Chapter 31

Painting Beautiful Souls

September 1943

T he setting sun cast the last vestiges of golden light through the open window, illuminating the painting which glistened beneath its touch, the oils still wet. Archie stepped closer, careful not to tread on the squeezed-out tubes of paint that lay abandoned on the bare, wooden floor.

Freddy’s studio was strewn with canvasses, some stacked against the walls, while others hung around the room. The smell of linseed oil and the mix of turpentine and oil paints hung in the air and intensified the closer he stepped to the canvas. It was a familiar odour that reminded him of home, of his artist mother, Mabel, and his elder brother, Jack, and his chest tightened as he drank it in fervently.

Freddy stepped back as he studied the image before him, his lips pursed tight, his forehead furrowed, a streak of black smeared across his cheek. The palette rested in the crook of his left arm while he held a cigarette casually between the second and third fingers of his left hand. In his right hand, he raised the brush and made some fine, sweeping strokes to the canvas, adding detail and definition to his subject’s face. Archie stood, transfixed, with the same, intense fascination he’d had as a child while watching his mother paint. He recognised hues of burned umber and yellow ochre as Freddy mixed colours to add to the complexion. The look of intensity etched on his face suggested that he was far from satisfied with his work and a pensive wave rolled in the air. Archie edged away.

Freddy had asked him to drop by and take the first glance at the painting when he ran into him yesterday at the hospital. As Archie gazed around, his eyes were drawn to a particular oil painting on the wall. It depicted an RAF crew standing in front of their Lancaster Bomber on a grassed airfield. The crew gazed into the distance with brooding eyes. Seven young men, all unsmiling, dressed in their flying clothes, and the breath hitched in Archie’s throat as he imagined what they’d been thinking at that precise moment. One of the men wore a defeated expression, almost as if he knew what lay ahead, or was perhaps thinking of a previous mission, and Archie’s skin prickled as the hairs bristled at the nape of his neck.

‘Freddy, when did you paint this one?’

‘Hang on a mo.’ Freddy added some fine brush strokes to the canvas, and then spun around. ‘Ah, that was RAF Binbrook. I did a short stint there, last year.’ He dipped his brush into a clear glass jar and sloshed it around, and the water swirled into murky brown almost instantly. He then sauntered over to join Archie.

‘Yes, I remember that day most vividly. They had their minds on the mission ahead and were rather rattled at having to pose for me. However, orders are orders, and so they posed, and grumbled, while I attempted a quick sketch.’ He drew on his cigarette and savoured it for a moment as if recalling that very day, that precise moment, and then released a vapour of white into the air.

‘Yes, the bombardier had to endure a little good-humoured ribbing from a couple of the lads. He’d recently become a father.’ He hesitated. ‘They never returned from that mission.’ Freddy gazed at the painting for a few moments longer and heaved out a heavy sigh, his eyes dark and serious. ‘Right then, come and have a look at this. Time waits for no man.’

‘Don’t I know it?’ Archie strode across to the latest creation. The man in the saline bath, one of his own patients to be precise. ‘Ah, yes. Excellent, Freddy. It’s very humbling.’ Archie scrutinised the scene. ‘You’ve illustrated the nurse superbly, tending to her patient. She’s almost angelic. And the airman looks relaxed, just as he should be in the tub.’

His eyes lingered on the nurse wearing her white surgical mask. A thick lock of black hair had escaped from her headdress and cupped her cheek. She was slim, the curve of her hip defined as she leaned over the enamel bath wearing black rubber gloves, delving into the water with a pair of forceps to remove a dressing from the man’s leg. The man lay outstretched, his hands soaking in the saline bath, the burns to both clearly evident, red, and raw. The angle of his head was dipped as he looked down at his injuries, and the definition of his shoulders, the trapezius and deltoid muscles, was illustrated to perfection. Freddy had captured the mix of emotion perfectly in the man’s posture and in his burned face, although the face was not exactly clear—obviously an artistic decision.

As Archie drank in the emotion of the scene before him, goosebumps erupted on his forearms. The subject in the painting was someone he’d come to know very well, and there had been so many thoughts hurtling through the young pilot’s mind back then.

As Archie studied the scene further, he also saw disillusionment and sadness; after all, airman’s burn was often life-changing, and the scars penetrated deep beyond the skin. The longer he mused, the more he thought how this represented something more conflicting, perhaps. It evoked beauty in so many ways. The nurse was beautiful, evident despite the fact her face was half-covered with a mask. The scene of a caring nature carried beauty and tenderness within it, and then there was the man himself.

‘Just needs a few more finishing touches.’ Freddy put the palette down and stood back, drawing his hand up to his tousled, mousy brown hair, smoothing it back from his forehead.

Archie glanced at the young artist. Freddy had never flinched or recoiled in horror at the sight of any disfigured man. He merely sat sketching, analysing every detail, every contour, absorbing every inch of maiming as if it was all in a day’s work, but Archie recognised his impartiality and the intensity that flashed in his eyes. The act of a real artist, discovering and revealing beauty in all its guises.

‘It’s marvellous.’ Archie grinned as he gazed admiringly at the scene before him, his chin held high. Art was open to interpretation, which was always subjective, and he had been interpreting the effects of burns on real patients for years. ‘It’s such a powerful, symbolic image. Truly compelling, Freddy. The Air Ministry ought to be happy with it.’

‘Ah, well I had a good muse that day.’ He grinned, a streak of black almost vanishing into a fold by his mouth as it creased at the corners and curved upward. His shirt was awash with colour, mirroring his palette.

Freddy had painted Mac as he’d seen him that day, his head down, focusing on all the bad, slipping into that dark place they all found themselves when they first arrived on Archie’s ward. Of course, his young lady had been a refreshing change from the usual sort. She had courage and determination, and she’d made him see sense and helped him to embrace life fully, after a little innovative meddling. It was the only way. Archie sighed, and his gaze returned to the ill-fated Lancaster crew on the wall, their futures now erased.

Outside, the Ashdown Forest brimmed with life, and pink bell heather and yellow gorse blossomed, carpeting the forest floor. From a treetop perch, the rise and fall of the elusive male nightjar’s churring song chorused all around this flourishing corner of Sussex, untouched by war.