Every time Eleanor crossed the road into Cleveland Square, she thought how attractive the Georgian terraces were—numbers four, five, six and seven, all connected in a most unusual curve. Their construction looked as if it defied logic, although she supposed that stonemasons could create any shape they chose, just as she could mould her materials in any way she liked. She felt an urgent and irrational desire to ensure that the homes would survive the war unharmed and go on to outlast her family, who had owned one for as long as she could remember. Even the blackout blinds and the tape that crisscrossed the windows like bandages didn’t detract from their appeal. Unlike with many of the other houses in the square, the designers hadn’t gone overboard: the masons had only carved ornamental wreaths on the balconies, not great swathes of fruit and bouquets. The large double doors at the entrance were decorated in a practical way, with functioning parts of brass rivets and bars, together with a large doorknob that she turned to let herself in.
Expecting Cecily to be back from her shift, Eleanor raced upstairs to the front door of their flat, trying to beat the timed light before it went out. There were only ever a few seconds to spare before they were plunged into total darkness, so she held the key ready before quickly unlocking the door. She dropped her coat and bag on a chair and went in search of her sister.
Halfway down the hall, Cecily popped her head out of the bedroom door.
‘Hello,’ Eleanor said brightly.
Everyone said that Cecily was a petite version of Eleanor, small-boned and thin, whereas Eleanor looked slim but strong in comparison. And Cecily’s dark blonde hair, usually tucked beneath the nurse’s hat, was less abundant than her sister’s. They had no idea from which side of the family Eleanor had inherited her voluminous golden curls, but she guessed it was from her mother.
‘Good day?’ Eleanor asked, following Cecily down the hallway into the lounge room.
‘Not especially,’ Cecily replied. She took off her glasses and wiped them on her cardigan. ‘How about you?’
‘Fine, everything was fine,’ Eleanor said, thinking better of sharing her news straight away. It had been such an eventful day for her but since Cecily always seemed so vulnerable, Eleanor worked hard to avoid upsetting her.
Cecily had laid the dining table with their pale blue cloth and napkins, and placed a small vase containing daffodils in the centre.
‘What a good idea!’ Eleanor said. ‘They’re lovely.’ She poured herself some water. ‘Where did you get them?’
‘One of my patients.’
‘How nice.’ Eleanor smiled at her. ‘Your bedside manner must really be improving.’
Cecily didn’t return the smile. ‘No, not really. He didn’t need them anymore. He died.’
So much for not upsetting her sister; some days she could never say the right thing. ‘Oh dear, I am sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ Cecily said with a sigh. ‘I suppose I shall get used to it.’
Eleanor gave her arm a comforting squeeze. ‘Do you want to sit down and you can tell me about it?’
Cecily explained how it had been one of the worst days so far. The hospital had brought in a whole train full of troops just back from overseas, and she had worked as a theatre nurse, helping with operations that were performed back to back. Teams of surgeons barely finished one before moving on to the next—amputations, grafts and fracture fixation—trying to finish some of the work the mobile teams had begun.
Cecily’s expression grew ever more grave as she told Eleanor how, as soon as the wounded soldiers arrived, they were triaged, the scale and severity of their injuries were assessed and an action plan was decided on. In a few cases there had been no hope, and it was the nurse’s job to make the men as comfortable as possible for as long as possible. But for most of the soldiers, there was some chance of a future with surgery. Cecily demonstrated, with shaking hands, how she’d used compression to help a poor young chap she had come to know as Bob Compton. He had lost too much blood—the stump of his leg was no more than a gristly lump of bone, cartilage and muscle. She had felt his pulse weaken and held his hand as he’d finally slipped away.
‘So,’ she continued, her voice rising and wavering, ‘thanks to Sergeant Compton, I haven’t had much luck with dinner, but we have some rather nice flowers—’ And promptly, she burst out crying.
‘Oh dear, Cecily,’ Eleanor said, moving to console her.
She cradled her for a few moments while Cecily sobbed and she gently stroked her hair. ‘You will get used to it. It’s an awful thing to say, but you have to.’
‘I can’t.’ Cecily wiped her hand across her nose like a child.
‘There’s no such word as can’t, Cecily. Remember what Father always said—’
‘I don’t care about what Father said. I’m not strong like you.’
‘But you are, don’t you see that? You are the one at hospital, not me, and you are doing all those things you said you never could—there’s no question that you can.’
Cecily’s eyes were large, watery moons.
It was Eleanor’s turn to sigh. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up before the others get here, and what about this supper then—is it mock duck again?’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t been very successful with that either.’ Cecily sniffed as she led Eleanor over to the kitchen bench. ‘This is all I could get…’ She unwrapped a small piece of meat and laid it on the brown paper.
Eleanor leaned forward and sniffed it.
‘Ugh, is that really necessary!’ Cecily said, turning her head abruptly and nearly losing her glasses in the process. ‘Anyway, who did you say is coming tonight?’
‘Lindsay, Pauline, Frank and Harry…and Heather said she’d try, but she wasn’t sure. She’s supposed to be on fire-watching duty.’
Cecily had met Lindsay at nurses training, but Harry and Frank were Eleanor’s friends from the Slade. Frank had started courting Pauline when the troupe began following the Seven and Five Society. That was back when their ambitions of transforming traditional sensibilities into abstract ones had driven their artistic endeavours. Now all of them were involved in completely different work—except for Eleanor, who had managed to establish a career in art, and they taunted her mercilessly because of it.
‘That’s seven, including us,’ Cecily said. She folded the paper back around the meat. ‘Let’s hope no one’s very hungry.’
‘Oh, don’t be like that. Where’s that cookery leaflet you brought home the other day? There was a lovely sounding stew. We could do it together.’
Cooking had been a late discovery for Eleanor. At their home in Bradford, their cook had prepared all their meals, and their mother hadn’t thought it was an important skill to teach her daughters—along with housekeeping and laundry. She believed her girls were destined for far greater things and would be in charge of their own households one day, with the necessary staff to do those jobs for them.
‘Really?’ Cecily said, looking at the narrow galley kitchen that had been inserted into the lounge room of the apartment. ‘So, what, I can peel on the sofa and you can sauté in the kitchen?’
‘You know, your cynicism might just see you through this war,’ Eleanor said lightly.
As their parents had come to spend less and less time in London, their father had divided the property into apartments and rented them out, keeping this one for the family. Each of the six floors was now home to an apartment with a different configuration and with kitchens that had been difficult to install; adapting the plumbing and electricity of a bygone era had ushered in so many unforeseen problems that their father had handed the job over to someone else. He had then been quite surprised to arrive for an inspection and find that half of the grand old ballroom at the front of the first floor had been given over to a kitchen that was totally out of keeping with the rest of its architecture. The elegant crystal droplets of the ornate chandelier were constantly coated with condensation from cooking pots.
Eleanor and Cecily had decided that as soon as the war was over, they would hire someone to reconfigure and redecorate. For now, the three-bedroom apartment was home for them and a revolving door of friends and family.
Eleanor reached out to the window ledge and brought in a bottle of gin and some tonic water.
‘Glasses?’ Cecily asked.
‘Of course! First things first, get the cooks taken care of.’
It took them less than half an hour to get the meal prepared and in the oven, and for Eleanor to change clothes and freshen up, just before the doorbell rang.
‘I’ll go,’ Cecily shouted from the hallway.
Their four friends arrived together, Frank bursting through the door first with Harry in tow and Pauline and Lindsay trudging behind. There was good reason Frank usually led the pack; unlike Eleanor, he always found the right thing to say. And he knew the latest places to go but he also looked the part; from his smart blazer and light-coloured trousers down to his brown Oxford shoes. It was no surprise to see Harry in another patterned knit sweater over his shirt and tie, his small dark beard and moustache unsuccessful in making him look any more than his boyish twenty-two years. Lindsay was air-raid-siren-ready in her usual attire of kangaroo cloak and clogs, and an odd contrast to Pauline, who must have used up all her clothing tokens since she was overdressed for the occasion in red turban, teal cocktail dress and cork wedges.
‘You’ve been to the pub already,’ Eleanor said, catching the alcohol on Frank’s breath as he kissed her on both cheeks.
He grinned. ‘We were merely testing the nearby public houses to make sure their evacuation procedures were up to scratch. It’s all for your benefit, my dear.’
‘You know there hasn’t been a raid in seven months, four days and twenty-one hours,’ she replied.
‘That’s very specific, Eleanor,’ Frank said with surprise.
‘It’s a very important fact. Why would you forget it?’
‘Quite,’ agreed Cecily.
‘Besides, when one knows things,’ Eleanor continued, ‘one needs to use them to inform others.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Harry said, flushed from the alcohol and the exertion of the stairs.
‘Where’s your loyalty?’ Frank said, shooting him a look.
‘Here, we brought you a present,’ Harry said. He scowled at Frank before taking a glass bowl full of nuts out of his pocket and placing it on the kitchen bench.
‘That must be quite some public house—I take it you brought those as opposed to bought them?’ Eleanor asked, crossing her arms and pretending to be annoyed.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Harry said as he flopped onto the sofa.
The others sat down, and Cecily helped Eleanor fix a round of gin and tonics while the friends caught up on the week’s events. One drink became three, and by the time they had eaten and were relaxing on the sofas, they were sated and sleepy.
Harry leaned back in his chair and lit another cigarette, watching the smoke perform like a ballerina, twisting and curling until it escaped through a small gap in the window.
Eleanor waited for a lull in the conversation before she said, ‘I’ve got some news,’ and paused to take a sip of her drink.
‘Well, come on then,’ Frank said lethargically. ‘You know we’re all in need of a drink or sleep!’
She placed the glass down slowly, enjoying keeping them all in suspense.
‘You are looking at the new art administrator of the WAAC,’ she announced.
‘Well, well, Eleanor,’ Harry said, ‘you’re going to be running the country before we know it!’
‘You kept that quiet,’ Cecily said, looking wounded. ‘When did all that happen? You didn’t even tell me you were looking for something else.’
Eleanor rubbed her eyes. Why couldn’t she ever predict how Cecily would react? ‘I wasn’t. They approached me.’
‘When did you leave the Ministry?’ Lindsay asked. ‘I thought you were enjoying it.’
‘I am, and I haven’t left. The WAAC role is part-time, so I’m able to do both—for the time being, anyway.’
‘How exciting,’ Frank said, suddenly perking up. ‘So, what’s he like?’
Eleanor couldn’t think clearly. ‘Who?’
‘Well, Sir Robert Hughes, of course. Is he as charismatic as they say?’
She thought about the run-in they’d had, and of her glimpses of the austere private man. And then she remembered Mr Steadman’s warning about the need for discretion.
‘Very,’ she replied diplomatically. ‘He’s exactly as he’s portrayed to be.’
Frank reached over and topped up their glasses, finishing the gin and raising his drink in the air. ‘I would like to propose a toast,’ he slurred. ‘Here’s to Eleanor and her extraordinary success!’
‘To Eleanor,’ the others echoed, clinking their glasses.
‘Now, you know I’m only a simple chap, Eleanor,’ Harry said, ‘but I have to ask…why are you arranging to exhibit other people’s work when yours is so damned good?’
‘Hear, hear,’ Pauline said, stumbling as she made her way across the room to Frank, nearly losing her turban.
‘Say, steady on, old girl,’ he said. ‘There’s a word for a lady like you.’
‘And don’t you just love them,’ she said and bent to kiss him on the lips.
Eleanor had looked forward to seeing her friends, but now she was growing impatient. They were smashed and becoming rowdy, and she wanted them to leave so she could look through her paintings and decide which one she would share with Jack.
The next time Eleanor glanced up, Pauline had draped herself across Frank’s lap and they were kissing as if they were the only ones in the room.
‘Must you two?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Why ever not?’ Frank said, surprised.
‘Because you can and we can’t,’ Harry suggested.
‘Or because you can and you choose not to,’ Frank said, raising an eyebrow at him and looking over at Cecily.
Harry blanched and stared at the floor. It was no secret that he had feelings for Cecily, or that it was reciprocated; the fact that he hadn’t acted on it had become a source of amusement for Pauline, Frank, Eleanor and a few others in their group.
‘Say, we’ve run out of gin,’ Pauline exclaimed, tipping the empty bottle over her glass, ‘and Eleanor’s news deserves another toast.’
‘Sound the alarm!’ Frank shouted.
‘Shush,’ Eleanor said. Her head was pounding. ‘I think it might be time to go home.’
‘Or to the pub,’ Harry said with a smirk.
‘Excellent idea,’ Frank said. ‘Come on.’
He jumped up and knocked Pauline off his lap. She scowled at him and he steadied her, then he pulled Harry to his feet. Cecily stood up too. Eleanor watched as they stumbled into one another, retrieved their coats and prepared to leave.
‘Are you coming?’ Cecily asked as Harry placed her coat around her shoulders.
‘No, I’m staying in. I’ve got some work to do.’
Cecily’s bottom lip protruded. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. You don’t mind?’
‘I do. Please come, pleease…’
‘Not tonight, Cecily—but I won’t do the clearing up either, I promise.’ Eleanor winked at her sister. ‘It will still be here for you when you get back.’
As soon as she’d closed the door behind them, Eleanor went to the old oak wardrobe in her bedroom and brought out a large leather portfolio. She laid it on the bed and carefully unzipped it, taking out five pictures, all roughly the same size.
Once they were propped up against the wall, she regarded each of them unhurriedly. The first was a scene of fire crews struggling to keep a flaming building under control. The next was of Belgrave Square as it currently looked, taken over as a tank park, with the strange juxtaposition of mothers pushing prams past the giant machines. The third was a more recent picture of a makeshift baseball pitch that the American GIs had set up in Hereford Square, and the fourth a painting of the barrage balloon in Cleveland Square, one that she had stood on the balcony to paint a few weeks earlier.
The last painting was the one that she planned to show to Jack. It was of a destroyed building and the wreckage from a double-decker bus twisted into the earth, bewildered pedestrians staring at the mangled girders and inverted ground. She had started it in pen and ink, giving detail to the startled onlookers, but the brutality of the scene lay in the carnage at the centre of the frame, which she had conjured from layers of oil. She usually worked in watercolour, the favoured medium on the battlefront where artists had no time to wait for thick oils to dry. In the field, artists also made thumbnail sketches on scraps of paper that they worked up later back at base or when they returned from their trip.
She thought about the scenes that Jack had captured and the ones she’d seen by exhibiting artists at the National Gallery—they were powerful depictions of the atrocities of war. She felt this fifth picture was the most similar to them and gave her the best chance to impress Jack. But was it really good enough? She ignored the sinking feeling that told her the answer was no and instead looked at the picture again, knowing she had to do her best—if Cecily had to hold the hands of dying soldiers and could nurse others back to health, then Eleanor should certainly be able to paint a picture that was good enough to hang alongside those of other war artists. Surely this was it.
Her only alternative would be to paint a better picture, but how? She had barely any time before her dinner with Jack, her studio was full of half-finished canvases and her materials were dwindling; she realised there might not even be an unused canvas left, only paper. But paper would have to do as she felt compelled to paint something new. She would work right here in the apartment, on the dining-room table under the light of the chandelier.
Usually she took as much time to clean brushes and mix paint as she spent on the actual work. Now there wasn’t any time for that, so she quickly laid out her materials. Last weekend she’d stretched some De Wint paper, but the glue had pulled loose and she had to do it again. The paper still looked wrinkled, but she considered this might be an advantage: its roughness might hold the pigment of her Conté crayons.
As she arranged the crayons carefully in order of the colours she most often used—black and white first and then the sanguine, bistre and grey—she meditated on her subject. She was drawn again to the blimp tethered nearby in Cleveland Square. She would keep the palette a simple black and white; it would allow her to show the metal cables. Even when she couldn’t see it, she could still hear it, the clinking of the metal that strained like a great animal against its captor. This was another sort of picture that the committee often wanted: a mechanical image, a triumph of man and machine, a reminder of the energy and apparatus of war.
Eleanor worked long into the night, and although she was satisfied with the result, her mind kept coming back to the children in the attic the day she’d met Jack. She had wanted to paint them since she’d first seen them—the contrast of their melancholy faces and the hope in their eyes.
She put the blimp picture to one side and laid out another sheet of De Wint, arranging candles around her workspace for extra light. While she usually used the crayons to under-draw on canvases for her sketch paintings, today she would use them to complete her picture; the layering gave her the detail she needed for the stark imagery she was aiming for.
Then she began to sketch—the rough outline of a figure, the edge of a face—and her years of life-drawing classes and studying subjects were all collected in that moment.
She laboured for hours, with a flick of her wrist here, a darker shading there, until she had captured the scene of the children in the attic—the intense mustiness of the room, the fractured light across the floorboards, the expression on their young faces—it had been more than just seeing them: she’d experienced an emotional connection to them.
Eleanor didn’t notice the time, or that Cecily came back and saw her working and went quietly to bed. All she remembered was waking up the next morning at the table, paint smudged across her forehead, and the certainty that this was the picture she wanted to show Jack.