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Grant hadn’t been planning on it, but at some point he fell asleep in Dare’s arms, not waking till the following morning. Unfortunately, that meant he surfaced to an aching back, rumbling stomach and a full bladder.
“Don’t go,” Dare mumbled at him when Grant finally extracted himself from the hot tangle of limbs and dragged himself out of bed.
“I’ll be back.” The morning air was chilly on Grant’s naked skin, but after he relieved himself, he headed into the caravan’s tiny kitchen and poked around in a few cupboards. Eventually he located a packet of unopened Crunch Cream biscuits and took them back to the bedroom.
“Thought you’d done a runner,” Dare said when Grant climbed back into bed. He wanted to snuggle down under the duvet, but he remained sitting so he could eat.
“Too cold to go for a jog without my clothes on.”
Dare’s chuckle was warm against Grant’s side. “But you’d give everyone a treat.”
“Not much to look at when it’s this cold.” Grant flipped back the covers to prove his point.
“Mmm, I’m sure I can do something about warming you up.”
“I brought biscuits.”
“Fuck the biscuits, I want to eat you.” Dare backed up his words with his mouth, and soon Grant was very much warmed up indeed, and then crying out as he came down Dare’s throat. After a sweaty reciprocal hand job, the two of them lay there, kissing lazily. It had been a long time since Grant had tasted himself in a kiss, and he liked it. Then he remembered.
“I thought you didn’t do that.”
“Didn’t do what?”
“Let anyone come in your mouth.”
The silence went on for a while, their eyes locked. “Guess I must trust you a little bit after all,” Dare eventually said, a playful smile on his lips.
Trust. The idea was strangely humbling. Perhaps even more so than letting Dare play with his arse had been. Grant wriggled a little on the bed. He could feel a slight twinge there, but only when he was paying attention.
“Think maybe I’m starting to trust you too.”
The moment could have got awkward, but fortunately, Solly bounded up onto the bed, and then there were the biscuits to open, clothes to put back on and coffee to drink, and that whole subject of trust and what it all meant was shelved.
“Suppose I should be off,” Grant said after finishing his coffee.
Dare opened the door and stuck his head out. “It’s a gorgeous morning. Feels like spring might finally be here. Fancy a walk?”
“Where to?”
“I usually take Solly down to the lock on Saturday mornings. She loves it there. It’s not far.”
“I’ve never been to the lock.”
“Then it’s about time you put that right.”
And so it was that ten minutes later, Grant found himself standing on the lock gates next to Dare, staring down at the river water ten feet below them. They were at the point where the waters of the floating harbour met the tidal River Avon, and from this vantage point, they could see all the way up the Avon Gorge. The Clifton Suspension Bridge spanned the top of the gorge, lit up white against the pearlescent sky. Grant pulled his phone out and took a few pictures, but the tiny lens couldn’t do the view justice.
“Wish I’d brought my camera,” he grumbled.
“Didn’t know you were a photographer,” Dare said.
“I’m not trained in it or anything. Just like taking pictures.”
“What sort of things?”
“Landscapes, mostly. Especially urban ones. I like buildings and structures.”
“Maybe you really are in the right line of work, then.”
“Maybe.” Grant pondered this. “I think I’d like being able to take shots to sell people’s houses, though. I’d be good at that. A professional-looking set of photographs can make all the difference when it comes to attracting buyers.”
“Hmm.” It didn’t sound like Dare was paying much attention, but when he turned to see why, Grant couldn’t be annoyed. Dare was staring in near-rapture at the boats in the harbour behind them. “Looks like the Matthew’s coming through. We’ll get to see the Plimsoll Bridge opening.”
“The Matthew?”
Dare stared at him in disbelief. “Just how long have you been living in Bristol? You know the Matthew. She’s only the most famous ship in town. That one there.”
Grant followed Dare’s finger and spied the old wooden sailboat behind the busy flyover. It looked like something out of a period drama, and strangely incongruous waiting there next to a modern tug. “Oh yeah, I think I’ve seen her before. But I thought the SS Great Britain was Bristol’s most famous ship.” It was the one with all the road signs pointing it out as a tourist attraction, anyway.
“Okay, Mr. Pedantic. Second most famous ship, then. But you can actually go out on the Matthew, so she’s more of a proper ship by my reckoning.”
A loud siren filled the air, and Dare took hold of Grant’s hand. “Come on. We’d better get off the lock gates.”
Watching the four-lane swing bridge open from this angle was much more impressive than Grant’s previous experience of being stuck in traffic on the flyover, cursing as he waited impatiently for the bridge to close so he could get to work. “It’s an amazing piece of engineering,” he commented. “But why did they name it after a shoe? You’d have thought they’d have named it after Brunel or something, like everything else in this town. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Dare’s look of disbelief changed to one of amusement. “Are you seriously telling me you haven’t heard of Samuel Plimsoll? I named my dog after him, for fuck’s sake. He’s only one of this town’s most amazing heroes.”
“For inventing a canvas shoe?”
Dare rolled his eyes and punched Grant in the arm. “He didn’t invent the shoes. They named them after him because of the lines around the soles. You know, the Plimsoll line. On boats.”
Grant hated feeling like he didn’t have the answers, but raising two children had taught him to accept that one person’s brain couldn’t possible hold all the knowledge in the world. “Well, are you going to make me Google this Plimsoll line thing, or are you going to take mercy? I’m not a naval engineer, you know.”
“Seriously? I thought everyone knew about them. Guess maybe it’s different if you haven’t been raised around here. Okay, well, Samuel Plimsoll was a social reformer. A proper man of the people, and he got angry that so many ship owners were overloading their boats and then claiming on the insurance when they sank. Coffin ships, he used to call them. So he got a law passed where all boats had to have a safety line on the hull, and that line couldn’t go below the water level. He’s probably saved more lives than just about anyone else from this city. A real fucking hero. Drives me nuts that that slave-trader Colston got all kinds of shit named after him, and poor old Plimsoll just got a bridge.”
“And a load of shoes.” Grant stared at the hulls of the boats entering the lock now the bridge had opened. Now it had been pointed out to him, he noticed the lines painted there. “It’s such a simple idea,” he marvelled.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t simple to get everyone to listen to him. Those fuckers didn’t care about the innocent lives they were destroying. All they cared about was the money in their pockets.” Dare’s voice was climbing in pitch, like he was about to get stuck into a proper leftie rant. People were starting to stare.
“Okay, okay, I wasn’t insulting him. Simple ideas are often the best ones. But you know, those merchant types were only doing what their business model demanded of them. Making a profit.”
“At what cost? You think money is worth more than human lives? You think the slave trade was justified too? Just coz it turned over a profit?”
“No, of course not.”
“But profit’s what you’re after, isn’t it? You and that boss of yours.”
“You’re after a profit too. You’re not telling me you give away your vans for nothing.”
“No, of course not. But at least I’m not hurting anyone else. And it’s all my work I’m getting paid for. Honest toil. Not paper shuffling and wheeler-dealing. You don’t care about my livelihood, you just want me to sell up so you can build another block of bleedin’ yuppie flats.” Dare glared at him, and Grant had the uncomfortable feeling he’d been lumped in with the enemy.
“Dare, it’s my job. Nothing personal. But if you don’t want to sell, I’m not going to pressure you.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’ve said to Cecil he should get someone else on the case. That I’m not having any luck with you. He just seems to think that I’ll be able to wear you down eventually.”
Dare folded his arms and stuck his chin out. “Not gonna happen.”
“I know that. You know that. But Cecil’s a man who’s used to getting his own way.” Even if that meant employing nefarious means. Grant shifted uncomfortably. Blast Cecil for putting him in this awkward position. He wanted to warn Dare, but that might just end up stirring up trouble over nothing. So far, Cecil knew nothing compromising about Dare, and that was the way it was going to stay if Grant had any say in the matter. “Look, we just have to wait another month or so and eventually he’ll give up. It’s not like he can force you into selling, is it?”
“No, I suppose not.” Dare looked like he had more to say, but then a man in a fluorescent jacket approached them.
“I’m going to need you two gents to step aside, please. You really don’t want to be standing there when I open the sluices.”
“Come on.” Dare tugged Grant over to stand at the edge of the dock, on the river side of the lock gates.
“Why didn’t we want to be there?” Grant asked. Surely watching the boats go down would be preferable to staring at the muddy river waters.
“There’s this whirlpool thing down here that I like to watch. And anyway, you can’t stand over there. There’s this gert big metal pole that comes out of the ground. Might end up spiking you in the foot or something.”
“Oh.” Grant watched the lockkeeper fiddle with a large electronic control panel, and sure enough, a thin metal pole did indeed sprout up out of the concrete dockside. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted that up my trouser leg.”
“Nah, I know what kind of pole you like inside your trousers.” Dare nudged Grant, chuckled filthily, and they stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the harbour waters flow out into the muddy river.
Peace filled Grant up. A kind of serenity he remembered from his early days with both Mas and Harriet. A sense that things would work themselves out if he could just let nature take its course.
But it had been a false sense of security both those times. Who was to say this time around would be any better? No, Grant needed to guard his heart. To let this thing with Dare run its course and then move on to find someone more socially appropriate for him. The kind of man he could introduce his daughters to. After all, what could he possibly have in common with a man like Dare?
Yet the feeling of hope remained, and Grant turned his face to the spring sunshine, basking in its warmth.