The Darkest Hour. Barbara Erskine

next time I get an hour or two off I will come to see you, but you can come to us. Draw me in my Spitfire. Show posterity what good-looking pilots there are in my squadron. Give me a reason to come back safe.’

      ‘I’ll do that. I’ll come tomorrow.’ She managed a smile. For a moment neither of them was capable of saying anything more. He opened the little door for her to slide into the car and they drove back through the dark lanes, the blacked out headlights barely showing up the narrow road and overhanging hedges. At the farm he pulled up outside the back door. They could hear the dogs barking from the kitchen. ‘Mummy is still up,’ she whispered. He nodded. She turned to him. ‘Thank you for a perfect evening. Don’t get out. I don’t want to say goodbye.’ She leaned across and kissed him lightly on the forehead then she slipped out of the car and ran towards the door without looking back.

      Monday 15th July

      Rosebank Cottage was bleak in the rain. Inserting the key into the lock and letting herself into the hall, Lucy stood for a moment looking round.

      ‘Hello?’ she called nervously. ‘Is there anyone there?’

      She had half expected Dolly to be there but the house was empty. The lights were off, the doors and windows shut, the only sign of life a fly buzzing angrily against a window pane.

      She walked into the kitchen. The silence was broken by the sound of a tap dripping slowly into the sink. Lucy stepped forward and turned it off with a shiver. It felt as though someone had just that minute walked out of the room. The atmosphere was tense, the room alive. She touched the kettle gently, anticipating it to be warm. It was stone cold. It wasn’t Dolly she was expecting to find here, she realised suddenly. It was the former owner of the cottage.

      ‘Evie?’ She spoke out loud, questioning, waiting for an answer. There was none. And yet she had the feeling that Evie was there, somewhere, waiting to be summoned.

      She went back through into the hall and stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up. The steps were narrow and uneven, polished oak, turning sharply halfway up so that she couldn‘t see the top. She took a deep breath and set her foot on the bottom step, wincing as it let out an agonised creak.

      There were two small bedrooms opening off the landing at the top and a bathroom. She hesitated again, feeling intrusive, even a little prurient as she peered first into one room and then into the next. But then Mike had told her she could use the bathroom and there was nothing to see in the two bedrooms which spoke of the present-day occupants. The rooms were neat and tidy, impersonal. She wondered if that was because Evie’s belongings were now stacked up in the studio and she felt a wave of sadness for having been the cause of her exile from her own home. She stood in the slightly larger of the two bedrooms and looked round. It was several seconds before, cautiously, she went over to the chest of drawers and pulled the top drawer open a crack. It was empty, as was the drawer below it. They smelled faintly musty. Obviously they had been recently emptied.

      Lucy turned and looked at the pictures on the walls and felt an immediate pang of disappointment. There was nothing here by Evie herself. She peered at each in turn. There was one by the door, two on the opposite wall and a cluster of small prints near the window. She peered at them closely, noticing the fade marks on the wallpaper beneath them. They didn’t match. There had been other pictures here but they had been moved and not all that long ago. Was this the mysterious Christopher’s handiwork? If so he had obviously been very thorough. The pictures which had gone had been very small. She groaned quietly. She was going to have to ask Mike about his cousin and see if he would give her his address. There were obviously going to be pictures in his custody which had never been in the public domain at all and which would be crucial to include in a complete survey of Evie’s work.

      There was a creak on the staircase and she spun round.

      ‘Hello?’ she called nervously. She was overwhelmed with guilt again, horrified to have been caught poking round the house even though she had every right to be there. She tiptoed to the doorway and peered out. There was no one there. She went to the top of the stairs and looked down. From here she couldn’t see the bottom because of the bend in the flight. The house was silent again.

      ‘Is there anyone there,’ she called. The sound of her voice was overloud and intrusive in the silence. There was no reply. Cautiously she set foot on the top step. Slowly she began to descend, wincing at the creaks and groans from the staircase beneath her. The cottage was empty.

      She worked for two hours in the studio, then paused to make herself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. She had amassed a pile of papers and notebooks and was beginning to get a feel of what had gone on. Christopher – or whoever had done the preliminary sweep of Evie’s belongings in the past – had, at least at first glance, taken everything that was obviously of potential value, that much was clear. As far as she could see, there were no sketchbooks or paintings, no drawings or notebooks with what she would describe as painterly annotations, no small sketches, scraps or doodles. But there were other things which were of value, at least to her. Notes, more letter fragments and letters from other people including some from dealers, referring to paintings she had never heard of, sometimes with quite detailed descriptions. She began to put the papers into a series of cardboard files and to these she added those she had brought back from the gallery. She would take a few back each time to scan them so that she had the complete sequence on her computer at home. After a while she stopped and straightened her back, staring round. She had barely scratched the surface of the work to be done but at the same time she had achieved enough to feel she had made a proper start. Tomorrow she would attack the pile of boxes beside the far wall.

      As she was tidying up, switching off the lights, she heard the sound of footsteps on the path outside. She paused, holding her breath, looking towards the door. The studio was silent. From somewhere in the distance she heard a blackbird’s harsh alarm note echoing through the garden. On tiptoe she moved towards the door and took hold of the handle. She waited for a few seconds, listening, then she pulled open the door. There was no one there. Behind her, a jar of brushes, caught by the sudden draught, rocked for a moment and fell to the floor with a crash.

       September 6th 1940

      Ralph was standing in the kitchen looking from his father to his mother and back. ‘We need to tell her. Eddie is cheating her out of a lot of money.’

      He pulled up a chair and sitting down at the scrubbed deal table leaned forward earnestly on his elbows.

      Dudley sat down opposite him. The dogs, Jez and Sal, threw themselves down at his feet. ‘And how exactly do you know that, son?’

      Ralph felt a quick surge of his old antagonism towards his father. Always the need to doubt him, to disbelieve. ‘I was in Chi. I walked down Westgate and I saw a couple of her pictures in the window of a little gallery there. The price on them was astronomic. Far more than he is giving her.’

      Rachel was leaning with her back to the sink. ‘How do we know what he is giving her?’

      ‘She told me. She was so pleased. He gave her two quid for her picture of the barn with the roses growing over it. It is there, in the window priced at five guineas.’

      Dudley snorted. ‘I always thought he was sharp enough to cut himself, that one.’ He sighed.

      ‘He has to make a turn on them, and so does the shop,’ Rachel put in.

      ‘That much?’ Ralph looked at his mother in indignation. ‘I would have gone in and talked to them about it but the place was closed. I will go though, another time, and find out just what is going on with Eddie. I don’t want my baby sister being made a fool of. Where is she, anyway?’

      ‘She biked down to the airfield. Eddie was complaining that she wasn’t producing enough for her portfolio for the War Artists Committee. You know how much she wants to be recognised by them.’ Rachel paused thoughtfully. ‘There weren’t any pictures of the airfield in the shop, were there?’

      Ralph shook his head.