An Irish Country Welcome

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  Copyright Page

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  To Dorothy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank a large number of people, some of whom have worked with me from the beginning and without whose unstinting help and encouragement, I could not have written this series. They are:

  In North America

  Simon Hally, Tom Doherty, Paul Stevens, Kristin Sevick, Irene Gallo, Gregory Manchess, Patty Garcia, Alexis Saarela, Fleur Mathewson, Jamie Broadhurst, and Christina Macdonald, all of whom have contributed enormously to the literary and technical aspects of bringing this work from rough draft to bookshelf.

  Natalia Aponte and Victoria Lea, my literary agents.

  Don Kalancha and Joe Maier, who keep me right on contractual matters.

  In the United Kingdom

  Jessica and Rosie Buchman, my foreign rights agents.

  To you all, Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly and I tender our most heartfelt gratitude and thanks.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I find it hard to believe that I am sitting here typing the fifteenth author’s note to accompany another novel in the Irish Country Doctor series.

  As with its predecessors, some aspects of the work require explanation or validation. Real places and real people, both medical and nonmedical, will be identified and my personal involvement with many of them noted. Given that the action takes place between July 5, 1969 and late January 1970, actual events like the moon landing and the periodic outbreaks of sectarian violence in parts of Ulster must be mentioned but will not be dwelled upon in great detail. With regards to the violence, I have reported the historical facts and have not taken sides.

  On one occasion in the nonpolitical part of the work I have, for dramatic purposes, bent the truth slightly, and I will note this instance in the coming paragraphs. Finally, I could not have written this work without the help of some of my friends, whom I will name and thank.

  All of the following senior physicians and surgeons on the staff of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast taught me: Doctor Minty Bereen, anaesthesia; Mister Eric Cowan, eye surgery; Sir Ian Fraser, surgery; Doctor D. A. D. Montgomery, endocrinology; and Mister Willoughby Wilson, general surgery. In July and August of 1963, Tom Baskett and I were part of a group of medical students “living in,” that is to say resident and under practical instruction, at the Royal Maternity Hospital. We were the last group taught by Professor C. M. G. Macafee, who retired in August of that year.

  Harith Lamki was two years my senior when I worked at the Ulster Hospital, Dundonald, for two years. He taught me a great deal, and he told me the story of Tippu Tib. Harith was a brilliant obstetrician and a man of deep compassion.

  I’m afraid I stole your name, old friend Doctor Rahul Bannerjee (a pathologist with whom I worked in Winnipeg).

  Doctor Virginia Apgar was the first woman to head a specialty division (anaesthesiology) at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. As an obstetric anesthesiologist, Apgar was able to document trends that could distinguish healthy infants from infants in trouble. This investigation led in 1953 to a standardized scoring system used to assess a newborn’s health one minute after birth and subsequently in five-minute increments. The resulting system was referred to eponymously as the “Apgar score.” This system is still in use.

  Doctor Jamsie Bowman was a friend of my father’s, our GP, and a keen wildfowler before he took up fly-fishing.

  Mister Jack Kyle, 1926–2014, was arguably the best out-half to play rugby football for Ireland. He trained as a surgeon in the Royal Victoria and later worked in Africa.

  Nonmedical people mentioned include Lieutenant-General Sir Ian Freeland, who was appointed general officer commanding British troops in Ulster on July 9, 1969 and was still in post when this book ends. Sir Edward Carson, 1854–1935, was a committed Unionist politician who bitterly opposed Home Rule for Ireland. In 1895, he defended the Marquess of Queensberry in a case of criminal libel brought by Oscar Wilde, which Queensberry won when Wilde withdrew the charge. Carson’s bronze statue, with its right arm raised, stands with its back to the many-pillared, Greek classical-style portico of the Northern Ireland parliament buildings.

  I will never forget Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface. The event was broadcast on BBC-TV from the Lime Grove Studios’ special Apollo 11 set in London by science historian and broadcaster James Burke; Cliff Michelmore, BBC’s regular current affairs presenter; and the astronomer Patrick Moore.

  I know Bushmills and have stayed there recently but have not visited the Giant’s Causeway for fifty years and was fortunate to have my hazy recollections confirmed, of which I’ll share more later. While my fictitious village of Ballybucklebo serves as most of the background for this work, scenes set in or near Bangor, County Down—including Bangor Bay, Luchi’s ice-cream shop, the Carnegie Library, Ballysallagh Reservoir, and the Crawfordsburn Inn—are all familiar. I grew up in Bangor from 1946 until 1964 and was a frequent visitor until I emigrated to Canada in 1970.

  When O’Reilly goes wildfowling on the shores of Strangford Lough, his route would take him, in succession, through Greyabbey, past the Mount Stewart estate, through Kircubbin, into the townland of Lisbane (Lios bán, the white ring fort), and over the Salt-Water Brig (so called because at high tide the brig, or bridge, spans seawater) to an old church and churchyard that abutted Davy McMaster’s farmhouse. I know this because as a young man I was a keen wildfowler and took the same route on as many Saturdays as possible in the season. Even the motorboat named Grey Goose is authentic. She belonged to a syndicate of four doctor friends, including my father and Jamsie Bowman, and served as their transport to the Long Island.

  I remember Hawthornden Way, which runs past Campbell College. I attended that school from 1954 to 1958, and am able to describe ward 21, the neurosurgical ward in Quinn House at the Royal Victoria, because I was a houseman there for three months in 1965.

  So much for accuracy. What is not authentic is that the marquis’s great-grandfather did not found the Royal Ulster Yacht Club. It was the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, on whose family and estate at Clandeboye Lord John MacNeill and his estate are loosely based.

  I am deeply indebted to several people for their expert advice and wish to recognize all but two of them in alphabetical order. My friend of longest duration, Doctor Tom Baskett, obstetrician and gynaecologist, for his reading and correcting my obstetrical scenes. Incidentally, Tom is the coauthor of Munro Kerr’s Operative Obstetrics, tenth and eleventh editions. Mister Tom Fanin, my senior at medical school and subsequently a skilled neurosurgeon in the Royal Victoria Hospital, for reading and correcting my description of the presentation, diagnosis, and
surgical treatment of a case of a leaking aneurysm on the right middle cerebral artery. Doctor Rob Lannigan, an old friend who by chance happened to e-mail me from Bushmills en route to the Giant’s Causeway, and who, after that visit, read and corrected my fifty-year-old description, to which I have alluded. Edward Lister R.N., of Travel Medicine Clinic of Rancho Mirage, California, returned my phone call and patiently explained to me what immunizations and medications would be required for passengers on a world cruise in 1969. Master builder Renée van Hullebush of Mountain Star Ventures, with his wife, Eva, guided my very nonexpert understanding to a credible scheme of how a crooked building material supplier might cheat an honest builder.

  Last, and by no means least, I owe a very large debt to two remarkable women. Dorothy, my wife, as Ulster as I and with a steel-trap memory for details of the old place and who, heavily disguised as Kinky, creates the recipes.

  Carolyn Bateman and I have worked together from almost the beginning of my fiction writing career in 1997. (My first publisher assigned her as my freelance editor.) She is an editor without equal who brings me back from the brink when I am writing myself into a corner, subtly suggests plot wrinkles when I’m stuck, and does not let me write plot holes. She even speaks pure Ulsterisms.

  To everyone named in this section, I simply cannot thank you all enough.

  And finally, some validation. I have striven for complete accuracy by consulting authoritative sources, including:

  BOOKS

  Bardon, J., A History of Ulster. Blackstaff Press, Belfast 1992, pp. 665–677.

  Baskett, T. F., A History of Caesarean Birth. Clinical Press 2017.

  Clarke, R., The Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast. The Blackstaff Press, Belfast 1997.

  Donald, I., Practical Obstetric Problems. Lloyd-Luke (medical books) Ltd., London 1964.

  Chassar, Moir J., Munro Kerr’s Operative Obstetrics. Seventh Edition. Balière, Tindall and Cox, London 1964.

  INTERNET

  1969: The North Erupts—History Ireland, for the Scarman Tribunal report.

  CAIN (Conflict Archive on the Internet), CAIN: Violence and Civil Disturbances in Northern Ireland in 1969

  The Cameron Report on Unrest in Northern Ireland, 1969

  I hope this short note has served its purpose of explanation and validation and will add to your enjoyment of the work.

  Patrick Taylor

  Saltspring Island

  British Columbia

  Canada

  July 2019

  1

  Day and Night Love Sang

  My heart at thy dear voice

  Wakes with joy, like the flow’r

  At the sun’s bright returning!

  Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly leaned back in his chair at the packed Ballybucklebo Bonnaughts Sporting Club hall. Not a sound could be heard but the soaring voice.

  Flo Bishop, standing behind the microphone on the small stage, let her magical contralto caress the notes of Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” from the opera Samson and Delilah. The song was better known in English as “Softly Awakes My Heart.” As she sang, her eyes were fixed on those of her husband, Bertie Bishop, who, after he had helped his wife onto the stage, joined O’Reilly’s table. The man’s eyes were overflowing with adoration, and O’Reilly clearly recalled how some months ago, when his brother, Lars, had helped Bertie draw up his will, Bertie had told the two men how he had fallen in love with the sixteen-year-old Flo McCaffrey at a cèilidh in a church hall many years ago.

  O’Reilly let the notes flow over him and marvelled at the purity of sound coming from the throat of the rotund wife of the equally spherical Councillor Bertie Bishop. Bertie was one of the prime movers behind using the Ballybucklebo Bonnaughts Sporting Club on Saturday nights for social events like ballroom dancing, hops, and cèilidhs. Bringing the two already tolerant country communities closer together in Ballybucklebo seemed important given the recent outbreak of sectarian troubles, some violent, that had been going on across the six counties for more than a year. Tonight, Saturday, July 5, 1969, the Bonnaughts were hosting the first of what was hoped would be a regular series of talent contests.

  Bertie’s lips were moving, and O’Reilly knew the man was silently mouthing along.

  Oh, bide here at my side!

  Promise ne’er thou’lt depart!

  O’Reilly glanced around the table, struck suddenly by the other love stories there. Kitty and he had celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary two days ago. She caught his eye and smiled. It would have been a longer getaway, but he had promised to attend here tonight.

  Was it really thirty-eight years since a young Dublin medical student had fallen for a Nurse Kitty O’Hallorhan from Tallaght and in 1935 had left her to pursue his all-consuming interest in his work? She’d taken herself off to Spain during the Civil War to work in an orphanage and he’d lost track of her. Thanks to his partner, Doctor Barry Laverty, he and Kitty had met again, and the long-cherished embers of their love had burst into fresh flames. Barry sat across from him now, holding the hand of his wife, Sue. Five years ago, he’d been besotted with Patricia, a young engineering student who’d won a Cambridge scholarship, left Ulster, and broken Barry’s heart. He’d been devastated, but some months later had fallen for Sue, paid court, and married her. Now they were expecting.

  As winds o’er golden grain

  Softly sigh roving by …

  Next to Barry was his former classmate, the surgeon Mister Jack Mills, who sat close beside his fiancée, Doctor Helen Hewitt, although O’Reilly knew the engagement was still a secret. When would they make their plans public?

  The party was completed by Lord John MacNeill, Marquis of Ballybucklebo, and his sister, Myrna. Both were widowed and O’Reilly wondered if they were thinking of their lost loves, perhaps moved, as he was, by the obvious bond between Bertie Bishop and Flo.

  He returned his gaze to Flo, took a pull on his pint of Guinness, placed it on the table, and stuck his pipe back in his mouth. He thought of the aria’s final words, but in the original French, which his father had insisted he and his brother Lars learn and which O’Reilly had polished with some French cruiser officers while serving in Alexandria on HMS Warspite during the war:

  Ah! respond to Love’s caresses,

  Join in all my soul expresses!

  Flo stood for a few seconds, then bowed as deeply as her considerable waist would allow.

  Bertie was on his feet, hands ready to clap, but before the applause could begin, O’Reilly, with his basso voice, finished the aria with Sampson’s reply:

  “Dalila! Dalila! Je t’aime!”

  Bertie said with a smile, “That’s my line, Doctor.”

  The room erupted. Not with its usual racket—say for a well-sung Irish song or neatly performed sean-nos hard-shoe dance—of whistles, foot stamping, and cries of, “You done good, you-girl-ye.” No, tonight the audience responded with all the decorum that would be accorded a professional opera singer. Flo Bishop was given a standing ovation and the hand clapping was deafening.

  O’Reilly looked over to the contest’s judges, Father O’Toole and the Reverend Mister Robinson. From the way the men were grinning at each other, they were not going to have any difficulty deciding the winner, even if she was one of the event organisers. So far tonight a cèilidh band had played, Alan Hewitt had sung Irish songs, six girl dancers from the Dympna Kelly School of dance had skipped and jigged, and even O’Reilly himself had performed a rousing sea shanty—and there was only one more act to come.

  The applause gradually died, replaced by the scraping of chair legs on the floor as people retook their seats and the dull hum of renewed conversations. A single voice that O’Reilly could not identify remarked above the murmuring, “—and Rod Laver beat John Newcombe in Melbourne in the men’s tennis finals the day.”

  O’Reilly watched as Councillor Bertie Bishop helped his wife down, hugged her, and Ulster reticence be damned, planted a firm kiss on her lip
s before letting her accept the congratulations of some of the nearest members of the audience.

  Her place onstage was taken by a carroty-haired buck-toothed young man. “All right, youse lot. Settle down. Settle down.” He waved his right hand, palm down. “Crikey, Flo, but you done very good. Very good indeed. You was sticking out a mile.” There was awe in his tone. “You have the voice of an angel, so you have.”

  Flo blushed and inclined her head.

  More applause.

  Since Bertie had made Donal a partner in the Bishop Building Company in May, willing the company to him when both Bishops died, the Bishops and the Donnellys were on Christian-name terms. Indeed, Bertie now treated Donal like the son he’d never had.

  “I’ll say that again,” Donal said when a semblance of quiet had returned. “Voice of an angel.”

  “Aye, Mrs. Bishop has that,” yelled Dapper Frew, Donal’s best friend. “And you, you bollix, Donal Donnelly, you can’t carry a tune in a bucket. I hope you’re not planning to sing nothing.”

  Much laughter.

  “Get on with what you’re going til say. There’s folks here with their tongues hanging out for a jar.”

  Donal Donnelly, carpenter by trade, architect of schemes for separating people like bookies and gullible English tourists from their money, was tonight’s master of ceremonies. As was to be expected in a place like Ballybucklebo, there was much good-humoured ribbing between audience and MC. Donal cocked his head sideways, looked askance at his friend, and said, “Dapper? Away off and chase yourself, you buck eejit.”

  More laughter.

  “But Dapper’s right about one thing. Well, two things actually. It’s true I couldn’t sing in tune if my life depended on it, and with this crowd it might. And it is time for us to take a wee break before I introduce the last act. So, chat nicely among yourselves, stretch your legs, and youse all know where the bar is.” Donal hopped down and the noise level rose.