Great Short Stories

Stan Mason

Description

GREAT SHORT STORIES is an anthology of fourteen stories comprising comedy, sci-fi, logic, romance, drama, and some fantasy tales, as well as other genres comprising great characters and novel stories. You will not only enjoy them but they will stick in your mind after you have read them as they are all truly original.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 10 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783335473
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
Great Short Stories

By
Stan Mason



Publisher Information
Great Short Stories
Published in 2014 by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Copyright © 2014 Stan Mason
The right of Stan Mason to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.



Frenchman’s Creek
The weather was unusually good for the eve of Good Friday. It was a pleasant evening with the sun looking extremely round and bright in a beautiful red sky before it dipped below the horizon. However, Donna Smith felt aggrieved to realise that she was going to spend the next four days sitting at home on her own doing absolutely nothing. It had been a different life when her husband had been alive when they had enjoyed being with a multitude of friends, attending many parties and going on weekend trips or travelling abroad, but he had died in a motor vehicle accident over five years ago leaving her a lonely widower. She never really got on with her life after that but loneliness was beginning to hover over her like a wayward buzzard watching a dying animal struggling in the desert. Her closest friend with whom she expected to spend the weekend was forced to travel north to attend to her sick mother, so Donna was left to her own devices. To avert the boredom, she picked out a volume from her bookshelf, dusted it off, and sat in her conservatory preparing to read it. Her faithful basset hound, Mitzi, sat by her feet occasionally staring up at her adoringly with its large round eyes. Donna was a woman of forty-two years of age, slightly plump, with a pleasant round face topped by a mop of black curly hair. Her husband had been employed by a motor car manufacturer and they had bought a detached house in Essex a long distance from the sea. She had always wanted to live nearer to the coast and regretted not having purchased a property near to the sea when the opportunity presented itself in the past but her husband’s work came first and now her life was set deep inland.
‘This book is called Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier,’ she declared to the dog, holding the volume on her lap. She often spoke to Mitzi as though the dog was a young person sitting at her feet. ‘It’s about a remote place in Cornwall in the south-west of England.’ She opened the cover and looked down at the first page before starting to read aloud. ‘When the east wind blows up Helford river the shining waters become troubled and disturbed, and the little waves beat angrily upon the sandy shores. Helford river was no inducement to a sailor ashore...’ she tailed off as an adventurous thought entered her head. ‘Do you know we haven’t been to Cornwall for years and years,’ she went on, as the dog whined lightly, placing her head between her legs as though intending to go to sleep. ‘Why don’t we go there and find Frenchman’s Creek for ourselves. That’s a great idea! Uncle Cyril will probably agree to come along for the ride. He’d like that, I’m sure. And you can come too of course. You don’t think I’d leave you alone here for a whole weekend, do you?’ She dropped the book and dialled a number on her telephone. ‘Hello, Cyril? Look, it’s Good Friday tomorrow and the holiday goes on until Tuesday morning. That’s four days. A whole four days. I don’t suppose you’re doing anything.‘
‘No, not really,’ replied the man tentatively. He was always uncertain how such conversations with Donna would end because she was a lateral thinker and had led him on more than one wild goose chase in the past.
‘I’ve got a great idea,’ she went on. ‘How would you like to go on a trip to Cornwall to find Frenchman’s Creek?’
‘Cornwall? Frenchman’s Creek?’ he echoed naively. He was a portly, balding man of sixty-two years of age but his attitude and decisions were always those of a person twenty years older. ‘What do you want to go there for?’
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ she riposted sharply.
‘I think it died when I peaked out at forty-five,’ he told her whimsically. ‘It’s a long way to Cornwall, you know. I say, it’s a long way to Cornwall.’
‘I know it’s a long way. That’s what makes it so interesting. Come on, be a sport. Join me on the trip.’
‘What brought this on? Why Frenchman’s Creek?’
‘I just started a book of that name by Daphne du Maurier and the idea rushed into my head. I thought, how great it would be to find this place. After all, it’s famous now.’
‘It’s still a long way to go on a whim,’ muttered Cyril shortly, hoping that she would change her mind. ‘I say, it’s still a long way.’
‘All the more fun,’ she returned casually, determined to make him come with her. ‘Well, how about it? You’ve just admitted you’ve nothing else to do.’
He knew that she knew he would never turn her down. They were related by marriage but the bond between them had always been very strong. ‘Okay, okay!’ he went on tiredly. ‘I’ll come with you. But it’s against my better judgement. I say it’s against my better judgement.’
‘It always is, Cyril. Now the arrangements will be as follows. We leave at five a.m. tomorrow morning. I’ll drive round to your place and pick you up. Just be ready.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he retorted. ‘Five a.m. I’ll be ready. I say, I’ll be ready.’
She replaced the telephone jubilantly. ‘There you are, Mitzi,’ she told the dog. ‘Uncle Cyril’s coming with us too. We’re going to have a good time over Easter after all.’
She began to pack a valise and then made herself some supper. As she began to eat it, there was a knock on the front door. She went to open it and faced her nephew, Matt, standing on the doorstep with a pretty young woman.
‘Why Matt!’ she exclaimed. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure. Do come in.’ She stared hard at the young woman.
‘This is Laura,’ he told her boldly. ‘And this, Laura, is my favourite aunt, Donna I’ve told you so much about. We’ve always been on first-name terms.’ He turned to his aunt. ‘We’ve come to tell you something important.’
There had been three occasions when her nephew had turned up on the doorstep in the past three years and each time he had asked for a modest sum of money none of which he had repaid. She wondered how much it was going to cost her this time.
They entered the lounge and sat down gingerly on the settee clutching each other’s hands.
‘Laura and I met three weeks ago and we fell in love at first sight,’ he went on. The dog made a slight whining sound and walked out of the room as though in disgust.
Laura smiled sheepishly and clutched Matt’s hand even tighter.
‘We’ve come to take you out for a drink,’ continued her nephew jubilantly. ‘You see, we’re going to celebrate.’
‘Celebrate,’ repeated his aunt dumbly. ‘What about?’
‘We’ve just got engaged,’ he enthused with a broad smile covering his face. ‘We’re going to get married.’
‘Well, that is something to celebrate,’ rattled Donna who had never seen or heard of Laura before, ‘but I’m afraid we’ll have to celebrate here. You see, Uncle Cyril and I are going to Cornwall at five o’clock in the morning on a trip to find Frenchman’s Creek.’
‘Frenchman’s Creek? Isn’t that the book written by Daphne du Maurier?’ uttered Laura sagely.
‘Indeed it is,’ retorted Donna staring at the young woman with a great deal of respect for knowing the fact.
‘Hey!’ intruded Matt thoughtfully, turning to his fiancee. ‘We’ve got nothing on this weekend. Why don’t we go?’ He turned to his aunt. ‘You wouldn’t mind us coming along with you, would you?’
Donna thought about it for a moment. ‘We’re taking Mitzi of course. You’d have to share the back seat with her. And it’s quite a long journey. About five or six hours each way.’
‘We could do that,’ he returned. ‘How about it sweetheart?’
Laura shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s all right by me.’ She stared at the dog considering it to be small and light, although she would be dismayed when she learned its true weight on the journey. ‘I suppose we can go for a few days.’
‘Right,’ uttered Donna sprightly. ‘The four of us plus the dog will embark on our adventure tomorrow morning. You’ll need to go home and get some spare clothes for the journey.’
‘Yes, I suppose we do,’ exclaimed Matt, his mind going into a turmoil at the sudden change of events.
The two young lovers rose from the settee and left the house to return just before five o’clock the next morning. In the darkness before the dawn, they climbed into the rear seat of the vehicle and Donna placed the dog between them before getting into the driving seat. It took ten minutes before they arrived at Uncle Cyril’s house. He was standing on the doorstep with two heavy suitcases peering into the gloom at the car’s headlights.
‘You can’t take two suitcases,’ snapped Donna sharply. ‘There’s not enough room in the boot for two. You’ll have to leave one behind.’
‘But I’ve closed the front door and I can’t wake mother up at this time of the morning,’ he bleated.
‘Well you’ll have to leave it on the doorstep. Now come on, Cyril! We haven’t got time to waste! If we don’t get on, we’ll meet all the traffic on the motorway. Hurry up!’
‘I’ve mapped out our route,’ stated her uncle, staring bleakly at the road ahead after they had set off. ‘We take the M4 to Bristol, turn left and make our way to Exeter, on to Plymouth, Redruth and then to Helston. I suggest we stop at Redruth and have some lunch. Then we continue the journey to Helston, past the Royal Nava