The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

And her words brought the disturbing memory of their honeymoon in Venice back to the surface once again. The pain. The cry. The rank disgust on Frank’s face. She sensed herself colour slightly at her own words and felt a little foolish.

Marthe failed to see the embarrassment in Ellen’s cheeks.

“But you must agree, Ellen, they are rather messy instruments. We women need more than that. Warmth and tenderness, compassion, understanding. Love. For men, this seems to mean the privilege of leaving their mess all over you and expecting you to be grateful.”

“Perhaps you look at it like that because you’re not interested in having children?” Ellen suggested. And regretted the words the moment they came out. Marthe glared at her with an expression she was unable to read. But Ellen could see that her words had hurt.

“Don’t get me wrong, Ellen. Urs and I have a good relationship. He’s very good to me. And very understanding. I’m so much luckier than my sister in that way.”

“You also have a sister?”

“She’s some years older than me. And I don’t see her much these days,” Marthe said. “She lives in Berne with her accountant husband. Poor soul. He doesn’t even let her have her own bank account, makes sure she keeps a cash book for everything she buys and expects her to present every receipt for him to check. He’s quite typical of many Swiss men.”

“He sounds a lot like my own brother-in-law.”

“I’m sure that’s not possible,” Marthe insisted. “You know, I first met him when I was going through my ‘Women in Playpens’ phase. I’m not sure whether it was thanks to Iris von Roten or my sister’s husband. Maybe it was a combination of the two. But it was around then that I decided to take a job with the school psychological service in the hope that I could help some of the children to avoid the traps men like to lay in this country.”

Marthe paused for a moment. The expression in her eyes spoke of a reminiscence she preferred to keep to herself.

“That was before I went to America with Urs. But you’re right, Ellen,” Marthe added, reviving Ellen’s allusion to her lack of children. Men can certainly be useful.”

There was a thinly veiled rebuke in Marthe’s voice, but she allowed Ellen to ignore it as she continued in the warmer tone that Ellen had come to appreciate in her.

“How important is it to you really?” she asked. “To have children?”

“Very.” It was all Ellen needed to say. It expressed everything. But Marthe was not satisfied.

“I know many people who find children very fulfilling,” she said, “but children can also hamper a woman. During the referendum, the campaign against the women’s vote was quite nasty. They produced some unbelievably unpleasant posters showing babies falling out of prams or flies crawling over a baby’s Nuggi, er,” she hesitated, looking for the English word. “Pacifier,” she said at last, curling her tongue around the r.

“Do you mean a dummy?” Ellen asked, mildly irritated by the American ways Marthe would throw into the conversation now and then.

“Is that the word?” Marthe asked. “Can you imagine? These were the posters they put up to persuade people that women should stay at home, look after their babies and not concern themselves with politics. Voting on issues that affect women’s lives was a man’s job. Really I didn’t need any encouragement to join the campaign against ideas like that. There’s more to a woman’s life than looking after babies. But let me put this another way,” Marthe added in an effort to get them back to the point of her original question, “suppose we never find Frank, and you never meet anybody to take his place. What would you do?” Marthe asked.

“It’s funny. If you’d asked that a few weeks ago I’d have died at the thought. Now I can talk about it without any problem. It’s frightening really.”

Marthe put her hand on Ellen’s, as if to demonstrate the warmth and understanding she spoke of earlier. Her touch made Ellen feel strangely at ease with the world. But Marthe was not prepared to leave it at that.

“You haven’t answered my question,” she persisted.

“I just don’t see that as a problem these days. You don’t have to have a mate to make babies nowadays.”

“It means that much to you?”

“Yes, it does.” Ellen failed to understand the disbelief in Marthe’s eyes. And sensing the demand for some explanation, she added: “I want to show I can do it better than my parents, who thought it was enough to bring me into the world and then packed me off to boarding school.”

“It’s interesting that we share the experience of a Catholic boarding school, but come to such different conclusions,” Marthe said. Her look of incomprehension deepened, as she paused, then added: “And you wouldn’t mind whose sperm you had, as long as it was fertile?”

“I didn’t say that. And in fact the question wouldn’t arise, because I still have Frank’s sperm. We’ve read a few reports recently about the advances they’ve been making in donor insemination. We discussed it a few times. And then one day, a few weeks ago, Frank just sprang the news on me that he’s banked some of his sperm in a donor insemination centre.”

Marthe’s mouth dropped. Had she not already finished her coffee, it would have doubtless been spluttered all over the table. Ellen had never seen her lost for words before and was surprised by the reaction. She had always seen Marthe as such a woman of the world, so difficult to shock – yet Ellen appeared to have done just that. Marthe’s expression wavered between amusement and incredulity.

“You know, Ellen,” Marthe said at last, her hand still reassuringly rested on Ellen’s arm, “the science is not nearly as advanced as people would like it to be. And these insemination services can be very questionable.”

Ignoring Marthe’s words of caution, Ellen felt compelled to justify herself.

“We discussed it a few times after he