The Boy Who Wanted Peace (Calder and Boyars 1964, Pan 1972, Polygon 1985)
Grace and Miss Partridge (Calder and Boyars 1969)
Mr Alfred M.A. (Calder and Boyars 1972, Canongate 1987)
An Empty House (Calder and Boyars 1975)
A Friend of Humanity: Selected Short Stories (Polygon 1992)
1. Marion Boyars, of publishers Calder and Boyars, who were the publishers of four of Friel’s five published novels.
2. In an unpublished MLitt thesis, ‘George Friel: An Introduction to His Life and Work’, by Iain Cameron (Edinburgh University 1987).
3. Author’s private papers, National Library of Scotland.
*indicates work currently in print
A NOVEL
Part One
CHAPTER ONE
She passed for a widow when she went to Tordoch. She flitted across the river thinking nobody there would know her husband had left her. He was a longdistance lorrydriver, always coming or going and never saying much the few hours he was at home. He went to Manchester one day with a load of castings and vanished, lost and gone for ever, as untraced and untraceable as those banal snows some folk keep asking about. Not that she bothered to ask. She was a working-woman with a good overtime in the biscuit factory. She could do without his wages. The manless planet of her life moved round her son Gerald. He was Gerry to his schoolmates, but never to her. She always gave him his name in full. She thought it sounded right out the top drawer that way. That was why she chose it, though neither she nor her husband had ever any Gerald among their kin. She loved her Gerald fiercely. She loved him a lot more than she loved his little sister Senga. He was a good boy to her, but too kind and gentle perhaps, too innocent. She had always to be protecting him from the malice of the world. But that’s what she was there for. He was tall for his age, blond and grinning. The girl was skinny, gin-gerhaired, crosseyed, freckled and nervous. She had loved her father because he used to cuddle her at bedtime. But after the row she got for asking where he was when they flitted she was afraid to mention his name again.
About a year later, say the week before Christmas, when she was turned eleven and Gerald was fourteen, he was thumping her hard because she wouldn’t fry sausages for him at teatime, even after he told her twice. The anapaests of his bawling were hammered out by his punches.
‘Aye, you’ll do what I say and jump up when I speak for you know I’m your boss and you’ve got to obey.’
Eight scapular blows.
She whimpered and crouched, but she still defied him, and her mother came home earlier than expected and caught her red-eyed in the act. Gerald was glad to have a witness of his sister’s disobedience and complained it wasn’t the first time.
Mrs Provan stared at Senga, frightening her.
‘You’d start a fight in an empty house you would,’ she said. ‘You bad little besom.’
She advanced speaking.
‘You know damn well it’s your place to make a meal for Gerald when I’m not in. I’m fed up telling you.’
Senga retreated silently.
Poised to jouk, right hand over right ear, left hand over left ear, her head sinistral, she borded the kitchensink in a defence of temporary kyphosis.
Mrs Provan halted.
Senga straightened.
‘It was me set the table and made the tea,’ she replied with spirit, confounding her mother and her brother in one strabismic glare. ‘If he wants any more he can make it himself.’
‘It’s not a boy’s place to go using a fryingpan,’ said Mrs Provan. ‘That’s a girl’s job. Your job.’
‘It’s him starts fights,’ said Senga. ‘Not me, It’s him. Always giving orders.’
Her guard was dropped.
Her mother swooped and slapped her twice across the face, left to right and then right to left.
Gerald grinned.
Senga wept.
‘I wish my daddy was here.’
Gerald chanted.
‘Ha-ha-ha! Look at her, see! She wants to sit on her daddy’s knee!’
‘She’ll wait a long time for that,’ said Mrs Provan.
She put her arm round Gerald, ratifying their secret treaty, and Gerald rubbed his hip against her thighs.
CHAPTER TWO
Mr Alfred sagged at the bar, sipped his whisky and quaffed his beer, smiled familiarly to the jokes exchanged across the counter, and lit his fifth cigarette in an hour. His hand wavered to put the flame to the fag and his lips wobbled to put the fag to the flame. The man at his elbow chatted to the barmaid. The barmaid chatted to the man at his elbow. Propinquity and alcohol made him anxious to be sociable. He waited for an opening to slip in a bright word. After all, he knew the man at his elbow and the man at his elbow knew him. They had seen each other often enough. But neither admitted knowing the other’s name, though he must have heard it countless times from Stella, who knew them all.
It grieved Mr Alfred. Sometimes he thought he was making a mistake frequenting a common pub with common customers and a common barmaid when he had nothing in common with them. In every pub he went to he recognised anonymous faces. For besides being a bachelor and a schoolmaster, a Master of Arts and the author of a volume of unpublished poems, the only child of poor but Presbyterian parents and now a middleaged orphan, he was a veteran pubcrawler. But it was his weakness to stand always on the fringe of company, smiling into the middle distance, happy only with a glass in his hand. He had been a wallflower since puberty. He wanted to love his fellow men. When he was young he even hoped to love women. Now every door seemed locked, and without a key he was afraid to knock.
Stella drew a pint. The beer was brisk. She brought the glass down slowly from the horizontal to the vertical. She was pleased with the creamy head on it, not too much, not too little. With pride she served her customer.
‘There! How’s that for a good top? See what I do for you!’
The man at Mr Alfred’s elbow put a big hand round the pint-measure. He grinned.
‘Nothing to what I could do for you.’
‘Ho-ho,’ said Stella. ‘I’m sure.’
Her frolic smile said enough for a book on sex without fear. Mr Alfred caught a reprint tossed to him free. He jerked and fumbled for something to say. Distracted to find nothing, he missed what they said next. When they stopped laughing Stella turned to him as if he had heard.
‘This man brings out the worst in me.’
Mr Alfred smiling tried again to find a mite to contribute. By the time he was ready to catch the speaker’s eye she was slanted from him, sharing another joke with the man at his elbow. She ended it laughing.
‘Aye, I know. The doctor says it’s good for you.’
Mr Alfred meditated. Alcohol always made him meditate. His cigarette smouldered at an angle of fortyfive. There was a glow in his middle and a halo round his head. He was getting what he came