The Cottingley Secret

by Hazel Gaynor

  “It’s all right to be sad, Frances,” she whispered. “You have to let all the sadness out to make room for the happiness again. Remember your daddy’s promise and try to get some sleep.” She squeezed my hand. “I’m here if you need me.”

  Seven months later, Daddy’s promise came true and the war came to an end at last.

  The fog of fear and worry lifted from Cottingley, leaving everything brighter and clearer. Finally we could live and breathe and hope again.

  I wrote to my old school friend Johanna in Cape Town, telling her how we were preparing the Union Jack flags for a victory party. “I am sending two photos, both of me, one of me in a bathing costume in our backyard. Uncle Arthur took that, while the other is me with some fairies up the beck. Elsie took that one. Rosebud is as fat as ever, and I have made her some new clothes. How are Teddy and Dolly?” On the back of the photograph of myself with the fairies, I wrote, “Elsie and I are very friendly with the beck fairies. It is funny I never used to see them in Africa. It must be too hot for them there.”

  Over the following months, arrangements were made for me and Mummy to leave Cottingley and start a new life in Scarborough on the East Yorkshire coast, where Daddy would join us as soon as he was demobbed. In Scarborough we would be a proper family again. I couldn’t wait, and yet I was sad to leave Cottingley and the family I’d become part of there.

  Mr. and Mrs. Hogan invited Mummy and me to tea to say a proper good-bye. Like everyone else, something about Mrs. Hogan had changed since Mr. Hogan came home. The haunted, distant look I’d seen cloud her face during lessons had all but gone. I overheard her telling Mummy that she still felt a shadow beside her where her daughter should be, but that things were much easier now that Robert was home, and perhaps the Lord would bless them with other children. She crossed herself as she said this, and Mummy closed her eyes and prayed for the Lord to be generous.

  As a farewell gift, Mrs. Hogan gave me a book of poetry by someone called W. B. Yeats and a play of his called The Land of Heart’s Desire. She had underlined the words “Faeries, come, take me out of this dull world, / For I would ride with you upon the wind, / Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, / And dance upon the mountains like a flame.” She said, “You can never have too much Yeats, or too many fairies in your life,” and her eyes spoke to me of secrets known and secrets kept.

  My last view of the cottage in the woods was of Mr. and Mrs. Hogan standing together in the doorway, a small pair of black boots beside them on the step, and although I promised to visit in the school holidays, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d forgotten to tell Mrs. Hogan something very important.

  Elsie was the hardest good-bye of all.

  “I’ll miss you terribly, Elsie,” I sobbed as I clung to her. “And so will Rosebud.”

  In typical Elsie manner, she laughed affectionately at my tears. “You’re a daft beggar, Frances Griffiths. True friends never grow apart. We’ll always be friends, no matter where we call home. Here. I drew this for you.”

  She gave me a parting gift of a sketch she’d drawn of us dancing together in the front room on Armistice Day. She said it was one of the happiest days of her life. I said it was one of the nicest things I’d ever been given.

  As for the fairies, I knew I would always have my memories, but I hated to say good-bye to them all the same. As I sat on the willow bough for the last time, I wished I could stay young forever so that I could always play with the fairies at the beck. But I wasn’t Peter Pan, nor was I a page in a fairy story.

  As all little girls must do, I grew up.

  And although I thought them forgotten about, the story of our fairy photographs grew with me.

  NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE

  Scarborough, Yorkshire. 1920.

  There was much about the seaside town of Scarborough that reminded me of Cape Town. With its long golden beaches and sweeping ocean views, I soon felt at home.

  Scarborough had an event for every season and occasion: brass bands in the market square on Christmas Eve, Shrove Tuesday skipping on the pier, and Michaelmas Day market, where the farmers hired dairymaids and laborers. Most of all, I loved to watch the spectacle of the returning herring fleet when crowds of women lined the harbor wall with their stalls, working quickly to behead and tail the fish, scales scattering like jewels against the cobbles as the fillets were deboned and placed in salt barrels. They worked for hours among the stench of fish oil and brine until the catch was processed. I loved to hear the screeching of the gulls that wheeled overhead before swooping down to snatch a fish head. Mummy didn’t like the fish women’s cursing and bawdy jokes and bustled me past as quickly as she could.

  Away from the seasonal events that marked the passing of the months, I loved to walk along the promenade past the magnificent pastel-colored hotels that stood shoulder to shoulder like refined old ladies: the Majestic, the Imperial, the Britannia, and the mighty Grand, which still bore the scars from the German naval bombing during the war. Sometimes I hung upside down on the promenade railings, imagining the sky was the sea and the water the rushing cloudscape, until it made me dizzy and reminded me of how impossibly large the world was, and how little I knew of it.

  At weekends and after school, I loved to play in the sheltered sandy coves, loved to run among the sand dunes and pick the wildflowers and collect shells from the shoreline: periwinkles, scallops, and mussels. And above it all stood the ancient castle on the cliff top, where I imagined the battles that had played out along the castle walls and turrets in centuries past. In the evenings, Mummy and Daddy often attended the concerts at the Floral Hall. Nellie Melba and Clara Butt were their favorites. Mummy sang the songs for me the next day, as she always had, but with greater joy and energy.

  Life returned to something like normality. I was a happy, carefree twelve-year-old girl. I missed the beck fairies and thought about them often at first, but as the months passed I thought about them less and less, my days occupied with picnics at Cayton Bay, crabbing in the rock pools, Punch and Judy shows on the promenade, and all the other new experiences. It was only at night, with the sound of the seagulls and the wind and the crash of the waves rushing through my open bedroom window, that my dreams pulled me back to Cottingley; back to the pretty cottage on the far side of the stream and the girl with hair like flames holding out a flower for her Mammy.

  Some things will always follow you, no matter where, or how far, you travel.

  The sky was a sultry gray the day the letter from Aunt Polly arrived. Heavy brooding clouds threatened rain as I arrived home from school to find Mummy hovering anxiously at the kitchen window, ready to fetch the washing in off the line at the sign of the first drops. She made idle chitchat about my day, as she often did when there was something difficult she didn’t especially want to talk about.

  The letter was sitting on the table, bearing a Bradford postmark.

  “What’s this?” I asked, pulling it toward me. “Is it from Elsie?”

  Mummy turned the tap too far, spraying water everywhere as it bounced off the scrubbed potatoes in the pan. “It’s from Polly.”

  “Did Elsie write?” Elsie was dreadful at replying to my letters. I missed her terribly and loved nothing more than to hear a few lines from her, but Elsie wasn’t one for writing and, as Mummy reminded me, Elsie was a young woman now and probably courting and had other things to think about than writing letters to her cousin.

  “She didn’t, love. Not this time. Read it if you like, but I wouldn’t take too much notice of it if I were you.”

  I read Aunt Polly’s neat handwriting. And then I read it again, to make sure.

  Cottingley. 5 March ’20

  Dear Annie,

  I hope you are all keeping well in Scarborough. We are all well here. I am writing with a bit of news.

  You’ll remember the meeting of the Theosophist Society we attended together at Unity Hall in Bradford, not long before you and Frances moved to Scarborough. They spoke about fairy life, and at
the end of the meeting, I showed the photograph of our Frances and the fairies to a Mrs. Powell. You might recall she found the photograph interesting and asked if she could borrow the negative plate and the sepia print our Arthur had made.

  A letter arrived last week from an Edward Gardner at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society in London. He has seen the photograph and is very interested in it. The best example of its kind—anywhere—he says. He has many questions: where it was taken, what time of year, what model of camera, etc. I asked Edie Wright to help me write a reply (you’ll remember her from our musical evenings) and I sent the negative plate as requested.

  Well, another letter arrived a few days ago, in which Mr. Gardner offers to send our Elsie her own Kodak camera and negative plates so that she can take more pictures of the “Yorkshire fairies,” as he calls them. He asks if her “friend” can join her (her friend being our Frances). He has asked to borrow the negative slide of the goblin photograph (I corrected him and explained that it is a gnome)—which I will send on.

  A peculiar turn of events, isn’t it.

  I’ll let you know if anything comes of it, although I expect it will all blow over, as these things usually do.

  Do you see the Bainses often? They’ve always been good friends to us. I imagine it must be nice to have a few familiar faces around.

  Our Elsie gets taller every day. Maybe you could visit in the school holidays? We would love to see you all.

  Much love,

  Polly

  xxxxx

  I sat quietly for a moment as Mummy scrubbed at a saucepan with iron wool. The scraping and scratching set my teeth on edge. It was a long time since I’d thought about the fairy photographs. None of my friends in Scarborough knew anything about the beck fairies, and it wasn’t spoken about between my parents and me. It felt like the whole episode had happened to somebody else, a story I’d read and left behind on the shelf in Cottingley.

  “What do you make of that, then?” Mummy’s voice was matter-of-fact, but I could tell she was putting it on.

  I didn’t know what to say. As far as Mummy and Aunt Polly were concerned, the fairies and the gnome in the photographs were real, so why would Elsie and I mind if important men in London took an interest in them? But we knew the truth, and it was alarming, to say the least, to discover that the photographs were being scrutinized by “experts.”

  I decided the best thing to do was act matter-of-fact, like Mummy. “It would be nice to see Elsie again,” I said, taking an apple from the fruit bowl. “And I promised to visit Mrs. Hogan whenever I went back to Cottingley. Do you think this Mr. Gardner will really send Elsie a camera and plates?”

  Mummy wiped her hands on a tea towel. “I don’t know, love. He sounds serious enough.” She leaned against the stone sink. “I didn’t know your Aunt Polly had taken the photographs to the meeting. I was as surprised to see them as Mrs. Powell was. I thought that was all forgotten about.”

  “Me too.” A sick feeling stirred in my tummy. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “I’m going out to play. Betty has a new skipping rope. She promised me a go with it.”

  As I made my way out of the kitchen, Mummy called after me. “Frances? Just a minute.”

  I stopped and turned around. For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me, and part of me wanted her to. Part of me desperately wanted to sit down at the table and tell her and Daddy everything—about the cutouts and about it only being a bit of fun to get me out of trouble for always falling in the beck. But as she looked at me, Mummy seemed to change her mind about whatever it was she’d been planning to say.

  “Nothing, love. You go on out and play. Don’t be going far, though. Tea’s at five o’clock.”

  My chance to confess blew away down the street as I opened the front door.

  As the day wore on, my thoughts wandered back to Aunt Polly’s letter. Why had she shown the Theosophist people our photographs? I didn’t like the idea of important men in London studying them with their clever contraptions and intellect. I was sure they would make out the hat pins, or the corners on the card where Elsie’s cutting out wasn’t as smooth. I thought about Mrs. Hogan’s words: “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?” I hoped Aunt Polly was right and that it would all blow over.

  Aunt Polly was wrong.

  It was over tea a few months later that I sensed tension in the air between my parents. Mummy huffed and sighed her way through her lamb chops while Daddy buried his face in the evening paper.

  Eventually he cracked. “Tell her, Annie, will you? She’s involved now, whether we like it or not.”

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  Mummy took an envelope from her apron pocket. “Your Aunt Polly wrote again. You’d best read what she has to say.”

  I took the letter tentatively. As I read Aunt Polly’s words, the paper felt like lead in my hands.

  2 July ’20

  Dear Annie,

  More news about the fairies.

  Edward Gardner has written several times now. He is most excited about our “Yorkshire fairies.” He is clearly a well-educated man and believes, firmly, in the existence of fairy life, having heard many accounts of them through meetings of the society. He believes in the authenticity of the girls’ photographs and sent our Elsie a box of chocolates, along with his latest request for her to take more photographs, and another offer to send a camera. I replied to say that Frances doesn’t live here and that Elsie can use Arthur’s camera and we’ll send on any more photographs if she manages some. He also asked for permission to make copies of the photographs. Elsie says he can do what he likes with them. He forgets Elsie is a young woman of nineteen now, and not especially interested in fairies.

  The two negative plates have also been analyzed by a Mr. Snelling—a top photography expert in London. He has declared them extraordinary and entirely genuine. He even pointed out the evidence of movement of the wings during exposure. So it would seem the girls were not making up stories as Arthur suspected.

  And that’s not all. Gardner showed lantern slides of the photographs to a meeting of the Theosophical Society at Mortimer Hall in London, where they caused a great fuss. A lady called Mrs. Blomfield saw them, and has brought them to the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!

  In the latest letter from Gardner, Conan Doyle enclosed a note to Arthur. He wrote very politely to say how interesting the photographs are and that he would like to know more about them. He happens to be writing an article about fairy life for The Strand Magazine Christmas number and has asked for permission to use the girls’ photographs. He assures us he won’t mention them by name and has offered to pay £5, or supply a free copy of the magazine for three years. He has since written directly to Elsie, saying how wonderful the fairy pictures are (he mentions Frances too), and says that if he wasn’t traveling to Australia he would like to visit Cottingley and talk to her about the fairies.

  It is a lot to take in—I know.

  I have invited Mr. Gardner to visit at the end of the month. Hopefully a visit to Cottingley will satisfy his curiosity and he will leave us alone. Elsie isn’t especially keen to meet him. I think she would prefer it if Frances were here. Would she be able to come?

  Love to everyone.

  Polly

  xx

  The color rushed to my cheeks, staining them scarlet with each astonishing line. “The two negative plates have also been analyzed by a Mr. Snelling—a top photography expert in London. He has declared them extraordinary and entirely genuine.”

  How could they believe it?

  Folding the letter, I returned it to the envelope and passed it back to Mummy, hoping she didn’t notice the tremble in my hands.

  “Lucky Elsie,” I said, “getting chocolates.”

  Daddy laughed. “Is that all you have to say about it?”

  “Do you think Mr. Conan Doyle will write
about our photographs?” I placed my elbows on the table and pressed my palms against my cheeks to conceal the deceit evident in the hot flush that had erupted there.

  Daddy peered over his newspaper. “Quite probably, yes, so if there’s anything you want to say about it, you should probably say it now.”

  An awful silence hung in the air. It was already too late to tell the truth. With prints of the photographs in circulation and magazine articles being planned and money and gifts being offered, how could we ever admit our “Yorkshire fairies” were nothing but silly cutouts of Elsie’s drawings? We would be in dreadful trouble if we told the truth. If Elsie wasn’t confessing—which she obviously wasn’t—then neither would I. We had sworn each other to secrecy, and a promise was a promise after all. The best we could hope was that we managed to stage one or two more photographs that would satisfy everyone’s curiosity.

  “At least our real names won’t be used,” I said. “Nobody will ever know it was us. Will they?”

  Mummy patted my hand reassuringly. “That’s right, love. Nobody will know, so you’re not to be worrying about it. You’ve miles of beaches to play on. Castles to explore. Fresh herring straight off the boat. What on earth could any of us possibly have to worry about?”

  But I did worry, and so did Mummy. I saw her reading Aunt Polly’s letter over and over, taking it from her apron pocket, sighing and putting it back again. As the days passed, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, either. The fairy photographs were far away in Cottingley, but they were part of me now, part of my story, and there were more pages to be written yet, I felt sure of it.

  Letters were exchanged like gunfire between Mummy and Aunt Polly over the following weeks. After a successful visit with Elsie, it was agreed that Mr. Gardner would visit me in Scarborough. I would then spend two weeks of my school holidays in Cottingley with Elsie, where we would try to take more photographs of the fairies with new cameras sent by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or “ACD,” as we called him for short.