Free Cryers Hill by Kitty Aldridge Page B

keep falling on me head – they keep falling.' He felt himself Butch and Sundance both; he knew how they felt. He wished the girl with the long dark hair and the lace dress would ride towards him on her bicycle. He'd kiss her like Paul Newman did. He could have been a bank robber. He could have been a movie star. He could have had it all.
    Sometimes on a Saturday night Gor would throw a little party at the house. 'What'll it be?' he'd ask himself as he approached the drinks cabinet with the glass-lined door panels that opened to form a cheery bar, complete with internal lighting. The drinks had beautiful names: whisky sour, Scotch and ginger, White Lady. Inside the cabinet were napkins and coasters and bar snacks. Gor would arrange a selection for himself, and fold into a triangle a fresh paper napkin. He would toss peanuts into the air and catch them in his mouth. He would toss them higher and higher, challenging himself, until they bounced off the ceiling and hit him in the eye. Gor mixed drinks that were the colour of jewels; ruby or emerald, topaz or amber concoctions that glowed and chimed with ice. Martini-Bianco-on-the-rocks. Sean thought these were beautiful words. He'd seen them on television, the Martini people, parking their boat and running on the beach. He and his father stared at the suntanned girls as they threw back their hair and knocked back their drinks. 'Whoa! Steady on, love!' Gor commented. 'Holy cow.'
    Gor's party preparation would begin early in the evening. He would bathe, shave, and dress in his favourite green shirt and checked slacks. He would adopt a loose-hipped walk and a slow carniverous smile. 'I'm singing a higgity, haggity, hoggety, high. Pioneers they never say die.'
    Nobody else, as far as Sean remembered, was ever invited to Gor's parties. He enjoyed himself alone in his favourite armchair, checking the time on his gold wristwatch, in a fug of Wild Mustang cologne. Cath came once. She tried a jewel-coloured drink and tapped her finger to the music. She never came again. She stayed upstairs with her Avon catalogues. Gor didn't care. He was enough guest for any party, what did he need others for?
    The record he loved to play on these nights was Trini Lopez Live at the Cabana, which made it sound like there were a hundred people in their front room. Like Dr Jekyll, Gor would begin a transformation that started in his clicking fingers and jerked its way up his arms until it reached his head, which would begin to twitch and peck and bob, followed by elbows, shoulders, hips and finally one bouncing leg, until off he would go like a voodoo rooster. The banging on the wall from next door followed. 'It's only eight o'clock,' he'd protest to himself, consulting the gold watch, waggling his hips. 'Bunch of squares!' he would roar at the wallpaper. 'Live a little!' The whooping and cheering of the audience on the record made it sound jolly and wild. Sean had to admit the songs were pretty good. 'When the Saints', 'What'd I Say?', 'La Bamba', 'Marianne', 'Unchain My Heart'.
    'Marianne, oh Marianne,
Oh, won't you marry me?'
    The dancing wore him out, so Gor was obliged to settle himself down to study the record sleeve under the lamp. 'I might get tight tonight,' he liked to warn with his third drink. He would grin and wink like he was Gary Cooper, as though perhaps he might tell a friendly joke, the way Americans did, or maybe sing something, 'That's Amore', Dean Martin style. Before he went to bed he always put his Trini Lopez record back in its sleeve and switched off all the lights.

Eleven
    T HE COLLECTED POEMS of W. H. Davies. On the inside flap of the book jacket, Walter noted, were some interesting facts about the poet's life. He felt extravagantly belittled by these, though he continued to read them as if to hammer home his own limitations.
    Mr. Davies was born in 1871 at Newport, Monmouthshire. He wandered, as a young man, across the Atlantic. He set out with a companion for Klondyke,