The covenant - James A. Michener [614]
When she tried to decipher how he had been seduced into committing his mortal sinthe betrayal of his nation and his peersshe began to think of the role words play in life: Our family was so keen on word games. Wexton and I played them incessantly. I think I first came to suspect him when he cheated one day. Altered the meaning of a word in order to win. At Cambridge he altered the meanings of the great words and ended a traitor. Back in Salisbury, walking within the shadow of the cathedral, she thought: Integrity in words protects integrity in life. If the word is corrupted, everything that stems from it will be evil. And this made her ponder word usage in South Africa, and it was then that she made her decision.
Immediately after she deplaned at Johannesburg she telephoned her son: 'Yes, tonight. I want you and Susan and the children over here at once.' When they arrived she took her son aside and said bluntly, 'Craig, I thought you were wasting your talents when you took science at Oxford. Now I thank God you did.'
'What are you prating about?'
'Your salvation. I want you to cable Washington tonight. Tell them that you've accepted the NASA position. Go to America. And take your family with you... forever. But first you must visit Salisburymake arrangements for Timothy's college.'
'But why? You've always said you love it here.'
'I do, and that's why you must go.'
'To what purpose?'
'To get out of here. I'll put aside funds for Timothy's fees at Oriel, and Sir Martin can find him something in England when he graduates.'
Mrs. Saltwood asked her son to call in his wife and children, and when they were formally seated before her she said, cryptically, 'Very ugly things are going to happen in this country. They're beyond our controlbeyond the control of any sensible people. If there was a chance that you could modify them, I'd want you to stay. I will.'
'We can't leave you here, Mother,' Craig's wife said earnestly.
'I'm expendable. You're not. I've had my life, you haven'tand it would be crazy to try to spend it in this insane atmosphere.'
'What makes you so agitated?'
'I went to a performance of King Lear at Stonehenge. I heard majestic words. And I dare no longer turn my back.'
'Mother, you're not making sense.'
'All you need to know, Craig, is that after the first of June it will not be wise for any Saltwood to be living in South Africa.'
'What happens on the first of June?'
'I go bowling. I go bowling in Cape Town with the Lady Anne Barnard Club, and I want you to be safely home in Salisbury.'
She would say no more. She bought four tickets on South African Airways: 'They have the best planes, you know, and the best pilots, too.' And she spent many hours at the Johannesburg offices of the Black Sash, discussing events with the ladies who were endeavoring to alleviate the tragedy and hardship engendered by enforcement of apartheid. She also sent four urgent letters to Sir Martin Saltwood at Sentinels, explaining the necessity for sending Timothy to England and asking him to watch over the boy. Finally she wrote to the principal of a black high school in the Transvaal, assuring him that she would speak at his school, as requested. After that she spent her spare time with the sonnets of Shakespeare, until a chain of those unequaled lines echoed in her head, building an eclectic sonnet of their own:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I all alone beweep my outcast state Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.
At times the sheer beauty of the words overcame