The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  Perhaps Ellen was feeling particularly paranoid after the events of the weeks just passed, but she found the station here strangely threatening. She tried to imagine what it must have been like before and during the war. All those poor Jewish refugees trying to flee the country into Switzerland.

  “They were dark times,” Dr Zellweger said, as if responding to her thoughts. “And it was especially dark at this border. Of course, most people were horrified when the railway company raised the Nazi flag above the building. It was like an insult to the city. But they preferred to ignore the fact that the industry here also profited very nicely from its German neighbours. In fact, it was the city’s chemical industry that supplied the blood-red dye for that flag and those Nazi uniforms.”

  The wry smile that crossed Dr Zellweger’s lips as he spoke these words was quickly replaced by a darker expression.

  “You know, Basel has a long social-democratic tradition, but there were also some people here at that time who supported Germany. Some even joined the German army. And many of the business leaders were also happy to sack the Jews in their company to satisfy their business partners north of the border.”

  After buying her ticket, Ellen walked over to customs in pensive silence, the image of refugees still preying on her mind. Dr Zellweger walked beside her, carrying her suitcase.

  “They were difficult times,” he repeated at last, as he waved her off through the customs barrier, but not before making a note of her sister’s phone number and promising to call as soon as he had any news of Frank.

  Why he should assume that Frank would still be roaming the streets of this fascinating city, she had no idea. It had long since dawned on her that, if this man really was Frank, he would almost certainly have already gone. He had no ties to this place, so what would keep him? But on the other hand, where would he have gone? What would he be doing there?

  These questions were of no interest to Dr Zellweger, and why should they be? Ellen asked herself. His interest was in the patient. And the patient had discharged himself, as had the patient’s wife. So when he waved Ellen off across the border into Germany, she detected a sense of relief in the way he moved his arm hastily through the air and turned back to face his day’s clinical duties. It left her with a disquieting sense of vulnerability.

  Chapter 15

  Ellen’s journey north to her sister Beth proved tediously uneventful, until she had to change trains in Cologne. It was the first time she had ever been to Cologne, and since she faced a long wait before her connection, she decided to spend the time down on the riverside enjoying the fresh air and the views. But the air proved a little too fresh to enjoy, while the views were dominated by the cathedral. And the forbidding darkness of the building that rose into the grey afternoon sky gave her no comfort. Ellen found it so oppressively imposing that she would almost certainly have missed the object of far greater interest across the street had it not been for a yapping dog that drew her attention in that direction. It was an irate and lost-looking dachshund, which stood outside a café barking at nothing in particular, as far as she could see.

  Then out of the café emerged a figure she knew at once. The mop of thick brown hair. The walk. It could only be him. It was Frank. Her heart missed a beat. Was this a dream? Ellen asked herself. There could surely be no other explanation. She felt she could not trust her own eyes. She wanted to shout to him across the street. She wanted to wave.

  But she was transfixed. Could do nothing but gape in disbelief. Was it really Frank? It seemed impossible. What could he be doing here? And by the time she had collected herself, it was already too late. He was stepping onto a tram and moving off out of Ellen’s life again as abruptly as he had re-entered it. She was confused. Was it a dream? Was she going mad? Was this really happening?

  Ellen was barely aware of the strange impression she must have created, rooted to the spot, gaping into the empty space across the street where Frank had been. A few people approached her and made noises of concern. But she was unable to understand. Each one moved on with a shake of the head when Ellen made no response. When eventually she regained her composure, she returned to the station and found a place to sit. A place where she could gather her thoughts.

  She was uncertain what to do. She could not go to the police. Even supposing she would be able to overcome the language barrier, they would simply think they had a raving lunatic on their hands.

  Ellen remained totally distraught and bewildered, yet overjoyed at the same time, by the knowledge that Frank was here in Cologne. So close and yet still out of reach. She decided to check into a hotel near the station.

  After phoning her sister to let her know she had been delayed, Ellen returned the next morning to the place where she had spotted him. And each day for the next three days, she sat in the café he had emerged from and drank cup after cup of what passed for tea – a bag in lukewarm water with a slice of lemon – and watched the comings and goings: the middle-aged women who gathered for coffee and cakes; the single women with their poodles or terriers, which sat patiently beside their mistresses drinking from a water bowl; and the occasional business types, briefcase in hand, who stopped by for a quick espresso. None sat for as long as Ellen, who stared in growing despair also at every passer-by who walked past on the street outside. Not one of them even remotely resembled Frank.

  Ellen became conscious of the strange looks and whispers from the café staff even before the end of the first day. By the third day, she had the feeling that the tolerance in those looks had turned to hostility. It became clear to her that this was no way to find her husband and she would do best to resume her journey.

  She checked out of her hotel, comforting herself with the thought that perhaps she could persuade her sister Beth to return to Cologne with her and help in the search for Frank. But the slight solace provided by this idea was in stark contrast to the reception that awaited her when eventually she arrived at Beth’s.

  Although she was more than six years older than Ellen, the two had been very close at one time and shared every secret and every little intimacy – until Malcolm appeared on the scene. Malcolm was everything Ellen disliked in a man: smug, self-satisfied, unintelligent, opinionated and in the army. And as if trying deliberately to highlight all these flaws in his character, he wore a salesman’s moustache on his upper lip and white socks in black slip-on shoes on his feet. The fate of Ellen’s relationship with him was sealed the moment she set eyes on him.

  Sadly, Beth fell so firmly under his influence that, every time Ellen saw her, she became less and less like the sister of old. Or maybe Malcolm was just bringing out the real Beth. It was hard to know. Certainly, she grew embarrassingly defensive of him in Ellen’s presence and always accused her of extreme intolerance. Said she was never satisfied with anything less than perfection.

  Beth put this down to the Catholic boarding school her sister attended. In truth, it was the day Ellen was sent off to school that the closeness between them began to wane. Malcolm simply applied the finishing touches. While Ellen saw this school as punishment for being what her parents called a difficult child with an unhealthy interest in boys, Beth resented her for what she saw as the special treatment her younger sister was being given and mocked her incessantly with jibes that, with her pretty looks, she must have plenty of admirers among the girls.

  “But it didn’t do you much good,” she would say. “You were a changed person by the time you finished at that school, that’s for sure.”

  Ellen had never enlightened her sister on the suffering endured at the school, the sanctions for the slightest lapse, the punishments meted out even for sleeping with their hands under the bed covers. She knew Beth would simply turn every word of confidence against her.

  The more Ellen mulled over these thoughts, the more she wondered what she expected to gain from going to see her. She supposed a part of her still clung to the memories of her childhood and fondly imagined they were as close as ever, because even now she fe
lt compelled by a girlish urge to see her sister every so often to giggle and gossip over old times. An urge that was invariably deflated by the anti-climax and disappointment of finding that the Beth she had once known was only a distant memory. This journey proved an exception only insofar as it was even worse than usual.

  Ellen had been looking for some kind of sympathy or understanding. From Malcolm, of course, she got no more than the gross insensitivity and callousness that she expected from the lips of a man-sized inferiority complex trying to hide its inadequacy under a military moustache. But she did not expect it from her own sister.

  “Walked out on you I gather?” were Malcolm’s very first words, before Ellen had even sat down in the little box of a lounge in their army house. It could have been anywhere in Britain, yet here it was – a little corner of England – in Germany. Even this, it seemed to Ellen, was trying to be something it was not.

  “Well, you’re probably better off without him,” Malcolm added. “Never did take to him.”

  He was enjoying every twinge of despair in Ellen’s behaviour. And then, to her horror, Beth joined in as well. At least she had the decency to make a pot of tea first. Not the kind of refined Darjeeling that Marthe so thoughtfully bought in for her. But something coarser. It perfectly matched their attitude towards Ellen.

  And then she started, mercilessly digging into Ellen’s relationship with Frank, “which was never built on very firm foundations when you think about,” she said. Her words hurt.

  “I have, Beth. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. That’s all I’ve been doing these last weeks.”

  She sensed anger and frustration coming to the boil. What am I doing here? Ellen asked herself.

  “My God, Beth. I don’t think you can even begin to imagine what I’ve been going through. Suddenly Frank disappears, then starts turning up and vanishing again on the other side of Europe. If it is him. You know, I even thought I saw him on my way here in Cologne. You haven’t got a clue, Beth. I really don’t know what you’re talking about, but for your information I was always quite happy with the ‘foundations’ as you call them. Just because they’re not built into the dense rock of the British army…”

  Her sister ignored the dig and took a turn that Ellen had not seen coming.

  “You don’t suppose he’s coming here, do you?” she asked.

  Perhaps Ellen just imagined the slightly rising colour in her sister’s face. But the way Beth hurriedly followed up this question by returning to an earlier remark of Ellen’s without waiting for a reply suggested the colour in her Beth’s cheeks was real. The burning sense of a blunder that needed to be covered up.

  “What did you mean earlier when you said ‘if it is him’, this bloke in the clinic?” Beth asked.

  “I just can’t believe it is. It doesn’t sound like Frank. Apart from anything else, this man apparently speaks a local dialect like a native. How could it be him?”

  “Nothing would surprise me about Frank after the last conversation I had with him,” said Beth.

  “What do you mean?”

  The blush this time was unmistakable. Beth had backed into a corner now that she could not simply escape with a smooth change of tack. Not without some clever explaining first. She put down her cup of tea. Ellen watched as Beth got up to shut the door, her mind almost visibly working overtime. For Ellen, it 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 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?”