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

fault too. I remember him mentioning that he would attend the event. He wanted me to come with him.” She stopped herself, but too late. She had already said too much and withdrew momentarily into a dark, impenetrable silence reflected in the blackness of the night, which sped past them unannounced behind the carriage window.

Frank was desperate to pursue her thoughts. But although she had taught him the art of curiosity, he still shied away from indiscretion. And she was more than eager to gloss over her own lapse and led them quickly onto a safer track. She rested a seductive hand on his and caressed his hapless desire for her with the obtusely captivating smile of her embattled lips and bewitching ebony eyes.

“Frank, I can’t go home now. Let’s stop off somewhere else. Just for a few days at least. Please,” she implored. She knew instinctively how to fill him with boundless warmth whenever she wanted to.

“How about St Moritz?” he suggested, handing her the newspaper he had bought at the station. “It says here that Winston Churchill is due to arrive there shortly for his winter break. After the nest of vipers in Davos, perhaps you’d feel safer in the proximity of a man of his stature.”

“You don’t have to make fun.”

“Actually, Pat, I’m quite serious. If you really want to go somewhere else for a few days, I can’t think of a better place. But I shall have to go to the bank tomorrow.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me Pat.”

“I’m sorry. When I was in England, many people used it as a term of endearment. They call their cats and dogs ‘pets’, just like you call me squirrel in your dafter moments,” he teased her, before adding a sting in the tail: “What do your other lovers usually call you?”

“Only a German could fail to notice any distinction in pronunciation between ‘pat’ and ‘pet’,” she said with a look of dismissive scorn. Then added:

“Do you think they allow pets in the hotels of St Moritz?”

She had chosen to ignore his last question. And he was glad of this. Even if it did come with a crushing put-down, it at least indicated that she had approved his suggestion.

They were fortunate that the last connection for St Moritz had not yet left by the time they reached Filisur, so it was still a respectable nine o’clock when their little red train pulled them into their last resort in the upper reaches of Engadin. Frank had already telephoned the Suvretta House from Filisur and managed to book a room.

“We shall have to take a taxi,” he explained. “It’s a little way out of town. But at least we shall be safely isolated from the Breitners of this world.”

She rested her head on his shoulder as the taxi swept them over the snow up the hill to their hotel. Although she was exhausted, the look in her eyes remained stubbornly alert. Frank could sense the trouble turning in her mind as he caressed her lips and the deep seductive furrow of her philtrum with his thumb.

“I’ve been told the more pronounced it is, the bigger the heart,” he whispered, “and those who have not been touched at all by your angel Lailah are completely heartless. Do you think that’s why Mr Hitler wears that ridiculous moustache? To conceal the absence of any soul?”

Patricia sat silently enjoying the caress of his fingers on her lips. But her mind was elsewhere.

“Can you imagine anyone wanting to bring children into the world?” she asked.

Frank was startled by the digression. For some reason, he had never imagined she would entertain such ideas, even from the remotest of theoretical viewpoints. She had always seemed to him to be above the untidy biological dimensions of life. It was one of the many qualities he liked about her. So he was glad the taxi was already pulling into the driveway of the hotel before the commitment of an answer could be expected of him. But her question stayed with him like a thorn, pricking him every time he touched it. Yet teasing, and inviting his vanity to play with its implications.

Patricia had taught him sufficient curiosity to want to return to the subject once their luggage had been delivered to their room and they were left alone for the night. But perhaps he was too fearful of where the conversation might lead. After the day’s untoward surprises and unplanned travel, he was too tired for any kind of serious conversation anyway. So they both sank into their private worlds, side by side in bed, without exchanging more than a few words. Only touching.

When it was he woke, he could not say, but it was still dark. Nor was he certain what it was that woke him – whether it was the unseen hand of his conscience or the communication between their tangent bodies. But even in his stupor, he was instantly aware that Patricia too was awake. He sensed her staring into space. Trying to lose herself in the darkness that surrounded them.

“Patricia,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

But night remained possessive of her thoughts. Not a peep filtered through the grasping darkness, until he felt driven to switch on the bedside light.

“Uhh! What are you doing?” She blinked violently and hid her face under the sheets. “Please!”

She said nothing more. Frank switched off the light again. And waited. It was the faint tremor of her weeping body that eventually shook the night into some kind of action. He took her in his arms. Her head on his shoulder. The soft flesh of her breasts caressing his belly as she breathed. And her tears trickling onto his chest. Not a sound passed her lips. He could only offer her closeness and warmth. He felt powerless to help. And sensed that she felt the same.

How much of the night passed over them in this impotent embrace it was hard for him to tell, as sleep kept trying to drag him