The Covenant Part 79

'I would like nothing better,' Laura Saltwood said.

She had already battled, with little success, for the rights of black and Coloured ex-servicemen and was appalled by the injustices that were being perpetrated under the new laws promulgated by the Nationalists since their 1948 victory. When Craig explained how he had been excused and Heather thrown into jail, she was outraged.

'Clear up one thing, Craig. Is she a prost.i.tute?'

'h.e.l.l no! She didn't entice me, like the court said. I chased her.'

'You visited her home?'

'Had dinner with her parents. As I would with any girl I liked.' 'Isn't her father Simon Botha, who restores the old Cape Dutch houses?' 'He is.'

That was all Laura Saltwood needed. Convening the small group of women who had joined her in her efforts to protect the rights of ex-servicemen, she laid the facts before them, and they were disgusted, but when she suggested ventilating the story in the newspapers, a Mrs. van Rensburg asked her if she thought this prudent: 'Hasn't your son suffered enough publicity?'

'We Saltwoods have never worried much about that,' Laura said, and she hurried to Cape Town, where she poured out her anger to the Argus Argus and the and the Times. Times. She visited Heather's parents and told them to be of good courage, but she also advised them that if her fight to get this infamous sentence revoked was successful, Heather should leave the country. She visited Heather's parents and told them to be of good courage, but she also advised them that if her fight to get this infamous sentence revoked was successful, Heather should leave the country.

'And go where?' Deborah Botha asked sadly.

'Canada. There they behave like human beings.'

She also visited Heather in jail, ignoring the snide remarks the authorities threw at her when she sought permission. She found Heather to be the kind of young woman a mother hopes her son will meetattractive, strong and with a robust sense of humor. 'We'll get you out of here, Heather.'

'In three months,' the girl joked.

I mean out of the country. You must get leave.'

I like it here.'

'You have no future in South Africa. Elsewhere you could lead a normal life.'

'I lead a pretty normal one here.'

'In a prison cell? For loving a young man? Don't be a fool.'

Heather had only a week to ponder this advice. In that time Craig Saltwood returned to Oxford, and his mother sought out the one person she thought would listen to her, Detleef van Doorn, chairman of the Committee on Racial Affairs, architect of the new laws. He did listen to her, attentively, then patiently explained that white South Africa had to protect its racial purity against the hordes that were trying to destroy it: 'Heather Botha's sentence is appropriate to the grave damage she might have done if she gave birth to yet another Coloured child.'

'What about my son's crime?'

'She tempted him,' and he cited several instances from the Bible in which honest young Israelites were tempted by the daughters of Canaan, and when Mrs. Saltwood smiled indulgently, he reached in his desk and produced an English Bible, which contained many paper markers. Searching for the applicable one, he opened to Genesis 28:1, which he read in sonorous English: ' "Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan." ' Closing the Bible triumphantly, he stared at Mrs. Saltwood.

'He did not, so far as I know, intend taking Miss Botha as his wife.'

Van Doorn, like any proper puritan, was incensed by this flippancy, but after a moment's silence, he said quietly, 'Mrs. Saltwood, if you continue along the path you've chosen, you'll find yourself in great difficulty.'

'No,' she said evenly, 'I shall find myself raising merry h.e.l.l wherever I can about Heather Botha's disgraceful sentencing.' Laura was a resolute woman who feared nothing, who intended her closing years to be meaningful. The contributions of her family to this nation had not been minimal, and she did not propose surrendering her moral positions to the judgment of Afrikaner Nationalists, whom she considered excessively bigoted.

Van Doorn, looking at her determined face thrust forward toward his, could imagine that he was confronting Hilary Saltwood, that first and worst of the difficult clan. Whenever the trekboers tangled with that demented missionary, they had come away scarred, and Detleef suspected that in any open contest with Laura Saltwood, he would be scarred too.

'I'll talk to the proper authorities about commuting her sentence,' he said.

'As of today?'

'I can't speak for others.' Then he dropped his voice and pleaded with his difficult visitor: 'Could we keep this a secret between the two of us?'

'We certainly shall. Detleef, I knew you were a man of common sense.'

'No, I'm a poor Boer, madam, incapable of combating you bedonderde Saltwoods.'

Heather was set free, and six months later, on a visit to Cape Town, Laura found the young woman packing. 'I'm off to Canada,' the girl said happily, and she kissed Laura for having shown her how a free woman should behave.

She took up residence in the best of Canadian cities, Toronto, where her style and beauty attracted people of diverse qualities, including several young men captivated by her exotic appearance and spirited wit. Friends helped her locate a job as secretary to a firm with overseas connections, where her facility with languages proved an a.s.set.

In Toronto she was prized for those qualities which at home had made her a criminal: a saucy indifference to outworn custom and an infectious acceptance of people, whatever their station. She was free to contribute to Canadian life to the extent of her capabilities, but she never became pompous or pontifical. When well-meaning travelers tried to inform her about current happenings in South Africa, she smiled graciously and said, 'I no longer give a d.a.m.n what those poor sick people do to themselves down there.'

But she did care, for she never threw away a small green plastic ident.i.ty card which proved she had been a South African citizen. In red letters it also informed the world that she was coloured-kleurling. coloured-kleurling.

Heather Botha married a young Canadian lawyer, had three fine children and became a patron of the musical arts in Toronto. She kept the plastic card at the bottom of a drawer in her bedroom as a sober reminder of the prison from which she had escaped.

AT SCHOOL.

At Venloo there developed alongside the school founded after the Anglo-Boer War by Mr. Amberson, the rugby player, a girls' school with a notable reputation for producing excellent Afrikaans-speaking graduates who did well at university. It had a patriotic tradition of which its students and teachers were proud. Said the princ.i.p.al, Roelf Sterk, 'My grandfather started this school in a cattle shed back in 1913, when our people were in the years of their suffering. He had no money and his scholars had none, either, but he gathered girls from the neighborhood and told them, "We will not be able to build a free nation in which Afrikaners can live in dignity unless you future mothers master the skills practiced by the English. You must learn to figure and write and reason. You must study." I now tell you the same thing. We've won our rightful place in the government of this land, but to keep ahead of those English, we must study as never before.'

He was especially proud of the way in which two girls in Standard Two took his lectures to heart. Petra Albertyn, aged nine, and Minna van Valck, aged ten, were the kind of students teachers pray for. They were eager and attentive; they behaved themselves without being subdued; they did well in cla.s.ses requiring memory, but just as well in singing and drawing; and in whatever good thing was afoot, they could be depended upon to take the lead. In addition, as if G.o.d sometimes gave certain chosen persons too much, each child was unusually attractivePetra a handsome dark-haired girl, and Minna a striking blonde with cla.s.sic Dutch features.

It was arithmetic that started the trouble. Minna, being older than Petra, excelled in most branches of study, which in no way distressed the latter, who told her parents, 'I love Minna. She's so sweet and kind.' But in arithmetic little Petra had uncanny skill; she was really quite brilliant, and her teacher, a woman from Pretoria University who recognized brains when she viewed them in action, reported: 'This girl is a precious little genius.' Obviously, she received highest marks, well ahead of her friend Minna.

This did not disturb Minna, for she told her mother, 'I don't like numbers anyway, and I'm not very good at them.'

'But you allowed Petra to excel,' Mrs. van Valck complained with some irritation. 'Have you no pride?'

'I beat her in everything else!' Minna exclaimed, but her mother suspected that something might have gone amiss at the school, and she was determined to ascertain whether or not her brilliant daughter had been improperly treated. Accordingly, she marched to the school and demanded to see the princ.i.p.al.

Roelf Sterk was accustomed to meeting distraught parents; in fact, he rather liked it when they thought enough of their daughters' progress to interrogate him, but he was not prepared for the harshness with which Mrs. van Valck a.s.sailed him: 'I'm convinced that Minna must have done better than this Petra, whoever she is, because I myself corrected her exercise book every night.'

'You mean, you helped her?'

'I did not say that. I said that when her work was done I checked it to be sure she understood the problems. And she never had an incorrect solution.'

'That's why she received such a high mark,' the princ.i.p.al explained.

'But this Petra received a higher. My daughter was penalized . . .'

'Mrs. van Valck,' the princ.i.p.al explained patiently, 'in Petra Albertyn we have a near-genius in arithmetic. She's extraordinary. There's no way your daughter could equal her in this one field. Remember, Mrs. van Valck, Minna got highest in all her other subjects . . .'

Mrs. van Valck was still not satisfied and demanded to see who this superior child was, so Dr. Sterk consented, hoping in this way to defuse the mother's suspicions. Since Petra, like many of the scholars in this school, lived in a town many miles away, she stayed in a dormitory, which differentiated her from other children like Minna, who stayed at home, and this aroused Mrs. van Valck's suspicions: 'Who is she? Why does she come so far to school?'

Patiently Dr. Sterk explained that more than two-thirds of his best students came from considerable distances: 'It was the same in my grandfather's day. Most of those first scholars who earned this school its reputation, well, they came here by wagon in January and never returned home till June.'

The simplest way for Mrs. van Valck to see what was happening in the school was for her to peek in the door of the cla.s.sroom, but when she reached that spot from which this would have been possible, Dr. Sterk pushed open the door, interrupted the cla.s.s, and announced: 'This is Minna's mother.' The students rose and bowed, whereupon Dr. Sterk pointed to a girl in the first row, saying, 'And this is Minna's good friend, Petra Albertyn.'

Later, when he testified before the Race Cla.s.sification Board, he would recall: 'When Mrs. van Valck first saw Petra Albertyn her jaw dropped and she froze. I noticed it at the time but could think of no reason for this strange behavior.'

That morning in the cla.s.sroom she said nothing, just stared at Petra, then hastened from the school, going straight to the magistrate's court, where she swept past clerks, burst into his room, and dropped into a chair. 'Leopold,' she said, 'there's a Coloured girl in Minna's school.'

'Not likely,' her husband, the magistrate of Venloo, said.

'Leopold, I saw her. Not ten minutes ago. If that girl isn't a Hot-not, I'm not a Potgieter.' She used her maiden name, one of the most revered in Afrikaner history, as verification of her own pure lineage.

'Mother,' her husband said quietly, 'Dr. Sterk does not allow Coloureds into his school. The law forbids it. Parents have to show their white I.D. cards before any child is accepted. Sterk and all his teachers are most circ.u.mspect in such matters. Now you go'

'Leopold! This Coloured girl has become Minna's closest friend. Minna wanted to bring her to sleep in our home last week.'

'Are you still angry about the arithmetic grade? Forget this silly accusation, and let's go home.'

That night the Van Valcks interrogated Minna, who said, 'Well, she's darker than me. But she talks like me.'

'You mustn't say anything about this, Minna. This is an important secret, but tomorrow ask her about her parents. Where do they live? What do they do?'

So Minna became a spy, and after much interrogation, was able to report to her parents: 'Her family is all right. Her father is foreman in a garage. Her mother runs a store. She says that's where she learned to add so fast, in the store.'

This did not appease Mrs. van Valck, who arranged for her husband to visit the school so that he, too, could see the suspected child, and when he did, his jaw dropped and he would utter no further words inside the school, but when he joined his wife in their car he said, 'My G.o.d! That girl is Coloured.'

The Van Valcks stayed awake most of that night, trying to decide what decent course they must pursue. For a Coloured child to pa.s.s as white was immoral, illegal, and crucially dangerous to their daughter, since the two were not only thrown together, but had established bonds of friendship, if not downright love. A thing like this could ruin a white girl, could tarnish her for life if it became known in the community. And it was not only the Van Valck family that was endangered; any school had to be constantly protective of its reputation, and the easiest way to lose it would be for it to harbor children of the wrong color.

Toward morning the Van Valcks decided that they must place this difficult problem in the lap of Dr. Sterk, a man of demonstrated competence and a stout defender of Afrikanerdom. Indeed, many supposed that he must be the head of the the local Broederbond. So after Minna was safely in her cla.s.ses, they drove inconspicuously to the school and slipped in to the princ.i.p.al's office. 'Dr. Sterk,' Mrs. van Valck said sternly, 'we have reason to believe that Petra Albertyn is Coloured.'

He choked. 'Mevrou van Valck! That's a serious charge to make.'

'We're making it. That girl is not white.'

'Impossible.'

And then something happened that sent a chill down his spine. The two Van Valcks simply sat there, firm in their chairs, their fists clenched, staring at him. They said nothing, made no threats, just waited. Finally he coughed, then said, 'You really are serious about this.'

'We are,' Leopold van Valck said.

'You're charging Petra Albertyn with being Coloured?'

'We are.'

'You're aware of the grave consequences? To the girl? To her parents? To the school?'

'We are.'

'Let me consult with her teachers.'

'That's not necessary,' Mrs. van Valck snapped. 'You can tell by looking at her that she's trying to pa.s.s. And she's endangering our daughter.'

'I need time to consider this,' he said firmly. 'Now you return home and I'll visit you tonight, after I've spoken with my people.'

That night, at half past eight, he came to their door, accepted the coffee and biscuits they offered, and reported: 'Not one of our teachers ever suspected Petra of trying to pa.s.s. She's a splendid little girl'

'She's Coloured,' Mrs. van Valck said firmly.

'We find absolutely no evidence'

'Have you checked her family?'

'I do not know her family,' Dr. Sterk confessed. 'Their I.D. cards say they are white.'

'I shall visit them tomorrow,' Mrs. van Valck said. 'Can you give me their address?'

'They live at Blinkfontein.'

On Friday afternoon she drove forty-eight miles north of Venloo to a crossroads village with a single store, Albertyn Super Shop. Parking her car, she looked for the police, but there were none. She walked to the post office and asked to see the man in charge, whom she swore to silence: 'It's a most important matter, Meneer. Things are being said about those people across the road. Back in Venloo. Their child Petra is in school there.'

'What are you talking about, Mevrou?'

'What do you know of the Albertyns?' Shrugging one shoulder toward the store, she added, 'Over there . . . '

'They've lived here for' 'Where'd they come from?'

'They've always lived here.'

Receiving no help from the postmaster, she went to the store itself, in search, she said, of Trotter's jellies. The a.s.sistant, a man suspiciously dark, said he had none, and she asked, 'Will you have some later, Mr. Albertyn?' and he replied, 'I'm not Mr. Albertyn. He works at the garage. I just help here.'

'Could I see Mr. Albertyn? Or Mrs.?' 'You can see them both. They're out back.'

When she met Petra's parents they seemed as white as any Afrikaner, but she noticed something she found most ominous: in spite of the sun, Mrs. Albertyn had no freckles.

Back home she told her husband, 'As clear as the lines in the palm of your hand, that woman's Coloured.'

'How can you be sure?'

'No freckles.'

The Van Valcks returned to the school to present their hard evidence to Dr. Sterk, who laughed nervously and said, 'Really, I can't act upon freckles.'

His use of this word angered the Van Valcks, who rose to leave. 'My husband knows what to do,' Mrs. Van Valck said. 'The life of our daughter is endangered.'

'Now wait,' the princ.i.p.al said, inserting himself between them and the door. 'A public charge could hurt this school. It might even rebound against your daughter.'

'It's our daughter we're thinking of,' Mrs. van Valck said.

'Will you grant me two days? Please?'

'We'll grant you two months,' Leopold van Valck said generously. 'But only if you take this seriously.'

'I do. I do. I'm thinking of the great damage that might be done to the Albertyn girl if your charges are made public . . .' He tried vainly to find some good way to end this sentence, but none surfaced. 'And are found insubstantial,' he added.