Another night in that house would have been the death of me. I boarded the ferry this morning without as much as a goodbye. I should tell you I’m not the nervous type. I never was. It took a strong will to leave home and start fresh in a big city alone. But now, one thing is certain. I know my limits.

           I can’t tell anyone at home what happened, or they’d call me mad, and not for the first time. When I get back to Cork, I’ll just say it was homesickness. I missed them all so terribly, especially Mammy. She is getting on in years now. Tired after rearing eight of us. It didn’t seem right to be away from her. I won’t tell them that I’m scared out of my wits. My nerves are shaken since old Miss Whitmore passed, almost a fortnight ago now, may the Lord have mercy on her.

           It does seem quite mad to say that my love for London just disappeared overnight. One night alone in a three-storey house in Hammersmith. I kept watch over old Miss Whitmore, and she all pale and waxy in her casket on the candlelit landing. I didn’t want to do it. There were plenty of things I didn’t want to do for those two women. But I did them anyway. Out of a sense of obligation, or I don’t know what.

           I called her old Miss Whitmore, not because she was particularly old, but because she was the older of the two sisters. By only ten months, she told me once in confidence, as if it was something to be ashamed of that her mother had two babies in a year. But Protestants are like that, aren’t they? She also confided that they had inherited the house and their wealth when their father died. The estate was divided equally between the sisters thanks to the new inheritance laws. If it had been ten years ago, as unmarried women, they would have found themselves in great difficulty.

           When I first arrived at the house on Rosedew Road, I was full of expectation. The avenue of identical, red-bricked houses was lined with neatly pruned lime trees. When I rang the shiny brass doorbell, young Miss Whitmore answered. She was in her fifties, but still beautiful. She had the most stunning dark hair, always held in place with an elegant marcasite pin. She greeted me with a husky, gentle voice and ushered me in to meet the elder sister, who was blind and waiting for me in an armchair in the parlour. Her crooked smile was identical to her younger sister’s, although the face was rounder and the eyes, milky and vacant. My uncle Paulie was blinded in the war and had eyes like that, so they didn’t disturb me, but I could imagine that other people would find them quite frightening.

           They paid me generously. I earned more than some of the other Irish girls over here, and they always gave me plenty of notice if they needed me to do any work outside of what we had agreed. From time to time, they would host a small group of visitors for what I understood was card games in the dining room. I would prepare food and cocktails and set them on silver trays and then go to my room until they called me to come and clean up. These visits happened only once a month or so and I didn’t mind not making plans for just one evening.

           I didn’t often have plans. Usually, it was just a trip to the pictures with Mary-Anne. Or we’d go to a céilí. Mostly, I liked to be alone with my books. I had discovered that London was a city stuffed full of books. You could get anything here. The old Spitalfields market was a great place to find novels you could never get back home, if you know what I mean. But I knew there were dangerous books too. Books my Daddy, may the Lord rest him, would throw on the fire if he came across them. I saw one of those, by Mr Crowley, at a stall one Saturday, and for weeks I couldn’t get the emblem from the embossed leather cover out of my head. It came to me in flashes on the bus, in the kitchen. Even at mass, I’m ashamed to say.

           I was so proud sending my first letter home, writing my new address in my best handwriting on the back of the envelope: 11 Rosedew Road. I was taken away with the idea of the place. The name sounded sweet. Fragrant. My sister would read it and see a perfect, red-bricked avenue decked out with bright pink roses. And she’d die of jealousy. It was a long time now since I’d ever caused her any worry and I was happy to be able to say I’d done well for myself. Here I was, starting out my new life as a housekeeper – an independent woman in the greatest city in the world. She was near delivering her third when I left, and her poor ankles were like pots. But I didn’t feel one bit guilty for leaving. Well, maybe just a tiny bit.

           It turned out that it wasn’t card games the Misses Whitmore were hosting. I discovered it on the third or fourth occasion. Instead of reading in my room, I was sitting in the kitchen folding a napkin into a rose when I heard an awful racket coming from the dining room. An elderly lady in a long taffeta skirt burst through the double doors and asked for the brandy. Her cheeks were ruddy and she was panting. ‘It’s for Mrs Pyne,’ she declared in a silky Scottish accent. ‘She’s taken a turn.’ I brought the brandy and found a huddle of women surrounding who must have been Mrs Pyne, sitting ghost-faced in the armchair by the hearth. A man in a dark suit was giving instruction. ‘Elevate her feet. Get something to put her feet up.’ He didn’t acknowledge or thank me as I handed him the glass, which gave me a chance to get a good look at him.

           He was tall and slender with fine fair slicked-back hair and grey blue eyes. But it was his hands that drew my attention. He had long spindly fingers that looked strangely abundant, as if he had more than five on each hand. When he took the glass, they wrapped around it like tentacles. His cologne was intoxicating. Lily of the valley, I think. When I breathed it in, I felt unsteady.

           Mrs Pyne was coming around and was clearly well looked after, so I turned to leave. The round table was draped in a white linen cloth, with three tall stem candles flickering in the centre. The cloth was a bit dishevelled and strewn with objects I didn’t recognise – cards with strange symbols, a gold pendant necklace, and pencils on sheets of paper. There was writing scrawled on one of the pages. It was a language and script I had never seen before.

           I went back to the kitchen and pretended to potter around. There was no explanation other than what was staring me straight in the face. I had heard rumours that this kind of thing was popular in London before the war. In Dublin, too. Father Boland had warned us in his Sunday sermons against the dangers of divination. You could open yourself to demons and spirits that would never leave you alone. I wanted to get my palm read by a tinker woman at the fair when I was twelve and Daddy, may the Lord have mercy on him, said it was the gravest of sins to try to know the future. Trying to get one up on God, he said it was. I was to make my confirmation the next year and was so pious and obedient in the hope of getting a nice dress for the big day and money for the pictures. ‘Yes Daddy,’ I promised. ‘I’ll never go near any of those things. I swear to God.’ ‘Don’t swear to God,’ he said. ‘That’s a grave sin as well.’

           I said a rosary before bed that night and wrapped my beads around the bedpost. I lay stiff as a board, for hours with the sheets up to my chin. The Misses Whitmore were long asleep by then, but the house made queer sounds, different to those I’d heard before. At first, it was a distant banging. Just the pipes cooling down I thought. But it grew louder, with a definite rhythm as though someone was knocking at the door of the bedroom beneath me. Then it stopped, and I took comfort in the quiet a little too soon, because then there was a loud thud that nearly made me jump out of my skin. It was a strange, hollow bang. It made my body turn rigid again. As the sound faded to a chime in my ears, I could have sworn I heard a voice. A whisper. ‘Leave. Leave now.’ I told myself it was my imagination. Mammy always said my imagination was too wild and vivid. All would be right again in the morning when the natural light of dawn came through the curtains. It was a cleansing thing, morning light. I counted the minutes and when I lost count, I prayed the Lord’s prayer.

           The morning was not bright. A gloom hung over London like a pawl and so the day brought me no relief. I asked no questions of the Misses Whitmore at breakfast, afraid of what the answers might be. But I noticed they were less inclined now to hide things from me. I overheard that Mrs Pyne was not coming back, but the tall man, Mr Lucey they called him, would be coming for the next gathering, planned for the night of June 21^st. They called it St John’s here. It was bonfire night back home. Either way, I knew it was a significant date chosen for its value in communing with the dead.

           I spent June 21^st in dread of the coming evening and busied myself as much as I could. I went to ten o’clock mass that morning and took communion. I had to get two busses to get to St Michaels. I kept my beads in the pocket of my apron all day, fiddling with them occasionally, whispering ‘Sé do bheatha, a Mhuire,’ when I did. ‘Blessed mother protect me.’ 

           The evening turned out to be uneventful, despite my awful agitation. I waited in the kitchen, holding my breath, listening carefully to the rhythms of silence and chatter. Mr Lucey’s voice dominated the group again, but nothing strange or unexpected happened. It was what came after that meeting that was most disturbing. Later that evening, old Miss Whitmore was somehow different. Not just with me, but she was not herself, and it got worse over the days that followed. First, she was distant, not chatty as usual. And a bit drowsy. Then she became confused – saying things that made no sense. ‘He will come, bearing an iron cross,’ and something about the rising of the morning star. Her sister paced about the rooms downstairs, and I too found myself fidgeting. Her declarations swam in circles in my mind. By the third morning she was fully entranced. She sat on her armchair, completely impenetrable and responded to no touch or sound. She breathed in and out with a queer rattle and wheeze that I didn’t like at all.

           I was like a hen on a hot griddle when I heard that young Miss Whitmore had called Mr Lucey back to the house to assist us. ‘Surely, Miss,’ I protested boldly, ‘it’s a priest we need for her. And a doctor?’ She replied bluntly that Mr Lucey would know what to do. Then she lowered her voice to tell me that this had happened once before. I wasn’t to worry. She gave me a list and asked me to go to Putney to a shop called Eglington’s and buy things that Mr Lucey would need when he called.        

           I dared not look at the list. I folded it and put it in my purse, then took a red bus across the river to find the shop. It was an ancient looking place with a crumbling wooden façade. The letters that spelled Eglington’s were once painted in gold but were now flaking and barely readable. When I pushed open the door I was hit by an overwhelming scent of frankincense. In that moment, I was at Christmas mass in the parish church back home and Fr. Boland’s voice echoed in my ears. ‘The Catechism strictly prohibits all attempts to tame occult powers, even if done for a perceived good.’ The lump in my belly moved up to my throat. Shaking, I handed my folded note to the stern looking lady behind the tall wooden desk, and she disappeared into a room behind. When she returned, she didn’t speak to me at all, just handed me a package wrapped in brown paper and string and then eyed the door. The bag wasn’t heavy, but I couldn’t bear to think further on what its contents might be.

           I found Mr Lucey, standing in the doorway to the parlour in an impeccably tailored pin stripe suit. My skin prickled when he greeted me, and my hello, came out as more of a gulp than a fully formed word. I steadied myself and looked past him to see young Miss Whitmore on the sofa with her head in her hands. ‘We have bad news,’ Mr Lucey said in a hushed voice. ‘Miss Victoria has passed on. The doctor is on his way.’

           I dropped the package on the side table and blessed myself. How I stayed standing, I don’t know, and I don’t remember what I said in response, but I know I went to Miss Whitmore to comfort her. It was the first time I ever touched her, and I felt her so fragile. Just bones beneath thin skin. She held my hand when I placed it on her narrow little shoulder.

           It took a while for the funeral to be arranged, as we waited for the autopsy report to confirm what was suspected heart failure. And in that time, I wondered about my future in the house. Would Miss Whitmore stay on here? Would she want to keep me? She would be lonely without her sister and want me for company. I had considered leaving countless times over the last few weeks, and there was plenty of work going, but how could I leave her alone now with her only sister gone? I’d wait till after the funeral and then I would go, but I prayed that she would ask me to leave, first.

           The evening of the funeral was ordinary enough. Quite different to what we do back home, but the same routine of people, although fewer, coming to visit the house to offer sympathies. Old Miss Whitmore would spend the night at home before being removed to the local chapel the next morning, followed by burial in the churchyard where their parents were already interred. There was no food or drink offered during the wake. This, I did find a little odd. And then I realised it was because people were not staying. They gave their condolences and quickly left. When the last visitor had gone young Miss Whitmore declared that she was going to a friend’s apartment in Pimlico and I was to sit with her sister until morning. She made the declaration with such authority that I couldn’t respond with anything but my usual ‘Yes, Miss Whitmore.’ It was as though I’d been given an order by my old teacher, the dreaded Sister Assumpta. She had a tongue that would clip a hedge, that one. My heart sank as the words left me. She went to go downstairs, but hesitated. ‘Do not leave her alone for a second and don’t let the candles go out, dear. It is so important. Do not let the flames burn out.’

           When I went to the landing, I saw that the setup had changed since the last visitor paid their respects. Five black stem candles had been lit in a circle around the coffin. Directly behind it, was a chair. For me, I assumed. And I sat in it, obediently, as I listened to the click of the door as it closed. And then the turning of the key in the lock, and I realised I was trapped.

           I rushed to the window and strained to see young Miss Whitmore pull the bolt across the iron gate. She sat into a black motorcar, the door held open for her by Mr Lucey. I made to leave the landing and run downstairs but remembered what I had so foolishly agreed to. I couldn’t leave her alone. What would it mean if a candle went out? I believed that those repulsive candles were there to protect old Miss Whitmore’s soul, which was surely at risk. Why such an elaborate set up? Had her death really been a heart attack? And what caused it? How long had they been dabbling in these dark arts? It was all the devil’s work, all of it. And I was an imbecile. A naïve girl drawn into their diabolical scheme. Now I was the one in danger. How could she leave me alone like this? That Mr Lucey was a horror of a man. Crooked as a ram’s horn, Daddy would say. I thought of those monstrous hands and a wave of pure dread came over me. Like that night in the bed, I was glued to the spot with fear.

           The grandfather clock in the hall below ticked loudly and I followed the sound of each hollow tick as it travelled up the stairs to chip away at my nerves. Time seemed to slow and I concentrated on the coffin to ground myself, but the reality of that waxy melted face was too horrible to bear. Poor old Miss Whitmore. She looked so unlike herself. Her flesh was draped over her rounded cheeks and had solidified into a death mask that could have been a carving for All Hallow’s Eve. She wore a lace collar that made her head look somehow separate from her body which was cloaked in black velvet and covered to the waist in a decorative white silk sheet. It glimmered in the flickering candlelight.

           Her hands were joined together with fingers interwoven. I wondered how they got them to sit together like that. Wasn’t she already stiff when they had to lay her out? Did they have to break them? My shoulders tensed. When my Nannie died, her mouth was open and they had to wedge a rolled-up towel under her chin to settle it closed. Once she stiffened that would be it. Imagine her lying in her coffin with her jaws wide open for all to see. A pink fleshy hole with a big lump of a blue tongue lying like a mollusc in the centre. She hadn’t a tooth left in her cheeks. Although she was seventy years old when she died.

           I decided that if the candles were a protective circle around the body, I was better off inside that circle. Somehow, I found the courage move my chair to sit beside the coffin. I felt less alone being closer to her, although I knew she wasn’t really there. I settled a bit, and my thoughts drifted. Where was young Miss Whitmore going with Mr Lucey? They seemed awfully close. Getting into the car together, they looked like a couple. Afraid of succumbing to sinful thinking, I closed my eyes and tried to pray. But the words kept getting muddled in my mind. I wandered from one thought to another at speed. Then a loud bang from downstairs shook me. My legs jerked, lifting me off my seat with the fright of it. The silence that followed was shattered by the thumping of my heart and the ringing in my ears. The internal sounds of my own body swelled to a deafening clatter and I must have collapsed, because the next thing I knew I was on the floor.

           I raised my head and when I saw the room was clear, I lifted myself on to my knees. Only then, I felt a firm hand on my shoulder, pinning me in place and a voice. That voice, again. ‘Leave, now.’ I closed my eyes and told myself, ‘This is not a real sound. Not a real feeling. It’s in your head. Just like before. It’s not real.’ Was I truly mad? Were they right about me? I stayed crouched on the floor waiting in terror for another word to come. Another touch.

           It was early morning. I rose stiffly from the floor beside the coffin, squinting in the light that cut through the dusty air like shards of glass. My head spun as I made my way down the stairs, gripping the banister with both hands as I went. The circular stained glass of the front door was in sight and on the other side I could see the shadow of a man and the outline of a small woman. Their talking was a low murmuring. I couldn’t make out a word.

           When the door clicked open, I retreated to my bedroom. Dwindling candles flickered in their holders on the landing as I passed. I pulled my suitcase from under the bed and started to pack, flinging everything I could into it. At the wash basin, I readied myself in haste and satisfied that I looked somewhat put together, I took a deep breath and left the room. ‘Good morning, dear,’ Miss Whitmore greeted me as if nothing was wrong. ‘I am so deeply grateful for your vigil with dear Victoria, last night. You will be rewarded in the next life for your goodness.’ Mr Lucey looked at me, wide eyed, and smiled before reaching for the snuffer to quench the candle flames. The ruby ring on his abominable hand glistened in the morning light.

           ‘I’m leaving, Miss Whitmore,’ I said weakly. ‘You may send my wages by postal order to my home address in Cork.’ I rushed past them and made my way down the stairs. Neither of them tried to say anything or stop me. When I stepped out into the garden, the cool morning air smarted on my cheeks, and a wave of relief passed through me, from my shoulders to my stomach and down to my toes. As if something that had possessed me left my body, or lost power over me, the very moment I crossed the threshold. The click clack of my heals echoed on the quiet street and I walked the shortest route to Kings Cross to find a way home.

           I’m so glad to have you for company on this dreadful crossing. The tilting of the ship and that constant banging and creaking has been a torment. Even more so than the rising storm outside. I’ll tell you, I’ve been very jittery all day. You’ve noticed me glancing over at the bar the last while. Since we left Liverpool, I haven’t been able to keep my eyes off that lady in the mink shawl. Do you see her, there, the one with the dark glasses and silvery hair? She’s by the mirror. No, don’t look now. She’ll notice. You’ll say I’m mad, but she is a dead ringer for old Miss Whitmore. I know it can’t be. And she isn’t blind. But there’s something about her smile. That crooked smile. Dear God, I think she’s seen me. I’m sorry. I have to… I have to go.

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