Chapter Two

T oc H—soldier parlance for Talbot House—was one of those rare establishments where officers and enlisted men mixed freely. It had been running for a year or so in the nearby village of Poperinge, a transfer station for thousands of soldiers, and was part bar and part place of reflection and rest.

Josef was most interested in the bar.

But a trip to Pops also allowed him to visit the elderly Belgian gentleman who developed his films. He was keen to see how the photograph of the dying young man came out. If it was as good as he hoped, it would be a powerful image.

M. Verbeke’s pharmacy was on a picturesque little street only five minutes from Toc H, which had so far escaped any of the shell damage inflicted on other parts of the village. Josef doffed his cap as a couple of black-clad elderly women left, each of whom paused to give him a level and uninterpretable gaze. The people of Pops were used to the heavy British presence, but Josef saw no reason they would enjoy it. He slipped inside once they were gone, pleased to find the shop empty.

Mdm. Verbeke stood at the counter, but when she recognised Josef, she called over her shoulder in Flemish for her husband. Josef had the impression that Mdm. Verbeke didn’t approve of her husband assisting him with his illicit photographs. Or perhaps she found the subject matter distasteful. And it was—the whole damned war was distasteful.

“Hallo, Josef,” M. Verbeke said, appearing from the back room. “Hoe gaat het met jou?”

He was a small, stooped man with a round bald head, ruddy cheeks, and sparkling eyes. Almost the opposite in every way to his tall, stern wife who, with a curt nod for Josef, disappeared into the back.

“Zo en zo,” Josef replied, as he always did. So-so was the best he could manage these days. It was also the limit of his Flemish. “I have another film for you, M. Verbeke. Are you able to develop it?” He reached into his pocket and handed it over.

“Joat,” he nodded. “Next week, I will have it for you.” He turned the film over in his hand, studying it. “So many photographs of dead men, Josef. What will you do with them all?”

“Publish them, of course. Back in London.”

M. Verbeke looked surprised. “They will let you?”

“No.” He smiled. “But…the newspaper I work for doesn’t much care for the propaganda laws. And I say the people have a right to know the truth.”

After eight months with the Red Cross, Josef had a stack of shocking images. And when he returned with them to London, he had every intention of shouting the truth from the rooftops. If that meant he went to gaol, then so be it. He couldn’t think of a worthier cause.

M. Verbeke nodded along, but said, “You would leave us to the mercy of the Germans, then?”

Ah. Well. Sometimes, Josef forgot that not everyone shared his pacifist perspective. He said, “I hope, monsieur, that there’s a man like me behind the German lines, too. Showing the truth to the German people. Then, perhaps, we can have peace.”

M. Verbeke looked doubtful. “I hope you are right,” he said, just as the door behind Josef opened with a soft tinkle of bells. Mr Verbeke slipped Josef’s film beneath the counter, and Josef heard English voices before he turned around to see a couple of Tommies lurking in the doorway. Given the entertainment most men sought in Pops, it would have been clear what the young men were after even if their furious blushes hadn’t made it obvious. But if either of them knew what to do with a real live woman, Josef would be surprised. Neither of them looked more than seventeen.

He left them to their stumbling requests. “Saluu, M. Verbeke,” he said, before slipping out of the shop.

Dusk was falling by the time he reached the market square and from there headed over to Toc H. Its white frontage and long, narrow window shutters looked a little grimy, but the sound of laughter spilled out along with yellow electric light, and Josef’s spirits lifted. There were few comforts in the salient, but everyone found solace at Toc H.

Despite the distant rumble of the guns, inside he was met by calm: a fug of tobacco smoke and unwashed men, the air thick with laughter, and someone on the piano bashing out an old Vesta Tilley number.

Josef headed directly for the bar. He wasn’t a soldier, and Toc H wasn’t strictly his turf, but he’d never had trouble being served here. Soldiers on the line knew the value of the Red Cross. It was back home where his status as a conchie caused problems. Not that he cared. What did a couple of rough shoves on the Underground matter, or a coward’s white feather thrust at him by a group of angry-eyed women? He’d watched his fellow socialists go to gaol for their beliefs, and he would have joined them had May not suggested signing up with the Red Cross so he could take his VPK to the front and photograph the truth.

Soon, he’d be home again—only six more weeks—and then they’d start printing.

He ordered a beer, which wasn’t real English beer but a light Belgian lager, and found a table to himself in the corner. Fishing out a cigarette, he amused himself by flipping through an old copy of the Wiper’s Times —he’d written a few sardonic pieces for it himself, earlier in the year—and studying the occupants of the room. It was the variety of people he enjoyed most about Toc H, and although the officers and enlisted men tended to keep to themselves, there was more mixing here than anywhere else—except in the line, or among the dead.

And as far as Josef was concerned, the more the classes mixed, the better. Harder to persuade a man that you were his superior by birth when he’d seen you drooling into your whiskey. Or pissing yourself with fear.

Josef liked to think of his interest in other people as a journalist’s eye. May said he was just a nosy bastard. Either way, Josef enjoyed watching people, which was why he noticed immediately when Captain Winchester and his Indian companion stepped into the room.

They went straight to the bar, talking only to each other. Not even a friendly wave for their fellow officers. Winchester was a little taller than Josef, which was to say neither tall nor short but somewhere unremarkably between the two. But his companion was tall . The effect was exaggerated by his turban and the fact that Winchester had removed his cap, exposing glossy dark hair swept back from his forehead. He leaned one arm on the bar, casting a bored eye over the room as he talked to his friend. Josef looked down at his newspaper to avoid making eye contact, turning the page without reading a word. After a moment or two, he glanced back over. Winchester was holding a glass of something amber, his companion sipped a mug of tea, and they were deep in discussion. Arguing, he would have said, except that Winchester’s face was alight with humour. His friend’s was not.

They were a curious pair.

As he watched, the Indian officer set his mug on the bar, leaned forward to murmur in Winchester’s ear, and took his leave. Winchester only smiled to himself—then, without warning, looked directly at Josef and lifted his glass in salute.

Ridiculously, Josef flushed. With a curt nod, he turned away, picked up his beer, and took a long draft to douse his embarrassment at being caught blatantly staring. So much for his journalistic talents.

“Mind if I join you?”

Surprised for the second time, Josef set down his glass and looked up. Winchester was already pulling out the chair opposite, setting his drink and hat on the table between them.

“Doesn’t look like I have much choice.”

The captain smiled as he sat down. It was rather a dazzling smile, wide and engaging. Josef wished he hadn’t noticed. “You’re not waiting for anyone, I hope?”

He could have said yes—he dearly wanted to puncture the man’s self-assurance—but he also wanted to investigate the mysterious and horrifying wounds he’d recently seen, and since Winchester appeared to know something about that, Josef simply said, “Not tonight.”

“Good.” The captain smiled again and lounged back in his seat. Beneath the table, their knees touched, and Winchester caught his eye, holding it rather longer than necessary. He said, “I’d hate to be in the way.”

Well, well. Pulse spiking distractingly, Josef couldn’t keep from smiling himself as he said, “Not at all. I’m glad you’re here, in fact. I wanted to talk to you.”

“Did you? How fortunate; I wanted to talk to you too.”

Not about this, I’ll warrant .

Josef folded his hands on the table before him but didn’t move his knee, growing warm now against Winchester’s. “In the resus tent the other day, I saw you looking at that man’s wounds—Bearman. They were the same as the boy we watched click it at the dressing station.”

Winchester’s smile faltered, jarring like a truck bouncing over a rut. “I see a lot of wounded men,” he said, but Josef could see his discomfort and jumped on it.

“Me too, but I’ve not seen anything like that before. What causes it?”

After a pause, the captain said, “I’ve twenty-four hours’ leave. I’d rather not spend it talking about the damned war.”

“Is it a new weapon? It doesn’t look like mustard gas, but—”

Abruptly, Winchester sat forward, placing his hand over Josef’s wrist, and looking directly into his eyes. “I saw straight away that you were a clever and curious man, so I shan’t trifle with your intelligence and pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about. In return, you must believe me when I say that I cannot tell you anything about it. And, furthermore, that you can’t try to find out.”

“Or what? I’m no soldier, Captain Winchester. You can’t give me orders.”

“Which is a shame.” His lips ticked up at one corner, rueful and wry. “I’d rather like to try.”

Josef held his gaze, very aware of the weight of the man’s hand on his wrist. “I’ll bet you would.”

Winchester gave a little huff of laughter, letting go. “Either way, it’s in your interest to have nothing to do with this matter. But you can trust that those who need to know do know.”

“I don’t have a lot of faith in ‘those who need to know’.” Josef gestured around them. “They brought us all here, after all.”

“This is different.”

“Is it? How?”

He made an exasperated sound. “Just be grateful you can leave this mess to others.”

“I’m not a very grateful man. And I happen to believe that hiding messes makes them worse.”

Winchester barked a laugh, raking one hand through his glossy hair. “Dutta said you looked like trouble.”

“Dutta was right.”

“He usually is.” Winchester’s smile faded. “But sometimes secrets are best kept secret. As I think you well know.”

And now they were talking about something else.

Winchester’s knowing look set Josef fizzing; the excitement of being seen for who he was never failed to light a fire. His heart began to race. “Perhaps I do.”

Beneath the table, Winchester rubbed his knee more surely against Josef’s. Eyes sparkling, he said, “So…?”

Josef reached for his beer, swallowed the last mouthful, and set it back down on the table. Naturally, he knew Winchester was distracting him, but what did that matter? It was all a bloody game, and they could both be dead tomorrow.

Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his eyes to Winchester’s—they were dark blue, like the night sky an hour after sunset. Attractive. He was an altogether attractive man, and it had been a long time since any man had crossed Josef’s path with such eager intent. Only a fool would look such a gift horse in the mouth. Offering him a bedroom look, Josef said, “Oh, definitely so .”

“Well then.” Winchester picked up his cap, toying with the brim. “Perhaps you’d care to take a walk, Mr Shepel?”

“What did you have in mind, Captain Winchester?” What Josef did not have in mind was a rough fondle in some back alleyway, looking over his shoulder the whole time. He had more respect for himself than that, and if Winchester thought otherwise, he could shove it.

But the captain held his gaze again and said, “Perhaps, on this matter, you could bring yourself to trust me?”

“That’ll depend on whether you deserve it.”

Winchester considered for a long moment before he said, “Number eighteen, Priesterstraat. Give my name at the door and they’ll let you in. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.” With that he rose, nodded, and sauntered out of the bar.

Leaving the ball firmly in Josef’s court and with plenty of time to reconsider. He appreciated that.

But he didn’t reconsider. He wasn’t the sort of man who second-guessed himself. Besides, his blood was up, and the thought of returning alone to the field hospital and his narrow cot was unappealing. And while Winchester might congratulate himself on distracting Josef from questions about the new weapon—which was Josef’s current best explanation—two could play at that game.

Plenty of secrets, among other things, had been spilled in bed.