Camdeboo Nights Read Online Free PDF Page B

else.
    Arwen and her pet hobbit. That jibe made him smile when no one was watching.
    * * * *
    Mr. Robins was their art teacher and classes were a haven for Etienne. Mr. Robins–a man gray and stooped before his time, yet still lively–never let Etienne feel as if he were anything less than normal.
    Mr. Robins’s bright green eyes missed nothing. To him it didn’t matter that Etienne sucked at life drawing. Mr. Robins always said, “It’s not how you draw, my children, it’s how you express yourselves. An artist is a thinking and feeling person.”
    Etienne didn’t mind that this man constantly referred to his students as “my children,” either. He somehow made the term sound dignified.
    Etienne only took art classes because Arwen did and Mr. Robins made him feel as if he were the best thing since sliced bread–he couldn’t think of any other way to describe it.
    Mr. Robins wore a wonderful, woody aftershave and sometimes, he’d stand behind Etienne, just breathing, and Etienne imagined he could feel the teacher’s heat radiating off him. This excited him in ways that he dared not voice.
    The art studio was situated next to the music rooms. Even in the dead of winter, it was pleasantly warm here, although the air-con didn’t always work during summer.
    Art wasn’t a popular subject at Rubidge Private Secondary School. The only kids who attended classes were the un-sporty misfits.
    Helen’s fate was sealed when she stumbled in, five minutes late. It wouldn’t be long now, a week, perhaps.
    You’re one of us , he thought with a wry smile. Odette hated artsy-fartsy nerds, as she called them. He wore that badge with pride.
     

 
    Chapter 7
    It Starts
     
    Rubidge Private Secondary School was nice enough, once Helen got over the initial strangeness. Built somewhere during the mid-nineties, the school’s buildings clearly leaned toward a Bauhaus revival that reflected a post-modernist trend–if she recalled her architectural studies well enough. But, somehow, the architect had tried to keep the style in character with the typical flat-roofed architecture of the old Karoo. She enjoyed figuring out the influences, hoping that when she got stuck into art classes the teacher would touch on architecture.
    All the buildings were single-storied and fit together in neat blocks joined by covered walkways. The school had been situated roughly five kilometers outside of Graaff-Reinet, so it held an air of isolation. The white karees held out their scraggly boughs, not quite large enough to provide much shade but the verdant sport field situated next to the irrigation dam was the school’s pride and joy, a vivid patch of green in an otherwise beige landscape.
    She assumed their father was responsible for the school fees, because most of the students were dropped off in the morning by parents driving Beamers, Benzes or large, shiny SUVs and the little savings their mother had would never pay for a private school.
    Their grandmother, a stern woman who would only allow them to call her by her first name, Anabel–not Ouma or Grandmother–drove a beat-up stationwagon full of rust, which developed an alarming tremor on the dirt roads. They had spent a scant few nights acclimatizing to Nieu Bethesda’s lazy heat before Anabel had announced they would start at their new school.
    Neither Helen nor her brother had boarded before. Thankfully, they’d still return to Nieu Bethesda over weekends. The dorms at school were in a series of four-bedroom chalets set on the slope of the hill overlooking the school. She had to give the architect that much, he’d tried to make things cheerful, only the edges were too sharp, and the paint too white in the sunlight. Each room slept two–only the grade twelves had the luxury of private quarters. Grade tens shared.
    Her roommate was a quiet girl called Myrna Barry, whose father farmed sheep almost one hundred kilometers inland. Myrna rather spent her time chatting online with her friends on