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

of weeks later,” said Beth. She paused, as if for effect, then added mysteriously: “Nervous breakdowns make people do very strange things, you know.”

“Who said anything about a nervous breakdown?”

“Well it stands to reason, doesn’t it? How else would you explain his being found on the streets of a foreign city, where he’s carted off to the funny farm?”

“It’s bad enough already, Beth. You don’t have to exaggerate.”

“Well, he was, wasn’t he?” Beth insisted. “You can’t really blame him. He’s probably had enough of living up to your perfectionist standards. Not that you’re a paragon of virtue yourself. I’m still waiting for the return of all my records you pilfered from me.”

“Why are you intent on making me suffer even more than I already am, Beth? Is it some kind of cruel compensation to make up for your marriage to Malcolm?”

“You don’t need to take it to heart so, Maud.” This was a signal, a clear sign that Ellen’s words had missed their target and that Beth’s ego was still firmly intact. She always used Ellen’s middle name when she wanted to drive home what she saw as her superiority over her sister. It went back to when Ellen was five years old and discovered for the first time that she had a second name. Maud. She left no one in the family with any doubt how much she hated the name. And Beth pounced on it with the eager malice of an elevenyear-old girl trying to cope with five years of unmitigated jealousy.

“Presumably having his mother move in just down the road added to the strain. I can quite imagine how these things can happen.”

“For goodness sake, Beth. What are you talking about? What strain?”

Ellen had by now been seized with the desperation that must take hold of a rape victim when she’s made to feel that she’s the guilty party. That she must have been asking for it.

“Anyway, his mother moving into the area was his idea,” she added in her defence. “And if that was a strain for anyone, then more for me than for him. Do you remember how I was always allergic to animals as a child?”

“You must be joking. How could I forget the hassle you gave us? We had to get rid of my dear little dog because of my precious little sister.”

“You make me sound like a spoilt hypochondriac. God, I was suffering Beth! I was suffering! And so I did when Frank’s mother came calling, cat and all. Which was just about every day. She wasn’t there for long, bless her soul. But it was hard.”

“Come on, Maud,” Beth continued. “Don’t be such a hypocrite.”

“No, I mean it. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. But her animal obsession really got to me. It was horrendous, Beth. She would bring it with her on a lead and let the creature sit at the table so she could spoon-feed it its milk. I tolerated it. But it was quite disgusting. I think she much preferred animals to people. Even her own husband.”

“What was he like?”

“I don’t know,” Ellen said, thankful that at last they seemed to be getting away from the rebukes and insults. “I never knew him. He must have been an odd father, though, because I remember Frank telling me how he would always tease him cruelly about the indentation in the bridge of his nose – ‘as if he’d been shot between the eyes at birth’ he used to say apparently.

“But Frank also spoke very fondly of him – how he had once brought a lovely ivory bracelet back from one of his business trips for Frank’s mother and she flatly refused to wear it. She wouldn’t have anything to do with ivory. In fact, she wouldn’t have anything to do with her own husband for months apparently. Wouldn’t go near him.”

“Sounds to me as though you and he would have got on like a house on fire,” said Beth.

And so the barbed exchanges continued for the next few days – until the phone call. Beth spent most of her time sniping at Ellen, who felt exhausted having constantly to dive for cover. But she could at least be thankful that Malcolm had to go off playing war games soon after she arrived, so she did not have to suffer his smug, smart-aleck sarcasm beyond the first evening. By the second day, she found herself trying as far as possible to avoid the company of her sister by taking long walks around the neighbourhood.

It was the kind of housing estate that manages to combine a soulless, comatose anonymity with the atmosphere of nosy curiosity. As if the whole place had been picked up lock, stock and barrel somewhere in England and dropped in the middle of Germany, complete with shops, pub, G plan furnishings and all the other accessories of Britishness. Even the classic red telephone boxes. Nothing fitted. After her stay in Switzerland, she found it especially strange to hear her native language being spoken all around her again in this foreign country even on the streets – a paradox that was made complete when the ill-fitting Britishness of the scene, the sense of being back home and yet not, underlined the alienation she felt from her own sister. She asked herself why on earth she had decided to visit Beth. What she could possibly have expected to gain?

Beth herself seemed unable or unwilling to show any understanding. Ellen assumed now that what she had seen as their earlier closeness had probably just been some image-boosting charade on her part. In fact, her recriminations and aspersions showed that the resentment of her baby sister ran far deeper than any sibling bond. What hurt most of all was the understanding she professed, to an almost exaggerated degree, for Frank. And then there were the secrets she shared with him. Her thoughts latched on to the apprehension Beth had expressed, whether feigned or real, when she suggested that