The Darkest Hour

She glanced back at him.

‘If I concede that a small amount of dust from the airfield may have sullied your pristine sketches will it appease you if I allow you to draw my picture?’

Her eyebrows shot up as she stared at him.

‘Go on,’ he grinned. ‘This is not an offer you can afford to turn down.’

She tried not to smile. ‘What if I told you I had already done it?’

He gave Ralph and Al a sidelong look. ‘Ah, well, I suppose I am irresistible. I shouldn’t really be surprised if you have.’

Ralph gave a snort of laughter. ‘Give up, Evie. I think you’ve finally met your match!’

Monday 8th July

Lucy waved the customer out of the gallery with a smile. He had been uncertain and unhappy, dithering between two pictures, not sure if the recipient of his gift would like it, angling to have her promise to give his money back if he had to return it. Which she would do, of course, but she would far rather he didn’t feel he had that easy option. The small watercolour under his arm was one of several Larry had picked up at the last auction he had attended before his death. She looked at the empty space on the wall where it had hung and sighed. She had to get in some new stock and soon. At the end of the week perhaps she would go to the country house sale she had spotted in the paper only that morning. Friday, the announcement had said and it specifically mentioned pictures. A good call perhaps.

She tucked the cheque the man had given her into the little cash box in the drawer in the desk. Robin would be furious with her for letting him take the painting without clearing the cheque first. Larry would have been too. The purchaser had looked honest but neither of the men would have taken him at face value. Not these days. Well, she had.

She noticed suddenly that the light was winking on the answer phone and she leaned across to press the button. It was Michael Marston. She rang back at once but there was no reply. It wasn’t until the next morning that she managed to get through to Dolly Davis. Mr Michael, she was told, would be in London for the next two weeks, but he had left instructions that Lucy was to be given access to the studio in the garden. She arranged to go the next afternoon.

‘He’s got this idea in his head that you can sort through all her stuff,’ Dolly said with a look of sour incomprehension as she opened the studio door and pushed it back against the wall. It was raining gently and the garden smelled of fresh grass and roses and honeysuckle. She reached up to turn on the lights and ushered Lucy in. The huge table which before had borne only an open empty sketchbook and some tubes of paint was now laden with dusty boxes and piles of books. More boxes lined the walls, accompanied by suitcases and even a couple of hat boxes.

‘You can look through everything but you mustn’t take anything away,’ Dolly went on, and by the set of her jaw Lucy could tell she intended to enforce that instruction personally. She wondered in sudden amusement if the old lady intended to search her before she left each day. She watched as Dolly turned and went out, closing the door behind her. Through the window she could see her stooped figure tramping across the wet grass towards the kitchen door.

Lucy stared round in awe. She had moved from having virtually no information about Evelyn Lucas at all to being given access to possibly the entire archive still in existence.

When Dolly returned after an hour or so with a cup of tea and a slice of lemon drizzle cake Lucy wondered if she had passed some kind of test. She had stacked the books on one side – very few novels, she noticed, mostly books on art, some technical manuals, exhibition catalogues, some brochures, biographies of famous artists – and she had shifted most of the cardboard boxes and baskets and bags either to the top of the bookcase or onto the floor in front of it. In this way she had managed to clear the table again, leaving it free to examine each item in turn. There appeared to be hundreds if not thousands of letters, not from Evelyn herself sadly, as far as she could see at first glance, but replies from other people, which was almost as good; bills, bank statements, most of which seemed to demonstrate a distinct paucity of funds and all kinds of other remnants of a busy life. The two portfolios, stacked against the wall behind the door had proved, to her intense disappointment, to be empty.

Lucy looked up as the door opened. Dolly set down her tray in the middle of the newly cleared space. There were two cups and two slices of cake.

Lucy smiled. ‘I’m amazed that Mr Marston has trusted me with all this. And truly honoured.’

‘He must have liked the look of you.’ Dolly slumped down on one of the two straight-backed chairs near the paint-splashed deal desk. She was in her eighties, Lucy guessed, but energetic and fit enough to keep the cottage spick and span. ‘It’s been something he’s put off doing again and again. And if it hadn’t been for that woman he’d have gone on putting it off.’

Lucy frowned, puzzled. ‘That woman?’

‘Charlotte Thingy.’ Dolly grimaced. ‘She’s behind this. Hard as nails, she is. She’s not interested in poor Evie. She just wants the space cleared so she can makeover the cottage. She’s even emptied the upstairs drawers.’ She pointed to the two suitcases under the table. ‘Poor Evie’s personal things. Can’t wait to get shot of them. Not that it didn’t need doing, you understand. Of course it did. But she should have left it to someone who cared. I offered, but oh no, she had already done it. Shoved it all in a great heap. No doubt next time she comes the rest of Evie’s things will all be pushed out here as well.’

Lucy thought it best not to comment. She reached for her cup. ‘I’m not sure where to start. There is so much more than I expected. This will take me weeks, months, to go through.’

Dolly nodded. ‘As I said, it’s time someone did it. She deserves some recognition. I was with her here for the last forty years of her life, you know. I looked after her so she could paint. Right up to the end she was working. Her eyes were as good as someone half her age.’

Lucy looked down at the slice of cake on her plate with an absent frown. ‘I didn’t realise she was still painting. There are so few of her works on the record. What happened to them, do you know?’

‘Christopher took them.’ Dolly grimaced.

‘Christopher?’

‘Christopher Marston. Her other grandson. Mr Michael’s cousin.’

Lucy gave a secret smile. Christopher obviously did not merit that honorarium of Mr.

‘He took the paintings,’ Dolly went on. ‘Mr Michael got the cottage. That was the arrangement.’ She pursed her lips.

Lucy digested that piece of news with disappointment. So, that explained the lack of paintings and sketches in the house.

‘He took her diaries too. Everything he could lay his hands on that wasn’t screwed down,’ Dolly went on. ‘I told Mr Mike but he wasn’t interested. He said Christopher was welcome to them. He said it was what Evie wanted. He said it was the cottage itself that mattered to him because that was where she had been happy. Christopher would have sold it.’

Lucy was studying her face, noting the anger and frustration there.

‘Did Christopher sell the paintings, then?’ she asked quietly.

Dolly shook her head doubtfully. ‘I suppose so. I don’t know. They were never mentioned again. But I’ll bet madam there,’ she gestured over her shoulder towards the cottage, ‘will want to know where they are once she realises how valuable they were.’

By ‘madam’ Lucy assumed she meant Charlotte Thingy. She hid a smile.

When Dolly had removed the tray she worked on for several hours, sorting through the different boxes. The suitcases poignantly contained a selection of clothes, underwear, nightgowns. Lucy could understand Charlotte’s indignation if these were still in place in what must have been the main bedroom in the cottage. She hadn’t been upstairs but it looked as if there wouldn’t be more than two rooms up there. She pushed the cases against the wall. Somehow touching Evie’s clothes was unbearably sad, but it brought her closer. She reached for another box. This seemed to contain the contents of a desk, perhaps the desk she had seen in the sitting room of the cottage. Stationery: unused notepaper and envelopes, cards, ancient fountain pens, old keys, stamps, a clip containing bills and receipts, all dating – Lucy turned them over carefully – from the summer before Evie died. And there was a tin box. She opened it and found it full of black-and-white photos of a young man. The top two snaps were of him in RAF uniform. In one he was leaning against a small three-wheeler car, in the other standing beside a single-seater aircraft, painted in the familiar brown and green camouflage with the RAF roundel and a large number painted on the side. A Spitfire. She stared at him for a long time, gently running her finger over his face, then with shaking hands she turned the pictures over and looked at the back. Only one was labelled. Rafie, it said and Summer 1940.

When she looked up her eyes were full of tears. She had recognised him at once. ‘Ralph?’ she whispered.

There was no reply.

She had been right in her guess. The shadowy figure she had seen in her bedroom was Evie’s brother.

She looked at the pictures again and picked up the others with unsteady fingers. There he was as a baby, a child, and as a boy in school uniform. Always the same wistful smile, the hair flopping in his eyes, the affectionate gaze directed at whoever was taking the picture.

She hadn’t realised that Dolly had come back in until the woman approached the table.

‘Sorry.’ Lucy brushed the tears away.

Dolly looked down at the photos. ‘Are those of Mr Ralph?’

Lucy nodded.

‘He was killed in the war,’ Dolly shook her head again. ‘Evie never talked about him, you know.’ She gave Lucy another curious glance.

Lucy gave an apologetic smile, aware suddenly of the tears on her cheeks and how odd they must look. ‘It seemed so sad. This picture must have been taken just before he died. He looks so happy.’ Or did he? Was that wistfulness there because he had a premonition of the future? She bit her lip.

‘Where did you find them?’ Dolly was frowning.

Lucy pointed at a cardboard box.

‘So, she’s been through the desk as well.’ Dolly glared at the box.

‘I’m sorry. Was it private?’

‘Not from you.’