Now and in the Hour of Our Death
Page 46
Three years ago, Tim and Pernille, in their fifty-foot Swan-Cooper, Windshadow II, left Burrard Inlet on the first leg of their round-the-world cruise. Tim, then seventy-two, brushed aside any suggestion that he was too old and reminded people that Sir Francis Chichester had been in his seventies when he’d circumnavigated the globe single-handedly in Gipsy Moth IV. They were last heard of six months ago in Portsmouth, when Tim phoned Becky in Henley and arranged to meet her for dinner.
Dimitris Papodopolous graduated in 2001 from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of British Columbia. He lives with the Turkish daughter of his Greek father’s business partner. Dimitris cannot tolerate Greek cooking, but both have appetites for sushi. They have two young children.
Jean-Claude Duplessis and Siobhan Duplessis (née Ferguson) live in Montreal. He is a senior producer at Radio Canada. Their children are grown, and Siobhan takes great pleasure from her grandchildren. She works as a volunteer for the Society for the Preservation of Grosse Isle, where, after the famine of 1845, Irish immigrants were quarantined and where thousands died of cholera and typhus fever. Every year on April 22, the date of Mike’s funeral in 1974, she goes alone to the Saint Lawrence and drops in a single red rose, just as she had dropped a bouquet of red roses on his coffin.
She kneels and, as she did back then, crosses herself and says a quiet Ave.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessèd art thou among women and blessèd is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.
PATRICK TAYLOR
Bowen Island, British Columbia, 2005
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Now and in the Hour of Our Death is the sequel to Pray for Us Sinners. The titles are taken from the Roman Catholic prayer Ave Maria, or Hail Mary.
The reader will be reacquainted with Davy McCutcheon, ex–Provisional IRA bomb maker, now British prisoner, and Fiona Kavanagh, who has left Davy and lives and works as a school vice principal in Vancouver, British Columbia. How their estranged love for each other is resolved and how this resolution affects the lives of people around them are the forces that drive the story.
The scenes are set against two backdrops: the sectarian carnage that was Northern Ireland in the mid ’80s, and the multicultural tranquility that was, and still is, the peace of Vancouver.
The events that occurred before and during the breakout by a number of Provisional IRA inmates from the Maze Prison in Ulster on September 25, 1983, are described as accurately as research allows. Names of historical figures are used fictitiously, and I have imagined their dialogue. Margaret Thatcher was the British prime minister at the time. Bobby Storey was the prisoner in charge of the escape, and Bic McFarlane the Officer Commanding the Provisional IRA inmates of the Maze Prison, always referred to by the Provisionals as the Kesh.
My characters and what happens to them are fictional, as is the raid on the police barracks in Strabane. No such raid actually occurred, but I have borrowed from the description of the intelligence-gathering operation by the Security Forces and their dealing with a similar attack by members of the Provisional IRA on the police barracks at Loughgall in 1987.
Scenes set in Ireland are flavoured by my having lived there for thirty-two years.
The city of Vancouver and an episode in the waters surrounding Bowen Island are drawn from personal experience. I have lived in Canada for forty years, Vancouver for four, Bowen Island, British Columbia, for thirteen, and Salt Spring Island for nearly four.
I hope my late friend Al Byers forgave me for borrowing the name of his vessel, Windshadow.
Although this work may be thought of as a thriller, it is really a story about love. It concerns the love of men for women, of women for men, and of a woman for her family. The principal actors must also deal with their feelings for Ireland, their country of birth and nurture, and Canada, their new and welcoming adopted country. The universal love of the human race for freedom, both physical and political, lives in many of the characters.
Which of these loves transcends the rest I leave for the reader to decide.
PATRICK TAYLOR
Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, 2013
BY PATRICK TAYLOR
Only Wounded
Pray for Us Sinners
Now and in the Hour of Our Death
An Irish Country Doctor
An Irish Country Village
An Irish Country Christmas
An Irish Country Girl
An Irish Country Courtship
A Dublin Student Doctor
An Irish Country Wedding
Fingal O’Reilly, Irish Doctor
The Wily O’Reilly: Irish Country Stories
“Home Is the Sailor” (e-original)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Taylor, M.D., was born and raised in Bangor, County Down, in Northern Ireland. He is the New York Times bestselling author of the Irish Country series that began with An Irish Country Doctor. Dr. Taylor is a distinguished medical researcher, offshore sailor, model-boat builder, and father of two grown children. He now lives on Saltspring Island, British Columbia.
www.patricktaylor.ca
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
NOW AND IN THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH
Copyright © 2005 by Ballybucklebo Stories Corp.
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph by Corbis Images
Cover design by www.nick-venables.co.uk
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3519-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-2143-9 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466821439
Previously published by Insomniac Press
First Edition: July 2014