The Darkest Hour

by Barbara Erskine

  Lavinia smiled. She had a warm smile, Evie realised, and a genuinely kind face. ‘I suppose I would if he had asked me, but he wouldn’t have. He is a high flyer, Eddie. I have nothing to bring him. You have a farm as well as all your talents. It would have been no contest. Better for me to imagine that he held back because I was already married.’

  Evie was shocked into silence by this pragmatic approach. ‘If I were you, I would hate me,’ she said softly after a long pause.

  Lavinia chuckled. ‘Good thing you ain’t me, then. Please don’t think too bad of me. I don’t see him often. I’m no danger.’

  A moment later Lavinia rose to her feet. She touched Evie’s shoulder lightly. ‘Shall we keep your visit between ourselves? I don’t suppose either of us wants to put him in a bad mood, do we?’

  Evie groped for a handkerchief. ‘No,’ she whispered.

  ‘And you take care of that little one,’ Lavinia went on. ‘That was my only sorrow, no kids. But it was not to be and it would have complicated matters, let’s face it.’

  Saturday 7th September

  In the attic Christopher had pulled the painting under the lights so he could scrutinise it more closely. He had forgotten Frances and Ollie downstairs in the kitchen. This was one of Evie’s war paintings and as such deserved a place in the Imperial War Museum at the very least. He felt a quick thrill of excitement. That was obviously why his father had wanted to give it to the nation. More fool him. He squatted down to examine the painting more closely. It didn’t matter a hoot who the young airman was. What mattered was that this was a genuine Lucas and had been painted during the Battle of Britain. Had she signed it? He couldn’t see any sign of a signature but maybe it was hidden by the frame. Anyway, the provenance was sound. No one could claim it wasn’t genuine and he could always get it verified by David Solomon if necessary. He sat back on his heels with a quiet smile of satisfaction.

  The light flickered and he glanced up at the bulb. The attic storey of the old house consisted of two long rooms under the roof beams. They smelled strongly of the ancient wood and, unfurnished and uncarpeted, had for the fifteen years the family had lived there, become the repository of all their unwanted possessions. Piles of unused furniture, boxes of old toys, empty frames stood around the edges of the long dark rooms. He had never bothered to decorate this top floor; there was more than enough room in the house downstairs. The light flickered again and he saw the bulb swinging on its length of flex in the draught, sending wild shadows whirling round the room. He straightened, frowning, wondering if someone had opened a door downstairs. ‘Hello?’ He rested the painting against the wall and turned to the doorway. The narrow upper flight of stairs led up between the two attic rooms and it was dark out there with no external light.

  ‘Ollie, is that you?’

  He squinted in the darkness. There was a figure standing there in the doorway. ‘What do you want?’

  He could see him now, a young man, with a thin face, mousy hair, dressed in the blue-grey uniform of the Royal Air Force. ‘Who the hell are you?’ He stepped towards him aggressively. ‘What the devil are you doing in my house?’

  The figure disappeared.

  Christopher went to the door and stared down the stairs. There was no sign of anyone there. He swung round and went back to the painting. He was imagining things. He thought he had seen the figure from the painting. He looked again hard at the figure of the young man with his helmet and goggles and shook his head. Not him. It was someone else. The figure in the painting was fair-haired, with a wild curly mop. The figure he had seen in the doorway was a taller, thinner figure with darker straighter hair and sad, shadowed eyes. Above all he realised he had noticed the eyes.

  For the first time he felt a shiver of unease. He stood unmoving, unaccountably uncertain what to do. The air was cold, draughts swirling round the attics and he was aware now of the sound of rain beating down on the roof tiles above his head. He shivered.

  Downstairs his wife and his son were waiting, full of antagonism and dislike, if not actual hatred, for him. He didn’t want to confront them and he didn’t want to move, he realised suddenly, in case that figure was still there, round the corner.

  With an angry exclamation he shook himself and turned to switch off the light. He headed for the stairs and began to run down. At the bottom he strode along the landing to Hannah’s room. He knocked on the door. ‘Hannah?’

  ‘Hi, Daddy.’ Her voice was bored.

  He opened her door and looked in. ‘Are you busy?’

  She was lying on her stomach on the bed, propped on her elbows, her mobile phone in her hand. The open suitcases on the floor under the window were half packed, ready for school the following week. He walked in and sat down on the end of her bed.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ he asked. She dropped the phone and sat up.

  ‘Oh my God! Have you seen one?’ Her long hair was hanging round her face and he couldn’t see her expression.

  He hadn’t meant to say it. He hadn’t even realised that was what he was thinking. Had he seen a ghost?

  ‘Cool.’ Hannah seemed anything but phased by the question. ‘What did it look like?’

  He hesitated. ‘He was wearing wartime uniform. RAF uniform.’

  She nodded. ‘Do you think it was Granny’s brother?’

  ‘Granny?’ he frowned, confused.

  ‘Your granny, Evie. You were always telling us how famous she was and how her brother was killed in the Battle of Britain. Don’t you remember? Ollie loved those stories. It was so sad. He was incredibly young. He had a funny name.’

  ‘Ralph,’ Christopher murmured. He shivered again. He rose to his feet and went over to the window, lifting the curtain a little so he could peer out into the dark.

  ‘What was he doing? Why would he come here? He never came to this house so why would he haunt it? Is he haunting us?’ Hannah climbed to her feet and came to stand beside him.

  He studied his daughter. She was wearing hideous floral leggings and a striped dress of equal ugliness. He sighed. How had he sired a child with such poor taste? Her feet were bare and rather grubby, as was her hair, but her face was alight with excitement.

  ‘Where did you see him? Do you think I can see him too?’

  Christopher shook his head. ‘I was imagining it, darling. I just thought I saw something moving in the shadows up in the attic. I was looking at the pictures I brought back from your grandfather’s house. There is one there of a young pilot –’

  ‘– and it’s Great-uncle Ralph?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, it’s not him.’ He paused for a moment, deep in thought. ‘This chap I thought I saw, his face was so clear.’

  ‘Then you weren’t imagining him.’

  He shook his head. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Have you any photos of him? Or portraits? Surely Great-granny painted her own brother?’

  He moved over and sat down on the stool in front of her dressing table. ‘I’ve never seen one, but you’re right. There must be a portrait of him somewhere.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s in the National Gallery.’

  He looked startled. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Well, there is one of hers in Tate Britain, isn’t there? She was very famous, Daddy. I’ve Googled it. It shows women in the war amidst all the bombed buildings. It’s amazing.’

  He gave a hesitant smile. ‘I didn’t know you were interested in art.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m interested in. You’ve never bothered with anything either of us do.’ She sounded resigned rather than angry. ‘Have you any idea what makes Ollie tick?’ She gave him a tenth of a second to answer. ‘No. I didn’t think so. Poor Mum has to do everything. She trails up to the parents’ evenings, and dutifully comes to our plays and matches.’ She sat down cross-legged on the bed. ‘Don’t look so crestfallen. You’re a businessman. Lots of business fathers don’t show up at school.’ She leaned forward. ‘Shall we go upstairs and see i
f he’s still there?’

  ‘No!’

  The force of his answer surprised them both. She looked hurt. ‘Why not?’ She slid off the bed and came to stand in front of him again. ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  ‘I just don’t want to.’ He stood up too. ‘Leave it, Hannah.’

  She glared at him. ‘I’m going. I want to see him.’

  ‘No!’ How could he explain to her the sudden wave of fear which had enveloped him as he ran down the attic stairs? The certainty that the apparition, whoever, whatever, it was, meant him no good. He tried to take a firm grip on himself. ‘Come on downstairs. Your mother is making supper. Let’s go and open a bottle of wine.’

  Her face broke into a smile. ‘Do you mean that?’

  He realised what he had said. The pretence that his kids were too young to drink was a nonsense they all subscribed to.

  Ollie was frightened of his father; she wasn’t. She stood up to him. If her pathetic mother did the same the family would be a lot happier, Christopher thought yet again. Instinctively his daughter knew he respected her for not being afraid of him and equally instinctively she realised that something had happened up there in the attic which had frightened him and she had never seen him afraid before.

  Lucy had been working hard, safe in the small spare room at the vicarage and with all the time she needed, secure in the knowledge that Robin was taking care of the gallery. She had decided to keep a low profile for a while as far as Mike was concerned, and anyway she had more than enough material to be going on with. She paused, thinking about Mike. She couldn’t decide how she felt about him. Or how he felt about her. Did he trust her again now? He seemed to. He hadn’t forbidden her to go back to Rosebank, as had seemed a real possibility at one point. He seemed happy for her to go on working there and happy for her to go on digging into Evie’s life. She sat back staring at the screen. On the other hand she had a strong feeling that he had real reservations about her motivation, thanks to his cousin. She frowned at the thought of Christopher. His presence in the background was a definite threat. She put her hand on the mouse as the screensaver kicked in, bringing her manuscript back to life. The book was taking shape at last. The book. Yes, she was beginning to see it as a book, beginning to write paragraphs of linking prose, to make notes of which illustrations would best fit the narrative and draw out a plan of how to fit in the details of Evie’s later life as they emerged. Evie was opening up to her, slowly, reluctantly, revealing her secrets one by one, emerging as a rounded fascinating, poignant figure, a real person in every sense, surrounded by a cast of characters who in their turn were fleshing out, stepping onto the stage.

  Putting Mike and Christopher to the back of her mind, she sat in front of her laptop scrolling down through the list of dates she had filled in. The events she had unearthed regarding Evie’s life, at first so sparse, were becoming more and more detailed. The small room was filling with books and papers, each one annotated, liberally bristling with coloured stickers, each fact now entered onto the computer, each supposed or guessed category of information a different colour and font.

  The later years of the war seemed to have been a more stable time in Evie’s life. After the birth of Johnny in 1941 she seemed to have settled into a routine of painting for the WAAC. From the infrequent diary entries and the more detailed painting notes a pattern emerged where her mother took over much of the daily care of her son while she visited Chichester and Southampton to record the daily life of the women in factories and in the services and in their homes. In her studio she worked long hours, noting from time to time that little Johnny had joined her at his small easel and was showing marked artistic talent. Lucy smiled indulgently at that, noting the 1944 date. The child was only three!

  Then in September 1944 came a note about more personal issues and a rare mention of Eddie in a letter to Johnny’s godmother, Sarah Besant. You won’t believe this, but I am expecting another baby! Eddie is so pleased. I am going to finish the large painting of the women queuing with their empty baskets and then cut back a little on work. I seem to get very tired all the time. Mummy and Daddy are brilliant with Johnny but Eddie is out so often. I wish I knew where he goes.

  Lucy cross-checked some dates in her timeline. This must have been the first announcement of George’s imminent arrival. She glanced up sadly. The personal blow at his loss, apart from a natural sense of unfairness at the death of a nice, gentle man, was doubled by the loss of all the information he could have given her about his mother.

  She noted down the date of the letter on her notepad and then went back to the letter. I wish I knew where he goes. Did that sound angry or poignant or just worried? She was getting a fairly clear picture of Eddie as she worked through the diaries. A bit of a bully, a man with fingers in a lot of pies; an entrepreneur, shrewd and with many contacts; she still couldn’t make up her mind if he had known about Tony Anderson. Evie and Eddie had married soon after what must have been Evie’s break-up with Tony. Had she preferred the older man all along – she glanced at her date chart. Eddie was twenty-nine when they married; Tony Anderson, from his portrait, looked much younger.

  June 18th 1941

  Eddie carried the painting into David Fuller’s gallery and put it down, leaning it against the wall. ‘I have something for you here.’

  The gallery owner’s eyes lit up. ‘Something of Evie’s? I’ve been missing her work. Now Sir Kenneth Clark has first dibs on everything it leaves very little for me, so it seems.’

  Eddie gave a quiet smile. ‘Then this will please you mightily.’ He bent and pulled off the brown paper it was wrapped in.

  David gasped. ‘It’s a self-portrait! You can’t want me to sell this.’ He reached for his spectacles and perched them on his nose. ‘Who is this young man with her?’ He glanced up over the spectacles, his blue eyes shrewd as he searched Eddie’s face.

  ‘He was a boyfriend. I am going to ask you a favour here, David.’ Eddie sat down on the bottom step of the staircase, his hands linked loosely between his knees. ‘Evie was keen on this chap. Very keen. Right at the beginning of the Battle of Britain. The guy was killed. It upsets her to see it now. I thought perhaps she would get over it but she found the picture the other day and cried all over it. She asked me to take it away and burn it. I took it away but I can’t bring myself to burn it. I thought you could sell it for me and we’ll keep it between ourselves. I don’t want the WAAC to have it either. They would display it somewhere and cause even more grief for her. Before you sell it, I thought you could do something to make sure that even if it did emerge that we had sold it, it wouldn’t hurt her any more. I want you to paint out the pilot.’

  David stared at him. ‘Me?’

  ‘You. Don’t tell me you don’t know how. You’ve cleaned up enough pictures in your time, you old rogue.’ Eddie gave a thin smile. ‘Call it portrait of a girl, and sell it to a dealer as far away as you can. We’ll go fifty-fifty on it.’

  ‘But you know you could get far more if it is put on the market as a Lucas.’ David was confused and not a little suspicious.

  ‘I know. But I happen to love my wife. She is preoccupied with the new baby at the moment, so hopefully she will forget about it.’ Eddie stood up and dusted his hands together. He had not looked at Evie’s baby for two days after he was born, had not come home the first night. If her parents thought it strange they said nothing. They were at her bedside and fulsome with their adoration and that was all she wanted. When Eddie finally came upstairs to look at the boy who everyone thought was his son he grunted a few words of congratulation and left the room. He had not brought mother or child any gifts.

  Now, he gazed down at the picture again. ‘It should make a good price. I’ll look forward to hearing from you when the deed is done.’

  David Fuller began to paint out the figure of the airman behind Evie’s shoulder that same evening. He did it carefully, with feather-light strokes of the bru
sh, well aware that at any time the thin layer of paint could be removed by someone who knew what they were doing. The overpainting was not good. The quality of paint was inferior now; Evie had obviously used pre-war oils which were of a far better consistency, but once it was dry it probably wouldn’t show. He covered the blank section of the canvas with cloud in a fair imitation of Evie’s sky and stood back to admire it, then he rang one of his best customers, a collector who lived in the Downs some sixteen miles away. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said with a huge smile. ‘Quite an interesting story attached to it. Come in as soon as you can.’

  It was agreed that the painting would stay under cover until the end of the war. The price paid was one hundred guineas. David pocketed fifty and split the remaining sum with Eddie. Evie did not notice that the picture had gone for another three months. She had no reason to disbelieve Eddie when he told her he had found it one day when collecting another painting from her studio, and that he had burned it. The tears she wept were private tears, snuffled miserably into Johnny’s soft hair as he clung to her breast.

  25

  Saturday 7th September

  Robin was seated at the desk at the back of the gallery when Lucy pushed open the door and went in.

  ‘Luce! How are you?’ He leaped to his feet and gave her a hug. ‘It’s so good to see you. Are you ready to come home?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘How is it upstairs?’

  ‘It’s OK.’ He caught her hand. ‘Come up while the shop is empty. We’ve been doing rather well, the last few days. I’ve sold another two paintings and there is someone interested in your little sculpture in the window there.’

  She followed him up, unable to suppress the small tremor of nervousness as she climbed the stairs. The flat was spotless and the kitchen full of sunlight. She glanced at the door of the studio. ‘Is it alright?’

  ‘As far as I can tell. Your friend Maggie came in yesterday. She opened all the windows and did some magical mumbo jumbo.’ He gave a broad smile. ‘I can’t see what it achieved but the whole place has felt marvellous ever since. I think your evil guy has gone elsewhere.’