The Cottingley Cuckoo

by A. J. Elwood

  Then I thought of the missing skeleton, the incontrovertible proof that was so much needed, and I suddenly much desired to look upon our own photographs again.

  I opened the bureau and took out the envelope. They had not disappeared; the plates are still in my keeping. I have checked them all several times and nothing has vanished, but despite that, something within them seems sadly changed.

  The little living lights I had seen previously, with the suggestion of limbs and the bright haloes made by their wings, appear to have faded. Arms and legs are turned to clumsy lines; the motion of the wings no longer obscures their ornamented shapes, which I think look nothing like those of the fairy I held in my hands. Their hair almost appears coiffed, like that of the Wright girl’s rather Parisienne-styled maids, and their dresses, now quite distinct, are as frilled and quilled as any lady’s in a ballroom.

  I have not ceased to be puzzled by the change. They no longer appear to be in motion but are sharply frozen; indeed, the little fellow pictured with Harriet is now more distinct than she. I cannot account for it at all. Have my eyes deceived me – were they always so?

  I wished to ask Charlotte, but she refused to look at them, and it would be unfair to upset Harriet by pressing her. Instead my thoughts turned to you, and what you would think of it – what anyone would think.

  You are in possession of copies of the earlier pictures, but how may we compare? Perhaps they never appeared to you as they did to me. Perhaps you thought me mad from the beginning and only humour what you see as the fancies of an old man. Pray tell me honestly what you think of them. I can only hope that yours continue as they once appeared, or you shall think me the most terrible confidence man – nothing but a trickster, when it is not I, but they! For the fairies must have changed them somehow, just as they have changed my home and my family; just as they adorn my words with ugly drips of ink; just as they have changed everything.

  In truth, I would that I had never seen them. I would that Harriet had not gone poking into the hollows with her stick. I would that I had never come to Cottingley!

  I anticipate your reply, in rather a state of agitation.

  Most sincerely yours,

  Lawrence Fenton

  * * *

  I set the letters down once more, the new one included, pushing their edges straight. This wasn’t what I’d wanted to find. It’s as if Lawrence Fenton’s disappointment is an infection seeping from the page, filling my mind. If the whole thing was a hoax of course the skeleton had to disappear, that much was obvious, but for the photographs to change…

  I see it happening as if the pictures are in front of me, magic dwindling from the world before my eyes, soon to be gone. I don’t know why I feel so crushed. I’ve never seen the photographs. They probably never existed.

  I turn to leave. The bed is neatly made, the corners squared, awaiting nightfall and the return of its occupant. It’s all so normal – so ordinary. Is the box still there, hidden beneath? She might have moved it as soon as I handed over her earrings, laughing at her little joke.

  I kneel down next to it and lift the valance, ignoring the blue smudge marring the fabric, and the box is there, nestled in the shadows. I let the bedding fall back into place. My neck prickles and I glance about me, half expecting Mrs Favell to be there after all, standing by the window or in the middle of the room, but it is empty. When I listen, there are only distant, everyday sounds: the television, the scraping of a chair, a brief whistle – Jimmy, I expect. Some of the residents will be gathering to play games: i-Spy or Cluedo. They’ll be wondering where I am.

  Quickly, I lie down with my face pushed against the carpet and reach under the bed. The box is smooth under my fingers. I can’t get a grip on it but I press downwards on the lid and pull it towards me and it slides easily. Then it’s in my hands and I feel like a thief, like the girl who worked here before me.

  The box is lighter than I’d anticipated. I turn it, looking for a keyhole, but there doesn’t seem to be one. There’s only a line where the lid joins the body. It isn’t hinged. When I pull, the lid comes off.

  The first thing I notice is the scent rising from within, sweet and evocative, like springtime. Bluebells? Of course, there’s no skeleton. What did I expect? There is only a dried-out bundle of flowers, tinier than they should be, as if preserving has shrunk them somehow: little golden cups, minuscule orange trumpets, lacy white petals and yes, bluebells. Didn’t people once believe that if bluebells rang out, they would summon the fairies?

  But that’s not all. Below the flowers are papers and I wonder if here are more letters, but the stock is thicker. They’re photographs, I realise, but not of fairies. Each picture, monochrome and bordered with white, shows a woman and her daughter. I know they must be related because their faces are a similar shape, a little like Charlotte Favell’s. Their smiles are frozen. I leaf through them, trying to make out if one of them is my Charlotte, but the woman looks so young and fresh; the child is shown at different ages, up to about seven or eight. Then time seems to stop. I can’t find any where she’s grown any older.

  From the corridor comes the distinct sound of footsteps. I try to replace the lid and fumble, rattling it against the box, and the footsteps stop. I swallow hard, replace the lid and shove it under the bed just as the door opens.

  It’s Patricia. She’s carrying a clipboard and a cardigan I recognise as Edie’s. She looks surprised and then she frowns. ‘Whatever are you doing there?’ she asks.

  ‘I – I was looking for Mrs Favell. Then I thought I trod on something, an earring or something, but I couldn’t find it.’ I push myself to my feet and feel sweat prickle along my spine. Will she bend down and check? Will she see the box for herself?

  She nods and says, ‘Well if you do find anything, be sure to hand it in. Now, it’s games hour. I believe Mrs Favell is already there. They need some juice. And Jimmy’s misplaced his teeth; you could help look.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll head down now.’

  She holds the door open for me and I slip out in front of her then listen as she follows me all the way down the corridor. Her gaze on my back makes me stiff and awkward. She stops when I reach the top of the staircase and all I can think is, Did I push the box far enough under the bed? Did I put it straight? If not, Mrs Favell will see. She’ll know, and furthermore, she’ll know the person who moved it was me.

  Another picture arises before me, not of the photographs, but the letters on the bedside table. There is something wrong with them and I remember the way I’d lifted the one she’d left there – for me? – and read it, becoming absorbed before replacing them once more. I see it as if I’m there again: positioning the little bundle of letters, then the new one – not beneath them, as it should have been, but on top.

  She’ll know I moved it. She’ll know I read it, her letter, not yet granted to me.

  I grimace. I can’t do anything about it now.

  A few more steps and I’m back among the residents. I sit next to Edie, who picks up something from her lap. It’s a pair of baby’s bootees, all finished, fresh and white. She holds them against my shoulder, pressing them there as if trying them for size. I force a smile, telling myself I’m relieved she’s knitting again – I’d been half afraid that Mrs Favell’s words would make her give up on everything – and then Mrs Favell herself is striding across the room, her eyes fixed on mine.

  When she’s standing directly in front of me, she slaps something down on the table: another letter.

  ‘You only had to ask,’ she says, and then she’s gone.

  I should protest. Everyone’s looking, Edie blinking in bewilderment, but Patricia chooses that moment to walk in and I keep quiet. Did she hear? I shake my head, a non-specific gesture that could be taken to mean I don’t know what Mrs Favell is talking about. But then, Patricia just saw me in her room.

  How on earth did Mrs Favell find I’d been poking around and get here so quickly? Or had she already concealed this new letter on her pe
rson, knowing what I would do? She set me up. She’s going to have me fired before I even know how the story ends. It isn’t fair, none of it is, and tears fill my eyes.

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Edie. ‘Don’t you like them? They’re for my daughter, you know.’

  ‘She’s not coming.’ The words are out before I can stop myself and Edie sags in her seat. ‘I mean – I didn’t mean—’

  But I see from her face that she knows I did mean it. She knows it’s true. Her eyes are full of hurt as she crumples the bootees in her hands.

  ‘I know,’ she says, and her voice is small. ‘I suppose I think if I do enough for her, if I try really hard, it’ll bring her back. Isn’t that silly? How very silly of me.’

  I turn cold. How could I be so cruel? But they hadn’t been my words – they were Mrs Favell’s. La Belle Dame sans Merci, that’s suddenly how I think of her, cold and yet alluring, impossible to break free of once she’s cast her spell. Or in her case, does Belle Dame mean beldam – sounding so similar, yet meaning the opposite: a malicious old woman?

  She hurt Edie too. She hurt her first and yet Edie didn’t react like this, not when Mrs Favell said those things. It’s hearing the truth from my lips that’s made her look so beaten.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, and put my hand on her arm, but that only makes it worse. It only makes it more true. She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t react. Her rheumy eyes keep blinking, seeing whatever it is she’s seeing, and I hate Mrs Favell with an intensity I’ve never felt for anyone. In a weird kind of way, I feel like it’s her who’s snatched my future from me. And what has she given in return? Not enough.

  If I’m going to get in trouble for this new ‘gift’, at least I’m going to know what it says. I pat Edie’s arm. Everyone else is focused on their game, and Edie doesn’t notice when I straighten out the letter in my hands. It doesn’t feel like a long missive. I hold it below the level of the table top and I begin to read.

  * * *

  5th October 1921

  Dear Mr Gardner,

  Thank you for your letter. It is true that it is very difficult to compare in writing one’s impressions of photographs. To judge by your description, the fairies have remained in position, and yet I rather fear they have flattened somehow – that they are not so redolent of life as I felt they were.

  But it is impossible to draw any conclusions without seeing. I do not know if they now appear quite dead, and you are being tactful; if they have become more like the Wright photographs, which have at least been accepted by experts; or if they remain as they once were.

  I am considering going to the glen to get more pictures. At least then we should have some other point of comparison, but if the same thing happened again I think I might despair. What can one do against such subterfuge? And it is all around me… it is becoming difficult to consume a meal in our own home for finding the cheese mouldy or the meat maggoty. Against all our inclinations, we are driven out to eat. Indeed, I wonder if we may be driven out altogether.

  I long to be a thousand miles from any mention of the word fairy, and yet I cannot escape it; it is in Harriet’s anxious expression, constantly looking at me as if to say, ‘Shall we go?’, and in Charlotte’s look of gentle sorrow as she bends closely over her work.

  I have even begun to dream of them. They visit me each night in the darkest hours, and each time I am taken in, because the dream begins with a false waking. I hear them first. There are words I cannot make out, spoken in mellifluous tones followed by tinklings of silver laughter, and there is more of the clicking I heard by the stream. I open my eyes expecting to see them dancing in the air, and I do, but I am surprised at their proximity; the little green fellow is leaning right over me. I catch one glimpse of his tiny features before he reaches out, quicksilver fast, and all goes black.

  I try to open my eyes again and see only the dark. I bat my hands before my face, afraid of what the fairies are doing, and my fingers close on nothing.

  I reach up, feeling my own eyelids, dragging them upward. It is difficult to tell but I think they are already open. And that is when I wake, when the first terror of it closes upon me.

  But it is only a dream, and many would doubtless claim that I have spent far too long lending such things credence already. As you said, Charlotte’s condition may well be the result of suggestion – of, ironically, prying too far into the mysteries, upsetting the balance of her mind to the degree that she is physically affected.

  I shall endeavour to learn from the spirit of Sherlock Holmes and take a more scientific approach. Indeed, I have fallen into some fanciful matter; I shall break off here and complete this letter later, when I hope I may be a correspondent of better sense.

  Continuance – 7th October

  I take up my pen once more rather late in the evening, for I have something new to impart, though whether it is of greater sense than the last is, alas, somewhat questionable. That is difficult to achieve, however, whilst living in such a place. Indeed, I have further reason to think it benighted – but I shall explain. Driven, as I mentioned, for want of unspoiled food, we took dinner in the parlour of a local hostelry a few hours ago. It was not the first time we had been forced to do such a thing, and the novelty of it was somewhat tarnished; we spoke little, until the landlady came in and asked how we did.

  We responded with the usual pleasantries. Then Harriet held up her glass of milk and said, ‘The fairies don’t like this. It’s the special milk they want.’

  The lady replied as one would expect, in the tones of humouring a child, and we went on quite dully until the end of our repast, when she bustled in with a little jug, which she set before Harriet.

  ‘Beastlings,’ she said with a wink. ‘That’s what the fairies like.’

  My daughter-in-law looked up with some annoyance. I think we would have sent the stuff away, but Harriet seized the jug with such eagerness her mother could not have taken it from her. Indeed, the child appeared quite desperate at the idea of its loss, and although I felt considerable dismay at the woman’s foolish meddling, I could not bear to remove it either.

  Beastlings. It is the word for the first milk after a cow has calved, I believe; it has a peculiarly rich smell and an almost green tinge. I cannot say I altogether like it, and would not bring myself to taste it for the world. But then, that would have upset Harriet too much. She carried it home with the greatest reverence, and I believe would have gone running to the glen at once had I not told her it must be kept for the morrow; which, in the worst possible circumstance, is a Saturday, and so even school cannot prevent her.

  I could not think what else to do, but I cannot imagine what possessed me to speak those words. For now she expects to go, and I do not know what I shall say to put the light of it out of her eyes.

  I shall finish here. I think I shall walk to the postbox at once, in defiance of the dark; it might help me to straighten my thoughts.

  Yours sincerely,

  Lawrence Fenton

  13

  Put the light of it out of her eyes. The phrase is in my mind all the rest of the day. Whenever I can spare a minute I go to Edie, being solicitous, bringing her tea, seeing if there’s anything she needs, her knitting needles maybe. She shakes her head and tries to smile. Each time I see that smile, something twists inside me. It’s worse because I know she isn’t doing it on purpose, there’s nothing designed about it, not like it would be if it was Mrs Favell.

  I suppose Mrs Favell must know I’m longing to find out what came of the promised trip to the glen. Did they really go? Did the fairies drink of what they gave? I almost don’t want to know because of course they couldn’t have, there’s nothing left but to rend the dream in two, and yet I must.

  What was it she said to me? You only had to ask.

  I could ask now. She’s upstairs, reading. She said that’s what she was going to do, loudly, when some special visitors arrived with therapy dogs in bright little jackets. The animals are cute and fluffy and placid, all
the better to be stroked and exclaimed over by the residents, hopefully lowering their blood pressures and bringing them a little joy. Exclamations rang out as the dogs were placed on the first waiting laps. None of them sat on Mrs Favell’s knee, of course. She rose from her chair the moment they arrived, though for a time she stood and watched, as if she couldn’t quite tear herself from the sight – though it disgusted her, that was clear from her expression. It was as if she was watching some arcane ritual, and she kept brushing at her skirt, as if it was covered in hair. Of course, it wasn’t; it was spotless.

  All the time I couldn’t help thinking of Lawrence Fenton on his way to the glen, apprehensive and afraid. What else might he have felt – yearning? Curiosity?

  I remind myself that it’s all invention, perhaps even made up by her, but there’s still a part of me that badly wants to believe there’s something more to the world than slow afternoons and tea and talk of children and grandchildren who never come. Or do I only miss stories so very badly?

  I nod to one of the ladies with the petting dogs and walk towards the stairs, half expecting someone to call me back, but nobody does. I open the door to the stairway and it closes again behind me with a sound like a whisper. The noise at my back is cut off: there’s only silence and there’s nothing to do but go on up, because I can’t bring myself to open it again.

  Mrs Favell is in her room, seated by the window, much as she was when I first saw her. Her blouse looks diaphanous in the light spilling through the glass, her pearls gleaming at her neck. She isn’t reading, doesn’t have a book in her hand; there’s an air about her of waiting. She might have been sitting there for years, and I wonder how old she is. Her neck is a little lined, but not too much. She’s kept her figure, hasn’t got jowly or bags under her eyes, and that makes her look younger than the others even as her clipped speech and formality make her seem older. I think of the way time is said to pass in Fairyland: fluid, malleable, a year flowing by for every human second, decades of summers swimming by as if in a dream.