Olivia went through the routine of saying she was sorry and explained that she’d lost her mother when she was around Iris’s age. “It’s a tough time. If a few letters help, then I’m only too happy to write them.”
“Thanks. But honestly, don’t feel obliged. She’s a bright kid but she gets these funny notions sometimes, especially when it comes to fairies.”
“Don’t all little girls?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been one.” His smile was infectious. A little too infectious. “Actually,” he continued, “there was another reason I wanted to call in. The fairy door was a convenient excuse.”
“Oh?” Olivia really hoped he wasn’t going to ask her out for a drink. Infectious smile or not, a drink with another man would be all kinds of awkward right now. Maybe she should have kept her engagement ring on after all.
Ross cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. “Okay. Here goes. I’m having some work done in the house, and Cormac had said I could use the flat to write for a couple of weeks, to keep out of the builders’ way until I finish my book. I know we only just met and I hate to ask, but deadlines make me desperate.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I guess what I’m asking is whether the offer might still be there?” He grimaced, as if the embarrassment of asking was causing him physical pain.
A drink would have been a far simpler proposition. Olivia offered an awkward apology, tripping over her words as she said she was sorry, but she would be staying in the flat for a while until she sorted things out.
Ross raised his hands in surrender. “Ah, listen. No problem. I totally understand. I wouldn’t dream of dumping myself on you.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help.”
“Honestly. Don’t be. I was pushing my luck anyway.”
“What will you do instead?”
Ross shrugged. “Kitchen table as usual. It’s grand. I’m sure I can put up with a bit of noise and dust.”
“It doesn’t sound very romantic. I always imagined writers had panoramic ocean views or a chaise to lounge around on.”
Iris called over to say she’d found the perfect spot for the fairy door. Olivia told her she could climb into the window to set it up.
“What do you write then, Ross Bailey, Writer?” she asked, turning her attention back to him.
“Kids’ books. Fantasy stuff. Dragons and mythical beasts. I’m an illustrator too.”
“Wow. Sounds impressive.”
“Yeah. It’s not, though, but I suppose there are worse ways to make a living. I sometimes think I have the best job in the world—except when I have a deadline. Then it’s the worst.”
Olivia thought about the flat upstairs. It was practically empty apart from a few boxes of trinkets from the cottage and the small case she’d brought over from London. It was only a temporary base for her, and there was something appealing about having a resident writer in the bookshop. Ross might be a stranger to her, but Pappy had trusted and helped him, and something told her that she should trust and help him too. Her mind was made up.
“Listen, use the flat. It’s fine. It’s really not a problem and . . . well . . . if you can make a decent cup of tea, it might be nice to have some company.”
Ross looked genuinely surprised. “Are you sure? I don’t want to impose.”
“Honestly. You won’t be. You’d be helping, if I’m honest. I can brag about having a Writer in Residence and maybe you can throw a few friends my way and I might sell a few books.”
“That sounds fair enough.”
“Deal, then?” Olivia held out her hand. “Start Monday?”
Ross laughed and smiled again in a way that Olivia didn’t want to think about too much because she wasn’t sure where her thoughts might lead. “Deal.”
As they shook on it, Olivia wondered why it was that some hands felt right together, like pieces of a jigsaw slotting into place, and she remembered how Pappy always said that we didn’t always have to look for an explanation. That sometimes it was far nicer to just let things be.
THE BRISK MORNING breeze became a reckless wind as Olivia made her way to St. Bridget’s that afternoon. It propelled her forward, blowing her doubts and disappointments away, out of reach. She felt wild and free, like the scudding clouds above.
Still slightly breathless and with her cheeks flaring scarlet, she stood for a moment at the dayroom door, watching Nana as she straightened the magazines and newspapers into neat piles before plumping the cushions. She worked methodically, from one chair to the next, picking up a cushion, giving it a shake followed by three sharp bangs on one side, and settling it back onto the seat of the chair. She went around the seats three times, having forgotten which ones she’d already done. When her little task was complete, Olivia walked into the room and gave her the bunch of sunflowers she’d brought with her, disheveled and windswept now. Nana thanked her and said it wasn’t every day you got flowers from the bus driver, and would she mind helping her back to her room before it was time to go.
Olivia took Nana’s arm, leading her along the corridor while Nana talked about the visitors she’d had in the week. Nana often had imaginary visitors. The President had even been last month. Olivia was used to these muddled memories, although it didn’t make them any easier to hear.
“You’d like him,” Nana said.
“Who?”
“You know.” Nana waved her hands in front her, conducting her memories into some sort of harmonious order. “What’s his name? The one with the smart tie.” She forgot who she was talking about then and turned to say hello to a gray-faced man in a tartan dressing gown who shuffled past with the aid of a walker. “Poor bugger,” Nana remarked, a little too loudly. “He was in those Olympic Games, you know. Won a silver medal.”
Olivia smiled at him as he passed them and pulled Nana a little closer to her. She sometimes thought it must be quite nice to exist in a world of your own imagination, where everybody used to be somebody, and nobody went home without a medal.
Nana’s room was neat and functional. She’d hated it at first but had gradually accepted it as her own. The doctors had told Olivia and Pappy about self-reflecting rooms—medical speak for ways in which little reminders of home would help Nana settle in. In a painstaking process in which Olivia became something of an archaeologist of Nana’s life, mementos and trinkets—including one lucky china dog—were carefully excavated from the cottage and brought to the nursing home. Most days, Nana looked at these things with the emotional response of a fish. But occasionally—increasingly less so in recent months—she would pick up a photograph or an ornament, scrutinizing it until she was able to drag the associated memory from wherever it was hiding, or until she gave up searching and put it down again.
Olivia settled Nana in her favorite chair beside the window, positioned so she could see the oak and rowan trees in the gardens. She liked to watch the world beyond the window, complaining of feeling “strangled” if she couldn’t see the sky. It was one of the few parts of Nana’s condition that Olivia understood. She often felt the same way in London. Suffocated by the soaring buildings and high achievers and the nagging sense that her property developer fiancé was constructing not only a new apartment building they would live in as Mr. and Mrs. Oliver, but was also constructing her life. It was ironic that she often heard Jack talking about solid foundations while it appeared that their impending marriage was built on nothing more than the flimsy premise of mutual contentment.
With Nana settled, Olivia perched on the windowsill beside her and continued to read from Frances’s memoir. Nana, as usual, listened in silence. Olivia was never sure whether she was asleep or listening, or a little of both. Either way, it gave Olivia something to do, and the story was so interesting, it was a pleasure to read on . . .
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. July 1917.
I said my story had many beginnings, and the day the camera arrived was one of them. After all, without the camera, there wouldn?
??t have been any photographs. Without the camera, I wouldn’t have a story to tell.
I first saw it when I came back from a morning playing at the beck. It was sitting on the table in the scullery like a magician’s prop, unfathomable to me with its dials for aperture, focus, shutter speed, and other things I didn’t understand. I walked around the table to look at it from all sides, inquisitive fingers reaching out to touch the smooth black box. Whenever I’d visited the photography studio in Cape Town, I’d wondered about the mysterious machine concealed beneath the dark cloth. It was all so strange: the pop of the flashbulb, the backgrounds I had to pose in front of, the props I had to hold, the same emotionless expression, frozen on my face for endless minutes. I was wary of cameras and the men who operated them, not least because when my image was captured on the glass plate, it would be there forever, whether I liked it or not, and I didn’t like most of the photographs I’d had taken of me. They didn’t look like the girl I saw when I looked in the mirror. Daddy laughed at me when I complained, and said the camera couldn’t lie. I wasn’t so sure.
“Quite something, eh?”
I jumped as Uncle Arthur appeared in the doorway. “I didn’t touch it,” I said. “I promise.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I’d only brushed the tips of my fingers against it.
“I should think not. Expensive equipment, that. You and our Elsie are not to touch it or go anywhere near the darkroom beneath the cellar steps. The chemicals would strip your skin off.” I winced at the thought. “It isn’t a toy. Not to be messed with. Do you hear?” I said I did. “Right so. Now, be off with you.”
I scampered upstairs, leaving Uncle Arthur to twiddle dials and press buttons and curse under his breath as he tried to figure out how to work the blessed thing.
When Elsie came home from work, she explained that the camera had arrived with Uncle Harry the previous night. He was a local timber merchant who often traveled to the port in Hull and came back with a collection of tall tales and new inventions. Everyone agreed that the Midg camera was the most interesting thing he’d brought since the leather tobacco pouch with a zip fastening, which Uncle Arthur liked to impress visitors with whenever he had the chance.
“I bet you’re itching for a go with the camera,” I said as we settled down to sleep that night.
Elsie turned onto her back. She was used to my nighttime ponderings now and knew she wouldn’t be left alone until we’d had our little chat. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, with you working at Gunston’s, you must know all about cameras and whatnot.”
Elsie laughed. “I don’t see the cameras, Frances. All I see are the gaps on the plates. I know about as much about the workings of a camera as you do.” She yawned and turned onto her side. “I suppose it would be fun to try it out, though. I could take a picture of you to send to your father.”
I quite liked that idea. “Do you think Uncle Arthur would let you use it?”
Elsie giggled into her pillow. “No. I do not. You’d think it was made of gold the way he fusses over it. Now, get to sleep, Frances. You might not have school tomorrow, but some of us have to go to work.”
I settled down beneath the top sheet, dangling my leg and arm over the edge of the bed to let the cool air brush over my skin. I felt sorry for Elsie. Sometimes she had to be so grown-up, and yet when we played our games and made up stories together, she became a child again, like me. As I lay in the dark, listening to the distant rush of the waterfall, I hoped that part of me would always be nine and a half, and that even when I was an adult and had to face the world with all its grown-up responsibilities, part of me would always know the excitement of the fascinating things I’d seen at the beck. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than a life without such wonders. How dull and sad life would be if it was all work and chores and war.
For the best part of a fortnight, I was intrigued by Uncle Arthur’s camera and the images that emerged from the mysterious darkroom he’d set up beneath the cellar steps (much to Aunt Polly’s consternation). After several failed attempts, he was delighted when he took the first successful photographs of Elsie and me. He followed these with several portraits of Mummy and me, and then of the two sisters, and eventually all of us together. I sent Daddy a portrait of myself and Mummy, telling him all about Uncle Arthur’s new hobby. “It was great fun at first,” I wrote, “but me and Elsie are fed up of having our games interrupted so that he can take another photograph of us. He even asks the tourists to stop to have their picture taken. Aunt Polly says she wished he’d never set eyes on ‘that ruddy camera!’ You know how he likes to tinker. I think it takes his mind off things, stops him thinking about not being at war with the rest of you.”
But as with most things that were once strange and then become ordinary, the novelty of the camera soon began to wear thin, and the summer started to drag. Without school to occupy me and with everyone at work, I found the days interminably long. I played skipping games and hoops and hopscotch with some of the village children in the street, but our games always ended in petty squabbles as the heat intensified and tempers frayed. If the heat didn’t spoil things, Mavis Clarke and her spiteful tongue did. I tried my best to fit in, to talk like the locals, dropping my h’s and saying “me Mam” instead of “my Mummy,” but square pegs won’t go into round holes, no matter how hard you try. I was different. That was that.
I was secretly glad of the days when I woke to the rain pouring down outside. On those days, I stayed inside to work on my flower diary and wrote long letters to Daddy and my friend Johanna in South Africa, but still the days dragged.
There was only one place that kept me enchanted that summer: the beck. The place that held such magical secrets and crept into my dreams at night so that sometimes I wasn’t sure where the dreams ended and the new day began. Mummy still worried about me playing there, and fussed at the slightest hint of damp on my skirts, but I couldn’t resist.
It was on the warmest days when I saw them most clearly, days when the sun dawdled high in the sky, tinting everything with rich gold and amber as long shadows played lazy games of hide-and-seek among the trees and ferns. Like the wildflowers that decorated the riverbank, my fairy friends grew more abundant as the summer went on, multiplying in numbers and strengthening in color, the pale yellows and greens evolving into mauves and pinks. I loved nothing more than to be among them, to dip my feet in the cooling water and watch them work. To be able to spend my days in such a place was a gift I would be ever grateful for. I needed nothing and nobody while I was there, although Elsie was always keen to come with me when she stayed off work, which was often, her being of a rather delicate constitution. Aunt Polly encouraged our games. I was good for Elsie, she said, and so was the fresh air, although there was nothing fresh about the manky stench from the woolen mill, which only worsened beneath the summer heat.
On days when my patient waterside vigil was unrewarded and nothing emerged from the foliage, I returned to the house sullen and disappointed. “What’s got into you?” Mummy would chide. “Your face will stay like that if the wind changes.” Aunt Polly still teased me about being in love with one of the village boys. “Look at you, mooning around, lost in your daydreams. A lovesick schoolgirl if I ever I saw one.” I didn’t really mind the teasing. It was worth it to see the fairies when I did.
It was an especially muggy July afternoon when I returned from my latest excursion to the beck. By then, I had almost become used to the presence of my little friends while I played. I suppose a sort of understanding existed between us—a delightful harmony of the magical and the ordinary, a coming together of the world I understood and the world that fascinated me. I grew hot and bothered by the persistent tickle of thunder bugs on my arms and the back of my neck and started to make my way home, slipping and tumbling into the shallow water as I did. My heart sank into my sodden skirts. I knew I would be in trouble.
Mummy and Aunt Polly were in the scullery, making tea. Aunt Polly was making a pie at the table, pre
ssing the rolling pin into a thick slab of pastry with brisk, firm movements before spinning the slowly emerging circle around and rolling the other end. I loved to help her bake but wished she wasn’t doing it right now. There was no way for me to sneak upstairs to my bedroom and change. I peered through a crack in the door frame, chewing anxiously on my fingernails. I would get into trouble for that too.
“I see our Frances was up the beck again yesterday,” Aunt Polly remarked, tutting for good measure. “Is she usually this disobedient, Annie?”
“That’s the strange thing, Polly. She’s usually such a good girl. I honestly don’t know what’s got into her. It’s like she’s walking around in a dream.”
Mummy was distracted and distant, as she often was lately. The novelty of being back in Yorkshire had worn off, and she found it difficult to be in her sister’s home, all five of us tripping over each other, having to wait for the lavvy and for the copper to boil to use the tin bath. She missed Daddy terribly and worried about him. I’d heard her talking to Aunt Polly about it as they scoured the newspapers for the lists of Missing, Wounded, and Dead. She dreaded the knock at the door from the telegram boy. Everyone dreaded the knock at the door.
“Can’t for the life of me understand what the fascination is,” Aunt Polly continued. “There’s nowt down there in the summer but a great swarm of midges.”
Uncle Arthur walked in then, his hands black with motor oil as usual. “Where’s a great swarm of midges?” he asked, scrubbing at his hands with the bar of soap I would wash my face with later.
“Down the beck. Our Frances can’t keep away from the place.”
Frustration bubbled up inside me. If only they knew that there was far more than midges to be found at the beck, that there were wonderful things that drew me back there again and again. If only they could see the fairies for themselves, then they would understand. Then I would be able to play at the beck as often as I liked.