The soldier, eighteen years old, five feet five and a half inches tall, sallow complexion, grey eyes, reminds Nicolas of someone he once knew, but whose name he cannot now recall. Grateful to meet an English-speaker, the soldier talks excitedly about his upcoming leave. He’s headed back to London to see his sweetheart and has come via Paris to buy her a present. He wanted to get her a miniature Eiffel Tower, but the war effort has pushed up the price of metal and all but the tiniest are unaffordable.

Nicolas orders more brandy and becomes unusually unguarded. ‘I’ve seen war myself,’ he says.

‘You were a soldier?’

‘A journalist. The Russo-Turkish War.’

The British corporal nods, purely out of politeness. The old fellow’s a decent sort but like all old men inclined to reminisce about an irrelevant past.

‘I expect the name Skobelev means something to you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ agrees the nice young man. ‘Oh, yes.’ He follows nothing of the long anecdote that follows: troop formations, unpronounceable foreign names, a man or woman named after a day of the week.

Nicolas sees the grey eyes disengage. ‘Another drink? I insist.’ He orders Marc de Bourgogne this time, the closest he can find to the vintage he drank with Younghusband. It is different from what he remembers: the flavour carries notes of leather boots warming at firesides, roasted chestnuts, old book bindings.

‘I never drank before I came to France,’ says the boy. ‘My parents would be horrified. We get rum in the trenches twice a day.’

‘What is their objection?’ Nicolas asks.

‘They’re Baptists. They don’t believe in it.’

‘You can remind them Christ’s first miracle was turning water into wine.’

The boy’s curiosity is piqued. The alcohol encourages him to overcome his ingrained habits of discretion, his instinct to avoid controversy. ‘May I ask what religion you belong to, sir?’

‘I’m a sort of Christian myself.’ The subtle qualification is a storyteller’s gambit. A slight misalignment, a raising of tension that demands resolution, a seventh chord yearning for a tonic. ‘Years ago, when I was travelling in India …’

The young man listens to Nicolas’s story as the afternoon unravels and pronounces it most interesting. His drinking slows, Nicolas’s continues at a steady pace. Before he knows it, Nicolas is drunk and venturing to give the young man advice. ‘What are you fighting for?’

‘For king and country. The Kaiser’s a tyrant.’

‘Go home,’ Nicolas announces. ‘There’s nothing here worth dying for. Find someone you love, be good to them. Lead a simple life. That’s all there is. Listen – your sweetheart, what’s her name?’

The boy blushes as he says it. He hasn’t told his parents and it feels like violation to be uttering her name to a stranger.

‘What’s she like? I mean, short, tall, dark, fair, slim, full-figured?’

‘It’s hard to say.’ The boy looks in consternation at the clock. The old coot has crossed a boundary.