Read Online The kindly ones by Anthony Powell - Free Book Online

the official announcement of his engagement. Billson had at once burst into tears. Bracey was having a ‘funny day’ – though a mild one – brought on either by regret at the necessity of resuming his duties, or, more probably, as a consequence of nervous strain after a spell in the house of his Luton sister-in-law. Accordingly, he showed no interest in the prospect of being left, as it were, in possession of the field so far as Billson was concerned. After issuing his pronouncement, Albert turned his attention to the mousse, the cooking of which always caused him great anxiety. Billson moved silently from kitchen to dining-room, and back again, laying the table miserably, red-eyed, white-faced, looking as much like a ghost as any she had described. She had taken badly Albert’s surrender to the ‘girl from Bristol’. The house had an uneasy air. I retired to my own places of resort in the garden.
    The Conyers party was scheduled to arrive about one o’clock, but the notorious uncertainty of motor-cars had given rise to much head-shaking on the probability of their lateness. However, I was loitering about the outskirts of the house, not long after the telegraph-boy had disappeared on his bicycle over the horizon, when a car began painfully to climb the lower slopes of the hill. It could only contain General and Mrs Conyers. This was an unexpected excitement. I watched their slow ascent, which was jerky, like the upward movement of a funicular, but, contrary to my father’s gloomy forecast, the steep incline was negotiated without undue difficulty. I was even able to open the Stonehurst gate to admit the vehicle. There could be no doubt now of the identity of driver and passenger. By that period, of course, motorists no longer wore the peaked cap and goggles of their pioneering days, but, all the same, the General’s long check ulster and deerstalker seemed assumed to some extent ritualistically.
    ‘It is always cold motoring,’ my mother used to say.
    The car drew up by the front door. The General, leaping from it with boundless energy, came to meet me, leaving his wife to extract herself as best she could from a pile of wraps and rugs, sufficient in number to perform a version of the Dance of the Seven Veils. Tall, distinguished, with grey moustache and flashing eyes, he held out his hand.
    ‘How do you do, Nicholas?’
    He spoke gravely, in a tone no different from that to be used with a contemporary. There was about him a kind of fierceness, combined with a deep sense of understanding.
    ‘We are a little earlier than I expected,’ he said. ‘I hope your father and mother will not mind. I drove rather fast, as your mother said you lived at the back of beyond, and I am always uncertain of my own map-reading. I see now what she meant. How are they educating you up here? Do you go to school?’
    ‘Not yet. I have lessons with Miss Orchard.’
    ‘Oh, yes. Miss Orchard is the governess who teaches all the children round here. I know her well by name. What children are they?’
    ‘The Fenwicks, Mary Barber, Richard Vaughan, the Westmacott twins.’
    ‘Fenwick in the Gloucesters?’
    ‘Yes, I think so – the regiment that wears a badge at the back of their cap.’
    ‘And Mary Barber’s father?’
    ‘He’s in the Queen’s. Richard Vaughan’s is in the “Twenty-Fourth” – the South Wales Borderers.’
    ‘What about the father of the Westmacott twins?’
    ‘A Gunner.’
    ‘What sort of a Gunner?’
    ‘Field, but Thomas and Henry Westmacott say their father is going to get his “jacket” soon, so he may be Royal Horse Artillery by now.’
    ‘An exceedingly well-informed report,’ said the General. ‘You have given yourself the trouble to go into matters thoroughly, I see. That is one of the secrets of success in life. Now take us to your parents.’
    This early arrival resulted in my seeing rather more of General and Mrs Conyers than I should have done had they turned up at their appointed