The Darkest Hour. Barbara Erskine

guns on the ground. Watching the sky she was aware of the scream of engines, the stuttering roar of machine guns, seeing tracer bullets streak across the sky, plumes of smoke. Men were dying up there. Boys, most of them. She saw a plane peel away from the action, trailing black smoke as it plummeted down, spinning out of control. Was it one of ours or one of theirs? Too far away to see. Either way she breathed a quiet prayer for a life snuffed out as the plane buried itself in a field somewhere in the Downs.

      Please God, keep Rafie safe; don’t let him die.

      Her brother had died in another war twenty-three years before. He had died far away in France; now they were having to watch their young men die here, in the sky, over their heads. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.

      The airmen soon became used to the sight of the slim fair-haired girl in her slacks and linen shirt, a sweater hung around her neck or knotted round her waist. She had appeared two or three times now, leaving her old bicycle near one of the Nissen huts on the airfield which were used as crew rooms, or leaning against the wall of the old farmhouse, now the Officers’ Mess. Leaving her gas mask dangling from the handlebars, she carried no more than a sketchbook and soft pencils and charcoal or coloured crayons to work with. She drew the planes, the ground crew, the pilots. She was friendly and exchanged some repartee with the men, but always she was drawing, not allowing herself to be distracted. The War Artists Advisory Committee was very strict about who it chose for its official team of war artists, and stricter still about women. She knew that to win her place on that coveted programme she should be painting in factories or depicting the brave men and women of the town streets and the people getting on with life under the threat of invasion; but it was the planes that fascinated her and to compete with the male artists, to get herself on the commission’s list, she had to be twice as good as they were.

      Since Ralph had got her permission to sketch at the airfield, she would repair to the farmhouse attic which she and Rafie and her father had turned into a studio for her when she had returned from art school. It gave her somewhere to paint; somewhere to be on her own and now somewhere to concentrate on her work away from the bustle of the farm. They had made a skylight which was blacked out now in the evening, but rigged up with electric lights hanging from the rafters, fed by the generator in the shed, there was just about enough light to transform her sketches into paint.

      Her canvasses from college were stacked against the wall. Portraits mainly, though some were country scenes; some influenced by contemporary heroes of hers like John Nash and Graham Sutherland, others more strongly her own clearly emerging style. And there were the birds. Her first drawings had been of birds in flight, studied over the fields of the farm, over the woods and sea and over her beloved Downs. It was when she saw her first squadron of fighter planes wheeling in tight formation above the farm looking like so many swallows swooping after insects against the intense blue of the sky that she knew she had to paint them as well.

      She was tired after the five-mile bike ride home from the airfield but that was no excuse. There was farm work to do. She ran up to the studio and left her sketchbooks there on the table before coming back down to the kitchen. Her mother was stirring a pot of soup over the range. She looked up.

      ‘It sounded as though there was a bit of activity this afternoon,’ she said with a thin smile.

      Rachel Lucas was a tall strong-boned woman with a fierce loyalty and love of her husband and two children which she hid with a layer of gruff understatement and determination. She would never admit that she was worried about Ralph, or demand he somehow get her a message after a particularly fierce aerial battle or that she had any misgivings about Evie’s excursions down to an airfield in the thick of the operations.

      ‘Eddie phoned. He’s back from London for a few days and he’s coming to supper. Your dad has started the milking.’

      Evie went over and gave her mother a light kiss on the top of her head. ‘I’ll go and see if he would like me to take over.’ There were only two cows in milk now, much to her relief.

      ‘Would you, dear? I know he denies it but he is finding it hard without Ralph and the men to help.’

      ‘That’s why I’m here, Mummy.’ Evie reached for her overalls from the back of the door and whistled to the two dogs lying on the flags. ‘When will Eddie arrive?’

      Rachel gave a rueful smile at the casualness of the question. ‘You’ve got time to give your dad a hand.’

      Eddie Marston was tall and slightly stooped with the mannerisms of a man far older than his twenty-eight years. He had dark straight hair and grey-green eyes, magnified by wire-rimmed spectacles. His parents were neighbours of the Lucases, his father’s farm bordering theirs to the east. Eddie however had shown no interest in the farm, preferring to leave its running to his two sisters and a team of land girls. He had failed the medical to get into the forces after a childhood bout of measles had left him with poor eyesight and had been co-opted into the Ministry of Information. It was no secret that he had a soft spot for Evie, nearly ten years his junior. Her feelings for him were not so clear. She enjoyed his company and was flattered by his attention. She wasn’t sure yet whether she felt any more deeply for him but in the meantime she enjoyed flirting with him.

      Sitting next to her in the farmhouse kitchen he gazed round the table as they waited for Rachel to serve the soup, then he sprang his surprise. ‘You know I took some of your sketches into Chichester to show to that friend I mentioned?’

      Evie looked up quickly. She hadn’t wanted to part with them but Eddie could be very persuasive.

      ‘He likes them. He thinks he has a potential buyer. I have arranged to have them framed and the cost taken out of the proceeds.’

      Evie’s father narrowed his eyes slightly as he surveyed Eddie across the table. Their neighbour’s son was becoming all too frequent a visitor in the house and treating it – and them – with just too much familiarity for his taste. ‘I seem to recall Evie saying she would think about whether she wanted to sell those. Some of them were from her college portfolio if I remember right.’

      ‘Daddy, I can speak for myself!’ Evie retorted crossly.

      Eddie scooped a piece of bread from the plate on the table between them and nodded nonchalantly. ‘But remember, if you change your mind about selling them it will look bad. An introduction like this at this stage in your career is worth its weight in gold. She has talent, your daughter!’ He smiled at Dudley Lucas. ‘If she wants to go far in the world of art – and she could – she can’t start soon enough.’

      Rachel stood up, pushing her chair back on the flags with unnecessary force. ‘I’m sure she does. She has enough ambition does our Evie, but Dudley is right. It has to be up to her.’ The quick look she gave Eddie from under her lashes was less than friendly.

      ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about me as though I wasn’t here!’ Evie said crossly. ‘I can make my own decisions! Yes, Eddie. Please sell them.’

      Eddie sat back in his chair with a smug smile. ‘You won’t regret it, sweetheart.’ There was a touch of triumph in his expression as he gave a sideways glance at Dudley.

      It was as he was leaving he took the chance to have a quiet word with Evie in the hall. ‘Have you got your paintings of the airfield ready yet?’

      She shook her head. ‘I’m working on them.’

      ‘When can I have them?’

      ‘I’m not sure.’ She hesitated. ‘The thing is, the squadron CO at Westhampnett said I ought to be careful. I’m not really authorised to do this even though I have his permission. It is not quite the same.’

      ‘Like when we kiss, eh?’ Eddie put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to him.

      Evie submitted without demur. In fact she quite liked it when Eddie kissed her. It felt exciting and slightly risqué. He was quite a bit older than she was and no doubt a lot more experienced. Her inexpert fumblings as an art student, even going ‘all the way’ as one lad had put it, had been profoundly disappointing