He wasn’t any more or less moral than any of the men out there fighting, but he knew it was wrong. This war. It couldn’t fix anything.

‘No. I’m not a religious man.’ If he ever had been, his belief lay bloody and stomped upon on the dirt tracks between Dunkirk and the Front.

‘Then your objection to taking up arms is not because you adhere to the sixth commandment. Thou shalt not kill.’ The Quakers and other extreme religious groups weren’t liked for their refusal to go to war but they did at least have arguments that might be excused as valid, respectable. This playwright, this artisan, what were they to do with him? What was the meaning or point of him, this man who threatened national unity?

‘I do not want to kill,’ Howard confirmed carefully. Was the sanctity of life something only a religious man could appreciate? Was the futility of war something solely a Quaker could see?

The dentist shook with outrage. ‘But it’s your duty,’ he insisted forcefully. He was the sort of man who had never had a moment’s doubt about anything in his life. Howard envied him.

‘I disagree. I would rather be killed than kill.’

‘That can be arranged!’ yelled a woman from the gallery. ‘My brother died out there. His mates in his regiment would know what to do with you.’ The crowd cheered, indicating that they supported her. Poor grief-stricken woman, thought Howard. He hoped her brother had had a swift death.

This interruption seemed to inspire a new line of enquiry for the dentist. ‘Would you fight a man who violated your sister or wife?’

‘I don’t have a sister or wife so this question is hypothetical.’ Howard regretted sounding glib, but he knew where this was heading. The chairman glanced again at Howard’s papers, shuffled them in annoyance. Were these notes another man’s? Another coward’s?

‘Your mother, then, everyone has a mother.’

‘Yes, probably. I would.’

‘So you are not a pacifist.’

‘Not as you might know one, sir.’

‘You are simply a coward.’ Again an assertion. Not a moment’s doubt. There was another general murmur of agreement. It seemed this matter was unequivocal, clear-cut.

‘I just think war is wrong.’ Howard realised he sounded childish and ludicrous even to his own ears, but there were no other words. His argument was no more or less complicated than that.

‘Germany violated Belgium’s neutrality and started on a meticulously planned journey of destruction, sweeping through France.’

‘I know.’ Howard met the chairman’s eye. It wasn’t defiance, it was respect, but his gaze caused the dentist to splutter with indignation, jowls quivering with irritation. Dread.

‘What were we supposed to do? Stand back whilst they bullied?’ Howard wondered whether he was the only man who was taught as a boy that two wrongs didn’t make a right. ‘There was the treaty that said we were guarantors of Belgium’s neutrality. We couldn’t allow the Germans to bully us or poor, brave little Belgium.’