The Darkest Hour

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘So, if he didn’t look like this chap or Lol, what did he look like?’ Robin glanced at her.

  ‘He was someone else. Not this man in Evie’s picture. Same uniform. Completely different face.’

  ‘Did he try and speak to you?’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘You think he was a ghost?’ she whispered.

  Robin put his head on one side for a moment, considering. ‘I’m not sure what I think. Most likely you are right and he came from your dream, but dreams are supposed to carry messages sometimes, aren’t they?’

  She was feeling confused. ‘He didn’t say anything. I was in such a state of shock. I was sure he was my imagination. It was only when I came back in here and looked at the picture again that I realised that it was a different man and I started to panic.’

  ‘Intriguing.’ Phil took a slow thoughtful sip from his mug. ‘Is he somewhere else in the picture, do you think? Behind her other shoulder?’

  Robin frowned doubtfully. ‘There is no room. Look at the composition of the painting. This was how it was supposed to be when she painted it. Without him there she is standing too far to the left. There is a huge empty space behind her. I’ll bet that is what Lol noticed. It would have looked wrong to him. He had a fantastic eye. He would have seen that something was off balance. Perhaps that’s why he thought that it wasn’t a Lucas after all. She must have changed her mind after painting him there. Perhaps they had a row.’ He reached over and caught Lucy’s hand. ‘You know what this means, Luce, don’t you? You have to find out the whole story. Who were these men and what did they mean to Evie? Perhaps this guy wants you to write your book.’

  Glancing at her sideways, noting her white face, he gave her a reassuring grin. ‘Are you going to be OK here on your own tonight? Why don’t you come back with us?’ He had only just stopped himself from saying, ‘Perhaps he doesn’t want you to write it.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘I can’t leave the place, Robin. You know I can’t.’

  ‘Then we’ll stay here.’ Ever practical, Phil reached over with the kettle and topped up Robin’s mug. ‘Kip down in the living room.’

  ‘Would you?’ She didn’t mean to say it. It had slipped out before she could stop it. She didn’t like to admit how rattled she still felt by what had happened. Standing there with them in the room with her was one thing. Being alone in the house with its flights of creaky stairs and squeaking floorboards was quite another.

  ‘Of course we would. If your boy in blue tries anything we’ll give him a surprise.’ Phil gave a small snort of laughter.

  She smiled. ‘You are incorrigible.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘But thank you.’

  August 13th 1940

  On June 18th Churchill had made his speech informing the country that the Battle of France was over and that the Battle of Britain was about to begin. For weeks the country waited, then, on August 13th the first massed attacks began. Huge formations of German fighters and bombers started to thunder remorselessly in over the Channel, some bound for London, some for Dover, Southampton and Portsmouth, but most, specifically and unerringly, for the chain of airfields defending southern England, and Ralph was in the front line.

  Evie was sitting outside A Flight hut on an empty oil drum when the phone rang in the hut. All round her men paused in what they were doing. She stopped drawing, her hand poised above the paper, counting under her breath.

  She could hear the mumble of the voice in the dispersal hut then the phone slammed down and the single-word shout. ‘Scramble!’

  It was the third that day.

  She swallowed hard, trying to keep her hand steady on the paper as she went on with her sketch. These lads had become familiar to her; they smiled at her and exchanged jokes as they waited between sorties. They were friends. And some of them were almost certainly not going to come back. In the previous three days eleven of the pilots had been killed and the majority of the planes damaged or destroyed. The surviving men were exhausted. The ground crew had barely finished refuelling the surviving planes, rearming the guns. The pilots had scarcely had time for a cup of tea. She sharpened her pencil and turned the page, forcing herself to concentrate on what she was doing, not letting the adrenaline get to her. She must not show her fear for them. Her job was to be invisible; to be utterly professional. Lightning charcoal sketches, a man pulling on his flying helmet, another knotting a scarf round his neck. The tractor dragging the refuelling bowser out of the way. Engines starting, the chocks being snatched from the wheels, the blur of propellers, as they gained speed and then they were gone, the remaining flight of Hurricanes, not even a full squadron now, swooping up into the air as in the distance she heard the air raid sirens start to wail.

  Behind her, one of the riggers stopped to look at her page of drawings. ‘There is a new squadron coming in this afternoon. 911 Squadron. Did you see the two big Harrows that flew in this morning with the advance ground troops and all their gear?’ he said. He waved and she glanced at the two large planes parked side by side near the line of trees. ‘It’s a Spitfire squadron, like your brother’s. Something new here for you to draw. Our chaps will be glad of a break, poor bastards. Jerry has really been going for us these last few days.’

  She looked up at him and managed a smile. ‘Our boys will cope.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’ The man pulled an oily rag out of a pocket in his battledress and wiped his hands. He looked up at the sky where already they could see the approaching attack. As they watched, the neat formations of fighters heading in from Tangmere to join their own boys began to break up and within seconds the sky was full of action.

  ‘Suppose we’d better get ourselves ready for them when they come back,’ he said with a sigh.

  Evie watched him depart, sharing his anxiety; within seconds she had sketched the man’s retreating form, the slump of his shoulders, the angle of his head as once again he glanced up at the sky. Evie followed his gaze, aware for the first time of the swallows which swooped and dived over the airfield, oblivious of the drama in the sky far above, and in the corner of the page she drew a small bird.

  Only moments later two planes broke free of the mêlée and Evie was aware of men appearing from the various huts staring upward as the dogfight swooped low overhead. The guns rattled as the two planes dodged and wove around one another, the RAF roundel and the square black crosses clear; a Hurricane versus a Messerschmitt 109. Evie found she was holding her breath. They were so close now she thought she could see the men inside, then they soared upwards on and on up towards the sun. A final blast of firing and suddenly it was over. The German plane veered away and down, flames pouring from the fuselage. It was heading straight for them. She watched, her mouth dry, unable to move, only faintly aware of the shouts near her, of men running, of the tortured scream of the engine and then the plane was down, crashing in flames barely fifty yards away on the far side of the hedge. For several seconds she was paralysed with terror. She found she had dropped her sketchbook and pencil; she had forgotten to breathe. Men ran across the field towards the wreck but there was nothing they could do. The man inside had never stood a chance. Taking a long deep breath she dashed the tears from her eyes angrily. He was the enemy; she shouldn’t be upset.

  Only five of their own planes returned from the sortie, one ending up spectacularly on its back in the field almost in front of her. Evie jumped to her feet, heart in mouth, watching as the medics ran out with a stretcher, only to see the pilot extricate himself from his straps without help. He staggered from the plane, clutching at his arm, which hung uselessly at his side. He ran several steps, then stopped, swaying slightly, obviously disorientated, as the men with the stretcher reached him.

  It was several seconds before, automatically, she reached again for her sketchbook. But her hand was shaking too much to draw.

  She was still sitting there, stunned, when the promised new squadron appeared, circling the airfield in formation, their engine
s thundering deafeningly overhead. Fifteen Spitfires landed one after the other, coming to rest at last under the trees near the Nissen huts. The engines cut out, leaving the airfield eerily silent but for the distant song of a skylark.

  Friday 5th July

  The nights after her strange experience were hard for Lucy. Robin suggested he and Phil come and stay with her again but she refused. ‘I have to learn to be here on my own,’ she said stubbornly. ‘If you come again I will want you here every night. I have to face it. I was scared, but nothing happened. He was just a shadow. He wasn’t threatening. He was probably a dream or just my imagination.’ She looked straight at Robin and gave a faint smile.

  Noticing the defiant challenge in her eyes he said nothing to contradict her. ‘Brave girl!’ he said.

  What she hadn’t told him was that she couldn’t get the man’s face out of her head. His shadowy presence was in a way more real to her than the solid cheery figure in the painting. He had appeared for a reason. He was a link to Evelyn and he must have been trying to tell her something. Surely, if he had failed to get his message across wasn’t he likely to come again?

  The gallery had been busy but she used the occasional pauses between customers to rough out the outline of the book she was going to write about Evelyn, filling in the very few details she had been able to scrounge from the information that was out there in catalogues and on the Net. A whole week had gone by since she had seen Michael Marston and still she had heard nothing from him. At first optimistic that he would get in touch she wondered now if he ever would. Had he promised to help just to get her out of the door? It increasingly felt as though that was exactly what he had done. But if he didn’t intend to help her, where did she go from here?

  Putting her ghostly visitor firmly out of her mind she went over her meeting with Michael one more time in her head.

  Had he given her any material she could work with, at least as a start? She went into the studio and stood in front of the picture. Michael had mentioned a farm where Evelyn had spent her childhood and he had implied that he would give her the address. There had to be some way of finding that out herself, but in the meantime, was there some way that she could identify it from the painting?

  She dragged her eyes away from the faces in the portrait and this time concentrated instead on the landscape. The gate, the sky, the skyline. Was there a clue there which she could unravel, assuming it been painted on Evelyn’s parents’ farm? There was nothing to distinguish the gate. It was a five-barred wooden farm gate shaded with grey lichen and a mound of soft pale moss. No clue there. Nothing special. But the skyline? The silhouette of the Downs. Would she be able to find someone who recognised that? If it was a favourite place, a real place, then possibly; if it was imaginary then obviously it would mean nothing. But Evelyn painted real places. She painted the Downs she loved and the landscape around her home, that much one could tell from the paintings Lucy had seen in the catalogues, so there was a possibility that the place was identifiable.

  What else had Michael said? He had mentioned Evelyn’s brother, Ralph, who was a fighter pilot.

  She looked back at the face of the young man behind Evelyn in the portrait. She was sure her initial impression must be right, that this young man was a lover. The touch of his hand on the shoulder, the expression in his eyes, both were too tender, too intimate to be the love of a brother and sister. She squinted at the painting again. It was strange how the expressions of the two faces seemed to change from one moment to the next. Perhaps that was the sign of a great portrait. Or was it just the change of light?

  Whoever it was, at least she had one name. Ralph Lucas. So she would start with Ralph.

  August 13th 1940

  Tony Anderson had finished training in June. After the fall of France, Churchill had ordered that all trainee pilots be sent straight to squadrons and Tony found himself heading back to Edinburgh where until very recently he had been a law student in his third year. His first posting was, to his great delight, a Spitfire squadron based at Drem, some dozen or so miles from the city, and there he spent another two months training on active duty and getting to know the men who soon became his friends. On August 12th, the squadron discovered that it had been posted. They were to go to Sussex where the Battle of Britain was under way.

  There was heavy cloud over most of the country and they flew well above it, stopping only once to refuel. As they neared the south coast the cloud began to break up at last and sunlight illuminated the landscape beneath them. Tony felt his heart lift. The most surreal moment had come as they approached London, seeing nothing of the city but an enormous number of barrage balloons poking up out of the heavy cloud.

  ‘Something going on over to our left, chaps.’ Tony heard the CO’s voice crackle in his ear as they began to lose height. Tony squinted round and saw the planes in the distance. Dozens of them all over the place, criss-crossing the sky. ‘No chance for us to have a crack at them this time. We’re too low on fuel. Let’s just get there safely for now; we’ll soon get our chance.’

  From the air he could see the Sector Airbase at Tangmere and then Westhampnett, so close it was almost next door. The latter seemed to be no more than a large field, without any runways. He could see a couple of Nissen huts, a windsock, a bowser and a few concrete hard standings around the perimeter and a line of trees. In the middle of the airfield a Hurricane lay on its back; behind the hedge he could see the wreckage of another plane amidst a heavy pall of black smoke. He felt a little kick of excitement under his ribs. This was it. They were now in the thick of the action.

  He took his turn to land, taxiing in towards the trees and came to a standstill. As he pulled off his helmet and slid back the cockpit’s canopy the last thing he had expected to see was a beautiful girl standing in front of him, sketchbook in one hand, pencil in the other, and a ferocious scowl on her face.

  Friday 5th July, late

  Downstairs in the gallery Lucy made her way to the back of the long narrow ground floor room which was their exhibition space. The gallery area had two windows, at the rear a tall narrow casement overlooking the small garden and at the front a bowed picture window onto the street which at present was lit by two spotlights focused on a bronze heron standing on a black dais. There was still light in the sky outside, late though it was, but the room itself was dark. She turned the lamp on in the small office area at the back, where an antique desk sat on an oriental rug between two comfortable leather armchairs. Sitting down at the desk she fired up the computer.

  Threading her way through the usual entries offering to find Ralph Lucas on Facebook, to contact Ralph Lucases on several different continents, to establish their position in a dozen Lucas family trees, none of them relevant, to sell to them and to buy from them and even to provide their phone number, she found the right one at last. The entry was pitifully short.

  Ralph James Lucas, Fighter Pilot (260 squadron, Spitfires) born 1919, died 1940

  Lucy sat back. Twenty-one. Evelyn’s brother had only been twenty-one when he died.

  There was no other information that she could find.

  Taking a deep breath she turned off the computer and the light and went slowly upstairs.

  Pushing the studio door open, she stood there, staring at the painting once more.

  ‘Ralph?’

  Her voice sounded hollow and hesitant. It held no conviction.

  There was no reply.

  So, since Ralph was not the fair-haired young man in the painting, was he her dream, her ghost, the shadowed, enigmatic figure she had seen in her bedroom, not a part of this composition at all, but still around, off stage, an éminence grise, a restless spirit? The man in the shadows? And if that was true, why had he appeared now? What was it he wanted to say? And was he haunting her, or was he haunting Evelyn?

  She found herself wishing desperately yet again that Larry was there, that she could talk to him, discuss the painting with him, share her compulsion to find out who this man was a
nd how he fitted into Evelyn’s life, and above all to feel safe, nestled in her husband’s strong arms. She glanced back at the painting one last time, then, shivering, she turned off the lights and closed the door on the studio. That night she slept on the sofa in the living room, wrapped in Larry’s old red dressing gown.

  August 13th 1940

  ‘But why are you so cross?’ Eddie seemed to find Evie’s fury funny. ‘There’s no harm done. You were going to work up the picture on canvas anyway. It was only a bit of dust.’

  ‘He headed towards me deliberately. Nobody else came near me.’

  ‘Maybe he was just the last one in and had to leave his plane at the end of the line.’ He laughed again, putting his arm round her shoulder and giving her a quick hug. ‘You said he apologised.’

  ‘He thought it was a joke. Some of these boys are so arrogant!’ She almost stamped her foot.

  ‘They are fighting a war, Evie,’ he said gently. ‘I think they are entitled to be a little arrogant sometimes. Maybe he just didn’t see you sitting there on your little oil drum.’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Well then.’

  She wriggled free of his arm and went over to the table, studying her sketchbook with a concentrated frown. ‘I saw a plane crash today. It went down in flames right there on the edge of the airfield. The pilot was killed. He had no chance to bail out.’

  Eddie sighed. ‘It’s happening everywhere, Evie. You know that.’

  ‘But there, right in front of me.’ She looked up at him. ‘It was an enemy plane. I should be pleased.’