The Darkest Hour

by Barbara Erskine

  He hesitated before replying. ‘Maybe I got it wrong. I probably misheard –’

  ‘No! You told me deliberately to upset me!’ She reached across to the roller towel on the back of the door.

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘You did.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Why have you come? Haven’t you got work to do?’

  ‘I have, Evie, yes.’ He adopted an infuriatingly conciliatory tone. ‘I needn’t have come but I felt I had to. I wanted to make sure you are all right. I care about you.’ He looked away. When she made no response he stood up and bent to retrieve his briefcase. ‘I brought you some money from the gallery. They’ve done well with some of your sketches. If you have any more I could take them –’

  ‘I haven’t. I’ve had too much on my mind to do any drawing. Or painting. What’s the point? It’s hardly helping the war effort!’

  ‘Evie.’ He looked seriously concerned now. ‘But haven’t you had a new commission?’

  ‘I’m not in the mood.’ She almost stamped her foot.

  ‘Ah, now that is childish. If you don’t behave like a responsible adult you won’t get any more,’ he said furiously. ‘I worked very hard to get you that contract, Evie. If you mess it up I will look a complete fool.’

  ‘You will look a fool?’ She headed for the door. ‘And how will I look if Tony has been taking other girls to dances?’

  She had gone before he could answer, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘What did you say to her?’ Rachel must have been standing in the hall. She came in, her arms full of dirty overalls and threw them down into the basket on the floor near the sink. ‘Eddie, you never seem to learn!’

  He was standing staring after Evie. ‘No.’ He looked crestfallen. ‘I’m a fool. She will come round, though, won’t she?’ They both looked up at the ceiling as the sound of aircraft approached from the south. Rachel opened the back door and went out into the yard.

  ‘They’re heading for Portsmouth.’ Eddie had followed her, squinting up into the sun. ‘My God, there are hundreds of them.’

  ‘There are our boys now.’ Rachel bit her lip. Was Ralph up there? They stood watching as the tight-packed formation of German bombers with their fighter escort thundered high along the coast. Then the fighter squadrons were there, Spitfires and Hurricanes on their tail, breaking the formation, harrying the enemy, smashing their lines, the vapour trails all that could be seen now as they climbed out of sight, lacing the sky with deceptively delicate patterns.

  Eddie glanced at Rachel. ‘He’ll be all right,’ he said with surprising gentleness. ‘Ralph is a damn good pilot.’

  She nodded wordlessly. Behind them Dudley and one of the land girls had appeared, the dogs at their heels, walking across the paddock. Both stopped to look up, then they walked on. The sight had become commonplace. There was work to do.

  Dudley waited until he could hear Rachel breathing evenly in bed beside him, then he eased himself carefully from their bed. He had left his clothes in a pile on the chair. Catching them up he tiptoed to the door and holding his breath he inched it open. The landing was draughty and the night cold as he dressed in the dark and crept in his socks down the stairs. His boots were by the kitchen door, his jacket on the hook. He glanced down at the two dogs which, tails wagging, had materialised out of the dark as he entered the kitchen and with a stern snap of the fingers sent them back to their blanket in the corner. There was no place for them where he was going.

  He had been approached several weeks before as the threat of invasion became ever greater, by two neighbouring farmers. There were five of them now in the Auxiliary Unit; five local men in reserved occupations who were, as far as the locals knew, now members of the Local Defence Volunteers. What even their wives didn’t know was that these particular men, meeting secretly at night at a hidden base, had been taught how to handle weapons, and had been given instruction in the art of sabotage and demolition. Like Dudley, the others had been born and bred in the area. They knew it like the backs of their hands. In the event of an invasion they would be ready, not just to defend their homes against the enemy but to take the battle to them. They were part of a secret army, with hidden dumps of weapons and supplies. They had been trained to kill and if necessary to die rather than divulge their secrets. And their discretion was guaranteed by the signing of the Official Secrets Act. They were to tell no one what they were doing, not even their immediate families.

  Dudley glanced at his watch as he walked silently across the yard. He was late for their rendezvous. Rachel had been up until past midnight, and then as so often, too tired to sleep when at last she did go to bed. He gave a grim smile. Never mind. If he missed the start of the cross-country exercise they were planning for tonight it would be up to him to track the others down. Good practice.

  He stopped suddenly as he heard a sound in the lane. Someone was out there in the dark. He shrank back into the shadows, edging along the side of the house and round the front, straining his eyes into the deeper black of the hedgerow as he heard the quiet squeak of the gate hinges.

  Bending almost double he ran quickly across the yard and was on the man as he turned to close the gate after him. His hand groped for the mouth to silence him and he dragged him backwards towards the dairy, hearing the frantic scrabble of heels as his captive tried to regain his balance and fight back. Pulling him into the dairy he slammed his opponent against the wall and pinioning him with his elbow he groped in his pocket for his torch.

  The wavering beam was trained for a moment on the intruder’s face. It was Tony, eyes wide and frightened as he leaned against the wall, panting.

  ‘My God, boy, what are you doing here?’ Dudley let him go. ‘Do you know how near I came to breaking your neck?’

  Tony nodded, still gasping. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry!’ Dudley reached forward and grabbed the front of Tony’s battledress, pulling him away from the wall. ‘You will be a great deal sorrier if you can’t give me a good reason for being here. I hope you were not expecting to meet my daughter!’

  Tony put his hands up and as firmly as he could disengaged Dudley’s fists. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated, trying to catch his breath. ‘We are so busy it isn’t possible to get here in the daytime to see her.’ He paused, suddenly realising what he had said. ‘She didn’t know I was coming. You mustn’t blame her.’

  ‘And how did you expect to see her?’ Dudley’s face was growing more angry by the second. ‘She is asleep.’

  Tony shook his head. ‘I was going to throw stones at her window. We wouldn’t have done anything wrong. Just a quick talk.’ He looked at Dudley hopefully.

  ‘Forget it!’ Dudley switched off the torch. ‘Go now. Before I get really angry. Go, and never come back here again, do you hear me? Leave Evie alone. I hear nothing but bad reports of you and her. She is not for you, boy, understood?’ He sensed rather than saw the disbelief in Tony’s eyes as the young man began to protest. ‘Out!’ he ordered. ‘Out now and don’t come back.’ He reached again for Tony’s arm and propelled him out of the dairy into the yard. ‘Go! Before I set the dogs on you!’

  Tony let himself out of the gate and stumbled back down the lane to where he had left the bike lying in the hedge. He glanced back once, but the yard behind him was silent and the house still in total darkness. He gave a grim smile. He could have got Dudley for flashing a torch around in the blackout if he had thought of it. Thank God Evie’s dad hadn’t caught him inside the house. Then there really would have been hell to pay. He took a deep breath. Poor Evie. He hoped her dad wouldn’t make trouble for her tomorrow. He had said she didn’t know anything about him coming, but that wasn’t quite true. She expected him every night. Expected and hoped. He had only managed to come up to the farm two or three times, but when he had it had been worth it! He gave a quick secret smile at the memory of creeping up the stairs in the dark, letting himself into her bedroom, listening for a few seconds to the soft murmuring sounds she
sometimes made in her sleep before undressing and sliding quietly into the bed beside her to wake her with his kisses.

  Gripping the handlebars he was about to vault onto the saddle when he paused thoughtfully. What had Dudley been doing out in the yard at this time of night, anyway? It had been incredible bad luck, but he had not been expecting him, clearly, so who had he been waiting for? A chance movement of the torch beam had shown that Evie’s father had been fully dressed in some sort of camouflage and his reactions to intercepting an unexpected intruder had been efficient and professional. Tony shivered. He had never thought much about Evie’s father, beyond a tendency to avoid him if he could. He was to all outward appearances a quiet, hard-working farmer, with stern old-fashioned views, especially about his daughter, which Rachel and Evie both seemed to respect even if they honoured them in the breach rather than the observance. But he was so often out on the farm when Tony was there he had not registered that much. Pushing the bike, Tony headed down the lane, deep in thought. Surely Dudley Lucas could not be a spy?

  Thursday 15th August

  The fire was out when they got there. The fire engine was still parked in the road outside the small warehouse as Huw drew up behind it. Lucy threw herself out of the car before it had come to a halt.

  ‘Robin? What happened? Has the painting gone?’

  Robin and Phil were standing on the pavement with two fire officers and a policeman.

  ‘It’s OK.’ Robin put his arms round her. ‘Calm down. The painting is safe.’

  Maggie and Juliette had climbed out of the car and followed Huw, stopping to look at the warehouse in horror. From the outside there was no sign of damage save some smoke stains above a window at the side. A hose disappeared into the wide open doors at the front of the building but the firemen were standing, arms folded, chatting with the policeman. All three appeared calm.

  ‘It looks as though it was an electrical short circuit of some sort,’ Phil said. ‘Luckily someone saw the smoke before anything too awful happened. There was nothing much stored in there and the picture’s completely safe. It’s in Robin’s car.’

  Two hours later they were all gathered in the sitting room of St Margaret’s Rectory at Chilverly. The picture, still in its wooden crate, was leaning against the wall in the hall.

  ‘Are you sure it will be OK to leave it here?’ Lucy asked for the fourth time.

  Maggie nodded. ‘I‘m sure.’ She glanced at Huw. ‘We agree. Whatever is going on Huw and I will deal with it.’

  ‘Aren’t you the least bit scared?’

  Huw sighed. ‘Maggie is my rock in these matters. Diocesan deliverance team or Maggie Redwood, give me Maggie any time. But I have a feeling nothing will happen while it is here. I don’t believe the fire was anything to do with it. The investigation guys from the fire brigade know what they are doing. They catch on very quickly if it is arson.’

  ‘Do ghosts count as arson?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘They don’t believe in spontaneous spiritual combustion, put it that way.’ Robin smiled.

  ‘But you didn’t tell them –’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t tell them.’ He shook his head.

  ‘So,’ Maggie had seated them all in the sitting room at the vicarage. ‘What we have is a conundrum. Ralph it is generally accepted was a nice guy, agreed?’ She looked round the room. ‘But now,’ she focused on Lucy, ‘we have this other presence making itself felt in the gallery and this one appears to be far from nice. Either Ralph has undergone an extreme character change, or it is someone completely different and he was sufficiently strong for something of his energy to remain with Lucy when she came here. He appears to have been determined to smash the picture, and maybe, although this is doubtful, he was behind the fire today. We already knew someone was determined to interfere with the painting. In what, for the sake of argument, I shall call real life, person or persons unknown have in the past tried to paint out the unknown figure standing behind Evelyn Lucas in the picture.’

  The door behind her was nudged open a crack. Roger the Dodger walked in and stood surveying the scene.

  ‘He’s not unknown,’ Lucy interrupted, her voice husky. ‘His name was Tony Anderson. He was another pilot, like Ralph.’

  The cat walked slowly through the room towards Maggie and majestically jumped onto her knee. She put her hand on its head as it settled down, paws folded neatly beneath its chest. It fixed its unwinking gaze on Lucy.

  ‘I can’t be sure, of course,’ Lucy added, ‘I am guessing. I think he and Evie fell in love with each other after they met In the summer of 1940.’

  ‘So, what happened to him?’ Juliette asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I am, as you know, going through what letters and notebooks I can find of Evie’s. Sadly most of them, if they exist at all, must have been collected up by Christopher, but from one or two diaries I have been able to read Tony and Evie were very much in love.’

  ‘But, for whatever reason, they split up?’ Juliette went on. ‘Do you think he was killed?’

  Lucy nodded slowly. ‘I suppose that is a strong possibility.’

  ‘And so maybe it was Evie herself who painted out his figure in the picture. She couldn’t bear to look at him after he died.’ Juliette looked at them all in turn.

  Lucy nodded. ‘I had wondered that too.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ Juliette said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I ever remember Johnny mentioning anyone called Tony. You would think if he was such an important part of his mother’s life she would have said something, even if only much later when time had healed the hurt a little. After all, she married and had children, so she wasn’t inconsolable forever.’

  ‘She may have kept it to herself just because it was such a painful memory,’ Phil put in slowly. He was sitting next to Robin on the sofa near the empty fireplace. With six of them in the room it seemed very crowded.

  Maggie nodded. ‘My instinct tells me that could be the most likely reason for not mentioning him. For now we will have to put that down as an unknown.’

  ‘You don’t think it is the ghost of Tony who is doing this?’ Robin put in suddenly. ‘He might be thoroughly pissed off at being painted out.’

  There was a moment’s silence. One by one they fastened their eyes on Maggie.

  She smiled. ‘Don’t know. Huw?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know either. I have had no sense as to the identity of anyone in this story. I have assumed Ralph because we know what happened to him, and because Lucy recognised him from a photo, but he is the only personality in this story we have tried to contact.’

  ‘Do you think the painting is going to be safe here?’ Robin put in at last. ‘Do you think you are going to be safe with the painting?’ he added. He sounded subdued and Lucy found herself shivering.

  Huw nodded. He glanced across at his wife. ‘If Maggie says so, then I am content with that. I feel that surrounded by prayers, and safely in its box, it will at least remain quiescent for the time being.’

  Phil looked from husband to wife and his face broke into a quizzical smile. ‘Would it be very indiscreet to ask how you two manage to combine your different belief systems without coming to blows?’

  They both laughed. ‘Easily,’ Maggie said. ‘Our beliefs are actually very similar though we differ slightly as to how things work. As long as we come to the same conclusions, we are able to back each other up admirably.’ She glanced at her husband with a fond smile. ‘And if we cannot agree, then Roger has the casting vote.’ She rested her hand on the cat’s head again. ‘For instance, if there was the slightest danger from that painting now, Roger would not be sitting here on my knee. He would be in the next county. Cats know about these things.’

  Huw stood up. ‘My friends, I feel we need to move on. May I suggest that Maggie and I return with Lucy to her flat and just check that all is well there, and that Phil and Robin return to check out your warehouse. Knowing about these things as I do, I fear the police and fire officers
may still be there. Juliette, I am sure Maggie will be in touch soon.’ He reached across to kiss her on the cheek.

  ‘We have been dismissed, guys.’ Juliette stood up, her bangles jangling.

  ‘Only temporarily.’ Huw beamed at her.

  As they all moved into the hall Roger stalked past the picture, pausing to give it a cursory examination. Lucy found herself holding her breath as she watched, but he gave no sign of being upset, trotting happily past them all into the garden.

  November 13th 1940

  Tony telephoned Box Wood Farm twice the next morning and both times the phone was answered by Rachel. On each occasion she said that Evie was out in the fields. Her tone was clipped and unfriendly. He walked away wondering what had transpired when Dudley had told them about their meeting the night before. With A flight on standby he had no further chance to get near the telephone in the Mess that day, flying three sorties one after the other without a chance to get his breath back, never mind leave the dispersal area.

  When at last the pilots returned to the Mess that night his friend Bill West was not there. Nothing was said but when at last Tony turned in, the other bed in their room was still empty. Heavy-hearted he threw himself down and tried to force himself to relax. His flight was on early duty the next day so their batman would call him at six with a cup of tea; he would be ready to go over to the dispersal hut with the others at six thirty. Even if Bill was still missing there was always the chance that he had landed somewhere safely. Best to hope. And pray.

  When he woke there was a note with his tea. ‘Young lady delivered it, I gather, late last night,’ his batman said with a wink. Neither of them looked towards the empty bed. ‘Your hot water for shaving is ready, sir.’ And he had gone.

  Tony sat down on the bed and ripped open the envelope.

  Tony, I gather Daddy has found out that you’ve been coming up here. Please don’t come again till I tell you it’s safe. Love, E xxx

  That was all. So, Dudley hadn’t told Evie any details of their meeting. He frowned. So far he had not had time to think about Dudley’s night-time sortie, and what if anything he should do about it. Tony drank his tea and tucked the envelope into the back of his log book. There was only just time to shave before grabbing a piece of toast and going out into the cold, dew-sodden dawn.