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

the silence of the room, Frank was startled by the sudden trespass on his thoughts. He was not expecting conversation. Nor seeking it. He looked to his right and found a woman two chairs along watching his every move. She had the anxious eyes of quarry. They peered out from under a luxuriant head of dark shoulder-length hair that hung over her face like a curtain of concealment from any predators. But she had the confidence to smile.

“Are you a writer as well?” she asked. Her hands fidgeted with what looked like a cigarette lighter as she spoke. The smile took the brittle edge from her voice for Frank. He was surprised, too, by the Englishness of her accent.

“Are you English as well?” he asked, mimicking her turn of phrase.

“No. Are you?” Her smile gave way to an expression that Frank found hard to fathom. She appeared to sense his fluster and smiled again, but this time with a curious resignation in her voice. “My husband’s mother is Irish. She’s been living here for years, but she’s still not mastered the language. So we speak in English.”

She turned her head and looked out into the winter garden, contemplating its emptiness.

“My name is Anna,” she said, turning back to Frank. “I’m a writer as well.”

“I’m a journalist. I report things,” he replied.

“We all report things in our own way.” The quarried expression in Anna’s eyes turned back onto the garden. “Do you see those trees?”

Frank watched as she dropped the cigarette lighter on the tray, raised both arms, with hands and fingers outstretched, then slowly lowered them again and let each finger jiggle down in a trickling motion as if to trace the outline of every single birch.

“They plant them there like that especially for us, you know. A perfect scaffold to keep us in our place. Like the bars of a cage. But I love them nonetheless. Especially in winter. There’s an honesty about them in the winter. None of the airs and graces of the spring or summer, when they’re shrouded in green. And none of the pretentious ways of autumn either.”

For the first time, Frank caught the hint of an Irish lilt in Anna’s voice that she must have picked up from her mother-in-law. It lent a pleasing warmth to the brittle voice. And while Anna’s expression was hidden from Frank beneath the dark curtain of her hair, he sensed a satisfaction in her as she sat now contemplating the garden outside, fidgeting again with the lighter.

Her silent engrossment in the winter scene outside lingered for so long that it became clear to Frank her mind had wandered off along another path altogether. Thankful for this release, he turned his thoughts back to Ellen. Looked again at his notepad and took pen to paper.

He recalled an early spring day together on the north coast of Cornwall. The trees, like these outside now, showed no signs yet of dressing for the spring. But unlike the naked birches, they were at least invested with a little life by the gentle breeze that blew in off the sea. A breeze that whispered its way quietly through their branches – a near-silent susurrus almost drowned out by the surf that swept over the rocks far below them. And he recalled how later in the evening, in the cool night of the cottage they had rented, Ellen breathed on a window pane, then drew a heart in the mist and the letters F and P on either side. Then they watched together as the mist faded.

“But the message never really fades,” she said. Frank recalled how captivated he was by the innocent lightness of her voice. “You just have to breathe it back to life,” she reassured him. Then she breathed on the pane again and let out a warm chuckle of girlish delight as they watched the heart and letters reappear.

No, that’s not right, Frank told himself. The letters are wrong. I’m getting everything mixed up. He threw the pen down on the pad in frustration and ran both hands through his mop of hair.

“It makes you wonder what you’re doing here, doesn’t it? Who you really are?”

That brittle edge had returned to Anna’s voice. It dragged Frank back from his entangled memories. He peered across at her. A look of sad anxiety had returned to her eyes.

“I like to write,” she continued. “I like to paint as well. But I’m not allowed to.”

“What do you mean you’re not allowed to?”

“There’s only room for one artist in a man’s world. But at least I can write when I’m allowed the time,” she said. Then added with a curious tightening of the lips: “What are you on?”

The mystified expression on Frank’s face was unable to penetrate the curtain of hair over Anna’s eyes.

“Do you know they invented LSD just down the road from here?” she continued. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they tested it in this clinic.”

Frank smiled. “You don’t need to worry. I’m only on Valium.”

“You may be. Or maybe not. They don’t say what they’re giving me. They just keep telling me it’s new.” Anna chuckled to herself, before adding, “So I suppose it can’t be LSD.”

“So what prevents you from painting?” Frank asked, guiding Anna back to the original question. She prevaricated.

“My husband’s not an easy man. But I think there are many husbands in Switzerland who are not easy,” she said and paused to gaze out through the window for a moment, before adding with a grin “I call it ‘la condition suisse’.”

It was a grin that spoke of resignation more than amusement.

“I heard there’s a referendum to give us the vote,” she said, then asked: “Are you an easy husband?”

Frank was momentarily stung by the directness of her question. He struggled for an answer that could be squared with his conscience. But it was an unnecessary struggle. The question was purely rhetorical.

“It was when he brought Esther home for the first time that I realised it was not