The Darkest Hour (28 page)

She smiled. ‘Don’t they like their children?’

‘I think children were merely part of the designer lifestyle.’

‘Ooh! That’s cruel.’ She grimaced. ‘Have any of them inherited Evie’s talent?’

‘Not that I’ve heard.’ He paused. ‘To go on with your family tree, there is my mum, Juliette. She remarried after dad died, but that’s probably not relevant.’

‘She is still part of the story, though. Would you mind if I went to see her?’ Lucy glanced at him cautiously. She had begun to realise that she could take nothing for granted in this family.

‘No, of course not. Why should I?’

‘Well, you were pretty sure you didn’t want me to talk to Christopher.’ She smiled at him. ‘I would love to talk to her about Evie. Get the woman’s view. Dolly told me they were very close.’

‘That’s true. If Evie confided in anyone it would have been my mum.’ He reached into his pocket for his phone. ‘Why don’t I ring her now? Fix something up for you. She lives in Brighton. In fact I could drive you there if you like. I have some things I need to drop off to her.

‘There’s no need,’ Lucy returned sharply. ‘I can go on my own.’

He gave a shrug. ‘As you wish. I am not going to interfere. I thought it might make it easier.’

She hesitated, then she conceded the point. After all, why not go with him. It would give her more time to talk about Evie.

Two hours later they were driving along the sea front in Mike’s Discovery and turning up into the maze of Regency terraces behind the Pavilion. Juliette Bell was waiting for them at the door of a classic white-painted house in a beautiful square. Mike performed brief introductions on the doorstep, then dived back into the car to go and find a parking place as Juliette led Lucy into the cool shadows of the hallway and through into the garden at the back.

‘I am so pleased someone is writing about Evie at last,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It’s long overdue, if you ask me.’ She waved Lucy towards a reclining chair on a terrace hung with roses and poured her a glass of fruit punch. Sitting down next to her, she studied Lucy for a moment and then nodded as though satisfied with what she saw. She herself was a powerfully built woman in her late sixties with short glossy white hair held in place by sunglasses, pushed up on top of her head. She was wearing a crimson dress and her arms were weighed down with bangles. Lucy found herself wondering if she too was a painter – something artistic anyway. ‘The old man, who is of course my new man, is playing golf, which seems insane in this heat,’ Juliette said with a chortle of laughter, ‘so he won’t interrupt us, and when Mike comes back I shall send him out shopping for our supper so you and I can have a nice gossip about Evie without interruption.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Have you met Charlotte?’ She fired the question at Lucy without preamble.

Lucy nodded. ‘Briefly. I don’t really know her.’

‘Hmm.’ Juliette’s response though monosyllabic spoke volumes. ‘Well, we’ll leave her out of the conversation. I gather she is trying to expunge Evie’s memory from the cottage so I’m even more glad you are there as a counterweight. Right,’ she took a sip of her punch, ‘fire away. What would you like to ask me?’

‘I met Frances Marston at the weekend,’ Lucy started cautiously. ‘She said she thought there had been a family row of some sort, or a division at least between your husband, John, and his brother and it is because of that row, she thinks, that Christopher doesn’t want anything to do with me and my research. As he inherited most of Evie’s papers and diaries that makes it very hard for me to proceed.‘

‘Ouch. In at the deep end.’ Juliette leaned back and slid her dark glasses down over her eyes. ‘I’m not sure I can help you over this one. Johnny and George were so different. They were never close. I don’t remember them being enemies, though. I wouldn’t have thought there was any deep-seated animosity. Have you asked George?’

Lucy stared at her open-mouthed. Here was another prime character in her saga who nobody had mentioned. ‘I assumed he had died,’ she stammered. ‘Because Christopher had inherited everything. This is crazy. Mike never said.’

‘He probably thought you knew.’

‘Where is George? Why didn’t he inherit the paintings? There is something odd there, isn’t there?’ Lucy wondered if she sounded as bewildered as she felt. Plunging into someone else’s family had seemed so straightforward when she was planning to write about Evie. She had never given a second’s thought to Evie’s surviving family and their reactions.

‘Yes, it is odd, come to think of it.’ Juliette nodded. ‘Evie left everything to Johnny. I don’t mean she cut George off, but it was arranged that George would inherit Edward’s fortune, and it was a large fortune, and Johnny would inherit Evie’s which consisted of the cottage and the paintings. She had very little money as such and was always in debt, bless her.’ She gave a fond smile. ‘You knew Evie and Edward were divorced? It was about a year before Johnny and I married. It was very acrimonious and quite horrid. Johnny always said his father ripped her off. He never got on with his father and that was why his father to all intents and purposes disinherited him. Johnny didn’t care. Darling man, he had no idea about money any more than his mother. You’d think as a solicitor he would have had more of a clue, but apart from our small house in Littlehampton, which was mortgaged up to the hilt, he left me more or less penniless, so when Rick asked me to marry him it wasn’t a hard decision to make.’ She gave a happy gurgling laugh. ‘Johnny and I had known and loved Rick and his wife for years. She died about five years before Johnny and we drifted together. He was a great comfort when I was hurting a lot.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I don’t regret it. I was determined I wasn’t going to be a burden to Mike.’ She reached for her glass. With every move her bangles rattled on her wrist.

Lucy was silent, trying to assimilate this torrent of information when she noticed Juliette’s attention shift to the door behind them. ‘Talk of the devil,’ she said with a smile. ‘Mike, darling, I want you to go out again and stay out for at least two hours so this delightful girl and I can gossip about your grandmother. If you can pick up something for supper that would be lovely. Take some money out of my bag, darling, it’s in the hall.’

Mike had stepped out onto the shaded terrace and was standing there, the shadows of the overhanging roses playing over his face as he watched them. He threw a look of mock despair at Lucy. ‘Is that all right with you? I don’t think I warned you how bossy my mother is. Or of the fact that she still treats me as if I were about ten.’

Lucy laughed. ‘It’s very all right with me.’

As they settled back into their chairs Lucy looked at Juliette with a frown, determined not to let the interlude with Mike destroy her train of thought. ‘When you were talking about the bequests just now you said Evie left the paintings to Johnny. So was he the one who decided to leave them to Christopher instead of to Mike?’

‘You may well ask!’ Juliette shook her head. ‘No. Johnny left his share of everything to Mike. It was Christopher who came up with a codicil to Evie’s original will saying she left everything to Johnny for his lifetime but then his effects should be divided between the grandsons. It was in a letter she had given him apparently. Personally I was in grave doubt that it was even legal but Mike wouldn’t contest it.’

‘And it cut out George?’

‘George had his father’s money. Still does.’

‘And where does George live?’ Lucy leaned down to her bag, which was lying on the paving stones under the wrought-iron table. ‘Do you mind if I write some of this down? It is all getting a bit confusing. I am bound to forget the details.’

‘You can always come over and check, dear,’ Juliette said comfortably. ‘And Mike knows it all. I don’t know why he hasn’t told you the whole grisly story.’

‘He’s quite reserved about Evie,’ Lucy said thoughtfully. ‘But perhaps it’s my fault. I was so focused on finding out about her painting, which after all is the centre of my research; he may have thought I wasn’t interested in the personal stuff.’

‘Typical man!’ Juliette grinned. ‘I would have thought you would want to know all the shocking bits. I certainly would.’

There was a pause. Lucy smiled. ‘Did Johnny talk about his uncle Ralph at all?’ she asked. ‘He would never have known him but –’

‘He was haunted by his memory,’ Juliette said. ‘Ralph’s whole story hung over the family.’

Lucy felt herself go pale. ‘Haunted? It’s a strong word.’

Juliette nodded. ‘And I meant it. Literally.’ She reached for her glass again.

‘I don’t understand,’ Lucy said carefully. Her heart had started hammering under her ribs.

‘Johnny used to have nightmares about him. They started when he was small, apparently. I blame his grandmother. Rachel was obsessed with Ralph’s death. You know about that? He was shot down in the Battle of Britain. Right at the end. The whole family was devastated. Johnny started dreaming about him, then he said he used to see him. It can’t have been healthy living in that house with his grandparents when they were so obsessed with Ralph’s death. He was sure Ralph wanted to tell him something. It went on all his life, right up to the end. A few days before Johnny died – he was in the hospice in Chichester – he said to me that at last he would be able to speak to Ralph properly, face to face, and find out what it was he wanted to say to him.’ She gave a tired smile. ‘Presumably he knows by now.’ She sighed. ‘Right. Back to George: now there’s a character. He loathed his father in spite of the fact that Edward left him so much money. He’s hung on to it, though. Never even offered Johnny a loan when we were in pretty dire straits and I don’t think he’s given any to Christopher either, not that he’s ever needed any.’ She poured them both another drink from the jug and waved away an inquisitive wasp. ‘George has been a widower for years and years now. His wife, Marjory, died of cancer. He runs an antique shop in Kensington. Very posh and very upmarket, selling goodies to rich people with pots of money and no taste of their own.’ She snorted with laughter. ‘Don’t I sound a jealous cow. Scrub that last remark.’

Lucy laughed. ‘Would he be prepared to speak to me, do you suppose?’

‘I’ve no idea. He doesn’t speak to us. Which is maybe what this quarrel is about? I can’t believe Johnny upset him in any way, he just wasn’t like that, but they didn’t get on, there is no getting away from that fact.’ She sighed and took a sip from her glass. After a moment’s silence she leaned back again and, pushing her sunglasses up onto her forehead she fixed Lucy with an intense gaze. ‘What is it?’ she asked gently.

Lucy was startled. She didn’t realise her momentary abstraction was that obvious. She was trying to decide whether to tell Julliette about her own experience of Ralph. And if she did, was she going to admit that she had one of Evie’s pictures and that she hadn’t told Mike about it.

‘I’ve brought a present for you.’ Eddie held out a small parcel to Evie with a strangely bashful smile. ‘I know I’ve been driving you hard, sweetheart, and I’m sorry. It is because I care about you. I so want you to be a success. You deserve to be a success.’

She took the parcel from him with a sigh. ‘Thank you.’

They were standing in the kitchen at Box Wood Farm drinking tea. Evie had been out walking the fields with her parents and the man from the War Agricultural Committee. It was his job to suggest which extra fields they could plough for crops now that the last of their beef cattle had gone.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Eddie picked up his cup and took a deep gulp of tea.

Evie sighed. ‘Of course.’ She unknotted the string and carefully unfolded the paper. Inside was a lace-trimmed silk petticoat. Evie held it up, feeling the soft coldness of the material slide through her work-roughened fingers with delight in spite of herself.

‘I thought you deserved a treat.’ He smiled. ‘I think it will fit you. Shall we go upstairs and try it on?’

Her eyes met his. She dropped the petticoat onto the table. ‘Eddie, it’s kind of you. But I can‘t accept it. Where did you get it?’

‘What do you mean?’ He looked affronted.

‘It’s black market, isn’t it?’

‘It is a present for the girl I love!’ He pushed it towards her again. ‘Them as asks no questions!’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Be a good girl, Evie. Just enjoy it.’ Suddenly he was impatient again. ‘Who’s going to see it under your dress? It’s our secret. Petticoats aren’t rationed, for goodness’ sake. Not yet anyway!’ He glanced heavenward. ‘Wear it for the next dance in the village hall. Then maybe someone will see a flash of lace as I swing you on my arm.’ He smiled. ‘But they won’t know where it came from, will they! Now, what about another cup of tea before I go?‘

When he left she took the petticoat upstairs to her bedroom and, just for a moment, held it up against her dungarees in front of her mirror, then with an exclamation of anger she bundled it up and pushed it into the bottom drawer of her chest of drawers. She had not allowed him to come upstairs with her; she had vowed never to let him touch her again. She pulled out her diary and sat down on the bed with it. Inside the front cover she had tucked a small photo of Tony, Tony who didn’t want to see her any more. She sighed, staring at him for several seconds, and almost unwillingly brought it up and pressed it against her lips, then slowly she tore the photo in two.

That night Tony was sitting on his bed in the small bedroom he shared with another flying officer in Woodcote Farmhouse, the old building they were using as the Officers’ Mess at Westhampnett. He was filling in his log book.

Patrol. Shot Enemy aircraft into water. Sitting target. Couldn’t miss. Plane sank as we flew back to base. Action 30 miles out to sea.

‘Coming up to The Unicorn for a pint?’ Bill West stuck his head round the door. Downstairs someone had put on a record of Glenn Miller and a blast of music followed him into the room.

Tony looked up. He nodded and screwing the cap on his fountain pen he put it down and tossed the log book onto the locker beside his bed. He doubted if Evie would be there, but after all, that was where he had first met her properly and there was always a chance she might go for a drink with Ralph. He bit his lip. He was missing her terribly, but the message had come through loud and clear. Evie did not want to see him any more. Ralph had told him so and Evie’s father had sent him a short curt note to that effect. Even without that, Evie’s silence would have told him more clearly than anything anyone could have said that their affair was over.