in standard English. (p. 429)
Nowadays we tend to ask the question: Was this policy of linguistic cleansing wise?
There are of course numerous other themes and topics in this rich fictional canon awaiting the reader’s exploration. There is the violent world of graffiti-land, of the Glasgow gangs and their significance in the society which spawned them. The death of Poggie in Mr Alfred M.A. and of Donald Duthie in Grace and Miss Partridge are important events, and here again Friel tries to tell it like it is – arguably with more insight than the sociologists manage. Then there is the whole business of sanity and madness in all three novels. Is Percy quite right in the head? Is Miss Partridge? Is Mr Alfred? Is it society that is mad?
Finally, there are the great apocalyptic scenes of Annie Partridge and her ‘spectres’ (pp. 334–43) and of Mr Alfred and his doppelgä nger Tod (p. 574 et seq). These seem quintessentially Scottish, in the tradition of Scott’s Wandering Willie, James Hogg’s justified sinner and R. L. Stevenson’s Tod Lapraik. It is hoped that this new edition of three important novels will renew interest in a significant contributor to Scottish literature of the twentieth century.
Gordon Jarvie
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Bank of Time (Hutchinson 1959, Polygon 1994*)
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 In an unpublished MLitt thesis, ‘George Friel: An Introduction to His Life and Work’, by Iain Cameron (Edinburgh University 1987).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
CHAPTER ONE
Hugh O’Neill and Shaun O’Donnell, two big broad Glasgow Irishmen who claimed to be descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages who was King of All Ireland when the ancestors of the English aristocracy were grubbing for nuts in the forest, bumped into each other getting off the same bus at Parkhead Cross just as the pubs were opening. The sky was blue, the syvers were littered, and there was the clinging smell of decaying refuse that goes with a warm spring evening in the East end of the city. They were parched, hot and sticky after a hard day’s work, and with a little jerk of the head and a question in their royal blue eyes they understood each other at once and went into the Tappit Hen for a brotherly crack over a quiet drink before going on home for their tea. They were only a couple of workers from the Yards who built more ships talking shop of an evening at the bar than ever they built in a year’s work, but their conversation on this occasion may throw some light on the events that began the same evening, though they themselves were of course unaware of the coincidence.
‘What’ll ye have?’ O’Donnell asked since he happened to be the first through the swing doors.
‘A glass and a pint,’ O’Neill answered, raising one hand high to salute the barman. The shade and coolness of the place were pleasant to him after the heat and dust outside. He liked pubs especially when they had just opened. At that time they were as dim and quiet as a church. A man could be at peace there with a drink in front of him, and the gantry was a kind of altar. Certainly it held on its glass shelves the expensive liquid that made life bearable and sometimes even enjoyable – uisgebeatha in the language of the Gael, the water of life in the language of the Saxon.
‘A glass and a pint!’ O’Donnell repeated in alarm, his Irish eyes reproachful. ‘Do ye think I’ve been robbin’ a bank? Ye’ll have a half and a half-pint and like it.’
They stood in reverent silence till they were served.
‘Funny you saying robbing a bank,’ said O’Neill. ‘I was just reading in the paper there coming in on the bus. See the Colonel’s deid.’
‘Oh aye, the Colonel, aye, so he’s deid, is he,’ said O’Donnell. Not until he had put a little water in the whiskies did he try to understand what they were talking about. He frowned. ‘How do ye mean, the Colonel?’
‘The Colonel I mean,’ said O’Neill. ‘Him they got for the Anderston bank robbery. He’s deid.’
‘Oh, I see, God rest his soul,’ said O’Donnell with routine sorrow in his flat voice.
‘The paper was saying he died in jail,’ said O’Neill. ‘Well, no’ in the jail exactly, it was in the infirmary, but he was still in jail of course because it was eight years he got.’
‘Funny,’ said O’Donnell. ‘That other bloke they got for the Ibrox bank robbery, he died in jail last month as well.’
‘Aye, it makes ye think,’ said O’Neill. ‘He was a Canadian.’
‘No, he was an Australian,’ said O’Donnell. ‘Or his pal was an Australian or wan o’ them was an Australian but no’ a Canadian.’
‘No, he was a Canadian all right,’ said O’Neill.
‘No, an Australian,’ said O’Donnell, finishing his whisky and elevating his beer.
‘Ach, ye’re thinking o’ the Ibrox bank,’ said O’Neill. ‘That was the Major, no’ the Colonel. The monocled Major they called him. ‘He was an Australian but it was his pal that died no’ him. But the Colonel was a Canadian so he was, it was the Major was an Australian.’
‘That’s what I’m saying,’ O’Donnell complained. ‘He was an Australian, him or his mate. Wan o’ them.’
‘Funny how these blokes come to Glasgow,’ said O’Neill. He shook the dregs of his whisky glass into his beer.
‘Ach, there’s a lot o’ folks come to Glasgow for the country roon aboot,’ said O’Donnell. ‘They’ve heard o’ the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.’
‘It’s no’ the banks o’ Loch Lomond they fellows came for,’ O’Neill retorted, pouting over the half-pint he was raising to his lips. He sipped and went on. ‘It’s the Royal Bank and the Clydesdale Bank and the Commercial Bank and the Bank of Scotland and the British Linen Bank, that’s what they came for. Ye know, there’s been a wheen o’ bank robberies in Glasgow in the last five or six year. Just
