The Old Bequia Bookstore

The first Bequia bookstore was located in the lower part of Papa Mitchie’s Guest House in Port Elizabeth.  It was a true pleasure to browse in that shop, there were rustic paintings by Nora Birmingham, scrimshaw by artists Sam McDowell and Elen Shwartz, a large selection of sailing charts and maps, flags and lots of wonderful Caribbean literature. The owners, a middle-aged couple from Barbados, ran this whimsical bookstore for twenty years and I loved it.

The bookstore was opened by Ian and Cyralene Gale shortly after my arrival on Bequia.  Cyralene was astonishingly beautiful and always well groomed, other women looked and felt frumpy in comparison, at least I did!  Ian was rather short and very quiet, he usually sat in a corner of the book store smoking his pipe and reading. He was a totally unflappable man and kept pretty much to himself unless he had something important to say. My mother told me that Cyralene was Ian’s fourth wife; I am not sure if this was accurate but it made me figure that Ian had something going for him because he was not exactly Tarzan in the looks department……….

Ian Gale had for quite some time been Editor of the Barbados Advocate, and was outspoken in his articles to the extent that he was once jailed for contempt of court.  He was also the founder and first Commodore of the Barbados Cruising Club, an organization he started in 1957 due to the membership practices of the Barbados Yacht Club.  The Yacht Club, located just 200 meters down the beach, did not allow blacks or poor whites to join, and Ian’s aim was to make sailing available to ordinary Barbadians.  One of the founding members of the Barbados Cruising Club was Errol Barrow, the man who would eventually guide Barbados to Independence from Britain in 1966 and become the country’s first Prime Minister.

Cyralene was a very prominent Barbadian.  She was a columnist and Women’s Editor for the Barbados Advocate, which is most likely where she met and subsequently married Ian.  She was also one of Barbados’s first female senators both before and after Independence.  She served from 1964-1966, then from 1971 – 1975.  Cyralene also established Duff’s Business College International, and in 1976 she was named the first female Commissioner to Canada.  Cyralene Gale was a formidable women and I often wondered what prompted her to move to Bequia, it couldn’t have been the lure of the Island’s social scene!

Ian and Cyralene lived in a house named “Friendly Hall” above the road leading down to the Friendship Bay Hotel.  Mac and I always laughed when we passed their gate, two large, ferocious dogs guarded the property and would try to chew their way through the fence in a frenzied attempt to attack pedestrians.  “Friendly Hall” indeed!

One day Mac and I were invited to “Friendly Hall” for sunset cocktails. Cyralene stopped me as I was rushing out of the post office to extend the invitation.  When I accepted she asked me to contact my parents as well as Violet and Rolph Wallach (a couple who visited Bequia each year) to let them know they were invited too. I hurriedly promised to do so, promptly forgetting when I got ten paces down the road.  I had just spent a frustrating hour clearing a Christmas parcel from Customs and needed to get back to work.  The invitation to “Friendly Hall” had flown in one ear and out the other.

Two days later my mother asked if I had seen Cyralene, and as soon as she uttered the name I clapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh shit!” said I, and my mother nodded her head in agreement.  Yes, oh shit indeed.  The only people invited to the cocktail party other than Mac and myself were the four that I had forgotten to contact, which meant that Ian and Cyralene had prepared drinks and snacks for guests that never arrived.

I had to apologize to the Gales and quickly made my way to the Bookstore. I was met by a stony-faced Cyralene, she was obviously very pissed off!  I told her how sorry I was, I had been in too much of a hurry and had forgotten about the invitation. I promised it would never happen again.  Regarding me coldly she said, “No it won’t, because you will never be invited again!”

I never WAS invited again, and because of my forgetfulness I never got to know the Gales very well.  Years later Ian committed suicide at Friendly Hall, after which Cyralene moved back to Barbados.  I understand that she died recently (July 2018) and it made me wonder what she did on Barbados during her post-Bequia years.