“Good Lord! mine would bellow the house down. He’s just slung me out of the dining-room over some nonsense about German and English babies.”
David threw himself disconsolately in the battered old armchair. The other boy glanced up with sudden interest.
“What’s your family’s attitude towards the war?”
“We’re all at sixes and sevens. Father’s more English than the English; and mother sits and worries in alternate layers over Con and her own people in Germany. Does not mention them, of course. Hardy is a genuine patriot, I believe, without making much row about it. Of course being married to Beatrice has influenced him. We hang the fact of Beatrice out in the front garden like the clean washing.... Sickening. And all the while there’s Max interned over there—and Gustave interned over here—also unmentionable ... not that Hedda minds much. But father.... You should see his face when visitors enquire after ‘poor Mr Fürth’—and they do it as if they were treading on egg-shells. The etiquette of internment is as yet very precarious. One isn’t at all sure if Gustave is to be exalted as a martyr or mysteriously hushed up as though he were a convict—I say, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m in for it too, that’s all.”
“Internment? You, Marcus? I—I’m sorry. I’d no idea....”
“All right. You needn’t do the egg-shell trick. I was born in Germany, and father didn’t have me naturalized, that’s all.”
David was silent a moment, thoughtfully staring at his boots. “Has he appealed?”
“Yes. No good. The Government has condoned too many cases, and the Anti-German section are beginning to protest. So they’ve had to tighten up again. We’ve got a let-off from deportation for grandfather and Aunt Stella. Can’t expect more, with all these spy cases about.”