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Commentary. football togs – футбольная форма

football togs – футбольная форма

fender – крыло (автомобиля)

calypso music – музыка калипсо (муз. стиль островов Вест-Индии, известный также как “soca music”, или soul calypso)

Trinidad steel bands – оркестры, играющие на стальных бочках, канистрах и т.п. (первоначально возникли на Карибских о-вах, а Тринидадский оркестр получил всемирную известность)

a novel off-beat rhythm – непривычный синкопированный ритм (off-beat – синкопа, или усиление слабой доли)

Lescaux caves – пещеры Леско (место археологических раскопок)

It’s a dilly! – (разг.) Прелесть! Чудо!

Exercise 1. Practise the pronunciation of the following words:

1. languor ['lWNgR] 6. fortuitous [fO:'tjuitRs]

2. tweezer ['twI:zR] 7. twirl [twR:l]

3. chrysanthemum [krI'sWnY(R)mRm] 8. impervious [Im'pR:vjRs]

4. mileage ['maIlIdG] 9. enmity ['enmItI]

5. vicious ['vISRs] 10. feign [feIn]

Exercise 2. Read the following extract:

When she went to school on Monday morning Jane discovered that personal disaster’s one solace lies in its modifying adjective. She found that nobody was apt to take her troubles as seriously as she did herself. In fact, nobody seemed to pay special attention to her at all. There was no hushed gossip among the girls – at least, none that she was aware of – and not a curious glance was cast her way. Trudy asked thoughtfully if she was feeling better, and Jane said, “Yes, much better, thanks.”

As a matter of fact, the lump in her stomach was less like concrete. It was still very solid, but she could live with it – at least for certain intervals of time.

The magnificent early-October day – crisp, clear, invigorating – had a part in this temporary cure. Hockey practice was called for three-thirty, and Jane threw herself into the game with new fervor. Playing wing, with Polly as center forward, she streaked down the field whenever she got the ball, setting a taxing pace for the line and completely confounding the opposing second team. Running off the pent-up emotion of the past two days, she treated the ball as a weapon, and every time she made a goal she felt a sense of revenge.

Polly praised her extravagantly. “You’ve got this crowd moving!” she panted. “Fine stuff. You’re really fast!”

At the end of the afternoon the coach brought the squad back to the gym for a meeting. As anticipated, Polly was elected captain, and Jane was slated to play right wing in the line-up for the first game of the season, on Friday afternoon, against Carlinville, a nearby industrial town.

“Don’t expect an easy victory,” Coach Glover warned them. “It’s bound to be a tough game. The Carlinville girls are very serious about hockey. They work hard, and they play to win.”

Polly and Jane walked part way home together as usual. Their cheeks were still pink from exercise; and Polly, at least, felt a sense of well-being. “I love autumn,” she said. “I think it’s the very best season of all.”

Jane was a summertime girl. She enjoyed its languor. But she understood that Polly’s vigor found its complement in the brisk, clear air. She tried to put this into words, and Polly listened sympathetically but then laughed at her. “There was nothing lazy about you today!”

It helped a little to be praised, to be needed. Jane walked on toward Franklin Street with her head held deliberately high. There was more than one fish in the Brookfield ocean. She wasn’t going to let Ken Sanderson get her down.

At home there was nobody in the living room, but when Jane went on upstairs with her schoolbooks she found Liza Haddon and Sally King sitting on Linda’s bedroom floor, manicuring their nails. Belinda herself was occupied with an eyebrow tweezer and a magnifying mirror. They had been talking in whispers and giggling, but when Jane appeared in the hallway they broke off.

“Hi,” Jane called, doing her best to sound casual.

“Hello,” and “Hi there,” Linda’s guests called back. Linda herself looked up and said, “Hockey again? How you stand it, every day in the week...”

“I like it,” Jane said truthfully. She went into her own room and dumped her books on the bed, then peeled off her uniform and changed to a pair of clean shorts and a shirt. The whispered conversation in Linda’s room had resumed, but she tried to ignore it. Whistling a popular tune, she ran downstairs.

Her mother had just come in with two great cartons of groceries. “Goodness, I’m late!” she cried, glancing at the kitchen clock. “Be a lamb, Jane, and go cut some chrysanthemums for the dining-room table, I meant to do it before I left; then I forgot.”

It took Jane a few minutes to find the garden shears. By the time she went out to the back yard dusk had fallen, dimming the colors of the flowers and giving the lighted houses a friendly, welcoming look. There was nothing friendly, however, in the conversation that was going on next door. Ken, in his football togs, was standing outside the garage talking to his father, who had pushed his hat to the back of his head and was resting his briefcase on a fender of the Cadillac.

“But, look, Pop,” Ken was saying. “Have a heart. Just look at it this way –”

“Suppose you look at it this way for a change,” his father cut in. “Tell me one thing. Why do you need two carburetors?”

“They step up the pickup and mileage, because they give better gas distribution to the cylinders,” Ken explained quickly. “They’re putting twin carburetors on lots of the new cars.”

“This isn’t a new car!” Mr. Sanderson roared. “It’s an old, beat-up job for which you paid three hundred bucks too much, and it’s going to cost you a thousand before you’re through if you don’t watch your step!”

“But, Pop –” Ken began in a conciliatory tone.

“Don’t ‘but-Pop’ me, young man! You keep quiet and listen. Twin carburetors will use double the amount of gas. Right?”

“Well, maybe,” admitted Ken, prepared to launch into counterargument.

“Right!” his father retorted, giving him no chance. “Double the amount of gas. Who’s going to buy that? And don’t tell me you need twin carburetors to deliver flowers for Teasdale’s. I never heard such a pack of nonsense in my life.”

Jane snipped chrysanthemums busily, pretending to ignore the controversy. She told herself that she wasn’t a bit sorry to find Ken on the carpet, It was what he richly deserved. When Mr. Sanderson stamped into the house slamming the back door behind him, she shifted position so that she could see Ken, standing crestfallen beside his Cadillac. Quite unaware of Jane’s presence, he was looking moodily down at his shoes. For several seconds he stood quite still, then impulsively gave the nearest tire a vicious kick.

Carrying her armful of flowers, Jane started back to the house. She didn’t hurry, and when the rustle of fallen leaves attracted him, Ken turned to see who was there. “Oh, hi,” he muttered dejectedly.

“Hi!” Jane replied, with a rising inflection to indicate that she found this meeting quite fortuitous, “By the way, Ken – that money I loaned you. I’d like to have it back by the week end, if you don’t mind.” She kept her voice so even that he was unaware her timing was intentional.

“This week end?” he groaned.

“Mm-hm.”

“Gosh,” Ken started, “I’m not sure –”

Taking a cue from Mr. Sanderson, Jane interrupted. “I’m sorry, but I have to have it.” She took a few steps toward the back door, then glanced over her shoulder and suggested wickedly, “Maybe you can borrow it from your dad.”

* * *

On Wednesday afternoon it belatedly occurred to the football team that the boys were badly in need of new uniforms. In order to raise money to buy them, the squad enlisted the help of the faculty, and a benefit dance was hastily cooked up.

The time was set for a week from Saturday, tickets were printed overnight, and class chairmen were elected. Belinda found herself with a job on her hands. This did not displease her. All day Thursday, whenever she had a free minute, she wheedled the freshman boys into rising above their natural shyness; and she was able to announce to her family that she had sold twenty-three tickets in one day.

“Who are you going with, Mark?” her father asked, ignoring his wife’s negative signal and oblivious to the fact that there was any “situation” between the girls.

Belinda shook her head. “No, Ken’s taking me,” she said. “Didn’t you know. He’s become the older man in my life.”

Mr. Howard chuckled in amusement, Mrs. Howard looked exasperated, and Jane froze. It took the most tremendous effort to keep her face blank and her eyes without expression, but she managed it somehow, and somehow she swallowed her dessert.

Jane’s mother tried hard to keep the dinner conversation cheery, but she reacted, inevitably, to the tension in the air.

Although she never mentioned Ken’s unexpected change of heart, Jane knew that she was completely aware of the problem. If she sympathized with her elder daughter she took care not to show it, except in the most subtle way possible — with an extra smile or an unexpected favor now and then.

Jane, on her part, understood. She wished she could confide in her mother, but the fact that it was Belinda, her own sister, and not some other girl, who was her rival, made this out of the question. She took an exaggerated interest in the coming hockey game with Carlinville and studiously avoided any personal conversation with any member of her family. Day by day, as Belinda blossomed, Jane became more remote.

The coming dance was the major subject of conversation in the school cafeteria the next day, but Jane took care to sit next to Polly and switch the talk to hockey whenever possible. She pretended an abnormal concern about the weather and kept saying, “It looks as though we’re going to have a storm.”

As it happened, her prediction was correct, and at the last moment the game was called off because of rain. This left Jane feeling utterly defenseless. There was time now to face the fact that she didn’t have a date, that there was every likelihood she’d be left sitting home next Saturday night, like an old maid.

Trudy met her in the hall just as she was ready to leave school and persuaded her to stop at the drugstore for a coke. They trudged through the downpour together, heads bent, saying little. It wasn’t until they reached the haven of a table for two that Trudy asked a searching question. “What’s the matter, Jane? You haven’t acted like yourself all week.”

“Nothing,” Jane replied without conviction. She stirred her coke with a straw and didn’t meet Trudy’s glance.

“You might as well tell me.” Trudy took a best friend’s prerogative. “Are you having a fight with Ken?”

“He owes me money, if that’s what you mean,” Jane hedged.

But Trudy wasn’t to be put off. “I hear he’s dating your little sister. Is that true?”

“Sh!” Jane glanced around, then nodded miserably. “He thinks she’s cute.”

Trudy had nice eyes. Their expression was kindly but candid. “She is cute,” she admitted honestly, “but I’m surprised at Ken. After going steady with you for so long.”

Jane looked up in surprise. “Oh, we weren’t going steady really. I mean, it wasn’t that way at all. We just live next door... and it was easy... and... oh, Trudy, you know.”

Trudy sighed and sipped her coke. She knew. Hadn’t she told Jane just last week that she didn’t make enough effort? But it was no time to remind her of that now. “The one thing you mustn’t do,” she said, after a minute, “is to show you care.”

“I don’t care, actually,” Jane muttered.

“Of course you do,” Trudy contradicted her. “Even if you didn’t give a hoot about Ken, you’d be embarrassed to have Linda take a boy away right from under your nose.”

“Sh!” Jane cautioned her again. “Oh, Trudy, please don’t tell anybody we’ve talked this way. I’d simply die.”

“You can’t die,” Trudy told her. “You’ve got to get to work. Have you got a date for the dance?”

Jane shook her head.

“Is Ken taking Belinda?”

Jane nodded.

Trudy tapped her foot impatiently against the table leg. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

Jane stared at her untouched coke. “I couldn’t,” she confessed.

“And then you say you don’t care!”

“Trudy, please don’t talk so loud. Suppose somebody should hear?”

“Nobody will,” Trudy promised. “Nobody’s sitting anywhere near.” She twirled her glass gently and looked into its depths as though she were gazing into a crystal ball, hoping to read the future. Finally she looked up and said, “I can’t think of a single soul except Gordon, can you?”

Gordon Tubby, solemn Gordon Park, the least attractive boy in the crowd. But Jack Preston was dating Polly, and Sue Harvey had already announced that she was going to the dance with Eric. Trudy, who up until this year had played the field, was seeing more and more of Stitch Whitehead, president of the junior class, and all the others were paired off at the moment. Gordon seemed to be the only possibility.

Yet Jane remembered with a qualm that even he had been seen hanging around Linda’s home room. Maybe she didn’t even have a chance with Gordon. The same idea must have occurred simultaneously to Trudy, because she looked at Jane speculatively. “Has Gordon ever asked you for a date?”

“Once, last year,” Jane remembered. “He had an extra ticket to a football game, but I was going somewhere with Ken.”

“You’ll have to play up to him,” Trudy said decisively, “starting right now. You’ve only got a week.”

“Oh, Trudy, I can’t!” Jane protested.

“Would you rather stay home?”

“Yes!”

“Think how it would look.” Trudy made it into newspaper headlines. “Older Sister Sulks While Freshman Cops Boy Friend.”

“Trudy!”

“All right then. You tell me.”

Jane’s face flamed with embarrassment. The reserve which she had drawn around herself like a cloak to hide her dismay had been ripped in two by Trudy. She felt exposed. She also felt completely at a loss for words. Trudy was right, she began to realize. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t stay home and mope.

“Well?”

Jane looked up. “I guess I’d better make a try.”

The storm ended during the night after blowing itself out with a violence that stripped leaves from the trees and plastered them to the sidewalks, so that Franklin Street acquired a yellow carpet for a day.

Jane stayed in bed late, then fooled around the house, washing a couple of sweaters, setting her hair, helping her mother make cookies. Belinda had gone off reluctantly to keep a dentist appointment and wouldn’t be back until noon.

From the kitchen window could be seen the full sweep of the Sandersons’ yard. Ken, or his family, was being deluged by callers this morning. Boys and men, most of them strangers to Jane, kept arriving. They would one and all disappear into the house, stay for a quarter of an hour or so, and then be ushered out by way of the cellar door. Upon leaving, many of them carried boxes or bulky packages.

“What under the sun do you suppose is going on next door?” Mrs. Howard asked.

Jane couldn’t imagine, but Belinda had the answer when she came home. “Ken’s selling his narrow-gauge trains and his woodworking tools,” she said. “He advertised them in the paper last night.”

“But why?” Jane burst forth. The trains he had abandoned long ago, but he was very proud of the tools, which had been acquired at a good deal of cost and effort.

“Something about the car,” murmured Linda, munching a hot cookie. “He had to raise a little cash.” Uninterested, she wandered back to the front of the house.

As Jane pulled another baking tin from the oven she felt a small twinge of conscience, but she steeled herself to disregard it. What did it matter to her what he sold or why? Their relationship had altered so drastically that it was ridiculous for her to have the slightest concern.

Linda had turned on the record player, and for some reason Jane found it irritating. “Can’t you turn that thing down?” she called from the kitchen door. Obligingly Belinda lessened the volume, but Jane continued to scowl as she put the cookie sheets to soak. Everything Belinda did, everything she said these days, made Jane’s resentment flare into anger. And the fact that Linda rarely took offense only made Jane chafe the more.

Mrs. Howard could have told her elder daughter that Belinda was quite impervious to her ill humor. She was drifting along on a rosy cloud of conquest, delighted to be in high school at last, delighted to be pretty and popular and an acknowledged success with the boys. She came home every day with some new tale of triumph, and only her immediate friends and personal happiness had any meaning to her. The family, including Jane, was only shadowy background for her immensely interesting, expanding life.

If it had occurred to Belinda that she was directly responsible for Jane’s moodiness, she might have stepped more softly on her sister’s feelings. “Ken doesn’t mean a thing to her. She told me so,” Linda remarked to Liza Haddon one day, when the subject came up. “She certainly can’t hate me for dating a boy she doesn’t want.”

But if she had known how closely akin to hate was the enmity Jane felt, she would have been shocked. Linda loved everybody and everybody loved her at this moment. Ugly emotions had no place in her scheme of things.

As the day wore on, Jane’s own emotional state showed little improvement. It was a relief when Trudy phoned, late in the afternoon. “I’ve got some wonderful new records my aunt just sent me from Trinidad!” she announced. “Come on over and hear them; then stay for dinner and the night.”

Jane jumped at the invitation, glad to get away from the family, and especially Belinda, who would undoubtedly have a date. She packed a small bag, kissed her mother perfunctorily, and sped out of the house.

Trudy, by prearrangement, met her halfway. “Gordon and Stitch are coming over tonight,” she said with satisfaction. “Did you bring anything else to wear?”

Jane shook her head. It had never occurred to her. She glanced down at her green sweater and flannel skirt, which had seen better days.

Trudy sighed and shook her head. “I never knew a girl who thought less about clothes.”

“But you didn’t tell me...” Jane objected.

Trudy grinned. “Never mind. You’ll do nicely. At least that sweater matches your eyes.”

Arrived at Trudy’s house, they settled themselves in her big square bedroom, shut the door, and talked. “Remember,” Trudy said, “You’re to be nice to Gordon – extra nice.”

“What do you mean, extra nice?”

“Look at him, make him feel important. Jane, where have you been all these years?”

“I don’t know,” Jane responded ruefully. But of course she did know. She’d been riding bikes and building tree houses and going to parties with Ken.

Trudy was looking at her best friend critically. “You ought to do something with your hair,” she murmured. “Come over here and sit down. Let me try the part on the other side. Or maybe the middle. No – for the middle you have to have perfectly even features.” She picked up a comb and began to experiment.

Jane felt like an insect impaled on a pin, and said so. But Trudy paid no attention. “Wait a minute. I’ll get some water and make some pin curls. Now just sit still.”

After fifteen minutes Jane found herself laughing at her own reflection. “Why, I look like Belinda!”

Without mincing matters, Trudy replied, “I wish you did!”

Her very artlessness revived Jane’s sense of humor. She laughed even harder. Now that the ice was broken, she was glad to be able to admit her predicament and discuss it. “Believe me, it’s better to talk to a good friend than to talk to yourself,” she said.

They sat on the window seat, in the sun, while Jane’s hair dried, sharing their views not only on Ken but on many unrelated matters. For the first time in a week Jane began to relax.

By dinnertime, to Trudy’s relief, she was almost gay. Fond of the Blakes to begin with, she expanded in the warmth of their interest and entered into conversation with a good deal of wit and common sense. Mr. Blake put his arm around her shoulders as they walked out of the dining room together. “You’re one of my favorite people, Jane,” he said. “Keep on being just as sweet and natural as you are.”

All in all, the evening got off to a good start. Jane’s new hair-do was becoming, and it gave her added confidence, as did Mr. Blake’s unexpected praise. She looked flushed and a trifle excited, almost pretty, with her green eyes dancing and her smile unforced. In such a mood it would be easy to join Trudy’s conspiracy and be nice to Gordon Park.

But when Gordon arrived, stolid and humorless as ever, Jane’s high spirits began to evaporate. She found herself comparing him with Stitch, whose shoulders were broad and whose mind was keen and quick. Maybe Gordon had redeeming qualities, but they certainly didn’t show on the surface. He always seemed a drag on the party, unless he had something definite to do.

Trudy apparently realized the same thing at the same time, because she gave him the job of taking care of the record player. Immediately he looked happier and more at ease. Jane, who had been regarding him attentively for the first time in her life, was aware that his basic trouble was self-consciousness.

The calypso music, played by Trinidad steel bands, had a completely novel, off-beat rhythm. Stitch was bored. He said frankly that he didn’t understand it, but Trudy and Gordon, who could play the piano and collected records as a hobby, were fascinated. Jane rather sided with Stitch, but she listened politely and acted interested. It was a relief, however, when they switched to a long-playing record of musical-comedy tunes.

This left Gordon once more at leisure, and when Trudy took Stitch off to look at her father’s tropical fish which were kept in a big aquarium in the library, he glanced at Jane rather helplessly. “Where’s Ken tonight?” he asked.

It was a question she should have anticipated, but because it was unexpectedly sudden, Jane stammered her answer. “I don’t know.”

“Gosh, I didn’t mean to be–” Gordon broke off in embarrassment. He was a perfect picture of a boy who knew he had put his foot in it.

“That’s quite all right,” Jane said. Then she made the plunge. “Maybe you haven’t heard the news. I don’t see much of him any more.”

“Don’t you? Well, er... well, say, I’m sorry.”

“Never mind.” Jane managed to grin. “I’m bearing up.” She thought it was time to change the subject, so she picked up a magazine from the table and said, “You’re interested in archaeology, aren’t you, Gordon? This has some wonderful pictures of the Lescaux caves.”

Gordon was flattered that Jane had remembered he was interested in anything. He sat down beside her on the couch, and together they turned the pages. Jane discovered he was not only interested but extremely well informed, and when he talked about something like prehistoric painting he didn’t stutter and trip over his words. She didn’t have to feign curiosity or manufacture questions. They came quite naturally. By the time Trudy and Stitch returned, the long-playing record had ended; but Gordon hadn’t even noticed, he was so absorbed in telling Jane about the ambition of his life.

“Stop being so serious!” Trudy commanded.

“Let’s roll back the rugs and dance.” She and Stitch began to try some new steps.

After a while Gordon stood up rather timidly. “Guess we’d better do something about this,” he said. But Trudy whirled up to him suddenly. “Let me show you this one, Gordon. It’s a dilly!” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Stitch, you explain to Jane.”

Later Gordon and Jane tried the step together. It was tricky, and it took a while to learn, but Gordon was patient and unexpectedly light on his feet. When they finally mastered it, Trudy and Stitch applauded.

“Whew!” Gordon gasped, fanning himself. “What are you trying to do – make me get thin?”

“It wouldn’t do you any harm,” said Trudy with good-natured bluntness. Then she took the curse off the criticism by smiling and patting his arm.

Later, after the boys had gone home and the girls had changed into pajamas and climbed into bed, there crept over them that cozy, almost indescribable intimacy which is the real reason good friends like to spend the night with one another. In the dark it is easier to talk, and everything is heightened in importance. It happened tonight, as it had happened to Jane and Trudy many times before.

But before they settled down to a really serious, hour-long discussion about life, Trudy wanted to get one thing settled. “Did you get him to ask you, Jane?”

“To the dance?” Jane asked, though she knew quite well what Trudy meant.

“Of course, silly.”

Jane shook her head. “I don’t think it ever occurred to him.”

“It will,” said Trudy with confidence. “You wait.”

Exercise 3. Find the following words and word combinations in the text you have read. Write out and learn the pronunciation. Give the Russian equivalents:

1. to be apt to do

2. to watch one’s step

3. to launch into smth.

4. to confide in smb.

5. to call smth off

6. to switch the talk to smth

7. to take smb. away right from under one’s nose

8. to feel at a loss for words

9. to feel a twinge of conscience

10. to take offense at smb. (offense - амер., offence – брит.)

11. one’s predicament

12. to look (feel) at ease

13. to side with smb.

14. to flatter (to be flattered)

15. to be light on one’s feet

16. to get smb. to do smth.

17. to put one’s foot in it

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