Hobo Johnny
2010-09-12 10:58:15 UTC
parties. The story takes place in the 1920s.
There was music from my neighbour's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men
and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high
tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot
sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over
cataracts of foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the
city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a
brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled
all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of
the night before.
Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York – every Monday
these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a
machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little
button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb.
At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and
enough coloured lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables,
garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin
designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass
rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his
female guests were too young to know one from another.
By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and
trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last
swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are
parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary
colours, and hair bobbed in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is
in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with
chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic
meetings between women who never knew each other's names.
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing
yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by
minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell
with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls
who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment
the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and
voices and colour under the constantly changing light.
Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for
courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary
hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the
erroneous news goes round that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the Follies. The party has
begun.
3
© UCLES 2005 0500/02/O/N/05 [Turn over
1 Imagine that you live near to Gatsby’s house where the parties take place. You object to the
parties for several reasons, including the lavish display of wealth.
Write a letter to the owner of the house, setting out your various objections and justifying each
one by developing ideas and details from the passage.
You should write about 1½ to 2 sides, allowing for the size of your handwriting.
Begin your letter: Dear Mr Gatsby…
Up to fifteen marks will be available for the content of your answer and up to five marks for the
quality of your writing.
[20 marks]
2 Re-read paragraphs 4, 5 and 6, which describe:
(a) the lights and the colours of the party
(b) the sounds of the party.
By referring closely to the language used by the writer, explain how he makes these descriptions
effective.
[10 marks]