The Diamond Hunter Read online

  ‘Well, I shall expect to see him this evening.’

  ‘I will tell him, sir.’

  ‘Right. Get back to your duties, then,’ he said, waving a dismissive hand. Reggie found the man’s dark stare unsettling: it seemed to look deeper into his being than he found comfortable. The Zulu dipped his head in a polite nod and disappeared back into the hovel.

  Reggie tugged uncomfortably at his starched collar before turning towards the street that would lead him back to the oasis of the club. He needed to think through his approach to Knight and that was best not done on an empty belly. There was roast chicken on the luncheon menu, he’d noticed, and suddenly he was ravenous.

  9

  Clementine looked between her two men, sensing a tension that hadn’t been there moments earlier when they had arrived back from Du Toit’s Pan with a happy air and fresh groceries following the sale of some diamonds.

  ‘Go through it again,’ James demanded.

  She didn’t know why her father needed this – even she could repeat what Joseph had clearly explained once they were both seated and he had ladled out the bean soup he’d had simmering on their tiny wood stove. He’d even warmed some of yesterday’s loaf, which he’d cooked in embers the Zulu way. She noted that Joseph didn’t so much as blink at her father’s bidding; she wished she could learn his patience. He repeated their visitor’s words.

  ‘He said to let you know that your wife’s brother is here. He is staying at the Kimberley Club and he plans to see you there this evening.’

  Clementine thought her father looked suddenly ill, which was sad because they had enjoyed such a happy day. He’d bought her a new dress because he said she deserved to look pretty like her mother; they’d bought Joseph a new shirt because the only one he had was tattered beyond repair. And they’d each had a glass bowl of ice-cream that to Clementine tasted like every birthday she could remember put together. Her father had tipped back his chin and laughed at that, his mouth filled with the creamy strawberry and vanilla treat. She had chosen chocolate as well as a scoop of the pale green mint flavour. As if that wasn’t enough, he father had called in to the new establishment by the pastry cook and confectioner Mr Thomas, which had newly opened in Du Toit’s Pan.

  They had chosen a box of decorated treats, including some rolled wafers enclosing a nutty paste and dipped in chocolate, and a tiny cake each that Clementine was sure she could consume in a single swallow but she would be sure to nibble on to make it last. Hers was so pretty, with dainty sugared flowers that Clementine wanted to learn how to make. The slices of treacle tart they’d bought would keep until tomorrow. As a final treat, she’d been allowed to choose one product in the grocer’s store to take back to Joseph and she’d chosen a tin of Lyle’s Golden Syrup. The deep ooze that shone glossy amber when she pulled a teaspoon of it out of the tin had entranced her. They’d brought a tin of it with them when they’d come to Africa and they still used that tin now for their coppers; her father shook it each afternoon before he went to the pub.

  The distinctive green tin with its odd image of a dead lion and bees swarming around it now sat untouched on the table. All the fun of their trip and the goodies they’d brought home had evaporated at the news that a man had come to visit her father.

  ‘Is he important to us?’ she asked in all innocence, while sipping her soup, trying to join the conversation.

  ‘He is your uncle,’ her father said in a tight voice. He’d sat back from the table as though he no longer had an appetite.

  ‘Drink your soup, Daddy. Joseph made it for us.’ That sounded like something her mother would say. She’d learned from her mother how to encourage him.

  ‘I’m angry now.’

  She could see that. ‘Why?’ she asked, even-toned.

  ‘Because, Clem, this man is here to make trouble for us.’

  ‘If he’s my uncle, then he’s family. Shouldn’t we be pleased to see him?’

  ‘He’s here for something. He’s hardly visiting.’

  Joseph shifted on his haunches. Clem knew it was his way of speaking without speaking.

  ‘What?’ her father demanded.

  She watched their friend lift a shoulder slightly in a shrug. ‘He might be here to visit his sister’s grave, Mr James.’

  ‘Mark my words, Joseph, he’s here to cause us pain of some sort. I won’t go to his rich man’s club, I tell you.’

  Clementine saw her father stand suddenly; it was an insult to Joseph’s meal.

  ‘I’m going to the pub.’ He dug in his trouser pocket and pulled out a fistful of money.

  Clementine gasped.

  ‘Here,’ he said, flinging it onto the table. Notes fluttered around like leaves, some falling to the floor.

  No one moved for a moment. Then her father grabbed a small pile of notes. ‘The rest is yours, Joseph, and you can keep some aside for food.’

  ‘That is too much, Mr James,’ Joseph said, shaking his head with disappointment.

  ‘It’s yours, I say. Put it away, hide it, spend it, I don’t care. You work harder than I do on any day and you’ve earned it. We got a very good return on our roughs and we’ve got plenty more to sell.’

  ‘Daddy, why is he here, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. He probably wants us to come back to England.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you want?’

  ‘I won’t be pushed around by the Grants. They’ve tried that before. They like to own and control. I won’t have it. I’m a proud man, Clem, and your mother loved me just how I was. Whatever he wants, whatever he’s selling, I don’t want it. We’ll go back to England, but it will be on my terms, darlin’, and not because your wealthy uncle clicks his fingers. We are going to be as rich as him. I’ll show them!’

  He left Clementine and Joseph in a shared astonishment at his hostility, their soup cooling before them.

  ‘Eat up,’ Joseph said, when the echo of the slamming tin door had faded.

  Clementine frowned. ‘Joseph, I can’t follow what Daddy is saying. He wants to go home, yet he’s worried this man has come to ask us to come home.’

  ‘I think grown-ups do not always think as clearly as children do, Miss Clementine.’

  ‘Why is Daddy so angry?’

  Joseph gave her one of his big shrugs. ‘Your father is angry in here, Miss Clementine,’ he said, placing a large hand over his heart. ‘He cannot forgive that your mother died and he was not able to save her.’

  ‘Who can’t he forgive?’

  ‘Himself.’

  Reggie whiled away the hours waiting for James Knight to present himself by finding his way to the local cemetery. The man in charge looked up a book and then asked Reggie to follow him. The man was respectful and polite but asked no questions. Perhaps the flowers that Reggie had ordered through the Kimberley Club’s contacts spoke enough about why he was here and hunting down the grave of a woman called Louisa Knight.

  ‘Her husband and their little girl visit most Sundays,’ he remarked to Reggie as they walked along the indistinct pathway.

  Reggie presumed this was the man’s attempt at conversation to prevent an otherwise awkward silence.

  ‘I am probably her only other family who will ever visit,’ he remarked. ‘Can I leave some money behind so I can rely on her grave being kept tidied and tended to each week with fresh flowers?’

  ‘You can, sir, but the family is careful to take care of the grave.’

  ‘Nevertheless, please make the arrangements and forward all necessary documentation to me at the Kimberley Club as soon as you can. I am only here for a few days.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ The man paused, then pointed. ‘Mrs Knight sleeps here, Mr Grant.’

  Reggie turned and looked to where the man gestured. He hadn’t expected to feel such a surge of sharp-edged emotion, and while he was able to blink away the tears that threatened, his throat closed instantly, like a knot around a rubber balloon, trapping air inside. His lungs felt tight. Sleeping. What a gener
ous way of describing his sister, who had left him so full of life and its promises, lying beneath several feet of earth and crawling creatures.

  After the man had departed, Reggie bent to lift out the dead wildflowers and put his bouquet of carnations and roses into the earthen jar. He touched the stone, glad to see Knight had at least done that much, although he’d failed to mention her loving family left behind in England. All that was carved into the stone was that she left behind her beloved James and cherished daughter, Clementine. Perhaps that was all the text his money could stretch to, but still he couldn’t find any forgiveness for Knight.

  ‘You are so missed, Louisa. Life has not been the same since you passed. I know you live on in Clementine, and I’ve come to fetch her home, Louisa. It’s what your mother wants, it’s what I want . . . I will make sure she is raised as you would wish for the child of a gentlewoman. She will want for nothing, I promise.’ He paused, taking a breath. ‘Give me a sign that this is your desire,’ he pleaded. Reggie believed in omens and he fancied himself a good reader of portents. He waited. Was the breeze stirring the grasses beyond the cemetery a message from the grave? He doubted it. He wasn’t quite so gullible. But as a single petal from one creamy rose fell to land on the grave, to Reggie it was as though Louisa had invisibly reached up from the depths with a ghostly finger to tap the flower and give him the permission he sought.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said fervently. ‘I will not leave Africa without her, no matter what it costs or takes from me. Rest peacefully now, my darling.’

  Reggie touched his hand to his lips and then placed those kissed fingers on the cool granite of the headstone once again. ‘Clementine will be in my care by tomorrow.’ It was an audacious graveside promise. Even Reggie was surprised by what had slipped out. It was as though his words were riding a wave that was all emotion: fierce and white-capped, he’d ride it all the way home.

  James Knight had not doffed his cap to the Kimberley Club. He knew its members were not the sort of men who clambered into pits and dug for a living. No, these were the men who used their existing wealth to generate more, and in this town that meant acquiring other people’s claims. There were educated men, like Mr Cecil Rhodes, and there were the rougher sort, like Barney Barnato, but they all made their extravagant fortunes selling diamonds to merchants in Europe. Was Reggie Grant now planning to become one of them, he wondered? Copying him! Living off the fat of the Grant empire wasn’t enough for the jumped-up half-brother. Now he had to come and lord it over his sister’s widower – rub that viciously rough salt into a gaping wound that simply wouldn’t close.

  James swallowed the dregs of his fourth pint and signalled to the barman for another chaser of whisky. They no longer gave him that perplexed look – the one that said, Haven’t you had enough, Knight? No, now they just poured so he could wallow deep in his sorrows.

  ‘Wouldn’t take much to blow you over these days, Jimmy,’ the barman observed. ‘You look like a walking skeleton, man. Get some food into you before you keel over and die.’

  James raised a dismissive hand and gave a sound of disgust. ‘I’m just fine, Mac. My life’s about to take a turn upwards,’ he slurred, voice getting louder.

  Men nearby laughed with expressions that said they’d heard it all before – from others and from him.

  James turned towards them, half standing, half falling off his barstool. ‘You got something to say, you fellows?’

  They waved his question away but he wasn’t about to be ignored. ‘You know nothing! But in the next few weeks you’ll know all about James Douglas Knight.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Why’s that, then?’ someone asked.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he slurred, staggering. ‘I’ll make the newspaper.’

  ‘Is that right?’ the barman said with a grin. ‘Go on, Jimmy, get yourself home. I’m not serving you any more. You’ve got a little girl to look after.’

  ‘Don’t you fucking tell me my business, Mac.’

  Mac looked surprised to hear James swear. He glanced over at a burly guy by the door, who was paid to keep the peace. While James Knight didn’t look as though he had enough strength in him to swing a punch, he sounded as though he was working up to picking a fight. The minder strode over and manhandled James outside to the street, his stubby finger in James’s face a sufficient threat. ‘Don’t come back tonight, Jimmy. Get yourself cleaned up and sober, and eat something, for Pete’s sake.’

  James responded with a stream of curses that won laughter from passers-by. The local minister unfortunately happened to be on the other side of the street and clearly felt obliged to check on one of his congregation.

  ‘Mr Knight?’

  ‘Minister,’ James said, obviously believing himself to be entirely in control and able to hold his head up straight.

  ‘Shall I accompany you home?’

  ‘I’m perfectly well,’ he ground out.

  ‘You don’t look well, Mr Knight?’

  ‘See you on Sunday, Minister,’ he said, lurching away.

  ‘But it is Sunday,’ the church man called to James’s back. ‘I didn’t see you this morning.’

  James was past caring about manners, about appearances, about what people thought of him.

  ‘We’re leaving tomorrow!’ he growled at the heavens, shaking a knobbled fist that looked more like a clenched claw.

  His awareness was dulled and he didn’t see the tall, dark-suited figure angling towards him until Reggie Grant’s sneering face was close enough for him to discern.

  ‘Don’t you dare ignore me, Knight.’

  ‘Get your hands off me,’ James slurred, pushing at the fingers that clutched his bunched shirtfront.

  Reggie let him go, but even through the liquor James felt the bastard son’s furious expression momentarily pinning him as effectively as if he’d closed a hand around his throat. James knew he was no longer that strong, wiry man who’d brought a young wife and child to the diamond fields. And the strength that his hard work as a digger had given him had evaporated when he’d turned to the bottle. Only in this heartbeat, as he witnessed his brother-in-law’s hatred and disgust, did he understood that all the hard work of recent times had been shouldered by Joseph. He had become an overseer, happy to give orders, unaware of how comfortable he’d clearly grown at watching another man do the strenuous toil, and utterly at ease in his mind that they should share the spoils. He’d obviously convinced himself that he was being fair by ensuring Joseph got his share, but it was not the right share. It was relatively tiny, and though Joseph might deny that he wanted more, James had become a useless burden.

  As if Reggie could hear this internal conversation, he joined it. ‘All you’ve ever done is take, James. And before you fuss and remind me you’ve not taken a penny from us, I’m not referring to money – not yet, anyway. But you took away something far more precious to the Grants: our women. Clementine is our heir. And by bringing my sister and niece to this hell, you took away their lives. At least in Australia my sister might have lived the life of a gentlewoman, but look what you did to her. You surely killed Louisa with your desperate and useless bid to make a name for yourself.’

  James wasn’t going to hear it. He shoved Reggie aside, and he knew the man only toppled away because he was taken by surprise. If Louisa’s brother had been ready for James, he’d hardly have shifted the tall man more than a step or two. Why weren’t there others around to help him? The wretched minister was not here when James really did need him. The street was empty and veiled in darkness, save the thin luminosity that spilled from the candlelight through the hut windows but could not reach them.

  He passed a group of African men seated around a small fire. They were singing a song in a language he didn’t know. It didn’t sound uplifting; it was a song of sorrow and matched his mood. He stumbled, lurched, wove his hideously drunken path past them. Not one even glanced up to notice him.

  James looked back. The action made him dizzy and nauseous. But he could see the sh
ape of Reggie following. Reggie was not so tall that people might comment but he appeared overwhelming to James in this state of mind and body. Reggie wasn’t even hurrying.

  So now James tried to hasten. In his mind, he was sure he was running. He didn’t want to head for home and Clementine – he wanted her nowhere near this uncle of hers until he could sober himself up and face Reggie feeling more in control. Instead he veered towards the Big Hole itself. Reggie wouldn’t know his way around but James felt confident, even in his hazy thoughts, that he could outmanoeuvre his brother-in-law in and around the pits. He could walk those narrow ways like a tightrope, while Reggie would find the maze too hard to navigate.

  He risked the nausea and glanced over his shoulder again. Reggie hadn’t gained on him, but he didn’t look at all bothered by the distance between them. He was advancing at a slow, steady pace that was perhaps meant to intimidate. James yelled back something unintelligible, although to him he was cursing the Grant family in perfectly understandable English. He tripped and fell over but somehow hauled himself back to his feet, pausing briefly to empty his belly. He vaguely imagined the contents spattering onto his boots, and it was a vision of Louisa looking disappointed that flashed through his mind. The vague sense of dampness at one knee, suggesting he’d broken the skin and was now bleeding, spurred him on. He staggered and was befuddled to see that there was no one at the Big Hole. He pulled at his pocket watch but couldn’t see the hands for the dark. How long had he been drinking?

  He swung around and Reggie was just twenty strides away, maybe. James took off – or so he thought. He loped in the opposite direction to the most densely crowded maze of structures. He had arrived into the darkest, most deserted area. And then he couldn’t go any further. James bent double and groaned up the rest of the liquid that had been sloshing around in his stomach. The whisky came back up; it hurt as if a cauldron of acid had spilled out of him. He was sure he wept, tears mixing with spittle as he gagged and cried long after his belly felt empty. The noxious smell enveloped him and for a while he lay staring at the black dome of the sky, its moon and stars hidden tonight beneath clouds. Much-needed rain was coming.