William
The bluebells had long since died off. I walked up to the stone circle to look out over the estate. My naked feet were claggy with mud. I’d wanted to feel close to the earth, but in reality, it meant playing hopscotch around the shit Achilles had festooned along the bridle trail. The day was overcast, and the breeze was cool against the bare skin of my chest and legs. My face was damp from tears that hadn’t stopped in days. The estate always looked so beautiful from here: the Long Water reflecting the sky, the house nestled between the two hills like a shiny new coin between a pair of glorious buttocks. I turned my back on all of it and looked east to the family mausoleum. I closed my eyes, sucking the fresh air deep into my lungs, and—when I had summoned the courage—scrambled down the rocks and through the forest.
I sat there for ages, on the floor, in the mortuary chapel above the crypt, letting the weight of my ancestors’ judgement press me into the stone. I needed to confess to the dead that I was contemplating the unthinkable.
“I know you’ll think I’ve failed,” I said, as if they could hear me. “But Mum is right. Living is for the living. Why am I living for the dead?”
Mum had been here, too, it seemed. There was a glass jar filled with foxgloves and ox-eye daisies. My fingers traced the names of my father and my brother, carved by the stonemason into the memorial plaque so recently it looked as if it had been finished yesterday. Their deaths felt as fresh as yesterday yet somehow also a lifetime ago.
“You would have been so much better at this than me,” I told my brother.
“And you”—I tapped my father’s name with my finger—“you have a lot to answer for. It’s as if you’d never heard of a savings account. Or tax. Or living within one’s means. But I’m proud to be your son. I love you, Dad. I miss you every day. And if,if,I sell the estate, I know you would understand. Because I’d be doing it for love.”
Petey’s face flashed through my mind. His laugh. His cheeky grin. The way his hip bones were sharp enough to slice through the elastic of his briefs and how right they felt in my hands whenever I pulled him towards me. The look on his face when I’d told him I was disappointed. That note:I don’t know what the future holds for us, William. But I know I love you.I had to try, surely? Even if it all came to nothing or he didn’t want me anymore, I had to try.
When I emerged, it was starting to drizzle and I was beginning to regret my lack of clothing. There was no buzzer in the mausoleum to summon help (probably because it would have scared the shit out of the staff if it ever rung—and believe me, as someone who was once a teenage boy, my brother and I would have been ringing it all the time) so I had to make the best of it. I trekked along the river path until I reached the Long Water. As the heavens opened up, I took shelter in LadyCaroline’s Bridge and pressed the button to summon Bramley. As I sat there, looking back at the house, waiting for my trusty chief operating officer to appear, my eye was caught by a movement on the water. It was Derek’s duck. He was followed by a mallard and a dozen ducklings. My heart filled with joy, and tears sprang from my eyes again. No wonder he didn’t want to get caught. He had too many reasons to stay.
“Good for you, mate,” I said. “You’re an ecological disaster, but good for you.”
A few minutes later, Bramley arrived with a towel, an umbrella, and a hip flask.
“Thank you, Brammers,” I said, wrapping myself in the towel.
“A pleasure, my lord.” I took a swig of the brandy and felt liquid fire all the way down to my gut. Derek’s duck was standing by the water’s edge, supervising his babies scrambling up the bank—as if he was counting each precious soul to safety.
Love. It was a future worth fighting for. And realising that, logically everything else fell into place. I had clarity. But I was also terrified.
“How would you feel about moving to London, Bramley?”
The old man smiled. “Sounds like an adventure, my lord.”
I blinked, astonished. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“I adore London, my lord. Great things always happen in London.”
No, they didn’t. I snatched the flask and sniffed it. “How much of this have you had? That city is cursed, man.”
Bramley’s eyebrows went up. “If I might speak plainly, my lord?”
I nodded, urging him to explain himself.
“You’re the fourth baron I’ve had the privilege to serve?—”
“If you’re going to compare me to my forefathers, I’m not sure I can bear to hear it.”
“The first was your great-grandfather, who went to London a freshly minted lord and rose to hold two of the great offices of state. A confidant of Churchill, he was a towering statesman who brought much credit and lustre to this house. The second was your grandfather, who came back from London with investments that saw this house safely through a period when many great houses were sold off. The third was your father, who came back from London with your mother—who is the best thing that has happened to this estate all my fifty years here. Oh yes, very good things happen to this family when the baron goes to London, my lord.”
“Golly.” That was quite the speech. I took a swig of the brandy. Then another. And one more for luck. “So you don’t think the place is cursed?”
“No, my lord.”
Holy shit, I was going to do this, wasn’t I?
“And you’d come with me, wouldn’t you, if I moved to London.”
The man bowed slightly, smiling broadly. “Of course, my lord.”
I hit the bottle one last time and sucked in a deep breath.
