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

“What a splendid idea. I’d be delighted.” The colonel’s face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm that almost endeared him to Frank – and at least made it easier for him to lend the semblance of truth to Patricia’s mischief-making:

“Is seven-thirty all right for you?” he asked.

“Splendid,” the colonel said again, and they left him with a smile on his face as he settled back into his chair to finish his pot of tea.

Dinner ran a similar course. The colonel was punctual, as to be expected, and positively bounced with excitement at the occasion. Frank had the impression they were the only people he had talked to the whole time he had been in St Moritz – apart from the hotel receptionist, the waiters and, almost certainly, the chambermaids. Patricia for her part played the attentive daughter substitute with conviction, flattering him with her smile and complimenting him on his choice of wine. For although Frank was ostensibly the host, he suggested that the responsibility for such an important decision as choosing the wine should not be left to the inexperience of youth. And all the while he was unable to imagine what it was about the colonel’s company that amused Patricia.

“Excellent, this dried beef,” the colonel said, as he devoured the last wafer-thin slice of his entrée and smacked his lips under cover of his moustache in a manner that Frank found faintly disgusting. The colonel appeared relaxed. But the slow deliberation with which he put down his wine glass and fixed his host across the table with his ageing, slightly washed-out eyes unnerved Frank, who once again suspected this was his intention.

“Well, old chap. Have you made up your mind yet?” the colonel asked.

Frank feigned incomprehension. But the colonel knew he was faking, even if he did not let on. And he knew the question had been occupying Frank’s mind ever since they had left him in the lobby. It was written all over the smug expression he used to wrap up his words. Frank suspected he also knew the answer.

“The Cresta Run, old chap. When are you going to do it?”

Frank’s reply was impulsive, but inevitable.

“I thought I’d give it a try tomorrow.”

“Knew you wouldn’t be able to resist it for long.”

‘Of course you knew,’ Frank said to himself. The self-satisfied smile on the colonel’s face irritated him intensely. But in a curious way he was beginning to look upon the man as an accomplice, if not an ally.

“Colonel, would you do me the honour of coming along?” he asked.

“Show you the ropes, you mean? Be only too pleased.” For a moment the colonel hesitated, as his smugness gave way briefly to a look of uncertainty. “Not sure I’m fit enough to do it myself, though. Not as young as I used to be, you know.”

It was as if he wanted to attempt an honourable retreat from his earlier posturing before Frank forced him onto the defensive by calling the bluff of his absurd bragging. And Frank wondered whether the colonel sensed the ambivalence of his invitation and the deep resentment he felt towards the man.

But it was settled. At nine o’clock in the morning, they would meet in the lobby. He had expected Patricia to be pleased that he was offering her lonely old colonel his company. But for the remainder of the evening a dark anxiety filled the expression in her eyes and told him that all was not well. Even later, when they were alone together in their room, her mood did not change. She made it plain that she wanted nothing to do with his plans.

“You’re not worried, are you?” he asked. “I’ll be in safe hands with your colonel.”

A stony stare told him that she did not appreciate his flippancy.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at, Frank. But I don’t like the sound of it. And I want no part in it.”

Although he was unsettled and slightly perplexed by this reaction, her intuitive knowledge thrilled him for the way it underlined the intimacy between them. But it was not this that kept him awake for much of the night, caressed by her breathing body as she slept. It was his apprehension at the gulf that he could sense opening up between dream and reality. A fear of failure. Tomorrow, his ambition would get the chance for a practice run, but would it match up to the task? Would it be strong enough? Would it show him that he was capable of leaping that gulf? He could not afford another failure. It was this that occupied him while the silky touch of Patricia’s body teased the man in him.

He had hoped that at the last minute she would change her mind. But it was not to be. So, when he met up with the colonel in the lobby the following morning, he made the necessary excuses for her. The colonel seemed surprisingly relieved.

“Just as well,” he said. “Not really the place for women.”

And he spent the next thirty minutes or so on their way over to the toboggan run explaining the ropes to Frank, as he put it. Coaching him. Preparing him for what he was about to embark on.

“Battledore is important,” he kept saying. “You’ll see a marker at Battledore. Get your steering line right here and you’ll sail round the horseshoe at Shuttlecock easy as anything. Get it wrong and you’re in trouble. And remember, don’t drag your rakes too heavily. If you must use them at all, then use them properly. If you don’t, you’ll be thrown all over the place.” And he proceeded to explain the technique with the detail of a military strategist that went right over Frank’s head as he began to wonder why it was he had considered this such a necessary plank in his preparation. But the colonel was in his element.

“Makes me feel thirty years younger,” he said. “Perhaps I should give it another try after all. Tomorrow maybe,” he added. And escorted Frank