Solitaire

by Graham Masterton

  ‘My dear friend,’ wheezed Harold, ‘when you have lived in proximity to diamonds for as long as I have, you get to know that they are very dangerous stones to be near; and the nearer you are to them, the more dangerous it is. A stone like the Natalia Star has around it a circle of influence, if you like, and as soon as you step into this circle you are at risk. You remember you told me that you felt the Natalia Star was evidence of God’s existence? Well, not everybody feels the same way about diamonds as you do. Not many people are so spiritual about them. But everybody invests them with equally extraordinary importance. And for something that is as important as the physical evidence of the power of God, people will kill.’

  Barney handed Harold his brandy, and murmured, ‘Mazel tov,’ under his breath. Harold sipped a little, and then put his glass down, and said, ‘The question is, if two of the people who stole the Natalia Star are now dead, what has happened to the others? We know about Nareez, of course, but where are Joel and Hunt?’

  ‘Most important of all,’ said Barney, ‘where is the diamond?’

  ‘Well – there are several possibilities,’ Harold told him. ‘If Sara was murdered by Zulus, then the diamond could have been taken by the natives and given to Cetewayo.’

  ‘That sounds a bit far-fetched,’ Barney remarked.

  ‘Maybe it does, but the history of large diamonds is always far-fetched. I’m more inclined to think that Joel and Hunt still have the stone, but if Sara was carrying it, and if it has gone to Cetewayo, then we may not be so unlucky after all. I heard from the post office this morning that the Zulu Empire may not last very much longer. The British forces surround Ulundi on three sides, and so the diamond might soon be recovered. We ought to write to Lord Chelmsford’s chiefs of staff, and put in a claim, in case the British Army find it in Ulundi.’

  ‘Well,’ said Barney, ‘if you really think it’s worthwhile.’

  ‘Of course it’s worthwhile. We’re talking a million pounds. Even more, if we can say that the diamond once belonged to Cetewayo. We shouldn’t ignore any possibility, no matter how unlikely it seems.’

  Barney was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at Harold, and said, ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t really listening.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Harold told him. ‘You’ve had a bad shock, unpleasant news. Perhaps it’s better if I go.’

  ‘I’d rather you stayed,’ said Barney. ‘I want to settle this Standard Diamond Company purchase.’

  ‘Let’s leave it for today,’ said Harold. ‘The Big Hole will still be there tomorrow morning.’

  ‘No, we’ll settle it now. I might have lost my wife, and my brother may be missing, but I’ve still got my business. How much do you think they’ll take for 170 and 160?’

  ‘Barney …’ protested Harold, spreading his hands wide.

  ‘Don’t mother me, Harold,’ snapped Barney. ‘I’ve been through just about enough.’

  ‘All right, you want to finish the Standard Diamond Company business, then we’ll finish the Standard Diamond Company business. And no mothering. I suggest you try to pay them £27,500 each, for 170 and 169, and £20,000 for 168.’

  ‘That’s less than we paid Stewart.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m trying to save you money.’

  Barney walked across to the fireplace with his hands in his dressing-gown pockets. ‘You know something, Harold?’ he said. ‘I thought I had everything, with Sara, and the diamond, and this house. I thought that I’d almost made it. Now, it’s all gone, except the house, and what’s the use of a house with nobody in it but yourself? And you know something, for all of the struggle, for all of the arguments, none of it really meant anything.’

  Harold took his pocket-watch out of his vest pocket and went through an exaggerated performance of winding it and holding it up to his ear.

  Barney said, ‘You’d rather listen to your watch ticking, than me complaining about my unfortunate fate?’

  ‘I’d rather not tell you what I think, that’s all.’

  ‘So tell me.’

  Harold turned around in his chair. ‘You really want to know?’

  Barney looked back at him, just as sharply, and then looked away. ‘Not really. I know it already. I should have tried harder with Natalia. I should have been less forgiving to Joel. I should have realised that only God blesses unions, not English society.’

  Harold nodded, his double-chins going in and out like an accordion.

  ‘But damn it, Harold,’ said Barney, ‘it’s bad enough being Jewish. It’s bad enough being an outsider because of your race and your religion, without marooning yourself twenty miles out from the rest of the human race because you’ve married a schwarzeh!’

  ‘You still think about her, don’t you?’ asked Harold. ‘After all these years, you still think about her.’

  Barney turned his back to Harold and rested his head against the mantelshelf. ‘She’s got my only son,’ he said.

  ‘But more than that,’ put in Harold, gently.

  ‘Yes,’ said Barney. ‘More than that, I still love her.’

  He lifted his head and looked at himself in the looking-glass above the fireplace. His short and unhappy marriage to Sara had aged him. There were three or four grey hairs around his ears, and his eyes had a dullness about them which only somebody else who had been through the same kind of loveless struggle would recognise. He thought of Sara and he felt like crying for her, although he found it impossible to squeeze out any tears. He hoped, desperately, that she had not suffered too horribly. And he hoped too, that wherever she was, she would be able to forgive him for being the wrong man at the wrong time, trespassing in a society for which only his diamond mines had given him any right of entry at all: not his class, or his race, or even his ambitions.

  Harold held out his glass. ‘Give me some more brandy,’ he demanded. ‘And have another one yourself. You should drink. It’s sad, but you’re a free man again. Did you think of that?’

  A week later, Cecil Rhodes came around to the house and brought Barney a bottle of single malt whiskey and a letter of condolence edged with black. He had put on weight, and his fair wavy hair had receded a little, but he was sunburned and healthy, and he was wearing a putty-coloured suit that was well-tailored to fit his rather broad-bottomed proportions. Barney was still in the habit of assessing people’s wealth and personality by the clothes they wore, and from Rhodes’s suit he gathered that he was doing very well these days, and that he was gaining confidence and skill.

  ‘I was frightfully upset to hear about Sara,’ said Rhodes, pacing around the library, and tugging out books now and again to inspect their bindings, and peer at their titles. ‘I say – you’ve got Appelbo’s Complete Gemology here – no wonder you’re so knowledgeable about gemstones. Oh – the pages aren’t cut.’

  ‘I’m, uh, having a memorial service soon,’ said Barney, taking the book from him, and pushing it back into its place. ‘I hope you’ll be able to find the time to come.’

  ‘Of course, my dear chap,’ said Rhodes. ‘Business isn’t quite so hectic just at the moment. Did you know that we now own more than fifty per cent of the De Beers mine? Next year, I believe that we’re going to set up our own company, the De Beers Diamond Mining Company Limited; at least that’s what Alfred Beit has in mind. In a year or two, the whole of the mine should be run as a monopoly, with all of the advantages that a monopoly can afford us.’

  Barney went back to his desk. ‘I suppose then you’ll start turning your avaricious eyes towards the Big Hole’.

  ‘Well,’ said Rhodes, ‘you have to admit that it’s in a bit of a jolly old shambles.’

  ‘We’re sorting it out,’ Barney told him. ‘When I first came here, there were 1600 separate claims. Now the whole mine is owned by twelve companies; with just one or two stubborn individuals clinging on around the reefs.’

  ‘Twelve are still far too many,’ Rhodes replied, shaking his head like a bullock trying to shake away a fly. ‘You’re down to six
hundred feet deep in places; with flooding, and collapses, and mudslides. You need to excavate the entire mine as one, under the auspices of one company.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Barney. ‘Well, I agree with you that the mine should be owned by one company. I think our opinions only differ about whose company that should be.’

  Rhodes picked up his hat. ‘Britain, one day, shall control the whole of Africa and her wealth. That was my avowed intention when I came here and it remains my avowed intention. However, let’s not talk diamonds any more. I have to go, and I want to tell you how cut up I was about your late wife.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Barney. ‘I appreciate your coming.’

  Just as Rhodes was about to leave, Horace knocked at the library door, and popped his head into the room. ‘Excuse me, Mr Two-Leg, sir.’

  ‘Mr Two-Leg?’ frowned Rhodes.

  Barney gave him a fleeting smile. ‘My brother has one leg. Or had.’

  ‘You mean he’s lost the other one as well?’

  ‘No. He’s gone missing, that’s all. We’re not at all sure of his whereabouts.’

  ‘My dear chap, I had no idea. What a dreadfully trying time you must be having.’

  Barney looked down at the papers on his desk, and said, ‘Yes,’ with as much patience as he could manage. Rhodes could see that he was outstaying his welcome, so he called, ‘Cheery-bye. I’ll see my own way out. Drop me a line when you’ve arranged the memorial service.’

  Barney gave him an absent-minded wave, and he left. Horace piped up, ‘It’s a lady for you, sir. Mrs Agnes Joy.’

  ‘Agnes? Is she alone?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Excepting her coachman, of course. He’s in the kitchen having a smoke, sir.’

  ‘Oh, he’s having a smoke, is he? He must have been pretty sure that his mistress was going to be staying.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Two-Leg,’ said Horace. ‘I wouldn’t presume.’

  ‘All right, Horace,’ Barney told him. ‘Show Mrs Joy through to the drawing-room.’

  Agnes was sitting on one of the small gilded French chairs when he came into the room, her chin proudly uptilted, her blonde curls tucked up under a severe but fashionable little hat. Because the weather was turning colder now, she wore a blue riding-coat, and buttoned-up boots, and in her hand she held a pair of pale blue gloves. She turned her head towards him as he came in, and smiled the kind of smile that makes an innocent man wonder what he’s done to deserve it, and a guilty man feel worried about what he might do next.

  ‘Agnes!’ said Barney, coming across the room and taking her hand. ‘This is the most happy surprise I’ve had for weeks.’

  ‘I’m sorry I took so long in coming,’ she said, her voice a little throatier than he remembered it. ‘But I didn’t hear about your wife until last week, and today was the first day that I was able to get away. Robert’s gone to Hopetown for a day or two, to talk to somebody about a job.’

  ‘Would you care for a sherry?’ asked Barney.

  ‘I’d adore one,’ she said. ‘A very sweet one, if you have any in stock. I don’t eat candies, but I do adore very sweet sherry.’

  Barney sat down opposite her. ‘How have you been?’ he asked her. ‘I’ve seen you around Kimberley from time to time. How’s Faith? And your family? You haven’t decided to have any children yet.’

  Agnes pouted. ‘Robert wants children, of course. All Australians do. There are so few Australians, compared with the size of Australia, that they believe they have an historical duty to increase their numbers as rapidly as possible. But the truth is that I had an infection when I was a little girl, a sort of scarlet-fever, I think; and that the doctor said then that it would be very unlikely that I would ever be able to bear children.’

  ‘And Robert doesn’t know?’

  ‘Why should I disillusion him, poor dear? He’s very handsome, you know, but he’s not particularly passionate; and if you ask me the only thing that ever arouses him is the thought of making me pregnant. So for my own sake it wouldn’t be very wise to tell him that he never will.’

  Horace came in, and Barney asked him to bring him another brandy, and a glass of oloroso for Agnes. ‘How’s Faith?’ he asked, trying to change the subject from the sexual shortcomings of Robert Joy to something a little more general.

  ‘Oh, she’s well, although she’s more old-maidish by the minute. She thinks I should have left Robert years ago. In fact, she thinks I was an absolute idiot for marrying him. She’s quite right, of course. Robert has no money at all, and he’s such a fool. Father’s grown tired of telling me that I would have been better off marrying you, for all that you’re Jewish. He calls you the “Chosen Chump” for some reason that I can’t really work out. “You should have told me to mind my own business and married the Chosen Chump,” he keeps telling me. “At least he owns half of Kimberley. That Robert of yours doesn’t own half a share in a lavatory seat.” Actually, do you know, I think Father’s going rather, you know, what do you call it, addled.’

  ‘I see,’ said Barney. ‘Well, maybe your father’s right. Maybe we should have married. But he didn’t exactly make it easy for us, did he? Or even possible.’

  ‘You can’t tell him that, not now. He has a most selective memory. He still doesn’t like Jews, of course. But in view of his own rather wobbly financial situation, and in view of who’s holding most of the purse-strings in the diamond business, he’s prepared to make exceptions. Do you know that he even acts for Yosel & Farber?’

  ‘Well, they’re pretty Jewish,’ smiled Barney.

  Agnes smiled back at him. Age and experience, if anything, had emphasised the fine Nordic shape of her face, and taken a touch of colour out of her eyes, so that they looked paler, and more translucent, like opals. She was prettier than Barney remembered her, probably because he had tried to persuade himself when Mr Knight had broken up their flowering relationship that she was not really so attractive after all; that she was just another watery English girl with nothing to recommend her but an accent that could splinter your best glassware.

  ‘I was surprised by your letter, though,’ said Agnes. ‘I don’t know whether you were just feeling upset with your wife at the time, or whether you’d seen me in Kimberley with Robert or somebody else and you thought about the life we might have had together …’

  Barney was staring at her with such a baffled expression that she trailed off. ‘The letter,’ she repeated. ‘The one you sent me two or three months ago. That was the whole reason I said I was such a long time in coming. I wasn’t sure if you meant it.’

  ‘You weren’t sure if I …’

  Agnes opened her small blue-eyed crocodile purse, rummaged around amongst the rouge and the rice-powder, and at last produced a crumpled letter written on Vogel Vlei note paper.

  ‘Read it to me,’ said Barney.

  ‘You don’t remember what you said?’

  ‘Just read it to me!’

  Agnes fussily closed her purse, straightened out the letter, and then read it out loud to Barney in a clipped, precise voice that was not at all suited to the flowery passion of the text. ‘My dearest darling Agnes, I am writing to tell you that my desire for you has still not waned, and that if you can ever find a way to come to see me again, to bring your lips closer to mine so that I may once more press their rosebud beauty with my own lips (she hesitated and stumbled over this part) then I shall be more than fulfilled! Let us forget the differences of our past … let us cast aside any thought that both of us have entered into vows with people whose company we sought because of loneliness, and because of confusion. Come to Vogel Vlei on the evening of 26 January, if you can. My wife will be away, and I am sure that you can find a believable excuse to make to your husband. Yours as always, Barney.’

  Barney held out his hand for the letter and Agnes gave it to him, her forehead peaked into a tiny frown. Barney only had to glance at it to recognise the handwriting as Joel’s; and it only took him a few ticks of the ormolu clock on the mantelshe
lf to realise why Joel had written it.

  All through his convalescence, Joel had been trying to play Sara off against Barney, to stir her discontentment into out-and-out dislike. When he had been crippled and bedbound alienating Sara had been the only means at Joel’s disposal of getting his revenge for the loss of the Natalia Star; and his only possible hope of winning the diamond back again. He had still legally owned fifty per cent of the diamond: perhaps he had thought that if he could persuade Sara to divorce Barney on the grounds of cruelty or unfaithfulness, he might also be able to convince Barney that to give Sara the other fifty per cent of the diamond in full settlement would be cheaper than having to assign her a large proportion of the earnings from his diamond mines. Then, Joel would have been left with nothing more difficult than the problem of cajoling her share of the stone out of Sara, and that probably would not have taken him too long. Perhaps he would have told her that the market price of large gemstones had drastically dropped, and offered her a tide in one of Blitz Brothers’ claims instead. Claim No. 176, perhaps, which was the smallest and the poorest of all of them.

  This letter to Agnes must have been part of his ploy. Joel had obviously hoped that Agnes would turn up on the doorstep of Vogel Vlei, dressed in her most provocative gown, on the night of Sara’s birthday celebrations, 26 January. One more nail in the coffin of a stillborn marriage.

  ‘I didn’t write this,’ said Barney, tearing the letter in half.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Agnes.

  ‘I said, I didn’t write it. I didn’t invite you here, not on 26 January nor any other day.’

  ‘But that’s why I came!’

  Barney reached out and took her hands. ‘I know. And I’m glad that you had the poise and the consideration not to come before you heard that Sara was dead. You’re much more of a lady than any of those gossipy stuck-up yentas at the Kimberley Club, with their social mornings and their ladies’ nights.’

  Agnes asked quietly, ‘If you didn’t write it, who did?’

  ‘Joel, my brother. It was a kind of a nasty joke.’