Eleanor’s Secret

Kathryn hurried out of Euston Underground and headed east towards the British Library, umbrella protecting her from the large barbs of rain and the fumes from the traffic crawling along Euston Road. Her grandmother had been encouraging about the diary and the War Artists booklets when they had talked by phone, so Kathryn had ended up staying the night at Helen’s in order to get to the library early.

Kathryn hadn’t wanted to ask her about the engagement until they were face to face so she decided to wait. Instead she voiced Oliver’s theory about The Bermondsey Rescue, July 1942 to her grandmother, but Eleanor had dismissed it. And because her grandmother had always prided herself on being a well-respected art teacher, Kathryn knew better than to argue with her.

Kathryn still didn’t have any clear knowledge of what had happened to Jack or proof that he was alive. Chris remained convinced she was on a wild-goose chase. But at least the past few days had shown her how much he had meant to her gran—which was a shock, given the happy marriage she knew her grandparents had had. She had also come to believe that part of Jack’s life had been covered up: it was as if someone didn’t want him to be known or found. The other major war artists had been properly commemorated and celebrated in the anniversaries of the Second World War, whereas Jack’s work appeared to be lost or hidden in the archive, and she had to search hard to find anything. She secretly thought that she might uncover some of his valuable missing artworks but, at the very least, she hoped to stumble across something exciting today since she had learned that the library held the best records and kept every publication ever produced in the UK.

Most of all, though, she hoped that she could find out about Jack before she caught the plane home, keeping her promises to everyone.

It was the first time she had visited the new British Library, and the elegant gothic towers of St Pancras station still overshadowed the harsh angles of the building’s twenty-first century replacement, with its blunt edges and boxy design. The rainfall grew steadily heavier and she pulled her raincoat tighter, walking quickly past the bronze statue, across the red-and-cream brick courtyard and towards the entrance.

A wide foyer sat at the foot of vast columns of glass, sentinels guarding the King’s Library, its thousands of rare books and pamphlets in glorious full view. Chris had been intrigued by the design when the building had been planned and built a few years earlier, and had reminded her of it when they’d spoken the night before—and asked her if she could take photos. She angled her iPhone to get the best shot but the reflection of the low-hanging lights on the glass made it awkward. Still, she had a couple that would do.

She muted the phone, tucked it inside her bag and made her way to the reception desk on the lower ground floor. The online registration had taken ten minutes, but she still needed the library card, so she joined the queue to get her photo taken.

Sitting on the row of plastic chairs, waiting for the photo to be processed, she was alert to the faces around her. An Italian family sat on the chairs ahead, the teenage boy and girl clearly arguing, though it still sounded glorious to Kathryn’s ears. Even the voices of the staff at the inquiry desk sounded interesting to her, with their wide-ranging dialects. Why was it that she didn’t respond this way to accents when she was in Australia, recognising the different ways of speaking and searching out her own, feeling happy to hear the English brogues? She kept catching herself thinking about how natural it felt to be back. How it didn’t do anyone good living in limbo, not being able to commit one way or the other, always the outsider and never quite at home.

Chris had been conciliatory on the phone last night, even showing an interest in what was happening in England generally. And so she was entertaining the thought that maybe they still had a chance.

Finally, her name was called. She collected the card and headed upstairs, through the glass double doors into Research Room One. A long counter ran along the left wall of the huge reading room, the signage helpfully offering guidance, so she got in line and took in her surroundings. The room was filled with avenues of wide beige-wooden desks and pale green carpet, impressive banks of brass sockets and number plaques where visitors sat. Most of the desks were stacked with books and folders and open laptops, the students so absorbed that barely any glanced up when she walked past. Trolleys creaked along, groaning under the weight of their books-in-waiting; others were left unattended beside the large columns that reached all the way to the ceiling. Air-conditioning grilles sat like ship portals along one wall, quietly gurgling as they sent out an excessive chill.

Despite the cold air, Kathryn felt a warming familiarity being in this environment again—it was reminiscent of her university days.

After the librarian handed her three bulky folders wrapped with elastic bands, she settled down at a desk to look through them. At first glance she didn’t think the library had fulfilled her request—that not all the items were there—but when she opened the second folder she noticed it contained all the War Artists booklets that her grandmother had told her about. She took out the first one, Blitz, and examined the list of contributing artists, looking for Jack’s name. The booklets were only small, 19 x 12 cm: small enough to fit in your pocket, according to Eleanor, and at only one shilling and threepence, affordable for the majority.

Blitz was one of four produced in the first set, titled War Pictures by British Artists, along with War at Sea, RAF and Army. Then she moved on to the second series: Women, Production, Soldiers and Air Raids. There was Clifford Rowe’s depiction of a National Fire Service crew responding to a call; Charles Cundall’s Study for St Paul’s Cathedral; and pictures by Denys Wells and Claude Francis Barry, Harold Arthur Riley and Rudolf Sauter, all names that had become familiar to her.

Then she came to pictures that she instantly recognised: Fire Drill at a School, Auxiliary Fireman, and a third, Streetscape After a Raid. These were certainly Jack’s work—they had his name on them and were in his traditional materials of watercolour, India ink, pencil and chalk on paper, and they were signed. But a fourth image, Children in the Attic, didn’t fit with his works: something in the style was different—something that resembled The Bermondsey Rescue.

Kathryn flipped back and forth between the pages, making sure it wasn’t a trick of the eye or a printing issue, but it was clear that the lines were blunter, the distinction between the images in the foreground and the background less clear. This was more like her grandmother’s work in its detail, the familiar figure shading. Oli had been right, the picture wasn’t Jack’s but it could be Eleanor’s. She rested back into the bow of the chair and wondered if it was possible—had Jack submitted Eleanor’s pictures as his own? And would that have caused problems severe enough for him to disappear either by force or by choice?

She was struggling to understand why he would have done this when it occurred to her that hardly any women artists were featured in the booklets. Evelyn Dunbar and Ethel Gabain were two she recognised, but they were only two among the hundreds of well-known male war artists whose work was represented.

The pictures in this volume provide a small cross-section of the whole gigantic contribution being made by the women in response to the ever-increasing demand for war supplies—and for more women to fill the places in the Services at home of men who have been called to the battlefronts.

The words were certainly stirring, and Kathryn could see how they would have been good propaganda because even now they were affecting—especially the final paragraph. She re-read it aloud, slowly, under her breath.

After what she has done in this titanic struggle, will she not guard what she has gained, and to Man’s effort add her own? If she can do what she has done in war, what may she not do in peace?

Eleanor had been quite adamant about the power held by the WAAC and the force of the personalities involved. What if Jack and Eleanor’s deception had been on the verge of becoming public? Could this have threatened the committee’s credibility—or even its very existence, which Sir Robert Hughes and the other members had reportedly fought so hard for?

Or perhaps Eleanor had at first been furious with Jack for submitting her work. He might not have asked her permission. Maybe they had fought, and Eleanor had come to regret it—but this just didn’t seem to ring true with what Kathryn knew of them.

Gazing at the sky through the roof-lights, Kathryn tried to picture her grandmother sixty-eight years ago. It would have been difficult to be acknowledged as a woman artist alongside the likes of celebrated male war artists—especially if you were working for the committee who selected them. But there might have been advantages too. A cloud passed overhead, throwing the library into momentary gloom, but Kathryn felt as if something had lifted. Having started down this track, her thoughts were racing, picking up threads and clues. Could this really be the reason that Eleanor had lost touch with Jack?

Her attention kept being pulled back to the picture, to the children lying on the attic floor, drawing. The more she looked, the more convinced she was that it was Eleanor’s work. She knew how hard her grandmother had always fought to protect her privacy, but why hadn’t she told Kathryn about this? It seemed she’d even lied outright.

This thought made Kathryn’s heart sink. Suddenly she felt as if the grandmother she had known and loved growing up wasn’t the same person anymore. The emotion of the trip was most likely getting to her, and maybe she was confusing Eleanor’s feelings with her own, but the sense of betrayal still hurt.

The morning passed quickly as she looked through the rest of the booklets. She turned to the pictures she believed to be Jack’s and the one she believed to be Eleanor’s and recorded them on her iPhone. She also photocopied them so that she could more easily show them to Eleanor. But then she had a thought: Oliver could probably determine if the paintings were by the same hand. She hastily emailed him: Are these paintings by the same artist? Love you, Mum xxx. This way she wouldn’t be relying on her eyes alone before confronting her grandmother.

She put the booklets back in their folders and turned her attention to the third folder. To her surprise, it contained an academic thesis about the WAAC by a British professor, Alexander Gower. This was a stroke of luck: here was detailed information about the committee and from an expert, somebody who had sourced material that she hadn’t found in any online archives and who had interviewed the committee’s surviving members. The problem was that the thesis had been written eighteen years ago. She knew that the committee members had all passed away now, so would the professor still be alive?

It was a large document of some six hundred pages. She searched through but nothing jumped out at her, so it seemed like a good time to take a break; she could google the professor and check on Eleanor. As soon as she was out of the reading room, she dialled her gran, but the number just rang out. She decided to get a coffee and some food, then try Eleanor again.

The pendant lights hung low over the cafe tables, bringing the spectacularly high ceilings only a fraction closer but still affording a clear view of the King’s Library. The structure really was magnificent: thousands of books behind gleaming glass, shining like a jewel-encrusted crown. It gave her an idea of how to bring more light into the Nautilus development, how the living areas could be opened up by replacing some of the walls with glass; she would update her plans and send them to Chris tonight.

Kathryn called Eleanor again, listening to the rain hit the glazed roof hard, a rhythmic drumbeat that accompanied visitors hurriedly arriving with wet clothes. There was still no answer, so she pulled out her laptop and googled ‘Military Historian Professor Gower’, spooning the chocolate froth off her drink as she waited for the page to load. When his Wikipedia page popped up at the top of the results, something twigged—she realised that she recognised it from the anniversary exhibition program.

Alexander Geoffrey Gower (born 19 July 1956) was born in Surrey and served with the Welsh Guards before becoming a journalist and broadcaster. He studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he gained a double first in English and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1978 to study at Harvard University. Following graduation, he became an academic, teaching English literature in the US before moving back to the UK.

The professor looked all of his fifty-four years, and a full head of curly grey hair and a small grey beard concealed much of his face. Along with his bio, this made Kathryn think that perhaps he wasn’t the life and soul of the party—that was until she read his bibliography. He specialised in books about military disasters with titles that Oliver and Chris would appreciate: The Big Book of Military Madness, Great Blunders of the Twentieth Century and Lost Battles That Changed History. Further down was a snippet from a review: ‘In an era that relies on technology it is refreshing to see attention drawn to the one underlying component that is present in all conflict: the human factor.’

There were a number of photographs of battle re-enactments, men dressed in full military regalia. She had heard about these fanatics, men and women who spent a huge amount of time planning and re-enacting different battles with precision. There was an industry built around filming it too. She clicked on the icon for memorabilia; war art, journals and specialist books bought and sold; Professor Gower was getting more fascinating by the minute. There was also a link to his website—‘Alexander Geoffrey Gower: Military Historian’—so she clicked on it and found his contact details.