by Hazel Gaynor
“Don’t be minding the village children. They can be wary of newcomers. I still talk like a funny foreigner as far as they’re concerned! You’ll fit in with them soon enough, Frances. Give it time.”
We would be going back to Cape Town as soon as the war was over and Daddy was home, so it didn’t matter anyway about fitting in with the local children, but I knew Mrs. Hogan was only trying to be kind and decided it was probably best not to say anything.
Mrs. Hogan noticed the book I was carrying. “Black Beauty. One of my favorites. I’m glad to see you’re a keen reader. You can never have too many books or too much laughter in a house. Isn’t that right?”
I looked up at her. “Mummy thinks I read too much. She says I live in a world of make-believe and it’s not good to always be filling my head with stories. She gets cross with our Elsie when she catches her whispering to me at night about goblins and unicorns and fairies. Mummy says Elsie Wright will have my head so full of nonsense there’ll be no room left for anything sensible.”
Mrs. Hogan chuckled. I was glad to have lightened the mood. “Well, I’m afraid I have to disagree with your mammy,” she said. “Make-believe keeps us going at times like this. We have to believe in the possibility of happy endings, sure we do, otherwise what’s it all for?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, and wasn’t sure it was the sort of question that needed an answer anyway.
Reaching the crest of the hill, we stood to one side of the path to make way for a passing horse and cart. I gaped at the great Shire horse as it lumbered past, its brasses jangling on the thick halter around its sweat-foamed neck. One of the lucky ones not to have been shipped out as a war horse. Mrs. Hogan bid the farmer good afternoon. I recognized him as Mr. Snowden, who owned the beck and the land at the back of Number 31.
He tipped his hat to us as he passed. “’Ow do, Ellen. Miss Frances.”
Ellen. Mrs. Hogan’s name was Ellen. It was a gentle name. It suited her perfectly.
“How does Mr. Snowden know me, Miss?” I asked as we walked on, the familiar spire of Cottingley church appearing above the tree line ahead.
Mrs. Hogan smiled. “Everyone knows everybody’s business in Cottingley, Frances. There are things people will know about you that you don’t even know about yourself yet!”
She winked playfully, but her words made me uneasy. Still, I was glad of her company and enjoyed the rest of our walk into the village. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we walked in comfortable silence as I tumbled the newly discovered name of my teacher around in my mind—Ellen Hogan—and all the while the gentle hush of the barley whispered its secrets in the fields beside us.
For Mammy . . . it whispered. For my Mammy . . .
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. July 1917.
Summer bloomed over Yorkshire and Mummy was right—everything was brighter and better. I woke each morning to the sound of birdsong and the glow of sunlight through the window. School would soon be over for the summer, and the prospect of long, lazy days at the beck stretched out before me like a spool of thread. And what days they would be, because a week before the school holidays, everything changed.
It started out as any ordinary Monday, but it was a day I would never forget, even when—years later—people told me it couldn’t possibly have happened at all.
Mummy went off to work at Uncle Enoch’s tailor shop in Bradford. Elsie went to her job at Gunston’s photographers. Uncle Arthur went to the Briggs’, and Aunt Polly bragged about being the first on the street to get her washing on the line, remarking at least a dozen times on the whiteness of her sheets as they flapped in the breeze and how Edna Morris—our busybody neighbor—could stick that in her pipe and smoke it. It was a warm, oppressive day, the air heavy with expectation that stuck to my skin as I walked to Cottingley Bar to catch the tram to school.
The sense of anticipation followed me around all day like a playful puppy, nipping at my heels until I could give it my full attention. I was distracted and forgetful at school, making a muddle of the simplest of comprehensions. Mrs. Hogan sighed with frustration when she corrected my work, saying she didn’t know what on earth had got into me, and did I have a fever coming on?
I was glad when the school bell rang, and I was glad to find the house empty when I returned home, a scribbled note on the table telling me Aunt Polly had popped in to Bingley and would be back at teatime. It was a perfect afternoon for dipping too-hot toes in cool water and for watching the painted lady butterflies fan their wings on the purple buddleia that grew by the riverbank. I didn’t hesitate for a moment.
Dropping my satchel in the scullery, I ran straight out to the garden, skipping across the grass, scrambling down the bank and down to the beck, where I pulled off my stockings and shoes, hitched up my skirt, and walked along the edge of the shallow stream. My skin savored the cool of the water, drawing the clammy heat down through my legs and out through my toes. I dipped my hands beneath the surface, the water slipping like silver ribbons over my fingertips before I pressed my palms to my cheeks, absorbing the refreshing coolness. I repeated this several times before sitting on the bough seat of the willow tree.
Leaning back against the smooth bark, I closed my eyes and listened to the gentle gurgle of the stream, the splash of a fish snatching a fly from the surface of the water, the soft rustle of fern and leaf, disturbed by unseen riverbank creatures. I imagined Daddy sitting beside me, my head on his shoulder, the tickle of his five o’clock shadow on my forehead. He would love it here. I imagined the flowers and plants coming to life, uprooting themselves, joining leaf and petal, like hands, to form a circle, entwining themselves around and around the trunk of an oak tree, like eager children in a Maypole dance.
It wasn’t a sound that disturbed me, more a sensation—the feeling I’d experienced so often at the beck, the suggestion of others around me, the sense of being watched.
I sat up and let my eyes adjust to the light, watching the shadows and shifting shapes among the trees. The beck was alive. The air around me hummed as my attention was caught by a willow leaf spinning around in an eddy at the side of the beck. I followed it as it drifted free of the bank and floated out into the center of the stream, where it continued to twirl and spin before carrying on, not downstream to follow the natural course of the flowing water, but straight across to the other bank, as if guided by something, or someone.
That was when I saw the first flash of emerald, then another of blue, then yellow, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Not dragonflies. Not butterflies. Something else. Something moving among a cluster of harebells, the delicate white flowers nodding as their petals and leaves were disturbed by the slightest of movements, like a gentle breeze blowing against them and yet there wasn’t the slightest breath of wind at the beck that day. All was perfectly still except for my heart thumping like a piston engine in my chest, my breathing fast and shallow. I pressed my hands against the solid bark of the tree trunk, anchoring myself as I leaned forward, wide-eyed in wonder, afraid to blink in case I lost them in the fraction of a second my eyes were closed.
Fairies.
They appeared to me like a thin veil of mist, translucent, almost—not quite there. But for all their misty peculiarity, they were as clear to me as the minnows in the shallows and the foxgloves on the riverbank and the butterflies fanning their wings. They flitted from flower to flower, as swift as dragonflies, sometimes glowing brightly like a candle flame suddenly catching, sometimes fading like a breath of warm air on glass, so that you would never know they had been there at all. Yet there they were. And there I was, watching them.
I had never observed anything so intently, conscious even amid my amazement and wonder that I had to remember this, had to take in every detail so I would be sure of it later. As I looked, a beautiful ringing filled my ears, a sound unlike anything I’d heard before, a sound I wished I could hear always, because it filled my heart with joy.
Half of me was despera
te for Elsie to appear so that she could see them too. Half of me was anxious that nobody—nothing—would come along to disturb them.
I watched for two or three minutes, maybe more. Time was suspended in those magical moments. The stream stilled at my feet. The birds paused mid-song. It was as if all of nature watched with me in respectful silence. And then, as suddenly as they had arrived, they disappeared. The birds resumed their singing, a soft breeze ruffled the foliage of the ferns, the stream trickled along its endless course, taking my astonishment with it.
Giddy with excitement, I hopped down from the branch and made my way slowly, quietly, along the center of the stream, searching among the foliage for any last sign of them. I sat on the riverbank for a while, tucking my knees up to my chest, waiting, watching until the afternoon sun grew too hot and I grew terribly thirsty. Reluctantly, my heart bursting with the greatest secret imaginable, I clambered up the bank and ran through the garden, back to the cool shade of the house where Aunt Polly’s note was still on the table, my school satchel was still on the scullery floor, and everything was exactly the same.
Yet nothing would ever be quite the same again.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. July 1917.
A wonderful array of color burst from the hedgerows and marched jubilantly across the hilltops that summer, defiantly smothering the lingering shadows of war. When I arrived home from school, I often found Aunt Polly napping in the garden, a bowl of half-shelled peas on her lap, her head tipped back, her mouth wide open in a deep, heat-soaked slumber.
She complained about the heat, saying it made folk weary as she fanned her flushed cheeks with a tea towel. “We need a good dose of rain. I don’t care for this weather at all. Can’t get anything done.” The previous month of “flaming-June” sunshine had scorched the front gardens so that, according to Aunt Polly, the whole street looked like it was suffering from a bad case of jaundice. But I loved the sultry warmth. I liked the tickle of pollen in my nose and the way everyone slowed down, languishing like cats at garden gates to talk to neighbors and friends whom they would have ignored in bad weather in their hurry to get indoors. Like the bees and the rambling roses that bloomed around the garden fence, I thrived in the summer heat. If only Daddy could have been here and the war were over, it would have been the perfect summer Mummy had promised.
Best of all, the summer brought school holidays and more time to play at the beck. Day after day I returned, eager to see the fairies again. Most days I saw nothing other than the usual birds and insects, but on the brightest, warmest days, my patience was rewarded with sightings of my little friends. They saw me, I was sure of it, and yet they never flew away or disappeared into the undergrowth. As I pottered about beside the stream, building dams and writing notes in my diary, they continued with their work among the flowers. I watched in peaceful wonderment, never disturbing them, never disturbed by them, until seeing these curious beings became almost as natural to me as seeing the plants and the birds. Distracted and delighted by what I saw, I often lost my footing on the mossy stones, and Mummy grew ever more annoyed when I continually returned home with wet shoes and sodden skirts.
“Oh, Frances. You’ve been at the beck again. I don’t know what’s so fascinating about it. Go up to your room and put some dry clothes on before you catch pneumonia.”
Everyone dreaded the pneumonia. In the privacy of the bedroom, I said a silent prayer that I would be spared.
Time and again, I was forbidden from playing at the beck. Time and again, I disregarded Mummy’s warnings, unable to resist the remarkable things I saw there. I took my secret to bed with me every night, where, disturbed by the oppressive heat and Elsie’s snoring, I lay awake, playing the images of what I had seen over and over in my mind, determined to remember everything so that I would never forget, not even when I was an old lady back in South Africa.
I was restless at mealtimes, fidgeting in my chair and kicking my toes against the table legs. Mummy said I was giving her a headache with all my writhing around. I overheard her and Aunt Polly talking about me, wondering whether I might have worms and should be taken to the doctor. Aunt Polly suspected me of being lovesick for one of the boys at school. Uncle Arthur declared me “a bit of a rum’n” and delivered a verdict of sunstroke. I was sent to bed with a cold compress and a dose of Epsom salts and forbidden from playing outside for a week.
Elsie noticed the change in me too. She did her best to prize the truth from me as I changed into my nightdress.
“Come on, then. What’s got into you? Summat’s up and don’t deny it, Frances Griffiths. It’s written all over your face.”
I wanted to tell Elsie. With all my heart I wanted to grab her hands and tell her everything, but I said I was weary from the heat. “Sunstroke. That’s all.”
With Rosebud in my arms, I lay on top of the bedsheet, too hot to snuggle down beneath it. I fell into a restless sleep in which my dreams carried me away over misty valleys and moonlit woodlands toward a fairy glen, where I watched their beautiful midnight revels in silent awe as I whispered the words of my favorite poem. “‘You shall hear a sound like thunder, / And a veil shall be withdrawn, / When her eyes grow wide with wonder, / On that hill-top, in that dawn.’”
As the summer heat intensified, so did my dreams. I dreamed of Daddy walking up the hill in his uniform, smiling as I ran into his arms. I dreamed of wild winds blowing down from the distant hilltops, tossing dandelion seeds around the garden like summer snowflakes, but mostly, I dreamed of the fairies.
They came to me night after night, bright shimmering lights at the window, twinkling like moonlight on frost. They beckoned to me, the ringing in my ears becoming voices, urging me on. Come, Frances. Come and play. And then something changed, and my dreams became real, in a way I could neither understand, nor explain.
I knew I shouldn’t follow the fairies and that I’d be in trouble if Mummy found out, but that particular night they were so beautiful I simply couldn’t resist and slipped quietly from the bed, tiptoeing downstairs to the scullery where I pulled my coat over my nightdress and stepped into my boots, clean and shiny from my diligent polishing earlier that evening. I moved silently across the garden, silvered with moonlight, my feet barely touching the ground. I brushed past fern and tree, following the lights across the stream, toward the cottage in the clearing where I watched a little girl surrounded by light and laughter as the fairies threaded flowers through her hair. I stood out of sight, peering through the tangled blackberry bushes, but the girl saw me, rushing forward, her hand outstretched, a white flower clasped between her fingers. “For Mammy,” she said. “For my Mammy.” As I reached for the flower, I slipped and lost my balance, tumbling down the bank and into the water, and all I could think was that Mummy would be ever so cross . . .
Waking with a start, I opened my eyes. Sunlight streamed through the open window, drenching the room in a soft golden light as a dandelion seed drifted inside. Elsie called them fairies, which I thought rather lovely. Birdsong pierced the silence.
When I stepped out of bed, I noticed a white flower on the floor beside my slippers. I picked it up, turning it over in my hands: a slender green stem, a single leaf, and five bell-shaped white blooms. I placed it between the pages of my picture book and, half in a dream, made my way downstairs.
Mummy was waiting for me in the scullery, holding my boots speckled with mud. “And what is the meaning of this?” Her voice was clipped. Stern.
I stared at my dirty boots. “But . . .”
“But what? I asked you to clean these yesterday, Frances, and what’s worse, you told me you had.”
“But, Mummy, I did. I had.”
She slammed the boots down onto the back step. “You’re to get a bucket of water and start scrubbing. Why on earth you can’t do things when you’re asked is beyond me, really it is. I’ve enough to be worrying about without you making things difficult.”
I felt the tears coming. I didn�
��t understand. I’d left the boots on the doorstep, perfectly clean, before I went to bed.
As Mummy clattered about in the pantry behind me, taking out her anger on jars of pickled onions and black currant jam, I filled a bucket from the pump, picked up my boots, and began to scrub at them with the brush.
“And put a bit of elbow grease into it,” Mummy called. “There’ll be no more playing at the beck. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Frances. You’re not to be playing there and coming back with muddy boots. D’you hear?”
I called back that yes, I heard, and rubbed my frustration harder and harder into my boots, until the water in the tin bucket turned a murky brown and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was scrubbing away more than the dirt. I was scrubbing away a memory or a message, but I couldn’t remember what it was, or whom it was for.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. July 1917.
I soon came to understand that Aunt Polly and Uncle Arthur were highly regarded in Cottingley. With Uncle Arthur working for Mr. Briggs, the Wrights were considered close to the local gentry and regarded with a certain degree of respect. I noticed it after Sunday service when people stopped outside the church to shake Uncle Arthur’s extraordinarily large hands, and on Friday evenings when friends gathered in the front room for a musical evening around the piano. I loved to listen to Aunt Polly singing “Four Indian Love Lyrics” and Uncle Arthur’s deep baritone rendition of “Roses of Picardy.” Sometimes Elsie and I were allowed a slice of jam tart while we listened, and although I never tasted it, I liked the musty smell of Mason’s nonalcoholic beer that Aunt Polly brewed especially for the occasion. She said it was a chance for everyone to forget about the war for an hour or two, to sing and laugh “rather than worrit and cry,” although I knew that everyone’s thoughts were never far away from their loved ones.