The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

was a scene reminiscent of someone trying to sneak into the confessional unnoticed. Malcolm had by now taken himself off to some other part of the house. He had more important things to do than talk to his sister-in-law. Beth returned to her chair looking slightly sheepish. She was plainly struggling to find the words.

“The last time we spoke on the phone,” she said at length, “he asked if I could get hold of a book for him. A German book. He thought it would be easier for me to get since I live here.”

“What book?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Beth. “I told him I couldn’t help anyway. It was an old book published decades ago. Probably out of print. And he was getting really weird. Talking about phallic faces and Jews. I assumed it was something to do with this Nazi obsession of his.”

Ellen felt as if the ground was suddenly slipping from under her. Her stomach turned over. She could not believe what she was hearing.

“You mean you and Frank have been having secrets from me?” she asked. Her voice quivered slightly.

“Come on, it’s not like that.”

“What is it like then, Beth? Are you in the habit of phoning each other?” Ellen asked, her anger chiselling out a desperate space around the word ‘habit’ and all that it implied. She was incensed.

“Look,” said Beth. She was insistent. “It really wasn’t like that. It was some weeks ago, when I tried phoning you and you weren’t there. Frank answered, we got talking, and he just started getting really weird about this book. He asked me not to tell you, because you wouldn’t understand. I remember now,” she added, “it was by someone called Costner or Kastner. Something like that.”

“And what is it I wouldn’t understand?”

“Search me. For some reason he seemed to think you wouldn’t approve, said you didn’t like him reading all this stuff.”

“Well, he does tend to go over the top when he gets interested in something.”

The corroboration implicit in Ellen’s words eased the tension. But she could sense a continuing discomfort in Beth, the way she shuffled about in her chair and her slightly podgy fingers played nervously with her teacup. They had always been like chalk and cheese. Ellen the fine-featured one, slim and blonde, while Beth was not only much older, but also the coarse-featured one with a freckled face, frizzy ginger hair and slightly overweight.

Being keen on astrology in her younger years, Ellen was also very aware that their sibship never really stood much of a chance from the outset, since she was Cancer and Beth was Libra. So it had always surprised everyone in the family that they got on so well when they were younger. How happy they would be to see their preconceived notions substantiated now, Ellen said to herself.

But she could not enjoy her sister’s discomfort. It had implications that gnawed at her own self-esteem as they shared what seemed to be the same bed of nails.

Beth had managed to manoeuvre a way out of her corner. But could she be trusted? Ellen asked herself. She did not really want to know. She was not feeling strong enough for the answer. So she let her sister guide them back to the conversation.

“I suppose we all do. And you especially perhaps. But we love you for it,” she continued with what sounded to Ellen very much like a backhanded compliment. “We wouldn’t have you any other way.”

“Everyone except Frank, you mean,” Ellen said, pausing briefly to let her irritation settle. “Beth, you’re incredibly unfair. Maybe I do expect a lot from people, especially from Frank – he’s my husband, for God’s sake. But I don’t demand anything from him that I wouldn’t expect of myself. Hell, I sacrifice a lot for him as well.”

“Do you?” was all Beth said, leaving the tension of a meaningful lull to fill the silence between them, before she resumed the assault. “Are you sure they’re really sacrifices, what you give him? I mean, have you ever stopped to ask yourself whether he actually wants what you see as your sacrifices?”

“What do you mean?” She felt close to tears, but her sister had no mercy.

Ellen had the feeling Beth had been waiting years for this opportunity to offload all her grudges and jealousies. She was enjoying every moment. But at the same time, her words were carefully wrapped up with such deliberation, they suggested a content that – once fully unfurled before her – might come painfully close to the truth. And it was this more than anything which made Ellen uncomfortably defensive.

“He can’t complain. He does all right,” she insisted. “In fact, he does just about what he wants.”

“Does he? Then why does he feel the need to do things behind your back?” Beth asked. She saw the gaping wound she had left with her earlier revelation and sprinkled salt over it now with heartless relish. But it must have been an exquisite pain that was written on Ellen’s face, because her sister instantly tried softening the attack, as if she had finally realised she had gone too far and was beginning to regret her hostility. It was as though she wanted to turn the cutting edge away from Ellen as she struck her with the blade of her knife.

But Beth would not have been Beth if she had not taken a double-edged knife with her into combat. Ellen was going to get hurt whichever way she put it.

“Why was there a post mortem anyway?” she asked.

“What do you mean? What are you on about now?”

“Your mother-in-law,” said Beth. “Why did they need to do a post mortem?”

“She was on her own when she died. Lay there for two or three days before she was found. So they had to. It’s the law.”

“You don’t suppose Frank had anything to do with her death, do you?”

“Beth! Don’t be absurd! It was a heart attack.”

“Well, it seems a bit odd Frank disappearing like that a couple