by Jules Jones
“Sorry, Martin.”
George looked him over. “He’s all right, I think.”
“Go on.” He was over the shock, and he wanted them. Wanted them both, Patrick thrusting inside him, George thrusting against his cock.
They did as they were told. Both hugging him, both thrusting hard. No point in drawing things out, so he let himself be carried along on sensation. And there was plenty of sensation. Patrick filling him, and then George not content to just thrust against him, but reaching to take both their cocks in one hand, squeezing them together.
“Think we can all come together?” George said, grinning.
Patrick shuddered, then held still. “Too late.”
“All right. Think we can come together?”
Yes. And he liked the idea. He liked it a lot. “Let’s do it.”
One jerk. His cock almost escaped from George’s grip, but George got it under control again. A second jerk, and he could feel that he was almost there, see the same thing in George’s eyes. One more wouldn’t be quite enough ...
One more, and then he knew the next one would be it. “George,” he whispered.
And the next squeeze and jerk was the last. All he needed, all they both needed. They came together, panting and laughing, with Patrick hugging him from behind and murmuring, “Still feels good.”
After a while they eased themselves apart and cleaned up a little. Patrick stroked his back and said, “Lunch, book, and sex. I could make a habit of this.”
“Don’t forget work,” George said. “But yes, it does sound like a nice habit.”
Chapter Fourteen
It was awkward work getting one of the ladders through the gap and set up so that they could run some of the planks as a bridge across the rockfall, but Martin insisted on taking the time to do it properly. “We have to get back out this way, remember; and it’s stable on this side, but we don’t know what could happen if we start scrambling about on the loose rock.”
They had already laid planks directly on the pile to spread their weight as they worked. George wriggled through on the existing planks to guide the second ladder into position. The pile of rocks seemed stable enough as he eased his full weight onto it, and Martin heaved a sigh of relief.
“Feels stable,” George reported.
“Good. Come back, and we’ll get the rest of it set up.”
A few minutes later, he and George were standing on the other side of the rockfall, inspecting it with one of the torches. “It really is pretty clean on this side, isn’t it?” George said. “We could have done it any time we liked, if we’d known.”
“You didn’t have an urgent reason to, and it was a lot safer doing it with ladders.” From this side, it was obvious that some of the big blocks had been positioned deliberately to support a weak section of the roof after a fall. There’d been at least one more fall over the years, dropping rubble that had covered the supporting wall and blocked the remaining gap, but the support-wall section was all very old. His view of the roof and side wall still wasn’t clear enough to say for certain, but it looked very much as if there had been a weak section that had simply dropped down as large blocks along with some smaller rubble. “You’ll still need to be careful -- there may be more to come down. And don’t move anything that looks as if it might have been put there deliberately. But if it’s just this one section ...”
“... we’ve got an exit, haven’t we?”
“Can I come over now?” Patrick asked.
“Bring some water and a couple of bars of chocolate,” Martin instructed. “And something to carry them in. Just in case. If there is another fall, we could be trapped for a while before anyone finds us.”
George looked at him. “Does Simon know where to find us?”
“Simon knows where to find something that will tell him where to find us if I don’t come home. But it only gives him a rough idea of where to look and what he’s looking for.” Martin could understand why George didn’t like the idea, but he agreed with Simon that it was necessary. “Look. This place is dangerous. The bit you use is fine because anything likely to come down already has, but we have no idea what’s behind here.” Of course, there was a reason for these two to think they’d be safe where he wasn’t. “Just remember, your sonar lets you see things I can’t see, and maybe that includes early signs of rock moving -- but it could also trigger a rockfall if there’s an unstable formation that needs just one last push.” Though it might be useful for testing from a distance, something to bear in mind as they explored the cave system.
“We really need to get that gate at the top end open if we can,” George said. “Just in case.”
A very sensible idea. “A crowbar will probably do it. Though you’ll still want to be able to lock it.”
“One big bottle of water and three bars of chocolate,” Patrick called from the other side of the barrier. “And a torch each.”
They already had one of the big lanterns, but it would be a good idea to carry a small torch each. “Right, bring that over.”
Patrick carefully made his way over the rockfall to join them, and they started moving up the passage. The floor was fairly clear once they got away from the rockfall, although there was still a little loose rock scattered about. George had been right about the passage -- it seemed to make a right turn about twenty feet ahead of them. They passed a chamber on each side, one with a large entrance, another relatively small. Martin played the light over it and saw that the entrance had once been larger but had been partly walled up.
George poked his head inside. “Fairly clear, but there are some bits of wood in here.”
It turned out to be a broken chair, roughly made and long abandoned. “Maybe they used this as an office or break room,” Martin suggested. The place had been stripped of anything worth hauling back to the surface or the sea cave, but the chair was obviously beyond repair.
The other chamber had its own rockfall, by the looks of it part of the same weak area that had blocked the passage. “Could this be why they abandoned it?” Patrick asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe it just became uneconomic. Or it was that fall that blocked the sea entrance that did for it.” He thought that was the most likely. “Once you couldn’t get a quarry barge in here, there’d be no point.” A thought occurred to him. “Though smugglers could have used that small entrance, if they didn’t mind bringing stuff in in small boats.” The passageway might well have been used after it was officially abandoned. And those side chambers left by quarrying would have made fine storage chambers for contraband brandy and silk. If that was the case, then the passage they’d seen up top almost certainly did lead to the summerhouse, or at least to a private and secure entrance out of public sight.
“They’d want a land entrance, wouldn’t they?” George asked.
“Yes. So let’s see where that passage goes after it turns the corner.”
It went past another chamber and to a steep flight of stairs. George and Patrick scanned it from a safe distance and pronounced it stable. Martin made his way up and found himself in a second passageway. He switched off the torch for a moment and could see green-filtered daylight along the passage.
“Martin?” Patrick’s voice.
“It’s all right. I can see daylight along here; I think it’s that entrance we saw.” He switched the torch back on and waited for them to join him.
They made their way along the passage and found themselves looking out through the old gate they’d seen yesterday. George went down on one knee to examine the hinges. “I think we could break this if we really had to.”
“Leave it for now,” Martin said. “We’ll want to keep it looking untouched if there’s a better entrance into the house.”
They kept moving along the passage and came to a door. Old, but still in good condition. There was a heavy lock and a separate handle. George tried the handle. “Locked.”
“But there’s a key,” Patrick said. He used his torch as a pointer, lighting up
a key hanging on a hook near the floor.
“Sonar?” Martin asked.
Patrick nodded. “Metal on stone. Stood out a mile to me. But I bet if someone like you came along here in the dark and didn’t know it was there ...”
They’d probably find it eventually. But it was a good way to keep the passage locked against intruders while still leaving an escape route for those in the know. Pile a few bits of furniture or some storage boxes along here, and the key would take some finding. “Let’s see if it still works.”
Their luck finally ran out. The lock was stuck, seized up over the years.
“Now what?” George asked.
“I’ll bring some graphite powder with me next time.” Martin tweaked it again. “Or it may just need someone to keep fiddling with it. Gently.”
Patrick pulled his hand back. “It might just need a good kick,” he muttered.
“And we might try that next. But if you try to force it with the key, we could end up breaking the key.” He tried again. There was definitely movement in there.
How badly did they want to get it open today? Patrick’s suggestion of a hefty boot to the lock might work, and he didn’t trust them to leave it alone until he got back with some suitable tools. Now that they’d found their way through into the upper passageway with so little trouble, they weren’t about to be baulked by a stiff lock.
He pulled the key out and stepped back. “All right. But you’re not trying to kick the door down, remember. Just see if you can jar something loose.”
Patrick stepped up to the door, braced himself with a hand on the wall, and let loose with a finely judged blow to the lock. George rattled the handle. “The door’s looser than it was. It was jammed tight before.”
Maybe it wasn’t the lock so much as the door itself had jammed, or moved slightly in its frame and jammed the tongue of the lock in its slot. Martin tried the key again. It was stiff, but this time it turned a little.
He knelt on the floor to get a better angle and kept working at it. Every so often George wiggled the door handle. Finally the obstruction was freed, and the key suddenly turned. “Got it!”
“Up you get.” George lifted him up, and he found himself grateful for the help. They must have been working on the lock for longer than he’d realised, because he was stiff and tired.
“Are you all right, Martin?” George asked.
“Just a bit stiff.”
“Let’s look at what we’ve got and then have a rest and a drink.”
That sounded like a good idea to him. He nodded, and stood back as George carefully eased the door open.
They had found a cellar, by the looks of it. There were still old boxes and odd bits of furniture piled around the walls. Everything was covered in dust.
As they walked into the room, he saw a wine rack against the wall they’d come through. There were still a few bottles left. Curious, he looked more closely. There were labels fixed to the rack, handwritten with a fountain pen. One, damaged but still just barely legible, said 191–. So the place had still been in use until just before the First World War, at least. Perhaps it was one of the many properties that had gone to rack and ruin in the aftermath of that war.
The wine rack was built in segments, and there was a section of racking leaning against the main rack. He swung the lamp around to look at the door again and saw hooks that were undoubtedly meant to carry the missing segment.
The room was part solid rock walls, part dressed stone. They’d built the house into the bones of the hillside on which it stood and given it a secret passage. Maybe just someone’s little joke, maybe it had served a real purpose. And the last person down here had found the secret, but not the key, and abandoned it.
“That staircase must go up to the next level,” George said.
“Probably the ground floor.” The house hadn’t looked elaborate enough to have two levels of cellar, although given the oddities of the place it wouldn’t surprise him. “Let’s take a look.”
This door was also locked and also had a key hanging on an inconspicuous hook. It took a little longer to find than the first one had, but whoever had hidden it hadn’t been expecting sonar. This time the key worked on the first attempt, although it was very stiff.
They found themselves in a kitchen. Martin’s knowledge of culinary history was hazy, but the room looked to him in keeping with a building that had last had a major modernisation sometime between the two wars. There were free-standing pieces of furniture and two built-in dressers of the style common in the era just before modern fitted cabinets, and the Aga-style range could have been installed any time in the last century. The electric cooker appeared to be both an afterthought in the layout, and relatively old, but that could have been simply the layer of dust.
George and Patrick prowled around the room, looking at things but being careful not to touch them. Then George went over to the door to the rest of the building.
“George, stay out of there for now. The building’s derelict, and it could be dangerous.”
“There’s a door to the outside here anyway,” Patrick added.
They inspected the door. Locked again, with boards over the windowpane and possibly completely boarded up on the outside.
“Leave it for now,” Martin said. “If this is one of the doors that was boarded up, we’re going to need tools anyway.”
“It’s going to take us a couple of days to clear the rest of the rockfall,” George said. “We might as well work on that first. At least now we know there’s something worth working for.”
They made their way back down into the cellar, carefully locking the door behind them and replacing the key. Back through the door between the cellar and the secret passage, locking that as well. As he closed the door, Martin noticed their footsteps showing in the dust on the floor. “We’d better get a broom in there.”
Patrick looked over his shoulder. “Oops.”
“We’re probably safe,” he reassured them. “We’d have to be bloody unlucky for someone to come down here in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll bring a broom with me next time.”
“Or we can buy one,” George said. “We’ll probably want one anyway to tidy up after moving that stone.”
“Good idea. Dustpan and brush is probably your best bet,” he suggested. “It’ll be slower, but you can carry out the fine stuff instead of trying to brush it all the way out. Come on, I could do with a cup of tea.”
They got back to the main cave without any problems and sat down for a much-needed cup of tea and a biscuit. Patrick glanced at the stove. “Do you want to eat with us tonight?”
Tempting though the idea was, he needed to get back to Simon’s and then get on the road if he wanted to sleep in his own bed tonight. “No. I really need to leave on time today.”
“You don’t know when you’ll be back?” George asked.
“I really don’t have much idea at the moment. It could be early next week if this flap of Doug’s gets sorted out quickly. Oh, that reminds me.”
Martin found his sample bottle and went to the spring in the back cave to collect a water sample. Dragging him up north on short notice meant Doug owed him a favour, and he might as well take advantage of it. It would be very useful if the water from the cave’s spring was safe to drink.
He looked around the room. George and Patrick had dragged a strange variety of objects in here. They obviously operated on the principle that it might come in handy some day. But it was all neat and tidy, and some of it was obviously the result of planning. There was a small box holding a bag of barbecue charcoal, a pile of kindling-sized wood, a stack of newspapers, and a lighter. It would be far too much trouble to use something like that on a daily basis when they had to find or buy it and then get it in here, but they’d made sure they had the makings of a fire for an emergency situation. Perhaps one of them had been ill and wanted a fire for warmth.
The little meths-powered stove would be a lot easier for them to run. That and a safe water
supply would make a big difference in how comfortable they were if one of them got sick. No, he hadn’t disrupted their life; he’d simply made things that little bit easier and safer for them.
Time to go. He went back and finished the last of his tea, and then they packed the boat in silence. He hugged them both. “I’ll try to get back as soon as possible. I just can’t promise anything.”
“Some people have to earn a living,” George said.
Patrick gave him a quick kiss. “Glad we don’t have to. But we’ll miss you.”
He couldn’t look back as he left the cave, not when he had to concentrate on getting the boat through without hitting anything. By the time he could look around again, there were two dolphins by the boat.
It had been a long and strange few days.
Chapter Fifteen
The mundane reality of his own house seemed strange to Martin after the last few days. A pleasant suburban house in a pleasant suburban dormitory town where nothing strange ever happened, at least not in public. Now he wondered what secrets lay behind those net curtains. There were undoubtedly stranger tales than his to be told.
He picked up the pile of post and flipped through it. All of his regular bills were paid by direct debit, so they only needed checking for random weirdness. Those he shuffled to the back, for after he’d dealt with anything that wasn’t either junk or real-but-routine.
There was an envelope with his address in Barry’s handwriting. He almost threw it in the bin unopened, then pulled back. It was always possible Barry had a good reason to contact him.
The note was short and unsigned. It didn’t need a signature.
I didn’t like to phone. I was a pig, and I’m a coward. It’s easier to write this rather than risk having you hang up on me.
I’m sorry I hurt you. I love you, but I love Margaret as well, and I was afraid of losing either of you. I know that doesn’t excuse my behaviour.