Dolphin Dreams

by Jules Jones

  Mr Parker snorted and settled back in his chair. “Both of them? You’re a damn fool anyway. Is that what you were nervous about?”

  He could feel himself blushing. “I know it sounds weird. I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. But I met them and something just clicked ...”

  “Hmph. Each generation thinks it invented sex. And illicit sex. I could tell you a tale or two.” Mr Parker’s expression turned distant again. “It’s easier for your generation, but there’s nothing new under the sun.”

  After a moment’s silence, he asked, “Sir?”

  “Hmm? Sorry, old memories. I might have married, if I’d found a nice sensible girl who understood me and was content to have my children and be my public companion. That was the way things were done then. I did find the right woman eventually, but by then my lover was dead and there seemed no point. All of the men in my family died save me, and even I lost the man I loved in an accident, and I was young and bitter and saw no reason to provide another generation to lose to another war. Let the women have the money; they were always better at managing the estate anyway.”

  Stunned, Martin sat in silence. Eventually, he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s the saying these days? Shit happens. What I regret is that I couldn’t mourn him, couldn’t even tell anyone that I had known him. And that I let Susannah slip through my fingers because of it. I might have liked children, later.” He smiled softly. “At least I have my nieces and their families.”

  A phrase from earlier in the conversation caught at his memory. “Is that why you stopped caring enough to go back?”

  “And didn’t stop caring enough to let it be turned into one more holiday cottage. You can have it, boy, if that’s what you need to sort out whether you and these friends of yours have something that will last.” Mr Parker heaved himself out of his chair and limped over to the table, where he rummaged in a pile of papers. “Here’s the agent’s address. Now, I’ll need to talk to the woman, but what I would suggest is that we start by organising a year’s lease at a peppercorn rent. You can do some work on the house in lieu of rent, and if you still want to buy it in a year’s time, you can have a credit on the selling price to allow for the work you’ve done. If you’ve abandoned the idea, well, at least I’ve got the place tarted up a bit and it will be easier for my nieces to sell once I’m dead and don’t care. We’ll need to sort out the details, but does the general idea sound interesting?”

  “That sounds very interesting.” It solved a lot of problems. It would give him breathing space, both to find out whether a long-term relationship with the shapechanger men was practical, and to organise the financing to buy the house outright. “Thank you, Mr Parker.”

  “Makes life easier for me as well. And I’d like to see it lived in again. Of course, if the place is such a ruin that it needs major repairs to the building fabric, we’ll have to think again. But I’ll give you the key, and you can take a look at the place.” Mr Parker picked up a keyring and tossed it at Martin. “Access gate, front and back doors. The keys for the quarry access are on a separate ring, and I’ll have to get them down from the attic. Haven’t been used in years. But you don’t need those yet.”

  “Thanks.” He checked the ring. There were several keys on it, possibly for the internal doors. Maybe even one for the cellar door, which would be convenient. It would be useful to get into the cellar legitimately and clean out the betraying dust.

  “Right. Drink up your tea, and then you can be off. I like company, but the sooner you look the place over the sooner we’ll know what options we have. If you think it needs a professional surveyor, I’ll get one in. Would have to anyway before it went on the open market.” Mr Parker picked up a couple of sheets of paper and handed it to Martin before easing himself back into his chair. “Copy of the access map so you can find the right gate, and there’s the agent’s address, just in case you need to contact her.”

  He put the papers away, and they talked about the local geology for the next fifteen minutes. It was a much more comfortable topic than the past, or possible future. When they’d had their second cup of tea and biscuit, he took the tray back down to the kitchen and then said goodbye. Mr Parker was right. The sooner they assessed the current condition of the house the better.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Martin got to the cave, George was sitting on the beach, inspecting a length of fishing net. Patrick came over to help Martin unload the boat.

  “How did your business calls go?” Patrick asked.

  By way of an answer, Martin pulled the keyring from his pocket. “We’re going for another drive to the summerhouse after lunch.”

  Patrick stared at the keyring. “You found the owner?”

  “Simon did, while I was away at the weekend. I went to see him this morning. He’s willing to let me have the house on a one-year lease in exchange for working on the repairs. After that I can decide whether I want to buy it.” He put the keyring away again, carefully. He’d put it on a security chain clipped to his belt, but he was still nervous about losing it. “I didn’t want to say anything until I knew there was a chance. And if it’s a complete wreck, it may not come off anyway. But he’s given me the keys so we can go and look at it.”

  “George?”

  “I heard.” George put down the net and stood up. “Lunch at your place? We’ve got some fish if you’d like some.” He picked up a rock near the water’s edge that turned out to be anchoring another section of net. “There’s more than we need for today, but I haven’t got a decent pen rigged yet. You’ve got a freezer, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Or we can leave some for Simon.” Fish sounded good, although he wasn’t sure if he knew how to clean them. He’d just have to hope he could work it out, or that one of Simon’s cookbooks had instructions. “Fish and chips for lunch, then. Let’s dump this shopping and go.” If things went well this afternoon, this might be the last supply run they needed to do in the boat.

  * * * * *

  Fish that had been alive ten minutes before going into the frying pan turned out to be very good indeed, as they all agreed. Lunch over, they headed for the summerhouse.

  The driveway took some finding even with the map, but at least the padlock on the gate opened easily enough. They bumped their way down a very grassed-over gravel track and parked in front of the house.

  There were two locks on the front door, one an old three-lever mortice that probably dated back to at least two modernisations ago, and the other a Yale deadlock that must have been added relatively recently, perhaps when the house had been boarded up. Both were stiff but not jammed. This time Martin was prepared with a puffer bottle of graphite, and he worked each key in its lock a few times once they had the door open. “That should keep it freed up.”

  They cautiously entered the house and stood in the hallway, looking around. All three of them had torches, and he could hear the faint noises that suggested that George and Patrick were doing an intense echolocation scan.

  “It all looks sound,” George reported. “Shall we keep going?”

  They used the same procedure in each of the ground floor rooms. Stop just inside, check thoroughly for obvious hazards, move into the room and examine it thoroughly. As with the kitchen, the rooms were still furnished, with empty places here and there where some valued item had been removed. Mr Parker had implied that his family had simply walked out one day, as if it was the end of a summer break, and then never gone back. The general appearance of the place fitted in with that.

  Martin took notes as they went along. There had been some vandalism over the years -- stones through windows, broken furniture. And there was the damage of time here and there, with one or two rotten floorboards underneath the broken windows, some crumbling plaster, and occasional evidence of mice. But the basic fabric of the building seemed sound.

  They had a nasty moment on the stairs, when one creaked ominously and then cracked under Patrick’s weight. The tread held
, but George and Martin were careful to step over it, and Martin put down a sheet of paper to mark the damaged step.

  Upstairs there was more evidence of animal damage, with old nests and the like. But the house seemed to be in as good a condition as could be expected. The basic building maintenance must have been kept going during the years it had been let out. Mr Parker had said it had been inspected now and then even after being boarded up, so perhaps there really was no major damage.

  The last thing they checked was the cellar door. One of the keys in the bunch fitted the lock. “So we can go in and out as we like, then,” Patrick said with satisfaction.

  “First job’s going to be sweeping that floor,” George said, pointing at their footprints from their previous visit. “The tracks will be really obvious once we’ve got decent lighting in here.”

  “Better take us shopping again, Martin,” Patrick said. “I bet the brooms here will fall to pieces if we try to use them.”

  They went outside to talk about the house. Martin carefully locked the door behind them -- the last thing they needed now was someone wandering into the house and poking around.

  “So what are we going to do? You two are going to have to do most of the work, at least anything that doesn’t require qualified tradesmen.”

  “But you’re going to have to put up the money,” George said. “Get us some books on DIY, and we’ll do the work. It’s only fair when we’ve no money to put in.”

  “It could still be too expensive at the end of the year, and then strangers might move in,” he warned them. That was his main worry, that by making the house more attractive they could be inviting trouble.

  “Then the keys to the quarry disappear, and the rockfall reappears just inside the door,” Patrick said. “Or we build another door in the passage.”

  “So we have to go back to the way we were before.” George shrugged. “In the meantime we’ve learnt new skills, and we’ve had the chance to move stuff down into the cave without having to take it in by boat.”

  In the end, it had to be their decision. It was his money, but it was their lives. “All right. I’ll tell him we want it. It’s going to take a couple of weeks at least to get the paperwork sorted out, but are you happy with starting work at once?”

  “Of course.” George walked over to the door and stroked it with his hand. “If we’re working, we can legitimately come and go.”

  “We should move in stuff to make it look as if we’re camping in the house, though,” Patrick said. “But what about a toilet? Even if we’re going back to the cave at night, we need to make it look as if we’re living in the house.”

  He could see life getting ever more complicated. The one good thing was that the house must have had some sort of sewage system that wasn’t connected to the mains, probably a septic tank or even just a drainpipe that simply went straight to the cliff. It might be the only thing still working when it came to the utilities. If so, at least they didn’t have to worry about importing a Portaloo. “The sewage might still be working, and you can always tell people that it is. We won’t be on the mains system here.”

  The council would undoubtedly make them stop using a drain to sea, but the council would have to catch them first, and it would give them a chance to sort out a less antisocial system. He scribbled a note to check with Mr Parker. With any luck it would be a septic tank and need nothing more than to be pumped empty and inspected. “Right. Let’s have another look around the grounds.”

  It was a fairly cursory inspection of the area they hadn’t already checked on their previous visit, but they found one of the springs and what Martin thought was the access hatch for a septic tank system. He was pleased to see that the tank had been sited below the spring, and also well away from the quarry. He took a sample of the spring water. “That’s it for today. Let’s go.”

  * * * * *

  When they got back to Simon’s house, Martin phoned Mr Parker to report. “I think you should send a surveyor around anyway. We’re not experts, and we could have missed stuff. And we couldn’t check the roof or attic space. But there’s nothing obviously wrong with the fabric of the building.” Of course, there was one other issue. “I forgot to ask -- is it a listed building? It will make life more complicated if we have to get listed building consent before doing any work.” Mr Parker hadn’t mentioned the age of the building, but it had to be old enough that it was probably Grade II listed.

  Laughter at the other end of the line. “No, it isn’t listed, although only because it’s been mucked about with by so many people that everyone’s forgotten how old it really is. Anyone younger than me probably thinks it’s Edwardian, so it never got listed just for its age.”

  He could understand that. In its current incarnation it felt Edwardian in style, and if he hadn’t known about its association with the much older quarry, he wouldn’t have thought of it as likely to be listed. “And something that’s occurred to me -- what about the sewage system?”

  “Used to be a drainage channel straight out to the cliff. Might even still be there. But there’s a septic tank system, and it should still be usable. Having it cleaned out was the last major preventative maintenance the place had, other than fixing a bit of the roof when it was boarded up and cleaning out the gutters every few years after that.”

  It all sounded very hopeful. “Right, in that case we’ll get started on chasing the mice out. If you don’t mind George and Patrick moving in, they don’t mind doing some preliminary work while we get the contract sorted out.”

  “Excellent. Might as well take advantage of the fine weather. Come round whenever you like if you need advice or photos.”

  They talked a little longer, with Martin giving details of the problems he’d noted down. By the time it was all done, George and Patrick were getting twitchy about leaving before Simon got home.

  “All right, I’ll take you home. Anything you need for tonight?”

  They shook their heads. “Though we’ll want some milk for tea in the morning,” Patrick said.

  He wondered whether to feel guilty at getting them hooked on tea, then realised that if there was anything to feel guilty about it was giving them a reason to spend far more time than usual in human shape. They were drinking more tea because they needed to drink more water anyway. And boiling the water first wasn’t a bad habit to get into with the spring water, even if it tested clean. “Take some milk from the fridge. I’ll pick you up in the morning, and we can go shopping for some basic tools.”

  “Sounds good,” George said.

  * * * * *

  They wanted a hug before he left the cave.

  “No sex?”

  “It would be nice, but we don’t need it,” Patrick said. “We know you’re coming back.”

  George stroked a hand down his back, affectionate but not trying to arouse him. “We wouldn’t have time for more than a quickie, anyway. It’ll only worry Simon if you’re out late on the boat.”

  He was never going to live down the episode with the boat conking out on him, but he didn’t regret it. Look what he’d got out of it -- two handsome men who adored him. And trusted him. They were happy now that he wasn’t going to walk away and abandon them. “I’ll pick you up from the cave in the morning. Tomorrow we can make it look as if you’re moving in, and after that I can just go straight to the house.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  He got back in the boat and headed for home. Home was a rather broad concept now. There was his flat and Simon’s house and the cave, and soon there would be the old summerhouse. He was doing quite well for someone who’d never bought a place of his own.

  Simon had just got in when he got back. “I thought you’d be out with your boyfriends. How’d your day go?”

  “They sent me back early so that you wouldn’t think I’d drowned. I went to see Mr Parker this morning. Did you know he’s gay?”

  “I thought that he might be. But he didn’t say anything, so I didn’t.” Simon pointed at t
he fridge. “Where’d that fish come from? I remembered to say I was bringing pizza home, didn’t I?”

  “George and Patrick caught it this morning. We had some for lunch, but if you want it for dinner, I’ll have it again.”

  Simon patted the pizza box. “Might as well have this tonight. If the fish is that fresh, it’ll keep a few days, though it’s a shame not to have it the same day. I can always come home for lunch.”

  Which in other circumstances would be nice, but he was going to be busy. “I probably won’t be here. Mr Parker gave me the keys, and we went to look at the house. It’s the sort of mess you’d expect when it’s been boarded up for twenty or thirty years, but there’s nothing wrong with it as far as we can see.”

  “So the three of you are going to spend tomorrow taking the boards off to get some light in, and taking a closer look?”

  “Got it in one.” He got some plates out. “Does that pizza need reheating?”

  “Not if we eat it now.”

  He told Simon about the day’s activities over pizza. At the end of it, Simon said, “Well, you know you’re welcome to use my place as a base while you’re doing the work. When do you have to go off again?”

  “Whenever the client wants me. Which reminds me, I haven’t checked my email since breakfast.”

  He did so. “Bugger. I wish they’d make up their minds.”

  “Bad change or good change?”

  Good, from the perspective of making money. Bad, from the perspective of having time off to get started on the house. “They’re on for next week again. The ones I was expecting to want me this week, only they put it off and I went up north to help Doug instead.”

  Simon gave him a cheeky grin. “Isn’t it fun being your own boss?”