The Darkest Hour

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘Ralph,’ Lucy murmured.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I haven’t read it all yet,’ she said. ‘Tempting though it is, I didn’t want to skip and see what happened at the end of the year so I am reading it carefully page by page, making notes as I go. It covers everything in her life. The Sussex cows she milked, the paintings she worked on, her mother and father, air raids and the Battle of Britain, her boyfriend, Eddie, and then the new one, the young man she met at the pub, Tony. I think he may be the RAF pilot in the picture.’

  ‘And Ralph?’

  ‘There isn’t much about Ralph, to be honest. He was stationed at Tangmere and came home whenever he could. But then today I read this bit about Ralph having a day’s leave and going to the gallery in Chichester – this gallery – and finding out that Eddie, that’s her official boyfriend, was ripping her off. The paintings even then were fetching high prices and he was only giving her a fraction of the value.’

  ‘Agent’s commission, eh?’

  ‘Something like that. He sounds a bit of a Flash Harry to me. He bullies her and blackmails her by reminding her that he is the one who introduced her to the War Artists Advisory Committee. She is ambitious and has plans to be a famous painter, even then, and he is the key to her fulfilling that dream.’

  ‘And how does Ralph feel about her painting?’

  She looked thoughtful. ‘Up to now she hasn’t mentioned him in that context. The entries only say that she is worried or that her parents are. Her mother was frantic, as every mother in the country must have been with their children in the forces. Reading this is bringing the war alive for me, Huw. They stood there in the garden or in the fields looking up and they could see people being killed above their heads. See planes spiralling down and crashing in flames, know there was no escape for the pilot –’ She broke off trying to suppress a sob.

  Huw reached across and put his hand over hers. ‘Don’t be afraid to cry, my dear. Cry for those boys, and most of them were only boys, who were killed, and for Ralph and for your Larry.’

  ‘They’re mixed up in my head,’ she said slowly. ‘The crashing planes and the crashing car.’

  He nodded. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And in the diary Ralph is going to crash. But she doesn’t know it yet.’

  Huw sighed. ‘I fear so.‘

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell me not to read any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You think I should go on?’

  ‘Of course you must go on. You are writing a book about Evie. However emotionally involved you are becoming, you are a professional writer. And your own nightmares have a message for you, unpleasant though it is. In my experience, once you face that message the dreams will stop.’ He pushed the diary across the table away from him. ‘I feel that Ralph and Larry both died with unfinished conversations. You are a strong woman, Lucy. You can be there for them.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I can do that.’

  ‘You are not alone. I am at the end of the phone and you told me you have a good friend who helps you run the gallery who is there for you as well. I suspect he would help you at any time and I will too. At any time. Ring in the middle of the night if you are afraid. But you needn’t be afraid. These are people. One of them is the man you love, the other was loved by Evie. How could they be frightening?’

  She leaned back against the chair in silence. ‘It is all very well you saying that here with sunlight pouring through the window,’ she whispered at last. ‘But in the dark, at night when I have woken to the sound of tearing metal and breaking glass? Then it is frightening.’

  13

  October 10th 1940

  Eddie pushed the door to the gallery open and walked in. He had a package under his arm and David Fuller stood up to welcome him with a feeling of excited anticipation.

  ‘More of Evie’s?’ he asked after they had exchanged greetings.

  Eddie nodded. ‘She gave them to me a couple of weeks ago and it is the first time I’ve had the chance to pick them up from the framer and bring them over here. You’ve sold a couple since I was here last, I see.’ His keen eye had at once spotted the gaps on the wall.

  David nodded. ‘I was hoping you would bring some more in, otherwise I was going to rearrange the display and put some others there.’ He watched eagerly as Eddie laid the parcel on the desk and began to unwrap it. ‘Evie’s brother came in a few days ago. Nice young man.’

  Eddie stopped fumbling with the string on his parcel and stared at him. ‘Ralph?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me his name. He had a day’s leave and he was going home for lunch. I gather he had promised her he would look in to see her pictures on display.’ He noticed Eddie’s expression and recoiled slightly. ‘Is there something wrong?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’ Eddie pursed his lips. He resumed picking at the knot and managed to loosen it, remove the string and coiling it neatly put it into his pocket. ‘Here. What do you think of these?’

  He displayed the two paintings. Both were of the farm, both were more traditional in style than her usual exuberant bright brushstrokes.

  David frowned. ‘I prefer her more modern approach.’

  Eddie’s face darkened. He had been angry when Evie produced these for him. They were makeweights, hurriedly done and thrust at him angrily when he complained that she was forgetting her promise to give him pictures to sell as well as those for the WAAC.

  ‘Do you think you can shift them?’ He tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. He was on his way somewhere else and had no time to waste.

  ‘I’m sure I can.’ David instinctively spoke soothingly. ‘My older customers like more traditional stuff, but I think she is doing herself a disservice with pictures like these. I won’t be able to charge so much.’ He glanced at Eddie, his eyes narrowed. ‘Evie’s brother seemed astonished that her pictures demanded such a high price. I presume she hasn’t told the family how successful she is?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Eddie responded sharply. ‘It’s none of their business.’

  ‘No. Quite.’ David nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Has anyone else from the family come in?’ Eddie asked after a moment.

  ‘If they have they haven’t introduced themselves.’ The old man sighed. ‘I would love to meet Evie at some point. She hasn’t time to come into town, I think you said?’

  Both men fell abruptly silent as the air raid siren began its caterwauling wail nearby.

  ‘Are you going to the shelter?’ Eddie asked when they could hear themselves think.

  David shook his head. ‘The gallery and I live and die together. They haven’t bombed us yet, I doubt they will. They are aiming for Southampton or Portsmouth if our boys let them through. Leave the pictures. I will let you know when I have sold more.’

  He stood at the door and watched as Eddie hurried down the street, turning away from the town centre and walking swiftly to the corner before he was lost to sight. Wherever he had gone it was not to one of the city shelters.

  Tuesday 6th August

  ‘I guessed you would probably go and see him whatever I said.’ Mike had swung the chair in Evie’s studio to face him and was sitting astride it, leaning his arms on the back. ‘So, how did he react?’ He did not look pleased.

  ‘He wasn’t there.’ Lucy had been surprised to find Mike at Rosebank the following day. There was no sign of either Dolly or Charlotte.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘No. Good. I spoke to his wife. She was nice. She asked me in.’

  ‘Frances?’ He sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yes, Frances. Why, is she not usually hospitable?’

  He gave a cynical laugh. ‘Not particularly, no. But then I haven’t been to see them in a long time. So, what happened?’

  ‘She let me look at Evie’s pictures, or at least the ones hanging on the walls.’ Lucy didn‘t mention the fact that she had photographed them, partly out of a feeling of loyalty to Frances who would get into trouble with Christoph
er if that fact ever emerged, and partly because she wasn’t sure how Mike would react to what he might see as a breach of trust. He did not look happy about her visit. She hadn’t yet worked out what she would do if she needed to use her photos in the book. Which obviously she might. He would find out then, obviously. ‘They have some wonderful stuff. Pictures I’ve never seen in any catalogue. She thinks he has put the notebooks and sketchbooks in the bank.’

  ‘Ah. Tricky.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Are you going back to beard the lion in his den another time?’

  ‘That is tricky too. I got the feeling that there is a huge amount of baggage there. Family rows and stuff.’ She looked up at him challengingly. ‘You hinted as much. Though why that should stop him wanting his grandmother’s story to be told I don’t know.’

  ‘I may have hinted, but I am not sure what I hinted at,’ Mike said thoughtfully. ‘I know my dad didn’t get on with Christopher’s dad particularly well, though they were brothers.’ He paused as though searching his memory. ‘But even if they didn’t get on that doesn’t seem to point to more than the fact that he and I saw little of each other and that he seems to avoid contact with me now.’

  ‘Dolly thinks it’s because he took more than his fair share of Evie’s work.’

  ‘She’s probably right. But then he wanted it so badly and I wasn’t particularly interested at the time.’

  ‘It’s probably worth a fortune, Mike.’

  ‘He’s not going to sell it. And he’s got kids. I haven’t.’

  ‘Not yet.’ She was indignant.

  He laughed bitterly. ‘Careful, you sound like Charlotte. ‘

  She blushed. ‘Sorry. None of my business. Where are Dolly and Charlotte?’ She quickly changed the subject.

  ‘Dolly had to go to the dentist. I told her to take the whole day off. And Charlotte is at a conference. As I was down here on my own over the weekend I thought I would take a day or two off and give you a hand if you were here. I wanted to see how you were getting on.’

  ‘And I hit you with the Christopher update.’ She smiled anxiously. ‘Well, apart from that, I’ve been doing a lot of research. Evie’s letters and notes are packed with clues and I’m making good progress with the chronology of her life. I sketched out a family tree too last night. Will you look at it for me and see if I’ve made any mistakes? There are still gaps.’ She was not going to tell him about her nightmares. That was definitely none of his business.

  She fished in her bag and brought out an A4 pad. On it she had drawn a pencilled family tree starting at the top with Rachel and Dudley Lucas. On the next line down came Ralph and Evie. Evie’s name was bracketed with Edward Marston and beneath them came the two boys, John and George, the brothers who had quarrelled. Beneath them came Mike, son of John, and Christopher, son of George.

  ‘Well, you can put in Frances as Chris’s wife, and their two children, Hannah and Ollie.’

  ‘There was no sign of them on Saturday.’

  ‘Boarding school.’

  ‘Isn’t it the holidays?’

  ‘Ah, you are probably right. In which case they will have been packed off to somewhere by the sea, I expect. In Cornwall. Or Scotland.’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t they like their children?’

  ‘I think children were merely part of the designer lifestyle.’

  ‘Ooh! That’s cruel.’ She grimaced. ‘Have any of them inherited Evie’s talent?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard.’ He paused. ‘To go on with your family tree, there is my mum, Juliette. She remarried after dad died, but that’s probably not relevant.’

  ‘She is still part of the story, though. Would you mind if I went to see her?’ Lucy glanced at him cautiously. She had begun to realise that she could take nothing for granted in this family.

  ‘No, of course not. Why should I?’

  ‘Well, you were pretty sure you didn’t want me to talk to Christopher.’ She smiled at him. ‘I would love to talk to her about Evie. Get the woman’s view. Dolly told me they were very close.’

  ‘That’s true. If Evie confided in anyone it would have been my mum.’ He reached into his pocket for his phone. ‘Why don’t I ring her now? Fix something up for you. She lives in Brighton. In fact I could drive you there if you like. I have some things I need to drop off to her.

  ‘There’s no need,’ Lucy returned sharply. ‘I can go on my own.’

  He gave a shrug. ‘As you wish. I am not going to interfere. I thought it might make it easier.’

  She hesitated, then she conceded the point. After all, why not go with him. It would give her more time to talk about Evie.

  Two hours later they were driving along the sea front in Mike’s Discovery and turning up into the maze of Regency terraces behind the Pavilion. Juliette Bell was waiting for them at the door of a classic white-painted house in a beautiful square. Mike performed brief introductions on the doorstep, then dived back into the car to go and find a parking place as Juliette led Lucy into the cool shadows of the hallway and through into the garden at the back.

  ‘I am so pleased someone is writing about Evie at last,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It’s long overdue, if you ask me.’ She waved Lucy towards a reclining chair on a terrace hung with roses and poured her a glass of fruit punch. Sitting down next to her, she studied Lucy for a moment and then nodded as though satisfied with what she saw. She herself was a powerfully built woman in her late sixties with short glossy white hair held in place by sunglasses, pushed up on top of her head. She was wearing a crimson dress and her arms were weighed down with bangles. Lucy found herself wondering if she too was a painter – something artistic anyway. ‘The old man, who is of course my new man, is playing golf, which seems insane in this heat,’ Juliette said with a chortle of laughter, ‘so he won’t interrupt us, and when Mike comes back I shall send him out shopping for our supper so you and I can have a nice gossip about Evie without interruption.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Have you met Charlotte?’ She fired the question at Lucy without preamble.

  Lucy nodded. ‘Briefly. I don’t really know her.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Juliette’s response though monosyllabic spoke volumes. ‘Well, we’ll leave her out of the conversation. I gather she is trying to expunge Evie’s memory from the cottage so I’m even more glad you are there as a counterweight. Right,’ she took a sip of her punch, ‘fire away. What would you like to ask me?’

  ‘I met Frances Marston at the weekend,’ Lucy started cautiously. ‘She said she thought there had been a family row of some sort, or a division at least between your husband, John, and his brother and it is because of that row, she thinks, that Christopher doesn’t want anything to do with me and my research. As he inherited most of Evie’s papers and diaries that makes it very hard for me to proceed.‘

  ‘Ouch. In at the deep end.’ Juliette leaned back and slid her dark glasses down over her eyes. ‘I’m not sure I can help you over this one. Johnny and George were so different. They were never close. I don’t remember them being enemies, though. I wouldn’t have thought there was any deep-seated animosity. Have you asked George?’

  Lucy stared at her open-mouthed. Here was another prime character in her saga who nobody had mentioned. ‘I assumed he had died,’ she stammered. ‘Because Christopher had inherited everything. This is crazy. Mike never said.’

  ‘He probably thought you knew.’

  ‘Where is George? Why didn’t he inherit the paintings? There is something odd there, isn’t there?’ Lucy wondered if she sounded as bewildered as she felt. Plunging into someone else’s family had seemed so straightforward when she was planning to write about Evie. She had never given a second’s thought to Evie’s surviving family and their reactions.

  ‘Yes, it is odd, come to think of it.’ Juliette nodded. ‘Evie left everything to Johnny. I don’t mean she cut George off, but it was arranged that George would inherit Edward’s fortune, and it was a large fortune, and Johnny would inherit Evie’s which consisted of the cott
age and the paintings. She had very little money as such and was always in debt, bless her.’ She gave a fond smile. ‘You knew Evie and Edward were divorced? It was about a year before Johnny and I married. It was very acrimonious and quite horrid. Johnny always said his father ripped her off. He never got on with his father and that was why his father to all intents and purposes disinherited him. Johnny didn’t care. Darling man, he had no idea about money any more than his mother. You’d think as a solicitor he would have had more of a clue, but apart from our small house in Littlehampton, which was mortgaged up to the hilt, he left me more or less penniless, so when Rick asked me to marry him it wasn’t a hard decision to make.’ She gave a happy gurgling laugh. ‘Johnny and I had known and loved Rick and his wife for years. She died about five years before Johnny and we drifted together. He was a great comfort when I was hurting a lot.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I don’t regret it. I was determined I wasn’t going to be a burden to Mike.’ She reached for her glass. With every move her bangles rattled on her wrist.

  Lucy was silent, trying to assimilate this torrent of information when she noticed Juliette’s attention shift to the door behind them. ‘Talk of the devil,’ she said with a smile. ‘Mike, darling, I want you to go out again and stay out for at least two hours so this delightful girl and I can gossip about your grandmother. If you can pick up something for supper that would be lovely. Take some money out of my bag, darling, it’s in the hall.’

  Mike had stepped out onto the shaded terrace and was standing there, the shadows of the overhanging roses playing over his face as he watched them. He threw a look of mock despair at Lucy. ‘Is that all right with you? I don’t think I warned you how bossy my mother is. Or of the fact that she still treats me as if I were about ten.’

  Lucy laughed. ‘It’s very all right with me.’

  As they settled back into their chairs Lucy looked at Juliette with a frown, determined not to let the interlude with Mike destroy her train of thought. ‘When you were talking about the bequests just now you said Evie left the paintings to Johnny. So was he the one who decided to leave them to Christopher instead of to Mike?’