Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  ‘We might retire after supper,’ Sara suggested, blushing slightly. Barney leaned over and kissed her, first her forehead, then her cheeks, then her lips.

  ‘I shan’t have any lip-colour left,’ she whispered.

  ‘Can you think of a better way of losing it?’

  Just then, their new manservant Horace came in, wearing ill-fitting knee breeches and a draped brown riding-coat. He offered them sweet sherry from a silver tray, and then retreated from the room backwards on squeaking boots.

  ‘I think Horace has heard about royalty,’ said Sara. ‘He always bows whenever he sees me, and he never turns his back on me, ever. It’s rather quaint, isn’t it? But I hate to disillusion him.’

  They drank a silent toast to each other, and Barney said a broche in his mind for Sara’s beauty, and also for her new warmth. It was going to take months of difficulty and pain for him to forget all about the love he felt for Mooi Klip, but if Sara was going to be as gentle and as alluring as this, he was going to find it far less harrowing.

  ‘There’s been an awful fuss in the house tonight,’ remarked Sara. ‘I asked Nareez what was going on, but she said she didn’t know, not exactly. She said she thought it was some kind of a search, though. I couldn’t think what on earth we could have lost that could have set off such a disturbance.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Barney, running his hand through his curly hair, ‘that’s rather a long story.’

  ‘Well, I’d love to hear it, especially since it’s turning my own house on its roof.’

  Barney could not think why he felt reluctant to tell Sara all about it; but somehow he did not quite trust her enough. There was no particular reason why she should not know. In fact, she had every right to. But he found himself hesitating and hedging, and telling her almost nothing.

  ‘The truth is, ‘he said,’ that I’ve lost something valuable. At least, I hope it’s been lost, and that it hasn’t been stolen. But I’ve organised a search for it, as openly as possible, in the hope that if anybody’s hiding it, they’ll feel constrained to hand it back; or, if it’s really lost, and not stolen, that it will soon be turned up.’

  Sara looked around the room as if she were appealing to an equally baffled audience. ‘Really, my darling, you should have been a colonial governor. I don’t think I’ve heard anybody make such a long speech and say quite so little since Papa invited Sir Henry Barkly to dinner. To begin with, you haven’t told me what this valuable thing is, or how you lost it, or whether it’s worth stealing.’

  ‘Well …’ said Barney, but at that very moment Joel appeared in the doorway, crisply dressed in a boiled white shirt and tailcoats, but frighteningly haggard. Barney felt his heart beat a slow bump as Joel stared at him, leaning heavily over his cane, obviously waiting for him to finish what he was saying.

  ‘Don’t let me interrupt you,’ said Joel, hoarsely. ‘I’m just as interested as Sara in what this valuable thing might be. After all, how can we help you look for it if we don’t know what it is?’

  ‘Well, quite right,’ said Sara. ‘You do seem to be playing games, my darling.’

  ‘Have a drink,’ Barney told Joel. ‘You look as if you need one.’

  Joel heaved himself awkwardly across the room towards the nearest armchair, and sat down. ‘Thank you,’ he grimaced. ‘My leg’s been giving me sheer hell today. The weather, I suppose. Down goes the mercury, and I’m done for.’

  ‘Is it a letter?’ asked Sara.

  ‘Is what a letter?’ frowned Barney.

  ‘This lost or stolen thing! This valuable property that everybody’s looking for! Letters are always valuable, aren’t they, in love stories, especially when they’re passionate, and incriminating.’

  ‘Well, it’s not a letter,’ smiled Barney, giving Sara an amused nod of his head. ‘I’m not very good at writing letters, either passionate or incriminating – or even readable, for that matter.’

  ‘Is it a piece of jewellery, perhaps?’ Sara proposed. ‘A tie-pin, or a pair of cuff-links?’

  ‘Or a clip?’ put in Joel, very softly. The English-Afrikaans pun was not lost on Barney, and he fixed his gaze on his brother very steadily.

  ‘You’re nearly right, Sara,’ he said, in a flat voice. ‘The truth is that it’s a diamond. Not just an ordinary diamond, either. But a diamond of unusual size. A real monster, from what I hear.’

  ‘But how exciting! Has someone stolen it?’

  Barney gave Sara a wry smile. ‘I don’t know, to be honest. I can’t prove anything at all until I find it. It was supposed to have been dug up on one of my claims while I was away in Durban. But even though there’s been a lot of rumour and gossip about it, nobody has yet admitted that it actually exists, and nobody has yet admitted that they have it ih their possession.’

  ‘It’s just another one of those kaffir yarns, I expect,’ said Joel, with a smile that was more teeth and muscle than anything else. ‘They’re always making up stories like that, just to keep the white boss hustling and bustling around like a dog after his own tail. One of them told me that he knew where King Solomon’s treasure was hidden. Fifty metres deep, he told me, through solid bedrock. I would have had him flogged to death, if I could have caught him.’

  ‘But this is a diamond, Joel,’ said Barney, suddenly serious. ‘This is a giant-sized diamond, anything up to 400 carats, and it was supposed to have been found on our claim.’

  Joel shook his head, and let out a dry laugh. ‘When you were away in Durban, little brother, I was in charge here. And let me tell you something, my supervision of what goes on in this mine is always ten times as strict as yours. If they so much as spit on the ground, those kaffirs, they get cuffed; and if I ever caught any one of them stealing, then God help me I’d strangle him with my bare hands.’

  ‘What you’re trying to tell me is that you don’t believe this monstrous diamond actually exists? You think it’s all a story?’

  Joel looked up at Barney keenly. ‘It may exist, Barney, but if it does, I haven’t seen it. Don’t tell me you don’t believe me – because what do you think I would have done if I had seen it? I would have turned it over to you, wouldn’t I? as soon as you got back from Durban? I’m not a diamond thief, whatever else you care to call me. And I’m your brother, too.’

  ‘I’m glad you said that,’ Barney replied. ‘Because while you’re down here, your room is being searched. I’ve even told them to cut open your cakes of soap.’

  Sara was shocked. She said, ‘Barney! I can scarcely believe it!’

  ‘All right,’ put in Barney, calmly, ‘you can scarcely believe it. But I’ve heard enough about this mythical diamond today to think that it’s worth looking for it; and the first place that I’ve been looking is inside this house. We’re talking about a gemstone that could be worth more than a million pounds here, Sara; and when you start talking about a million pounds, I don’t think you can talk about loyalty in the same breath. Family loyalty, servant loyalty, any kind of loyalty. Most people have their morals, sure; and most people have a sense of duty and honesty and good old shoulder-to-shoulder comradeship; but a million pounds is more than most people’s honesty is worth. A million pounds is enough to convince most people that it’s time to forget about their duty, and their friends, and even the people they love. A million pounds is even enough to persuade most people to forget about their God.’

  There was a momentary silence. Joel made a painful face at Sara, and shrugged, as if to say that he might not believe me, but I know you do.

  ‘Maybe you think I’m crazy,’ said Barney. ‘Maybe you think that it’s just as wicked to suspect your own family of theft as it is for them to steal. Well, maybe you’re right. But let me tell you this: when there’s a million pounds at stake, I’m as greedy and determined as anyone else, particularly when I know that it’s my million pounds, and that it’s being taken from under my nose.’

  ‘So, you’re accusing me of taking a giant-sized diamond, are you?’ asked Joel. ‘You’re accu
sing me of stealing the largest gemstone that anybody has ever dug up at Kimberley – in fact, one of the largest gemstones that has ever been heard of in the history of the whole world?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ said Barney, in a level voice.

  ‘You didn’t have to,’ Joel retorted. ‘It’s enough that you ordered your black monkeys to look through my room. And to cut up my soap? You’re as mad as Mama.’

  ‘What would you have done?’ demanded Barney.

  ‘If I had suspected you of stealing some fictitious diamond – and by God, Barney, I emphasise fictitious – I would at least have had the decency to ask you first. I mean, you’ll make sure they look through my underwear, won’t you? And through all of my personal possessions? My letters, and my pictures of Papa and Mama? You’ll make sure that they desecrate what little dignity I have left?’

  Barney set down his drink on the small inlaid wine-table beside him. ‘I’m sorry, Joel,’ he said, quietly. ‘But that’s always been the difference between you and me.’

  ‘What has? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about bluster, that’s what I’m talking about. Hot air. You’ve been appealing to my conscience ever since you could talk; and now you’re always appealing to justice, and to God, and to the tides of fortune, and to whatever comes into your head. But you’ve never actually gotten anything done, have you? You never cultivated the farm at Derdeheuwel. You lost all your money at Klipdrift, You got yourself accused of stealing diamonds at Kimberley. It’s no use appealing to the powers that be, Joel, because there’s only one reason you’re sitting in this drawing-room in evening-dress waiting for a well-cooked supper, and that reason is me.’

  ‘Is that my cue to pack my bags and leave you?’ asked Joel, whitefaced and fierce.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Barney, plainly. ‘But it’s certainly a cue for you to tell me whatever you know about this diamond, don’t you think, and to stop playing ridiculous charades?’

  ‘Charades!’ shouted Joel, although his shout was strained and weak, and thick with phlegm. ‘You’re the one who’s playing charades! You spring this story about a monster diamond on me, the very first time I’ve ever heard such a thing in my whole life, and then you immediately accuse me of having stolen it! It’s madness! And then you accuse me of playing charades!’

  Sara turned to Barney appealingly. ‘Don’t you think we ought to drop the subject, darling! I don’t want a row just before supper.’

  Barney continued to stare at Joel with an expression of deep distrust. ‘I just want a straight answer, that’s all. There is a diamond, I know it. Harold Feinberg told me; and so did one or two other people who ought to know what they’re talking about. And if Joel doesn’t know anything about it, then I can only say that his memory is proving as inconstant as his loyalty.’

  At that moment, Michael came to the open doorway of the drawing-room and gave Barney a quick shake of his head.

  ‘Aha,’ said Joel, shifting himself in his chair to make himself more comfortable, ‘I suppose that means I’ve been vindicated.’

  ‘It means they didn’t find the diamond in your room, that’s all,’ said Barney.

  ‘Diamond,’ mocked Joel, with a sharp laugh. ‘If you ask me, Barney, you’ve been out here in Kimberley far too long. You’re getting the fever.’

  ‘There is a diamond,’ insisted Barney. ‘It weighs more than 350 carats, and I’ll bet money that it’s somewhere in this house.’

  ‘Do you want to reveal the identity of your informant?’ asked Joel, raising an eyebrow.

  Barney glanced towards Sara. He had already been given enough trouble by Nareez over his continuing affection for Mooi Klip. If Joel provoked Sara’s suspicions even more by telling her that Mooi Klip had been round to the house this evening, it would take more than a day or two to persuade Sara that his affair was all over, and that Mooi Klip had returned to Klipdrift for good, to marry a farmer, and rear chickens. Without taking his eyes off Joel, he said quietly, ‘All right. Let’s forget about diamonds for the rest of the evening. Let’s talk about love instead.’

  ‘Love!’ sputtered Joel.

  ‘I think it’s a very good subject,’ enthused Sara. ‘Dryden said that love is the noblest frailty of the mind.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joel, ‘and Phineas Fletcher said that love is like linen. The more you change it, the sweeter it is.’

  Sara did not know what to reply to that; and Barney was too furious with Joel to say anything; so when Horace walked solemnly into the very centre of the drawing-room and rang a little hand-held gong for supper, both of them were more than ready to go through.

  ‘Can I take you in?’ Joel asked Sara, heaving himself to his feet, and offering her his uptilted elbow. Sara looked back at Barney, to see what he thought about it, but Barney simply made a face that meant ‘go ahead’.

  Neither Barney nor Sara could have guessed at the agony that Joel went through, just to walk the length of the hallway to the dining-room. He did not falter once, or cry out; but by the time they reached the dining-room door his face was deep grey, like a victim of angina, and he was crowned with sweat. When he took his place between them at the dining-table, he appeared to be unable to speak, and he shuddered from time to time so violently that he displaced his knives and forks.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Barney asked him, gravely.

  ‘What?’ said Joel.

  ‘I asked you if you were all right. You look like death.’

  Joel opened his linen napkin with fingers as clenched as claws. ‘Of course I’m all right. It’s the weather, that’s all. It gives me a little twinge, now and again.’

  ‘Well, as long as you’re sure,’ said Barney. ‘We don’t mind excusing you from the table, if you’d rather have your supper upstairs.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that interrupt your searching?’ asked Joel, acidly.

  ‘Joel,’ said Sara, in a gentle voice. ‘You really mustn’t take everything so much to heart.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Joel, with a jerky smile. ‘I forgot.’

  It was a light supper of liver pâté, toast, and roasted fowl. Horace crept solemnly around the table and poured them chilled Austrian hock, which had been a gift to Harold Feinberg from a diamond dealer in Vienna. Sara talked about Fanny Brewbaker, a débutante she had known in Durban, and how Fanny had attempted to elope with a chump called Watkins, and how she had finished up dangling from the branches of a sausage tree, instead of in Watkins’ arms.

  Joel forked his food listlessly from one side of his plate to the other, saying nothing at all, and eating scarcely anything. Barney looked at him once or twice expectantly, but he would not even raise his head. What Barney did not know was that the walk from the drawing-room to the dining-room had opened Joel’s wound, and that Joel was bleeding thickly into his left sock.

  Before the coffee, Joel stood up, dropped his napkin, and said, ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve had a bad day.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you care for a brandy before you go up?’ asked Sara. ‘I’m sure that you and Barney could settle all your differences over a drink.’

  Joel leaned against the table to support himself. ‘Thank you,’ he told her, ‘you’re very kind. But you know what brothers are. Arguing one minute; and the best of friends the next. I’m sure that Barney didn’t mean what he said.’

  ‘You look bad,’ said Barney, ‘you’d better go lie down.’

  ‘It’s nothing much,’ Joel told him. ‘Fatigue, I think, more than anything.’

  Horace brought him his cane, and he made his way slowly to the dining-room door. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t find your imaginary diamond,’ he said, without looking around. ‘It would have been wonderful if it had been true.’

  ‘Yes, wouldn’t it,’ said Barney, without any inflection in his voice at all.

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ said Joel, and painfully made his way upstairs.

  ‘He seems very ill,’ remarked Sara, when he had gone.

 
Barney peeled himself an orange. ‘I think it’s the morphia, and the whiskey. He’s going to kill himself unless he’s careful.’

  ‘He’s not a bad man, you know, underneath.’

  ‘I never said that he was.’

  ‘No, I know you didn’t,’ said Sara, ‘but you give him such a difficult time sometimes. He’s very much gentler than you, you know. If you ask me, he’d be better off as a painter, or perhaps a musician. He doesn’t have the head for all this diamond-digging and all this business. He thinks he ought to, just because you have. But he doesn’t, at all; and I wonder if that’s what makes him so unhappy.’

  Barney chewed orange, and carefully spat out the pips into his hand, practising that social legerdemain that he had seen in Capetown and Durban. ‘What makes Joel unhappy is his inability to face up to his own shortcomings. He lives in a world of utter fantasy – a world in which he thinks that he’s rich, and successful, and unfailingly attractive to women. The simple truth is that he’s not, and that he’s never done anything to make him that way. He’s not capable of it.’

  ‘But you still love him, don’t you?’ said Sara, reaching out her hand across the damask tablecloth, and touching Barney’s wrist. ‘I wouldn’t want you to fall out with him.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Barney told her. ‘I used to believe that he and I would always be together, and always love each other, no matter what. Now, with this diamond business –’

  ‘You really believe that there is a diamond, and that Joel has it?’

  Barney nodded.

  ‘Can I ask you how you found out?’

  Barney looked at Sara for a moment, and then reached for some grapes. ‘One of the blackies told me. That’s all.’

  ‘And you believe the word of a blackie against the word of your own brother?’

  Barney did not answer that question, but continued to pluck grapes from the stem which he held in his hand, and eat them as methodically as if he were saying a silent rhyme to himself – she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not.

  That night, when he climbed into bed, Sara was naked except for a small lace bodice, and she held out her arms for him almost immediately. He kissed her, and her mouth pressed as hungrily against his lips as if she were devouring a pomegranate. Her sharp-nailed fingers ran down the length of his spine, and around his bottom, and at last cupped his balls with threatening delicacy, caressing them most of the time with infinite care, but now and then squeezing them tightly, which made him gasp.