Chapter 18
William
The footage of the “fox hunt” was completely unusable.
We’d cost the production tens of thousands of pounds, which Indira intended to deduct from Buckford’s estate hire fee.
No matter what demands the cursed letter from HMRC contained, the loss of cash would hurt.
But principles are principles, right? Indira said the best sound guy she’d ever worked with had been injured (we had apologised profusely) and was now on leave—although whether he was on leave because he’d broken his arm, his emotional support duck had done a runner, or his first aid had been administered by a pair of bare-breasted, rain-soaked hedge witches was still unclear.
What was clear was that the kidnapping charges would not stick.
The police found Samuel Fox in the village pub, getting merrily drunk with Uncle Leaf, standing on the bar reciting T.
S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to rapturous applause from the locals.
So far, so good. But Petey Boy hadn’t spoken to me for over a week.
The atmosphere when he arrived at the folly each evening was frosty at best. This space had enough difficult memories without this unpleasantness.
It was absolutely killing me. I’d wanted to be chums. I’d wanted to get to know him.
I was sitting in Dad’s armchair in the study, reading The Knight’s Vow, the second Knights-Errant novel, the brown HMRC envelope shoved down the side of the cushion so I didn’t have to look at it.
Young Prince Henry was now young King Henry, and the teenage lust between him and Sir Gawain had mellowed and matured into something deeper—a kinship all around them envied.
The door downstairs clicked open.
“Petey Boy?”
I moved to the top of the staircase. Petey Boy looked up at me, his eyebrows flicking an acknowledgement, then he moved out of sight.
“How was your day?”
Still no answer, so I bounced down the stairs. Petey Boy stared, his face clearly unimpressed.
“Do you have anything else you can wear? Anything at all?” he said. Yep, definitely unimpressed. He looked tired too.
“These are my jimmy-jams.”
Petey Boy rolled his eyes. “You’ve been wearing the same pair of red boxers this whole time. It’s gross.”
“Bramley washes them every other day,” I protested. “In Fairy Non-Bio. I assume because I have enough Fairy Bio as it is.”
He didn’t laugh.
“They barely cover you. It’s obscene.”
I leant my bum against the kitchenette and folded my arms. “I’m getting the sense you’re mad at me about something.”
Petey Boy’s eyes flared. “You’re joking, mate. You know exactly why I’m pissed at you. It’s quite the list. For starters, you made me look like an idiot in front of the whole cast and crew.”
“In the carriage court, you mean?”
“You know that’s what I mean.”
I supposed it was why my boxers had set him off tonight; they reminded him of the other day.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I’d meant to pull on some trousers before I went down, but the blasted window—”
“You undermined me. In front of everyone.” Petey started unbuttoning his boiler suit, revealing his white vest.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was angry. I could have handled it better.”
“Derek had to be taken to hospital. They’ve upped his anxiety meds. You know he’s off the show?”
“Yes, I’m very sorry about that too,” I said. “If there’s anything I can do—”
“You sabotaged an entire day’s filming.” Petey tied the sleeves of his boiler suit around his waist, yanking them tight. I got the sense he wished he was tightening them around my neck.
“To be fair, that wasn’t me. I was in here almost the entire day. Reading. Except for when I went to the pub to watch the rugby with Bramley and Uncle Leaf. And Samuel Fox, actually. Did you meet him? He’s great. He’s thinking about renting a cottage in the village.”
Suddenly, Petey Boy roared in unmistakable frustration.
“Shut up! Just bloody well shut up, will you?”
That took me aback.
Petey Boy flopped onto the bed, his head in his hands. Then his shoulders bounced, and I realised he was crying.
“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,” I said, which I believe comes straight out of all the psychology textbooks. I moved towards him, arms outstretched, instinctively, to hug him. Then I second-guessed myself and pulled away. Then he sobbed and I stepped forward again, but he held up a hand to stop me.
“I haven’t cried since I was fourteen,” he said, face buried behind his other hand.
“Then you should probably let it out,” I said. “That sounds super unhealthy.”
Petey Boy slowly shook his head, refusing to look at me.
After a few moments, he picked up the end of a sleeve and wiped his face.
There were dark rings under his bloodshot eyes, and snot was glistening at his nostrils like a couple of silvery snails who were thinking about popping out for some lunch. His eyes finally met mine.
“If you ever tell anyone you saw that, I will hunt down everything you care about and personally see to it that it is destroyed beyond recognition.”
“You’ll have to hurry. I’ve got quite the head start on you,” I muttered.
“Huh?” He frowned.
“Nothing. Your emotional vulnerability is safe with me.”
He scowled and got to his feet. “I’m going for a shower.”
He slunk out of the room. As the door closed behind him, I exhaled a long blast of breath. Unsure what else to do, I checked the water level in the kettle and lit the gas ring. By the time Petey Boy came back from his shower, there were two steaming mugs on the coffee table in the study.
“Up here,” I called down when I heard the door click.
“I’m going to bed,” he mumbled.
“Come have your tea. It’s Scottish. It’ll help you sleep.”
I heard a few steps, and Petey Boy’s head popped up in the stairwell. “I’ve heard of Irish coffee but not Scottish tea.”
“It’s my invention,” I said, taking a sip from my mug, then raising it to say cheers. Petey Boy continued up the stairs, his slender body hidden behind the white robe. He was always so completely covered, and I wasn’t sure why. He sat down in the armchair opposite me and picked up his tea.
“What’s that taste?” he asked, nose crinkling. “Is it brandy?” He sipped.
“Valium.”
He nearly choked on it.
“Are you for real?”
“No, you goose, it’s a shot of Scotch whisky. But it will absolutely help you sleep, and you’ll have very sweet dreams. Probably about sexy kilted ginger Scotsmen. The kind who’re so hung their foreskins drag along in the heather behind them.”
This time Petey Boy did laugh. Oh, I had missed his smile. Then his face turned serious again, and I realised it must be time to pay the piper.
“When we first met,” he said, “you told me we were on the same team.”
“We are.”
“So why does it feel like I’m constantly fighting against you?”
“I promise you, we want the same thing.”
“It doesn’t feel like it to me. It doesn’t feel like it to Indira either. She’s on the warpath, mate, and she’s got you in her sights.”
I gulped down my tea. “And what does that look like when it’s at home?”
“Put it this way, if there’s going to be a second season of The Love Manor, it won’t be filmed at Buckford Hall. I can tell you that for free.”
This was very bad news indeed. I was kind of relying on the show coming back year after year to keep the estate afloat—and to deal with whatever it was the King’s tax collector wanted.
My fear at losing a significant amount of future income must have been obvious on my face, because Petey Boy’s eyebrows went up.
“Yeah,” he said, “it turns out I’m not the only one who unleashed forces I didn’t understand.”
Well, he had me there. My father always used to say Don’t quote me to me, and now I understood why. It had seemed funnier when I’d said it.
“How do I fix it?”
Petey Boy leant forward in his chair, cupping his tea on his knees.
“You can start by keeping your word about being a help, not a hindrance, bruv.”
He was right. My eyes flicked down to my copy of The Knight’s Vow, Sir Gawain’s oath to protect Henry unto the death flashing through my mind.
To be honest, if you’d asked me, I’d have said keeping my word was a defining feature of my personality—right up there with being bookish, horsey, and deathly allergic to trousers.
Petey Boy seemed to sense his words had wounded.
“You promised to do everything you could to make this show a success,” Petey Boy continued. “So far, you ain’t lived up to that promise, mate. It’s me who cops it in the neck every time you fail to step up.”
My leg started to bounce involuntarily, the way it did when I felt uncomfortable or stressed.
I chewed at my thumbnail, looked aimlessly around the room as if my father’s dusty books might provide the answer.
I needed Petey Boy to know I really would do whatever it took to make The Love Manor a success—and to keep future seasons filming at Buckford.
My eyes settled on The Knight’s Vow again.
“That’s it!” I said, jumping up.
Petey Boy looked startled. “What’s what?”
I put my tea down. “Stand up,” I told him, grabbing his hand.
“William, I’m tired, what is this?”
I got down on bended knee, still holding Petey Boy’s hand in mine.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he said. “No, I don’t think that’s the answer.”
I bowed my head and said the words Sir Gawain had said to his beloved King Henry. More or less.
“I, William Stanley Leaf Richard George Winters-de Valois-Winters, swear that henceforward I will be a faithful man to my lord, Peter…” I looked up. He was smiling. “What’s your middle name?”
“Boy.” He giggled.
“Fair enough.” I bowed my head solemnly once more.
“Will be a faithful man to my lord, Peter ‘Petey Boy’ Topham, and do become your liege man of life and limb in your crusade to make The Love Manor a success. I will bear unto you a BAFTA-worthy television programme, to live and to die, against all manner of folk. I will not reveal your counsel to any man, nor any angry chain-smoking Scotswoman, and I will serve you faithfully with worldly honour, until your show is safely ‘in the can.’ So help me God.”
I put my hands together in the prayer position and presented them to Petey Boy, my head still bowed.
“Put your hands around mine,” I said.
“This is batshit crazy, bruv.”
“Come on, do it. Or I can’t be held to my words.”
He put his hands around mine.
“Now kiss me on the forehead.”
“Are you serious?”
“Do you want my help or not?”
Petey Boy chortled. I looked up at him, and he finally bent down.
He closed his eyes, and his gentle lips met my brow.
He smelt of Buckford’s familiar rose-and-geranium soap.
My breath caught. He lingered, perhaps a moment longer than he should have.
My pulse raced. Then, suddenly, he was upright again, and my face was almost in his crotch. I stood up, my eyes meeting his.
“Well, that was very dramatic,” he said. “Thank you for the tea. If you don’t mind, I’m off to bed. I’m so far beyond tired, I’ve just hallucinated that you swore an oath of fealty to me.”
“I did,” I said, with a sincerity I hoped he saw.
“I know you did. As odd as it was, I appreciate it. Really. I’ve been so stressed, it helps to know I won’t be fighting all the way anymore.
” He turned and took the first couple of steps down to his bedroom.
“Oh, by the way. It’s my day off tomorrow.
I’m planning to sleep in for as long as possible.
I appreciate this is your home, but do you think… ?”
“You won’t hear a peep out of me, I promise.”
“Thanks.”
As he started back down the stairs, an idea came to me. This was exactly the opportunity I’d been waiting for.
“Hey, when you get up, do you want to, maybe, hang out?”
“Huh?” Petey Boy’s head reappeared above the level of the floor.
“I thought I could show you around the estate. We could take the horses out? Go down into the village, perhaps?”
Petey Boy was frowning.
“You want to hang out with me?”
“Well, it’s not obligatory. But I am your liege man, after all. I thought you might need to get away from the house for a while. It’s what I do when it all feels like too much. This house is enormous, but it’s also very small. Getting away from it is good for perspective. Clears the mind.”
Petey Boy chewed his lip, considering. Then a hint of a smile, and a nod.
“I’d like that.”
My heart took off at a gallop, my whole body tingling.
“Great,” I said, trying to sound casual. “You sleep as long as you need. When you’re ready, I’ll get you out of here and show you my world.”