‘Rosalie, that isn’t true.’ Alison, too, kept her voice low, and stood so that Rosalie was hidden from the rest of the people. ‘I never thought of such a thing. You know I didn’t’
‘You needn’t play innocent on top of it all.’ Rosalie twisted her own engagement ring on her finger with a nervous anger which suddenly showed Alison with deadly clearness that it was of no real importance to her. ‘You always meant to get Julian. Well, I suppose, in a way, you have got him now. But he isn’t really yours in any sense that matters. And you know it as well as I do.’
‘Please Rosalie-’ Alison began. But her cousin cut across her words with furious scorn.
‘Oh, don’t bother to say any more. Why don’t you do the same as Julian? He has more sense than to try to come and speak to me.’ She gave a slight laugh, and then added slowly: ‘Unless, of course, it is that he knows he can’t trust himself near me.’
There wasn’t any answer to make to such a speech, and, trembling all over, Alison went back to Julian.
She scarcely took any note of the other good-byes, except for the welcome warmth of Audrey’s kiss.
And even when the car moved clear of the farewell group, and Julian and she were alone together, she could find nothing to say. She leaned back in her seat beside him, pale and with her eyes closed, and for a while he drove in silence.
At last he said: ‘What is it, Alison? Are you very tired?’
‘A little yes,’ she said quickly. And then: ‘Do you mind if I don’t talk at all for a bit?’
‘Not in the least, my child.’ He spoke very quietly and calmingly, ‘I imagine this isn’t exactly an easy day for you.’
‘It can’t be easy for you either, darling,’ she thought impulsively. ‘But you do it all so much better than I.’
They were clear of London and heading for the open country before he spoke again. And then his tone was still blessedly cool and matter-of-fact.
‘I don’t know how much you’ve had to eat to-day, but it probably isn’t any more than I have. Suppose we stop and have a very late lunch somewhere.’
Alison agreed, and, ten minutes later, over a good meal in a country inn, she began to feel better. Even now, it made her feel faintly sick to think of what Rosalie had said, but she must try not to remember her cold, angry face, and her bitter words.
It was terrible to have someone hate you like that. Terrible-and so bewilderingly unfair.
Alison glanced across timidly at Julian and thought:
‘It’s not even as though I had taken him away from her. I could understand her anger if I had done that; But I tried so hard not to do anything unfair so long as he was hers. It was only afterwards-’
But then, of course, what Rosalie had probably wanted was to be able to whistle him back again, chastened and humiliated, if she happened to want him. She had never really meant him to go out of her reach so finally.
And, in that case, would he have come back? Alison wondered. Reluctant and resisting, no doubt, but fascinated into submission.
‘Well, I’m glad I saved him from that, at any rate,’ she told herself grimly. ‘She’s done some awful things to his self-respect, but she hasn’t been able to do that.’ And she gave a sigh, half-triumphant, half-afraid.
‘Eat up your lunch, child, and think out the problems afterwards,’ Julian’s voice said quietly at that moment, and she looked up quickly to find him watching her with a kindly, worried air.
‘I’m sorry.’ She laughed a little, and deliberately cleared the expression of care from her face.
‘That’s better.’ His own expression lightened too at that, and after a moment or two she began to talk to him quite naturally and almost gaily.
By the time they came out again to the car the late afternoon light was beginning to fade. Sudden grey clouds were rolling up from the west, and a strong wind was rising. Even as they moved off, the first big drops of rain came splashing against the windscreen.
‘There’s going to be a heavy storm,’ Julian remarked. ‘You’re not nervous driving in a storm, I suppose?’
‘Not if you’re driving,’ Alison said. Whereat he laughed.
‘You’re very soothing to a man’s vanity, Alison.’
There was something very pleasant about being alone together in the warmth and intimacy of the car, after all the conflicting excitements of the day. And later, when it was quite dark. and the wind was hurling the rain against the windows in great driving gusts, they seemed to be all alone in a safe. cosy little world of their own.
About seven, they passed through a fairly large country town, and Julian asked if she would care to stay there for the night But Alison, more than slightly drowsy by now, had no special wish to face the problems of the outer world just then.
‘I’d rather drive on,’ she said, ‘if you’re not tired.’
‘I’m not tired,’ he assured her with a little smile. ‘But I see you are.’ He reached with one hand for another cushion and put it behind her. ‘You’d better go to sleep for a while.’
‘Oh. no,’ Alison said. But two minutes later it seemed too much trouble to open her eyes again.
When she woke up it was pitch dark outside, with the blackness of the completely open country. She glanced at the little car clock and gave an exclamation.
‘Is it really as late as that, Julian? Quarter-past ten?’
‘Hello. Awake again?’ He smiled at her. ‘Yes, that’s the time.’
‘But hadn’t we better stop somewhere? You must be dead tired, driving all this time.’
‘We will stop, my dear, when we can find somewhere.’ Julian laughed ruefully. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know where the deuce we are.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, we’re sure to come on something or somewhere soon,’ Alison said equably.
He cocked a quizzical look at her.
‘How refreshingly philosophical of you. You’re quite at liberty to call me a fool for losing the way, if you like.’
But Alison smiled and shook her head.
‘It can happen to anyone. Especially on a night like this,’ she added, as a tremendous gust of wind and rain seemed to hit the car broadside on.
‘Well, that’s a very charitable point of view. But I certainly think we had better make do with almost any sort of place we can find. Petrol’s getting low and-Aren’t those some lights ahead there on the left?’
Alison peered through the rain-streaked window.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
Three minutes later they were running up the one street of a dreary little hamlet. It consisted of about a dozen houses, one shop, and a tiny inn.
‘This looks like our quarters for to-night.’ Julian drew up and looked distastefully at the place. ‘What do you think of it? Shall we drive on and chance hitting something better?’
‘No, I think we’d better try this,’ said Alison. And, climbing stiffly out of the car, they both went in.
A woman came forward, with a surprised and not specially friendly air; and Julian explained that they wanted quarters for the night.
She didn’t seem enthusiastic, and, glancing at Alison’s coat, she said, ‘I don’t know that I’ve got anything that’d suit you. I’ve only one room anyway.’ Then, suddenly fixing her eyes gloomily on the few tell-tale pieces of confetti that had shaken from Alison’s coat, she added, ‘Though perhaps that don’t matter.’
The laborious train of thought was so obvious that Alison had a hysterical, though hastily suppressed, desire to laugh. Perhaps Julian had too, because he bit his lip sharply, and then said, ‘Well, how far are we from a town?’
The woman didn’t seem very good at guessing distances. She murmured something about ‘eight or ten miles, or perhaps twelve.’ And then added, ‘But that’s by the straight road, and that’s flooded. You’d have to go round.’