run off with the diamond, all on my own?’

  Simon de Koker chewed methodically, and then he said, ‘It crossed my mind. Don’t tell me it didn’t cross yours.’

  ‘Of course it did. But then we all went into this little affair together, didn’t we? Each of us is equally culpable. Each of us will equally profit. I expect you’re going to ask for rather a large percentage of the proceeds for the resistance in the Transvall, but then I can’t say I blame you. The British have always been pigheaded about the Boers, and I’m sure that you’re not going to give them any more than they deserve.’

  Simon de Koker watched Sara carefully, his eye glittering orange in the firelight. ‘I thought you were a strong British patriot,’ he said.

  Sara smiled at him. ‘I’m afraid that profit comes before patriotism. It always has done in my family. My father is Gerald Sutter the shipper; you’ve probably heard of him.’

  Simon de Koker nodded.

  ‘The truth is, Mr de Koker, that you’re a very brave man,’ said Sara. She waited a moment or two for that remark to have its full effect, and then she added, ‘You’re brave because you’re risking your life to overthrow a tyranny; and no matter whose tyranny it is – you have a moral and religious right to struggle against it. For once, I’m on the side of the Boers.’

  ‘Are there many English people feel like you?’ asked Simon de Koker, warily.

  ‘Some. Mostly the old-time Africa hands – those who have seen for themselves how hard the Boers have had to struggle for their independence. We’re not all insensitive, you know. We admire what you’re doing, and we know that one day you’ll be successful.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Simon de Koker, trying to sound suspicious, but clearly pleased.

  Sara stood up, and walked around the campfire, so that she was standing only two or three feet away from Simon de Koker, her face softened and blurred by the fog, and by the shadows from the dying flames.

  ‘Unless you’ve been ignoring me on purpose, you will have seen that I am a woman of great passion,’ Sara told him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon de Koker. He closed his clasp-knife, and then realised that his hands were greasy with weinwurst. He wiped them assiduously on the wet grass while Sara came two or three steps closer, and gathered up her skirts so that she could kneel down beside him.

  ‘You mustn’t be afraid of me,’ she said. ‘This is one of those things that happens in war, and during great adventures. Men and women meet in desperate circumstances, and they take whatever they can from each other; not caring about their responsibilities, not caring about the future. You are a Boer agent, and I am an English lady. I should be taking care of my husband, and thinking of my propriety. You should be guarding me, and keeping me prisoner, and not listening to any of this. You should be thinking of the Transvaal.’

  ‘The Transvaal?’ frowned Simon de Koker, as if he could not understand what she was saying. He was hypnotised by her perfume, and her femininity, and the way that she spoke so suggestively in such a glacial English accent. The last woman he had slept with had been a big, black, broad-bottomed Kaffir girl in Dutoitspan, in the back room of Maloney’s Bar, and that had been well over three months ago.

  Sara reach out and tugged gently at Simon de Koker’s fringe of a beard. ‘Ask me no questions,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t expect anything – least of all that this will ever happen again. I will always deny it, to my dying breath. But go to the waggon now, and lay out the blankets; and in a while I will come and join you.’

  Simon de Koker slowly, hesitantly, reached up and held her wrist. His fingernails were embedded with crescents of black dirt, and both he and Sara glanced simultaneously at the contrast between the pale, blue-veined skin of Sara’s arm and the grimy calluses of Simon de Koker’s fingers; but then Sara laid her other hand over Simon’s hand, and said sshh, as if to reassure him.

  ‘You’re a hero,’ she said. ‘And there never was a hero, not a real hereo, with clean hands.’

  Simon de Koker said thickly, ‘When this is over – tonight – you will let me have the diamond?’

  Sara’s eyes were wide and sincere. ‘If you can prove you trust me … then I can show you just how much I trust you in return …’

  ‘The diamond, though?’

  ‘Anything,’ she murmured. ‘Anything at all.’

  Simon de Koker looked round at the huddled blankets all around the fire, where the others were sleeping, or trying to sleep. Then he eased himself up, collected his rifle, and stood for a moment in the fog, still indecisive.

  ‘Just a few minutes,’ said Sara; and to encourage him, she lifted her gold neck-chain, so that he could glimpse the leather bag in which she kept the diamond. He nodded, and walked across to the waggon, a tall spindly shadow in the fog, with a wide-brimmed hat.

  Sara waited five or six minutes, watching the fire sparkle and subside. Then she lifted the diamond from around her neck, and took it across to where Nareez was already sleeping, and tucked it in between Nareez’s blankets. Carefully, she stepped over Joel, and tiptoed towards the waggon.

  Simon de Koker was waiting for her, on the blanket bed that he had made up on the floor of the waggon, in between the biscuit-boxes and the kegs of water. As he sucked at his pipe, and the dottle glowed, she saw his sweaty bearded face and the flat herringbone pattern of his ribs, decorated with a pattern of moles and stray curly hairs. He had hung his hat from one of the hooks at the side of the waggon cover; and beside him, as close to his naked body as he could comfortably wedge it, was his Mauser rifle, greasy and dark.

  ‘You took your time,’ he smiled.

  ‘I wanted to make sure they were all asleep.’

  He took his pipe out of his mouth, and knocked it on one of the water kegs. ‘That lot, they fall asleep as soon as they look at a blanket. They’re just tenderfeet. I’ve buried more people like that on the Great Karoo than you could count on ten fingers and ten toes.’

  Sara unclasped her cape, and folded it up. Then she began to unbutton her blue flowered dress. Simon de Koker noisily cleared his throat. ‘You’re not frightened, are you?’ asked Sara.

  ‘Frightened?’ grinned Simon de Koker, and his Afrikaans accent was so strong that he pronounced it, ‘frartened?’

  ‘I’d understand, if you were,’ said Sara. ‘We’re so different, you and I. It’s not just a question of two people sharing the same blankets. It’s like two enemies, in the same bed.’

  ‘I’m not your enemy,’ said Simon de Koker.

  She leaned forward, the front of her dress unbuttoned to reveal her white camisole, and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’m not your enemy, either. And I hope that God forgives us.’

  Simon de Koker watched her in silence as she lifted her dress over her head, and then stood up under the blue-willow hoops of the waggon to step out of her underwear. Only the dim flickering light from the campfire, shining through the linseed-treated twill of the waggon cover, lined for him the curve of her body, and showed him for one fleeting second the complicated swaying of her bare breasts.

  He threw back the blanket as she climbed on top of him, and reached up for her with both hands. He felt the wiriness of her pubic hair against his thigh.

  ‘Simon …’ she breathed in his ear. ‘You mustn’t ever think that this shouldn’t have happened. It was fate. I saw it in your hand, in the lines of your palm, when you first took up the traces of Barney’s carriage. I saw a broken life-line.’

  Simon de Koker kissed her cheek, and then her mouth, and t
hen said, ‘What?’

  ‘Your life-line,’ she said. She kept on kissing him, little kisses all over his forehead and cheeks that teased him at first, but very quickly irritated him. ‘A broken life-line almost always means sickness, you know, or bereavement. Sometimes it means an accident.’

  ‘You’re a strange lady,’ Simon de Koker breathed. He touched her shoulder, and ran his fingertips down her arm.

  She sat up; and in the darkness Simon de Koker thought that she was preparing herself to sit on top of him, and he craned his neck to see. But there was nothing but a dull rattling sound, and then a rapid series of sharp metallic clicks, like castanets. At the very same instant that his mind registered that she had been dragging his rifle towards her, lifting it, and releasing the safety-catch, she pulled the trigger, and with a deafening bang she blew half of his stomach across the waist of the waggon.

  Outside, Joel shouted, ‘What’s happened? Sara! What the hell’s going on in there? Sara!’ and Hunt wrestled his way out of his blankets and came scampering around the campfire to see what was going on. He threw open the waggon-cover to see Sara crouched naked, except for her muddy white stockings, with Simon de Koker’s rifle under her arm; and Simon de Koker lying back on the floor of the waggon with his eyes wide open and his body plastered in blood.

  ‘Oh my God, it’s murder,’ said Hunt. ‘Oh my God.’

  Simon de Koker looked up at Sara with an expression of surprise. His lips moved silently for a while, but then he managed to speak. ‘You’ve shot me,’ he said.

  Sara was incapable of saying anything. She had been quite sure that if she shot him, he would die, with a small round puncture as his only wound. She had been totally unprepared for the violent ripple of shock that had shaken his belly like a tent in a storm, and the bucketful of red paint that had splashed over him from nowhere. And he was still alive, and talking to her!

  ‘You’ve shot my guts art,’ Simon de Koker told her, in a liquid whisper. He breathed out through his nose, and a bubble of blood came out of his nostril.