I stood there, flabbergasted. It took me a moment to speak.
“Is that who I am?”
“Of course it is.” Edward waved a hand in the air, apparently indicating the house, the estate.
I shook my head.
“Sir Edward, I’m a twenty-five-year-old former fly half for a semi-professional Welsh rugby team you’ve definitely never heard of. That was my career before all this. Did you know? I’m also a fantasy-reading geek who can empty a pub with his opinions on the works of D. R. R. Fanshaw. And don’t even get me started on Brandon Osmond’sA Kingdom of Vipers and Valourseries because you’ll regret that you did. I’m also a level six human paladin with an oath of devotion. These are my passions, by the way. Oh, and let’s not forget, I’m a common or garden-variety himbo on horseback. I’m a son and a brother, an uncle and a godson, and I’m a lover. To your son, as it happens. I am all of these thingsbeforeI am a baron. Petey understands that. He sees me, not a title—which is how we prefer things around here.”
I paused to give that time to sink in, but Sir Edward appeared unmoved—which was annoying because I thought I’d been jollyeloquent. So I put the metaphorical gloves back on and delivered the blow I knew would land.
“The fact you think a title matters more than the soul of a person, the fact you think it would take a financial incentive to make your son worth loving, Sir Edward, says more about you than it does about him.”
Sir Edward’s face went as red as a shiny new cricket ball. “How dare you?—”
I held up a hand. “I’m not telling you how to be a father. That’s between the two of you. But I won’t stand here and let you talk about Petey like he’s a burden, or a problem to be solved, or something you need to pay someone to take off your hands. He deserves better than that.”
Peggy stepped out from behind Sir Edward’s back. I hadn’t seen her approach, had no idea how long she’d been listening.
“It’s true, Teddy,” she said. “You’re my son and I love you, but you’re an arsehole to that boy.”
The heat was now visibly rising from beneath Sir Edward’s collar. His blood was bubbling away like raspberry jam on a stovetop.
“As if I would take parenting advice from you, Mother,” he sneered. Then he stopped, and squinted at her. “Dear God, are you high?”
This was not a conversation I needed to be a part of. I turned to make my exit, only to be greeted by a wall of feathers and flapping wings. Derek’s duck was scrambling across the lawn, flying over Jaguars—with my mother, still dressed like a geriatric nymph, in hot pursuit.
“Someone help me grab this duck,” she wailed—and a horde of men in Tudor battledress rallied to the cause, descending on Gerald and the water’s edge. One man in the burgundy-and-blue livery of the Duke of Gloucester made a leap for him, but the duck flapped high into the air and landed on the other sideof a car. There were three roadsters with their roofs down in a row, and the duck scrambled through the first, my mother leaping over the door and across the seats trying to nab the bird. Gerald flapped his wings and flew over to the next Jaguar, and my mother—with an esprit that defied her years and how stoned she was—followed along doggedly, arms outstretched. Men were falling all over themselves to keep up and to catch the duck, which leapt into the belly of the next car.
“Not on my leather seats!” Sir Edward cried. At which point my mother looked up, got her leg caught in her muslin dress, stumbled, pitched forward into Sir Edward’s Jag, and struggled to pick herself up. She stood and fell, and stood, and tumbled out of the car onto the lawn, and stood again.
“I’m all right!” she said—as Gerald finally managed to take flight and make his bid for freedom. “I’m all right!”
And everyone watched in disbelief as, behind her, Sir Edward’s beloved 1967 Series 1 E-Type Jaguar roadster rolled silently into the Long Water.
Chapter 49
Petey
The following Tuesday afternoon, I was in the Old Coach House editing footage of two hundred men in Tudor battledress dragging a classic Jag out of a lake like they’d challenged it to a tug of war. Haruto had captured the whole disaster on the drone—Bunny scrambling through the cars after the duck, the stumble that must have knocked the handbrake loose, and the slow inevitable roll of the car into the water. Thandiwe had caught the close-up of my father’s face as the only thing in this world he truly loved entered the water and sank like a stone. I had watched it at least four hundred times. My parents had taken the train home with Gran, who was still high and singing “Octopus’s Garden” on a loop, I think to torture my father. The Jag had gone back on a tow truck.
William, dressed in his riding gear, popped his head around the door. I quickly turned my screen off and pulled my headphones down.
“Not suspicious at all,” he said, stepping into the room. He was filthy and sweaty.
“I don’t want you to see it until it’s finished.”
William stood behind me, hands on my shoulders, kissing my neck.
“You absolutely reek,” I said.
“Of horse and leather and manliness?” He slid a hand down to my crotch and gripped it like he was testing an avocado for ripeness.
“Of horse shit,” I protested. “Come on, off you go. I have work to do.” I shrugged myself free.
“You don’t even know what I want yet.”
“I have a fair idea, and you’re not getting it until you’ve showered.”
