The Covenant (176 page)

Philip was at a loss for words. Stunned by the request, he finally said, weakly, “I can’t very well watch over her from Venloo.”

“I don’t mean that. You can never stop my mother from doing what she wants.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she’s going to fall afoul of the law. Everything she says and does strengthens the impression.”

“Then why are you leaving?”

“Because she insists. Says things here are bound to go to hell—Here she comes.”

Laura Saltwood was sixty-seven that day, tall, white-haired, thin as in her youth, and clear-eyed. She was quite content to see her family leaving “for a better climate,” as she phrased it, and she did not intend showing tears as they departed. She was somewhat disconcerted to meet Philip, for his unexpected presence made the departure one degree more grave than she had intended; however, she greeted him cordially and asked him to join them in the lounge to await the plane’s takeoff.

“I have these friends with me,” he apologized, and when he called them over she widened her conversation to include them, using Afrikaans when introductions were made. The situation was strained, for the Craig Saltwoods were embarrassed at leaving the country, while Frikkie and Jopie were obviously disgusted with them for doing so.

Now the plane was wheeled into position, a modified version of the standard 747, shortened so it could fly nonstop to London, since South African planes were not allowed to refuel anywhere in black Africa. An all-white flight crew took their places in a land that was eighty percent non-white, and after formal goodbyes another family left the country, its children never to return to the land which had nurtured them and which sorely needed whatever contributions they might have made.

Jopie said as the plane soared off, “The English—last to land, first to flee.” And Frikkie said, “A wise farmer weeds out his weak mealies.” They made no attempt to hide their bitterness.

They might have been even more upset had they chanced to see at a far edge of the airport an unscheduled Boeing to which a sequence of small automobiles reported during the space of about an hour. No announcements were made over the loudspeakers regarding this plane; no uniformed stewardesses flourished through the airport, heralding it. Quietly it filled with passengers, quietly it taxied to the far end of the runway, and without notice of any kind it took off, circled, and flew directly westward on a very long flight to South America. It contained one hundred and eighty businessmen and farmers, most of them Afrikaners, who were going with their wives to visit Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to investigate farmlands of the interior against the day when they might wish to quit South Africa
for a new frontier. Of these passengers, forty-three families would like Brazil so much that they would make arrangements to purchase vast
fincas
, holding them in reserve for the day when they might be needed. The others would make their decisions later. As for the secret plane, after an appropriate rest it would load up with Afrikaner and English doctors and fly them to Australia to register with that country’s medical association, so as to ensure a refuge … when the crunch came.

On May 30 Laura Saltwood appeared at the black school in the Transvaal to find that publicity regarding her visit had encouraged some thirty or forty black principals and school officials to drive substantial distances to hear her. They knew her to be a remarkable woman, a quiet worker in a score of worthy causes. She had the reputation for both good sense and fearlessness, and they knew she would not have come so far unless she had something pertinent to say.

Although she had written her speech in detail, suspecting that it might be the most important she would ever deliver, and perhaps the last, she did not refer to notes but spoke extemporaneously. She announced her subject as
Language
, one of the most mercurial topics in the world, and eased the apprehensions of the older conservatives by praising Afrikaans:

The more volatile younger teachers were disappointed by the conciliatory approach, and one history teacher whispered, “She could be the spokesman for the Afrikaner universities.” But then she launched into the heart of her message:

The principals applauded; the teachers cheered; the students went out and marched with banners. The police looked diligently for Mrs. Saltwood, but she had traveled by back routes to her home in Johannesburg; the next day she flew to Cape Town with a friend who served
with her on the board of the Black Sash. What was more important, they made arrangements to bowl together on the Lady Anne Barnard team.

On June 1 Laura Saltwood rose at seven, read from the little book of Shakespeare’s sonnets which she kept with her, and after a spare breakfast in her friend’s kitchen, dressed in her bowls uniform: white stockings, white shoes with pale blue trim, white dress with heavy braided piping, white sweater with the Lady Anne Barnard colors on the pocket, and a stiff white straw hat with Barnard streamers. A selected group of women, most of them Church of England, had proudly worn this uniform for the past eighty years, and now twelve of them journeyed by different ways to the bowling green in the park, where they were to meet the distinguished Ladies of the Castle. During much of South African history this team had enrolled titled members.

Most of the players were in position when Laura arrived; some were much older than she; most were in their fifties. They were a handsome group of women, suntanned, each in proper uniform, each keen on the game which they had played for decades. The Ladies of the Castle could be easily differentiated from Laura’s team: they wore brown shoes with very heavy rubber soles, and their hats had wide brims, down in front, up in back, with ribbons that hung neatly from the left side. It was obvious that they intended to win.

No one, either from the Barnards or the Castles, spoke to Mrs. Saltwood in any way other than their normal greeting on a June morning when the air was brisk and the sides of the playing field rimmed with beds of late-autumn flowers, but their tenseness indicated that this was not an ordinary day.

Laura was paired with the best bowler on the Barnards, Mrs. Grimsby, a stern-faced woman who intimidated her opponents by wearing on her dress a band of six medals she had won in international competitions. She was formidable, and shook Laura’s hand firmly when they met: “We’ll have at them, yes?”

“It’s our turn to win,” Laura said.

The teams bowled in sets of four, two opponents at one end of the rink facing two at the other. Today Laura would be bowling against Mrs. Phelps-Jones, who consistently beat her, but she felt that with Mrs. Grimsby at the other end, they just might pull off a surprise victory.

Laura won the right to send down the target bowl, the jack, which
she did with some skill, landing it almost exactly the right distance from the backstop, but a little too much to the right. Since other foursomes would be playing at the same time on adjoining rinks, it was customary to move the jack into the center of the lane, at the distance set, and when this was done, the game began.

Laura and Mrs. Phelps-Jones were each to bowl four balls, Laura’s marked with a small blue triangle inset into the wood, her opponent’s with a green circle. A small mat was spread to protect the grass where the bowlers would be standing throughout the game, and on it Laura took two firm steps, swinging her right arm at the same time and delivering a ball with a decided spin. She launched it far to the left of her target, but since it was not perfectly round and since she had been careful to start it on its largest axis, it gradually twisted itself to the right, ending up not too far from the jack.

Mrs. Phelps-Jones was not daunted. Taking over the mat, she swung her first bowl well to the right, watching with satisfaction as it cut a large parabola toward the left, ending closer to the jack than Laura’s. At the end of this first head, Mrs. Phelps-Jones scored one point, for her first ball rested closer than any that Laura could send down, but Laura escaped disaster because one of her bowls was better than her opponent’s second closest.

Now it was Mrs. Grimsby’s turn, and she was a terror. Sending her wood right-to-left, she seemed to have implanted a magnet in the jack, for it drew her wood to it, and at the end of that head she had scored a cheering three. The game continued close through the twenty-one heads, with Mrs. Grimsby scoring the points that Laura failed to make. It was a splendid competition, with all four ladies delighted by the closeness.

It was Mrs. Grimsby who first saw them. She had delivered a smashing wood, sharp right-to-left, that knocked away two of her opponent’s bowls, and when she looked up, they were standing off to one side, two men in dark suits watching the game, saying nothing.

Mrs. Grimsby’s opponent saw them next, then all the women on the far ends of the rinks. No one spoke, but gradually their changed expressions alerted the women, whose backs were to the men. Finally Mrs. Phelps-Jones said matter-of-factly, “Laura, I think they’ve come.”

Mrs. Saltwood did not look up. She was checking the position of the balls sent to their end by Mrs. Grimsby and her opponent, and she said, “I think Esther has two, do you agree?”

Mrs. Phelps-Jones bent over to inspect and said, “Two, right.”

The game continued, as the men intended it should, and although Laura did poorly, the remarkable bowling of Mrs. Grimsby enabled their side to win 25–21, but as Laura knelt to recover the bowls, she saw that Mrs. Phelps-Jones was weeping, and when she moved down the rink to congratulate Mrs. Grimsby, she found that she, too, was crying.

It was Mrs. Grimsby’s opponent who spoke: “Laura, you were the dearest woman in the teams. May I kiss you?”

Tears streaming down their faces, the women gave her their farewells, aware that they would probably never again compete with this fiery, wonderful woman. When they were finished, the two men moved forward, stood facing Mrs. Saltwood, and said quietly, “Laura Saltwood, you are banned.”

She sat in her house, alone. For the next five years she must never be seen in the presence of more than one other person. She could attend no public meeting of any kind, nor address any gathering of even three, nor publish anything, nor consult with anyone except her doctor, her dentist and her lawyer, but not even them in unison.

No mention of her could be made in the public press; no quotation could ever appear in print of anything she had ever done or said or written or thought. She could not receive money from abroad, or appear on radio or television. If she went into town, she must never appear with more than one other person, and if friends stopped to talk with her, she was obliged to turn them aside.

It was because she had anticipated this imprisonment that she had sent her son and his family out of the country, for as a banned woman she would not have been free to meet with them or to travel with them on vacations of any kind, and she did not want them to share such painful limitations.

When anyone visited her, she had to leave her door open so that police or even strangers could satisfy themselves that she was not conducting a meeting, and if more than one person came to her house, with spying neighbors knowing that they were there, she had to provide chairs for the extras so that they could sit outside and be seen as not participating in the visit.

Since she would never be told what charges had been brought against her, there was no way to defend herself against the banning
or clear herself once it had been imposed. Some eighty or ninety minor officials had the right to recommend to higher authorities the names of those they disliked, but the victims would never know who the accusers were or what had provoked them. In Laura’s case heavy emphasis was placed on the report from the secret operations maintained by the South African government in London: