There’s always a danger, when reading a novel almost 70 years old on a potentially sensitive topic, that it will not be readable by today’s standards. When I saw that The Friend in Need (1957) by Elizabeth Coxhead was about a social worker I was torn – it would be fascinating to read a novel on this topic from the 1950s, but would elements of classicism, racism or simply outdated methods make it feel unreadable?
Thankfully, I needn’t have worried. There are definitely some things that would be phrased a bit differently today, and I can’t imagine Isobel Fairlie’s approaches as a social worker would be endorsed by anybody working in that field now, but it’s a novel that vibrates warmth, compassion and sense. It also, incidentally, has one of the more lovable romantic pairings I’ve come across in a long time.
We first meet Isobel Fairlie, social worker, through the eyes of a man in a teashop – he is waiting for his girlfriend Mercedes (he lives with her and her mother) and not with any especial enthusiasm.
He closed his eyes, summoning up the energy to greet her decently when she did arrive. And the next thing he knew, someone had pushed half a cup of cold tea into his lap.
“Oh lord, I’m frightfully sorry,” said a woman’s voice above him. He roused himself to explain to her that it didn’t matter. A very superior young lady too, tall and fair and nicely dressed, and in the act of setting down the outsize tray they supplied you with in these places, so that there had not been room for it and the dirty crockery.
“It don’t matter a bit, miss,” he said, and as she still looked stricken, tried for further reassurance. “It’s the sort of thuing that’s always happening to me.”
“Oh, but that makes it worse,” she said, and now she was nearly laughing, but still worried to death.
It was an interesting choice from Coxhead to introduce Isobel through the POV of Walter (for such is his name), when she is the main character – but I think it is an instructive choice. Isobel’s professional life moves largely among the working-classes, and she is very much upper-middle-class, so it is useful to see her slightly out of her element in the beginning. So much of the novel is about how she sees people in a different class from her – and somehow the balance is preemptively redressed by seeing her from the vantage of a working man.
(Yes, this is a classic of the British literature genre, where class is incredibly important.)
We’ll certainly come back to Walter, but there is lot of actual social work in this novel too. This element of the novel can feel a bit episodic – Isobel heads out to visit children needing homes, existing foster homes, prospective foster families, and in one case a biological mother who seems to simply Need A Talking To in order to sort the whole thing out. There are a couple of well-rounded, interesting and sympathetic boys – Don and Jacky – who play a larger role in the novel, but by and large these are fleeting background characters. It’s really about giving an insight into the life of a social worker in the mid-1950s. I have no way of knowing how accurate it is, but it certainly gives the impression of being thoroughly researched. Isobel breaks any number of safeguarding laws by modern standards, and certainly doesn’t divide the personal and professional in the way that would be recommended, not to say enforced. But it comes from a place of deep care.
Having the perspective of Walter is useful in showing when the ignorance of her class is a stumbling block. He certainly understands Don and Jacky in a way that she can’t, but we are also able to see the impressive extent of her professional knowledge, her tireless care, and her insistence of doing things as thoroughly and compassionately as possible. While she is unable to fully understand the children for whose fates she is partly responsible, she does have a self-awareness that helps make her a delightful character to be around, rather than a frustrating one. Here she is, in an argument with her own sister:
“How dare you. Sometimes I think she isn’t the only one in the family you can’t stand.”
The bell rang.
Wonderful, aren’t I? – thought Iosbel, going to answer it. The trained social worker, the expert on human relations, the handler of domestic broils, and this is how I handle my own flesh and blood. Gilly and I – it was always the same. No adult reasoning alters the patterns of our childhood. And then I have the nerve to expect the ignorant and poverty-stricken to show a self-discipline in their personal relationships that I never attain.
But the truly lovable character in this novel is Walter. As mentioned, he is living with his girlfriend – but it’s really in a daze after the loss of his wife and their young child. It seems to be controversial to some, and even effete, that is mourning the death of a child after a number of years – thankfully conversations about grief have moved on in the past 70 years – but Coxhead knows that Walter is exactly the sort of thoughtful, kind, reluctantly taciturn hero that we are going to fall in love with. Of course, there are plenty of obstacles to a possible romance with Isobel, but I’ll leave you to guess whether they are insurmountable… and I will add, I am seldom particularly invested in romantic subplots in novels, but this one really won me over.
The Friend in Need is a wonderful surprise. I’d hoped it would be eye-opening and not offensive. It turned out to be much more than that. Coxhead has a lightness and charm to her writing that brings her characters live, and I thought this was a real triumph – and one that would be wonderful to see in print again.