Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  Silently, Barney and Donald sat side by side in the surrey as the horses pulled them over the uneven grassland towards Kimberley. As they crested the rise, they could see out over the diamond mine, where a thousand tiny fires sparkled. There was an aroma of woodsmoke and cooking on the wind.

  At last, on the outskirts of the main street, they came to the Knights’ house. It was one of the better buildings in town – a white-painted frame bungalow with a long verandah and a shingled roof. There was a small picket fence around its neatly-planted front garden, and the path to the front door had been marked out with white pebbles. Through the open curtains, Barney could see Agnes setting the table, and Faith lighting the oil-lamps.

  Donald said, ‘What time I come back?’

  Barney looked at his watch. ‘Make it eleven o’clock. That should be just about right.’

  ‘Just about right for you maybe.’

  Barney raised an eyebrow. ‘Why, what are you planning on doing?’

  Donald gave a wide, checkered grin. ‘Jan Bloem tells me new sister arrive today, good fat Hottentot. Jan Bloem says her name is Heavy Mary.’

  ‘I might have known. Well, you can make it eleven-thirty. But no later.’

  ‘You are a good fellow, Mr Blitz.’

  As Donald clicked at the horses and drove the surrey away, Barney walked up the Knights’ front path, stepped up on to the verandah, and knocked at the black-painted door. He pretended not to notice the way the lace curtain covering the small window beside the door was hurriedly brushed back into place.

  Mr Knight himself opened the front door, although it must have been quite a recent experience for him to have to admit his own guests. He was dressed, as before, in a buttoned-up black coat, and a gates-ajar collar.

  ‘You’re very punctual,’ he said, in a tone of voice that made Barney wonder whether he considered punctuality a virtue or a slightly shameful peccadillo. ‘The girls have been looking forward to seeing you.’

  Barney stepped into the living-room. It was furnished with an incongruous collection of expensive mahogany tables, inlaid kingwood tallboys, and atrocious varnished armchairs and sofas. It was the sort of clutter you might expect to see on a refugee’s pushcart, a mixture of valuable heirlooms and utter rubbish.

  Agnes and Faith were both standing by the green-painted upright boiler, and they curtseyed, with a giggly sparkle in their eyes, as Barney came in.

  ‘I think that I’ve been looking forward to seeing you two again just as much,’ Barney told them. He took off his hat, and his gloves, and Mr Knight relieved him of them, only to juggle with them in embarrassment because there was no hallstand on which they could hang.

  ‘It’s been very difficult for us, moving out here to Kimberley,’ said Mr Knight. ‘We had to leave some of our most precious possessions behind. Apart from our friends, that is, and our social life.’ He gave a harsh, high-pitched chuckle. ‘And you can’t exactly describe the social life out here as scintillating, can you? Not scintillating, by any means.’

  ‘You’ve enough business here, though?’ asked Barney.

  Mr Knight at last found a place for Barney’s hat, on the left-hand antler of a very sorry-looking stuffed springbok’s head. His gloves, he fitted over the right-hand antler. ‘Business?’ he asked, drawing back his coat tails, and planting his fists on his hips. ‘Oh yes, plenty of business. Squabbles over claims, squabbles over diamonds And quite a few squabbles over women, too.’

  A small, pale lady with a face the shape and colour of a blanched almond appeared from the interior of the bungalow. She wore a drab dress of pale green cotton, and dangling earrings of amber cornelian, and when Barney took her hand he felt as if he were trying to save someone with greasy palms from falling over a small cliff.

  ‘M’good woman,’ mumbled Mr Knight, abruptly.

  ‘Please to know you,’ said Barney.

  ‘Charmed,’ said Mrs Knight, in a vague, bright voice. ‘The dinner is almost ready.’

  Agnes giggled. She was dressed very prettily tonight, in a pink dress of polished cotton with lacy frills at the neck and the cuffs and hem. Faith appeared a little more severe, in grey, with a cameo brooch at her neck, and her hair scraped back from her forehead.

  ‘Mummy’s had a very difficult time with the new cook, haven’t you, Mummy?’ said Agnes.

  Mr Knight frowned, but Mrs Knight flapped her hands in amusement and desperation, and said, ‘These Malays … they can’t understand plain English, that’s the trouble. I told him to sauté the potatoes, and when I came back, he had simply placed all the small potatoes on one side of the drainer, and all the large potatoes on the other. “There, missis,” he said. “I sort out all the potatoes, just like you say.” Isn’t it impossible?’

  ‘She misses Capetown,’ remarked Mr Knight, unnecessarily, as his wife returned to the kitchen to rescue the meal.

  They sat down to dinner at last, at an oval table with a wobbly leg. Halfway through the soup, which was thin split-pea with enough pepper in it to make Barney feel as if he were going to sneeze the whole bowlful clear across the cloth, Mr Knight had to get up and wedge a copy of Good and Great Churchmen under the offending castor to keep the table level. He was red in the face when he emerged from under the cloth.

  ‘It wasn’t always this way,’ he intoned, to the world in general. ‘There was a time when we owned the finest mahogany dining-table in the entire Colony.’

  ‘Never mind, dear,’ his wife soothed him.

  Faith said, ‘Will you be staying until Sunday, Mr Barney?’

  Barney was glad of a chance to lay down his spoon and dab at his mouth with his napkin. The napkin was real Irish linen, although rather tired. ‘I’m sure I will,’ he said. ‘I have quite a few days’ business in Kimberley.’

  ‘Then you could accompany us to church?’ said Faith.

  ‘Faith,’ protested her father, gruffly. But Barney could see that the idea did not altogether displease him. It may not have been appropriate for a young woman in England or in Capetown to seek a young man to escort her to church on Sunday, so that they might recite their devotions together, but here in Kimberley it was almost respectable. Better than chattering in the street with diggers, like a common whore. And certainly better than secret liaisons behind the assay office, which he would be unable to inspect either for quality or for moral content.

  Mr Knight was sure that both his flirtatious daughters were still virgins, but only just. Another six months in this primitive hurly-burly of miners and prostitutes and thieves, and he would no longer be quite so certain. A daughter’s virtue was so fragile, like a protea flower. And he knew, with a kind of quiet desperation, how very attractive to men his daughters were.

  ‘You enjoyed your soup?’ asked Mrs Knight, as Agnes got up to clear away the plates. The Knights were obviously very hard up, or else they had servant trouble. But performing the duties of a parlourmaid gave Agnes the opportunity to bend over Barney as she took his bowl, so that he could smell her perfume, and so that he could feel for a moment the young resilience of her breast against his shoulder.

  ‘The soup was delicious,’ said Barney. ‘I haven’t tasted soup like that since I was in New York.’

  ‘I pity New York,’ murmured Agnes, as she passed on to collect her father’s dish. And she glanced back at Barney and gave him a twinkling smile that was both merry and provocative. Barney found himself blushing, and paying more attention to his breadroll than most people would have considered usual. Faith noticed what had happened, but Mr Knight was too busy propounding a legalistic theory for dividing up the diamond claims, and Mrs Knight was biting her lip and frowning at her husband in a hopeless attempt to follow what he was saying.

  ‘You’re a gentleman farmer, I suppose?’ Mr Knight asked Barney, as Agnes brought to the table a large white tureen brimming with a brown and indiscriminate stew.

  Barney gave him a sloping smile. ‘I guess so, whatever that’s worth in the middle of nowhere at all.’


  ‘Well, it’s worth a very great deal, old chap,’ said Mr Knight. ‘A gentleman farmer can be nominated for membership of the Kimberley Club; whereas any other kind of farmer may not.’

  ‘Is the Kimberley Club so important?’

  Mrs Knight tittered abstractedly as she served up the stew, and Mr Knight glared at her. ‘Yes,’ he said, turning back to Barney. ‘It’s a little rudimentary at the moment, but then the new building’s complete, it’ll look like what it was founded to be. A club for gentlemen of social standing; a place where business can be discussed among the select few; an enclave, if you like, for those of breeding.’

  ‘You’re a member yourself?’ asked Barney.

  Mr Knight folded his chins into his stiff collar with self-satisfaction. ‘Billiards secretary, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And you’re thinking that I might …?’

  ‘It would be of considerable advantage to you if you did. It’s a question of those within the circle, if you see what I mean, and those without. And those without, well … those without will never know what it means to be within.’

  Mrs Knight tittered again, and passed Barney a plate crowded with unlikely-looking pieces of meat. Either she was serving up some completely unknown animal, or else her new cook had no idea of how to cut a brisket up into palatable pieces.

  Agnes, her hands prettily clasped in front of her, said, ‘Are there really Red Indians in America, Mr Barney? And bears?’

  ‘Both,’ nodded Barney, ‘but not in New York.’

  ‘So you’ve never seen any?’ Agnes asked. Barney was suddenly conscious of her knee pressing against his under the tablecloth. He looked down at his plate, at the awkward lumps of meat and bone swimming in their pool of greasy gravy, and he wished he had not.

  ‘I saw a Red Indian once,’ he said. ‘When I was a boy, a Comanche called Eagle Feathers visited New York, and was driven around the streets in a carriage. I was pretty disappointed, though. He wore a top hat and a morning coat, and carried a cane. Not very savage, I’m afraid.’

  Mr Knight, sniffed loudly, said, ‘Apropos of that – of savages, I mean – I defended a very interesting court-martial once, in Capetown. A chap charged with the theft of silver from the officers’ mess at Cape Castle. He was said to have run up some pretty hefty gambling debts which he couldn’t pay back. Chatsworth, his name was. Old Harrovian.’

  ‘But not a savage, dear, surely?’ asked Mrs Knight, vaguely.

  Mr Knight fixed his wife with a look that went beyond mere exasperation. It almost seemed as if he were trying to melt her down by the force of concentrated eyesight.

  ‘This chap,’ he went on, still staring at his wife, ‘this chap denied the charges completely. And the interesting thing was that the only witness to his alleged theft was a Kaffir cleaner. So after all the evidence had been heard, I stood up before the court-martial and asked them if they considered that kaffirs were more important in the Lord’s scheme of things than, say, polo ponies – or less. And if they believed, as I did, that a thoroughbred polo pony was more important in the Lord’s scheme of things than a Cape Coast blackie, then they would have to come to the conclusion that the only eye-witness in this trial was less than human, and that his so-called testimony was therefore inadmissible. I have to tell you, of course, that we were sitting in front of old Clough-Parker, who used to be an absolute fanatic for polo.’

  Barney was stunned. ‘And they let him off? Chatsworth, I mean?’

  ‘Of course. Acquitted without hesitation. It shouldn’t have come to a hearing, of course, except the colonel in charge of the mess on the night of the alleged theft absolutely hated Chatsworth’s guts. Think he believed Chatsworth had been messing around with his wife, something like that. But – and this is the most important thing – old Clough-Parker’s decision created something of an interesting precedent … and the plea that kaffirs can’t give admissible evidence in a court of law because they aren’t human is still used today, although not as often as it was. It’s known as the Polo Pony Precedent.’

  Agnes’s thigh was now pressing close and warm against Barney’s knee, and when he looked at her, she gave him a smile of unmistakable desire. Barney felt excited and confused at the same time. He liked Agnes a great deal; she was pretty, and she stirred up in him the kind of tingling sensations that stayed with him in the morning after an erotic dream. But his experience with girls was limited to his childhood friendship with Leah, and his strenuous defloration by Louise Loubser. He had often stared covertly at the bare breasts of black girls around Oranjerivier, and thought about inviting one of them back to the farm. But in the end he had always been too shy, or too concerned about disease, or too worried that he might end up like Monsaraz, copulating like a fancy-dressed dog.

  Faith must have sensed what was going on beneath the table, because she suddenly hissed, ‘Agnes,’ as if to reprimand her sister and remind her who had invited Barney to church first.

  But quite apart from the Knight girls’ coquettish behaviour, Barney had something else on his mind – the possibility of getting Joel acquitted by Stafford Parker’s magistrates. If Mr Knight could plead on Joel’s behalf, and if the magistrate was prepared to accept the Polo Pony Precedent, then Joel could go free.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Mr Barney,’ said Mr Knight, ‘if you’re interested in becoming a member of the Kimberley Club, I could put your name up. It would stand you in excellent stead, you know.’

  ‘Billiards,’ said Mrs Knight, scathingly, for no particular reason at all. Barney glanced at her in alarm, but Mr Knight shook his hand to indicate that he should not take any notice.

  ‘We could do with some more gentlemen,’ said Mr Knight. ‘And gentlemen, of course, includes American gentlemen. We’re not xenophobes.’ He let out another high, grating laugh, as if he were amazed at his own good humour and tolerance.

  Barney reached under the table and held Agnes’s knee to keep it still. He was feeling hot and flushed, and inside his best black trousers he had half an erection. ‘You don’t admit … half-castes, I suppose?’ he asked.

  ‘Half-castes! My dear chap! We don’t even admit Wykehamists! No, my dear fellow, there isn’t a half-caste to be seen. Nor anyone of any of the inferior breeds. No Arabs, no Chinese, no Malays, and no bloody Frenchmen!’

  ‘Jews?’ asked Barney.

  Mr Knight, with his mouth full of stew, stared at Barney as if he were mad.

  ‘The day they admit a Jew to the Kimberley Club – that’ll be the day that I drink five bottles of brandy one after the other and go to seek my place beside the Lord my God. Jews! Mercenary, money-grubbing Jews! What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Actually …’ said Barney, in a dry voice, ‘not all Jews are as grasping as they’re made out to be. In fact, one of my very best friends turned out to be a Jew.’ The words came out like toads, but he knew he had to say them. ‘Jews can be very … well, sensitive.’

  ‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me,’ Mr Knight put in. He chewed for a while, with obvious distaste, and then removed from his mouth a large piece of fawn gristle, corrugated by teethmarks, which he parked prominently on the side of his plate. ‘The Jew is a human being, no doubt of it; unlike your kaffir. He has his religion, no matter how perverse many of its tenets may be, and he has his family life. And I’ve heard people like yourself say that your occasional Jew can be most obliging. No, no, you mustn’t get me wrong.’

  Barney found it almost impossible to stop himself from pushing back his chair and walking out of Mr Knight’s bungalow at once. His brains felt as if they were boiling. But the way that Agnes held his hand close to the warmth of her thigh was somehow soothing as well as erotic, and even more sobering was the thought that Joel’s life was still at risk from the magistrates. Mr Knight, with his bristly quiver of well-sharpened bigotry, might well be the only person who could save him.

  He had to admit to himself, too, that the idea of becoming a member of the Kimberley Club was something of an attraction.
It would establish him as a bona fide businessman, and give him the social credentials to start making his way to the top.

  Where ‘the top’ actually was in the hugger-mugger of De Beers New Rush, he was not quite sure. But it had to be better than working Monsaraz’s farm for him; and it had to be better than living like the Knights, on thin pulse soup and faded dreams.

  ‘Perhaps you’d consider helping this Jewish friend of mine out of a difficult legal spot,’ said Barney.

  Mr Knight swallowed wine, and then looked at Barney with great care. ‘A difficult legal spot, you say.’

  ‘He’s been accused, wrongfully, of theft.’

  ‘Aha! Like our friend Chatsworth.’

  ‘Well, that’s right,’ said Barney. ‘And the similarity doesn’t end there. As far as I know, the only witnesses were kaffirs.’

  ‘What was he accused of stealing?’ asked Mr Knight. ‘Not diamonds, I hope.’

  Barney nodded. ‘It was said that he bribed kaffirs from the British Diamond Mining Company, whose claim was next to his, to bring him the best of their finds. He then sold them on the IDB market.’

  ‘You’re talking about Mr Havemann, aren’t you?’ put in Faith, in surprise. ‘I thought he’d been sentenced, and staked out.’

  Barney felt hot. ‘You knew him?’ he asked.

  ‘Everybody knew him,’ said Faith. ‘But then, everybody here knows everybody. A very morose man, but quite handsome.’

  ‘That’s enough, Faith,’ interrupted her father. He put down his knife and said to Barney, ‘Is Havemann not dead then?’

  ‘He’s alive,’ said Barney. ‘He’s not particularly well, but he’s alive.’

  ‘Stafford Parker will have him hunted down like a rogue lion, I promise you that, and probably shot.’