Camdeboo Nights Read Online Free

her head nodded and she drifted into slumber.
    The vehicle swerving onto gravel woke Helen, its wheels churning up small stones that knocked against the car’s body, sounding as if they would puncture the metal.
    “Are we–” Helen asked, rubbing her eyes.
    The landscape had changed yet again, with the Karoo’s typical flat-topped hills in evidence. The spear-shaped, blue-gray leaves of sisal lined the road but the rest of the terrain was uniformly dull, bleached by the sun.
    “You missed Graaff-Reinet. I saw the turn-off for our new school. Mom wanted to go look but we drove right through,” Damon said. She’d showed some interest in something, for a change, was what her brother really tried to say.
    Uncle Reinhardt gave no sign he’d heard the comment, which Damon had clearly intended as a barb. The man continued to wrestle with the car, driving too fast.
    Mother’s head bobbed and she didn’t seem to be aware of their surroundings. Helen’s butt burned and her legs cramped something awful from having sat still for so long. Every so often, the car juddered over a stretch of rippled road. The sound drowned out even the tenors, making speaking impossible.
    This was a dismal land.
    They’d crested a curvy mountain pass to reach a plateau covered in rocks, scrub and not much else. Ahead, a tall mountain peak rose to a sharp blue point without a stitch of civilization to be seen.
    Where was Nieu Bethesda? Could an entire village exist in the middle of nowhere?
    Helen slumped. The shadows were long and blue, and stretched over the narrow track. The CD skipped whenever the surface grew too furrowed and Helen grabbed for the panic handle time and again, while entertaining visions of the car overturning on a corner.
    Then the car pointed down and they plunged into a river valley. Helen would not have believed in its existence out in this bone-dry world.
    Green, and so many trees lining the river’s course, with a crust of folded sandstone cliffs cupping the verdant strip.
    Damon turned toward her and smiled. No doubt he’d expected worse, himself.
    A large monitor lizard, more than a meter long, dashed across their path when the road leveled out at the bottom. Uncle Reinhardt cursed, overcompensated and almost succeeded in running them off the road. Damon’s face, however, lit up. No doubt he’d be out hunting for new pets quite soon.
    Mother raised her head to look around. “Aah...we’re almost–” Then she lapsed into silence.
    The hamlet’s church steeple was the first they saw of Nieu Bethesda. Ancient pear trees lined the road, welcoming them–their shimmering leaves a deep green contrasting with the brown ridges.
    “When last were you here, Mom?” Damon asked.
    “I, uh... When I met...”
    Helen glared at her brother. “Don’t mention him, idiot!”
    Damon made some show of looking contrite. No one said anything.
    That meant she hadn’t been here for sixteen years. Mom’d been sixteen when she’d had Helen. For some reason this thought chilled her.
    Trees shaded the furrow-lined streets and most houses were modest, one-story structures with peaked tin roofs, covered verandas and a distinct farm-housey air. Many were in a state of disrepair and a number were clearly closed up. Holiday homes.
    The place seemed pretty enough, almost charming. People looked up when Uncle Reinhardt gunned the car down the main drag, still too fast and raising a great plume of pale dust behind the vehicle.
    When it seemed as if he was about to drive clean through, he took a sudden right, and pulled up in front of a double-story house, a structure that appeared almost too grand for the setting. Although it may once have been fancy, the home offered an air of neglect, its shuttered bay windows badly in need of paint. A huge, overgrown hedge and a veritable forest of weeping willows, whose branches reached the ground in places, obscured almost the entire building.
    Salix babylonica , Helen thought, remembering what she’d