Easter Beside an Estuary

By Craig Carden

Brad Peters comes to spend the Easter holidays on the family farm of his rugby-loving school friend, Karl van Aswegen. The farm is a large citrus estate in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, close to a magnificent estuary filled with wildlife that joins with a sea in which schools of brilliantly coloured fish are as common as idly cruising sharks. 

At first everything is wonderfully idyllic on the fruit farm and open, sandy beaches. The two boys enjoy riding, fishing and swimming beneath a warm sun, and Brad spends time indulging in his major love of painting. A truly close relationship develops between the youths, and, if it weren't for Karl's moody and sometimes downright menacing brother, the black-eyed Stephan, their holiday on the farm and beach would be almost perfect. But Stephan becomes increasingly aggressive, and during the tail-end of a cyclone that batters Mozambique, a cruel tragedy strikes out of the dark one as summer draws to a humid close. The even blows the close-knit family apart, leaving a wound that takes years to heal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Green Monkey Publications
• Release date: Dec 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9780620558334

Craig Carden

Craig Carden was born in Zululand, South Africa. He enjoys South Africa's wildlife, flora and beaches. The area in which much of his first novel, 'Easter Beside an Estuary', is set contains one of the world's biggest estuaries. It is about an hour's drive from where the author spent most of his childhood. The estuary is home to one of the largest populations of Nile crcodiles and hippo in Africa. It and the surrounding farmland and bush veld play a powerful role in 'Easter Beside an Estuary'.   Craig Carden is currently working on two novellas. 

Book preview

One

Seventeen-year-old Brad Peters ran his fingers through his tousled blond hair. Having noticed for some time that the surroundings and air were different here, he was looking keenly about him with his blue-green eyes. The atmosphere was heavier, almost palpable, and everything was abundantly green. Not just one green, but myriad shades of it guaranteed to defy any artist’s palette. Untamed bush thronged and jostled on each side of the road, giving the impression it would close over the tarmac and obliterate any mark of civilization if it were not ruthlessly kept in check. Easing to almost a crawl, the black Mercedes bumped over pot-holes and puddles. Several brown frogs jumped madly from them as the car approached. Brad learnt from Karl that no one had had the time to put a grader over it to even the surface.

It is often best to tough it out to the end of the rainy season, he said, otherwise it could mean doing the job several times over. Heavy rains a week ago caused the most recent damage. My parents always phone me with farm news.

The car’s back windows were open and the forest sang its slow, somnambulant song of hidden insects around the two youths and their elderly Zulu driver, a man Brad thought to be in his sixties, with heavily greying hair and tortoiseshell glasses. His name was Moses, and, earlier on, he’d told Brad of how he’d worked for the family for thirty-five years. First I was a tractor driver. Now I drive the car, he’d said proudly.

The shrill of unseen insects and the sudden gaudy whirl of butterfly wings in front of the car were in counterpoint to the languid humidity deep within the leaves that closed over, and kept secret, anything within a metre of the road. An insect smacked into the front window and turned into a gooey smudge that began to meander down the windscreen. A butterfly? A winged beetle? It happened so fast that Brad found it impossible to tell from the gunge what pulsating life-form it belonged to seconds earlier.

Through a gap in the trees where lightning had scorched two flat crowns while sending them crashing down to rip open the forest floor, Brad saw a stagnant patch of midge-infested swamp water. It was silent there and two pairs of unblinking, yellow-ochre eyes appeared to be watching the progress of the car. As their eyes were large and placed high on either side of their long heads, it was possible for Brad to see them. Seconds later, the log-like bodies of the crocodiles eased below the weed-choked surface. Further on, the car stopped as a troop of samangos loped across the road, gathered briefly on the trunk of a tree now home to what looked to Brad like white ants and fungi, and then leaped into the canopy. The monkeys were quickly out of sight amongst the leaves. As the forest thinned into open grassland, Brad caught a fleeting glimpse of a blue duiker before it was gone, pale tail flagging through waist-high grass, rank after the season’s good rains. A fork-tailed drongo, busy preening on a telephone pole, whisked away in apparent alarm.

Brad could now smell the sea tinged with the danker notes of the river, but the forest blocked out any view of the waves breaking on to the hot, sandy beaches. The high stone arch of the farm gate loomed in front of them and then they were under and through, rattling over the cattle grid and past the sign which read: River’s Edge – R and R van Aswegen. The two R’s were intertwined in a plain scroll of wrought iron. Here there were more butterflies, lots and lots of them, dipping and rising over a plant bedecked with minute yellow blooms. Brad had never seen so many butterflies. Three speckled fowls enjoying a dust-bath squawked and scurried off with feathers fluffed as the Mercedes rounded a corner, picked up speed and wound between two enormous Natal fig trees whose upper reaches spanned the pebbled driveway. Brad noticed tanned, dark-haired Karl shift his long, muscular legs on the seat beside him. He was the same age as Brad and his best friend and schoolmate.

Brad had been quietly aware of watching and listening to it all in peaceable contemplation. Now he was smiling at Brad, his large, brown eyes alight, and the look on his handsome face said it all: home!

The house was white, and imposing by any standards: a sprawling double-storey in the middle was amplified by single-storey wings on either side. Karl told him they were later additions when the second generation of the family had grown in prosperity. A profusion of orange-red bougainvillea cascaded in a riot of colour from each extension, and a wide verandah ran the length of the house. Two pairs of miniature palms stood on either side of the stone steps that led to the open front door. Rose bushes, neatly trimmed, but bare of flowers, reached to the top of the railing. In the centre of the gravel courtyard, a circular pond glinted in the mid-afternoon sun. From the back seat of the mud-splattered Mercedes, Brad was able to see several goldfish while they flicked lazily above a tumble of water-weed. Behind the house, palms, that looked as if they might be a hundred years old or more, arrowed into the air. Palm swifts zipped to and from them in sharp flight.   

As the car drew to a halt, the sound of an operatic tenor in full voice reached Brad’s ears through the open window of the car and two tan-coloured  boerboels ambled from the shade of the verandah, their black nostrils wide to catch the scent of the new arrivals. Having obviously established who was in the car, they began to run while barking sonorously towards them. Brad watched the approach of the racing dogs, with their massive heads and large paws, in some trepidation. Moments later a woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, dressed in jeans and an orange T-shirt, and seemingly just as excited as the dogs, followed them, but at a more sedate pace.

Hello, Karl, my boy. Welcome, Brad. It's nice to see you again. Everything okay Moses?

"Yebo, Missus. Everything is okay." Moses adjusted his glasses and nodded his grizzled head as he spoke.

While the driver busied himself with the cases, the boys greeted Karl’s mother, Ria.  Karl kissed his mother and Brad offered his hand. It's nice to be here and to see you again, Mrs. van Aswegen. Thank you for having me. He’d briefly met her and Karl’s father, Rudi, twice before when they had come to watch Karl play rugby, and liked them both.

So formal, Brad, Ria van Aswegen laughed. She bent forward to give her visitor a kiss. Brad felt his cheeks redden.

Please call me Ria. Mrs. van Aswegen’s a mouthful. Most of the boys’ friends call me and my husband by our first names. Don't worry about the dogs. They're friendly towards those we accept. They like to go out with us when we ride, not that I’ve been in ages. I should because I’m putting on too much weight.

Brad didn’t think so. He thought she looked beautiful and a lot younger than the forty-five years old Karl said she was.

Karl, who had been patting the male boerboel, Bully, and fondling his ears said, We're planning to go riding as soon as we've had something to eat and drink.

Ria laughed. Guys your age are always hungry. In celebration of your coming, Cookie and I have put something together for tea. Stephan and your father will be joining us. At the moment they’re busy working on the furrows in the orchards nearest the river.

Aah, my friend is here. Karl, my boy, you are back. The rich, melodious voice belonged to a motherly looking elderly black woman dressed in a blue-and-white maid’s uniform that appeared several sizes too big for her. Arms outstretched, she was standing barefoot in the doorway.

Cookie’s boy is here, she continued. Karl jumped forward and gave her a hug. "Au, Cookie’s boy has grown. She turned to Brad. Every time I see him he is bigger. Already he is taller than his father because his father did not eat so well as he. He is not a baby anymore, this one."

Brad, this is Maisie, said Ria. She’s our chief cook and bottle-washer. Don’t know what we’d do without her.

My name is really Maisie, but everyone calls me Cookie. I have been here on this farm for seventy years and a cook for nearly fifty. I knew the great-grandfather and the grandfather, and now the father and his boys. All of them. She clapped as if highly delighted at the thought.

Hello, Cookie, Brad said, smiling. Karl has told me all about you. He says you always fill his tuck box well.

Laughter welled from Cookie’s heaving bosom and she rolled her eyes dramatically in Ria’s direction. Even better than his mother. That’s why this boy is so strong. Tea is coming now-now everybody. She clapped her hands before waving and bustling down the passage to the kitchen.

Has she really been here that long? Brad asked.

Yes, and she doesn’t let any of us forget it, especially me, Ria laughed. "She considers me almost a newcomer. But she’s a gem of a cook, keeps the housegirls in check and really adores Karl.

A different tenor began singing in a buoyant mood as the three made their way onto the verandah. The mounted heads of kudu, nyala, three almost identical springbok and that of a sombre-looking wildebeest adorned the walls at evenly spaced intervals.

Shot by my husband’s father and grandfather, said Ria. Relics of a bye-gone era. The only hunting done here these days is with a camera, thank God.

Stephan and some of his buddies aren’t happy about it. Karl was looking earnestly at the victims of early hunts.

Stephan and his buddies are going to have to learn, said Ria firmly. We need to conserve what we have for future generations. Wildlife isn’t some unlimited commodity that can be manufactured on command. She smiled at Brad. Sorry. I tend to go on about my hatred of hunting. It’s something about which I speak out against whenever I can.

So do I, said Brad. I think hunting is cruel.

Big brother Stephan’s got all sorts of theories about why he thinks it isn’t. Once he’s got a couple of beers in him, he can get pretty het up, said Karl.

Sounds like one guy I mustn’t get into an argument with about hunting. Brad pulled a mock-rueful face.

You and Stephan will get along fine, assured Ria.

Brad could not help noticing that the words emerged somewhat firmly and he wondered if Ria had spoken to Stephan to make sure he accepted him as a visitor. He’d heard rumours about Stephan from the younger brothers of guys who had been at school with Stephan. They all said he hadn’t been a friendly personality and tended to use his fists to get his own way. Still, Brad supposed they’d be OK together. Stephan normally stayed behind to manage the farm when Rudi and Ria travelled to the Midlands to watch Karl play sport and Brad had yet to meet him.

As she spoke, Ria led them to just past the wildebeest head. Realistic glass eyes gave the solemn face a keen and knowing look as if it had been called upon to preside over numerous family debates, such as the merits and demerits of hunting, and was able to give an opinion on most matters, whether they were sought or not.

We call him Wilde, said Ria.

Karl bent over and gave the wildebeest a kiss on its dusty nose.

Good to see you after a whole term, Wilde. I hope you’ve been behaving yourself. Brad and I have. That’s why we’re planning on getting into lots of trouble these holidays to make up for it.

They try, said Ria, to the head of the wildebeest, and I’ll whack both of them with a wooden spoon.

Karl and Brad roared with laughter.

A short, plump maid in a pink uniform was busy setting out the tea things on a nearby table. Her eyes shyly met Karl’s before she stared at the floor while greeting him with a demure, "Sawubona, Karl."

You remember Bongi? Ria asked Karl. She’s come from the packhouse to work here in the house.

Hello to you too, Bongi, Karl said. Kunjani? How are you?"

I am fine, thank you.

Karl introduced Brad before Bongi turned and padded barefoot back through the house to the kitchen. Brad and Karl's gaze fixed on the outsized chocolate cake.

Okay, guys, said Ria. Help yourselves.

It was only when they sat down that Brad noticed the mud structures under the eaves. A quick flit, so fast as to be barely a blur from the garden to the verandah, drew his attention to them. 

Swallows, Ria laughed. They’ve been coming here for generations of swallow life-times. Probably since the house was built. We find it best to ignore them, but just look at the floor! All that mud and grass. They bring it in from the river in their beaks to build their homes. Cookie goes mad. Still, it’s wonderful they trust us so much that they’re happy to live here. They go to Europe each winter, but are back here every summer without fail. I always marvel at that one.

You should see the telephone poles when they gather on them to go to Europe, said Karl. They just about weigh the things down. And the noise is unbelievable. There are always hawks and yellow-billed kites hovering around and trying to make a grab, like sharks and marlin when they follow the sardine run. 

Look who's home, came a man's voice. It was Rudi.

Brad noted he was as tanned as Karl, but stockier and heavier built. Rudi was greying at the temples and his close-cropped hair was thinning slightly on top, but unlike many men of his age he didn’t have even the hint of a paunch and was tremendously fit looking.

Cookie’s been telling everyone at the back that you’d come. Rudi shook Karl by the hand before pulling him to him and giving him a quick hug. Great to see you. Did old Moses go all right, Karl?

Yes, said Karl No problem.

Rudi shook Brad’s offered hand. While Brad returned the handshake he gazed at the powerful figure coming around the side of the verandah. It paused, half-in, half-out of the shade, the afternoon sun behind accentuating its presence. Taller and darker than Karl with an altogether more muscular body (not that Karl wasn't pretty powerfully built) and almost black-eyed, he nodded a greeting to Brad before taking up the knife to cut a fat slice of cake.

Cookie always makes the best. Stephan lifted the cake to his mouth and took a big bite. It was only then that he seemed to notice Karl. 

This is Stephan, Karl's older brother by three years said Ria, after both brothers greeted each other with a sober look and Karl had stood up to give his brother a somewhat wary handshake.

Brad was also struck by Stephan’s voice; it was intense and gravelly, and seemed to vibrate upwards from deep within him. Hi, said Brad. I know you finished at our school three years ago.

And played first team rugby for the last two years he was there, said Rudi, giving his older son a rough pat. I hear you're more into the arts, is that right?

Brad said, Yes, it is. I paint mostly. He did not miss the scornful look that passed across Stephan's face as well as the almost shrewd, assessing gaze from eyes that were rather like Karl’s, but narrower and lacking some of their vitality. Karl was not looking at his brother. Brad’s eyes followed his and his attention was immediately arrested by the brief iridescence of kingfisher wings as the bird flitted from the pond. The goldfish were foraging within the weed and the bird came away without its prey. Stephan helped himself to an even larger slice of cake than the one before.

Don't take it all; offer some more to Karl and Brad. Ria took up the knife, her dramatically raised eyebrows indicating she knew Stephan wouldn't be much help. Brad liked her. With her trim figure and relaxed, open manner she seemed more like a sister to Stephan and Karl. Brad took another bite of cake and eased back into his chair. Any small worries he’d had at school about getting on with Karl’s parents were fading, but Stephan he wasn’t so sure about. Stephan’s eyes seemed to be on him more than the cake he was devouring. There was something hard and unflinching about them, and, at the moment, they held more than a suggestion of contempt. Perhaps he should have paid closer attention to the rumours, but there’d been nothing specific, just that Stephan had been known not to take too much shit from anyone, particularly the opposition on a rugby field. 

Though Stephan was still talked about at school and his name appeared on the school’s honours’ boards as having been Captain of the First Fifteen as well as cricket and water polo Captains, Karl seldom mentioned his brother. Brad could see why. They were different from each other. Stephan was a closed, watchful personality while Karl possessed a sunny nature that helped him make friends easily. He found himself wondering if Stephan would be out working on the farm all day, because there was much in Stephan's face that told him he wasn't going to spend time being friendly. The hands that held the second piece of chocolate cake were heavy-fingered and square, and his dark-blue jeans fit closely, accentuating the muscular strength of his thighs. Brad could well imagine them rocketing a rugby ball between the posts while the home crowd roared its approval. But it was Stephan’s face, deeply tanned against a loose, white shirt that commanded the most attention. Like Karl’s, his black hair tumbled about his forehead. There was a slight lift in the middle of his eyebrows, and abundant lashes framed those disturbing black eyes that were perpetually watchful. His mouth had the same upturned shape as Karl’s, but his lips were thinner. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved that morning and the blue-black stubble defined the clean cut of his jaw and the slight dimple in his chin.

Sitting there, eating his own piece of rapidly diminishing cake, Brad had the uncomfortable feeling that Stephan was all too aware of his power and wasn’t shy to use it to his advantage if needed. He was glad when, after asking Karl a few questions about some of his old teachers, Stephan got up from the tea table and said, After I’ve checked the dairy herd and horses, I’m meeting some of the guys for ales at the fishing club.

Without saying another word, he left the verandah as a pair of swallows shot out from beneath the eaves into the late afternoon sunlight. 

Rudi settled into his chair and began to ask about life at school. He had also gone to Charleston College and Brad was quickly aware that he was as anxious to swap stories of his time there as he was to hear about current happenings and the different characters on the staff.

After about half-an-hour Karl brought the conversation to a halt by saying, If we’re going riding we’d better go now otherwise it will be too late.

Brad was glad to go riding. Though he’d enjoyed talking with Rudi and Ria, Stephan’s scornful scrutiny had unsettled him.

Two

Brad was on a dapple-grey mare called Blue Haze and Karl was on Copper Bay, his chestnut gelding, as they moved at an easy trot between the broad avenue of heavily leaved oaks, which had been planted by Karl’s great grandfather.

They were grown from seedlings brought by ship from England in the 1920’s, Karl said, when Brad admired them.

Blue Haze was proving a comfortable ride. Provided Copper Bay didn't get too close, she moved steadily along the untarred road.

When Karl had finished telling him about the trees, Brad asked, With a surname like van Aswegen, do you sometimes speak Dutch or Afrikaans at home?

Karl laughed. My great, great grandfather was born in Holland, but he went to live in England, where he got married. My great grandfather came to live in this country with his mother after his father died and our family’s been here ever since. Dutch faded out a long time ago in this family and my Afrikaans isn’t that brilliant.

Brad sighed as he felt the tensions of the day begin to leave him. The four-hour journey from boarding school had been tiring, and Stephan's scorn-filled eyes across the tea table hadn't made for a completely relaxing tea-time. Someway ahead, a lizard with a blue head made a scuttling dash from one side of the oak-treed avenue to the other, before disappearing into a hole half-way up one of the gnarled Methuselah’s.

Through the last of the trees Brad caught sight of the river, and, moments later, it came fully into view. Brown and soundless, it oozed in a widening expanse in front of them. Dozens of white butterflies flew in giddy whorls above seeding grass at its edge. A metallic blue dragonfly zoomed out across the water, and then, apparently thinking better of it, moved closer to shore, to hover just above the butterflies. Down-river, a fish eagle yelped before Brad saw it lifting from a leafless tree.

I never bring the dogs when I come this way, said Karl, speaking quietly. There are too many crocs and a hell of a lot more in the estuary.

Brad noticed that though the horses were several metres from the water, they were standing with their necks outstretched, ears pricked and nostrils slightly dilated, clearly alert for any change around them. It was only after they’d stood like that for several minutes that Blue Haze relaxed and gently nuzzled Copper Bay’s neck. The gelding turned his head slightly and Brad saw his eyes had lost their tense alertness and become dreamy and faraway.

She always does this when she gets a chance, said Karl. They’ve been best mates ever since we bought Copper Bay.

Karl began to guide his horse along a path bordering the river. Without needing to be told, Blue Haze followed. Neither boy spoke. Unconsciously at first and then with increasing awareness, Brad found himself looking at Karl, at the way his auburn-tinged hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck, at the movement of his muscles as he sat lightly astride the gleaming chestnut that steadily picked its way along the narrowing path. Brad wanted to paint them just like that: the horse and its rider against a background of innumerable greens:  the grasses, the tangled vines, the shading leaves of the wild figs and the broad-leaved banana trees.

The gentle call of one laughing dove to another hardly touched his thoughts and Brad began to see clearly his friend and the horse on canvas; a perfect harmony of shape and carefully articulated colour. He felt an almost indefinable stirring within him and he knew he needed to paint them, to capture the scene and his feelings for it. That’s what all the great artists did. They put something of themselves into their work and the pictures became an expression rather than just an imitation. Old Huddleston, who taught him art, spent a lot of time encouraging his pupils to understand that one.

He was distracted from his reverie by the horses taking a path that veered away from the river as well as the silence that now spread around them. The doves had stopped calling to each other and a breeze lilting through the leaves disappeared while the grass gave way to the quiet gloom of a mangrove forest, oppressive and humid in the last light of the afternoon.

Brad's mare flicked an ear in their direction. On the tallest of the trees a fish eagle was busy preening itself, its white head distinctive against the bottle green of the leaves. Through a barely perceptible gap Brad's eyes glimpsed a particularly large crocodile resting on a sand-bank, its mouth slightly agape. Even from such a distance, its jagged rows of ivory coloured teeth were clearly visible. Karl had obviously seen the croc too, because in a low voice, as if not wanting to intrude into a space that wasn’t entirely theirs, he said, There'll be others just now, and hippo, lots of them.

Brad soon learned Karl was right. In ten minutes they'd rounded the edge of this particular patch of mangrove forest. From a slight rise Karl pointed out a partially submerged head cruising though the water. Another croc. It’s a brute. Again he did not speak loudly. Look to your left and further out and you'll see the head of a hippo poking through the water.

In a moment Brad saw it clearly, then another, and another. The snort of a bull hippo reached him. This was also a scene Brad wanted to paint. I could live here, he thought. I could paint and paint all day. It would be unreal.

The river widened where it joined the estuary and at times the late-afternoon glare made it impossible to see smaller objects on the other side. From around a bend in the mangroves a boat belonging to KZN Wildlife edged into view. Passengers leaned from its upper and lower decks, clearly determined not to miss this slice of Africa they had journeyed thousands of kilometres to see. Not far away, a broad-bottomed boat with two fishermen in it was at anchor. Two smaller boats trailed in the wake of the Wildlife Board craft, hardly bothered by the slight turbulence. Close to the gesticulating tourists a pod of hippo popped their broad heads up, and a few snorts carried across the water. Immediately, there was the click and whirr of cameras accompanied by even more excited pointing and much craning to see.

Costs quite a bit to go on one of those, said Karl, jerking a thumb in the direction of the Wildlife boat, but you can see a lot from a horse.

Brad nodded in agreement. You can see what’s on the land and in the water.

The horses picked their way along the path until it came out at the side of the road, beside a cement bridge with iron railings, which spanned a narrow section of the estuary.

‘WELCOME TO PARADISE’

was emblazoned on an enormous, slightly crooked sign beside the railings. It was twilight and hundreds of swifts were careening through the sky. There were so many that Brad wondered if