Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  Joel honked like a wild goose with hilarity, and almost lost his balance, tipping a salt-cellar all over the tablecloth. ‘Sara has her husband summed up to a T, doesn’t she? Oh, Sara! Oh, God, my poor aching kishkas! She’ll kill me!’

  Barney stood up, and tossed down his crumpled napkin.

  ‘Not staying for the brandy?’ asked Sara, sharply.

  Barney shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. I’m going to be obliged to spend the rest of the evening in the library, finishing off some paperwork. We’re making a bid for those three Quadrant claims next week, and I still have all the surveys to go through, as well as Harold’s reports on their gem samples.’

  ‘It’s all right, Barney, bubeleh,’ grinned Joel. ‘I’m sure we can find some way of entertaining ourselves while you’re gone. How about some brandy, William, and a game of cards? Sara?’

  Sara was watching Barney through the dazzling flames of the silver candelabra, and there was an expression on her face which he had never seen before. He thought at first that she was smiling at him, smiling at the way she had teased him this evening, and he smiled back. But then, narrowing his eyes against the glare, he realised that she was looking at him with unfamiliarity, as if she could not quite decide who he was, and where she could remember him from. It was the expression of a woman who no longer feels any affection for her husband at all; a woman who looks at the man at the head of her table, and beside her in her bed, and sees only a stranger. Barney knew that their marriage was formal and remote these days, but until now he had not realised just how much of an outsider he had become in his own house. He looked at Joel, who was lifting his glass in a mocking toast to Hunt; and then he looked back at Sara, and all he could do was push his chair back under the table and walk out of the room.

  Once inside the library, with the doors closed behind him, he stood for a long time with his hand held to his mouth, thinking. He had been able to cope with Sara and Joel separately; when Joel had been irascible and alone, and Sara had been aloof and alone. But now they had formed a relationship from which he was being increasingly excluded, a relationship of shared dissatisfactions; of mutually-felt isolation and inadequacy, particularly in the face of Barney’s success. He had thought they looked like children, the other night, when he had seen them playing cards, and in a way they were behaving like children, too, keeping secrets from him, stopping in mid-conversation when he came into the room, exchanging glances and smiles. He did not think that they were in love. Love was not what they needed from each other. But he did believe that they were able to share their fears and their uncertainties with each other, far more intimately than they could with him.

  During the slow summer months of Joel’s recovery, while Barney had been digging and supervising out at the diamond claims for ten to twelve hours a day, and then coming back to eat a hurried supper before working three hours longer with Harold Feinberg, Sara and Joel had been playing whist together, either in Joel’s bedroom suite, when his leg was hurting him, or out on the patio, in the sparkling shade of the newly-planted cherry trees. Sometimes they had argued, and if Barney had been at home he had lifted his head from his paperwork in the library to hear Sara snapping at Joel with the accents of a cultured poodle, and he had smiled, and gone back to his surveys. But a man and a woman only argue with such persistence when they are trying to get closer to each other, trying to tease out the real sensitivities behind the prickly manners and the aggressive charades.

  On some evenings, sweating with heat and pain and frustration, Joel had talked to Sara about his boyhood on the Lower East Side, and about the way his papa had always favoured Barney, giving him rides on his shoulders and sitting him on his knee. He had told her about his mama, too, and how she had suffocated him not only with affection but with more and more responsibility, until he had felt that it was impossible for him to breathe. He told Sara about things that he had done and things that he had failed to. He told her secrets that he had never confessed to Barney. He told her what Meg his red-haired lady mistress had done for him, and why he had paid her so much money not to stop.

  Sara, in her turn, told Joel all about her stilted upbringing; about her erratic mother and her laconic father. She told him about a life that had always seemed elegant and attractive on the surface, but which had at last proved to be empty of meaning.

  And so both of them sat together in the vast, empty rooms of Vogel Vlei, one with a brother to whom he owed everything, including his life and his disfigurement; and the other with a husband who kept her in fine gowns and beautiful diamonds and endless discontentment.

  Barney turned up the wick of the oil-lamp, and went to the safe. He hesitated for a moment, but then he unlocked it, and took out the diamond. It lay in the darkness, the diamond, its light unlit; but when Barney laid it down on his desk, on a sheet of white paper, it sent out flares of brilliant iridescence all around it.

  ‘I’m going to name you,’ he said. ‘No gemstone as magnificent as you are should go without a name.’

  He picked the stone up, and clasped his fingers around it, as if he were holding a human heart. ‘I name you the Natalia Star.’

  It was more than five minutes before he put the diamond down again, and sat at his desk, and then he kept staring at it. He knew that he had just put his deepest and most painful feelings into words; but he did not want to think about it any more. His sense of loss was too complicated and too complete.

  He worked for a little over an hour, studying the Quadrant surveys and writing a long letter to Ascher & Mendel in Antwerp, asking them to send a representative to Capetown to discuss the cutting of the Natalia Star. On an impulse, he also wrote to Leah Ginzburg in New York, telling her that he was working hard, and that he was married ‘to a very charming English girl from Natal’. Somehow he felt that if he told Leah about his marriage, it would improve things. His life with Sara was not that difficult, was it? They still kissed. They still made love. They talked over breakfast. What more could there be to any marriage?

  He glanced at the diamond again, and remembered for one brilliant moment a night in the bungalow with Mooi Klip when she had whispered ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ over and over again.

  At last, he laid down his pen, lowered his lamp, and stretched. He was about to return the Natalia Star to the safe, when it occurred to him that it might be amusing to tantalise Hunt with it, and so he wrapped it up in its leather cloth and took it through to the drawing-room.

  Sara and Hunt and Joel had just finished a three-handed game of cards, and they were laughing over another of Hunt’s outrageous stories – this one about a new recruit to the colonial service who had been served up on his first morning in Africa a boiled ostrich egg, and told that it was frightfully bad form not to finish it. They all went quiet when Barney walked in, and Joel reached over to the bell-rope to call Horace to bring them some more brandy.

  ‘Have you finished, my dear?’ asked Sara. Her cheeks were flushed from drinking and laughing.

  Barney nodded. ‘Just about. I’ll have to get up early tomorrow and write two or three more letters before I go to the mine.’

  ‘You poor overworked darling. To think that all we can do is sit here and amuse ourselves while you have to go out and support us. But never mind, it’s Shabbes the day after tomorrow, and you’ll be able to put your feet up.’

  ‘You celebrate the Jewish sabbath out here in Kimberley?’ asked Hunt, lifting an eyebrow.

  ‘The sabbath is the sabbath whether you’re in Kimberley or Potter’s Bar,’ said Barney. ‘I didn’t use to observe it, when I first came here; but life is different now. I have time to remember my background, and my God.’

  ‘He usually has at least five minutes to say a few prayers in between the mine and the library,’ said Joel. ‘He can say shachris while he’s shaving; mincha in between mouthfuls of lunch; and mairev while he’s washing his teeth before he goes to bed. Then he’s just got time to say Shema while the kaffirs
reload the mechanical trommel with more blue ground; and his Silent Devotions he can recite whenever the whims break down.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so devotedly Orthodox,’ said Hunt.

  Barney sat down. ‘I’m not. I think I forgot about God altogether when I first came to the Cape. My religion didn’t seem to be enough to carry me through. But now I’m trying to get back to Him; and the only way I can do that is through prayer. Jews are great prayers, William. They believe that their whole life is a running conversation with the Lord. And why shouldn’t I pray, when I’ve seen such evidence that He really exists.’

  With that, Barney opened his hand, and held up the diamond. Joel, on the sofa, turned immediately away, as if Barney had slapped his face. But Hunt stood up, stunned, and stared at the stone as if it had materialised by some kind of magical trick.

  ‘My God,’ he said. ‘I had no idea.’

  Barney continued to hold it up, and Hunt approached it with his eyes wide. When he was close enough, he said, ‘May I?’ and picked it up carefully from Barney’s palm.

  ‘I have never seen anything like this in my life,’ Hunt said. hoarsely. ‘It makes me feel ridiculous. I mean – I can absolutely see why it has restored your faith in God. My dear chap.’

  ‘I should take a good look at it,’ said Joel. ‘You won’t see it again, ever. Old Shylock here is going to keep it locked up in his coffers until he dies, if you ask me.’

  Hunt held the stone up to the lamplight, and rainbows curved across his face. ‘It’s astonishing. I really don’t blame you for wanting to keep it. Look at those colours!’

  Sara said, ‘I keep telling Barney that it’s too beautiful for us to lock away; but he won’t listen, will you, my dear? I think the whole world should be able to admire it. But, oh no. Barney wants it for himself. He wants it in his safe, where it’s worth nothing at all.’

  ‘This stone has a destiny,’ said Barney, holding out his hand for Hunt to give it back to him. ‘I just want to make sure that it’s the right destiny.’

  Hunt turned the diamond around in his fingers one more time, and then dropped it back into Barney’s hand. ‘You can’t control destiny, old fellow. When you’re dead, which you will be one day, that stone will pursue its course through history according to greed, and finance, and politics, and human passion, and you won’t be able to do a damned thing about it. So what does it matter to you, its destiny? I’ll give you a million-three.’

  ‘I’m not selling,’ said Barney.

  ‘A million-four, and that’s how confident I am that my backers will like what they see.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time, William,’ said Joel, his eyes still turned away from the diamond. ‘Barney is never tempted by money, only by the chance of proving his ineffable superiority. We used to have a name for people like him back in New York, but I won’t repeat it here.’

  Hunt looked covetously at the diamond as Barney wrapped it up in its leather cloth again. ‘I’m staying in Kimberley for another day or two,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you think it over? A million-four, in gold and securities.’

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ Barney told him, quietly and firmly. ‘Now have some more brandy. Sara, do you know if Kitty made any more of those Dutch sugar cookies? Perhaps William would like a sugar cookie.’

  Hunt sat down again. ‘I just hope you realise what a difficult time Sir Bartle is going to give Blitz Brothers mining company after this. I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes moves in court to have your licences revoked.’

  ‘No,’ smiled Barney, ‘that wouldn’t surprise me, either.’

  Later that night, as they lay in bed, with the dim moonlight transfiguring their rooms into ice, Sara said, ‘Will you really not sell?’

  Barney had been dropping into sleep, and it took him a moment or two to understand that she had said something. ‘What?’ he asked her, blurrily.

  ‘The diamond. Will you really not sell it to Hunt?’

  ‘I’ve told you. I don’t want to sell it to anybody until it’s cut. That way, it will be worth even more.’

  ‘But we’re so short of money. And life is so tedious here. Don’t you understand how bored and unhappy I am?’

  ‘Sara,’ sighed Barney, ‘I don’t want to start that argument all over again. I’ve already written to Ascher & Mendel, the diamond-cutters in Antwerp. In six months or so, we should be able to send the diamond to Europe, and have it cut. Maybe we’ll take it to Belgium ourselves. Wouldn’t you like to do that?’

  ‘We could go anywhere we liked if we sold the diamond to Hunt. And Belgium’s such a dreary place anyway. Besides, there’s the whole question of patriotism. This is a British colony, and any really spectacular riches that are found here ought to go to the Queen, simply as a matter of courtesy. If you don’t sell the diamond to Hunt, and allow him to call it the Victoria Star – well, that’s a snub to the British throne.’

  Barney propped himself up on one elbow and punched his pillow back into shape. ‘For one thing, Sara, I’m an American, and I don’t feel the slightest obligation to the Queen. And for another thing, I don’t trust any of these colonial wheeler-dealers, nor their motives, nor their so-called “gold and securities.” ’

  ‘Oh, you’re so suspicious. Why on earth don’t you just sell the diamond and have done with it?’

  Barney did not answer, but wrestled himself into a more comfortable position in bed and closed his eyes. He had three letters to write to Quadrant’s lawyers in the morning, and if he was going to get them done, he would have to wake up at five o’clock. Digging at the mine started at six, and he wanted to be there early. His kaffirs were finally going to excavate their two newest claims down to the level of all the rest of the Blitz Brothers diggings; and, with luck, Barney would now have sufficient space to bring in a steam-shovel. That would speed up the mine’s rate of production more than ten times.

  He did not know that Sara lay next to him for the rest of the night without sleeping. Nor did he know when he left the bedroom in the morning, and leaned over the bed to kiss her forehead, that she was still awake. Most poignantly of all, though, he was completely unaware that he would never kiss her again.

  He was out at the mine with his foreman, eating a cheese pastry and drinking a mug of black tea, when he first realised that the key to his safe was missing from his key-ring. It was a grillingly hot afternoon, and when they sat down to eat their lunch at an old scratched kitchen table, with upended toolboxes for chairs, Barney took off his vest, and hung it on a nearby shovel handle.

  ‘I shouldn’t leave your keys in there,’ said the foreman. ‘We’ve got some light-fingered kaffirs these days. Jackdaws, I call ’em. They take anything as long as it shines.’

  Barney unfastened his key-chain from his buttonhole and dropped the keys on to the table. Then he sat down and opened up the paper bag that Kitty had given him after breakfast to take to the diggings. The foreman, a short squat Australian with forearms like sides of beef, was already munching his way through a doorstep sandwich of sausage and mustard, mostly mustard.

  ‘I saw Gentleman Jack late yesterday,’ said the foreman, with his mouth full. ‘He was sitting outside of Dodd’s Bar, on the boardwalk, and he was pissed out of his mind. You know that fancy grey suit of his? It had holes in the knees and holes in the elbows, and it was so darn filthy it stunk.’ He reached over and took a generous swallow of tawny-coloured tea, to wash his bread and sausage down. ‘I’m darned if I know why you never handed that nigger over to the Board, and had him hung.’

  ‘It wasn’t entirely his fault, that’s why,’ said Barney. ‘And besides, he won’t ever get work in the diamond fields again, not from anybody.’

  ‘Stafford Parker would have had him castrated.’

  ‘Maybe he would. But I’m not Stafford Parker.’

  He glanced down at his keys, and pushed them a little way across the table because the sun was being reflected by the oval brass name-tag and was getting into his eyes. The k
eys sprawled apart on the ring, and it was then that he saw the safe-key was missing. He set down his mug with a frown, and picked the keyring up, sorting through it key by key to make sure that he was not mistaken.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked the foreman.

  Barney jingled the keys in his hand. ‘I’m not sure. Listen, I have to go back to the house for a while. Will you make sure they don’t bring that side wall down when they start digging out the last of the debris? I don’t want half of Tennent’s claim collapsing into ours.’

  ‘Sure. Aren’t you going to finish your lunch?’

  ‘You have it, if you’re hungry. Now, where’s Michael?’

  He did not know what to think or what to feel as Michael drove him briskly back over the stony roadway to Vogel Vlei. He took his key-ring out again and again, and searched the pockets of his vest, but the safe key was indisputably gone. And not just lost, either. The key-ring was made out of sturdy steel and Barney practically broke a fingernail every time he tried to twist a key on or off it. The safe key had been taken deliberately, and since he wore the key-ring all day long, it must have been taken at night, when he was asleep.

  It could not have been Hunt, because Hunt did not know where he kept his keys at night, under his socks in the drawer of his bureau. It could not have been Joel, either, because Joel could only walk with crutches, and he could not have swung his way into Barney’s bedroom without waking him up, no matter how deep Barney had been sleeping.

  He did not want to think of the other alternative, but there was no way in which he could stop his mind from turning it over. He closed his eyes as the carriage jostled its way up the tree-lined driveway that led to Vogel Vlei, and all he could see were pictures of Sara. Sara smiling, Sara frowning, Sara sad. The large white house stood silent and dazzling in the heat of the afternoon, and after Michael had turned the horses in front of the main door, and applied the brake, there was no sound at all except for the distant pick-pick-pick of the kaffirs who were preparing the gardens.