Camdeboo Nights (8 page)

In another time, another age, he would have waited in ambush. Now, all he could think of was to put as much distance between him and his own kind as possible. A long night of cat and mouse lay ahead in this small town.

Trystan was patient. He knew of many hiding places.

Chapter 10

All’s not Well

“God, that girl’s a loony,” Damon said when the silver Volvo pulled off. “You’re not seriously going to go with her, are you?”

“She’s kinda cool, I think. I haven’t decided if I’ll take her up on her offer,” Helen said. “If I change my mind, I can still meet her at the gate and tell her no.”

The shadows were already lengthening but the trees provided some relief from the late afternoon heat. Bars of sunlight slid through a haze of dust suspended in the air.

Helen and Damon hefted their bags and opened the gate. Deep within the house, Odin’s deep barks reverberated through the structure and the thump of paws–claws clicking on wooden floors–announced that the great gray beast lumbered toward the front door.

“Brace yourself,” Damon said, reaching for the door handle.

Already Odin whined and scrabbled at the barrier. Anabel had warned them that the dog was, well, enthusiastic in his greetings.

He accosted them with a fury of licking, his long tail thumping legs, furniture and walls in his frenzy.

“Some watchdog.” Helen laughed. “He’ll most like lick a burglar to death.”

“Ma! Anabel!” Damon called. “We’re home.”

Only the regular tick-ticking of the wall clock in the hall answered them with the hum of the fridge, farther down the passage. It seemed to her somehow wrong to enter without permission. This was not home yet, with its polished golden oak floors and the dusty, oval-framed faces of illustrious ancestors glaring at them from rows on the walls.

“We may as well go up then,” Helen said, with a shrug. “It’s not as if the old lady’s gonna eat us for first dropping off our things in our rooms.”

As much as Helen still had to get used to her new home, she had to admit she liked her room.

“No sticking up posters of rock stars!” Anabel had admonished on that first day. “That putty stuff will damage the wallpaper.”

Helen had only smiled. She doubted her grandmother knew the true worth of the wallpaper in many of the rooms in this house. The previous owner must either have been loaded or had had exquisite taste–she suspected both–for she recognized the intricate floral patterns from her studies.

“William Morris,” she’d said, tracing the gilt highlights. This might only be a reproduction but part of her hoped the paper was still the original, with its sinuous curves of golden lilies entwined with leaves and stems.

She thought, ruefully, of all her art books lying in storage, packed far away in boxes. Her current predicament couldn’t be helped.

Her mother sat on the back veranda, a blanket drawn over her knees, as if she already were an old person. She glanced up at Helen with tired eyes, bruised-looking bags beneath them. The first gray in her hair seemed more pronounced.

“Hey, sugarplum.”

“Mom. How are you?”

“So tired.”

Her eyes remained unfocused and she gazed out across the backyard where, at the far corner, next to the field where two gray donkeys grazed, Anabel scattered corn for the chickens.

“School’s all right,” Helen said, hoping to start a conversation.

“I miss him,” her mother said. “Mom won’t have me talk about him when she can hear and I’ve had no one else to talk to all week. I miss him so much and he doesn’t phone me.”

Her mother startled her by grabbing at Helen’s wrist, clutching so fiercely her ragged fingernails bit deep into flesh.

Helen’s initial reaction was to pull away but the sudden clarity–the need–in her mother’s wide green eyes made her hold back. She licked her lips, hopeful her mother would let go.

“Father hasn’t called at all?”

“No!” The word came out as a wail.

“Well, he’s an asshole, Mom. I shouldn’t have to say it, and you know it!” Her chest constricted and she marveled at how a perfectly adequate Friday afternoon–all circumstances considered–could so rapidly turn pear-shaped. She’d purposefully avoided contacting her father since that last time when Mom’d been taken up in hospital. The man could go to hell. He was no father to her.

“Mom!” Damon’s greeting almost caused Helen to sag in relief.

As sudden as a cloud dissipating in front of the sun, their mother’s expression shifted. “Damon! How was school?”

Her mother could perk up long enough to ask Damon about school?

She suppressed the stab of jealousy before her expression betrayed her. Damon couldn’t help it that he looked like their father.

Like a bird, their mother nattered, animated in her son’s presence, but could not stick to the topic. Fortunately the conversation did not last.

“You’re back,” Anabel said.

Helen started. She had not seen the woman return to the house.

Placing Anabel’s age was difficult. A tall, spare woman, she wore her long gray hair in two braids on either side of her face. The same mint-green eyes as her mother’s were watchful–but with far more awareness–and, despite the years out in the Karoo sun, Anabel had looked after her skin. Although well tanned, she had few wrinkles.

“Yes, we’re back,” Helen answered, trying not to feel some annoyance for the accusatory tone she detected in her grandmother’s words.

“The school is adequate?”

Oblivious to the mood, Damon rushed in to answer, “It’s cool, ’cept for some of the rugger-buggers who are too pushy.”

“You shouldn’t let the bullies get to you. In any case, you are both here now and while you are under my roof I don’t want you slacking off. I’ve drawn up a duty roster and have pasted it up on the fridge. I expect you to pull your weight. That way we won’t get under each other’s noses and God knows it’s hard enough with your mother.”

Wow, that didn’t take long! “Fine,” Helen said, not looking up.

“Didn’t hear what you said.”

“It’s fine,” Damon answered but from the way he straightened his shoulders and shifted about he did not appreciate Anabel’s tone, either.

All things considered, being stuck out here was still better than being sent up to Joburg or having to live with their aunt and uncle.

Dinner was a formal affair but Anabel surprised Helen by allowing her and Damon each a half-glass of wine with their meal.

“It aids digestion, and I’d rather you learn to drink moderately than end up raging binge-drinkers because you feel like you have to rebel,” she said, before lapsing into silence.

Mother stared at the fork in her hands for a long time before deciding what to do with it. Damon had to keep nudging, reminding her to eat the rapidly cooling fish, veggies and boiled potatoes.

All the while, Odin stared at them from the doorway, forbidden to enter the dining room. A thin sliver of saliva slipped from his muzzle to moisten the wooden floor. It was the same ritual every night.

Anabel broke the silence. “What are you children planning this weekend?”

Helen almost dropped her knife. Children?

Damon answered. “I’d like to go hunting for snakes.”

This statement, clearly designed to provoke, didn’t shock their grandmother. Was that twitch at her lips almost a smile?

“Just watch out for the puffadders. There are plenty up in the
kloofs
. They’re lazy snakes and apt to strike first before trying to get away from you. However, you may want to meet the Prof then. He’s back from his overseas trip.”

“The Prof?” Damon asked.

“Professor Du Randt. He’s a herpetologist. Retired. Used to lecture at Wits. He built that house that looks almost like a castle.”

Damon looked as if he were about to choke with excitement, the way his eyes bulged.

Helen wasn’t sure yet if she should be relieved that her brother had an activity to keep him busy. She did need to work on the template for a fabric pattern...

And, there was Arwen. She wasn’t sure how Anabel would react to the intended outing. It wasn’t always easy figuring out whom their grandmother approved of.

Arwen, with her penchant for black, lace-trimmed clothing and too much eyeliner might just be too over the top. But, then, what was stopping Helen from simply telling her grandmother she’d go out this evening, regardless? Part of her certainly felt reckless enough.

Anabel fixed her granddaughter with her basilisk glare. “And you, Helen?”

“I’ve a friend from school–”

“Arwen,” Anabel finished for her. “She comes from a family of hereditary witches, you know. Such a pity her parents chose that name for her. I’m sure she also gets teased a lot at school by the other children.”

Helen had to force shut her mouth for fear of swallowing one of the gnats hovering around the candles. “What?”

Damon leaned forward and put down his knife and fork. “Well, that witch thing certainly explains why Odette and the others are forever picking on her and the dwarf.”

“Little person!” Helen snapped.

Anabel smiled, and dabbed her mouth with a napkin, before sinking back into her high-backed chair. This forbidding woman’s mood became mischievous in a blink of an eye.

“The whole lot of them, they’re all witches. The father too.”

“And you’re okay with this?” Helen asked, incredulous.

“Why not?” Anabel replied. “Your grandfather and Arwen’s grandfather were cousins.”

“We’re family?” Helen asked. Okay, this was getting a little too much information, too fast.

“Distant, yes. I’d hardly call it family now, the blood is quite diluted but, as you can see, Nieu Bethesda is a small place.”

“So, you don’t mind if I hang out with Arwen?”

“Why should I? You’d only go about it behind my back, in any case. Do I look stupid, child?”

Helen flushed, much to her brother’s evident amusement.

“Nice girl,” Mother said, as the phone began to ring shrilly from the kitchen.

“I’ll get it!” Damon shouted. He pushed his chair back with so much force it almost toppled over.

“Careful with the furniture!” Anabel exclaimed, half rising herself.

Helen’s stomach lurched. She’d nearly gotten sick every time she’d heard her cell phone ring this past week. Was it her father? Somehow the disappointment hurt more than she’d expected. Anabel had been the last–and that was only because
she
had called him last week to let him know his children had arrived safely. Even now, her memory of that conversation smarted.

No wonder Damon took his chance now to reach the phone before their grandmother did.

A wild hope transformed her mother’s face, momentarily dispelling the defeated slump in her shoulders, an attitude that tore Helen the most.

“It’s
him
, isn’t it?” she asked of Helen as she tried to rise.

“I’ll go find out,” Helen said. “You sit down, Mom.” The last thing she needed was for her mother to have another fit of hysterics.

The times she’d watched her mother tear at her hair while weeping hadn’t been particularly great. Then that night when her mom had run half-naked and wailing into the garden so that the entire neighborhood had heard. Pure mortification. Black helplessness.

These negative thoughts flared to the surface. At school it was easy to pretend things were getting better, that the medicine helped Mom, but the reality was far, far different at home–Anabel’s home–where Helen could see things were still the same, if not worse.

With a gentle touch, she pushed down on her mother’s shoulder, feeling how bony it was beneath its thin layer of skin.

“Sit, Mother.”

Helen’s mother obeyed. Anabel nodded and settled down to continue eating. Damon had been gone long enough, he could only be speaking to someone he knew, most likely Father. They hadn’t yet given the landline number to any of their friends from Cape Town, who kept in touch via social media, in any case.