“Just not to be ordered to kill Jews. Men with faces like mine, and exquisitely humorous noses like mine.... I used to lie awake and think of it ... the rush into the opposite trench, and my rifle in the stomach of another Jew, tugging at it to get it out—get it out ... while he looked at me—with my own eyes.... Well, thank God, I shall be spared that, at least!”
“I don’t suppose they’d have massed all the German Jews there are, in the bit of trench opposite yours,” Richard argued.
“One would have been enough, thanks,” grimly. “I wouldn’t have minded laying in among those swaggering Prussian crop-heads who have always shoved the Jews off the pavement ... but it does make a difference in war whom one fights.”
“Don’t see it.”
David laughed: “I might have known that even Richard the Second has his limitations!” and indeed Richard’s later-born understanding of things below the surface had thickened somewhat again during his past year of reprieve.
The Conductor came round; and David said, “I’ll stand the ice-cream if you’ll stand the fares.”
“Right. Lend me some coppers then, till I change a quid.”
David had only half-a-crown, and the conductor handed Richard back two and fourpence. David eyed the coins mournfully.... “And ’e didn’t pay for ze tr-ram fares,” he sang, in imitation of a music-hall Hebrew comedian. “I foresee much trouble hereafter over these reckonings. Look!” with a sudden wild lurch to starboard—“No—not there, you ass! Chalked on the pavement!”
“‘British troops across the Jordan’—that’s good going!”