Five Days in Corfe: An Adventure

By R Fitzgerald

Four cousins, a dog and a crumbling castle on a mysterious island in the bay of a holiday village on the Dorset coast . . . Did you ever wonder what happened to all those characters in all those stories you read as a child? Four adults, Jonathan, Dirk, Jacq and Louise, are together again after more than thirty years. They return to the village of their childhood to find the landmarks are all still there – the island, the cottage, a limping stranger and lashings of country food – but who they were and who they have become is the real mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Feb 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781925447873

R Fitzgerald

Rosemary Fitzgerald is a playwright and fiction writer. She lives in Melbourne in a tiny apartment; where there is a cat, a writing spot by the window and no tv. Due to a recent obsession with minimalism, she is now less eight hundred books, four book cases, thirteen pairs of high heels and half the kitchen cupboards. She is also claiming ownership of a new verb: to konmarie. As in, "I konmaried all last winter and now have the makings for a capsule wardrobe". Five Days in Corfe is Rosemary's first novel.

Book preview

Five Days in Corfe

An Adventure

R. Fitzgerald

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO BOX 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2017 © R Fitzgerald

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

This story is entirely a work of fiction. No character in this story is taken from real life. Any resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is accidental and unintentional. The author, their agents and publishers cannot be held responsible for any claim otherwise and take no responsibility for any such coincidence.

Cover design and layout: Jhana Pfeiffer-Hunt

Editing, design and typesetting for print version: Nan McNab

This book is dedicated to Jayne Dullard and Linda Howie,

who kept checking in on the story.

And to Jacqui Wright, my writing friend.

With many thanks.

Good-bye, Mother!

Don’t worry about us – we’ll be having a jolly good time!

– Five Get Into Trouble

DAY ONE

Part I

WHAT IF THEY WERE ALL GROWN UP and pulled into Corfe Station, older and more battered by life? What if it was the twenty-first century and the train was all modern and up and running to a smooth timetable? And Jacq was there on time. To meet them. Standing on the platform with Thomas’s great great-grandson up on his hind legs, barking at the train and identifying the three cousins immediately, of course. What if Jonathan was still tall, and he helped his little sister Louise cross the gap between the train and the platform? What if Dirk was looking frayed around the edges, but also had laugh lines at his mouth and eyes? What if Dirk still looked as though he had a cheery nature?

What if Dirk was thumping Jacq on the back and Louise was patting Tommy and telling anyone who’d listen that he was ‘so licky!’ and Jacq was trying to get to Jonathan, but he’d darted back inside and begun to haul out their bags and haversacks?

What if Dirk had to suddenly buck up and help Jon with the bags because the train was hooting and the doors were starting to close and Jonathan was still on board heaving out a large case? What if the train almost took off again with him still on it! What if Jacq wanted to hug him hard when he did get off, then pulled back when she looked into his eyes, eyes that looked at you, assessing, waiting, distant, old, and she gave a shiver as if the boy she’d been waiting for was a long time gone?

What if.

Part II

And how’s Aunt Ginny? asks Dirk, sitting up straight in the comfortable, red, roomy leather seats of Jacq’s ancient Wolseley.

And Uncle Thurston too, says Louise, giving Dirk a nudge. They mightn’t like the curmudgeonly old bastard, but he was Jacq’s father.

Oh, mother’s the same as usual. Busy. Fussing. Still cooking up a storm, thank god. And father’s a pain in the arse, also as usual.

The others laugh: good old Jacq! She still hadn’t learned to mince her words. Jonathan finds himself giving out a long sigh, as if he’d been holding in stale air for thirty years. He puts his arm around Thomas Five, beside him on the front seat, and hugs the dog to him, burying his face in the thick fur. And feels himself to be coming home, in a way that neither his own flat nor his parents’ house has ever felt to him.

What if Louise reached over then, and rested her arm on his shoulder and then cupped the back of his head with her hand, strong and thin? What if Jonathan felt her touch and had to force himself not to flinch? Force himself not to flinch from his sister.

As Jacq kept the car in low gear to negotiate the narrow village streets that were gay with flags and bunting, her cousins looked eagerly out of the windows. A sign above the village hall proclaimed it was Corfe Village Triple Jubilee Year, All Welcome! and a Back to Corfe banner hung above the butcher shop. Posters with Corfe – More than a Place to Live! were emblazoned across windows and doors at the greengrocers, the Pottery Hive and the first and second Corfe pubs.

Then the car cruised quietly out of the village, onto the road and through the fields beyond.

I say, says Dirk looking back at all the jolly decorations. Corfe does look festive!

Yeah, says Jacq accelerating along the empty road. It’s wall to wall quaint here these days, although the celebrations should be fun. There’s an awful lot planned.

Then the coast opens up before them and there is Corfe Bay and at the mouth of the bay is Corfe Island and on it is the old castle that has belonged to Jacq’s family for generations, and now belongs to Jacq herself. And what if the sands of Corfe Bay are impossibly golden and the sky is childhood blue and when the sea pushes its salt smell through the windows of the car and they all breathe it, against the odds, through the maelstrom of their lives, what if they feel a sniff of optimism?

The sea.

Part III

What if Dirk was absolutely fucked? What if Dirk was looking down the barrel at the end of his career, long before he was ready to leave it? What if Dirk had made his living as a panto star, song and dance man, leading-man’s-best-friend, eternal boy-adult, in countless musicals and variety shows? What if Dirk always came second to someone else, someone else more famous? On the BBC. At the West End. Out on the hustings. What if Dirk had made his career being the back end of a horse? What if it had all dried up? Inexplicably dried up. Gone. And no real idea of why. What if he thought he’d become reconciled to never making it big, but never thought he’d lose it all? What if this was the punch in the gut he’d never seen coming? What if there was never going to be another call for a middle-aged tap-dancing lounge singer who looked natty in