There’s this place up north. I won’t tell you its name. Either you know and recognise it, or you don’t, and then I pity you. I’m not from the north. I happened to find the place by sheer luck during my bleak years as a travelling salesman. Margaret Thatcher was bludgeoning Arthur Scargill to a bloody pulp, and half of the retail spaces were empty eye sockets that stared out into desolate shopping streets yearning for the happier days of yore.

It’s the best tea room in the known universe; its afternoon teas are the stuff of cholesterol-saturated confectionary legend. Tradition wants us to believe that Britain will come undone when the ravens disappear from the Tower of London. I prefer to think that the closure of this tea room will herald the end of our nation. The place is an Art Deco jewel box of honey-coloured wood panels that sits majestically on the town’s busiest street corner. It has floor-to-ceiling windows and rows upon rows of tables decked in crisp, white linen. Customers are only allowed a seat if they pass muster with the steel-backed maître d’. 

During the second world war, its downstairs bar was the watering hole of the servicemen from neighbouring airbases. They were men who counted their days in dog years. They spent their off-duty moments here in forced, raucous merrymaking. Alcohol dulled the memory of getting caught in klieg lights, expecting to be shot down any minute on night missions over enemy territory. Here drank the bomber crews who answered Hitler’s Blitzkrieg with carpet bombing raids that reduced proud German cities to smouldering slag heaps.

If you’re my age, you’ve seen their exploits celebrated in heroic black-and-white films on Saturday afternoon television and gritty late-night documentaries. You’ve watched their numbers dwindle each successive Remembrance Day when the veterans ceremonially lay their wreaths at Whitehall’s Cenotaph. Possibly, you’ve built Airfix model kits of their aeroplanes when you were a kid. I know I did.

My generation will never be the men they once were. Their names can still be read, scratched in the bar mirror — hundreds of them. Many never saw the end of the war, never came back from their suicide missions. Each time I visit the tea room, I go to the restroom downstairs to stare at the mirror. The names stare right back at me. I’m a travelling salesman no longer, but I still visit the tea room once a year. Call it a pilgrimage if you want. 

Last time, I ordered my afternoon tea and then went downstairs. When I came back after my customary introspection in front of the mirror, a man sat at my table. It was a slow day with heavy rain. The place was empty. The maître d’ was nowhere to be seen. The man had a pot of tea in front of him and ate a Fat Rascal — a warm, fruity scone served with butter. He made an inviting gesture as if he generously allowed me to sit at his table instead of the other way round. It was vexing. I didn’t want to share my sacred afternoon tea ritual with a total stranger.

‘Are you quite done indulging in your private self-flagellation?’ he asked me with a smirk.

I’m sure I’d have found a sharp-witted repartee to his question, but his dark-grey eyes compelled me to silence. I took my seat at the table opposite him.

‘You think you’re but half the man those servicemen used to be,’ he said.

It wasn’t a question, so I kept mum.

‘The chaps who scratched their names in that mirror downstairs were just kids,’ he continued. ‘They were frightened little boys trying to mask their fears with empty macho posturing. Each night, they left this bar cut to ribbons. Not knowing whether they’d be back after the next raid scared them shitless. Their upbringing gave them a sense of duty — I’ll grant them that. But — between you and me — if they’d had a chance not to climb in their kites without losing face, a lot of them would have jumped at the opportunity. Most of them didn’t want to die any more than the next man.’

I didn’t like what the man was saying. It was disrespectful, and I felt like I should throw my cup of hot tea in his smug face. Instead, I asked, ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Bravery in war doesn’t necessarily measure a man’s worth,’ the stranger said. ‘I could point out a few names on that mirror to you of men who did survive the war and then lived on to be absolute bastards. They were terrors to their family, completely useless in civil life. There’s a rapist on that mirror and several philandering wife beaters. You’ll also find a murderer and a couple of men who became successful entrepreneurs by exploiting and cheating the people who worked for them. One of them drove his daughter to suicide. They proudly paraded in uniform throughout their lives each Remembrance Day, carrying the flag, their chests puffed up all covered in rows of medals. And still, at heart, those very men were but miserable excuses for human beings.’

‘I could never have done what they did during the war,’ I argued. ‘We owe these men our freedom. Whatever you say, they were heroes, and I am not. Never will be.’

‘Who’s to say?’ the man asked. ‘These lads happened to be there at that particular moment in history. They were cogs in the great war machine, kept in place by a ruthless chain of command. Some of them had great individual merit and integrity, sure. Others only did what they were told.’

‘Let’s agree to disagree,’ I said and added, ‘I don’t understand why you’re telling me this, and why you chose to sit at my table when the rest of the tea room is empty. You could have sat at any other table. Why did you come to me?’

The man had finished his Fat Rascal and his tea. He picked up the last crumbs of his scone with his index and put them in his mouth. He looked me right in the eye and said, ‘A man’s worth is measured by how he chooses to treat other people. There’s only one defining rule of law — whatever all the holy and unholy books say. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You’ve lived all your life as a contented bachelor, earning a living with undemanding jobs. You never had to shoulder the burden of responsibility. You’ve never been tested, but you shall be. Take my word for it. The question is: Will it be your finest hour or not?’

I could only gawk at him. I had no idea what he was going on about.

Three days later, I received a telephone call. A faceless voice informed me that my younger brother and his wife had died in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. They left three young children behind.