by Jules Jones
I came round to apologise, but you were away, even when I tried again. I hope it’s just work at a remote site, and you haven’t had an accident at work -- you do some bloody dangerous things in that job, even though you’re careful. Even if you never want to speak to me again, please let me know you’re all right.
It would have hurt too much to read it in the immediate aftermath. But Barry wouldn’t, couldn’t have written something like this in the immediate aftermath. Sometime in the last two months he’d grown up a little bit, taken responsibility for his own behaviour. The man who’d written this was the man Martin had thought he’d got involved with.
The “let me know you’re all right” wasn’t manipulation. He did sometimes do things on the job that would seem dangerous to outsiders. So he sat down and wrote a brief reply, saying that he had been away working and was likely to be away for much of the next few months. He made it as neutral as possible and mentioned Simon’s new house and its proximity to the stretch of coastline that was such a delight for a geologist. Something to make it clear that he wasn’t deliberately avoiding Barry, but had a real reason for being away at weekends. He didn’t mention George and Patrick. Even if he hadn’t needed to protect them from exposure, it would have been a childish gesture to rub Barry’s nose in the fact that he’d found someone else.
He checked the return address on the envelope. Same old post office box number, the one Barry had asked him to use because it was convenient to where he worked. A lie he’d swallowed because it was the same thing he did when he was away from home for long periods. Maybe not even a lie, maybe the box had already existed and had simply been convenient when Barry suddenly found himself with a secret to hide.
Secrets. Everyone had secrets. Barry’s had been that he was bi and kink-curious. Now Martin was involved with two men who had a real secret to protect. At least this one had less chance of blowing up in his face.
It wasn’t going to be easy. He’d already lied to Simon for them, not just evasion and misdirection, but an outright lie. He hated lying, but it wasn’t his secret to reveal. And it was worth it. He liked them. Enjoyed the sex, yes, but he liked them. The three of them seemed to have a lot of things in common, however wildly different their backgrounds might be.
He was going to miss them over the next few days.
* * * * *
Doug was quite happy to let Martin add his own water sample to the batch he’d collected during the afternoon’s poking about in a pit. “If I dragged you away from your first decent break in a month, the least I can do is slip a quick private sample in. What’s it from, anyway?”
It was only fair to reassure him that it was a personal sample, and not something from another job being slipped in at Doug’s expense. “I’ve seen a derelict house that might make a good hobby. There’s a spring nearby that I think might have been the water supply for the house. The place is off in the middle of nowhere, and it looks as if it’s been abandoned for years, so I doubt it was ever hooked up to the mains.” Which was probably true, and they should take a look to see if there was a well or spring in the grounds.
Doug nodded in understanding. “And if it has got a usable water supply, at least enough for drinking and cooking, it’s a lot more practical to live on the site while you try to renovate it.” He scribbled a note and dropped it in the tray of samples. “I’ll get the lab to run the full check on it.”
“Thanks. I don’t even know if the place is for sale, or if I could afford it, but a working water supply could make a difference. And if the price takes it into account, I want to be certain it’s actually drinkable.”
“Yeah. Good idea to know something like that before you get involved.” Doug patted the tray of samples. “Look, if you want any more samples done, soil or something, bring them along next time you’re doing a job for us. Just keep it within reason.”
“Thanks.” This was why he was willing to drop his holiday plans on a day’s notice for Doug. It wasn’t just the upfront offer of extra money for the inconvenience, but the willingness to do a favour in return. Doug believed in getting value for money, but he understood that it went both ways -- money should be given for value. “There shouldn’t be any industrial pollution, but if there’s more than one spring, or a well, I’ll probably want to test the lot.”
Doug grinned. “Oh, it’s a sheep-shit problem, is it?”
That was a rather crude way of putting it, but more or less covered what he was worried about. Though he’d still need to check for industrial pollution, just in case there’d been anything other than quarrying going on. “Pretty much. Though I’ll still test for everything if you don’t mind, just in case. After all, we found a few surprises in this lot, didn’t we?” He waved at the test pit on what had turned out to be a former factory site from the dawn of the industrial age.
Doug rolled his eyes. “Gawd, I don’t want to think about it. At least paying for the cleanup isn’t our problem. The owners aren’t thanking us for being careful and stopping to check when the bulldozers started turning up that crap.”
“Be fair. We cleared the original site as stable. It’s nobody’s fault, theirs or ours, that they bought an extra bit of land at the last moment and got a nasty surprise. I’m not surprised they’re unhappy.”
Doug gave him a hearty clap on the back in response. “And you get weekend rates out of it, so it’s not all bad. Right. Let’s go and wash our hands and get a cup of tea.”
* * * * *
They got the work done by Sunday afternoon, to the great relief of the site owners. Doug said, “They could have done without any of it, but at least it’s not going to hold up the schedule. We can work around the dodgy area while they think about what to do next. Ta for getting up here this weekend. I’ll email you the last of the test results on that spring water when they come through.”
“It’s looking good so far.” The basic tests had come up clean; it was safe to drink in terms of heavy metal content and the like, although the organics and microbial results still hadn’t all come through.
“You could probably bottle it and sell it.”
“Not likely. It’s enough for household use, and probably not even that if you run a washing machine every day.” He got into the car and swung the car door shut, saying through the open window, “Try not to find anything exciting for a few days, because I’ve got another job coming up next week.”
“I know where to find you if I do.”
He set off, glad to be on the road home. The job had been interesting and well paid, but he had other things on his mind now. By the time he got to Simon’s it would be too late to do anything but fall into bed and sleep, but tomorrow he would see how George and Patrick had got on with their own job.
* * * * *
Simon’s conversational gambit over breakfast was, “You’re in luck. That building you were interested in might be for sale to the right person.”
“The right person?”
“Someone who wants to restore it instead of converting it to a luxury weekend cottage for yuppies.”
“Simon, from a local perspective, a weekender is exactly what I am.”
“No.” Simon waved a fork in the air to emphasis his point. “I explained that you were a contract worker who was away from home a lot, but you were looking for somewhere to buy that would be a home.” He smirked. “What won the old guy over was when I said you wanted to move here because you liked fossils.”
Martin sighed. Simon should have been a journalist, not technical crew. He had a knack for finding interesting stories, and it sounded as if this was the latest. “All right. Tell me about it.”
The short version was that Simon had spent Saturday morning tracking down the provenance of the summerhouse and found that it was a summerhouse, or at least that was what it had last been used as. It was the seaside retreat of an old and almost extinct family, which had been land rich and cash poor for some decades before the last remaining male family member had inherited the estat
e.
“And he still lives around here, so I went to see him. Interesting old coot. Apparently they lost all the younger men in the Great War, and his dad was the only direct male heir left. Too young to even be a bugle boy. Same pattern in the Second World War, only he was the one left behind.”
Simon looked distant for a moment. Martin could sympathise. It was bad enough looking at the little village cenotaphs, with the toll of names that left no family untouched. Actually meeting a representative of one of those families that had lost an entire generation of young men, and not just once, but twice ...
After a moment, Simon went on. “He’s got some nieces through his sister who’ll get everything when he dies, and he wants them to get a decent pot of money and the income-generating property instead of an albatross around their necks. He’s quite happy to sell some of the estate’s property if he’s offered a good price. Only he’s sentimental and he’d rather the summerhouse went to someone who’d appreciate it for what it was.”
“No children of his own? I thought the aristocracy went in for heir and a spare.”
“Not aristocracy. Victorian nouveau riche who couldn’t be bothered to buy a title. They knew they’d only be buying the name and not the real thing. But they did buy the occasional pretty piece of land or building as a distressed sale.” Simon grinned. “Often without considering why it might be a distressed sale. He’s very cynical about the whole thing and saw no need to provide a male heir, let alone a spare, to be dragged down by running the estate. Says the women in his family were always the ones with the brains, so let them have it.”
“Thanks.”
Simon toasted him with a mug of tea. “No problem. I enjoyed talking to him. If you’re serious about the place, you should go and talk to him. He might cut you a deal, and besides, he’s interesting.”
“I’ll do that. But I need to go and see what George and Patrick have been up to.”
“Well, they’ll be pleased you’ve managed to get back so soon.”
* * * * *
They were. George came running through from the passage before he’d even tied up the boat, and grabbed him in something that was half hug, half rugby tackle. “You did get back!”
“And with some good news about your spring, although we still have to wait for the last few results.” He wouldn’t mention the news about the summerhouse just yet, in case it all came to nothing. “It looks as if it should be safe to drink, though hold off on using it until all of the test results are through.”
“And we’ve managed to clear most of the rockfall. Come and see.”
He followed George along the passageway and found Patrick sweeping up some loose chippings on the floor. “We clear these out of the way every so often so we don’t trip on them.”
So they were being careful in spite of their excitement at having opened a route to the surface. But they’d cleared most of the rubble, and it was now possible to walk through if you didn’t mind picking your way over the last bits of rock. “You have been busy.”
Patrick put an arm around his waist. “It gave us something to occupy ourselves with, and we didn’t need to go out and hunt, not with the food you left for us.” Quick kiss. “Thanks. That stove and the food really made a difference.”
“But we’ve been thinking about what you said about fish,” George added. “The next time we do go out, we’ll look for some fishnet. There’s often some lying about. It’s easy enough to build a temporary fish pen, and if we bring back live fish, they’ll keep for a few days.”
“We’ve done it before,” Patrick said. “It just isn’t worth the bother, usually. It’s a pain to keep the pen repaired.”
“Good. I’m happy to buy you food, but I’m not going to be here a lot of the time.” It wouldn’t be wise for them to depend on him for food. “Being able to get fresh food without having to go out and buy it is a good idea if you want to live here more permanently.”
“Especially as we’ll have less money now,” Patrick said innocently. George glanced at him but didn’t say anything.
Martin could guess exactly what Patrick meant. They no longer had the urgent need to visit the cruising beach, so they wouldn’t be getting the tips that went along with the sex and conversation. He ignored it. He knew they’d cruised, and he knew why; and it didn’t bother him, because they’d made it clear that he was all they wanted now. “Where have you put the stone?”
“Stacked most of it in one of the rooms for now,” George said. “Oh, do you need any help with the boat? I can help unload while Patrick finishes up.”
“I’ve brought some stuff.”
Once they were out of Patrick’s earshot, George said, “Does it bother you about the money?”
“It would if you were still doing it, and doing it for the money. But you don’t, do you?”
“No. It’s useful, but we wouldn’t do it just to get money. Which is why Patrick hasn’t quite made the connection with prostitution and how a lot of your people feel about it.” George shook his head. “He’ll work it out eventually, but I’m happy to leave him in unenlightened innocence for now. The beach gave him something he needed, even if we never found anyone interested in more than a holiday fling.”
“But you understand what it looks like.”
“I ... didn’t need the sex side of things as much as he did. And I could see that some of those men were lonely and paying to get the same thing I was looking for. Sex was just the excuse.” George gave him a sad smile. “Ironic, isn’t it? I’m young and pretty, so I have to be bribed to spend time talking to an older man. But the truth is, I enjoyed their company. A lot of them were interesting people.”
Everyone was looking for love, or at least a little affection, and not knowing what to do with it when they found it. “At least we’ve got a chance of making a go of things.”
“Oh, yes. You can’t be here all the time, but at least you want to come back to us. That means a lot, Martin.”
He hugged George, trying to offer comfort. “Don’t hold it against them, George. Some of them may have wanted to come back. But it’s a big beach and it’s hard to find people again, when you can only get away for a day’s outing every now and then.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t mind trying. I could believe that some of them would have liked things to have been different.” George hugged him back. “If we could have exchanged addresses ... But we couldn’t.”
Life got complicated when you really did have to lie to your partners because the truth was too fantastic for anyone to believe.
Best not worry about it. They’d found each other, and they had a real chance of making it work. “Let’s finish unloading this stuff; then we can go and help Patrick. It won’t take us long now.”
“No,” George agreed. “The less there is of it, the easier it is to work out what you can safely move next. And we’re well into the old fall now.”
“Old fall?”
George looked around the cave. “It’s been like this since before we were born. But our gran said there was still a way through back in her day. You had to scramble over a pile of rocks, but you could get through. That’s how we knew there probably was a passageway to the surface, but we didn’t know how much had been blocked or how far back the passage itself went. She’d only been here a couple of times herself and only as far as the fall. Didn’t feel like scrambling over the rock when she didn’t need to, thought it was dangerous. She came here one day and found that more stone had fallen, and that was that.”
“So your family’s been using this cave for a while.”
George nodded. “Though we’re probably the first ones to actually live in it. Before that it was just a handy place to keep things or meet up with people.”
“So when you first asked me about it, you already knew there was a passage.”
“Well, knew that there had been once upon a time.”
Once upon a time. That old phrase that started off a tale of long ago, a time when there w
as magic in the world. Now he’d found that there still was. No, they hadn’t told him all their secrets in those first few days, and doubtless there were plenty more he hadn’t heard yet. But he couldn’t blame them for keeping secrets from him. It had been an act of courage, or foolhardiness, to expose themselves at all.
Or just simple loneliness, the ache to be with other people who were like them in a way that the true dolphins weren’t. “So you suspected that there was an exit beyond the rockfall, but you weren’t certain if there was, let alone whether it still existed.”
“It wasn’t just trying to hide it from you, Martin. If you thought it was safe to clear the passage, without any prompting, it might be worth trying. We only had old stories to go on.” George picked up the box of food. “Let’s not go over old history. We’ve got stories of our own to write.”
They cleared right down to floor level before lunch. Patrick swept it free of stone chips and said, “I suppose we should sit down and think about what we want to do next.”
“Fuck, eat, rest. In that order,” George suggested.
Patrick looked down at his clothes, which were showing signs of the work over the last few days. “Wash, fuck, eat, rest.” He stretched himself. “And nothing fancy for any of them.”
Martin could agree with that. He hadn’t been doing heavy labour over the weekend, but he had been tramping around a field in the fog. A sea fret had come up, and they hadn’t had the time to wait until it went away. He needed some relaxation time.
A hot bath would be nice, but even a dip in the sea would be refreshing after the morning’s work. “Let’s go and get cleaned up.”
George and Patrick must have felt the need more than he did, for they started stripping off their clothes even as they walked down the passage. They stopped by the water’s edge just long enough to pull their jeans off and fling them onto the sand, then ran into the water. He stopped for a moment to watch them, enjoying their exuberance as they splashed about. It was the first time he’d seen them playing in the water in this shape.