“I work in a portrait studio. I take photographs of brides and holidaying spinsters and babies. I sometimes find the babies frustrating—they cry and they blur and they leave wet patches—but when I go back to the studio, I shall be very glad to see them.”

Gabriel touches his glass against Harry’s. “I am sure.”

The girl brings the soup. Gabriel serves, as if he is accustomed to playing this role.

“And you?” Harry asks. “Is it a friend or a relation that is in the cemetery?”

“It is my brother.”

The soup is thin and tastes of nothing much. Gabriel stirs in copious pepper and sneezes into a handkerchief that is embroidered with another man’s initials.

“I am sorry.”

Gabriel shrugs at his soup. “We were both here, in the Bois de Chaulnes, in the winter of 1916. It was terrible in the woods. The woods were full of graves. We moved north in February and I had to leave my brother in the woods. It is a long time ago, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We moved south, to here, that same month. I was here with my brother too.” He nods to the window. “I was just remembering drawing that church spire.”

Harry also remembers the French graves that they had passed along the road. They heard that the roads all around were full of wire entanglements and machine gun posts and French dead. Mostly he remembers the mud on those roads.

“It is bizarre to be back, isn’t it? It is the first time that I have visited my brother’s grave. I thought that I should come and see it before I go home. My mother has never seen it.” Gabriel gulps at the wine as if he wishes to be rid of it and then refills his glass. “Would you perhaps take a photograph for me? I would pay you.”

“Of course,” says Harry. “But only on condition that you do not give me any money for it.”

“Perhaps I can buy you a bottle of whiskey instead?”

“I am more amenable to such suggestions.”

Gabriel raises his glass toward Harry and smiles.

“So you are going home?” asks Harry.

“Yes. Enfin. At last. I am traveling south now. I have been working on building sites in Clichy for the past two years. I am a stonemason.”

Harry nods and takes a mouthful of the wine. “There is plenty of work?”

“Enough. But I must return home. Like a fish on a wire, I am reeled in.” He makes an action like he is casting a line to catch a salmon and grins unconvincingly.

The café behind Gabriel, in the background of his portrait, is loud. A party of workmen, their faces white with plaster dust, all glance at the clock as they drink. They josh with Élodie and roar at her lightly delivered put-downs.

“Unwillingly reeled in?” Harry asks.