The Cottingley Secret

by Hazel Gaynor

  But even with these social gatherings at the house, I found it hard to join in. I was the girl who stood back, the girl who remained quiet and reserved, happy to let Elsie do the talking on behalf of us young uns, as we were called. I wasn’t necessarily shy, but I still felt like a stranger in Cottingley, despite my efforts to adopt the local dialect and throw in the odd thee and thou for good measure. Mummy mithered at me to try harder to make friends with the village children. “No wonder they talk about you behind your back, Frances. They don’t know what to make of you, walking around with your head in the clouds. They think you sullen and unfriendly.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Well, I know that, and you know that, but they don’t, do they?”

  I tried to explain that I had friends at school, although most of them lived in Bradford so I didn’t see them in the holidays. I said there wasn’t much point making new friends when we would be going back to Cape Town when the war was over and Daddy was home, and that, besides, I was perfectly happy playing with Elsie at the beck, or on my own. Mummy threw her hands in the air and said she gave up, really and truly she did.

  It was on a thankfully cooler day when Elsie was off work with a head cold that I decided to explore a little further afield, clambering over the stile at the top of the lane and following the beck upstream, where it opened up into the glen and Cottingley Woods. From there, I walked along the far bank, following a little trail where the grass had been flattened, perhaps by other inquisitive young girls, or perhaps by a badger or fox. As I stopped to pick a handful of wild raspberries, I saw Mrs. Hogan’s cottage among the trees ahead. It was almost completely concealed by the lush summer foliage, more woodland than house, as if made of flowers and trees, not of stone and mortar.

  I picked my way through the tangled briars underfoot, drawn toward the cottage as if in a dream as something nagged at me, a distant memory of something I’d forgotten to do. As I walked, I thought about fairy stories of stolen children locked up by wicked old witches and I skirted the edge of the cottage wall with a mixture of excitement and trepidation as I peered into the garden. I knew I shouldn’t have been there, and yet I sensed that I was welcome, that I had been there before and knew everything I saw in front of me: the rambling roses around the low white door, the patterned curtains at the windows and the posy of wildflowers in a willow pattern jug on the sill, the elder tree—heavy with white blooms—that grew in the center of the garden, the pair of man-sized black boots on the doorstep and the much smaller pair of child’s boots beside them.

  Everything was so peaceful, the only sounds the birds singing in the branches high above and the constant gurgle of the beck behind me, the waterfall just visible through a gap in the trees. I imagined Mrs. Hogan standing at her window, watching Elsie and me play that April morning. I wondered if she’d once watched her daughter play there too.

  A click of the latch on the cottage door snatched me back from my thoughts.

  “Frances? It is you. I thought it was.” Mrs. Hogan stood in the doorway, her hands covered in paint, a bemused look on her face.

  My cheeks blushed furiously. “I was taking a walk, Miss, and . . .”

  “Exploring?”

  I nodded.

  Mrs. Hogan smiled warmly. “I’m almost completely hidden by the trees in the summertime. But you’ll see the cottage easily enough in the winter when everything dies back. Come on in for a glass of water. ’Tis fierce thirsty work, exploring.”

  I followed her inside the cottage, as pretty on the inside as it was on the outside. Tapestries and samplers hung on the walls with carefully stitched Irish proverbs and sayings. One in particular caught my attention.

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild,

  With a faery hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  The words reminded me of Elsie’s nighttime stories of changelings and fairies who stole human children and left monstrous things in their place.

  Mrs. Hogan noticed me looking at it as she emerged from the pantry with a glass of water. “William Butler Yeats. ‘The Stolen Child.’ One of his most famous poems. Perhaps we should read it in class after the holidays.”

  She said this more to herself than to me as I turned my attention to the watercolor paintings of landscapes and flowers that filled the spaces between a hotchpotch collection of crockery on the dresser. I told Mrs. Hogan I liked her painting of the beck.

  “I expect you like to play there,” she said. “Hard to resist such an enchanting place.”

  “Me and Elsie make dams and race the baby frogs on leaf boats. You can hear the waterfall from our bedroom. It used to keep me awake at night, but I don’t notice it now.”

  “Everything strange becomes familiar in time. I loved the beck when I was a young girl, although I was older than you when I played there—closer to your cousin Elsie in age. My parents moved to Yorkshire from Leitrim so my father could get work in the mills.” I sipped my water and wished Elsie was with me and not at home in bed coughing and sneezing. Elsie was much better at conversation than me. “You’ll have heard the stories, I expect, about the beck and the woods and Gilstone Crags.” I shook my head, even though Elsie had told me some of the local folklore. Mrs. Hogan lowered her voice. “Some claim to have seen the Little People there. Pixies and fairies and such.” Her eyes sparkled like the water in the beck when the sunlight hit it. “What do you make of that then?”

  My heart thumped beneath my pinafore as I thought about what I’d seen at the beck. I desperately wanted to tell someone, and Mrs. Hogan was as good a person as any.

  She mistook my silence for doubt. “Sure, you don’t believe me.” She smiled. “Most people don’t. Most of the locals say it’s a ‘load of old codswallop.’ And they say I talk funny!”

  “I do believe you, Miss. I really do. I . . .” My heart raced. I felt as if I would burst if I didn’t tell her, but I couldn’t find the right words.

  “What is it, Frances?”

  “Nothing, Miss.” I fished around wildly for something to say, remembering the leaflets I’d seen at home for the Theosophist Society meetings in Bradford. “Is that what the Theosophists are interested in? Fairies?”

  “How do you know about the Theosophists?”

  “I’ve heard Aunt Polly talking to Mummy about them.”

  “Theosophists believe in the existence of other beings, and other realms,” Mrs. Hogan explained. “Ghosts and spirits, and fairy life.”

  “Uncle Arthur says it’s all a load of old codswallop.” I was pleased to make Mrs. Hogan laugh. “But what if he could see fairies? He’d have to believe in them then, wouldn’t he?” I sipped my water to stop myself talking. I’d already said more than I should, talking about Uncle Arthur out of turn.

  “I suppose he would. There are stories going back years about fairies in Upper Airedale and Wharfedale. Some of them must be true, sure they must, but most people only believe what they see with their own eyes.”

  As I sat in Mrs. Hogan’s cottage I felt I could tell her anything, and it would be all right.

  “Do you think it’s wrong to keep secrets, Miss?”

  She thought for a moment. “I suppose it depends on what the secret is, and where it’s being kept.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cottingley’s a small village, and small villages can’t keep secrets. They’ve a funny way of setting them free, and who knows where they’ll end up?” She leaned forward. A gentle smile danced in her eyes. “If I had a secret, I’d hang on to it.”

  The sound of the rag-and-bone man’s bell signaled that it was time for me to go home. “I should be going. Aunt Polly will be looking for me.”

  “You’re welcome anytime, Frances. The woodland belongs to everyone, and my door is always open in case . . . well, never mind. It’s open. That’s all that matters.”

  I said good-bye and Mrs. Hogan disappeared into the dark
interior of the cottage, closing the door behind her and humming a ditty that drifted through the open window. “‘Up the airy mountain, / Down the rushy glen, / We daren’t go a-hunting / For fear of little men; / Wee folk, good folk, / Trooping all together; / Green jacket, red cap, / And white owl’s feather!’”

  I hurried back along the mossy path, unable to shake the feeling that I had forgotten to tell her something very important.

  It was now three weeks since my first sighting at the beck. More than once, I’d almost told Elsie. Like water coming to the boil in the copper, I could feel the bubbles of excitement rise to the surface, certain they would burst out of me if I didn’t tell someone. But somehow, I bit my tongue. Only when I was alone in the bedroom did I even breathe a word about it.

  “They’re real, Rosebud!” I whispered, grasping my doll’s hands. “Very real and so beautiful . . .”

  “Who is beautiful?”

  I turned to see Elsie standing in the doorway, a slight smile at her lips.

  “Nobody. Nothing.” My cheeks flared scarlet. “I was just making up stories for Rosebud.”

  Elsie stepped into the room and pulled the door to behind her, her eyes burning with excitement. “What happened, Frances? I promise I won’t tell.”

  She looked so grown-up and pretty that I couldn’t resist. I had to tell her. Jumping up onto the bed, I grabbed Elsie’s hands, pulling her down to sit beside me. “You have to promise you won’t laugh, or tease me, or tell anyone.” She promised, twice, three times before I took a deep breath. “I’ve seen things at the beck.”

  Elsie squeezed my hand in encouragement and nodded for me to go on. “What sort of things?”

  The word caught in my throat, emerging as a faint whisper. “Fairies.”

  Elsie said nothing. My heart sank. I’d known she wouldn’t believe me.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I continued, imploring my cousin to believe, “and you’ll only think I’m making it up or imagining things, but I see them, Elsie. I promise I do. I see them just as I can see you now.”

  Elsie studied me carefully, her lively blue eyes searching deep into mine. “It’s all right, Frances. I believe you.”

  “Do you, really?” Elsie nodded, her eyes sparkling with intrigue as I threw my arms around her. “Oh, Elsie. Can you believe it? Fairies at the bottom of the garden!”

  My words came out in a rush then as I told her everything. How I’d first seen them and how they always appeared toward the end of the afternoon in fine weather, never in bad. I tried to describe them exactly as I’d seen them while Elsie listened and asked questions until we were both whispering about fairies as if we were gossiping about the neighbors. And it was as easy and as difficult as that. In a moment, the secret I’d kept so carefully in my heart wasn’t mine anymore. It was Elsie’s secret too.

  That night, we lay in the dark and whispered for a long time about my remarkable discovery. Elsie assured me again and again that she wouldn’t say a word to anyone, and although I trusted her and felt a delicious fizz of excitement in my tummy when we talked about it, I also felt a nagging sense of doubt. Of something not quite right.

  I felt my words seep into the walls of the bedroom and under the door. I felt them slip through the gaps in the window frame and wished I could take them back, because when Elsie went to work the next morning, she would take the secret with her. It would leave 31 Main Street and travel to Bradford, where it would spread like a fever down the long line of girls who did the spotting work with her. It would be there at every mealtime, passing between us like salt and gravy. It was part of the house now, captured in the wind that whistled down the chimney and in the floorboards that creaked on the stairs.

  As I squeezed my eyes shut and fell into a restless sleep, Mrs. Hogan’s words raged through my mind like the whispers I’d heard among the barley. “Cottingley’s a small village, and small villages can’t keep secrets. They’ve a funny way of setting them free, and who knows where they’ll end up?”

  Six

  Ireland. Present day.

  After another restless night, disturbed by the same curious dream of a little girl and a woodland stream, Olivia woke to dazzling sunlight and the glaring realization of what she’d done. She lay still, her hands on her stomach, feeling her breath as it rose and fell in synch with the distant pull and push of the tide. The tightness in her chest had eased. Her body—her heart—felt lighter. Extending her stay in Ireland was just the start, the loose end of a messy tangle she would have to unravel if she was serious about making these seismic changes to her life, but as Nana had always said when she was winding a skein of wool, finding the end was the hard part. After that, all it took was patience, determination, and plenty of fresh tea in the pot.

  Reaching instinctively for her phone, she winced at the thought of it lying at the bottom of the sea. A childish act of rebellion, perhaps, but the relief at not having to listen to notification alerts and read through missed messages was immense. For the first time in months, her head felt empty of noise and clutter. She had bought herself time to think—precious, vital time to be herself and not someone’s fiancée, or a bride-to-be, or a name on a consultant’s appointments list.

  She pictured Jack’s golf-tanned face, imagining his reaction to her message and his frustration at not being able to get hold of her. He could still contact her at the bookshop, or could even travel to Ireland if he was that concerned about her, but she doubted he would. Jack wasn’t the spontaneous type. Theirs was a relationship of schedules and carefully coordinated diaries. Squash on Tuesdays (him). Pilates on Wednesdays (her). Date nights on Thursdays (Jack’s business meetings permitting). How do you schedule spontaneity?

  Determined to put Jack out of her mind, Olivia spent her morning in a series of unpleasant meetings.

  The accountant—a Ms. Gilbert, who looked far too young to know anything about such things—talked about the bookshop’s unique selling points and asked Olivia if she’d considered modernizing. Olivia tried to explain, as calmly as possible, that the whole point of Something Old was to be quaint and full of old-world charm, the antithesis of modernized, but her words fell on deaf ears as Ms. Gilbert pressed on about margins and bottom lines and Olivia retreated further and further into her chair until she was almost fetal.

  The solicitor was equally bewildering, impressing upon Olivia how fortunate she was that her grandfather had been astute enough to grant her power of attorney over his and Nana’s assets. Olivia wanted to say that she didn’t feel fortunate, that she mostly felt sad and worried, but she pushed her feelings aside, diligently signed various forms and left Messrs. Comerford & Keogh to put things in motion. It came down to a simple, gut-wrenching decision: sell Bluebell Cottage and use the funds to pay off the bookshop’s debts, or lose the bookshop and keep the cottage. Either way, she would be letting Nana and Pappy down; letting go of something they had treasured and had made them part of who they were.

  She was grateful for the quiet, unassuming calm of the bookshop when she returned that afternoon, and although she hated to admit that Nora Plunkett was right, she had a point: the shop front was in desperate need of a spring clean. After a few hours of hard work, and with the addition of four new window boxes from the florist (whose ladder and head for heights Olivia was especially grateful for), Something Old looked much neater and brighter. Nora Plunkett might have had a point, but Olivia refused to give her the satisfaction of making it twice.

  Inside the shop, Olivia found another note from Iris pushed through the letterbox. She wrote a reply and placed it in the window for Iris to see, trying desperately to ignore the urge to think about Ross Bailey, Writer, as she did.

  Before making a start on the shop interior, Olivia took a few minutes to look through more of the newspaper clippings she’d discovered in the old briefcase.

  In contrast with the articles written in the 1920s, more recent reports from the 1970s were skeptical of the fairy photographs, asserting they were fake. Som
e of the articles went as far as to accuse the two girls of being the perpetrators of England’s greatest hoax. Olivia thought about the innocent photograph she’d discovered in her mammy’s jewelry box all those years ago. She’d had no idea it had been the source of international media interest and speculation. It made her more determined to find it, and to understand the connection between Frances and Cottingley, and her own family.

  The jangle of the shop bell disturbed Olivia from her reading. An inquiring baritone voice followed as the bell fell silent.

  “Anyone at home?”

  Olivia peered around a column of books to see a smartly dressed elderly gentleman peering back at her through the door. “I’m not actually open,” she said. “I’m closed for . . . refurbishments.”

  “According to the sign, you’re open.”

  The sign said OPEN on one side and NOT CLOSED on the other. Pappy’s little joke.

  Olivia stood up. “Ah, yes. The infamous sign.”

  The man stepped inside and removed a trilby hat. A tortoiseshell cat was cradled in his arms. His face was kind and inquisitive and he looked at Olivia a little longer than might be considered acceptable. She felt herself blush beneath his scrutiny.

  “You must be Olivia?”

  “Yes. Olivia Kavanagh. The owner.” It felt good to say it out loud.

  The man’s eyes flickered from Olivia to the bookshelves and back again, a broad smile curving across his mouth as he handed her the cat. “In that case, I believe this scoundrel belongs to you.”

  “Hemingway?”

  “The very same.”

  “I wondered where he’d got to.” The cat wriggled from Olivia’s arms, stretched, and strode purposefully upstairs as if he owned the place, his tail waving in the air in pompous disregard.

  “I’m terribly sorry to intrude, Olivia, and please do ask me to leave if you’re busy, but I promised Cormac I would look in on you from time to time.”