Read Online Gordon Williams by The Siege of Trencher's Farm--Straw Dogs - Free Book Online Page B

famous stars in early bit parts, he could put names to the faces of second-rate bit players. Did anybody else in the world have such knowledge of Hollywood’s immortal trivia? Stars interested him less than the anonymous faces who had down the years peopled the mechanical dreams from the fantasy production belt. He saw them as prototype personalities of the twentieth century... Elisha Cook (the twisted face of the third gangster, the little man who always cracked under pressure), Robin Raymond, Gloria Dickson, Adele Jergens, Charles Smith, Luis Van Rooten, Percy Helton, Russell Simpson (who stepped out of his grade to play the father in The Grapes of Wrath ), Don Beddoe, RaymondWalburn, Paul Harvey, John Litel, Tom Kennedy (monopolist of Irish New York cop parts).
    If old films were his non-hobby, Westerns were his specialisation. He remembered the plots of innumerable sage-bush sagas starring Roy Rogers (with Dale Evans). He was a connoisseur of secondgrade cowboy stars, Rod Cameron, John Payne, Randolph Scott.
    There was nothing surprising about all this, he often said – defensively, for there was something embarrassing about comprehensive knowledge of a subject which few other people are aware of.
    “Great minds like simple things,” Louise would say reassuringly, in those days when she was still interested in reassuring him.
    “There’s a peculiar and unexplored potency to mass subculture,” was another of his rationalisations. Yet... was John Wayne swapping punches with other giants any more ludicrous a fantasy than Branksheer’s bawdy England? Given the choice, wouldn’t any man prefer to know he could defend his land and log cabin against Shawnee war parties – instead of being stuck at a desk?
    It was not an idea he could ever reveal to the people he worked with. It couldn’t stand up to severe analysis, but it was real. It had started as a joke and then grafted itself on to his consciousness; the frontier was no more and a man had to settle for the second-best. Like being a professor.
    He couldn’t work. He went upstairs. Louise was reading on the bed.
    “I want to say I’m sorry,” he said.
    “What for?” Her voice was huffy, a little girl’s voice.
    “I’m sorry ! I lost my temper unnecessarily.”
    “Did you?”
    “Come on, Louise, I’ve come up to apologise.”
    “All right, so you’ve apologised.”
    “Well?”
    “Well what?”
    “Don’t you want to say anything?”
    “No.”
    “Look, I notice it’s always me who makes it up first. Aren’t you ever in the wrong, just a little bit in the wrong?”
    “Probably.”
    “Well then –”
    “Oh shut up and leave me alone.”
    “ Please , Louise, let’s not be stupid, huh?”
    He sat on the bed and took hold of her right hand, making her drop the book on the bedcover. She stared at him defiantly, as though he was threatening to strike her.
    “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to hit you, silly.”
    He smiled, as he thought, apologetically. Louise thought it was a coy little smirk.
    “That’s what’s wrong with you.”
    “What is?”
    “You haven’t got the guts to hit me. Go on, try it, you’ll feel better. I deserve it. Go on.”
    “Come on, honey, let’s not –”
    “Don’t honey me, you all-forgiving bastard. What do you think being married is, the stupid PTA? God, you make me sick, look at you, all nicey-nicey smiles, you big sook. What’s going on in that great All-American head of yours? Eh? Be honest – for once.”
    “There’s no need to –”
    “Yes there is. I’m sick of it, the whole thing. What’s wrong withyou? One minute you’re whining and moaning you wish you were a big man – like Hemingway, ha ha, Hemingway’s just your type, little Georgie wants to be a grown-up man with a hairy chest! But little Georgie hasn’t got the guts to hit his own bitch of a wife.”
    “All right, I’ll smack your teeth on the floor if it makes you any happier.”
    “Don’t smirk at me! You can’t