Page 10 of No Man's Land

Out of nervous habit his hand went to his breast pocket, checking for the camera that was gone, and this time he felt a crinkle of paper beneath his fingers. Reaching inside, he found a note. It was a single piece of paper, folded. On it, in the elegant hand of an educated man, were written two lines.

Take nothing home but yourself; souvenirs are dangerous. And stay out of the shadows. A.

That was it; that was all. But it was enough.

“Bloody hell,” Josef said, staring at the note. “Hewasbloody Intelligence Corps.”

Who else would issue such a threat? If so, it meant Alex could have dropped Josef into some very hot water. He hadn’t. He could also have turned a blind eye to the camera, considering that they’d spent the night fucking, and he hadn’t done that either.

For a long time, Josef perched on the edge of the bed in that empty room and stared at the note. Then he got up, tucked it into his pocket, donned his coat and hat and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

Threats be damned. If Captain Winchester—or any other sodding arse in the Intelligence Corps—thought Josef could be intimidated out of publishing his photographs, then they’d better think again. Because in six weeks he’d be back in London, and then the world would know the truth.

Chapter Four

London, November 1917

“The thing is,” said May Capper, “the world doesn’t want to know the truth.”

Josef had been home from the front for two weeks and sat now in the cramped offices of the DailyClarionwith a selection of his photographs spread out on the desk before him. He pushed one towards her. “You can’t mean that you won’t publish any of these.”

May sat back with a sigh. She was a young woman, older than him but not yet thirty, and spoke with a strong Manchester accent. Her lips pursed as she quoted the Defence of the Realm Act to him. “No person shall by word of mouth or in writing spread reports likely to cause disaffection or alarm among any of His Majesty’s forces or among the civilian population.”

“Since when do you give two hoots for DORA?”

May had no qualms about breaking the law; she’d been imprisoned several times for disorderly conduct and assaulting the police during Suffragette protests. She’d even been on hunger strike.

“It’s not that I’m afraid to publish them, Joe.” With one hand she indicated the photographs, some of his most urgent and harrowing work. “My God, they’re desperately important. But if we publish any of these, the police will be round here before you can say Jack Robinson. The government are just looking for an excuse to shut us down. And what good will that do?”

“At least people will have seen the truth. That was the point, wasn’t it? That’s why I spent ten bloody months in that…that nightmare.” His gaze roved over the images he’d captured, shying away from the memories they invoked—still too real, too visceral to bear unless through the filter of his camera lens. “What the hell was it all for if we don’t publish? I might as well have gone to prison with the others.”

“We have to walk a line, Joe. Say enough to inform people, but not so much that we give the censors reason to prosecute.” She met his gaze across the table, her own softening. “But it’s not just that.” With her fingertips she moved the pictures around on the desk, examining each in turn. One, the boy lying among the dead at the dressing station, she drew closer, examining the lad’s deathly face and the eerie gleam in his eyes. “This is some mother’s son, Joe. Do we have the right to use his image to shock? I’m not sure.”

“We do if it shakes people up enough to end the slaughter. We’d be saving countless other sons.” He pulled the picture back towards himself. An error in developing the photograph had left a slight double shadow over the boy’s face, as if his ghost already watched from behind those startlingly open eyes. Behind him, the dead blurred, indistinct mounds in the early dawn light. And suddenly, Josef could taste the cigarette he’d been smoking that morning, feel the clammy air on his skin, smell the stench of the putrid wound on the boy’s arm. His stomach roiled, and helooked away, back to May’s face. “If we hide the truth, then we’re complicit.”

“The countess wouldn’t thank us for getting shut down.”

The countess. Muriel Sackville, fervent campaigner for women’s suffrage and the Labour Party, was the money behind theClarion. Without her largesse it would have folded at the start of the war, when the public appetite switched from theClarion’straditional socialist campaigning to the richer, more jingoistic diet provided by theDaily Mail, and other such rags. Although Josef didn’t much like the idea of an aristocratic patroness, the countess’s money kept him in work, and he wasn’t the sort to look a gift horse in the mouth. Not even a posh one. He supposed toffs could develop a social conscience as well as anyone else.

Even if most of them turned out to be secretive, sneaky bastards.

Not that he was thinking about anyparticulartoff, you understand.

“What you’ve seen and suffered won’t be for nothing,” May said. “One day, your pictures will be a vital record. Peoplewillknow the bloody truth of this imperialist war. But for now… Do you have any images that are less shocking?”

Josef folded his arms over his chest. “Like what? Good old British Tommies playing footie behind the lines? No, I don’t. I left that crap to the ‘accredited reporters’ and the propaganda machine.” Angry, he pushed himself to his feet and paced to the other end of the office. “I thought we wanted the truth, May.”

Through the grimy window, he looked down into the street, damp and foggy this November morning. The poor sods would be freezing their asses off at the front, and he was meant to be helping them, exposing the truth to the complacent world back home so that the people would rise up and demand an end to the slaughter. That had been the deal, the bargain he’d struckwith himself when he’d taken non-combat work instead of going to gaol as a proud conscientious objector. But now… A knot tightened in his throat, a ball of guilt and horror and sudden hopelessness. God, but this war would go on forever, grinding up men into mince while everyone at home got blind drunk on patriotic zeal.

How could he stand it? How could he bear to do nothing when he knew what was happening over the channel? When he had the evidence but couldn’t—?

“Joe.” May’s hand landed on his shoulder, but he didn’t turn around because he could feel his churning anger and didn’t want to lash out. She squeezed. “All right, listen. What about a pamphlet? We print it anonymously, distribute it by hand. Leave copies on the tube, hand it out in the street…”

He turned cautiously. “A pamphlet?”

“Choose, say, six of your most hard-hitting photographs and we’ll put it together.” She framed the headline with her hands, as if seeing it written in the air. “War: The Hidden Horror. We’ll keep it between us. Six photographs and some words to go with them.”

“It should be the front page of theClarion, May.”

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