‘You are a writer, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well, come and write, as I am.’

‘I’m not a newspaperman.’

Clarke shrugged as if this fact was neither here nor there. ‘Don’t you see? This war is it. This is our generation’s moment. You can’t sit on your backside, at home by the fire. You can’t miss it. You could write a play about it all.’ Howard accepted that that much was true. Clarke added, ‘I’d like the company.’ This confession sounded singularly honest. ‘I think you are the very man to join me.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’ Howard couldn’t think how Clarke had come to this conclusion but felt flattered. He seemed determined to persuade. ‘Do you know how I became a journalist?’

‘No.’

‘After a chance encounter in a hotel where I joined in singing with some strangers as the fourth voice in a Gilbert and Sullivan quartet. We got along and so on, the way sometimes it happens. One of them invited me to write an article on musical appreciation for the Evening Gazette in Manchester. I didn’t have a career to speak of but I had a wife and a family. I took the opportunity. Grasped it with both hands.’

‘You think our meeting is such an opportunity for me. You are drawing a parallel.’

‘Damn right I am, boy. You’d be mad to miss it.’

‘I have no money.’

‘I have.’ Clarke reached into his briefcase and pulled out a bag of coins as though he was a character from a fairy tale producing a magic spinning wheel or a poisoned apple. The coins jingled against one another. ‘They gave me one hundred gold sovereigns for expenses – you know, bribes and such.’ He chuckled at the absurdity. ‘There isn’t time to get home to Manchester to kiss the wife but they handed me this. I’ll be going to war in a bowler hat. It’s all rather odd, don’t you think?’

‘I do. Seems a little seat-of-the-pants,’ commented Howard.

‘Isn’t the whole damn war?’

‘Yes, I fear it is.’

‘Shall we go and find out together?’ Clarke beamed, a glint of mischievous goading flickering across his face. Howard was tempted to answer the challenge.

Clarke’s expression was intelligent and yet accepting, a rare combination and certainly not one Howard had been on the receiving end of since the war broke out and he’d refused to join up. He thought again of Warrington’s fury. If this war continued, his popularity as a writer would wane; people wouldn’t come to see a show written by a man who refused to fight. He’d lose his job for sure. It was only a matter of time. He and Beryl, whatever they’d had, had petered out. She was writing to Jack, who was already in France. He had heard that she’d sent her worn stockings, a photo and cigarettes. If he went out there then he would know, know for sure, what it was about. What was right and wrong. He was an artist and should know humanity at its best and worst, if he was to write with any truth and conviction. There was nothing to keep him here.