The Cottingley Secret

by Hazel Gaynor

  As the day of Mr. Gardner’s visit drew nearer, I wished more than ever that Aunt Polly hadn’t taken our photographs to the Theosophist Society meeting. I wished they had stayed in the drawer, forgotten about. Most of all, I wished I hadn’t lost my temper that sultry afternoon in the scullery of 31 Main Street. I wished I’d kept my secret locked away, safe in my heart.

  But I hadn’t, and now I would have to face the consequences. Whatever they might be.

  NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE

  Scarborough, Yorkshire. 1920.

  Mr. Gardner arrived on a muggy Saturday afternoon, the heat sticking to me like my bad mood. I hadn’t slept well the night before. Neither had Mummy. She was anxious about what this man “all the way from London” would think of our humble home and northern ways. I was worried about the questions he might ask, and what he might already know. I didn’t think it fair that I had to wait around the house to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk about the fairies—especially not to a stranger—and I certainly didn’t want to talk about the photographs. I’d made a solemn promise to Elsie, and that meant I would have to tell Mr. Gardner a lie. It made my stomach tangle up in tight knots so that I couldn’t eat my breakfast.

  I sulked all morning until Daddy insisted on taking me for a walk along the seafront, where he hoped the breeze would blow my temper away.

  We sat on the harbor wall, waiting for the herring boats to come in. I dangled my legs over the edge, letting my bare calves rub against the cool stone.

  Daddy threw stale bread for the gulls. “Come on, then. Spit it out.”

  I sighed and leaned my head into his shoulder, cherishing the fact that I could, that my daddy had come home when so many others hadn’t.

  “Why does Mr. Gardner want to talk to me, Daddy?” I kicked the heels of my shoes against the wall, enjoying the feeling as they bounced off again.

  “Well, it isn’t every day you see photographs of fairies, is it? I suppose he wants to ask you about them to understand them better.”

  The summer sun had reddened Daddy’s cheeks, like it used to in Cape Town. He looked more like the man I remembered. For a long time after being demobbed, he’d looked like a ghost, as if part of him was still at war.

  “We never meant for the photographs to be seen by anyone else though,” I said. “They were only meant for us.”

  I felt his grip tighten around my shoulder as tears pricked my eyes. If only I could tell him. He would know how to make it all better.

  “I know, pet. But other people have seen them now. Best to talk to this Mr. Gardner. Answer his questions. Tell him what you can.” He ruffled my hair with the palm of his hand. “That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”

  I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face. “No. I suppose not.”

  Mummy twitched at the lace curtain in the front room until the motorcar pulled up outside.

  “Frances! He’s here, love!”

  I stiffened as I heard the car door opening and closing. I was in my bedroom, reading through the letters Johanna had sent from Cape Town. I wished Johanna or Elsie were with me. I wished I could go cycling along the leafy back lanes with my friend Mary. I’d rather do anything than talk to this Mr. Gardner. Elsie usually did the talking. Without her, I was sure I would trip myself up and say things I shouldn’t say.

  Mummy called up to me again, and I made my way downstairs on heavy feet, my heart thumping in my chest, the knots still tangled in my tummy.

  Mr. Gardner stood in the hallway, sun streaming through the stained-glass panels in the door behind him. He wore an expensive-looking brown wool suit with a brown bow tie and smart brown trilby hat. His brown eyes were intense, but he had a pleasant smile that stretched his slim mustache above his top lip.

  Mummy did the introductions, her voice all up-and-downy again.

  Mr. Gardner held out his hand. “I am delighted to meet you, Frances.” He spoke softly, with a crisp London accent.

  I shook his hand and thanked him for coming, as I had been told to, and while Mummy fussed over him, taking his hat and coat, I stood quietly at the bottom of the stairs, wishing I could sink into the floorboards.

  Mummy showed him through to the front room, which had never been tidier or more vigorously polished. “Thank you for coming all this way, Mr. Gardner,” she said. “It isn’t often we get visitors from London, is it, Frances?”

  I said, no, it wasn’t, and sat at the opposite end of the table from Mr. Gardner—whom I kept wanting to call Mr. Brown—while Mummy excused herself to make the tea.

  The carriage clock ticked away the seconds on the mantelpiece as Mr. Gardner settled himself into the chair, pulling at the fabric of his trousers in brisk movements before crossing one leg over the other and remarking on how pleasant it was to breathe the fresh sea air. “You wouldn’t believe the fogs we get in London. Have you ever been?”

  “No,” I said. “But I’ve read about the pea-soupers in Mr. Dickens’s novels.”

  He smiled. “Indeed. And his descriptions are astonishingly accurate.” He tugged at his trousers again, and I wondered if he was a little nervous too. “I’m very grateful for your time, Frances. I hope I’m not intruding on your weekend too much.”

  His smile put me at ease. He wasn’t as stiff and intimidating as I’d imagined. “Not really. But I hope to get out bicycling if the weather holds.”

  He rubbed his hands together like Aunt Polly did when she was cold or vexed. “Of course. And I won’t keep you long. As you know, we were intrigued by your photographs. Most intrigued.” I glanced at my feet and wished Mummy would hurry up with the tea. “Your cousin, Elsie, told me all about the fairies you saw together. I visited her recently and took a walk to the beck. It certainly is an enchanting place. Exactly the sort of place one might expect to find elementals.”

  To my relief, Mummy reappeared with a clattering tea tray, and for a while the room was filled with the noise of best china cups and teaspoons and sugar tongs rather than the sound of my guilty conscience. I ate two slices of parkin while Mummy and Mr. Gardner spoke politely about the weather and the coal strike and other dull things.

  After the customs of tea had been dispensed with, Mr. Gardner suggested we talk in the garden, it being such a warm day. “I like to hear the gulls whenever I’m by the sea,” he said. “And the fresh air does wonders for the soul.”

  Mummy said that was a nice idea but insisted I put my coat on since the wind was blowing from the east.

  I sat beside Mr. Gardner on the bench Daddy had made last summer. My feet touched the ground now, where they hadn’t six months ago. I was pleased to be growing into a tall girl, like Elsie.

  “I know this must all be rather unusual for you, Frances,” Mr. Gardner explained, “and I can assure you we only wish to understand the circumstances in which the images were captured. It isn’t every day one sees fairies at the bottom of the garden, is it?”

  I said no, it wasn’t, and swung my legs nervously beneath the bench.

  “Perhaps you could tell me how the photographs came about. Take me back to that summer’s day. Try to recreate the scene for me, as if it were a painting.”

  I thought about those carefree days I’d spent by the beck, when I saw the fairies in abundance. It seemed silly to me now that we hadn’t tried to take a photograph of real fairies. Elsie was so intent on her idea of the cutouts, we’d never discussed it, let alone tried. “It was all done in a hurry, Mr. Gardner. We were only allowed the camera for a short while and only had one plate. We didn’t have time to think about what we’d seen. I stood behind the fairies and Elsie pressed the shutter. That was it.”

  Mr. Gardner asked questions about the weather that day and how we’d reacted when we saw the image on the plate.

  “It was a warm day,” I said. “Hot and sticky. We were very excited when we saw the plate. We wanted to prove to the grown-ups, you see. That there were fairies in the beck.”

  “And did they believe you?”

&
nbsp; “Mummy and Aunt Polly did. Uncle Arthur teased us about it.”

  “How did that make you feel? When he teased you and said the fairies weren’t real?”

  Finally he was asking some interesting questions. “I didn’t mind. It was only harmless fun, so I ignored it. Uncle Arthur was always teasing me and Elsie about something or other. But I knew what I’d seen.”

  Mr. Gardner jotted things in his notebook as we talked, and I began to relax in his company.

  “Do you believe the fairies are real, Mr. Gardner?”

  He paused for a moment as the sun lit up his face, making him look less brown and more interesting. “I do, Frances. I believe there are other realms, other places, where fairies and elemental spirits dwell. For those who doubt, I say only this: Does something not exist simply because you cannot see it? You cannot see Conan Doyle right now, but you know he is real, don’t you?”

  “Of course he’s real. He wrote a letter to me. And he wrote all his books about Sherlock Holmes.”

  Mr. Gardner chuckled. “Ah, but how can you be sure he’s real if you’ve never seen him yourself?”

  I was starting to feel confused by Mr. Gardner’s puzzles and was grateful for Mrs. Hogan’s words, which popped into my head. “Sometimes, we just have to believe, don’t we?”

  He made some more notes in his book. “You are a wise young lady, Frances. I couldn’t agree more.”

  Mummy appeared at the back door to say tea was ready. “It’s only egg and chips, Mr. Gardner. Nothing fancy. I hope that’s all right for you.”

  “Egg and chips is my favorite of teas, Mrs. Griffiths. Thank you. I shall enjoy it very much.”

  I let Mummy do the talking while I ate. I copied the way Mr. Gardner dipped his chips into his egg, because I knew Mummy wouldn’t have let me if we were on our own.

  By the time Mr. Gardner said good-bye, I was almost sorry to see him go. He hadn’t mocked me or teased me or dismissed what I’d seen as some trick of the light—or sandwich wrappings. He believed me. And even if the photographs were staged, he believed in fairies, and for that alone, I liked him well enough. I was surprised he hadn’t asked me to describe the fairies in detail, or to speculate on what I thought they were doing, or how they appeared and disappeared, and why, but I presumed he must know the answers already. He was a clever man from London, after all.

  He left a smart new Cameo camera and six packets of plates for me to practice with. “So that you’ll know what to do when you get to Cottingley,” he said.

  Over the following weeks, I had great fun photographing my friends and the views from the castle and the harbor. I enjoyed messing about with the camera, so much so that I almost forgot its real purpose. It was only when Mummy said the Bainses would be coming to collect me at ten o’clock the following morning, to accompany me on the train journey to Cottingley, that my stomach churned.

  “And stop taking silly photographs, Frances. You’re to save those plates for the fairies, remember?”

  I remembered only too well.

  Eleven

  Ireland. Present day.

  The more Olivia read of Frances’s story, the more she felt drawn back to Cottingley.

  Reading Frances’s memories of Ellen Hogan was like having a front-row view into her family’s past. Olivia had never known or thought much about her great-grandmother. She vaguely remembered seeing her once or twice in old family photos, but the past is such a distant, colorless place to a child’s eyes, and it was only now that Olivia saw Ellen as a young wife, worrying about her husband away at war; as a mother, grieving for her lost little girl.

  As she read Frances’s words, Olivia wept for Ellen’s loss, wishing she could step back in time to help her, or comfort her, or find some answers for her. More than ever, Olivia wanted to stitch together the scraps and fragments she was discovering about her family. Just as Nana used to make patchwork quilts, Olivia was sure she could create something meaningful from all the disparate parts. She just wasn’t sure how yet.

  Taking Henry at his word, she made arrangements to travel to England. First to London, because the longer she stayed away, the more certain she was that in order to walk away from her future, she had to confront it. She would travel from London to Cottingley and to the library at Leeds University, where the archives about the fairy photographs were kept.

  Despite the soothing lullaby of the sea, Olivia slept fitfully, her mind a confusing tangle of questions and doubts. She sensed her mother beside her, and always she saw the red-haired child, surrounded by flashes of brilliant jeweled light, handing her a flower. “For Mammy.” Each morning when Olivia woke, her body ached as if she hadn’t slept at all, and often she found the flowers from her dreams dropped on a stair, or on the floor beside the bed, or tangled between the crumpled bedsheets. She collected them and placed them in the coffee cup, suspending her disbelief and choosing, instead, to trust in the things she couldn’t easily explain or understand, but which charmed the childish wonder in her heart nevertheless.

  As her dreams intensified, the red-haired girl became so real to Olivia that she found herself absentmindedly sketching her image during the day, bringing her to life on the page. She drew her surrounded by the flowers she held in her hands—white harebell, pink campion, and yellow cinquefoil—entwining them into the curls in her hair, until the flowers and plants were not around her, but part of her. A true child of the woodland.

  AFTER SEARCHING ONLINE, Olivia found a photography studio in Dublin that could develop the film from the Instamatic camera she’d found in Nana’s dressing table. She took the bus into town and left the camera with the owner of the studio, an expert in older film formats who was delighted to see the Instamatic. He told her the prints would be returned in the post. There were only twelve exposures, but they were her mammy’s, and the tantalizing prospect of the images that might be captured on the film meant everything to Olivia. It was like leaving a piece of her heart behind, and she couldn’t help feeling a little anxious as she made her way back to Howth on the bus.

  Back at the shop, Ross bounded downstairs as soon as he heard the jangle of the bell.

  “Good. You’re here.”

  “Why? What happened?” Olivia passed him the Americano she’d picked up for him on her way back and tried to ignore the touch of his fingers against hers as she did. “Did you sell all the books? Okay. You win.”

  He laughed. “A reporter from a local newspaper called in. He wants to interview you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You, Kavanagh! He’s doing a feature on the Little Lane shops. Part of a commemorative history project or something. He left a card and asked you to give him a buzz or drop him an e-mail.”

  Olivia took the business card. “Cool. I hope you told him you’re the Writer in Residence.”

  “Obviously. He wants to interview me for their Arts page. He didn’t know there was a bestselling author in town. Good, eh?”

  Sometimes Ross was so unintentionally charming and so humble about his work and his success that it took all Olivia’s resolve not to throw her arms around him and tell him she was so pleased Iris had wandered into the shop that day and that he’d wandered in after her.

  “Liv? Are you listening?”

  “Sorry. What?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re worse than Iris with your daydreaming. The reporter. He liked the window. He’s sending a gardening expert over to have a look.”

  “A gardening expert?”

  “Yep.” He laughed and went back upstairs. “Olivia Kavanagh. Local celebrity and the darling of gardeners everywhere.”

  Olivia threw a packet of mints at his head and switched on the radio as she walked over to the window. Everyone who came to the shop was fascinated by it. One customer had left a coin for the fairies, for good luck. Others followed until the collection of copper coins in the window began to grow as quickly as the foliage.

  The single green shoot that had first wrapped itself around the fairy door had
grown into several green shoots, some of which had formed buds and flowers. Even when Olivia had moved the window box so that the original shoot was no longer attached, the flowers and plants inside the window still thrived. There was no logical explanation for how it continued to grow, but remembering the words from Frances’s story, Olivia stopped trying to find a rational scientific explanation for it, allowing herself the far greater pleasure of simply being enchanted by it. A wild garden growing in the bookshop window was too magical to spoil with rationality. Olivia embraced it without question, because something told her that as long as the window bloomed, so would the bookshop—and so would she. She often left little gifts at the fairy door—flowers, leaves, feathers, shells, pebbles—things she found during her walks along the harbor and the cliff tops.

  The fairies would bring a gift to her in return. She was sure of it.

  THE COMMEMORATIVE ARTICLE on Lána Beaga was published a few days later, along with a piece in the Gardening pages about the bookshop window, which Ross teased Olivia about relentlessly. Word of mouth about this “magical” bookshop began to spread among the local community, rushing along the narrow streets like the white-tipped waves that rushed toward the shore. At the same time, the new Something Old website was officially launched. Slowly, new customers began to ring and e-mail to order books or to check if Olivia had something particular in stock. By the end of the week, a dozen new customers had visited the shop after seeing the feature in the newspaper. Collectors and curators of specialist libraries and museums sent inquiries. The wind had changed direction. Finally, good fortune was blowing Olivia’s way.

  The reporter had been especially interested in Pappy’s antique book press and Olivia’s bookbinding tools. At his suggestion, and despite being nervous, Olivia organized a bookbinding and restoration demonstration evening. The level of interest was far higher than she’d expected, and the shop buzzed with the sounds of conversation and questions and clinking teacups on saucers. Olivia was glad she’d kept Nana’s china tea set. It seemed fitting that a small part of Nana and Pappy was there that night. It was such a success, Olivia decided to hold an Evening of Fairy Stories the following week.