Means to an End

by Lucy Gillen

  Bambina!’ he said softly against her lips and, despite the chaotic state of her senses, Alison thought she heard the sound of the Dunway bus chugging along the coast road behind them. But it was too late now, to worry about whether they had been seen or not and, at the moment, it seemed not to matter.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DANNY was waiting in his customary place on the sea wall when Alison went to meet him that evening, but she could tell by his stance, long before she got near him, that something was wrong, and guessed that the interview that morning had not gone well for him. She sighed, partly in sympathy with herself, in case he should be in a difficult mood after his disappointment.

  His shoulders drooped despondently, and he looked as if he was at odds with the whole world as he kicked with one foot at the base of the bollard he lolled against. His hands were in his pockets and his head bowed, and he did not even look up, even when he must have heard her approaching.

  He raised his head only when she spoke to him, and it was when he looked at her that she saw the expression in his eyes. Instinctively she put out a hand to touch his arm, and looked at him with anxious eyes. ‘Danny!’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’

  He said nothing for a moment, and he did not even kiss her, so that she resigned herself to a gloom-filled evening and looked at him with her eyes darkly blue and unhappy. Then he heaved himself away from the bollard at last, and started walking, but made no move to put an arm around her, as he usually did, nor even looked as if he cared whether she was there or not.

  ‘Danny ! ‘

  She went after him, although her first instinct was to leave him to brood on whatever it was, on his own. He could at least have stopped and explained his reasons, she thought. He walked on along the sea wall as far as a rather tumbledown concrete shelter, and there he ducked inside so suddenly that she almost lost him, turning to face her as she followed him in.

  ‘Danny, what on earth’s the matter?’ she asked, a little breathlessly from trying to keep pace with him.

  He looked at her steadily for a moment longer, his light blue eyes cold and curious. ‘I saw you,’ he said at last, and in tones of such heavy drama that she would probably have laughed if she had not known he was so deadly serious.

  ‘You—saw me?’

  He still looked at her, as if he expected his accusing gaze to make her uneasy enough to lower her own eyes, but she refused to do that, at least until she knew what she was supposed to have done wrong. It was obvious by now that whatever was wrong he was holding her the cause of it.

  ‘Danny,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re not being very fair up to now. I wish you’d let me into the secret of what I’m supposed to have done.’

  He slumped down on to the slatted wooden seat in the shelter, his hands still in his pockets and looking thoroughly disgruntled. ‘I told you I was going to Leethorpe this morning,’ he reminded her, and she nodded.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, you did.’

  ‘Well, if you’re interested

  ‘Of course I am,’ she interrupted hastily.

  `They hadn’t anything for me,’ he went on, ‘but they knew of someone in Dunway who wanted a booking clerk.’

  `You went for it?’ She still could not see what the

  connection was between that and anything she could

  possibly have done to offend him, but she waited. `No, I didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I don’t see

  He looked at her narrow-eyed. `No, you didn’t see,’ he interrupted shortly. ‘That was the whole point.’

  She waited, but he was looking at her now as if he expected her to know what he meant by that very enigmatic remark. ‘Danny, will you please explain?’ she begged, and he glanced at her grudgingly before looking down again.

  `I don’t suppose you expected me to be travelling on a bus along that particular road, did you?’

  ‘On a bus ‘ she began, and then suddenly saw it all clearly. Too dearly, as she remembered sitting that morning in the car with Stefano, along beside the Dunway road, pleading to be let off her driving lessons. She remembered, too, that just as Stefano kissed her, she had vaguely registered the sound of the Dunway bus chugging along on the road, only yards away from where they sat.

  `Yes,’ he said, nodding his head when he saw realisation dawn in her eyes. ‘I saw you with Illari in his car.’

  `Oh, I see ! ‘ She smiled wryly. ‘Is that what’s bothering you?’

  ‘Bothering me?’ He looked at her, his eyes angrily unhappy. ‘Of course it’s bothering me. Why wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Because it’s so easily explained,’ she told him, still hoping that he might not have seen anything more condemning than the two of them sitting in the car. ‘Stefano’s teaching me to drive.’

  Danny curled his lower lip, his eyes scornful. ‘It wasn’t driving he was teaching you, when I saw you,’ he told her. ‘Not by a long way ! ‘

  ‘Danny ! ‘ She tried to look righteously indignant, but it wasn’t easy when she felt so guilty about it, and she could cheerfully have murdered Stefano at that moment for putting her in this position.

  ‘He was kissing you ! As plain as day and in broad daylight he was kissing you,’ Danny went on relentlessly, `so don’t try to deny it.’

  ‘I’m not trying to deny it,’ Alison told him shortly, and Danny stared at her, disconcerted for the moment by her admitting it.

  ‘You mean—you mean you admit it?’ he said, and she shrugged, sitting down beside him on the slatted seat.

  `There’s not much use my denying anything, if you saw it, is there?’ she said, and took a moment to swallow on her temper that was being sorely tried. ‘All right, Danny, so Stefano was kissing me; but if you’d seen us a bit more closely and for a bit longer, you’d have seen that it was a mere—friendly peck and lasted just about two seconds, if that.’

  Perhaps friendly peck was stretching the truth a bit, she would have been the first to admit, but only

  because Stefano was incapable of producing anything so commonplace, but she refused to have one kiss turned into a full-scale orgy by Danny’s fertile imagination.

  He did not look at her, but kicked at the rough concrete floor of the shelter, his head still bowed. ‘I didn’t have time to see much,’ he admitted. ‘But he was kissing you, and it isn’t a necessary part of learning to drive that I know of.’

  `No, of course it isn’t,’ she agreed, already seeing the first signs of capitulation. ‘If you want the full truth of it, I was begging to be let off .any more lessons. I’m just not cut out for driving cars, especially that great brute of Stefano’s.’

  Danny looked up, cocking a brow at her. ‘And where did the kiss come into it?’ he asked.

  She looked at him from under her lashes, and smiled. ‘I’m afraid I’m not above using any tactics to get out of anything I particularly don’t like,’ she confessed, although it was a little short of the truth. ‘I had been playing up to him rather to get him to drop the idea ‘of the lessons.’

  ‘Don’t you want to learn to drive?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Not if my teacher is Stefano,’ she told him. ‘He’s a bully!’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And he wasn’t easy to persuade,’ she went on. ‘That was a sort of—of capitulation kiss, if you like.’

  ‘On his part?’

  ‘Of course on his part.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Are you sure you do?’ she asked, with a wry

  smile. ‘You don’t sound very sure.’

  ‘Oh, I believe you,’ he said, and reached out with one hand to draw her closer to him.

  ‘You’re not angry anymore?’

  He smiled wryly. ‘I believe you mostly because I want to,’ he admitted.

  He looked at her for several seconds speculatively, and she laughed. ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ she asked.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ he said, his fingers ruffling
her hair. `If you’re so good at coaxing your friend

  Illari, you’d better try some of the same tactics when you’re next after that money for us.’

  She frowned over that, and shook her head, not liking the implication at all. ‘You wouldn’t mind what I did?’ she asked, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  ‘Of course I would,’ he told her. ‘But whatever you did this morning, it might just work again.’

  She snuggled up close to him, glad to be back to normal. ‘I don’t think it would,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think I’d better do anything too obvious.’

  He smiled down at her, kissing the end of her nose. ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Wouldn’t your auntie like it?’

  For a moment Alison wondered if it was possible that he too had noticed anything, then realised that he had never seen Aunt Celia and Stefano together, so he couldn’t possibly know anything. ‘I don’t think she would like it,’ she agreed, and must have put rather more meaning into her answer than she had intended, for he looked at her speculatively.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that Aunt Celia’s fallen

  for -him! ‘

  ‘I wouldn’t say fallen for him exactly,’ Alison demurred, unwilling to be too open about her suspicions, but Danny was nodding wisely and smiling in a way she did not like at all.

  As if to confirm her suspicions, Stefano and Aunt Celia went off together the following day, and Alison watched them go with mixed feelings. She had asked, quite casually, what plans her aunt had for the afternoon, and Aunt Celia had looked across at Stefano before answering. It was a gesture that annoyed Alison intensely, because it gave her the impression that her aunt was seeking his permission to tell her.

  She had to go in to Skarren to, see her dentist. Aunt Celia explained and, since Stefano also had business in Skarren, they thought. it convenient to go in together in Stefano’s car. ‘It isn’t long since you went to the dentist before,’ Alison said. ‘Are you having trouble with your teeth, Aunt Celia?’

  Her aunt shook her head hastily and smiled, again flicking a glance at Stefano. ‘Oh no, not really, darling, but I—well, I need more check-ups now.’ She laughed. ‘Old age creeping on, you know.’

  Alison saw her glance at Stefano, and frowned. ‘Hardly that,’ she told her. ‘But I forget you’re one of those rare people who don’t mind going to the dentist, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t mind in the least,’ her aunt agreed, and Alison thought she detected a small, sardonic smile on Stefano’s dark face.

  She shrugged, still unsure whether the dentist was

  merely an excuse to go with Stefano, although why either of them should have thought it mattered to-her one way or the other, she could not understand. ‘Rather you than me,’ was all she said.

  ‘What are you going to do, dear?’ Aunt Celia asked, and Alison shrugged again.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about it. Go for a walk probably, I feel like walking.’

  ‘Well, we shan’t be very long, darling,’ her aunt told her as she followed Stefano out to the car. ‘Then maybe we can go through those paint pamphlets, hmm? It’ll be lovely to see the old house with a new coat of paint, won’t it?’

  Alison nodded absently, watching from the step while Stefano helped her aunt politely into the car and smiled down at her as he slammed the door shut. He was the very essence of the perfect escort, Alison thought wryly, thoughtful and polite and quite charming when it suited him, and she nibbled thoughtfully at her thumb as she watched them go. Aunt Celia was very definitely impressed, it was easy to see, but Alison simply could not, no matter how she tried, visualise Stefano as her uncle.

  Left to herself she decided that the idea of a walk was a good one, for it was much too nice to stay indoors, and she would go down to the village and decide where to from there. It would help to clear the cobwebs from her mind and also give her some much-needed exercise. Driving lessons and boat trips were all very well, but they were no substitute for walking when it came to exercise.

  It was warm and sunny and as she walked down the hill to the village, the turf underfoot smelled

  rich and loamy and the sea, rolling in lazily below the rock-faced cliffs, caught the sun and glinted like thousands of tiny mirrors that dazzled her eyes. There were gulls, drifting broad-winged on the warm currents of air below the higher cliffs, wheeling and turning, their cries carried to her on the light inshore wind that lifted her hair and cooled her forehead. It was the kind of scene that she had known and loved all her life and she never grew tired of it.

  She knew she would not be seeing Danny, for he had gone to look at yet another garage for sale, this one further afield still, and she smiled ruefully when she considered how remote their chances were of ever buying it. Stefano showed no sign of relenting in that direction and she thought he never would. If only Danny had not so firmly set his heart on owning a garage, things would have been so much easier all round.

  She sighed as she came down the last few feet into the village, and shook off the problem of Danny and Stefano, determined they should not spoil her enjoyment of her walk. The village itself was very small, and was soon left behind as she started out along the coast road, heading towards Creggan Creek, although consciously she had no particular destination in mind.

  She turned inland after a while, striking off along a path that ran across a field, giving a wide berth to the more permanent occupants who eyed her with bovine suspicion, but mercifully took no closer interest.

  She was aware that the path would bring her out

  on to the road not very far from the house she had visited with Stefano, but she was half way across the path before she realised with a start that the old house had been at the back of her mind ever since she set out.

  Shrugging off the realisation, she climbed over an ancient stile into the lane, glad to have the shade of the trees after her walk in the sun. It was hotter than was comfortable away from the cooling breeze nearer the water, and she stood for a few moments, leaning against the stile and enjoying the shade.

  The house was almost opposite where she stood, on the other side of the road, shrouded by tall trees and’set in its own, now neglected, garden. It must once have been quite a lovely old place, she thought, and the knowledge that Stefano was interested in it drew her across the road.

  There was no one else about that she could see, not even a passing car, and only a small brown dog eyed her curiously when she went in through the rotting wooden gates and along the gravel drive. The windows had that blank, closed look of a house without life, and she peered into one of them, seeing little more than her own face because of the sheen of dust inside that reflected the sun.

  Walking round to the side of the house, she discovered roses growing in profusion on a tumbledown trellis, and she broke off one of them and held it to her nose. It was an old-fashioned dark red rose, and somehow the sweet headiness of its perfume made her feel sad suddenly, as if it was a reminder of happier times.

  At the back of the house it was mostly lawn, or

  what had once been lawn but was now not much better than rough grassland, sloping down to the creek and the rickety wooden pier where she and Stefano had come ashore. It had a still, breathless air about it that seemed to belong to summer, and she could not easily imagine it in the wild east gales that blew up the creek in winter.

  Stefano had thought it had possibilities, she remembered, and at the time she had not been very impressed, but now, closer to the house and absorbing something of its atmosphere, she could better understand what he meant. The view of the creek and the sandy bay on the other side of it had, in the bright sunshine, a slightly Mediterranean look, and she remembered, too, Stefano’s comment that it reminded him of home.

  His interest in it, which had so puzzled her at the time, was of course explained by his business interests in property development, and she smiled to herself when she thought of how ignorant she had been of even the most basic kn
owledge about him.

  She had never really thought of him as having an existence until she had come into actual contact with him, although she knew of her great-grandfather’s remarriage, of course, and that he had a stepson. She had not, she thought, even known what his name was until she heard it at the reading of the will.

  The windows on the side of the house facing the creek were much easier to see through, being in shadow, and Alison peered through curiously into the big, dusty rooms, feeling once again that strange air of sadness when she thought of it having been

  someone’s home, and now looking so old and neglected.

  It was as she pressed her face to one of the windows that she felt it give slightly, and stepped back, frowning. She hesitated briefly, then poked an exploratory finger between the window and the frame. As she half expected, it pulled open as, far as the first hole on the arm, quite enough for her to reach in and open it further if she wanted to, and she stood there for a moment or two, undecided whether she should or not.

  Eventually she succumbed to curiosity and reach, ed in, lifting the arm off the peg and opening the window wide. Then she scrambled in over the sill and landed with a dull, echoing thud on the board floor, brushing dust from her clothes as she looked around her.

  It had high ceilings, and the rooms had a spacious and sunny look, even with their coating of dust, so that she could more than ever see Stefano’s point about it having possibilities, and she wondered what plans he had in mind for it.

  She ventured upstairs, lured there by the sun shining in through a window at the top of the wide, curving staircase, and she was in one of the bedrooms at the front of the house, when she heard the unmistakable sound of a car door slamming, followed closely by another, and then the crunching of footsteps on the gravel drive.

  She dared not even look out of the window to make sure that they were coming there, but she had no real need to, for there was little doubt they must have been, and none at all in her own mind. Instead

  she looked around desperately for somewhere to hide herself.