Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  ‘They’d probably accept that. I’d have to talk to them for a while, though.’

  ‘Then talk to them. I’ll pay your commission.’

  Harold said, ‘There’s more than commission involved in this. Waterlo have business connections with Ascher and Mendel, in Antwerp.’

  ‘The cutters?’

  ‘That’s right. And, believe me, they’re the very finest. They specialise in odd-shaped stones … getting the best out of a gem that most cutters wouldn’t even know what to do with. They cut the Orange Diamond last year, as a seminavette. Seventy-one carats.’

  ‘I remember. But what are you trying to tell me?’

  Harold laced his fingers over his camel-coloured vest. ‘What I’m trying to suggest is a three-corner partnership. You mine the diamonds, I market them, and Ascher and Mendel’s cut them. Between the three of us, in time, we could control almost every major diamond that Cape Colony can produce.’

  Barney eyed Harold thoughtfully. ‘You’re talking a lot of speculative hot air, Harold,’ he said. ‘But you’re also talking a lot of sense. The only thing that disturbs me is why Waterlo want to sell.’

  ‘They invested too much money in diamonds before the slump. Now they need capital. It’s as simple as that. And – let’s be truthful – diamonds were never a good investment, were they?’

  Barney ruffled Pieter’s hair. ‘You know what Rhodes said to me once?’ he asked Harold. ‘As long as women go on falling in love, he said, the future of the diamond industry will be assured. Four million diamond engagement rings are required each year, and that means that four million diamonds are required.’

  ‘Rhodes is a cynic, when it comes to women.’

  ‘I wish I were, sometimes,’ said Barney.

  ‘I’m glad you’re not,’ smiled Harold. ‘The day that you’re not desperately in love with one lady or another, that’s the day I will call for the rabbi.’

  Barney linked arms with Harold and led him through to the library. The only piece of furniture in the entire house stood there: a small chipped Pembroke table, clustered with bottles of South African sherry and sweet white wines. There was also a bottle of whiskey.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ asked Barney.

  Harold shook his head. He sat on one of the windowsills and watched as Barney poured himself a small measure of Scotch.

  ‘You never used to drink,’ he remarked.

  ‘I never used to be a millionaire,’ said Barney. ‘It’s a responsibility, being a millionaire.’

  ‘What do you think of my partnership, then?’ asked Harold. ‘You want to try?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘You’re going to have to do something dramatic, sooner or later. Have you seen how Rhodes is buying up claims at De Beers? In a few years, he’s going to have control of the whole mine. Then he’s going to start looking at the Big Hole.’

  ‘He won’t find it easy, taking over Kimberley.’

  ‘He will, unless you’re strong enough to resist him. And that means buying up as many claims as you can, and controlling the price of diamonds. You won’t win out against Rhodes unless you control the price. That’s why I think it’s worth your forming an alliance with me, and with Ascher and Mendel. If we’re clever, we can keep the price of diamonds high when Rhodes wants to buy, and low when he wants to sell.’

  Barney poured himself another whiskey. Across on the other side of the library, Pieter was scuffing his foot across the oak parquet flooring to make curving marks, like giant eyebrows, or scimitars, or unsmiling lips.

  ‘Maybe you’re right, Harold,’ he said, softly. ‘Maybe we should get into the cutting side, and the marketing side, and the retail side. After all, it’s the retail side that counts.’

  ‘Well, sure,’ said Harold. ‘It’s on the retail side that they make most of the profit. You think you make a profit when you sell a rough diamond to me? You think I make a profit when I sell a rough diamond to a dealer from Europe? You think he makes a profit?’ Harold pouted his lips, and shook his head. ‘Not a chance. What we make is piffle. The people that make money are the jewellers. They mark up those diamonds a hundred, two hundred, three hundred per cent! And the poor fellow in the street pays two hundred pounds for that glassy stone you sold to me for ten pounds. Then he goes waving it around, telling all his friends what a wonderful investment he’s made! A two hundred pound diamond! What an investment! He should try to sell it back to the trade and see what he gets for it. Diamonds are the worst investment since the South Sea Bubble.’

  ‘The South Sea Bubble?’ asked Barney.

  Harold waved a dismissive hand. ‘Take it from me, a bad investment. But for you and me, diamonds could be tremendous – as long as we control the business right from the mines to the shops.’

  ‘And as long as we own enough claims to keep Rhodes out of Kimberley.’

  ‘That goes without saying.’

  Barney finished his drink, grimaced at the taste of it, and then held out his hand for Pieter. ‘Pieter, kom.’ He said to Harold, ‘I’ll talk to you later, when I’ve had a chance to discuss things with Joel.’

  ‘I thought everything was yours. The claims, the house. What do you have to ask his permission for?’

  ‘He’s my brother, and he does half of the work, at least. I wouldn’t presume to change the whole of his future life without talking it over with him first.’

  Harold set his hat on top of his head, and tilted it a few degrees backwards. ‘All right. It’s your funeral. But don’t wait too long. The French people have got their eyes on those claims, too. Let me know yes or no by morning.’

  Barney lifted Pieter up in his arms, and said, ‘Pieter – say goodbye to your Uncle Harold.’

  Harold raised his hat, and leaned forward with his moustache puckered up to give Pieter a kiss on the cheek. ‘You’re almost a lucky boy,’ he told him, and then he gave Barney a brief and sideways smile that was friendly and sad and a little bit sour, all at the same time.

  At noon the following day, in the offices of the Board for the Protection of Mining Industries, amidst the aromatic dust of cedar pencil-sharpenings and barathea business suits, Barney was handed in silence the titles to all of the eight and a half claims belonging to the Waterlo Diamond Coy. In return, he passed to the clerk of the board, a bespectacled Englishman with a face as pale as calf’s-foot jelly and a disposition to match, a cheque for £185,000 and a few pence. This cheque was duly passed to a short freckly Belgian called Mr Wuustwezel, who waved it in the air in jolly celebration, only to be peered at by the clerk with an expression of dire disapproval.

  ‘This is a solemn trading matter, Mr Wuustwezel, not a carnival.’

  ‘For you, maybe,’ smiled Mr Wuustwezel, irrepressibly.

  Afterwards, they all gathered at the Kimberley Hotel, where Mr Wuustwezel ordered French champagne and cigars, and where they sat around highly varnished yellow-wood tables, surrounded by smoke, and talked of diamond prices and diamond digging and, most important of all, of Cecil Rhodes.

  ‘Against a man of Rhodes’ determination, you will never win,’ attested Mr Wuustwezel. ‘He will take over every diamond mine in South Africa, simply because he believes it is his divine duty to do so.’

  ‘Just because he’s a religious zealot, that doesn’t mean he’s going to get what he wants,’ said Joel, testily.

  ‘Do you have such inspiration? Such ambition?’ asked Mr Wuustwezel.

  Joel eased his mended leg into a more comfortable position, and pulled a face. ‘I have a taste for riches, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘I suppose you have to,’ put in Edward Nork. ‘Morphis is expensive, out here in the back of beyond.’

  Joel drained his glass of champagne, and set it down on the table with a sharp click. ‘I have pain,’ he told Edward. ‘Particularly in damp weather, and in the company of idiots.’

  ‘You don’t change, do you?’ smiled Edward, reaching down beneath his chair to retrieve his bottle of Irish whiskey,
and top up his glass.

  Barney said, ‘We can really start to mine on a large scale now. That’s if you don’t mind my interrupting your personal vendetta with a little business talk. We can level off our own four claims to the same depth as the Belgian claims, and drain them all with one pump. The Belgians have two horse whims, if I remember, and those two can serve to carry out all of the blue ground from all twelve claims. We’ll have three times the mining area and yet our daily expenses will scarcely be increased at all.’

  ‘You’ll need more kaffirs,’ said Mr Wuustwezel, raising his champagne so that one of his appeared to be grossly magnified through the glass.

  ‘Kaffirs aren’t expensive,’ said Joel.

  ‘Not your run-of-the-mill kaffirs. But there’s one kaffir I recommend you take on in particular. His name’s Jack, and he’s a Ndebele. He’ll cost you twice the price of your usual kaffir, because he’s educated, and he knows what’s what. He’s a good foreman, too. Takes care of all your workers for you, keeps an eye on all the stones they find, and makes sure you don’t get trouble.’

  ‘How much did you pay him?’ asked Barney.

  ‘Nineteen shillings a month. And when you think this mine’s losing fifteen or twenty thousand pounds a week through pilfering, that’s a worthwhile investment.’

  Joel reached across the table and poured himself some more champagne. ‘Nineteen shillings a month?’ he asked, wrinkling up his nose. ‘Don’t you think they’ll start getting ideas, if you pay them as much as that?’

  ‘Jack’s a Christian, Mr Blitz,’ said Mr Wuustwezel, his round face suddenly solemn. ‘He’s honest, and temperate, and he has no ideas other than to do good work so that he can earn himself good wages.’

  ‘I always suspect fellows who don’t drink,’ said Joel. ‘Even blackies.’

  Barney stood up. ‘I think it’s time we went,’ he said. ‘We have a great many arrangements to make. And besides, I’ve decided to go to Durban in two weeks’ time to buy furniture and furnishings for Vogel Vlei.’

  Joel looked up. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘I’ve only just decided.’

  ‘I see. I suppose you want to go sniffing around that Sutter girl again.’ He turned to Mr Wuustwezel and said, ‘My brother is not a man for whores. He likes his relationships to be difficult; even tragic, if possible. He is a man who is aroused by hardship. Girls who simply lie on their backs with their legs in the air just will not do.’

  Mr Wuustwezel reached for his grey Derby hat and carefully put it on. ‘I think I, too, must be leaving,’ he said.

  ‘The party’s just started,’ protested Joel. ‘What about some more champagne?’

  ‘If you want more champagne. I regret that you will have to pay for it yourself,’ Mr Wuustwezel told him. ‘After all, you are now the part-owner of one of the largest diamond mines in Kimberley, aren’t you?’

  Barney reached across the table and shook the Belgian’s hand. Mr Wuustwezel said, ‘Thank you for everything, Mr Blitz. I hope that you will make much profit out of our mines, and I hope that your problems will not prove too great a burden for you.’

  Joel raised his head. ‘What problems?’ he demanded.

  Mr Wuustwezel touched his hat, and walked away across the polished boards of the hotel lounge.

  ‘What problems?’ Joel shouted after him. ‘What problems?’

  Then he turned around and saw the look on Barney’s face, and he seized his champagne glass and emptied it in one exaggerated swallow.

  Jack, the Ndebele, turned out to be one of the suavest black men that Barney had ever come across. He had tight curly hair, a broad, handsome face, and he wore a gold and ivory earring in his left earlobe. But there his resemblance to his brother kaffirs ended. He spoke almost perfect English, in a Shropshire accent, and he always wore a white collar and a grey morning suit. He was known around the Big Hole as ‘Gentleman Jack’; but although his civilised manners would normally have aroused suspicions that he was trying to ape the white man, and pretend that he could be the white man’s equal, Jack’s devotion to his work and his reputation for honesty were enough to quell the fears of those diggers who liked to make sure, for safety’s sake, that they kept their kaffirs overworked and underpaid. ‘There is no more dangerous nigger than a nigger who has tasted kindness,’ a Boer farmer had once told Barney, back in Oranjerivier. ‘You must keep them without hope that they will ever know anything better; because hope is the first ingredient of unrest.’

  Jack met Barney the day after the titles to the eight and a half Belgian claims had been handed over, out by the North Reef. It was a cool morning, and Barney was wearing his blue covert coat, and his cap. Work had already started on most of the claims, and the clatter of picks and shovels and the squealing of winding-gear had frightened away the birds which came to pick over the freshly-dug earth whenever the miners were away.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Blitzboss,’ said Jack, climbing out of the steepsided claim in his grey suit and rubber galoshes.

  ‘Good morning,’ nodded Barney. ‘I see no kaffirs here.’

  ‘I’m here, Mr Blitzboss. I’ve worked here since they first broke ground.’

  ‘I’ve seen you. And Mr Wuustwezel recommended that I take you on.’

  ‘I was hoping you would, Mr Blitzboss. I am a worker of exemplary character. Excellent references from all my places of employment. Orphan from three years old, Mr Blitzboss, both parents died of the cholera. Taken in by Wallington, an excellent missionary and his family, and taught the exemplary manners of British people. I wear underwear, Mr Blitzboss, clean every week.’

  Barney gave him an uneasy smile. ‘Good. Well, I’m glad to hear it.’

  Jack tugged at his tie, to straighten it. ‘Without a necktie, Mr Blitzboss, no man is properly attired. That’s what they taught me when I worked for Mr Jones. He sold pianofortes and religious music, sir, and it was my part to sing Psalm 23 at a position of attention while Mr Jones demonstrated the pianoforte from the back of his waggon. Later I got work building houses at Klipdrift, and then mining. Now I am here, if you wish to take me on, sir.’

  ‘Sure I’ll take you on. Mr Wuustwezel paid you nineteen shillings the month, didn’t he?’

  ‘And fourpence, Mr Blitzboss.’

  ‘What was the fourpence for?’

  ‘A special extra emolument, sir. For keeping Mr Wuustwezel’s cook cheerful. You see, if she wasn’t kept cheerful, she cooked badly, and Mr Wuustwezel was a stickler for good food. So, three times in each month, he would say to me, “The soup’s getting thin, Jack,” or “The cutlets are burned again, Jack,” and off I went that night to make his cook cheerful. A fine big Basuto woman, Mr Blitzboss – well, a quarter French, but black like tar. I can tell you that I earned my fourpence.’

  ‘It sounds as if you did,’ smiled Barney. ‘Perhaps I ought to pay you a pound a month, just to make up for what you’ll be missing.’

  Gentleman Jack’s left eyelid trembled into what was almost a wink. ‘A pound will be satisfactory, Mr Blitzboss. You will get excellent work from Jack for a pound.’

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ Barney told him. ‘In a few days, I’ll be leaving Kimberley for a month or two and going to Durban. You’ve seen my house, I expect – Voegl Vlei? Well, it needs furnishing, and decorating, and I’m going to Durban to find someone to do it for me. When I’m away, my brother Mr Joel Blitz is going to be in charge. So – no matter what he does or says, I want you to make sure you obey his orders and do exactly what he tells you. He’s a Blitzboss too.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Jack, simply.

  ‘Well, make sure that you do. I don’t want to come back from Durban and find there’s been trouble.’

  ‘No, sir. You won’t find any trouble.’

  Barney looked down at the cluster of diamond claims that were now his. There was nearly enough space how to use a steam-shovel, and excavate the rock at three times the speed. The sides of most claims were now collapsing so regularl
y that more and more debris had to be dug out than ever to reach the diamond-bearing soil. Rhodes had been right. The sooner all these hundreds of individual diggers could be bought out, and their claims amalgamated, the sooner the mine could be prospected by largescale, mechanised methods. Barney determined to order two steam winding-engines while he was in Durban, and more rotary trommels for sorting the soil once it had been dug out.

  ‘I’ll leave you in charge, then,’ Barney told Gentleman Jack. ‘I want this mine working at top speed by eleven o’clock this morning, with the best kaffirs you can find. You can tell them that if they work extra hard, they get extra rations.’

  ‘You think that’s a good idea, Mr Blitzboss?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Jack smiled. ‘Mr Wallington always taught me that black men should be satisfied with their lot. They should work hard because it’s good for their bodies and their souls, not because a white man has offered them more rations.’

  Barney stared at him for a while. ‘You really believe that?’ he asked.

  ‘Mr Wallington said it was so, sir.’

  ‘Well, if you think Mr Wallington was right, how come you’re happy to take a pound, instead of nineteen shillings?’

  ‘And fourpence, sir.’

  ‘Yes, and fourpence?’

  Jack gave an enigmatic shrug. ‘Maybe, Mr Blitzboss, I am ahead of my time.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Barney. ‘And maybe you’re a damned rascal.’

  It took two weeks before the Blitz Brothers Diamond Mining Company was bringing up diamonds in sufficient quantities from their new possessions to be able to show a profit. The sides of the Belgian claims had collapsed, from weeks of neglect filling them with tons of worked-out debris, and Gentleman Jack spent five days clearing it all away. Even so, the claims were dug so deep that frequent cave-ins were unavoidable, and there were some days when they had to shovel out three tons of rock and debris just to extract one ton of diamond-bearing blue ground.

  Barney, impatient, had no choice but to wait until the excavations were going smoothly before leaving for Durban. But Joel and Gentleman Jack seemed to get along quite well with each other, which was one comfort; and Edward Nork was devising a way of shoring up the sides of the claim with discarded iron girders which he had rescued from the construction site of the new London & South African Bank; and so by mid-July, Barney was able to take his two best horses, Boitumelo and Moonshine, and load them up for a journey across the plains of the Transvaal and the mountains of Natal.