The Cottingley Cuckoo

by A. J. Elwood

  I warm a bottle and sit on the sofa while I feed him, watching his lips pulling at the teat, a line of milk welling there. His eyes close, the lids almost transparent. I can see the blood running through them. I remove the bottle, notice the indentations in the rubber where his teeth have been. I tell myself he can’t help it. I rest one finger on his lip, pulling on the slippery softness to see the natal teeth more clearly: ill-shapen, discoloured, slightly jagged at the tip. I stare into his eyes, which are wide, regarding me. I sit him up and rub his back. I feel the sudden warmth as he spills some of my own milk onto my shoulder and the smell turns my stomach. The milk rapidly turns sour, I think, and wonder that I can be so unnatural as to think he may not be mine.

  All in my head, I tell myself.

  He wriggles, wailing next to my ear. He’s still hungry. He’s always hungry. In the stories, that’s why they do it, isn’t it? Fairies want to steal human children to strengthen their line, but they don’t always replace them with an enchanted stock of wood. Sometimes they leave a fairy child behind, to benefit from the care of the human mother, to drink her milk. Some even thought the false baby could imbibe a soul along with human milk, gaining a treasure the fairies don’t possess by nature.

  Is that why he’s so hungry all of the time? Has he succeeded? I think of Fenton’s letter, telling of eyes that are quite black, without a soul in them. I wonder if Alexander’s will darken as he grows.

  Is that why I feel so empty?

  I shake my head and dab once more at his plump lips. They open in response, rooting, and a new picture rises: an everyday, ordinary picture of the shops, so short a distance away, and the quantities of baby formula lined up on their shelves. I know Paul wouldn’t like it. He’d remind me that breastfeeding’s important to give babies antibodies, resistance to disease, defence against allergies, to equip them for our world. Still, the image stays.

  I pick him up. Usually I’m surprised at the solidity of him but he seems to weigh almost nothing as I carry him upstairs and lay him in the crib, then lie awake, listening to the breathy noises he makes, the little hiccups and gasps and exclamations, as if he’s still crying out for more. The sounds are oddly articulate, as if they could easily become words and sentences if his undeveloped anatomy would enable him to form them properly; or if I only had the ability to understand.

  8

  When I awake to the sound of the baby wailing, the events of the night before seem as insubstantial as my movements as I change him and warm his bottle and do the things I need to do. Paul comes in stretching, grins, plants a kiss on my cheek. He takes the bottle and baby and starts the feed – do I only imagine the way he swirls the milk, examining the colour? He makes a comment about his clever boy sleeping through the night and I don’t bother to enlighten him.

  Time passes in skips: walking up the stairs, tilting my face into the shower’s spray, willing myself awake, finding my car keys – did I really leave them in the bathroom? I settle into the car seat, wondering if I kissed Paul and Alexander goodbye. Paul and Alexander. The names are distant, people I heard of once, words that scarcely mean anything at all.

  I help the residents with breakfast, more mouths that need to be fed, like chicks in a nest. Mrs Favell is there and I check on her with no eye contact and little comment, and she behaves with similar coolness towards me. Why should she take the time to be rude? She’s got what she wanted. I’m furniture to her now. I meet her smallest requirements and nothing more.

  It isn’t until I see Nisha heading outside with a mug of coffee that I am suddenly and fully awake.

  Not entirely knowing why, I hurry after her, stepping into a garden now firmly in the grip of autumn. A few red berries, clinging to a shrub I cannot name, are the only colour. The smell is of dormant soil and mulch and, coming from the woods, a richer, fungal scent, a little tainted with rot. It isn’t raining but the air feels damp.

  Nisha stands at the end of the path, just beyond the furthest bench. She raises her mug, narrowing her eyes against the steam, but she doesn’t drink. She delves in her pocket with her free hand as if she’s forgotten something.

  She doesn’t look at me until I’m right next to her. I don’t apologise for interrupting her break. Her habitual smile is replaced by a look of annoyance, almost suspicion. I don’t care. ‘I need to know about the girl who was here before me,’ I say.

  ‘Theresa?’ She glances towards the French windows. Is she afraid someone might hear? ‘I told you already.’

  ‘I need to know where she is.’

  She pushes away from the wall, distancing herself from me, shaking her head.

  ‘You told me you were friendly. I have to talk to her – that’s all I want, to talk. I think she might be able to help me.’

  ‘What with?’ Now she really looks at me.

  ‘Just – nothing. There’s something I need to know. I’m not going to upset her or anything.’ I have no idea if this is true.

  Nisha exhales, long and slow. ‘Has Mrs Favell done something to upset you?’

  I realise that this is what she expected to happen all along. She knew there was something wrong about her, they all did, and anger flashes through me. It quickly fades, leaving weariness behind: the residue of sleepless nights, the madness of the thoughts that weigh me down.

  ‘Please, Nisha. I can’t explain, but I need your help. I need Theresa’s help. I just want to ask her a few questions. It won’t come back to you.’ I hope I’m not lying to her. If I can find this girl, if I learn what Mrs Favell did to her, it might make everything clear to me. I might be able to claw my way through the thorny forest of my thoughts.

  ‘She works in the chemist,’ Nisha says, ‘on the High Street. That’s all I know.’ She throws what’s left of her coffee into a rose bush, wilted and infected with black-spot, no flowers left. She edges around me and walks away, leaving clear footprints in the soft earth. In her haste to get away from me, she thought nothing of stepping into the dirt.

  * * *

  My hands shake on the steering wheel as I pull into the car park near the centre of town. Rain flecks the windscreen, not heavy, but leaving its mark. It feels like a warning. A few desultory souls walk past, stopping to put up umbrellas or fiddle with their hoods. It’s lunchtime and I wonder if she’ll even be there, but I can’t help that. Maybe she’s sitting in a café. It could be her day off; she could be sick. She might have left. I don’t even know what she looks like. I had imagined looking into her face and understanding everything, but now nothing in the world feels certain.

  I throw coins into the pay and display machine then walk towards the High Street, feeling the same way I did when swollen with pregnancy – as if my centre of gravity has shifted, making the simple process of walking unfamiliar. I pass the bakery with its queue of office workers and builders in metal-tipped boots snaking out of the door; the Post Office, which is closed; a florist with a pretty window display but no one inside; a tiny boutique, its window filled with jewel-coloured sari fabrics. The chemist is an independent called Ainley’s. I’ve been in there plenty of times. Perhaps it was Theresa who served me and I never knew. They have a jumble of items crammed into too small a space, a tiny pharmacy counter at the back.

  I stop outside and peer through the window. A girl on the till rhythmically passes bottles of shampoo and packets of vitamins and bottles of orange juice across a barcode reader. Her hair is platinum blonde tipped with black, tied in a messy ponytail, and I wonder if this is the girl who was thrown out of Sunnyside because of Mrs Favell.

  There’s a queue at the till, so I can’t just go up and ask her. I walk in, pick up a packet of mints and join the line. It doesn’t take long before I’m close enough to read her name-badge: SUE. HAPPY TO HELP.

  She doesn’t look happy to help. I turn and thrust the mints onto a shelf amid the chocolate bars and batteries and glance around. An older man in uniform is stacking shelves with cheap body spray and I look away from his smile. At the very back of th
e shop, the pharmacy is staffed by a young woman with pink-tinged hair, small-featured and hard-faced.

  After a moment’s hesitation I walk towards her and she meets my gaze and watches my approach. She doesn’t smile. Maybe she can tell I’m not a customer. She has a name-badge too: THERESA. There’s no HAPPY TO HELP, not this time. She wears the white tunic of a pharmacist; she must be trained and trusted, with the responsibility of handling drugs every day. Do her employers know what happened at Sunnyside? I try to picture her sobbing against a wall while the police search her locker and I can’t. The pharmacy is on a higher level than the shop floor and I crane my neck to look at her.

  ‘Do you have a prescription?’ she asks.

  I shake my head. I’m making her uncomfortable, I can tell. A rustling comes from the back room as if someone else is there, and I speak softly. ‘I really need to talk to you for a minute. About Sunnyside. I think we have a mutual friend.’

  That was supposed to make it sound less mysterious, but it only makes it worse. Her expression hardens and she casts a worried glance over her shoulder. I’m right, then: the matter of theft can’t have been taken further or it would be on her record. A guilty little secret? Well, that can only work for me.

  She steps back out of sight and I hear her say she’ll only be a moment before she reappears through a side door. She grabs my arm, harder than she needs to. ‘One minute,’ she snaps.

  I’m marched through the shop like a shoplifter and I don’t say anything until we’re in the street, a short distance away from the customers going in and out of the door. She’s a head taller and she uses it, leaning over me. Her expression doesn’t change. There’s no trace of softness in her and I wonder that Mrs Favell could ever have singled her out – or has Theresa toughened up since then?

  ‘What do you want?’

  It’s me who looks shifty, my gaze sliding away. ‘I wanted to ask you about Mrs Favell.’

  ‘That’s your mutual friend?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Seriously, what the hell do you want? It’s not as if I was even there that long.’ Despite the reference to her leaving, she seems less scared than angry.

  ‘Look, I heard about what happened, okay? And I know what she’s like. I’m working there now and I wondered if you could tell me anything about her.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ She spits the words.

  ‘Well – she’s been saying things to me. She confuses me. I’m not sure who she is, not really.’ I’m not sure what she is, that’s what I want to say but can’t.

  She lets out a short bark of laughter. ‘She’s a witch. Is that what you want to know? I doubt you need me to tell you that. Why do you think she’s there at all, at Sunnyside?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Not frail, is she? Not like some of them. Not poor either. She doesn’t have to live there. But if she lived alone she’d never have any fun, would she? You know what I think? She likes to watch people at the end of their lives. She enjoys it – just as if she won’t reach the end of her own soon enough.’ She sneers. ‘There’d be no one to mess with, to play with their heads.’

  I push aside the thought of Edie Dawson. This isn’t why I’m here. ‘Is that what she did to you? Mess with your head?’ I must sound hopeful.

  ‘What do you reckon? She says things to you, you know that. She plays tricks. It seems stupid afterwards, but when you’re there, she knows how to get to you. She’s clever like that. Had lots of practice.’

  I nod. ‘It’s hard to explain to anyone else, but I – I’m not sure she’s even—’

  ‘She’s not all there, that’s for certain, but she’s not mad. She enjoys it. Look, just stay away from her, okay? As much as you can.’ Her expression softens and she leans in. ‘I hardly knew what I was doing, you know – when I took the necklace. She had me so upset. I just wanted to hurt her, I think. I’m not a thief.’

  I freeze. ‘You took it?’

  ‘I thought you said you knew what happened?’

  ‘I did. I thought I did.’

  ‘That’s it: I’m done here. Leave me alone, okay? I’ve finished with the whole thing. I’m not talking about this ever again, understand?’

  She walks off, leaving me standing in the street, not sure what happened. I haven’t said any of the things I meant to, haven’t asked the question I wanted to ask. Perhaps that in itself tells me all I need to know. Could I really have stood in the High Street and asked if she thinks Mrs Favell is a fairy? Or perhaps not that – but some nameless, strange, unnatural thing? Of course I couldn’t. They’d have me locked up, even section me. It’s not a normal thing to say.

  I’m not a thief, Theresa had said. And yet it sounded as if she had been.

  She says things to you.

  Everything seems simpler and yet more complicated than I’d thought and I picture her going back to her counter, going on with her life, as if Sunnyside and everything in it had never existed. For a moment I envy her. I turn and walk back in the direction of the car. Lunchtime will be over before too long, and Patricia will be watching to see if anyone is late. It had better not be the girl who only just came back, the one who had a baby.

  Still, there is something else I need to do before I face Mrs Favell again – and that means another quiet visit to her room.

  * * *

  11th September 1922

  Dear Mr Gardner,

  You will perhaps be surprised to hear from me again. It has been some time to be sure, and yet you cannot doubt my continued interest in this affair, no matter my silence. I have answered certain small queries you have sent; I hope I never failed you in that regard. And yet it is with the keenest sense of disappointment that I take up my pen.

  I recently obtained a copy of Mr Doyle’s book. Indeed, I opened The Coming of the Fairies with the greatest anticipation, as you may well imagine. You kindly informed me that a significant portion of the account would be taken up with further sightings and evidence of fairies, brought to light after the photographs taken in 1917 and the article in The Strand of 1920, and I did not deceive myself, I think, in expecting that my own was to be among them.

  Imagine my feelings then, in leafing through it – and again, and indeed again – and finding nothing more than the same scant cases that were the subject of the secondary article in The Strand of March of last year.

  I should tell you, I have no wish to convey my immediate impressions. Indeed, my emotions remain very high, though I shall endeavour to temper them.

  The prime cause of my concern, needless to say, is that Sir Arthur may have disregarded my story because he believes it to be a fraud or imposture. Does he class us with the cases that were ‘more or less ingenious practical jokes’? Has he truly dismissed us as such? I ask you directly, and I believe, after all my openness upon the matter, I am entitled to do so. Does he consider me a liar and a cheat?

  But he can have no doubt, his own belief being what it is! He has many times stood accused of the most dreadful species of foolishness, if not mendacity, and it is difficult to countenance that being his first response to me.

  I am a man of honour, Mr Gardner. I have always conducted myself as respectable in business and of decent character in all aspects of my life. I would challenge anyone to find a soul that would not speak for me in that regard. I have invented nothing. I can only mourn such proofs as I have held in my hand and that have gone from me, since they would have made my position unassailable and above reproach.

  I have seen fairies. My daughter-in-law has been cruelly blighted for spying upon them and has been restored by their agency. I have held pictures of them in my hand. I have touched their earthly remains. Such is my testimony, stronger than many that are instanced in Sir Arthur’s book, and yet my name is struck from the record as surely as if I had never existed.

  It cannot be only because he has not made my acquaintance. He never saw Elsie Wright or Frances Griffiths, but has taken the word of others as to the unlikelihood of
their having invented anything. He stakes his reputation on their photographs being genuine. And yet how great an argument in his favour would it be to show other photographs, captured in the same place but at different times and by different hands? It would reaffirm the existence of the sprites – demonstrating, at once and for ever, that theirs was no isolated case.

  I know that through some misfortune my photographs had been rendered flattened and dull and without the traces of life they once held, but could they be entirely without purpose? For the ones printed in the book were no great demonstrations, as is evidenced by the public doubt and incomprehension that has greeted them.

  Why, even within the text there was some little excuse made for them by an interested party, namely that the fairies’ odd whiteness was a natural result of their lack of shadow. Such is nonsense! They have physicality – why, then, should they be without shadows? And elsewhere it is blamed upon the glow of ectoplasm. I am not even sure I believe in such stuff. And someone described their ‘somewhat artificial-looking flatness’ – that says everything, does not?

  Yet I wonder if the images I sent to you have undergone some further deterioration that made them unfit to be seen even by the side of these? Those I keep here appear to be a match for them in my eyes, but can I trust them? I admit, it rather gives the lie to that old Yorkshire phrase that is referred to in the book – ‘Ah’ll believe what ah see.’

  But you will forgive me the general tenor of my letter. Please understand that I am simply very distressed at the great opportunity that has been missed. I assure you that I have no desire for personal gain. I never have; I made that quite clear from the outset. I am a Seeker of Truth, and I know that in you and Sir Arthur I found fellow travellers along a similar road, and I cannot contemplate how we have somehow lost each other along the way.

  Did Sir Arthur wish to keep the accounts of additional fairy sightings just as the secondary article had them, ignoring later developments? Had he so little time to commit to creating his new ‘epoch’ that he was unable to bring the section up to the present? Or did he wish only to protect us and leave us to our misery?