The Darkest Hour

by Barbara Erskine

  Evie broached the subject with Eddie that evening when he came back from London where he was setting up an exhibition of southern artists, one of whom was of course Evie. To her astonishment he greeted the news with alacrity.

  ‘About time. I thought you wanted to stay here forever. It will suit me far better to move to London. I will start looking for somewhere at once.’

  ‘London?’ Evie looked at him aghast. ‘Not London. I couldn’t bear to live in London.’

  ‘It will be good for your career,’ was his only reply. ‘And it will be good to make a new start for all sorts of reasons.’

  One of the reasons, it turned out, was George. On the eve of their eventual move Eddie handed Evie an envelope. In it was a birth certificate for George Edward Marston. She stared at it. ‘But the adoption papers?’

  ‘There will be no adoption. Why should we adopt our own child?’

  ‘This is a forgery?’

  He smiled. ‘Good, isn’t it? No one will ever know.’

  ‘I will know.’

  His smile faded. ‘But you are never going to tell anyone, are you?’

  The new house was near Hampstead Heath. It had belonged to another artist and had a glorious studio for Evie. The money came from Eddie’s parents, who had sold up their farm after the war and retired to Bexhill.

  To Evie’s distress only two years after they had moved her father died. Eddie refused to go to the funeral. ‘Why should I? The old curmudgeon as good as threw us out of the house.’ So, Evie went alone with Johnny, leaving George with his father. It was on the train that Johnny turned to her and asked when George was going back to his own mummy.

  Evie froze. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s not my brother. I know you said he was, but when I asked her, Grandma told me he wasn’t really. I remember when he came to live with us. You said it was to keep me company but I don’t like him.’

  Evie shrank back into the train seat, overcome with horror. It had never occurred to her that her own mother would betray them. Luckily they were alone in their compartment. She put her arm round him and gave him a hug. ‘Grandma made a mistake, Johnny. George is your brother now. He is always going to live with us, darling. Why on earth don’t you like him?’

  ‘Daddy loves him much more than me.’ The boy’s mouth turned down.

  Evie sighed. ‘It only seems that way because George is younger. Younger brothers and sisters always seem to get more attention but it’s usually because they are naughtier. As George grows older Daddy will love you both the same, you’ll see.’

  Going back to Box Wood Farm was agony for Evie, and for Johnny too, she realised. She shouldn’t have brought him. This was her home. The Downs were in her blood. Hampstead might be right in so many ways, but it wasn’t home. She said nothing to her mother about her revelations to Johnny; she doubted anyway if her mother would have listened. She was a shadow of herself, drawn and grey-faced, talking incessantly about Ralph, convinced that the report of his death had been a mistake, that one day he would return to the farm and take it over and that she would be there to meet him however long she had to wait.

  ‘But, Mummy,’ Evie said, when the last of the mourners had departed and she and her mother were clearing up the table in the living room they had so seldom used in the past. ‘You can’t run the farm on your own.’

  ‘It’s your farm now. Daddy left it in trust for you and Ralph,’ Rachel said. There were streaks in her face powder from her tears. ‘He said to get in a manager for you so when you came to your senses and left that dreadful man you could come back and keep it going. Please, darling, come home.’ Her eyes flooded with tears again.

  She couldn’t, of course. For one glorious moment Evie thought about doing it. Staying here, cancelling the taxi back to the station, ringing Eddie and telling him she had left him and was never coming back. Her father was dead. Eddie no longer had any hold over him. Then she thought about George. George was Eddie’s son in every way as far as looks went, but in other ways he was nothing like him. He was a delicate, sensitive child, easily hurt by his father’s shouting, hiding from him whenever he could, following her around with adoring eyes fixed on her face. How could she abandon him? With a sigh she kissed her mother and told her she would consult a local agent to find a manager for the farm and she promised to come back in the summer.

  To all intents and purposes they settled down in Hampstead relatively happily. The two boys were sent to school nearby and Evie painted a series of pictures of Hampstead Heath which were exhibited to great acclaim. It was after her third sale of a large expensive painting that the trouble started. ‘It is my money, Eddie. It is only right that I receive it.’ She had found the receipt book on his desk.

  He snatched it from her, threw it into a drawer and locked it. ‘This is nothing to do with you.’

  ‘But it is. It said clearly that it was my picture of Keats House.’ She clenched her fists. ‘This has gone on long enough. You have pocketed my earnings for years, Eddie, and it has to stop.’

  He laughed. ‘I don’t think so. I think you will find that you signed your earnings over to me as your agent. I have the document, if you don’t believe me. Your job, my sweet, is to paint for me. In return I house you and feed you and look after your brat of a son.’

  She went white. ‘When did I sign such a thing?’

  ‘On the 20th September 1940, the day you had your first commission from the WAAC.’

  ‘But I signed something for them.’ She stared at him aghast.

  ‘If you think back you signed two documents. In your excitement you read neither.’

  ‘I was only nineteen.’

  ‘Old enough, I think you’ll find.’ He walked over to the fireplace and reached onto the mantelpiece for his pipe. ‘We have a nice home here, Evie, and two presentable sons. Don’t rock the boat.’ He reached into his pocket and produced his wallet. Opening it he peeled two fifty-pound notes off the wad of cash and handed them to her. ‘There. Buy yourself something pretty with that. You are right. You have worked very hard and you deserve a reward.’

  Barely able to contain her fury she snatched the notes from him, tore them in half, threw them at his feet and stormed out of the room.

  Monday 16th September, early morning

  At the bottom of the last damp cardboard box she had brought over from Rosebank Lucy found another notebook which, as she eagerly extricated it from the surrounding foxed papers and gingerly prised open the pages, proved to be another diary. Evie’s writing was cramped now, less exuberant than usual, but she had entered in great detail over several months the happenings of her daily life with her sons. Then came the surprise.

  July 1953

  ‘Evie!’ Her mother’s voice was shrill on the telephone. ‘Are you there, darling? Listen. I’ve seen Ralph!’

  Evie sat down, her heart sinking. ‘Mummy –’

  ‘No, I know what you are going to say. But I did see him. I was walking across the yard and he flew over. I stood looking up. It was his plane, I know it was. I waved …’ Her voice died away. ‘You think it was someone else, don’t you?’

  ‘Mummy, it can‘t be Ralph, you know it can’t.’ Evie tried to keep her voice level. At least this time there was a plane. The last time Rachel had rung in the middle of the night she thought she had seen him in the kitchen. ‘He was standing there looking at me, Evie, with his lovely smile. He held out his hand and then …’

  Then she had burst into tears.

  ‘Would you like me to come down and see you, Mummy? It’s holidays. I could bring the boys for a few days. You enjoy it when they come down, don’t you?’

  She waited for the inevitable hesitation and then when it came, the caveat that followed, ‘I don’t think you should bring George, darling. This is not his real home. He won’t feel comfortable here.’

  ‘He loves the farm, Mummy, you know he does.’ Usually if she was firm it would be all right. Once or twice her mother had put her foot down and Ev
ie had refused to go without the boy she thought of as her younger son. He would always be her younger son. She loved him absolutely and completely, as much as she loved Johnny. There was always a risk in taking him, of course, that one day her mother would tell George that he had been adopted but somehow it had never happened and usually when they arrived the two boys ran outside and were hardly seen in the house at all. When they were there Rachel treated them both the same with lavish supplies of homemade cakes and biscuits, and Evie suspected she forgot her reservations in the joy of having the house full again.

  As she had suspected, Eddie showed no interest at all in where they were going or for how long. Evie had her own car now, a Ford Popular which was all she could afford. Eddie had grudgingly given her a little towards it with a scathing remark about women drivers but other than that he had made no objection to her having a car of her own so she had kept quiet and revelled in her new-found freedom.

  She loaded the suitcases, put the two boys in the back and set off one glorious morning. Besides packing their clothes she had smuggled in a selection of paints and sketchbooks. Her old easel was still at the farm in her attic studio. Down there, in the place she still thought of as home, she could paint to her heart’s content and any pictures she thought good enough to keep would be secreted away somewhere Eddie would never find them. Or sell them. When she had finally met David Fuller after the war they had become good friends. Without her having to say a word he seemed to understand that any deals he made with her were of no concern to anyone else. She adored the old couple and their gallery and never failed to visit them when she was down at Box Wood Farm. They would provide her with cake and Chichester gossip and when she left David would sometimes slip her an envelope with a wink and then a warm hug. Those holiday visits gave her more money than she had ever dreamed possible and it was her very own.

  The boys grew brown and fit running around the fields. It was down here in Sussex that they seemed to get on best together. There was no Eddie to set them up against each other; Johnny forgot that he was the elder. He forgot his resentment of his younger brother and seemed to enjoy his company. They borrowed ponies from a neighbour of Rachel’s and rode up on the Downs with picnics strapped to their saddles, leaving Evie to paint and talk to her mother alone.

  Rachel was growing very thin. From time to time her wild cries and frenzied excitement terrified Evie, but the boys seemed to take her moods in their stride – it was, after all, the way they remembered her.

  It was on a humid day in August, when another neighbour had taken the boys off to a funfair in the next village, Evie was upstairs in the attic, painting a wild thundery sky much like the one she could see outside the attic window. She was enjoying herself, dressed in a cotton shirt and slacks, her hair, short now and curly, at this moment tinged with vivid blue streaks from where she had pushed it back from her face with paint-stained fingers. She was standing back to study the painting when she heard her mother’s cries from downstairs. Dropping her brush she turned towards the door.

  ‘Ralph, Ralph, please, darling, wait!’ Rachel’s voice floated up the stairs as Evie began to run down. ‘My darling, wait for me.’

  ‘Mummy?’ Evie ran into the kitchen. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘He was here again.’ Rachel was standing by the table, tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Evie, why won’t he wait and talk to me?’

  Evie put her arms round her mother and hugged her, horrified at how thin she had grown. ‘I don’t know why,’ she whispered.

  ‘He wants to tell me something. I can sense his unhappiness. He can’t rest.’ Rachel looked up at Evie, her eyes still brimming with tears.

  Evie sighed. ‘There is nothing we can do, Mummy. We have to let him go.’

  ‘But that’s the point!’ Rachel pulled away from her angrily. ‘Don’t you understand? He can’t go! Not till he has told us what it is that is making him so unhappy.’ She turned and walked out of the kitchen.

  Evie stood for a long time lost in thought, then at last she turned towards the door. Ralph was standing near the table looking straight at her.

  Lucy read the whole extract again, then she pushed the diary away and sat staring at the wall. So Ralph was haunting Box Wood Farm even then.

  Monday 16th September, mid-morning

  Lucy had been hard at work for another couple of hours when the doorbell rang. She sat back from the computer and listened. Huw and Maggie had gone out early and she wasn’t sure if they were back yet. The bell rang again and she pushed back her chair and stood up.

  Mike was standing on the step, his back to the door, staring up into a tree. She was tempted to slam the door before he turned round but it was too late. He swung to face her and she saw the look of astonishment in his face. ‘I thought you would have gone back to the gallery by now.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘No, no, Lucy, I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I was hoping to see you, but I wanted to consult Huw and Maggie as how best to do it. Now I’m all unprepared.’ He gave her a nervous smile. ‘I owe you an apology. A big one.’

  She looked surprised. ‘No. I was in the wrong. I didn’t trust you and that was unforgivable.’

  ‘Can we go back to the beginning?’

  She smiled. ‘I would like that very much.’

  ‘Good. If I went home without us making up Dolly would probably kill me. She says I am a lousy judge of character, which brings me to my next problem. Charlotte.’

  ‘Do you believe her?’ They were walking round the garden in the soft autumn sunshine as he told her Charlotte’s latest threat. ‘If I’m honest, I think I do. Dolly remembers the writing case. She thought I had given it to you. I don’t remember ever noticing it. What worries me is that if it was in the bedroom, maybe it had particularly important things in it. I can’t imagine how Christopher missed it.’

  ‘And it might contain more recent information. I think I have a grip on Evie’s life up until she and Eddie moved to London. George told me a bit about it, but I feel there is a huge gap. There are so few paintings from that period. Where did they go? She sold some through David Fuller, I gather, and they presumably disappeared into the open market, but I wonder if when she was back in London she stopped painting altogether. I gather from one or two letters she had never wanted to move from Sussex. The Downs were her muse. And if she was having problems with Eddie and his reluctance to give her any money perhaps she went on strike.’

  ‘She’s always been known as a Sussex painter, that is true,’ Mike said thoughtfully, ‘though she seems to have painted Hampstead when they lived there.’

  There was an awkward pause. ‘Hannah has gone home, by the way. Did you know?’ Lucy said after the silence had drawn out uncomfortably long. ‘She ran away from home because she saw a ghost in the attic of their house. It was hanging around some of Evie’s paintings that Christopher had stored up there, and, Mike, she recognised who it was. Your mother has a picture of Eddie in her dining room and apparently Hannah completely freaked out when she saw it.’ She glanced over her shoulder towards the house and dropped her voice as if she could be overheard. ‘She was terrified.’

  ‘The ghost is Eddie? My grandfather? I did wonder when you mentioned before that he seemed so angry.’ He paused for a moment, looking confused. ‘I thought you’d said the ghost was Ralph.’

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘But the other ghost, the angry ghost, no, I’ve never seen him. I just feel him. See what he does. I don’t think I’ve seen a clear picture of him. Quite a few old photos but none close up. I want to go and see your mother’s portrait. Do you think she would mind? Did Evie paint it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I can remember it, to be honest.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Do you want to go over there and see?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘If you like. I want to get this sorted, Lucy. The whole thing is getting to me.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I’ve never seen a ghost at Rosebank. I keep tel
ling myself that. It’s as if Evie’s presence is too strong. She’s not a ghost. She died peacefully, as far as I know, but I do sometimes think she is still there, keeping it all safe.’

  ‘Even when the studio caught fire,’ Lucy agreed. ‘It could have been so much worse.’

  They went in his car. Forewarned by a phone call, Juliette was waiting for them and apart from a quick glance at them both as if to reassure herself that they were not about to kill each other, she refrained from saying anything about the last time they had all met in her house. She led the way inside.

  ‘Christopher came and collected Hannah,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I phoned them as soon as I realised she hadn’t told them where she was.’

  ‘I hope he wasn’t too angry with her,’ Lucy said with a shiver.

  ‘No. Surprisingly not.’

  ‘Did you show him the picture?’

  Juliette nodded. ‘He was very shaken by the whole thing. Hannah disappearing like that had really rattled him. He stared at it for a long time. He was very white about the gills and tight-lipped but he didn’t say anything. He just turned round and walked out of the room.’

  ‘You didn’t ask?’ Mike was incredulous.

  ‘Don’t forget Hannah was standing there,’ Juliette said defensively. ‘I didn’t want to upset her any more than she was already.’

  ‘Can I see the picture?’ Lucy asked.

  Without a word Juliette walked along the passage and opened the door into her dining room. She stood back and ushered them in. She didn’t follow them. Lucy and Mike stood side by side looking at the painting. It wasn‘t large, about thirty centimetres by twenty or so, a pen and ink sketch with a sepia wash to shade it.

  ‘That’s Evie’s work,’ Lucy said at once. ‘I recognise her style.’

  Mike walked over and took it off the wall. He carried it to the window. ‘It is very good, isn’t it? I do recognise him. I was about thirteen when he died.’

  ‘What do you remember about him?’