The Cottingley Cuckoo

by A. J. Elwood

  It is the place she told me of with her poem. And so I look for her, standing under the trees in some delicately coloured gown, lavender or mauve or baby blue; a graceful woman, so much more poised than I, so much more elegant. She will be wearing a new face of course, not the one she showed to the world or even the one I glimpsed under the full sun, but the one she hides beneath them all; she will be her true self at last – La Belle Dame sans Merci.

  It’s an important poem… It’s for you.

  She had poured her words into my ear. They were like worms, eating their way into me like a canker, finding out my bed of crimson joy, rotting me from the inside with their dark and secret love.

  O Rose thou art sick.

  She had told me all along what she was doing. She had told me what I was. And I see it at last. I remember my impatience with it all, my longing to get away. The way I’d resented the times I’d had to wash them, feed them, change them. I’d seen only the surface of things: the false teeth and incontinence and bedsores and being asked the same questions over and over again because they couldn’t remember the answers. I hadn’t seen beneath. I hadn’t seen because I hadn’t troubled to look and my punishment was that Mrs Favell had seen me.

  I had been a carer, but I hadn’t, had I? I hadn’t really cared about anything.

  I abandoned my son. I left the man who loved me. I gave them up for nothing but a story. And I know that Charlotte is not here, that she never will be here again, and I am bereft.

  It’s for you.

  I am the only one standing here by this lifeless lake. Why should I look for anyone else? This is my place. I look down at myself, holding out my arms, seeing the garment I’d chosen to wear, as if I’d known. My blouse is silky, pearlescent, and the faintest, softest green.

  You remind me of me, Rose.

  But of course I had. Because it was never her, was it? I am La Belle Dame sans Merci, the woman without mercy; the woman without love. It was always me.

  I picture myself walking away from here, getting back into the car and going – where? There is no place for me now. She has seen to that, or I have. I am not a wife, not a mother. And I realise: this is my happily ever after, the one I had wished for. I am free. I can go anywhere; I can be anyone.

  The knowledge creeps into me, along my bones, through my veins, layers of it going down and down as if into deep water. It is cold, turning me numb as it bleeds through me. There are no ties left. There is nothing to keep me from my future. I have my wish, and it is Mrs Favell who has given it to me. She was my fairy godmother all along. She granted my desires, everything I ever wanted; I just had to give her a little something in exchange.

  I step towards the abandoned and lonely lake, no life in it, as the sun recedes from the world. I look down into the darkened water at my reflection, shimmering in the surface: my pale form, my eyes staring back at me, always and entirely black.

  No. She cannot win; I cannot finish this way. It isn’t the end. I have my happy ending, but at the wrong time, when I no longer want it. I only want my life.

  Have you ever been in love, Rose? – that had been her question, and I know now that I have. I felt my child growing inside me, his skin and bones forming within, his translucent eyelids opening and closing in the dark of me, his heart beating so much more rapidly than mine. She cannot take that from me. I turn my back on the lake where no sedge grows, where no birds sing – the one she meant for me to find – and I run back towards the car.

  * * *

  It takes for ever and is gone in the blink of an eye, but I reach the ending. Time is flowing differently now, slipping away all around me as if I’m in Fairyland, but this is real: this is mine. I look up at the narrow dirty-brick terrace, trying to read in the blankness of its windows what lies within. Is Paul already back? Has he found Alexander there alone? Is he even now cradling his son to him – that, and his own bitterness?

  He can’t be. I will him away with my mind. He won’t be. Mrs Favell’s story has finished, the one she wanted to tell. I listened too long; now I will write my own.

  I already know what I will find as I step out of the car, hurry along the path and turn my key in the lock, the mechanism so worn it does not make a sound. I pause for a moment in the hall. Here are no snaking words to find their way beneath my skin; they are banished now. There is silence within, silence without. This is my home.

  And I see it all.

  Alexander is lying quite still in his bassinet. I lift him, hold him to my breast, close my eyes, breathe him in. A breathy sigh – his or my own? – fills my mind, my heart. He does not wriggle; he does not fight. He must know I have decided to be his mother at last.

  I tell myself I never could have hurt him. I never could have cast him away. Even when I’d seen that hideous carving in another baby’s crib and wondered if it somehow represented Alexander, a changeling returned to the fairies, some part of me had still chosen it in preference to any other child.

  My arms begin to shake – with relief perhaps, or with spent adrenaline for dangers past. He is mine. My son. He must be hungry. I will hold him for a while longer, feeling the weight of him, the solidity. I will breathe his breath. I’ll feed him the milk my body has made, nurture and comfort him, and soon his father will come home and he’ll forgive the things he doesn’t know he needs to forgive and it will be as it always was. Better, even, because I will never want to leave again.

  I refuse to see the kitchen, to think of the chaos strewn across the worktops, the history of the things I have or haven’t done. I will not see the stolen papers abandoned on the floor. None of that matters, not any longer. Patricia will forgive me. Perhaps Harriet will even vouch for me. She knows what her mother is, after all. They won’t press charges. They already know I won’t go back: I’ve made my choice.

  I close my eyes once more and tell myself a new story.

  We will be mother, father and baby. The three of us will walk in the park, doing everything Paul had spoken of. All the stories he told me once – they are the ones that will come to be. We’ll swing Alexander in our arms between us as he grows. We will watch his clumsy movements as he tries to kick a ball and we’ll laugh together. We will have matching smiles and matching dreams, and somewhere not too far distant another mother will hold her child, a little girl, and she too will tell her stories. She’ll tell her she will always be hers, and wanted, and loved.

  Paul will be happy and so shall I. He won’t need to speak to me again about coming around, because he’ll never need to. We’ll find the work we need to get through this and we’ll do it together. There will be new choices to make, and this time we’ll make all the right ones. I could even return to my studies. I’ll finish what I once began; I can still be the person I have always wanted to be.

  And one day, when my family is ready, we will leave. When we do, it will be to a new reality: one we have chosen, one we have built, one we will create with our own hands. I can achieve every dream I’ve ever had. They will become real, surrounding us like a fairy materialising in a photograph. Surely, after these last months, anything else will be easy. I’ll take Alexander and Paul with me, somehow. I’ll find a way. I always have.

  And we will be together.

  You believe, he had always said to me. And he was right. I do believe. Mrs Favell had tried to take that and warp it and twist it into something I could no longer recognise, but I see that now. It doesn’t mean I have to stop believing in anything; it doesn’t mean I can’t try again.

  I hold on to it all, everything I have gained – a new ending. This is the future: it is beautiful; it is life, and it is my own.

  Alex doesn’t stir, though I’m holding him so tightly. He sleeps on, peaceful in my arms, trusting me at last. He knows I will take care of him; he knows I will take care of us all.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you so much to the vibrant, enthusiastic and always awesome Team Titan, particularly Cat Camacho and George Sandison, for shepherding this book
into publication. Thank you too to my agent Oli Munson of A. M. Heath, for setting it all in train. I’m also grateful to designer Natasha MacKenzie for such an incredible cover and to Wayne McManus for taking care of my website.

  This book owes a large debt of gratitude to Ian Whates, who asked me a few years ago if I’d write a novella for his independent press, NewCon. The result was Cottingley, a story told entirely in the form of letters, released under the name Alison Littlewood. Thank you, Ian, not only for publishing that novella, but for being so supportive when I decided to revise and interweave those letters into the new and rather longer contemporary story that became The Cottingley Cuckoo.

  Thank you to the incredibly talented writer Priya Sharma, for support and friendship as well as help with my research questions – any errors remain entirely my own. This book is dedicated to you and Mark Greenwood, fabulous people both, not to mention fiendish Cards Against Humanity players.

  A big shout out to my writing friends, and the giant genre family formed by events like Edge-Lit and FantasyCon. I miss you, and I’m looking forward to a time when everything becomes possible again.

  Fergus, thank you for being there. Thanks too for that trip to Cottingley where you waited, not even a little bit bemused, while I insisted on kicking off my shoes and paddling in the beck. It just had to be done, in memory of a hoax that by turns delighted, entranced and puzzled the world.

  One hundred years ago, when Elsie and Frances took their startling photographs, they pictured a very Victorian kind of fairy. Such pretty winged creations, flitting among the flowers, had largely replaced the older tales of darker, more dangerous creatures, who played nasty tricks and might even steal humans away. This book brings the different strands of lore together, and I’m grateful for the work of the numerous folklorists and researchers who have made it possible. I am also indebted to The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology by Edwin Sidney Hartland (1891), The Coming of the Fairies by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1922) and the poetry of Keats and of William Blake – who, in a delightful piece of symmetry, once claimed to have witnessed a fairy funeral.

  Many are surprised that Doyle, creator of the ever-rational Sherlock Holmes, also argued for the existence of fairies. As Rose surmises, his was an attempt to apply scientific methods to unscientific matters, and his aims were really rather noble. He wished to increase the world’s knowledge, to provide comfort against the fear of death and ultimately, to better the lot of humankind. He was a dreamer as well as a rationalist – and who isn’t the better for that?

  Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Ann and Trevor, for the love and fairy tales – always.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A. J. Elwood studied literature and history, which everyone assured her would never have any direct relevance to what she ended up doing with her life. She remains fascinated by those times when people could believe in things we think of as madness and have perfectly good reasons for doing so. An early obsession with fairy tales has stayed with her and she loves to pen stories that hopefully contain a little bit of magic and often more than a little of the strange.

  Elwood lives in a three-hundred-year-old house where floorboards creak, doors open of their own accord and rooms seem to spontaneously transform into libraries. She enjoys travel, particularly to cold places; she dreams of living above the Arctic Circle with mysterious lights and the silence of the snow. For now, her beloved dogs wouldn’t let her. She’s happy to remain in Yorkshire with her partner, a growing collection of fountain pens and increasingly inky fingers. She also writes as Alison Littlewood.

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