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

her heart. She headed on to the Piazza Grande for a last taste of this strangely ambivalent town and to enjoy a coffee before she left. There was not a lot of activity on the piazza at that hour. While the cafés were open, none of the tables outdoors were occupied, and a restful silence hung over the place, punctuated only now and then by occasional footsteps. Although it was still on the chilly side, Ellen was loath to sit indoors, so she sat at the table she had occupied the day before. As soon as the waiter had taken her order of a cappuccino, the silence gave way to a music from inside the café that was so light it was barely audible. The sound of a keyboard and guitar that strained even to compete with the occasional footsteps on the piazza. Ellen thought she recognised it.

She looked back at the café and saw that the waiter who had taken her order was not the same man as yesterday. This one was older, wore his hair long and sported a five-day shadow that seemed out of keeping with the dress of a Swiss waiter. What looked like a permanent snarl on his lips underlined this impression. It occurred to her that this was probably not a waiter at all, but simply the owner opening up for the morning. And the music perfectly matched the sense of a slow start to the day. As Ellen observed him moving around the bar, she had the sense that he was enjoying the early-morning freedom of doing as he liked. Playing his own music. Not having to concern himself with the clientele. She was grateful for that.

As she continued to watch, the music slowly built into a mysterious, captivating atmosphere. It lent a new dimension to the piazza. The footsteps around her slowly lost their power. It was the emergence of the trumpet that did it for Ellen. The sparing mournful tones gradually eased their way into the music, then skittered into the foreground like a little girl in search of somewhere to belong. ‘In a Silent Way’. It instantly put her in mind of Frank. It was his kind of music. He had introduced her to Miles Davis not long before that day he left for Switzerland. The memory evoked by those eerie, almost menacing sounds of the trumpet, guitar and electronic keyboards gave Ellen a strange sense of comfort.

She relaxed into the music, took out her book and started reading where she had left off the night before at the third tale in the collection. ‘Don’t Look Now’. As the music weaved its mystery and Ellen became engrossed in the story, still waiting for her cappuccino to arrive, she became aware of a figure approaching the table.

“Good morning. May I join you?”

It was the elegant lady from the day before. She was now wearing a coat over her Chanel two-piece, but still clutched the same Louis Vuitton bag emblazoned with the initials P.R. Without waiting for a reply, she sat herself down in the chair next to Ellen. There was a presumptuousness about it that irritated Ellen. But having made up her mind to leave Locarno that day, she felt more at ease with the world this morning.

“I must apologise for being so unfriendly yesterday,” Ellen said, overcoming her irritation as the Louis Vuitton lady made herself comfortable.

“I was not aware that you were. But it did seem to me that you were a little troubled.”

The words were broken by the man from the café, with the snarl on his lips, placing Ellen’s cappuccino on the table. She left the remark to hang in the air, as she contemplated the froth and the dusting of cocoa in silence, listening to the mournful trumpet that encroached increasingly onto the piazza air. She saw the man who put the cappuccino on the table in a different light now. The snarl broke into a smile of casual nonchalance. And he took her uninvited companion’s order. Caffè e latte.

“I lost my husband recently,” Ellen said, as the man returned to the bar with the order.

The words were intended as an explanation. But the moment she blurted them out, it struck Ellen that she was really speaking them for herself. They provided a release.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I should not have intruded. Do forgive me.”

“It’s all right. It was a long process,” said Ellen, adding with dubious conviction: “I’m sure it’s good for me to talk about it. And probably easier to do so with a stranger.”

There followed a long, awkward silence as the two women stared into their coffee cups. Around them, activity on the piazza was beginning to grow. Two more guests arrived and sat down at a table nearby. A delivery van pulled up at the café next door. And the man and woman Ellen had seen the day before admiring each other’s dogs were now walking their animals together.

“Where did you say you learned such good English?” Ellen eventually asked.

“A very good friend,” the lady said with an enigmatic smile. “I lived with him in South Devon for some years. But when he passed away, I moved back to France.”

“Do you know London at all?”

“A little.”

“I live in Fulham,” said Ellen.

“Oh, I know Fulham. On the few occasions we went to London, my friend would take me to see a polo match there.”

“Polo?” said Ellen with a look of surprise. For her, this was a sport that belonged to a bygone age, to the days of the British Empire. Yet looking now at this lady in her stylish clothes with her Louis Vuitton bag, she could well imagine her at the Hurlingham polo club.

“Really? I live just down the road from there. At the less fashionable end.”

This unexpected connection between the two women gave Ellen heart to open up a little more. She began to speak of the events leading up to the morning when Frank stepped out of her life just