The kindly ones by Anthony Powell Page B

Aldershot.’
    ‘Quite close then.’
    ‘What the devil is Giles doing in Aldershot?’
    My parents looked at each other without speaking. Things could not be worse. Uncle Giles was not much more than a dozen miles away.
    ‘We heard there was some trouble, didn’t we?’
    ‘Of course there is trouble,’ said my father. ‘Was there ever a moment when Giles was not in trouble? Don’t be silly.’
    There was another long pause.
    ‘The telegram was reply-paid,’ said my mother at last, not able to bear the thought that the boy might be bored or inconvenienced by this delay in drafting an answer. ‘The boy is still waiting.’
    ‘Damn the boy.’
    My father was in despair. As I have said, all tragedies for him were major tragedies, and here was one following close on the heels of another.
    ‘With the Converses coming too.’
    ‘Can’t we put Giles off?’
    ‘He may really need help.’
    ‘Of course he needs help. He always needs help.’
    ‘Difficult to say he can’t come.’
    ‘Just like Giles to choose this day of all days.’
    ‘Besides, I never think Giles and Aylmer Conyers get on very well together.’
    ‘Get on well together,’ said my father. ‘They can’t stand each other.’
    The thought of this deep mutual antipathy existing between his brother and General Conyers cheered my father a little. He even laughed.
    ‘I suppose Giles will have to come,’ he admitted.
    ‘No way out.’
    ‘The Conyerses will leave before he arrives.’
    ‘They won’t stay late if they are motoring home.’
    ‘Shall I tell Giles he can come?’
    ‘We must, I think.’
    ‘It may be just as well to know what he is up to. I hope it is not a serious mess this time. I wouldn’t trust that fellow an inch who got him the bucket-shop job.’
    Uncle Giles did not at all mind annoying his relations. That was all part of his policy of making war on society. In fact, up to a point, the more he annoyed his relations, the better he was pleased. At the same time, his interests were to some extent bound up with remaining on reasonably good terms with my father. Since he had quarrelled irretrievably with his other brother, my father – also on poorish terms with Uncle Martin, whom we never saw – represented one of the few stable elements in the vicissitudes of Uncle Giles’s life. He and my father irritated, without actually disliking, each other. Uncle Giles, the older; my father, the more firmly established; the honours were fairly even, when it came to conflict. For example, my father disapproved, probably rightly, of the form taken by his brother’s ‘outside broking’, although I do not know how much the firm for which Uncle Giles worked deserved the imputation of sharp practice. Certainly my father questioned its bona fides and was never tired of declaring that he would advise no friend of his to do business there. At the same time, his own interest in the stock market prevented him from refraining entirely from all financial discussion with Uncle Giles, with whom he was in any case indissolubly linked, financially speaking, by the terms of a will. Their argument would often become acrimonious, but I suspect my father sometimes took “Uncle Giles’s advice about investments, especially if a ‘bit of a gamble’ was in the air.
    ‘Shall I say Expect you teatime today ?’
    ‘How is Giles going to get here?’
    ‘I won’t fetch him. It can’t be done. The Conyerses may not leave in time.’
    My mother looked uncertain.
    ‘Do you think I should?’
    ‘You can’t. Not with other guests coming.’
    ‘Giles will find his way.’
    ‘We can be sure of that.’
    My mother was right in supposing Uncle Giles perfectly capable of finding his way to any place recommended by his own interests. She was also right in thinking that Albert, after confiding his marriage plans to herself, would immediately reveal them in the kitchen. Edith described the scene later. She was having a cup of tea before church when Albert made