The Oxford Set
3rd February 1925- Prologue
The firefighter hid the letter before retreating from the charred remains of the country house. He wanted to be sure that whoever found him would understand that the boy who seemed to be lost was, in fact, not and that they didn’t need to reunite him with his parents. To do that would be physically impossible.
A day later, Hugo and Matilda Perceville, Lord and Lady Brooke, arrived at the massive mound of ashes.
Hugo was the son of the Earl of Waering and the owner of a bank in London.
For a while, he realised he needed to move out of his childhood home of Waering Castle and find somewhere else to live until he could inherit his father’s title and once again take up residence there.
The site of a smouldering pile of rubble nestled deep in the Waeringshire countryside seemed like the perfect place.
”It’s going to take a lot of renovation,” Hugo said. “But this will be the perfect home for us within time.”
”And our children also,” Matilda said. “And their children, of course.”
”Indeed,” Hugo said. “Right, let’s take a closer look, shall we?”
Hugo clambered up the mountain, his wife tailgated behind him.
Something crumpled under Hugo’s foot.
He observed the ground beneath him and found a sheet of paper underneath the cinders.
Hugo bent over and picked it up, brushing off the dust on top of it.
He noticed that someone had folded the sheet into two, so he unfurled it.
He perused the scribbled lettering, his mouth drawing into a straight line and biting his lip.
”What is it, dear,” Matilda said, noticing her husband frowning as he read the letter.
She leaned closer over his shoulder, trying to get a better view of the frame.
But before she could, Hugo snapped the letter shut and placed it inside the breast pocket of his tweed jacket.
”Nothing, darling,” Hugo said. “It’s just a bit of litter, that’s all.”
Hugo marched onward; Matilda followed his lead.
Lord Brooke observed the vast blackened landscape around him and froze.
Staring back at him on the horizon was a figure, a boy no older than fifteen.
His face was blank, and his skin was unnaturally white.
Hugo’s shoulders tightened. His breaths burst in and out.
“Is something the matter, Hugo?” Matilda said.
At first, Hugo didn’t respond, but then he sprang to life.
“I’m fine,” Hugo said. “I just thought I saw something, that’s all.”
Hugo scanned his surroundings.
The boy appeared to have vanished; the Percevilles were the only people for miles.
“Let’s move on, shall we?” Hugo said, stomping further into the horizon.
He pointed vaguely into the middle distance. “The squash court could go there, I think.”
Lord and Lady Brooke clambered over the pile of cinders until they were on the other side.
3rd February 1935- Hugo and Matilda Perceville
It took a decade for the mound of ashes to transform into the honey-coloured country house that was Perceville Hall.
By this point, fears were growing about Germany’s Führer and the prospect of another war.
“I don’t see what the fuss with this Hitler fellow is about,” Hugo said, reclining behind a mahogany desk as he read the latest news. “He’s simply an imbecile with a passion for ancient history, sharing his love with the crowd as any good leader should.”
He turned the page of his paper and glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room.
The clock told Hugo it was half past ten, which he knew was wrong as he had just finished lunch.
Hugo harrumphed as he threw the paper onto the desk and strode to the clock.
After setting it to the correct time and getting it ticking again, the phone rang.
Hugo jolted and hugged the grandfather clock.
He composed himself and stepped over to the phone.
“Hello,” Hugo said, pressing the phone tightly against his ear.
The hairs on his neck stood on end as he heard what sounded like breathing on the other side.
”What’s inside?” Said a teenage boy’s voice from the other end of the phone.
Hugo’s heart pounded in his chest. His veins pulsated violently.
The telephone vibrated in his trembling hands.
“What do you mean,” Hugo said. “What’s inside what?”
“What’s inside the desk?” the boy said.
Hugo’s eyes inflated.
He stalked the sides of his desk until he arrived at a drawer.
Lord Brooke breathed erratically, and he opened it with a shaky hand.
The letter he had put in the drawer was inside, and he had not examined it since.
Hugo stared at the letter for a moment.
A blood-curdling scream startled him.
He dropped the phone and clung to the desk.
Slamming the drawer shut, he walked to the balcony and gazed down at the vast hall below.
“Is everything all right, darling?” Hugo said, believing his wife to have emitted the scream.
“There was a boy in here, Hugo,” Matilda said. “He was using the secret telephone.”
Hugo plonked the phone back onto its holder and bounded down the stairs to the great hall.
When Hugo reached her, Matilda was frozen into place, staring at the wood-panelled wall.
“He was just using the phone, inquiring about an object inside a desk,” Matilda said.
Hugo took a deep breath, pushed his chest out, and approached the phone.
”There’s no one there now, darling,” Hugo said, closing the small door on the phone. “You may have just been imagining it.”
Hugo scanned the small alcove and locked eyes with the boy.
He sat by the fire, resting in one of the high-backed velvet armchairs in that part of the house.
Lord Brooke turned round to his wife.
”Let’s walk around the grounds, shall we, darling?”
Hugo placed his arm around his wife’s back and escorted her out of the house and into the garden.
The boy observed them, his face devoid of emotion, before focusing on the fire.
3rd February 1985- Ambrose and Margaret Perceville
Unfortunately for everyone, the fears surrounding Hitler were well-founded, and he plunged the world into another war.
Perceville Hall became the base of Hugo’s bank, as he believed the country was safer than the capital.
Although the bankers enjoyed the serenity and novelty of living in a grand country house, they were homesick and looked forward to returning to Londinium.
The boy watched from the shadows, excited by the hustle and bustle of seeing several people hurriedly typing on typewriters and pacing up and down the corridor.
Some bankers commented on Mr and Mrs Perceville’s son, which Lord and Lady Brooke were confused by as they had no children.
Their denials and Hugo’s visible fear scared the bankers into never mentioning the boy again.
The allied forces won the war, and the bankers returned to Londinium.
After a few decades, Hugo and Matilda moved out as Hugo inherited his father’s title and took up residence in his childhood home of Waering Castle.
Their son, Ambrose, later became the head of Perceville Hall, and he was subsequently joined by his wife, Margaret.
For many years, they were unaware of the child living in the house with them or of the other ghosts until one day, exactly sixty years after the fateful fire.
Ambrose, who was Chinewrde and Sucham’s Conservative MP, awaited the arrival of his friend and idol, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her husband.
”Mind the Persian rug, would you?” Ambrose said as a group of servants moved a giant table into the dining room upstairs. “I don’t want it rumpled when Maggie sees it.”
“There’s someone here to see you, Ambrose,” Margaret called from the corridor.
Ambrose’s eyes bulged. He stood to attention, brushing the dust off his suit.
Margaret Perceville, a woman every inch the Prime Minister’s identical albeit younger twin, strode into the room.
Ambrose grimaced at the middle-aged man beside her, who most definitely wasn’t Dennis Thatcher.
”I’m sorry, I’m much too busy to have a private meeting with constituents today,” Ambrose said. “You can speak to my representative at the village hall on Friday like everyone else.”
The man took a few steps forward and bowed his head.
“This isn’t about constituency matters, Lord Brooke,” the man said. “I‘m here to carry out my father’s dying wish.”
Ambrose tilted his head and furrowed his brows. “What on Earth are you talking about?”
“He was a firefighter, sir,” the man said. “He put out a fire here sixty years ago.”
Ambrose pouted and nodded his head. “Yes, I think I remember my father saying the house was a pile of ashes when he bought it.”
“Mine died last week,” the man said. “He wanted to know whether the boy was ok.”
The ears of the boy, who had at this point become accustomed to being unnoticed, perked up.
He crept closer to the three people but stayed out of view.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Margaret said. “But Ambrose and I are the only people in this house.”
”But my dad talked about a boy he failed to save,” the man said. “Who now lives here for all eternity.”
Ambrose scowled at the unwelcome visitor.
He wafted a hand in his face and turned away.
”Kindly take this fellow off the premises, would you, Maggie?” Ambrose said. “His grief has driven him to insanity.”
“It would be my pleasure,” Margaret said, pushing the man out of the hall. “Come along, please.”
”It was my father’s dying wish,” the man said as Mrs P escorted him out. “He wanted to know if the boy was happy and being looked after.”
Ambrose watched as the man disappeared from view. He eyed the ceiling and took a huge breath.
He rotated towards the fire and stopped in his tracks.
A small knife lying on a table was glistening in the sun.
Ambrose stomped over to the knife and picked it up.
On it was a handwritten inscription: Look inside the desk drawer.
Ambrose’s mouth fell open as he examined the knife, the upper lip curled back.
He threw the knife across the table and stumbled into the chair behind him.
The boy watched in the shadows as his plan came into motion.
Ambrose had absolutely no idea what was going on, but somehow, his eyes gravitated upwards towards the balcony where the library was.
His eyes bulged as he observed the desk behind the railings, and his breathing became shaky.
Almost against his will, he zoomed up the stairs into the library.
Once he arrived at the desk, he noticed a post-it note stuck to the wooden surface.
On it was scrawled the words, “Look inside this drawer,“ with an arrow pointing to the drawer on Ambrose’s right.
He grabbed the drawer and tried to open it, but it was useless.
He rattled it, attempting to get it to open.
Ambrose’s face reddened, and his eyes burned with fury.
“He hid the key in the bookcase, sir,” a young voice said.
Ambrose’s eyes bulged. He hyperventilated as he scanned the room.
”Who said that?” He said.
His vision darted around the room, trying to discover who was with him, but he was alone.
Ambrose began to shake uncontrollably, grateful that neither his constituents nor the national press were present to see him gradually lose his mind.
“The Thatchers have arrived, darling,” Margaret called from the ground floor, making Ambrose flinch.
Ambrose composed himself and controlled his breathing.
“Coming, Maggie,” Ambrose said.
Ambrose quickly fled from the library, leaving the letter unread and the boy unnoticed.
3rd February 2025- Harold and Thelma Perceville
The intervening decade saw the downfall of Margaret Thatcher and eventually Ambrose himself, as he lost his seat to Labour at the 1997 General Election.
But he was only out of politics for a year, for Ambrose took his father’s place in Waering Castle and the House of Lords.
Ambrose’s son Harold and his American wife Thelma moved into Perceville Hall when he was old enough.
Harold had followed in his father’s footsteps and become Chinwrde and Sucham’s Conservative MP only a year after graduating from Oxford.
Harold ignored the silent, emotionless teenager who shared the house with him until precisely a century after the fire that cost the boy his life, and it was here that things looked up for him.
“Lol, Dwight is such a wuss,” Thelma said as she lounged in an armchair by the fire, scrolling through X on her iPhone.
Thelma was involved in a worldwide coverup, trying to convince those to the left of the political spectrum, of which her brother Dwight was one, that Elon Musk did not do a Nazi salute at a rally and instead made a random gesture that others could easily mistake for one.
Although her primary job was as a lobbyist, her speciality was screwing with people online.
”Wouldn’t it be better to start a new campaign?” Harold said. “Instead of engaging with discourse about something that happened a fortnight ago?”
Thelma sunk further into the back of her chair. “Sure, I could do that,” Thelma said. “But nothing is happening right now. Besides, this is still fun.”
Harold stared out the window, observing the rolling hills of the Waeringshire countryside in the distance.
He took steps back and tripped over something behind him.
Harold steadied himself and bent down to examine what he had tripped over.
He had found an old toy, one he reckoned was at least a century old.
“I’m not gonna stop until the libtards crack,” Thelma said. “I wanna know they can endure it.”
Harold scrutinised the toy in his hand, turning it over to examine every detail.
It was a toy he’d never noticed and certainly not one he remembered playing with as a child.
He placed the trinket onto a piece of furniture.
Harold jolted at the touch of something ice-cold in his hand.
He could feel an object clutched in his palm.
Harold analysed the thing he was holding; it was a key.
He turned towards his wife. “Darling, did you just give me this?”
Thelma momentarily glanced up from her phone. “No, I haven’t left this chair all day.”
She resumed staring at her phone and slid further down the chair.
Some very random things are happening, Harold thought.
He knew it wasn’t Monty; all Monty did was stomp down corridors and slam doors shut behind him.
Was there another ghost in the house he’d somehow not had the pleasure of being properly introduced?
A strange, intrusive thought burned into his brain. It was one he couldn’t ignore.
“I’m just going to visit the library,” Harold said. “I’ll be visible from the balcony if you need me.”
“Sure, you do that, suguh,” Thelma said, reaching to the glass bottle containing a dark liquid next to her and pouring it into a glass.
When Harold wandered into the library, he didn’t know exactly why, but he trusted his instincts as he approached the desk in the middle of the room.
He placed the key in the hole in one of the drawers and opened it.
Inside was a sheet of paper, which Harold knew was a century old.
The person who placed it in the drawer had folded it. Harold unfurled the paper and perused the lettering on one side.
He leaned against the desk as he read the letter.
To whom it may concern,
As you wander through what remains of this stately home, you may see a young man on his own.
Do not be alarmed if you do, as he is a ghost.
Harold put the letter down momentarily and peered over the balcony towards the great hall.
The boy stared up at him.
A smile appeared on Harold’s face, and he gave the boy a small wave before returning to the letter.
It was too late to save him when I discovered him. I couldn’t hear his cries because, well, he can’t.
His eyes were dry; that’s what his parents said, anyway.
So, if you see him, let him be. Better yet, look after him if you plan to build another house on this site.
Good luck,
Joe Thompson, firefighter.
Harold ripped the letter into tiny pieces and threw it into the waste paper basket before quietly vacating the room.
Once he was back on the ground floor, he approached the boy.
”Hello, I don’t believe we’ve formally met,” Harold said, offering a hand to the boy. “I’m Harold; I suppose you can see me as something of a father figure.”
The boy stared at Harold and slowly raised a hand.
Harold’s hand did not touch the boy, but both knew the intention when they shook hands.
”What’s your name, if you don’t mind me asking,” Harold said.
”Tom,” the boy said. “My name’s Tom.”
”Well, then, Tom,” Harold said, eyeing a room adjoining the great hall. “How familiar are you with Billiards?”
Harold ushered the boy into the billiard room.
”I’ve never played it,” the boy said.
“In which case, allow me to show you,” Harold said.
Thelma quickly glanced above her iPhone, not really sure what her husband was doing, but she decided to shrug it off and resume her part-time position as an internet troll.
The Robinsonverse 