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

said ‘a swan no longer spotless white passes like the times, where the headline reads of chaos and confusion’. And he began to sing that Marc Bolan song to himself. ‘Ride a White Swan’. Do you know it?

Marthe shook her head, lifted her tea cup from the table and took a sip.

“He had a strange way with words,” Ellen added. “But that’s what fascinated me about him from the first moment we met.”

“Where did you meet?” Marthe asked.

“At a music festival in a little place you will never have heard of called Shepton Mallet. Quite small, but lots of big names. Like Led Zeppelin, Colosseum, Pink Floyd.”

“I’ve heard of Pink Floyd,” Marthe said with a spark of recognition in her eyes as she took another sip of her tea.

“Oh, they were fantastic!” Ellen’s eyes sparked with the memory. “The whole event was great, of course. Not just the music. I was there with some friends. And out of nowhere this gorgeous man with dark, gentle eyes framed by a mop of dark-brown curly hair rode up on his Triumph motorbike. I was hooked. That was just last summer. It was a whirlwind romance. Within a few months we married, and he moved down to London. He even ditched his motorbike for me.

“That was a big sacrifice,” Ellen continued, mulling over the words as she spoke. “He loved his Triumph bike. German engineering at its best, he used to say. Which I found strange, until he explained to me that the company was founded by immigrants from Germany. I didn’t know that.

“But actually I don’t think he regretted giving up the bike. It didn’t really fit. It was almost like a mask he felt he had to wear. He seemed more than happy to throw it off and settle into what was quite a humdrum life in some ways. We were both happy with it, and I was just looking forward to the day when we would hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet in the house.

“Then he started to do these funny things. Mostly little things, as I said. Like the day he came home with an LP of Bartok, all nicely giftwrapped for me. But he knows that’s not my sort of music. Nor his.

“Or the time we were walking along this street together in London. We were passing a second-hand bookshop, and he suddenly stopped, transfixed by a drab, dusty old window display. Not that this was unusual in itself: he often browses through second-hand books. If it’s not poetry, then it’s something to do with the Third Reich.”

“An intriguing combination of interests,” Marthe said in the manner of someone taking notes. Ellen could almost picture her mentally putting pencil to paper.

“He’s become fascinated by that period since he started researching for an article about the Bank of England and its links to Nazi Germany before the war,” Ellen explained.

“So anyway, when he disappeared inside this shop, I automatically assumed it must be for one of the few books he hadn’t read on the subject. But when he eventually emerged from the place, he came out proudly carrying a dusty copy of Collins Handguide to the Birds of the Indian Sub-Continent. It was probably quite interesting in its way, and the illustrations were beautiful. But it was just not the sort of thing that would normally have interested Frank.

“‘I saw it and thought that’s just the thing,’ was all he said. And he carried on up the street as if it was the most natural thing in the world. It was the first time I had ever known him buy anything on impulse like that. Then a few weeks later came the Bartok LP. ‘Heard it on the radio the other night,’ he said. ‘I thought that’s just the thing for pet’.

“And that’s another thing,” Ellen added. “The way he started calling me pet. It wasn’t his kind of word. It’s a Geordie word. From the north-east. Not something Frank would use. When I think of it now, it’s almost as if he was living a lie.”

“How did you react?” Marthe asked.

“What? To being called pet?”

Ellen became aware of herself flushing again at the memory of the first time she heard Frank use this name for her. On their honeymoon in Venice.

“I suppose I got a bit irritated sometimes, that’s all. But it didn’t really bother me that much,” said Ellen, wincing inwardly at the discomfort of another lie.

She sensed her face colour all the more. But Marthe appeared to ignore it. Or perhaps she was enjoying the psychiatrist’s couch routine too much to interrupt the flow.

“Did you ever talk to him about his strange behaviour?” she asked.

“I tried. Once.”

Ellen’s words became involuntarily muted by her recollection of that attempt.

“Tell me about it.”

Ellen would have preferred not to, but she knew Marthe would not let her off that easily. And deep down, she also sensed the need to get it off her chest.

“Do you know Cornwall?” Ellen asked. Marthe shook her head with a slightly mystified expression. But Ellen could see that she had her full attention.

“It’s very beautiful. Full of myths and legends. I always spent my holidays there as a child. Loved the place. Then, one day, I persuaded Frank to take me back for a long weekend. You must have heard of King Arthur?”

Marthe nodded.

“Well, he’s supposed to have held court in a place called Tintagel. And every year, when we went on holiday to Cornwall, I was always dying to visit the place. But I never did. My parents never took me. So Frank made it an extra-long weekend and booked a lovely little cottage just outside Tintagel, because he said he’d never been there either. Actually, I think he was probably lying just to please me – he was a bit like that. Well, to tell the truth, Tintagel itself proved rather disappointing. And much smaller than in my childhood dreams.

“But the landscape is magical. It was late autumn. A damp Saturday afternoon. And