The Dark Frontier by A. Decker (best books to read non fiction .txt) 📕

“I shall be glad when I get home to Normandy. I think I’m getting too old for all this travelling. You know, it was the colonel who took me back to Normandy in a manner of speaking, though he never knew it. It was his most lasting legacy to me. Such a beautiful part of the world, do you know it?”

Ellen confessed that she knew very little about France at all.

“I was born there, you know. But that’s only partly why I returned. You see, it reminds me so much of southwest England, where the colonel lived. He had a beautiful cottage on the edge of Dartmoor.”

Ellen almost dropped a suitcase on the woman’s head as her heart stopped for an instant. She knew what was coming. Yet she could not quite believe it.

“I’m sorry, my dear. That one is rather heavy, I’m afraid – I should have warned you – it has the other bottles of wine in it.” She smiled with a slight embarrassment in her eyes, which Ellen noticed were starting to twinkle again at the memories of her colonel.

“It caused quite a stir in the village, you know, when I moved in.” The smile broke into a mischievous chuckle. “He never really lived it down. But he enjoyed that. It appealed to his sense of fun, the idea of the scandal. And I was very happy there, especially when spring came round – the wild primroses, the daffodils and the honeysuckle crawling over the hedgerows. It was like a dream. Reminded me so much of my early childhood. He left the cottage to me, but I could never live in the place on my own. I tried, but it was never the same after he died. So eventually I sold it and came home to find a place in Normandy. That must have been about twenty years ago. Of course, Normandy is not quite the same. But the colonel would often take me to Penzance for weekends just so that I could enjoy the view of St Michael’s Mount, because it reminded me so much of my childhood in Avranches, where I grew up. He was very sweet like that.

“But there are no moors in Normandy with their beautiful granite outcrops. I found it a hauntingly beautiful landscape. So my sentimental streak often took me back to see the old place again. But the last time, I found it had changed so much that it no longer meant anything to me. So I don’t go anymore. The cottage was bought by an artist, an American, who converted it into a studio. Lost all its character. I feel so guilty when I think of it, for letting that happen. The poor colonel would turn in his grave if he knew.”

Struck dumb by the sheer scale of the coincidence, Ellen let the reminiscences wash over her. If she could have spoken, she would have told her that she knew the artist in question, would have offered her sympathy, since he had taken something very precious to her as well. But there was no time for such complications. They were already rolling into the station at Strasbourg as Ellen fetched the last of her baggage out and deposited it in the corridor.

Ellen was a willing recruit to the last task she set her: it seemed the most obvious and natural gesture to help her down from the carriage and unload her luggage onto the platform.

“Thank you so much, my dear.” She knew she had left Ellen no choice but to lend her this hand. And Ellen could not begrudge her the small manipulation, especially now she knew what they had in common. When she insisted that Ellen get back on the train before it went without her, that she would soon find a friendly porter to help, Ellen hesitated. She felt that she was letting her down in some strange way. That she should stay with her. But there was still sufficient independence there. She did not need Ellen.

Slowly, the train pulled out of the station, and Ellen’s travelling companion was left on the platform, bracketed by all the baggage that seemed to hold the last remaining bouquet of her past, the sum total of a sad unwritten life. She waved sweetly as she receded into the distance, and Ellen returned to her compartment. The bottle of wine she had left Ellen still lay on the seat, and the sight of it filled her with an oddly uncomfortable feeling. It was a part of the woman’s life that held a special significance for her. Twenty percent of all she had left from a job lot. And she had given it away.

Ellen wondered whether she would be as profligate with what Frank had left her, such as it was. It was this thought that prompted her to rummage through the waste bin and retrieve the scrap of paper with the strange words that he had written. She had pondered over Marthe’s theory about past lives, what she called frontaliers of the consciousness. And wondered whether Frank’s cryptic verse might hold any clues to his own dark frontier.

She read the words once more and found them no less baffling than the first time she had read the verse. But she hoped that, if Marthe could translate the German parts for her, they might enlighten her a little more. So she tucked the paper safely back in her handbag and spent the rest of her journey to Paris and on to Calais writing a long letter to Marthe. She was so looking forward to her coming to stay.

Copyright

Published by Clink Street Publishing 2021

Copyright © 2021

First edition.

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