Mrs Zigzag: The Extraordinary Life of a Secret Agent's Wife (19 page)

The refurbishments were hardly without problems:

They were bringing in heavy equipment one day, huge equipment, but they had laid the floors and had forgotten to put in the services for the equipment. Another day they had hung the doors into the kitchen and they had not brought in the large kitchen equipment. How did they think they were going to get it in? I was always on site for some problem. I knew a lot about building contractors. I was lucky that during my Brighton period I had to do contract building there, so I was pretty quick to suss out if it wasn’t going right. There were endless problems. Because I was English and because of the IRA, everything always seemed to be difficult. I think it was really resentment. I was both chairperson and managing director of the castle. I did my best to fit in with the local community. Even though I was Church of England, I still went to Catholic services with many of the staff. It was politics rearing its ugly head yet again.

When we had our monthly meetings we all sat at this long table with all of the accountants and senior staff and so on. I always sat at the head of the table as chairperson, but I could see that there were one or two of them who really resented it.
²
When we were fully open, it was all a great success. We had masses of functions there; people came from all over the world. But, there was always a fine line to tread. For example, one day my manager came running in to me shouting: ‘Are you crazy. Get that flag down!’ We always used to fly the flag of the country whose group we were hosting, and I used to have flowers on the table in the colours of the country to make it special for them. In this case it was an Australian group, and the Australian Ambassador was coming for lunch. The Australian flag has a Union Jack in the corner, a hated symbol in much of Ireland. I was warned that the flag, and possibly even more of the castle, would be blown up if I didn’t get it down.

Despite the problems due to my being English and Protestant, we had the first All-Ireland Peace Conference in the castle. They were there for three days – the North and the South. I was sent home, the organisers did not think it was wise to have me there. They ringed the place with steel for security. The conference didn’t do any good, but it was the first that took place.

There was always promotion going on for the castle and its facilities. Betty did a long promotional tour in Europe. As she recently remarked:

I was looking at the itinerary yesterday and it was quite an exhausting tour. Then I went to America to try to persuade the more upmarket tourists to come, particularly since by this time it had a health farm, and the Function Hall. The night before the American agents came, I was talking to them in New York and they said ‘Now is it safe?’, and I said, ‘Of course it is safe, it is only the newspapers which give out these scary stories.’

As often happened with Betty’s luck, just a few days afterwards several people were killed in the main street in Dublin.

I used to go back and forth every couple of weeks between the castle and Shenley. Evelyn Black, my friend, was running Shenley with Eddie, whilst I was in Ireland. Evelyn Black was one of the best things that ever happened to me. She was with us for twenty-seven years, and remains a good friend to this day. In fact, she really remains part of our family. I enjoyed my five years at Kilkea Castle, it was an interesting project. I travelled a lot to promote it, for one month in Europe alone, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and plenty more. I was alone and it was hard work. I had to get as much knowledge as I could about how I could liaise with different countries regarding the health farm. It was a really busy place with lots of travel agents involved. I had forty-five permanent staff in the castle and sixty for big events. I lived in the castle; I had a general manager who made me a lovely suite, after having just a room and a bathroom originally. My suite was called the ‘Esmeralda Suite’. Eddie came to stay and brought friends with him.

My assistant was extremely useful, since he could see things that other people couldn’t or wouldn’t. He would put a watch on the Function Hall kitchen and at 1.30 a.m. the chef was sitting outside and half pissed. The women staff were going home with big bags of food that they had stashed outside the back door. Even the general manager had a huge deep freeze full of everything. It was yet another burden when I was new to it and trying to build up and run the place at the same time. Needless to say, it all stopped very abruptly.

The first general manager lived in the lodge at the end of the drive and then after he left in disgrace I had another one who actually lived in the castle, so I moved out of my personal sitting room downstairs to a double room and bathroom upstairs so he could have living quarters for himself, convenient to the workings of the castle. I must say he did himself proud. It was a popular move with the staff, because I was English and no one expected anyone English to do any such thing.

The new general manager ran a very tight ship for me. If he heard that anyone had done anything to upset me, he had them carpeted at once. Another time we had someone special coming and the housekeeper Kate Nelligan was complaining about the condition of the stairs – that they weren’t up to scratch. On examining the stairs I found that they really were not satisfactory. I was a bit fussy about it all, so I decided that I would scrub the stairs myself, and say ‘this is the way it should be’. I also wanted them to know that I was not averse to getting down on my hands and knees and doing things myself. The staff were all quite amused, but they got the message!

Kate always used to warn me about coming downstairs in late hours. She was aware of some of the shenanigans that the staff got up to. One night I had a restless night, and wanted a cup of tea. I decided to come down to the kitchen and make it myself rather than disturb the night porter. So I just tumbled down in my nightie and my rollers expecting that there would be no one around at that late hour. And to my enormous surprise there were about twenty of the staff having a bean feast. They were as surprised as I was. I said, ‘Oh, excuse me’, and I left. The next day I discussed it with Nellie and she said, ‘Oh, I warned them.’ I decided not to make a fuss about it because they were good staff and I had good relations with them. They worked very well for me and for long hours, so I decided it was nothing to make a fuss about.

During the summer, the gardens were open to the public because we had beautiful gardens. These gardens stretched right down to the River Breeze, which was filled with trout. There were very interesting objects in the garden, as well as beautifully laid out plants. One of these objects was a centuries-old Tithe Table, which was stolen.
³
There was a great deal of publicity across Ireland about this, and it was eventually recovered.

Betty had an extremely unpleasant experience in the same garden:

I was sat in the garden one day, and the housekeeper came with a tray of tea for me and some guests. I happened to move and the whole tray of tea fell in my lap. I had to go to hospital and have all my burns and blisters syringed because they were so large. I was in pain for a very long time afterwards. It was horrible. I missed walking in those beautiful gardens when I left.

There was a lot of impromptu entertainment, much of which took place in the garden when weather permitted. ‘If there were passing dancers or singers or something they would ask if they could play at the castle. We would take up a collection for them, and some of the talent was great – a lot of Irish folk dancing, and really good music.’

Despite problems arising almost immediately with the IRA, her relationship with people in the area was very good:

Despite being hated by many for being English, many of our Irish staff were as nice as could be, and despite problems with the IRA, not all of them were full of hostility either. There was a major in the IRA who was stationed nearby. He would turn up and we always had a sing-song. The local people were decent too, because whenever there was any IRA activity in the area we would be forewarned.

Even so, one night we had about 250 people in the hotel and about an equal number in the function suite. We suddenly had a call to say that bombs had been placed all over the castle. And being an old building, there were very many places that they could be hidden. So I got out of my bed, and I had to clear the hotel. We had a big white horse called Bony, and my driver Jim got on this horse and got a megaphone and called everyone out of the hotel, and of course they had to disperse into the grounds. Imagine 500 people in the early hours of the morning. They spread out all over the castle grounds right down to the river. The police searched the place, but it so happened that it was a hoax and they finally found the man who made the phone call. All he got was three months. I mean, all the aggravation. People who came to the hotel were from all over the world and you can imagine how things like this affected business, so you were always fighting. I once found an advert which was placed in the local paper in Northern Ireland for people to come to the castle for peace and quiet after the Troubles in the North. Someone sent in a letter and pinned the advert to it, making some vile comment, and saying, ‘Stick your castle up your arse.’

The same night as the hoax bomb-threat, one of our Filipino staff was coming across the bridge over the river near the Function Hall, and she said she had heard the cry of the banshee. She was so scared, she said, that the hairs stood up on her arms. It is said that if you hear the cry of the banshee someone dies within three days. The next day, one of our neighbours died.

The Filipino who heard the banshee was a relative of one of the Filipinos who worked for me at Shenley. The Filipinos were fantastic, and good workers. The castle and its environs had 101 acres of land, including our own church. I always went to the Catholic Church with the staff. I was used to the Catholic Church from my visits to Katherine Ryan’s family at Bunton Hall, outside Dublin. Katherine’s mother turned everyone out of bed at an early hour, regardless of their religion, to attend Mass. Many times the guests were nursing hangovers.

In addition to our permanent staff, most of the local villagers were on standby in case we had large functions. When the group Human Potential came from America there were over 350 of them, which was more than we had capacity for in the castle. That is why we built the River House, otherwise the overflow had to be accommodated in the village. We had our own chef for the conference hall, which could easily accommodate 300 people. We had our own sous-chef for the castle. The castle was always so busy, but it had its own kitchens, because I also built new kitchens for the castle. I was on my feet constantly, the whole time I was there, not the least of which was because it was 100 steps up to my bedroom. My general manager said that it was unsustainable for me to have to run up and down the stairs every time I wanted to rest, which is why he had the suite made for me so I could rest there whenever I wanted, or on the rare occasions I entertained there. John and Kitty Mills were great friends of ours and they were frequent visitors there.
⁴
Richard Burton was one of those who frequently joined us.

Another visitor of note to Kilkea was Princess Helena Moutafian, MBE, a name scarcely known to the public at the time, but the recipient of a large number of civic awards in Britain, France and Russia for her charitable and social works. The daughter of the Russian prince Alexei Gagarin, she, along with Dame Barbara Cartland, were close friends of Betty.
⁵

In addition to the functions at the castle itself, it was also necessary to set up outside activities such as fishing and riding:

I even started a football team for the castle, and another for the jockeys from the local Jockey Club, who trained there. I gave them a piece of land for their own football club. The football pitch where the local football team played belonged to the castle. I had built facilities for them on that land. At the time that I was forced into bankruptcy on a technicality and lost the castle, I wanted to leave something behind, so I backdated the sale of the football ground to the village team, so that they would have it perpetually. I should think there are still football teams there now.

I was quite proud of what I did there; the entire thing was a huge project. But once again I got robbed of it. Banks and accountants, once again, took me to the cleaners – after I had modernised the castle and made it a going concern. They forced me into bankruptcy on a technical point, because they tried to make me prove that I had enough money to support Kilkea all the time, which I didn’t. I didn’t want to lose Shenley Lodge. God knows I’d given up five years of my life, and many people have run very successful businesses without much money at hand – the money comes after. But they took Kilkea away from me.

The day I found out I was at Shenley. I nearly collapsed, and I couldn’t believe it, that after giving so much of my life, people could be so awful. The world is full of ungrateful, ungracious people. I didn’t even go back; I have never been back, even though one day now I would love to. All of my stuff was packed up and sent to me.

It remained open as a health farm. Betty reflects:

When you’re dealing with governments or politicians, someone sometimes happens not to like you because you had some tussles with them. I did a lot for the Irish tourist business. I was really bitter because I had neglected Shenley. I had five long years of grind. My personal assistant from the castle later wrote to me: ‘You know, Betty, when you left Kilkea, all the locals said that all the graciousness went out of it.’