The Secret of Eveline House

by Sheila Forsey

  ‘Indeed, I certainly have not, or have I any inclination to do so. I have it on very good authority, so be careful working up there and mind your job as I have already warned you – it might be hard to get work anywhere else if they were ever to leave.’

  Betsy had almost thrown the money at Miss Doheny, who looked immensely pleased with herself at upsetting Betsy.

  There was no point in trying to sleep, it had left her. She got up and went into the small kitchen of her cottage. It was still warm, and she stoked up the fire and put on a kettle to boil some water for tea. From the small deep-set window, she watched the dawn arrive in all its colours, slicing the sky with golden liquid and flashes of pinks, blues and violets. She had so many memories in this kitchen. It was all she ever knew, all of life that had meant anything to her had happened in this kitchen. The leaving of Michael her brother, the past Christmases and the happy times of her younger years, the rosaries and all the prayers that were said on bended knee. At Easter after the weeks of deprivation and prayer, they would eventually come home on the Good Friday after kissing the Cross and waiting for the darkness to pass. Then at last Easter Sunday would come. In jubilation they wore their best to Easter Mass and came home to hot tea and porter cake, made on the fire.

  There were memories of her brother on that last night when the neighbours came to sing a tune and have a bottle of porter. Then the sickness and all the looking after her parents. Eventually when they got so sick, they slept on the settle bed. The last time people were in the house was the wake of her mother. Lying still and frail in her casket. She had prayed for a happy death and Betsy was glad she had not suffered too much, her weak body eventually giving in as Betsy held her hand and knew then she was alone.

  She got up and took a box from a drawer. In it was everything that was precious to her. Her brother’s letters from Australia. Her mother’s brooch and her father’s pipe. She picked up the pipe, the faint smell of tobacco filling the air. If she closed her eyes, she could see her father as he sat and talked of myths and legends handed down from generation to generation. All the letters that Michael had sent. They would save them and when the chores were done and they were sitting at the fire, her father would take out his spectacles and read the letter aloud as they savoured every word. She remembered all the talk of Michael coming home. The money that was sent over from Australia and very gratefully received. The letters written and sent back with the news of what was going on in Draheen. The money that Michael sent had allowed them to buy good coats, pay the Easter dues without worry. Her father was a labourer for a landowner. Her mother worked in one of the big houses, but the house was closed now, and the family had moved to Dublin. Michael’s money had bought a pony and cart and had allowed some little luxuries for Christmas. At one stage there was even a mention of Betsy going out to Australia. Michael had said there was great opportunities for her. But Mother would not hear of it. Betsy was all that they had with Michael gone. Then Michael got married and had two sons. There was less talk about him coming home. He still asked for Betsy to go over, but it was never really discussed, especially when her mother got sick and Betsy looked after her morning, noon and night, Oh, how she would have loved to see those young boys, but alas it had not happened!

  When her father died, Michael was good as his word and had sent money home for her, to give him a good send-off. He still talked about coming home, but he was always so busy with the construction business that he had set up. Of course, his life was there now with his wife Jane and the boys. Betsy felt no animosity towards him. She was glad he had a good life, she just wished it was not so far away. She was eight when he left. His picture took pride of place on the mantelpiece. There was one other of her First Holy Communion. Michael had a big smile on his face with long tall thin legs and a shock of fair curly hair. He was ten years older than her and had always been her protector.

  But when her mother died, standing alone at that graveside had almost killed her. Michael had written and told her that he would book a place for her on a ship to Australia. But Betsy was reluctant – she had never been further than Grafton Street in Dublin and that was only three times in her life. She had marvelled at the style and the fancy food. Towards evening as she got the bus the night sky was illuminated with the streetlamps but she was glad to get back to Draheen. Truth was she was nervous of travelling so far alone.

  Dublin had seemed like a different world. If she had any desire to go to Australia, it had left her. She now only had a fear of the unknown. What if Jane, Michael’s wife, did not take to her? She would hate to be a burden. So, she wrote back to say that she would look for work and if she got some she would stay.

  One minute she was a young sixteen-year-old and it seemed the next minute she was thirty-seven. Her years had filled a pattern. The dark winter nights and the howl of the unknown outside her bed, glad of the safety of her home. Then the spring would come, and the briars would start to bloom, the hens would lay much better and after Easter the summer arrived. Autumn was there again, and the pattern continued. She had spent all her years in a continual sense of ritual, prayer, fasting, Stations of the Cross, picking berries, making bread, peeling potatoes, the Missions with maybe a priest home from Africa with tales of black babies and a land unimaginable. The seasons were broken by the different religious ceremonies.

  Her mother had taught her how to pray. They prayed together to all the saints and angels in heaven. She had thought of joining a convent, thought she had a calling for it, but her mother had never encouraged it. They needed her at home more than any convent needed her.

  Betsy picked a rosary beads from the box and said a decade of the rosary, offering it up for peace for the Wards. Her kitchen was eerily silent except for the prayers. A kitchen haunted with memories and ghosts. She was a spinster now living alone. She thanked God for the Ward family coming into her life.

  Yet, she had a terrible fear in her for them. If only she could figure out who sent that dreadful letter. Those women who cleaned the church knew who had, Betsy was sure of it. Hiding behind a poison-pen letter. What an unchristian act!

  Morning had finally arrived. She swept up the kitchen and left for morning Mass. She wanted to say some prayers to the Holy Mother for poor little Sylvia.

  She loved this time of the morning when there was a white frost and a mist coming up from the river. Draheen was mostly still asleep. She walked briskly to keep warm.

  At first she thought it was someone else, but as she walked up the Master’s Hill she recognised Mr Ward coming up the road, looking much the worse for wear. He spotted Betsy and called out to her. She rushed over as he looked like he could fall, and he had a cut on the side of his face. But, as she drew closer, the smell of stale whiskey and Woodbines hit her nostrils.

  ‘Mr Ward, what in God’s name are you doing out here in this state?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have only myself to blame, too much porter and whiskey. I had to sleep it off on the settle bed in Binchys’. My head is dizzy, Betsy. I am afraid I am still drunk – we had an awful feed of drink. Peter Binchy was nearly as bad. He’s still sleeping it off. I just slipped out without waking him or his wife.’

  ‘What, you never went home? Mrs Ward will be out of her mind.’

  ‘Oh, she went off in a right strop last night. I tried to talk her out of London.’

  ‘I gathered that – she was upset when she came in.’

  Henry stopped and put his hand on a nearby wall to steady himself. His face was white and he looked like he would throw up.

  ‘I can’t go back to London, Betsy, I can’t. She wants to drag me back there. I am telling you I can’t do it. I am done with London. You don’t know what it was like, Betsy.’

  ‘Hush now and keep your voice down a bit. If anyone sees us, it will be the talk of the town.’

  But Henry was oblivious to anyone. He looked haunted by what he was thinking. He looked intently at Betsy who was desperately trying to get him to move.

  �
�I still dream of those men waiting for the boat. It was a human tragedy. I was barely sixteen. I had not seen further than the nearest town. Unless you were there, Betsy, you could not understand. Young men and old men. Knowing nothing but a will to work. Leaving everything they ever knew. It may only have been across the water, but it may as well have been another planet. The stench of sick on the boat – some of them had never been on a boat. Leaving the mothers, wives and loved ones staring after them. There were women on it too. Some who had got into trouble and some who had no choice but to leave. Leave everything they knew for the cold unforgiving streets of London, where we toiled and sweated enough to keep us alive and send a bit home. Oh, we drank to stop feeling so lonely, but we had our dignity even when we had the porter. I can’t go back. I dreamt of making it and I have. I made it, Betsy, can’t you see? I cannot go back. Ireland is my home.’

  Betsy was shocked at his outburst. There were tears rolling down his face. What on earth would anyone say if they saw them on the street and he with his arm around her in case he fell. She had to get him home. He must have had some amount of drink. He could barely walk. She walked slowly alongside him, his arm over her shoulder, trying to balance himself. They were walking so slowly she reckoned they would never get to Eveline.

  ‘Mr Ward, you have to pull yourself together and try to get home, or I will get cross with you.’

  Henry smiled at this last comment. ‘I can’t imagine you getting cross, Betsy. You are far too good-natured.’

  They were nearly at Eveline when the keen eye of Mrs Roche spotted them – she was coming up the road on her High Nelly and she almost cycled into a wall watching the goings-on.

  Well, that was that – that would feed the gossipers for the next few days, Betsy thought.

  And she had missed Mass. She would call in later and light some candles. She said a prayer to Saint Joseph for strength and she eventually got Mr Ward into the house and put him on the sofa in the drawing room. She put a blanket over him as he fell into a deep sleep. She could almost hear what Mrs Roche was saying to her cronies and she could feel her face blush with anger. More gossip to fuel those women.

  In the kitchen she stoked up the range. After a cup of tea and a slice of soda bread and butter she felt a bit better. She had some scraps for Milky the cat and a bowl of milk. The cat loved the garden and was constantly found sitting guarding it – she knew she would find her out there.

  Sylvia was normally up and about early. She loved to sit in the kitchen and help Betsy making bread. But there was no sign of her this morning. Milky the cat was delighted to see Betsy and rubbed herself against her legs.

  Betsy was about to leave when she spotted it. A letter torn into pieces and lying beside it was Petite Suzanne, face down with her head askew. She walked over in dread and picked up the doll whose head was cracked with pieces broken from her face. Her arm was also hanging loose. In dread she picked up the pieces of the letter. She managed to put it together. It was short and to the point, scrawled in large writing.

  The Ward Witches of Eveline

  Witches die and the daughter of a witch is burned alive. Leave now.

  Betsy gasped and dropped the doll. She ran all the way to Sylvia’s room. It was bolted. Sylvia never locked her room.

  As she pounded on it, Violet came rushing out of her room in her nightdress.

  ‘Whatever is the matter, Betsy?’

  Betsy showed her the bits of the letter.

  ‘It was in the garden, I just found it with Suzanne. The doll is broken in bits. I haven’t seen Sylvia. The door is locked from the inside.’

  She rapped on the door. ‘Sylvia! Sylvia, pet, open the door!’

  Violet read the vicious words, gasped and then began pounding on the door.

  ‘Sylvia, open up! Sylvia, open the door at once!’

  But there was no sound. They kept pounding with Violet screaming at Sylvia to open the door.

  Henry came up the stairs with his hand on his head.

  ‘What on earth is going on? Are you planning on breaking up the house?’

  ‘It’s Sylvia – we think there is something wrong!’ Betsy cried. ‘She has locked herself in. I found another letter and her smashed-up doll! Mr Ward, we need to get in there – do something!’

  ‘Move away from the door, Violet! Betsy, step away now! Sylvia, if you are at the door move away now!’

  He charged the door like a madman. On his third attempt the latch broke and the door flew open.

  Betsy saw nothing but the blood first – heard nothing but the screams of Violet. Small hand-marks of blood were on every wall. Written on the mirror in blood was the word SATAN. A vison of being on a relative’s farm and the killing of a goat came back to her. She never quite forgot the screams of that goat.

  Then she saw Sylvia. She was lying on the bed in a blood-stained pale-blue nightdress, her eyes open with a look that made Betsy’s blood run cold. The child’s head was lying askew. Her children’s prayer book was torn and scattered around the bed. Her white rosary beads broken and scattered around the floor. Blood was oozing from her arms, her torso and her legs from what looked like stab wounds. Her face was covered in bright red marks and her forehead was swollen as if she had fallen and hit it. But it was a large gash at her wrist pulsing with blood that almost took the breath from Betsy. Then she spotted a nail scissors on the floor beside the bed. She recognised it from Mrs Ward’s vanity unit. The scissors was covered in blood.

  Violet was still screaming.

  Somehow Betsy sprang into action.

  She checked the child’s pulse at the side of her neck. She said a silent prayer of thanks – there was a pulse.

  She grabbed Henry who was on his knees as if in pain, animal sounds coming from him.

  ‘Go get the doctor quick!’ she shouted.

  Henry was white. As white as the sheet of the bed. He didn’t respond.

  Betsy shook him.

  ‘Go!’ she screamed.

  Henry stared at her, his eyes full of horror.

  ‘There’s little time!’ Betsy screamed. ‘She’s alive but she’s dying!’

  He rose to his feet and ran from the room.

  Violet was cupping Sylvia’s face, tears flowing down her cheeks, screaming at her to come back to her.

  Betsy prayed that the doctor was still at his house and had not left for house calls. The house was only down the street. She ran and grabbed a sheet from the cupboard in the corridor. Back in the bedroom, she tore at it with all her strength. She tied one strip tightly around the bleeding wrist, then began to wrap strips around the other wounds. She began to talk to Sylvia. The child’s eyes were now closed, but her mouth was moving. Betsy leaned in to hear what she was saying. She could hardly believe the words.

  ‘I am the daughter of the devil, I am the daughter of the devil, I am the daughter of the devil, I do not believe in deum immortalem . . .’

  Then she seemed to faint.

  Betsy had prayed at enough Masses to know that deum immortalem meant ‘immortal god’ in Latin.

  Violet screamed and fell to her knees in fright while Betsy forced herself to check the child’s pulse again.

  ‘She’s alive, Mrs Ward, she’s still alive.’

  Within about seven minutes Victor Gettings arrived with his medical bag. He did a double take when he saw the room as if wary of entering it but then he saw Sylvia and he set to work. He checked her pulse then swiftly opened his bag. He took out a small vial and punched it with a needle and then injected the liquid into Sylvia’s arm. She never flinched. She had slipped into an unconscious state.

  ‘We need to get her to the hospital immediately. Quickly, Henry, you carry her – we need to go now,’ the doctor instructed.

  Betsy and Henry wrapped her in a blanket then Henry picked her up in his arms.

  ‘Is she going to die?’ Violet sobbed as she followed them and the doctor down the stairs.

  ‘Her pulse is weak. We need to get blood into her as q
uickly as possible.’

  They put her in the doctor’s car, lying in the back seat. Violet jumped in at the other side and Henry placed his daughter’s head on Violet’s lap. The doctor drove away shouting at Henry to follow him.

  Betsy locked the front door. Henry jumped into his own car with Betsy beside him.

  The hospital was only a few miles outside of Draheen. It seemed forever but eventually they got there. It was run by an order of nuns who lived in a convent on the grounds of the hospital. A nun in a white habit met them. Sylvia was put on a stretcher by two porters and Doctor Gettings was at the front of the stretcher. The grave look on his face frightened Betsy even more than before. Mrs Ward was crying and Mr Ward looked as white as the starched veil of the nun. An older nun met them and directed Mr Ward, Mrs Ward and Betsy to take a seat in the corridor. Mrs Ward was intent on following Sylvia and Mr Ward tried to tell her to wait. The nun stopped her and told her that she could not go into the room where they were taking the child. Mr Ward tried to hold his wife in his arms while she shouted and tried to pull herself away.

  ’Hush, Violet, we have to let them do their job,’ he whispered.

  ‘Let them do what they can now,’ the nun instructed gently.

  Violet sat down with Betsy beside her holding her hand. Henry pulled out a packet of cigarettes and dropped the matches his hands were shaking so much.

  Betsy put her arms around Violet who was crying uncontrollably. Then Betsy began to pray, the corridor echoing her voice. She prayed to Mary the Holy Mother. She prayed to Saint Martin and she prayed to her mother. The small corridor was silent except for the sobs of Violet and the prayers of Betsy.

  CHAPTER 13

  Betsy thought the hours would never end. All she could do was pray.