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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 and 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.’
He pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘He’s still a human being. You wouldn’t be you, Evie, if you were dancing with glee. But if it hadn’t been him, he would have shot down one of our boys, we both know that. Maybe more than one. Your young friend from this afternoon perhaps.’
She glared at him. ‘I suppose so.’ She looked back at her sketchbook. ‘You’d better go, Eddie. I’ve got to help Mummy downstairs and then if I’ve got time I’ll come up and do some more work here.’
‘If?’ he said, with not altogether mock indignation. ‘You’d better find some time. I’ve got an investment in these pictures, don’t forget.’
It was dark outside by the time she returned to her makeshift studio. She made sure the blackout was secure then switched on the lights, flooding the table with cold white light.
She reached for her pencil. Since the incident on the airfield with the young pilot she had been itching to draw him, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she had even noticed his golden good looks. The sketchbook lay open at her drawings of the crashed Hurricane in the middle of the airfield, the smoking shell of the Messerschmitt beyond the hedge. She folded the page back and looked down at the clean new sheet in front of her. They had started limiting the size of newspapers the year before, but so far there had been no more mention of paper rationing. Even so, she was going to have to be careful not to waste a single piece.
His insolence, that was what she remembered most clearly, his cheeky smile, the sparkling blue eyes, the wild hair springing up as he pulled off his helmet and goggles.
‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he had said and she had let fly. Instead of smiling and welcoming him to Sussex she had called him a selfish inconsiderate clod and probably more besides. She couldn’t remember.
Her hand hesitated over the paper as she ran through in her head the things she had said and she blushed; here alone in the empty studio, she blushed at the memory. Why? Why had she been so angry and why so rude when for all she knew, as Eddie had just reminded her so sanctimoniously, the young man was quite possibly about to die for his country.
Tony. She remembered his name too. ‘Hi, I’m Tony.’ And he had held out his hand.
‘Thanks a lot, Tony. You’ve ruined a day’s work, Tony. Why did you have to taxi up here instead of down to the other end of the line, Tony?’
She had seen his face fall. He had been the one to blush. Then mercifully for them both someone had yelled his name from the Nissen hut behind them and he had raised his shoulders, then his hands, in a gesture of surrender. ‘Sorry,’ he had said and he had turned away.
And now she could picture every detail of his face in her mind, every freckle, every stray corkscrew spring of his curly hair, every quirk of his mouth.
With an exclamation of impatience she leaned forward over the table, her elbow on the page itself as if to hold it in place and she began to draw with swift sure strokes of the soft pencil.
Sunday 7th July
‘I can’t find her card.’ Mike Marston was rummaging through the pile of post and papers on the kitchen table at Rosebank Cottage.
‘Whose?’ Charlotte was arranging some flowers in a blue pottery vase.
‘The woman who wants to write about Evie. She gave me her card. God, what was her name? Why do I keep forgetting it?’ He lifted a pile of magazines off a chair and looked under it. ‘I hope Dolly hasn’t thrown it out.’
‘Dolly never throws anything out,’ Charlotte commented tartly. ‘If she did we might have a bit more room.’ She rammed a vivid blue stem of delphinium into the vase.
Mike stood up and watched her for a moment, amused. ‘You don’t have to attack the poor flowers. You’ll find they surrender quite easily if you push them in gently.’
She swore under her breath. ‘They might surrender to you. They are out to get me! I am not the domesticated type, or hadn’t you noticed?’
‘I’d noticed.’ He laughed.
She glanced up at him suspiciously. ‘You sounded as though you meant that.’
‘I did.’
There was a split second’s silence. He reached over and touched her hand. ‘I don’t go out with you for your domestic skills, Charley, and you know it!’ He caught her fingers as she reached for a rose and swore. ‘You can snip off the thorns, you know. Then you won’t get pricked.’
She sighed. ‘So, who taught you that? I know. Don’t tell me. Evie. Right?’
He gave a rueful nod. ‘She loved flowers.’
She found the card on the dresser propped against a jar of peppercorns and for a moment she held it in her hand, staring down at it, studying the small sketch of the shop front, the elegant italic script, the name The Standish Gallery, and on the back the name, hand-scrawled in ballpoint. Lucy Standish. Her brow was furrowed in thought. He was looking the other way. She could drop it down the back of the line of old cookery books and it would be gone forever. She pictured the woman’s shadowed, melancholy face and straight dark hair and gave a small satisfied smile. Was there any danger? None at all.
‘Mike.’
He looked up and she held out her hand. He grinned and took the card. ‘Glad one of us is organised.’ He reached for the phone. She watched as he waited for the call to connect and registered by the slight slump of his shoulders that it had gone to voicemail.
‘Hello Mrs –’ He paused and looked at the card. Then he turned it over to where she had written her name on the back. ‘Mrs Standish, this is Mike Marston. I’ve been thinking about our discussion the other day and I was wondering if you would like to come over here again so we can work out some modus operandi. I’m sorry for the delay in contacting you. I’ve been rather busy.’ He looked at Charlotte and winked. ‘Give me a call. You have my number here.’ He hung up.
‘Have you given her your mobile number as well?’ Charlotte queried.
‘No. She rang the house when she first got in touch. Better that way, then she can speak to Dolly.’ He stood for a moment looking round the kitchen. ‘Your idea of putting Evie’s stuff in the studio will take an awful long time. Hadn’t we better make a start?’
He walked through into the sitting room and surveyed it rather hopelessly. ‘There is such a lot. I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Why not leave it to Dolly and me?’ Charlotte brought in her vase of flowers and put them down on a side table. She stood back to admire the effect. ‘We could go to the supermarket now and collect some cardboard boxes. In fact, after this weekend, why don’t we leave the whole thing to Dolly, then as you suggested Mrs Standish can come over during the week when we’re not here? We don’t want to waste our precious weekends.’ She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and carefully blotted a drop of water which had fallen onto the table from the rose petals. ‘You have told Dolly what you plan to do?’
‘Well,’ he hesitated.
‘Oh, Mike!’
‘I did hint at it, just to test out her reaction.’
‘And what did she say?’
Mike gave a rueful smile. ‘Quite a lot, actually.’
5 (#ulink_3d46aa53-fc8e-51f8-a76c-be9e792f6b82)
August 22nd 1940
It was Ralph who introduced them properly. He finally persuaded Evie to go with him to the pub.
‘Eddie is more like a slave driver than a –’ he was saying as they climbed into his car. He drove an ancient cream three-wheeler Morgan which was his pride and joy. He stopped suddenly mid-sentence and she looked at him quizzically.
‘Than a – ?’ she echoed.
‘I was going to say boyfriend,’ he said at last.
‘Is he my boyfriend?’ she repeated softly. ‘Yes, I suppose he is. I’m sorry. I know you don’t like him.’
‘I never said that.’
‘You don’t have to.’ She grinned mischievously. ‘Dear Rafie, I can read you like a book. Daddy doesn’t like him either. Not really. And you’re right, he does make me work hard and just occasionally, yes, I do feel a bit put upon, and yes, I would like to go to the pub with my big brother.’
It had been a hard week. Tangmere had been targeted and it had received several direct hits. Parts of the aerodrome had been reduced to a mass of rubble. Many planes had been lost when the hangars were destroyed. There had been nonstop sorties as the waves of attack came over, but a blessed interval of quiet followed. It had been a baptism of fire for the new squadron at Westhampnett. There had been no night raids here, however, although everyone expected them soon, and a night off for a jar and some female company seemed like a really good idea for the exhausted pilots and ground crew alike.
Ralph took her to The Unicorn in Eastgate Square, a favourite with the pilots. The pub was noisy and very crowded. It was stuffy and hot inside and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. He bought Evie a drink, then they ducked out through the blackout curtains which hung over the door of the lobby and went to stand on the pavement outside. Within minutes a group of young men in RAF uniform had joined them.
‘So, Ralph,’ the voice behind Evie was cheery, the accent Scots, ‘are you going to introduce me to the lady?’
Evie turned, the half-pint glass in her hand slopping shandy over her shoes.
‘Hi, Tony.’ Ralph slapped him on the back. ‘Evie, this is Tony Anderson. One of the boys from Westhampnett. Tony, my sister, Evelyn.’
‘Your sister!’ Tony echoed with a huge grin. ‘Wow!’
Ralph smiled happily.
Evie scowled. ‘What he means is, we have met before. Flying Officer Anderson ruined one of my pictures.’
‘Oh, come off it. It was hardly ruined,’ Tony exclaimed. ‘A wee bit of dust, that’s all.’
‘A wee bit of dust, as you called it,’ Evie repeated, repressively, ‘can destroy a picture if the paint is still wet.’
‘True.’ Tony nodded thoughtfully with a wink at the bemused Ralph, ‘but you were only doing some quick pencil sketches. I remember most particularly.’
Evie gaped at him. ‘You noticed?’
‘Of course I noticed. To make amends, I will buy you a drink. But that is all,’ he added severely. ‘I will not grovel for the rest of my life.’
Evie stared after him as he headed towards the door and vanished into the smoky interior of the pub.
Ralph laughed. ‘So, you two have met before.’
Evie nodded. ‘But I am not going to let it spoil my evening.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Ralph raised his glass as another group of RAF officers headed their way. ‘Let’s see if we have more success here. Have you met my flight commander?’
By the time Tony threaded his way back through the crowds with Evie’s glass in his hand she was engaged in animated conversation with Alan Reid. Tony elbowed his way to her side and pushed the glass towards her. ‘Thanks.’ She took it and turned back to Al with a smile.
‘Evelyn!’ Tony called out. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard.
