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

will call again tomorrow – and keep calling until you speak to him. He needs to know that you’re still ‘toeing the line’.”

“What are you playing at, Frank?” she asked, staring at him over her cup.

“Trust me, Patricia,” was all he said, and it seemed to be all she needed to hear. From that moment, her expression lightened, as if he had just removed the last burden from her shoulder and she could now walk upright. She became as carefree as every other tourist in St Moritz. Even the phone call she made to Breitner later that evening failed to chip away at the screen she had thrown over the giant hole of despair. Quite the contrary, she found the conversation hugely amusing.

“You should have heard him,” she giggled. And Frank was reminded of her girlish enthusiasm during the concert that became such a horrendous experience for him at the hands of Bartok.

“The way he was blustering and choking. It’ll be a long time before he gets over his walk down the mountainside.”

Frank smiled.

“When did he get back down?”

“I didn’t dare ask. His pride was far too injured to tell me that.” She laughed, so free at last that Frank felt his task was already half done. “But he did say you would live to rue the day you met him.”

“That day has long since passed.”

She reached a hand across the table and held his arm as he was about to put the last piece of buttered roll in his mouth.

“Frank,” she said, “promise me you’ll take care.”

Her concern excited the conceit within him. But it expressed itself as irritation: “Why is it that my sacrifice is any less worthy than yours?”

“What do you mean, Frank?”

She was hurt. His words had plainly taken her aback. And he had to admit that he was unable to explain them. But this brief preoccupation with the darkness that was lurking in the wings would not be allowed to unhinge their extended honeymoon.

“Come on. It’s time we enjoyed some of this Engadin sunshine.”

He guided her out through the expansive lobby and past the other hotel guests milling around the aspidistras in opulent fur coats that looked far too large even for the most overweight of them. Patricia clung to his arm like a wicked young koala and whispered: “What on earth made you bring me to this place? It must cost a fortune.”

“Childhood memories, maybe,” he replied, conceding quietly to himself that it was more likely he just wanted to impress her. And of course, she was right: he could not afford it. But issues of this kind were unimportant as they walked out into the sun, into a week that would come the closest to heaven he would ever be. And a week also that saw his decision harden and carry him relentlessly towards the final act.

Much of their time was spent either watching the bobsleigh teams practising for the world championships or following the horse-racing down on the flat. It had always fascinated him as a boy when he came here with his father to watch the horses. The snow and ice of the frozen lake under the beating hooves added a new dimension to the excitement of the race. Perhaps it was the resonance of their pounding hooves in the cold thin air. Or maybe it was the crowd. The atmosphere was so unlike anything he had met anywhere else in his narrow world at the time.

Patricia was even more spellbound by the activity than he had been as a boy. The heavy breath of the beasts on the cold air and the steaming of their sleek bodies. It pleased him that he had been able, however unwittingly, to provide her with some nutriment for her dreams. In fact, so taken was she by the festive, gaming mood of the spectators all around them, as they buzzed with expectation at the final Grand Prix race, that he could not restrain her from trying to throw nearly all their money away on one of the horses.

“But you don’t know the first thing about horses,” he insisted.

“You don’t have to. All you need is intuition and a sense of fun,” came the bubbling reply. She was in thrall to the race even before it had started and her chosen beast had taken the lead.

“Come on, Broiefort!” she screamed with a power in her voice that was new to him – and did not altogether meet with the agreement of the spectators around them. A tall distinguished-looking man in his early sixties with a white moustache and a fresh-faced appearance that told Frank he was not unaccustomed to a winter climate in the mountains even went so far as to offer his sympathy for the loss he was about to incur.

“I regret to say that your young lady has made a most unwise choice,” he said, instantly identifying himself as an Englishman.

“I knew his father, Blandford. Derby winner. Beautiful creature. But this horse is not a patch on him,” the man explained, before adding: “Something of a failure as a two-year-old, you know. Tends to fade when the chips are down. You know the type. Not to be trusted.”

But Patricia was too enthralled by the race to hear his words. “Broiefort! Broiefort!” she continued to scream.

And perhaps this support was the fillip which the horse had been waiting for. If so, Frank knew precisely how the creature felt and fully understood how, much against his English neighbour’s judgement, the horse managed not only to win, but to lead from start to finish.

“Well I’m blowed,” was all the man could say. His eyes widened in amazement, as Patricia wrapped every inch of her excitement around Frank. But he could not resist overcoming his English reserve to interrupt their embrace.

“Beg your pardon, madam,” he said, raising his hat with an emphasis that seemed to say he was not accustomed to such forward behaviour and would she please forgive him the indelicacy, “but may I be so