BACK PAGES:Brian Friel wrote a regular column in The Irish Times in the late 1950s and early 1960s in which the central character was one "Brian Friel" who was much put-upon, bemused by and at odds with the world as in this extract from 1961.
I am nobodys fool, no greenhorn, no goat’s toe, no rustic, no half-wit; I am a citizen of no mean city (Derry, population 53,000): I am at home in Belfast and Cork and even if it stretches me slightly, I can cope with Dublin. But the moment I get off the bus at the West London Air Terminal, I am seized by a quiet panic. I am not being facetious: I am not overstating. Panic precisely describes my reaction. London terrifies me.
Most of my terrors, I know, are irrational: the flyover will not collapse; Covent Garden will not crash down through the ceiling of the underground; the taximan is not plotting to carry me past Earls Court and sell me to the Peruvian navy; the drivers of the stream of cars that rush past will not sneeze, go berserk, be stung by wasps, get the death-wish, just as I am about to cross the road.
The real dreads are very real, a nightmarish mixture of the catastrophic and the sinister. Because I feel so alone in London, so abandoned, I who am usually reserved, become effusive with chance acquaintances. I am unnaturally hearty with the hall porter in the shabby hotel where I am booked in, tell him about Paddy starting school and about Mary’s dose of the measles, and he addresses me as “Squire” and congratulates me on my English, very distinct for an American.
Then, when I have begun telling him of my absurd terror of being arrested for the Sylvia Warren murder – here in the warm light of the foyer my perspectives are suddenly sharp again; I laugh recklessly and slap his broad back – he produces a bottle of gin from his hip pocket, pulls down his lower lip, winks evilly at me, and whispers: “I’ll be off duty in an hour, Squire, and I know a place just down the road where we could have some fun, What d’you say, Squire?”
Betrayed again, I stare stupidly at him. He catches my elbow and rolls his eyes. I wrench myself from his grip and charge up the narrow stairway. But he misunderstands my flight; he thinks I am going to get my £6 15s. spending money from under the carpet. I hear his voice pursuing me. “It’s OK . . . it’s OK . . . leave the lolly to me . . .” I lock my door and stick the toothbrush in the keyhole and stand panting while he prowls along the corridor, calling softly. “Squire? . . . Squire?”
I get to the airport hours before the plane leaves. There I die a hundred times, with every announcement made over the loudspeaker system
That last announcement, what was it? Passengers for Belfast go through gate A? I dash through gate A and find myself among bespectacled, sallow men in plastic raincoats. “Excuse me,” – mouth wide, vowels rounded, consonants distinct – “could you tell me is this plane for Belfast?”
“Yees. Yees. So I hope too. Belgrade, yes.” Hell for leather back to the lounge. The girl with the microphone is still at it: “Will Mr Frielle, repeat, Mr Fri-elle, passenger on BEA flight number 922 to Belfast, please go immediately . . . Mr Fri-elle, please . . .” They fasten my safety belt for me because I am past helping myself and they know they have got me, and although the roar of the engines drowns everything they say, they keep talking to me and smiling down at me. I close my eyes. Go ahead! You have beaten me, England! Ship me off to Bolivia! Plant the money from the bank raid in my case! Then the touchdown at Nutt’s Corner and the bus run. Glengall Street and the sheer ecstasy of the homely, welcoming, familiar murals: “NO POPE HERE. ULSTER IS BRITISH. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.”
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