The Darkest Hour

by Barbara Erskine

‘I don’t suppose Evie haunts this house?’ Lucy asked tentatively. Or Ralph, she added silently. Why was it she felt compelled to ask that wherever she went? She softened the question with a rueful smile, implying that she was joking.

  To her astonishment Elizabeth nodded, her face suddenly taut with anxiety. ‘It is strange you should ask. We have often wondered. There are footsteps sometimes, you know, and Georgie, that’s my eldest grandson, who was about seven at the time, said he could smell paint up here. Can you smell paint?’ She held Lucy’s gaze for a moment. ‘No. Neither can I, but occasionally Georgie says it was very strong and oily. We took him to an art shop and he identified the smell as oil paint. None of us is artistic so he wouldn’t have smelled it here, and the house itself was redecorated a while ago and anyway house paint smells nothing like oil paint.’

  Lucy felt a jolt of unease deep in the pit of her stomach. ‘No one is afraid, though?’ she asked cautiously.

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘Not of the smell, no.’ Elizabeth put her hand up to the necklace she was wearing over her cotton sweater and twisted it nervously. She had moved away from her visitor and was standing by the train track staring down at it as if lost in thought. I’m often alone here,’ Elizabeth went on at last. ‘My husband travels a lot.’ She paused, as if regretting that she had said too much.

  Lucy hesitated. ‘My husband died a few months ago,’ she said at last. ‘I know how it feels, being alone.’

  ‘My dear, I’m sorry.’ Elizabeth looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘So you understand. He’s supposed to have retired but he runs a consultancy, advising people on buying overseas properties, and,’ she hesitated for a moment, then continued softly, ‘when I am here by myself, at night, sometimes I think I can hear people in the house. It is a big house for one person.’ She gave an awkward smile. ‘When it is full of family and children and my daughter’s dogs it comes alive, then it belongs to us. But when I am by myself I am sure it still belongs to the Lucases. They were here for generations, you know.’

  For a moment Lucy was stunned. ‘But you said there were other families here in between,’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes. And of course it could have been them.’ Elizabeth shook her head. ‘But it isn’t. Evie’s brother was killed, you know, in the Battle of Britain. There’s a memorial to him in the village church. I think his mother went mad with grief.’

  Lucy held her breath, staring at her in horror, intensely aware of the silence around them.

  ‘I hear her crying,’ Elizabeth went on almost under her breath. ‘I tell myself it’s the wind in the chimneys, perhaps an owl screaming into the night, but it isn’t. It’s Rachel. I sometimes think I can’t bear it.’ She gave a small wistful smile. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. You must think I’m ga-ga.’

  ‘How do you know it’s Rachel?’ Lucy asked at last. Her voice was husky.

  ‘I just know.’ It was a whisper. She shuddered. ‘Let’s go downstairs. Do you mind? I’ll make us some tea. Then you must see the outbuildings.’ Suddenly her voice was stronger. ‘They were all farm buildings in Evie’s day and I think you’ll see they have probably changed much less than the house has. In fact I doubt if they have changed in hundreds of years. The land itself is all owned by a huge company now. There is a farm manager who lives on an estate the other side of Chichester.’

  Lucy followed Elizabeth down the two flights of stairs back into the kitchen. While they waited for the kettle to boil on the Aga Elizabeth disappeared into the old-style walk-in pantry to find some biscuits and Lucy stared round the room. With part of herself she was listening, afraid she was going to hear Rachel’s cries.

  The kitchen was immaculately tidy. There had only been one car outside, a smart new Mini. It was obvious that Elizabeth’s husband must be away on one of his trips. The woman was living alone in the house with nothing but the ghosts of the past for company.

  She looked up as her hostess put the plate of biscuits in front of her. ‘Do people in the village remember the Lucases?’ she asked, trying to change the mood.

  Elizabeth shook her head. ‘I doubt it. I don’t know. To be honest we don’t mix with the village much any more.’ She reached down the teapot from a shelf and set it on the hotplate to warm.

  ‘But your family come down to see you?’ As soon as she had said it Lucy regretted it. She had already guessed what the answer would be

  ‘They used to. All the time. But they have other calls on their time now. The children have grown out of the countryside. They want to go abroad or spend the holidays with their friends. You know how it is.’ Elizabeth helped herself to a biscuit and broke it in half, scattering crumbs on the pine table before putting it down without tasting it. She didn’t seem to notice. ‘There was a time when I could have offered you a homemade biscuit. Not any more. It’s not worth making them just for me. I bake when there is something on in the village of course. I do my bit, but even that has been taken over now by young families. The mothers are very energetic, very bossy,’ she laughed quietly. ‘They like to do things their way.’

  Lucy’s heart went out to her.

  Behind them the kettle began to whistle. Elizabeth stood up abruptly and went over to the Aga. She made the tea and came back to the table. ‘There you are, my dear. I am so sorry; you must think I am pathetic. Drink that, and then we’ll go outside. I love my garden. It’s mine. Out there I have no sense of Rachel at all. Out there I feel as if I still have a use in the world. I’ll show you.’

  Rachel. Once more she was talking about Rachel. Only in the studio was there an echo of Evie left behind.

  The garden, as Lucy had glimpsed when she first walked up the drive, was lovely. It was formal, carefully planned and obviously much loved. She looked round in delight. ‘You make me feel so ashamed. Our, that is my, garden is so tiny.’ When would she get used to talking in the first person singular. ‘It was very precious to my husband and me, but since his death I have neglected it terribly, there seems to be so little time for it now.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘Being alone is very hard to bear.’

  Lucy bit her lip. Without quite knowing why she recognised that she had been tactless. She wondered suddenly whether Elizabeth’s husband was alone on his trips abroad and guessed immediately that he was not.

  ‘Evie would have approved of this garden,’ she said softly, trying to change the subject. ‘She loved flowers. Her own garden at Rosebank Cottage is very pretty. Not formal like this. It is very much a classic cottage garden, but it shows the love and care she must have lavished on it for years.’

  ‘You know her grandson, you say.’ Elizabeth fished in her pocket and brought out a pair of secateurs. She must always have them with her, Lucy guessed, just in case something needed dead heading. ‘He came here once. He wanted to know if we had any of her paintings.’

  ‘Mike came to see you?’ Lucy frowned. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you knew him.’

  ‘Christopher Marston. A nice man. We keep in touch now and then.’ Elizabeth leaned forward and snipped off the broken stem of a rose.

  ‘Christopher,’ Lucy echoed thoughtfully. ‘Mike is his cousin. He owns Evie’s cottage. I gather the arrangement was that Mike got the house and Christopher, the paintings.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘I think he mentioned something to that effect. He felt short-changed, I gather. He said a lot of the paintings were missing and he suspected they were stashed – I believe that was the word he used – here somewhere.’ She gave a bleak smile. ‘I am afraid I had to disappoint him. There was nothing here when we bought the house. It was totally empty and nearly derelict.’

  ‘Evie’s paintings are very valuable,’ Lucy said, ‘perhaps the more so because so few seem to have survived.’

  ‘And you too were hoping they might be hidden here?’

  ‘No!’ Lucy looked at her, aghast. ‘Oh no! I’m not here because of that. I thought I explained. I am writing Evie’s biography.’

  ‘You did t
ell me that, yes. I’m sorry, my dear. Cynicism is one of my more disgusting failings.’ Elizabeth sighed and reached out to clip off a shrivelled rosebud before determinedly pocketing her secateurs again. ‘Come with me. We’ll go and look in the barns. Then you will be able to describe them in your book.’

  Lucy followed her across the lawn to a range of neat outbuildings around the back of the house. They were meticulously cared for, with clean windows, black boarded walls and peg-tiled roofs. Beside each door there was a tub of scarlet geraniums. Elizabeth pulled open the door of the first.

  ‘I have been told this was probably a dairy. The actual barns were pulled down when the land was sold. They were too small for modern equipment apparently, but these, because they were all grouped round the back yard, were sold with the house, for which I am rather pleased. They are attractive buildings and as you can see very old.’

  She gestured to Lucy to go in.

  As she stepped inside the gravel of the yard outside gave way to rounded cobbles. There were broad low shelves around the walls and large nails protruding from the beams which had obviously been used in the past for hanging things on. The building was completely empty. Lucy took another hesitant step forward and stopped dead as she was enveloped in a wave of cold unhappiness. It seemed to leach from the walls on every side and cling to her skin like some kind of damp mildew. She shuddered. As she turned hastily towards the door she remembered her camera.

  ‘May I take a photo?’ she called out. There was no reply.

  She took a couple of photos and hurriedly made her way back to the door. In the fresh sweet-scented air of the courtyard she took some deep breaths. To her surprise she found that her hands, as she returned the camera to her pocket, were shaking.

  ‘You felt it, didn’t you?’ Elizabeth had been leaning against the wall a few feet away staring down at the tub of plants at her feet. She had glanced up as Lucy appeared.

  Lucy gulped in another breath, trying to steady herself. ‘What happened in there?’

  Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. ‘Most people say there is nothing there. You seem to be sensitive.’

  ‘Is it Rachel?’

  ‘I assume so. I imagine she had to go on running the farm. It was the war. Every drop of milk would have had to be accounted for. Butter. Cheese. I expect they made it all here.’

  ‘Would you mind if I made some notes about all this?’ Lucy asked suddenly. ‘You have a far better grip about the family than I have. I started from a baseline of nothing. Mike is telling me some stuff, but he is, to be honest, not all that interested in the family history. He comes up with afterthoughts every now and then. I am being allowed to look through what are left of her papers but there is very little there that is personal. It is mainly bank statements and stuff like that.’

  ‘So, was she very rich?’

  ‘Ah, from the statements, you mean. No. As far as I can see she was actually quite poor. Artists often were, weren’t they, in their own time?’

  They had begun to walk slowly down the line of buildings. There were several looseboxes, all equally neat and empty, another couple of larger outbuildings, one of which contained a ride-on mower and a wheelbarrow, with rakes and spades and forks hanging on the wall, obviously the heart of the gardening empire, and there was an open-fronted cart shed with wonderfully twisted beams. In the distance Lucy could see a small pond, carefully fenced. On it a pair of moorhens swam anxiously back and forth uttering little calls of alarm.

  ‘Well, that’s it.’ Elizabeth drew to a halt.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to have shown me everything.’

  ‘Please, don’t go. Not yet.’ For a moment Elizabeth seemed quite panic-stricken. ‘You wanted to make some notes and take some pictures. You ought to snap the studio. Please, why don’t you stay and have some supper? You can wander round on your own as much as you like.’

  For a moment Lucy was hesitant; the atmosphere of Box Wood Farm was getting to her, as was Elizabeth’s neediness, but it was, she realised, too good an offer to turn down.

  After a moment she nodded. ‘I would love to. Thank you.’

  She took dozens of pictures and made notes in almost every room of the house, lingering in the studio wondering if she could smell the taint of oil and turpentine in the air as she had at Rosebank. There was nothing. It was almost sterile up there save for an almost imperceptible smell of dried wood from the beams.

  They ate in the kitchen. Elizabeth produced a chicken casserole from the freezer which they ate with fresh bread and salad from the garden accompanied by a glass of sauvignon blanc. Lucy had her notebook on the table beside her plate and from time to time made notes as Elizabeth talked.

  ‘I never knew them, of course, but when we first moved here people in the village used to talk about the Lucases a lot. I was so intrigued. I had never had anything to do with someone famous before, and occasionally people would come and knock on the door and ask about her.’

  ‘When did she move?’

  Elizabeth thought for a moment. ‘After her father died her mother stayed here alone. They had sold off the sheep and horses – I think they still used horses on the farm after the war. And, of course, they had some cows. Then at some point Rachel sold the land. That was sad. It probably wasn’t worth all that much then. After she died Evie sold what was left. She didn’t come back here at all as far as I know. Someone in the village told me she sent someone to pack everything up. They were very disappointed. The word was that she was too grand for the place by then. She was living in London, I think. There was a lot of resentment locally.’

  Lucy was scribbling hard. ‘How strange. I had somehow formed the impression that she was very low key. Certainly not a snob.’

  Elizabeth sighed. ‘Who knows what makes people do things? Perhaps it was just too painful for her to come back here. I am afraid I was told all this a long time ago, when we first moved here. I don’t think anyone is left who actually knew them.’

  Lucy watched as Elizabeth made coffee and then followed her through into the room she described as the snug. Double doors opened out onto the lawn and they sat side by side staring out into the garden.

  ‘This is a magical place,’ Lucy said after a while.

  ‘It is, isn’t it.’

  Somewhere outside a blackbird was singing and Lucy found herself listening so intently she hardly registered the distant cry from somewhere in the house. She took another sip from her cup and then saw Elizabeth lean forward suddenly, her face white, her hands shaking.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Listen.’ Elizabeth held up her hand. ‘It’s Rachel.’ She swallowed hard, turning to look towards the door. ‘She’s here.’

  Lucy felt her stomach turn over. Setting down her coffee cup with a deliberate effort to keep it steady she sat forward on the sofa listening hard.

  Elizabeth took a deep breath, standing up. ‘She’ll cry again. She always does.’

  Lucy found her mouth had gone dry.

  ‘Shall we go outside?’ Lucy glanced at the garden doors which were standing open only feet away from her. She was really scared now.

  Elizabeth clenched her fists. ‘This is my house now. I am not going to let her chase me away!’ she said stubbornly. ‘You go if you want to.’

  Lucy was tempted. Beneath the bravado, Elizabeth’s fear was visceral and infectious. She found she was using every ounce of willpower she possessed to stand her ground.

  And then the sound came again. Distant, eerie, but recognisably a woman’s voice, and it was a woman in agony. The sound echoed down the stairwell and round the hallway outside the door of the snug. There was another moment’s silence and then it came again, more distant this time. And this time it sounded not unlike the soughing of the wind in the eaves. Then there was silence.

  Lucy couldn’t bear it. Her own eyes were full of tears as she glanced helplessly at Elizabeth, who seemed rooted to the spot. Without knowing where she found the courage to do it she stepped forward an
d eased the door open, looking out into the hall. There was no one there.

  ‘Hello?’ she called, her voice shaking. ‘Where are you?’

  Elizabeth stared at her, her clenched fist pressed tightly against her mouth.

  Lucy stepped out of the doorway and stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. ‘Rachel?’ Her voice sounded odd even to her own ears as it echoed up towards the first floor. ‘Rachel!’ she repeated. ‘Can we help you?’

  There was no response. The two women waited for several minutes, then at last Elizabeth shook her head. ‘She’s gone.’

  Lucy went back into the snug and sat down abruptly. Without thinking what she was doing she picked up her cup of coffee and drank it all in one go. Her hands were shaking so much the cup was rattling against her teeth.

  Elizabeth came and sat down beside her. ‘You were very brave to do that.’

  Lucy groped in her pocket for a tissue. ‘How can you live here?’

  The other woman was silent for a moment. ‘I’ve got used to it. It happens very seldom. I think –’ She paused, then went on, ‘I think I guessed it would happen tonight.’

  ‘Because of me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Oh God, I am sorry. I had no idea –’

  ‘Of course you didn’t.’

  For a moment both women were quiet, then Lucy got to her feet and went back into the hall. Something was wrong. It had all happened too much to order. Could the whole thing be some awful vicious hoax? If it was, it was a hoax played on Elizabeth, not her. The woman’s fear had been too real, too gut-wrenching to be a pretence. She glanced up the stairs and, not giving herself time to think, ran up the first flight.

  ‘Rachel!’ she called again. ‘Are you there?’

  Her voice sounded flat; the place was empty. She looked around for several minutes, aware that her own fear was contained only just below the surface, that she was waiting to hear the cry again. But it didn’t come. The rooms were silent. All she could hear was the distant cooing of a turtle dove from the trees around the lawn.

  Thoughtfully she made her way downstairs again. She gave her hostess an apologetic smile. ‘I’m sorry. I suddenly wondered if –’ She paused. ‘Oh God, Elizabeth I am sorry, but I wondered if it was a hoax.’