Solitaire
Page 64
Joel closed his eyes, and swayed a little on his crutches. ‘I don’t think I can believe what I’m hearing,’ he said. ‘I’m going to count to ten, and when I’m finished, I want you to show me my diamond. Because if you don’t …’
‘If I don’t, what? You will strike me with your crutch?’
Joel opened his eyes again and stared at Frederick Goldin hauntedly. ‘I went through agony and exile for that diamond, Goldin. I’ve suffered for that diamond for years. Don’t think you’re going to be able to take it away from me, because you’re not.’
Goldin thought about that, and then smiled again. ‘There was never any diamond, Mr Blitz. Come on, you’re a sick man. You must have imagined it. You drink, don’t you? Maybe it was something you hallucinated.’
‘I’ll kill you,’ said Joel.
‘No, you won’t,’ Goldin told him. ‘You have no reason to.’
‘I have plenty of reason. A perfect emerald-cut diamond of 158·4 carats, that’s reason enough. The Natalia Star. It existed because I saw it. It shines like no other gemstone on the whole of this earth. It’s mine, Goldin, and if you don’t give it to me then I swear to you that you will die.’
‘You’re over-wrought,’ said Goldin. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down and drink a glass of water. Gilbert, would you bring Mr Blitz a glass of water?’
‘I want my diamond,’ repeated Joel.
Goldin shook his head. ‘There was never any diamond,’ he said. ‘It was a dream.’
Joel stood on his crutches in silence while one of the assistants brought him a chair and a glass of water. He ignored both of them; although the assistant remained where he was, holding out the glass, one hand on the back of the chair, solicitous and still. Joel stared at the snow as it fell on Antwerp, on Jezusstraat and Twaalfmaandenstraat and the Oude Koornmarkt, on the Gothic spire of the cathedral, on the statues of Rubens and Quinten Matsys, on the Vlaeykensgang and into the river. He felt as if time had suspended itself, as if nothing else was ever going to happen, because the key to his future had disappeared as briefly and as completely as a star winking out behind a distant rooftop, a star by which he had desperately hoped to steer himself, but which had proved to be a false star, a wandering star, and a star too bright.
Agnes said, ‘You know, my darling, I should have married you at the very first.’
Barney was bent over his desk, almost crouched over it, reading through a packet of letters that had arrived that morning from Kimberley. The light that strained into the drawing-room was autumnal and brown, and yet at four o’clock it seemed too early to call the servants to light the lamps.
‘Hmh?’ he said, as he pencilled a note into the margin of one letter. Then, looking up, he said, ‘Well … that’s a strange thing to tell me.’
Agnes smiled at him. She had been sitting contentedly for most of the afternoon in the small blue crinoline chair by the fireplace, tatting. The folds of her smock and her overdress revealed that she was heavily pregnant, and her face had that roundness and that light moustache of fine blonde hair that betrayed a woman whose body is enriching itself for that final moment of birth. Their second child was expected in ten days, perhaps sooner.
Barney put down his letter and stood up. It was five years since Joel had lost the Natalia Star to Frederick Goldin, five years and four months, and during that time Barney had worked more furiously than ever. Agnes thought he looked old, and very tired, but there was nothing she could do to woo him away from his desk and his diamonds. She tried to accept his work in the same spirit that she might have accepted the constant presence in their home of a crippled uncle: with patience, and endurance, and as much charm as she could. After all, Barney was very thoughtful, and very loving to her, and he adored their first child, David, as if he were a cherub.
‘I don’t give you much of a life, do I?’ asked Barney. He touched the curls of hair that strayed over her ears. ‘I’m surprised that you haven’t asked me why I married you at all; not why I didn’t marry you earlier.’
‘You have to do what’s right for you,’ said Agnes.
Barney leaned forward and kissed her, first on the hairline, and then on the forehead, and then on the lips. The sound of their lips parting, in the stillness of that afternoon room, sounded like a mayfly falling on a still pool somewhere.
‘Other married people see even less of each other,’ said Agnes. ‘I think we should just be happy for what we have.’
Barney looked at her for a while, and then kissed her once more to release himself from her loving but unwavering gaze. He went to the window behind his desk and stared out at the leaf-cluttered garden. They had been in London for three weeks now and already it was beginning to depress him. The heavy skies, the whirling leaves, the grey-shouldered buildings. London was a city of weight and law and majesty, but at the same time it was one of the most melancholy cities on God’s earth. To be sad in New York could be maddening, maniacal, or even elegaic. But to be sad in London was to feel the shackles of history closing around one’s ankles, shackles that one had to drag around from Regent Street to Hatton Garden, from Hatton Garden to Barnes, like the chains which Marley’s ghost had forged for himself in A Christmas Carol.
Barney knew that he had very little to feel sad about. He had lost Joel, of course; and he had lost Sara. He had lost Mooi Klip, and he had lost the Natalia Star. But in April 1882, only three months after Joel had been tricked out of his diamond by Frederick Goldin, he and Agnes had been married, drawn together again by the same feelings that had first attracted them. She was fair-haired, and pretty, and coquettish, and for Barney she had all the temptingly unreliable qualities that so many Jewish girls lacked. He, to her, had been individualistic, even odd, even obsessed. But he was handsome, gentle, and he could touch her sensitivities in a way that no other man had been able to before. Perhaps it was the sense of fate that he carried around with him, of great events, even of doom, that attracted her. She always suspected that one day he would kill himself, and that he would never tell her why. There was a side of his mind that was always concealed from her – sometimes under the lock-and-key of direct refusal, at other times hidden beneath the dusty drapery of evasiveness and silence.
They loved each other, certainly, although it was impossible for either of them to tell quite how much. Not as much as they might have done if they had married when they first met. There had been too many painful encounters with too many other people since then. Not as much as they might have done if the Natalia Star had never been discovered, and if it hadn’t burned its image into Barney’s consciousness like the sun on his unprotected eyes.
They had married in Capetown in April 1882, first at the synagogue and then at the Anglican church. It had showered that day, and the quicksilver puddles had trapped the petals that their guests had thrown, and pasted them on to the wheels of their carriage. They had spent their honeymoon in Paarl, in a quiet and private strooidak house with an enclosed courtyard, and for the first two weeks they had talked and kissed and made love like two delirious young lovers. Barney could still remember the feeling of those warm afternoons on the old Dutch bed, under the thatched roof, with the windows open on to the flowering garden, and the distant clouds lazing their way across the mountains. He could remember the clock ticking in the corridor, the only sound in the silence after they had made love, and he could remember thinking that things could never be the way they were again.
The diamond business was too demanding, and Barney wanted it to be too demanding. To reflect was to reflect on Joel, and the Natalia Star, and the dark and mesmerizing woman for whom the Natalia Star had been named. During the last days of their honeymoon, Barney began to have nightmares about his mother, about blood, and knives, and the old days on Clinton Street.
Once Barney and Agnes had returned to Vogel Vlei, Barney had worked harder than ever before. He would often rise before dawn, and have to bend over the washbasin and retch because his stomach was nauseous from lack of sleep. Most nights
, he would return well after dark, too tired to do anything but eat a frugal supper of bread and stew, and then take a bath, and collapse into bed. Agnes had lain next to him, listening to him breathing, listening to him stirring and murmuring as nightmares raced through his brain, and she had often felt that she might spontaneously break down and cry out of frustrated passion.
There was a time, at a dinner party in Capetown, when Agnes had caught the eye of a handsome and straightbacked young British ordnance officer. They had danced twice, and at the end of the second dance, the officer had asked her if he could meet her again. She had been tempted, God knows, but she had refused, and kissed him once on the cheek as a consolation.
Agnes’s married life had improved, however, after the birth of their first child, David, in 1884. Not long afterwards, Cecil Rhodes had introduced to Barney the son of an old schoolfriend of his, a smart and personable young man called Lance Pollock. Despite his public-school drawl, and his liking for loud cricket blazers and straw boaters and a monocle, Pollock was an astute and extremely hard young businessman, and he took over many of Barney’s administrative chores and paperwork – apart from supervising at the mine. He was very harsh with the blacks. When he visited the mine, he always took a George Taylor riding-crop with him, and he never hesitated to use it. Barney always said that he would not trust Pollock with a single point; but Pollock was glib, and quick, and mercilessly efficient, and when Barney found that Pollock’s management of the mine enabled him to spend whole days with Agnes and their tawny-haired baby boy, and even to take his first vacation, he began to rely on him more and more.
By the fall of 1887, Barney’s accountants informed him politely that he was one of the wealthiest men in the British Empire. Together, he and Agnes had bought this huge country house in Barnes, along by the Thames; and another house on Fifth Avenue, in New York, cater-corner from Mrs Astor’s house at Number 350. The demands of the diamond business took Mr and Mrs Blitz away from Vogel Vlei more and more often; until the popular name for it at Kimberley became ‘the Ghost House’.
With his riches, came fame. Barney and Agnes Blitz were invited to all of the best parties, and were photographed with Vanderbilts and Huntingtons and even at Mount McGregor, with the dying President Grant. Agnes dressed in silks and velvets and lace, and for their third wedding anniversary Barney gave her a 120-carat diamond necklace. They financed one of New York’s most memorable productions of La Traviata, with Gisella Fini. They met the Queen of England, and presented her with a Kimberley diamond cut as a teardrop, a silent crystalline memorial to her grief for Albert. They sailed from America to Europe and back again six times, and each of their sailings was noted in the London Times and in The New York Times. Some of their more lavish weekend parties in Barnes were described, in breathless detail, in the popular magazines bought by housemaids and governesses.
Agnes adored the parties and the riches and the unceasing attention she received. She was slightly sensitive about Barney’s Jewishness; but he was never maudlin about his upbringing, and he never once took her back to see Clinton Street. He never went back himself. Clinton Street was the bottomless treacherous pool where his nightmare dwelt. It was a grave, rather than a memory. And besides that, it reminded him too much of Joel.
Agnes said, ‘Would you like some tea now? Or would you rather wait?’
‘We could have it now,’ said Barney. ‘These letters are giving me a headache.’
Agnes went across to the bell-pull to ring for the maid, but before she could do so, the door opened and their footman Edwards appeared. ‘There’s a gentleman outside to see you, sir. Mr Cecil Rhodes.’
‘Rhodes? Here?’ asked Barney, in surprise.
Agnes glanced at him quickly; as if to say, what’s wrong? But Barney said, ‘Show him in. Please. And tell Harriet to bring us tea.’
Rhodes strode confidently into the drawing-room. He was looking browner and plumper than before, and his grey Savile Row suit seemed to be too tight all around, especially across the front buttons, but he was in excellent humour, and he pumped Barney’s hand with enthusiasm.
‘Barney, my dear chap! And Agnes! How good to see you! I’m so sorry I descended without an invitation, but I’m only in London for two or three days, and time presseth. I hope I’m not interrupting anything crucial?’
‘I’m just trying to catch up with my correspondence,’ said Barney. ‘I’ve always been a terrible letter-writer.’
‘Well,’ said Rhodes, drawing back the front of his coat and thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers, ‘the reason I’m here is to save both of us a great deal of letter-writing. The fact is that I’ve put in a bid for the French Company, and if all goes well we’re going to be neighbours in the Big Hole.’
Barney looked at Rhodes cautiously, but said nothing. Up until now, he had been quite content to share the Big Hole with the French Company simply because it would have cost him well over a million to buy them up, and because he had felt sure that they were far too expensive for anyone else to take over. The French Company had been peaceful and non-acquisitive, but if Rhodes took them over, Barney knew that it would only be a matter of months before Rhodes began to put pressure on him, too. For Rhodes, only complete control of South Africa’s diamond industry would ever be enough. He had demonstrated that by the way he had voraciously acquired the whole of the De Beers mine, and he never stopped talking about a diamond monopoly to control prices of precious stones throughout the world.
Barney however, was emotionally tired. He had no dreams left, except to watch his children grow up happily. He had achieved wealth and success beyond anything he ever could have imagined in Clinton Street; and in doing so, he had lost everything that had ever fired his heart. With Mooi Klip, he had briefly experienced the vividness and strangeness of unconditional love. With Joel, he had just as briefly experienced unconditional hatred. With Sara, he had felt pride, humiliation, frustration, inadequacy and loss. He did not believe that he would ever feel emotions as turbulent as these again.
Nor did he believe that, for all the digging at the Big Hole, he would ever own another Natalia Star.
Rhodes stood with his hands in his pockets, his head slightly inclined to one side, waiting for Barney to say something. Agnes said, ‘Would you like some tea, Cecil? I’ve just asked for some.’
‘Well, yes. Capital,’ said Rhodes. ‘Although I’m afraid I’ve been overeating lately. Do you mind if I sit down?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Barney. ‘Go ahead.’
‘The fact is,’ Rhodes went on, as if he had been interrupted in the flow of a long financial monologue, ‘the fact is that N. M. Rothschild’s have put up a million, and that I myself have put up £400,000; and that the French Company seem more than interested. Well, you know as well as I do that they’re losing interest in the diamond market. They don’t have sufficient influence to be able to control it, the way you and I can. They’re bound to sell, sooner or later.’
Barney went to the window again. A black and white cat was walking along the back wall of the garden. He said, ‘It looks like rain again. It does nothing but rain here. I feel as if I’m drowning, sometimes.’
‘You ought to come back to Kimberley,’ said Rhodes.
‘What for?’ asked Barney. ‘To be sacrificed on the altar of British imperialism?’
Rhodes laughed, and turned to Agnes. ‘He will rib me, you know. He’s always been a ribber.’
Barney attempted a smile. ‘Whatever you bid for the French Company,’ he said, ‘I’ll outbid you. I can promise you that.’
‘I’m surprised,’ said Rhodes. His voice abruptly lost its humour. ‘I thought you’d be rather bucked. After all, you and I, we’ve been in it right from the beginning, haven’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Barney, ‘and that’s why I know you so well. And that’s why, whatever you bid for the French Company, I’ll outbid you.’
‘You can’t bid more than two million,’ said Rhodes, suspiciously.
The maid, Harriet, a pale girl with a face that always reminded Barney in its indistinctness of someone who had inadvertently moved during the taking of a daguerreotype portrait, brought in currant scones and Darjeeling tea. The steam rose in the afternoon light like the hair of a drowning woman. Rhodes smiled, and cuddled his stomach, and took two scones, which he spread with butter and greengage jam.
Eventually, Rhodes said, ‘You can go on bidding ad infinitum, old chap, but we shall have it in the end.’
‘You think so?’ asked Barney.
‘Sure of it,’ Rhodes nodded. ‘Absolutely sure of it.’
Barney stared at the small cluster of bubbles that circled in the centre of his cup of tea. ‘It seems to me that you’ve come here with a proposition,’ he said. ‘You seem to have that air about you.’
‘Well, that’s true,’ said Rhodes. He glanced at Agnes, and gave her a smile that was intended to be winning. Agnes patted the back of her upswept hair, and nervously looked towards Barney.
Barney said dryly, ‘You’d better tell me what it is.’
‘Barney,’ Agnes protested. ‘It’s tea-time.’
‘Cecil didn’t come here to eat scones and drink tea,’ said Barney. ‘He came to talk business, and I think we’d better know what it is.’
‘It’s very simple,’ said Rhodes. ‘My suggestion is that you allow me to bid for the French company at my original price of £1,400,000, which I am quite confident they will accept. I will then immediately resell the French Company to you for just £300,000, plus a one-fifth share of Blitz Brothers.’