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

of paper that Professor Abegg had shown her when she met him for the first time in the clinic.

“Here, maybe you can make sense of it.” Ellen handed it to Marthe when she returned and resumed the story while Marthe digested the words.

“Well, eventually Frank persuaded me that we should accept his invitation. I have to admit that I was very curious. But also a little apprehensive.”

“Why?” Marthe asked, looking up from the piece of paper with a quizzical expression in her eyes.

“I’m not sure. There was just something about the man that disturbed me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. And he could actually be quite entertaining. The setting for his studio was certainly just as he had described it. Bleak and depressingly beautiful.

“And for all his pretentious posing, he was really quite modest. I don’t think he genuinely saw himself as a very talented artist.

“‘No one can come anywhere near the talents of Nature,’ he used to say. ‘Nature will always be the only sculptor of any note. She can do anything – from the human body to the Bowerman’s Nose.’ That was one of his favourite rocks on the moor. ‘What can we hope to achieve against that? We’re nothing more than poor copyists,’ he used to say.

“Well, some weeks after that trip, Frank suddenly announced, quite out of the blue, that he had arranged to visit Bill Plattner again at the weekend. I didn’t even know they had kept in touch. And I was very much against him going. Apart from anything else, I already had plans for that weekend.

“‘Fine. Then you won’t be bored if I’m not here,’ he said.

“That got me so angry. I think it was the only really serious argument we had. We hardly spoke for the rest of that week, except to heap abuse on each other. So anyway, despite my protests, he went. And I stayed behind – that is, until I could stand it no longer. Much against my better judgement, the thought of a Saturday night alone drove me to follow him. It wasn’t easy to find the place on my own through the rambling lanes of Devon. When eventually I got there, it was already quite late, and I was exhausted. The door was open. I remembered Bill saying he never locked it, so I just walked in. The place seemed cold and deserted, but I could hear voices coming from the studio.

“The studio was actually a converted barn directly adjoining the cottage. And when I went through the passageway that Bill had created between the living area and what he liked to call his workshop, the sight that greeted me was so comical I don’t know why I didn’t split my sides. Bill was sitting beside a huge lump of his favourite granite, making sketches. Around him and at his feet lay dozens of discarded sheets of paper containing what looked like unfinished sketches of the same model. And the model in question was my Frank. Stark naked. Stretched out on a sofa. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“‘Hi Ell,’ Bill said, friendly as ever and completely unabashed. ‘I thought Frank was coming down alone this trip.’ Bill insisted on calling me Ell from the very first time we met, and I hated it. But I didn’t bother to make my feelings known the first time since I didn’t even remotely imagine we would be seeing him ever again. Let alone under such circumstances. So the name stuck, along with a growing antipathy towards him.

“Well, Frank very sheepishly pulled his clothes on, and it became one of the strangest weekends I’d ever experienced. Frank and Bill spent a lot of time alone together, and on the few occasions they were with me they behaved like two giggly schoolgirls. I’d never seen Frank behave in such a silly way before. In retrospect, I suppose it was embarrassment.”

“You say you tried talking to Frank about his behaviour.”

“Yes, that was when I tried talking to him – after we got home. Before that, we spent the time either in silence or skirting the issue with meaningless chatter. Or in Frank’s case, silliness.”

“Which issue were you trying to skirt?”

“Well, there was only one. That cosy little scene on the sofa.”

Ellen detected in her own voice an involuntary disbelief that Marthe even felt the need to ask such a question.

“I mean, how would you feel suddenly finding you were married to a queer?” Ellen asked.

“Is that how you put it to him?”

“More or less.”

“And what was his reaction?” Marthe asked. “You know, just because he was posing naked for an artist doesn’t mean that he’s homosexual.”

“That’s what he said. Those very words. And when I calmed down and thought about it, I managed to convince myself that he was right, that I had probably been exaggerating. A bit like that Geordie girlfriend I dreamed up. But don’t you see? He was acting so strangely. I had to find explanations for his behaviour.”

“You didn’t try to ask Frank for explanations?”

“Of course, but none of them made much sense. And when I pressed him on his ‘modelling scene’” (Ellen sensed each syllable breathe contempt as she spoke the words) “all he said was ‘Ask my mother. She never liked the clothes I wore’. I mean, what a strange thing to say.”

“Do you often press him for explanations?” The way Marthe borrowed her word ‘press’ – and lingered on it – bothered Ellen. Was it an uncertain command of the language? she asked herself. Or did it betray an implicit reproach?

Marthe appeared to glean a certain satisfaction from Ellen’s hesitation. And she promptly followed up with another line of questioning before Ellen had time to consider her reply.

“What was his mother like?”

“A bitch.”

Ellen’s response this time could not have been swifter. But the eagerness of her reply concealed a reluctance to continue what had become a rather tiresome interview.

“Marthe,” she said. There was a new firmness in her voice, “I