Solitaire

by Masterton, Graham

  ‘Perhaps I’d better go,’ said Mooi Klip, softly.

  ‘I haven’t made the tea yet,’ said Mr Ransome, awkwardly standing up.

  ‘You don’t have to trouble,’ Mooi Klip told him. She stood up, too, and picked up her basket of vegetables. ‘I really just came to tell you about Coen.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Ransome. ‘Well, I’m sorry that you decided not to go ahead with your marriage plans. I, er, I … I can only give you consolation from the Bible. As it says in Ecclesiastes, “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better!” ’

  Mooi Klip stared at Mr Ransome for a moment or two, and then giggled. Mr Ransome laughed too, in an odd staccato way that made Mooi Klip giggle even more. She reached up and kissed his cheek, and said, ‘You’ve consoled me already. I think you’re a very fine missionary, Mr Ransome.’

  ‘You ought to call me Hugh.’

  ‘That is your name? Hugh? What does it mean?’

  ‘I’m not honestly sure. My mother knows. She’s good on things like that. You know, folklore, history. She embroiders rather well, too. She sent me a whole set of embroidered antimacassars for my birthday, I –’ he looked around his cheap and crowded little sitting-room, ‘I really haven’t had time to put them out yet.’

  ‘You talk of your mother,’ said Mooi Klip. ‘Why don’t you tell me about yourself?’

  ‘There’s not a lot to tell, actually.’

  ‘Why don’t I make us a picnic, for you and me, and on Friday we can go along to Blaauwkopje and talk? My mother will look after Pieter.’

  Hugh Ransome looked at Mooi Klip carefully, and smoothed back his hair. ‘I should say no,’ he told her. His voice seemed suddenly more mature, quieter. ‘Do you really want me to come?’

  Mooi Klip nodded. ‘I want to hear all of your life, from the day you were born.’

  ‘I’m afraid that the life of a man who has never known a single woman is not very interesting listening.’

  ‘You never know,’ said Mooi Klip, and turned around to go. A mongrel dog was barking loudly in the next-door yard.

  ‘Natalia!’ said Hugh Ransome, hastily.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s – well, it’s nothing, really. I just wanted to say “Natalia”. I think the name is as beautiful as the girl.’

  ‘Thank you, Hugh,’ said Mooi Klip, and walked out across the verandah into the brilliant early-afternoon sunshine, as if she were a dissolving vision. Hugh Ransome stayed still in the middle of his sitting-room for a long time, embracing himself in his own arms; and then he felt the need to sit down.

  ‘ “Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee,” ’ he recited, under his breath. ‘ “Wisdom shall deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words; that thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.” ’

  He stared at the worn-out rug on the floor, and thought again of Mooi Klip with her sun-hat halo. ‘Damn wisdom, and damn discretion,’ he said, and then sat up straight and looked quickly around, to make sure that nobody had heard him.

  Barney was working in the library at Vogel Vlei when Horace rapped at the doors and put his black face around it at an alarming sideways angle, with only his eyes showing. Barney looked up from his papers and said, ‘What is it, Horace?’ without even remarking on the servant’s odd posture. He was used to Horace, after six months of living at Vogel Vlei. Horace was entirely individual. He had once tried to warm up a visitor’s bed by coaxing a black nanny-goat to lie under the blankets until it was time for the visitor to retire.

  ‘A gentleman from Capetown to see you,’ said Horace. ‘He presents his card.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ said Barney, ‘where is it?’

  Horace’s head disappeared like a badly stage-managed Oriental conjuring trick. Then his right hand emerged, holding the card between two fingers.

  ‘Bring it here, will you, Horace?’ asked Barney. ‘My eyes are reasonably good, but I can’t read a visiting card from fifty feet away.’

  Horace withdrew the card, and then remained in hiding behind the door. ‘Come on, man, I don’t have all day,’ Barney demanded.

  ‘I can’t, boss.’

  ‘You can’t? Why not?’

  ‘My uniform trousers, boss, have torn badly.’

  ‘Then just read me the name on the card.’

  ‘Can’t read, boss.’

  Barney threw down his pen in impatience, stalked across the library floor and plucked the card out of Horace’s hand. It read ‘William Hunt, Trade Attaché, Government House, Capetown.’

  ‘It’s me!’ exclaimed a sharp voice, and Horace stood back against the door to admit the diminutive Hunt; still bearded, though now touched with wiry silver hairs, still immaculately dressed in a greyish-lavender suit, and still smelling strongly of French cologne. ‘My dear Barney, it’s such a pleasure to see you! After all this time!’

  Barney grasped Hunt’s hand, and shook it. ‘I’m amazed,’ he said. ‘What can bring a city fellow like you all the way out to Kimberley? Listen – you must have a drink. Horace – bring us two glasses of schnapps, will you.’

  Horace, with his back pressed to the open door, said, ‘Now, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Horace, now.’

  Horace awkwardly shuffled around, and then hurried off across the hallway as quickly as he could, grabbing behind him for the errant triangular flap of fabric that had torn from his trousers. Hunt watched him go with a look of almost professorial interest, and even took out a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘Fine brown bum your man’s got,’ he remarked.

  ‘He’s something of a clown; but he’s good-natured,’ said Barney. ‘And I see that you haven’t changed.’

  ‘Would that I could, my dear chap. The truth is that all the new fellows that Sir Bartle has brought in from India are rather a supercilious lot; or, if they aren’t supercilious, they’re spotty. I’m not sure which I can tolerate the least – haughtiness or hives. Each of them has their own disagreeable poison.’

  Hunt walked over to a large brown leather armchair by the fireplace, and sat himself down as if he had lived at Vogel Vlei for most of his life. He leaned his cane against the hearth and tugged off his gloves, one finger at a time, and flopped them over the arm of the chair. ‘I’ve been hearing some very interesting stories about you,’ he told Barney. ‘They say you’re almost a millionaire these days.’

  Barney walked around his wide partners’ desk and cleared away some of the papers he had been working on. He was entering the final negotiations for buying seven more claims, two of them crucial diggings right in the centre of the Kimberley pipe. Apart from the fact that both claims had been yielding scores of high-quality diamonds every single week since they had first been excavated, they stood right between Blitz Brothers and the French company which owned most of the claims on the Big Hole’s southern side. Their owner was asking £360,000, and Barney was doing everything he could to persuade him to bring down his price. Barney was a millionaire, all right, but only on paper.

  The trouble was, everybody in town now knew that Barney owned a 350-carat diamond, and even in the local dry goods stores his servants were being charged twice the going price for any supplies that were ordered for Vogel Vlei. Barney was finding that his liquidity was dwindling fast, just when he had the most need of it. He could have stepped up diamond production, but he was anxious not to stir up the whole of the Kimberley mine into a furious burst of digging, in case they flooded the market again and brought the world price down. Whenever he was asked about the monster diamond in public, he said again and again that it was one of a kind, a freak, and that the chances of anyone finding another one of that size were practically nil. Harold Feinberg during the summer of 1878 and 1879 lived on heart flutters, patent antacids, and the dogged sexuality of his little froggy girl. Barney could not even mention the diamond to him without him turning white.


  ‘Owning one fancy diamond doesn’t actually make me the richest man in the world,’ said Barney.

  ‘No, I understand that, of course,’ said Hunt, ‘And so does Sir Bartle.’

  ‘Sir Bartle’s taking a personal interest in me? I thought Sir Bartle was busy being friendly to the Zulus.’

  ‘Well, he’s not, actually,’ said Hunt, ‘and that’s part of the reason I’m here. We’re in a spot of bother with the Zulus, as a matter of fact. You know how they were always haggling with the Boers over their borders with the Transvaal … Well, Sir Bartle set up a commission last year to settle the matter, and – rather bad luck – the commission actually found in favour of the Zulus. Bit embarrassing, really, what. But Sir Bartle’s trying to sort the whole thing out by insisting that he will only ratify Zululand’s border if Cetewayo disbands his army.’

  Barney listened to that, and then pulled a face. ‘I don’t know much about Zulus, but from what I hear of Cetewayo, that’s about the last thing he’ll do. How can he disband his army and still stay independent? The Boers will have him for breakfast.’

  ‘Between you and me, old chap, you’re quite right. But that’s just what Sir Bartle’s counting on, Cetewayo saying no. And unless Cetewayo disperses his army within a week, Sir Bartle’s going to send Lord Chelmsford and two thousand soldiers into Zululand to teach him a considerable lesson. That way, Sir Bartle can keep his promise to honour his commission’s findings, and crush the Zulus, both at the same time.’

  Barney rubbed his eyes. He had been working late almost every night for the past three weeks, and he felt exhausted. ‘You Colonial Office monkeys really enjoy this kind of thing, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘But where do I come into it? I know as much about Zulus as everyone else around here, and that’s nothing at all.’

  Horace came into the library with two glasses of schnapps, and a jug of water. He was wearing his usual black tailcoat, but this time, underneath it, he wore bright yellow riding breeches. Hunt gave him an amused, provocative look which perplexed Horace completely. He turned to Barney for reassurance, and Barney waved him out of the room with a grin.

  ‘It’s your diamond we’re interested in,’ Hunt told Barney. ‘It’s already been written about in the London papers, of course; but I must say that you kept the press very short of detail. The Morning Post said nothing more than that they had heard a “rumour” that a particularly large gemstone had been dug up at Kimberley, and that it was “estimated” to weigh in excess of three hundred carats.’

  ‘I’m not announcing anything else until I’m ready,’ said Barney. ‘It’s taken us years to build up this diamond industry the way it is today, people like Rhodes and Gould and me. The very worst thing that could happen to us now is an old-style diamond rush, and a collapse of diamond prices on the world market.’

  ‘Well, you’re right, of course,’ said Hunt. ‘But I must say that Sir Bartle came up with an excellent idea in his bathtub the other day. He suggested that he should announce the discovery of your diamond right away, in a really dramatic fashion, all champagne and trumpets and God Save The Queen – and that he should then arrange for a special presentation of the diamond to Her Majesty in London. He suggested that you might think of christening the stone the Victoria Star, in her honour.’

  ‘And what would be the point of that?’ asked Barney.

  Hunt raised a finger. ‘The point, my dear chap, is that the attention of Her Majesty and Her Majesty’s ministers of State would be diverted long enough by this patriotic charade to allow Sir Bartle to overwhelm the Zulus and capture Cetewayo before anyone in the Government could start squeaking about fair play, and cricket, and all that nonsense.’

  Barney sat back in the buttoned armchair behind his desk, and looked at Hunt thoughtfully. Barney had changed a great deal since Hunt had first met him on the deck of the Weser, and Hunt, who was sensitive to men, had already been alerted by the flamboyant style of Barney’s well-cut tweed suit and by his careful but abrasive mannerisms that Barney was now stronger, and much more aware of his personal power, and that he was going to be far more difficult to handle than the peaky-faced Jewish emigrant whom he had tried to seduce off the coast of equatorial Africa.

  What Hunt did not know, although he sensed it, was that Barney had lost at last those youthful sympathies which had made him so gentle and so spontaneous in New York and during his first years at the Cape. He had abandoned his unquestioning devotion to his brother, and to the memory of his mother; and he had grown wise to the papier-mâché hauteur of the British colonial classes. Barney had become less pliable, but also more perceptive, and he had begun to organise his business and his household on his own terms and very rarely on anybody else’s.

  All those nights of guilt and all those splattered visions of his mother’s blood had long since faded away. Now, he slept dreamlessly next to a well-bred woman who had agreed to say what she was told, and lift her nightdress when she was required, and to smile and be pretty whenever it was called for. In return, he was faithful to her, and he brought her diamond bracelets and necklaces by the handful. Nareez came and went on shuffling silk slippers, and scowled at him whenever she passed him on the landing, but Nareez no longer upset him, because there was no longer any weakness in him for Nareez to pick at. He had come to terms with an attractive woman whom he did not love, and who did not love him in return. He had bought nearly a third of the Big Hole at Kimberley. And to crown it all he owned one of the largest rough diamonds ever found anywhere since the recorded beginning of diamond mining.

  ‘The Victoria Star, huh?’ said Barney. ‘I’m an American, why should I consent to my diamond being called the Victoria Star?’

  ‘We’re friendly, aren’t we, Americans and British?’ said Hunt.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Barney told him. ‘Are we? Wasn’t it Queen Victoria’s grandfather who fought against us so bloodily only a hundred years ago?’

  Hunt smirked. ‘You’re pulling my leg. You’re German Jewish. You couldn’t care a less about George III. Besides the Queen’s mostly German herself. As one Kraut to another, you should be glad to give her the Star.’

  ‘Give?’ asked Barney, ignoring the gibe about his nationality.

  ‘I don’t mean give in that sense, my dear chap. There will of course be the matter of reasonable payment.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By a consortium of British businessmen who are quite anxious to see South Africa organised into one profitable and easily-administered dominion, and to see that Zululand is All Sir Garnet as soon as possible.’

  ‘All Sir what?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, old chap. Fashionable expression in the colonial service. After Sir Garnet Wolseley, who crushed the Ashanti in ’73. It means “shipshape!” ’

  ‘You British have a jolly phrase for everything, don’t you?’ said Barney. ‘What’s your expression for get the hell out of my house?’

  Hunt made a moue. ‘I think “bugger off” should do nicely for that.’

  ‘Good. Then bugger off.’

  Hunt sighed. ‘You really don’t understand, do you? I’m here to offer you almost anything, within reason, provided you sell us the diamond and make a big splash about how you found it, and how proud you are to hand it over to Her Majesty.’

  ‘I haven’t had the diamond valued yet,’ said Barney. ‘My dealer’s still doing tests on it.’

  ‘What have your tests discovered so far? Is it flawed? Is it coloured? I mean, I’ve really come up here on something of a blind man’s errand. It may not be worth handing over to Her Majesty at all.’

  ‘It’s an exceptionally fine lilac-coloured stone of exactly 356 carats and two points. There are no flaws. That’s all I’m prepared to tell you.’

  Hunt tipped back his schnapps glass, and took out his handkerchief to wipe his mouth. ‘I’m empowered to offer you £750,000, in gold and notes.’

  Barney said, ‘It may be worth more, it may be worth less. I can’t tell until we’ve finis
hed our tests. Besides, I don’t think I’m particularly keen on the idea of using the diamond simply to take the public’s attention away from one of your squalid native wars.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Hunt. ‘You can hardly call the spread of the British Empire squalid. Everywhere that Britain rules, there is justice, freedom, stern fair play, and so much gin and adultery that those who aren’t down on their knees are flat on their backs.’

  Barney gave Hunt a wry smile of amusement. But then he said, ‘I’m not selling. Not yet. I want to see this stone through every single stage of its cutting and its marketing, and I want to see that it’s bought for the right person for the right reasons. The Victoria Star? You must be joking.’

  ‘I can offer you a million,’ said Hunt, with a grin.

  ‘Just like that? Sight unseen?’

  ‘Subject to proper examination, of course. But if the stone turns out to be what you claim it to be, a flawless rough of 356·2 carats, then we won’t have any difficulties, will we? It will be worth a million.’

  ‘I’m not selling,’ said Barney.

  ‘A million, two hundred thousand,’ said Hunt. ‘That’s my absolute limit!’