Means to an End

by Lucy Gillen

  She reached out one hand and touched his face, her eyes half hidden by their fringe of dark lashes, urged on by something she did not quite understand but which quickened her pulse and made her half turn towards him with only one object in mind. ‘Please, Stefano,’ she pleaded softly. ‘Please let me have the money. I’ll—I’ll do anything you want, if you’ll let me

  He sat up then, one hand sweeping aside her caressing fingers from his cheek, and with such an air of purpose that she was silenced before the sentence was finished. His fingers dug hard into her arms as he pulled her right round to face him, and his eyes glowed like live coals as he looked down at her.

  ‘I do not think you mean that, piccola,’ he said in a tight, hard voice she did not recognise.

  ‘I do,’ she cried. ‘I want that money! I need it, Stefano, and I—I don’t care what I

  ‘Be quiet! ‘ He shook her hard, his eyes blazing now with such fury she would not have believed it possible, and there was a taut, almost cruel look about his mouth with absolutely no hint of a smile.

  ‘You—’ He took a deep breath, and his fine nostrils flared briefly as he sought to control his temper. ‘You little fool! You would make a promise like that, just to get the money?’ His voice was cold and hard as steel and she did nothing but stare at him, realising at last just what the impression was she had given him. ‘You can thank heaven that I did not take advantage of your—your offer,’ he told her, and dropped his hands suddenly as if he could not even bear to touch her.

  ‘Stefano—’

  ‘I could make you pay for the favour you ask, as you so generously offered,’ he told her, ignoring her attempt to speak, ‘but it is not the way I want you, Alison. I do not have to bribe my way to such—such favours.’ He smiled, a cold, hard smile that she hated to see, for he looked as if he despised her. ‘You would not even have a guarantee that I would keep my side of the bargain even, so you are a poor bargainer, Alison. But,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘if the money means so much to you, you can have it, with my blessing!’ His, eyes raked swiftly over her and he laughed shortly. ‘I wish you luck with your Danny!’

  It was more than she could bear, to see him so plainly disgusted with her, and she scrambled to her feet, no longer even caring that she had at last achieved her goal, the tears running unchecked down her face as she turned away from him. Across the small, sandy beach she went, to where the dunes rose under their spiky grass fringes and where she could be out of sight of him.

  It would be a long weary walk to the road, and

  further still all the way back to Creggan, but she would rather have walked fifty miles than go back in the boat with him. Faintly, as she ran across the springy, warm-smelling turf, she heard his voice following her from the top of the dunes.

  `Alison! ‘

  The exaggerated second syllable of her name sounded even more accented and she bit on her lip

  as she went blindly on, refusing to either turn or even hesitate, with tears rolling down her hot face, anxious only to make her own way, anywhere away from that look she had seen in his eyes.

  `Alison ! ‘

  She shook her head, as if he was near enough to see it, and went on towards the road. There was no going back now with Stefano, and it dawned on her suddenly that it should not have mattered so much, since she could now marry Danny, which was what she had wanted all along.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HAD it not been for the thought of worrying Aunt Celia with her absence, Alison would not even have bothered telephoning to explain that she would not be back in time for lunch. It had been a long, hot walk to find a telephone box, after she had reached the road, and she had no money with her so that she was obliged to reverse the charges.

  Mrs. Dawlish answered the call and Alison was already relaying her message when, after a few mumbled words, the housekeeper handed over the call to Aunt Celia. ‘Darling,’ her aunt said, ‘where on earth are you?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Alison. ‘Somewhere along the road between Crag’s Head and Skarren I hope.’

  ‘Mrs. Dawlish was saying you told her something about not being back in time for lunch.’

  ‘That’s right. It’ll take me at least another hour and a half to walk from here. Probably longer, and it’s so hot I couldn’t possibly hurry. But please don’t wait for me, just have your lunch.’

  ‘Alison dear,’ she suspected her aunt was smiling, perhaps even laughing quietly to herself as she spoke, ‘you sound rather melodramatically sorry for yourself, and why on earth are you walking?’

  Alison sighed, a little hurt by the suggestion of self-pity.

  ‘Because I haven’t any money with me,’ she said.

  ‘That’s why I had to reverse the charges on this call.’

  There was a few seconds’ thoughtful silence. ‘What I really meant, dear,’ Aunt Celia said then, ‘was why aren’t you with Stefano?’

  ‘Hasn’t he told you that?’

  ‘No, dear, he hasn’t, and you went out with him, so why aren’t you with him now? What’s happened?’

  She sounded anxious, Alison thought, and took time to think before she answered. Stefano should have been back long ago and it did not sound logical that he had not already told her aunt his version of what had happened. Unless, of course, he had stayed on at Crag’s Head in the hope that she would come back.

  ‘Hasn’t Stefano come back yet?’ she asked, and immediately thought of a dozen alternatives to his having stayed where she had left him, all of them more hair-raising than the last.

  ‘No, he hasn’t,’ Aunt Celia told her, and sounded a little uneasy herself. ‘Alison, why aren’t you with him, wherever he is? What’s happened out there?’

  ‘We—we quarrelled.’ If that was not strictly true, it was as near as no matter.

  Certainly-Stefano had been angry enough to quarrel, if she had stayed long enough to argue with him. Only it would have been too humiliating to stay after the way he had spoken to her, and she was still horribly uncertain whether he had misjudged her or not. She had not intended to sound so boldly provocative, but she had to admit that her words could have been more easily interpreted that way than any other.

  ‘Oh, Alison ‘

  Her aunt sounded, to her sensitive ears, as if she already knew who was to blame for the quarrel, and Alison was immediately on the defensive. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she protested, automatically, then shook her head when she considered the facts again. ‘That’s not strictly true,’ she added. ‘I—I suppose I started it.’

  ‘So then what happened?’ Her aunt sounded resigned.

  ‘I—I just ran off and left him.’

  ‘At Crag’s Head?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Darling, with that long walk back, that was

  rather rash of you, wasn’t it? Didn’t you think about that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Alison declared shortly.

  ‘Well, he’s either stayed on in the hope that you’d come back,’ her aunt speculated, ‘or something’s happened to him on the way home.’

  ‘Oh ! Oh no, surely not,’ said Alison, her heart suddenly cold and heavy as lead when she thought of that sleek, speeding monster bouncing across the water, and of those treacherous sand banks below Crag’s Head.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be all right,’ Aunt Celia assured her. ‘And in the meantime you’ve got yourself stranded somewhere along the Skarren road?’

  ‘Well, I’m not exactly stranded,’ Alison argued. ‘I can walk, but it’ll take me a long time, and I didn’t want you worrying about me not being in for lunch. That’s why I rang.’

  ‘You’re a silly girl,’ her aunt scolded. ‘I’ll get the

  car out and come and fetch you.

  `No, really, Aunt Celia, there’s no need!’

  ‘Of course there is!’ her aunt retorted. ‘You can’t walk all that way back and go without lunch as well. I’ll be with you in no time if you stay where you are.’ There were background sounds sud
denly and she heard her aunt’s voice only faintly for a few moments, as if she had her head turned away from the instrument. ‘Well, at least one of you is back safely,’ she said a moment later. ‘Stefano’s just come in.’

  Something uncontrollable fluttered relief in her breast at that, and she spoke almost without thinking. ‘Don’t let him come for me, Aunt Celia, please!’

  A wry chuckle crackled along the line and Aunt Celia lowered her voice. ‘From the look in his face he doesn’t know whether to be angry or worried about you,’ she told her. `So I’ll come and fetch you, just in case the two of you start all over again.’

  ‘Thank you, Aunt Celia.’

  Alison sat and waited on a low wooden fence at the edge of a spinney, feeling rather disconsolate and definitely uneasy at the prospect of having to sit and face Stefano at the table after all. It was, she supposed with a sigh after a while, something she would have to do sooner or later, and better to get it over with.

  It did not seem too long before she saw her aunt’s little blue car coming along the road, and she raised one hand in greeting, stepping out of the welcome shade into the road. Aunt Celia, she thought, looked faintly amused when she stopped the car and

  waited while she settled in her seat, so that she wondered if Stefano had already told her his version of the incident.

  ‘Well,’ Aunt Celia said, as they set off back towards home, ‘you do look hot and bothered, darling. What on earth have you and Stefano been quarrelling about now?’

  ‘Oh ‘ Alison shrugged uneasily, ‘just the

  usual things.°

  ‘Pretty serious things, by the look of Stefano’s face,’ her aunt said, and glanced at her briefly. ‘Do you want, to tell me about it?’

  Alison thought she did, but finding the right words, without making her own part in it sound much worse than it was, made it difficult. And she could not even be sure that Aunt Celia would automatically be in sympathy with her.

  ‘I—I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Well, only if you want to, of course,’ Aunt Celia told her. ‘It isn’t really any of my business, but I do hate to see you looking so unhappy, and you and Stefano seemed to have. been getting along so much better lately.’

  ‘We shan’t any longer,’ said Alison, without perhaps realising quite how regretful she sounded about it. ‘In fact I’ll be surprised if he even speaks to me again.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Her aunt pulled a face. ‘What have you been up to, darling?’

  ‘Nothing! It’s just that—that I didn’t realise Stefano was so—so straight-laced.’

  ‘Is he?’ Another glance flickered in her direction, and her aunt’s elegant brows expressed surprise.

  ‘Apparently. He was angry enough about me.’

  ‘Were you fishing for that money, for Danny’s garage again?’ Aunt Celia asked, and Alison frowned her dislike of the way the question was worded.

  She had forgotten about his having agreed to let her have the money at long last, but she supposed she could have claimed the outing had been a success, even if it had been something of a disaster as well.

  ‘He did say we could have the money for the garage,’ she told her aunt.

  ‘Oh well, that’s something, I suppose,’ Aunt Celia said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. ‘Is that what caused the rift?’

  ‘In a way.’

  Aunt Celia sighed. ‘Darling,’ she said with exaggerated patience, ‘don’t think I’m not in sympathy with you, and if you don’t want to, don’t tell me what happened, but please don’t offer me little bits and pieces, it’s maddening. Like trying to get blood out of a stone.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She was going to cry again, Alison knew it, and she felt the first big, warm tears rolling down her cheeks to plop dismally on to her tightly clasped hands. She dare not say any more or she would have cried like a baby and made a complete fool of herself, so she simply sat there, blind to everything, while her aunt drove them home.

  It was several moments before she sensed her aunt looking at her and then, a moment later, the car stopped suddenly at the side of the road and

  gentle hands covered hers. ‘Tell me all of it, darling,’ Aunt Celia told her kindly. ‘You’ll feel much better if you do.’

  So it came out, tumbling out in words that did not always make sense, but which seemed to convey to her listener just how abject she felt, even though she had at last managed to achieve her object. ‘I—I didn’t mean it like that, Aunt Celia,’ she sobbed. ‘Not just like that, not the way he made it sound, and he was so—so—’

  ‘Latin?’ Aunt Celia suggested softly, so that Alison looked at her with red-rimmed, tearful eyes, suspecting facetiousness. ‘Oh, the men play around,’ her aunt went on wryly, ‘but they expect their women to be less free and easy.’

  ‘But I’m not his women,’ Alison protested breathlessly.

  Aunt Celia smiled slowly. ‘In a way you are, darling,’ she argued gently. ‘It’s all in the family, so to speak.’

  It was a new and interesting thought—the idea that Stefano considered her his family—and she pondered on it for a moment. ‘Just the same,’ she said at last, ‘he had no right to act the way he did. He looked at me as if—as if he despised me for the lowest thing on earth. And I think he does—I just can’t face the thought of living in the same house with him ever again.’

  ‘Alison dear, you’re being melodramatic again,’ Aunt Celia told her with a smile. ‘Sometimes you’re almost as much a Latin as Stefano. More so most of the time, in fact, he doesn’t often go off bang—it must be quite an impressive sight when he does.’

  ‘I felt I wanted to crawl away somewhere and die,’ Alison said bitterly. ‘I can’t face him again, Aunt Celia, I just can’t ! ‘

  ‘Oh, darling, of course you can.’ She mopped her face gently with her own handkerchief. ‘If I know Stefano, he’s already forgotten all about it. Now you do the same and think about telling Danny his good news.

  ‘He—he will be pleased.

  ‘Of course he will!’ Aunt Celia smiled and started the engine again. ‘And you’ll feel so much better when you’ve had a nice cool wash and some lunch.’

  Washed, changed and definitely feeling better, Alison came downstairs to lunch. She could hear voices in the dining room as she crossed the hall, and wondered if Aunt Celia was interceding on her behalf with Stefano—asking him not to be too cold and distant. Because if he was, Alison felt sure she would simply curl up and die, no matter what Aunt Celia said about it.

  When she opened the door her aunt looked across at her and smiled encouragingly. Stefano inclined his black head in a much more formal greeting and said nothing. `I—I’m sorry I’m late,’ she apologised. ‘It took me longer than I expected to wash and change.’

  ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Aunt Celia told her cheerfully. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

  Alison looked across at Stefano through the fringe of her lashes, but he was ringing to let Mrs. Dawlish know they were ready for their lunch, and

  he did not even look at her. It looked, after all, as if he meant to be merely formally polite, and her heart sank when she considered the prospect of endless days or even weeks of his disapproval.

  It took all her strength of will not to sink back into a state of abject gloom, but instead she made a determined attempt to be cheerful, no matter what he did. ‘I had an offer to hitchhike while I was waiting for you to come for me,’ she told Aunt Celia, and the older woman raised elegant brows in comment.

  ‘I hope you wouldn’t have accepted,’ she said. ‘Even if I hadn’t been on my way to fetch you, it’s far too chancy a pastime, dear, especially for a pretty girl on her own.’

  Alison laughed, although she was well aware that it sounded forced and Stefano was taking no part at all in the conversation but simply getting on with his meal in silence. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have gone with this particular driver,’ she told her aunt. ‘He was a very recognisable type—so obvious o
ne could almost feel sorry for him.’

  ‘Oh, I think I know the type. Face too red, suit too shiny and far too much after-shave,’ Aunt Celia summed up accurately. ‘I know the type. Usually between thirty-five and fifty, and desperately afraid of losing what little appeal they ever had.’

  ‘That’s it, exactly,’ Alison agreed.

  ‘I understand what you mean about feeling sorry for them,’ her aunt mused. ‘It is rather pathetic the way they imagine no woman can resist them.’

  ‘I never fancy hitchhiking, somehow,’ Alison said. ‘Danny says that girls who hitchhike ask for all they get, and I think I’d go along with that to a

  certain extent.’

  She was aware suddenly that Stefano’s black eyes were fixed on her and one black brow arched in a comment that said more than any words could have done. ‘That is not only confined to girls who hitchhike,’ he remarked coolly, and Alison felt the colour flood into her face as she looked at him with wide, reproachful eyes. Only he was no longer looking at her but was giving his attention to his meal again.

  ‘I suppose you and Danny will be naming the day any time now?’ Aunt Celia asked, so suddenly and unexpectedly that Alison glanced at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, then she shook her head, her eyes darting a swift, almost panicky look at Stefano again, wondering if he realised that she had told her aunt about his agreeing to let her have the money.

  ‘I—I suppose so,’ she said. ‘We—we haven’t really thought too far ahead yet. Everything’s been so—well, uncertain, and we’ve rather left things in the air as far as an actual date’s concerned.’

  ‘Well, at least he can buy his garage now, can’t he?’ her aunt went on, apparently blithely unaware of having said anything untoward.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose he can,’ Alison agreed uncertainly.

  Aunt Celia looked up again, glancing from Alison to Stefano with an assumed naiveté that deceived no one. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I didn’t get hold of the wrong end of the stick, did I?’ No one spoke and she looked at Stefano enquiringly. ‘You have given Alison the money, haven’t you?’ she asked.