The Cottingley Secret

  Again, the reporters were waiting. I did my best to avoid them and their intrusive questions, but they were more persistent this time, and the mocking from the girls at school was more sustained. Things became so difficult that my parents considered taking me out of school and sending me to relatives in Bradford. I was relieved when Mummy said they’d decided against it.

  “You’ll just have to put up with a bit of ragging until this all dies down,” she said. “And it will. I promise.”

  I remembered that cold April evening in Cottingley when Mummy sang Nellie Melba and promised better times would come in the summer. I had to trust her again.

  But all hopes of an end to the fairies were dashed when Mr. Gardner made an unexpected visit to Scarborough. Over apple pie and a pot of tea, it was suggested that I return to Cottingley once again that summer during my school holidays, when Elsie and I would be joined by a Mr. Geoffrey Hodson, a renowned psychic friend of Conan Doyle’s.

  “Mr. Hodson is a gifted spiritualist,” he explained. “He will try to create the right aural conditions for the nature spirits to appear and will be able to authenticate your fairy sightings. He will use a new cinema camera to film the events. If he can capture the elementals on film . . . well!”

  I wasn’t sure what “aural” conditions were, but didn’t want to appear ignorant by asking.

  “And ACD is working on a book about the events,” he added. “Isn’t that something?”

  “A book about us?” I asked, my apple pie sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  “Yes. I believe the title is to be The Coming of the Fairies. He hopes to publish next year. I imagine it will be of great interest.”

  I felt sick and asked to be excused, but curiosity got the better of me and I listened secretly at the door. Mr. Gardner told Mummy he believed I was “mediumistic”—that I had the power to see things other people couldn’t. “Frances is surrounded by an etheric material, Mrs. Griffiths. I believe it is this material that draws the nature spirits to her.”

  Whatever it was that drew the nature spirits to me, I had no desire to be observed by strange men from London when it happened. And anyway, I doubted the beck fairies would make an appearance with so many people around. They were shy, quiet creatures, not performers on the stage at the Spa.

  By the time Mr. Gardner left, it was agreed that I would travel to Cottingley during the final week of my summer holidays. A few days later, I found a letter Daddy was writing to confirm things. “. . . We will do whatever we can to meet your requirements next August and will wait for further word from you re the arrangements. Meanwhile, Mrs. Griffiths and her sister will fix up Frances’s stay at Cottingley. . . . We were interested to read in Monday’s issue of the Scarborough News a short account of your Manchester lecture. We must certainly keep our eyes open for fairies when next we have flowers in the house.”

  I was now nearing fourteen, and Elsie nearing twenty. If I found the thought of sitting by the beck for hours looking for fairies a tedious prospect, I dreaded to think what Elsie would make of it all. Worst of all, I would miss my beloved Cricket Week when all the stars came to Scarborough. It wasn’t fair. I sulked in my bedroom and wrote to Johanna in Cape Town. I told her that even if I did see fairies in Cottingley that summer, I wouldn’t tell Mr. Hodson. If he wanted to see fairies, he would have to do so himself.

  I tried to forget about Cottingley over the following weeks and months as I enjoyed the sea air and long walks along the foreshore. Only occasionally did I find myself looking for signs of fairies among the long grasses and cliff top meadows, but I didn’t see them. I presumed it was too cold for fairies in Scarborough’s wild spring breezes. It was barely tolerable for a girl with a thick woolen coat.

  NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE

  Cottingley, Yorkshire. August 1921.

  Summer arrived in a rush, and too soon I was back on the train, hurtling toward the West with Mummy beside me. I was sullen and quiet and kept my head in my book all the way there. I had no interest in the passing landscape that had once intrigued me. I just wanted to get this over with and get back to Scarborough.

  But despite my frustration at being dragged back to Cottingley again, my mood lifted as soon as I saw Elsie leaning against the door of Number 31, as tall as a lamppost and prettier than ever. She squeezed my hand as we stepped inside and whispered, “Ruddy fairies,” which made me laugh and made me feel much better.

  When I asked why the curtains in the front room were drawn in the middle of the day, Aunt Polly said it was to keep the sun off the good furniture and that I wasn’t to be worrying about curtains. When she stepped out of the room, I asked Elsie if people had been snooping.

  She nodded. “’Fraid so. Fairy hunters. Cottingley’s swarming with them, carrying nets and cameras. Daft beggars. As if they’re going to see fairies making that much of a clatter.”

  “Fairy hunters.” My stomach tightened into a painful knot so that I didn’t even fancy any of Aunt Polly’s parkin.

  Apart from the “fairy hunters” who trampled over everything and made far too much noise to ever see fairies, the beck hadn’t changed, other than perhaps appearing a little smaller because of the inches I’d grown since the previous summer. Like a reliable old friend, it welcomed me back without question or hesitation. The yarrow and dog roses bloomed brighter than ever, and the waterfall slipped smoothly over the shale rock, the familiar sound sending a shiver along my spine. Through the dense foliage, I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Hogan’s cottage, and visions of a little girl tugged at my conscience. I had to tell her.

  Elsie and I walked for a while, discussing what we were going to do about the fairies, and how boring we found it all. We linked fingers and renewed our solemn promise never to tell the truth. We understood that this was far bigger than the two of us now. Somehow, we knew it would be part of our lives forever. Like our shadows, the photographs of the fairies would always be there, following a few steps behind.

  “We might as well have a bit of fun with this Mr. Hodson while he’s here,” Elsie said. “I bet he isn’t really a psychic, and anyway, I’ve had it with chuffin’ fairies.” She said she would do the talking when Mr. Hodson arrived. “Your cheeks always go bright red when you tell a lie.”

  I was grateful for Elsie’s sense of humor. Grateful that she was there, beside me.

  As we mooched about by the beck that afternoon, I watched our reflections in the water, fragments of both of us, moving in the ripples stirred by a gentle breeze. But I didn’t just see a tall teenager and a young woman. I saw the reflection of two younger girls, happily playing in the innocence of summer days when Mummy would stand on the back step and call us in for tea, just as she did now.

  “Frances! Elsie! Elsie! Frances! Tea!”

  I smiled. It was always Frances and Elsie, or Elsie and Frances. That was how it was, and I was glad to know that some things hadn’t changed from those summers during the war, even when so many other things had.

  I was admiring Aunt Polly’s costume jewelry in the front bedroom when the hansom cab pulled up outside with a great crunching of brakes. Concealed behind the lace curtains, I watched as a round-faced man and a strangely angular woman stepped out of the car. The man fastened the buttons on his tweed jacket, which was too small for him, adjusted his hat, and pushed open the front gate. The squeak reminded me of that magical day when Daddy arrived home on leave. The house was so happy then. Such a contrast with the awkward tension that filled the rooms now.

  Mummy was all of a fluster and got one of her headaches. She’d been polishing and sweeping all morning, silently cursing Aunt Polly under her breath and muttering about it being all very well for Aunt Polly and Uncle Arthur to take off to the Isle of Man whenever it suited them. I crept to the top of the stairs and peered through the banister as Mummy took off her apron and fussed with her hair in the mirror before opening the door.

  The usual pleasantries were exchanged between Mr. and Mrs. Hodson and Mummy: “Pleased to meet you
.” “How was the journey?” “Delighted to be here.” “Shame about the weather.” Mummy spoke in her posh voice, rounding out her vowels and finishing every word with a crisp t or d or whatever letter was required. It made me uncomfortable when she used her posh voice. It made me feel stiff and prickly at the backs of my knees.

  The pleasantries dispensed with, Elsie and I were summoned to the front room, dressed in our Sunday best. “We can’t be having visitors from London looking down on us and thinking us common northerners,” Mummy had said. I was tempted to ask if it wouldn’t be better if I wore my “etheric material” instead, but somehow managed to bite my tongue.

  I shook Mr. and Mrs. Hodson’s hands, and Elsie did the same. Mrs. Hodson sat quietly by the fireplace while her husband did the talking. He had squinty currant eyes that I didn’t trust, and sagging jowls like Mr. Briggs’s dog. He spoke through his nose in a way that people do when they pretend to belong to a better social class than they actually do.

  His hand was clammy in mine as he gushed about how thrilled he was to meet us. “It’s quite marvelous to be in your presence at last. I’ve read a lot about you both. It is rare one gets to meet with such special girls.”

  My toes curled inside my boots. I hated to think of people reading about me. I’d learned a lot about newspaper reporters in recent months and knew they didn’t always stick to the facts.

  Mr. Hodson looked at me strangely as we drank tea and chatted politely—or rather, he looked around me, his eyes flicking from side to side as if he were following a fly. Elsie mimicked his mannerisms behind his back, and I had to bite my lip and put my hand to my mouth to stop myself laughing.

  After an excruciating hour or so, the Hodsons returned to their hotel, and Elsie and I were dismissed.

  I didn’t go to the beck that afternoon. There were too many strangers there with nets and cameras.

  That night, I fell into a deep, travel-weary sleep, lulled by the familiar sound of the waterfall beyond the window. I dreamed of the beck fairies, a blur of lavender and rose-pink and buttercup-yellow light, flitting across the glittering stream, beckoning me to follow them toward the woodland cottage. There, the little girl with flame-red hair picked daisies in the garden, threading them together to make a garland for her hair. She picked a posy of wildflowers—harebell, bindweed, campion, and bladderwort—and gave them to me. I carried them to the cottage door where I left them on the doorstep beside a pair of stone boots. The girl then sat on a willow bough seat and wept, her tears spilling into the stream, merging with the reflections of the stars until they faded, one by one, and the sun rose in the east, and when I looked at the willow tree again, she had gone.

  The next day dawned with rain and cloudy skies, but as I knew from the previous summer, fairy hunting didn’t stop for bad weather, and Mummy sent us outside between showers.

  While the silly people with their butterfly nets crept about as subtly as elephants, some of them claiming to have spotted a fairy every now and again, Mr. Hodson took endless photographs of me by the beck or Elsie by the waterfall as he claimed to sense this, that, and the other. We couldn’t summon the enthusiasm to smile, despite his encouragement. His effusive manner was irritating, and neither Elsie nor I cared for the way he spoke to us, as if we were children. Mrs. Hodson kept herself to herself, sitting a short distance from our sullen group. The relentless click-clack of her knitting needles set my teeth on edge. At regular intervals, Mr. Hodson would inquire in a sickly voice if she was happy, to which she would smile sweetly and say, “Very happy, darling,” before resuming her knitting.

  In our bedroom that night, Elsie mimicked the Hodsons until tears rolled down our cheeks with laughter.

  That was how the week passed. Miserable weather. Miserable girls. Long, boring hours spent at the beck, waiting for something to happen, and all the time Mr. Hodson whispering in his strange voice, muttering about “auras” and “heavenly bodies” and his experiences in the world of the occult. It was like watching an act on stage at the Arcadia. We couldn’t take him seriously at all.

  Mr. Gardner stayed at the Midland hotel in Bradford for the duration of the Hodsons’ stay. He came to Cottingley a few times to ask us how we were getting on with our “field trips,” as he called them. I often saw him spying on us from behind a tree, scribbling notes in his book. Elsie laughed whenever I pointed him out to her, especially if he ducked down, suspecting he’d been caught out.

  Elsie often grew bored and made her way back to the house early. I had more patience and sat by the stream for hours, always aware of Mr. Gardner observing me from a distance. When I made my way home he would ask if anything had occurred at the beck that day. I always said no, there was nothing doing, or that it was too wet for fairies. As I’d decided months earlier in my bedroom in Scarborough, I wouldn’t tell, even if I had seen something.

  As the days passed, our boredom spilled over into something like a hysteria and Elsie and I began to have a little fun with Mr. Hodson and his auras.

  Elsie started it. “Over there! Look!” She winked at me and pointed to an oak tree, saying that she could clearly see a figure like a fairy godmother.

  Mr. Hodson hopped to his feet, instantly declaring that yes, he could see it too. “Do you see it, girls? Look. It is materializing as we watch.”

  I giggled into my hair as Elsie added more and more detail and Mr. Hodson became more and more animated, agreeing that he could see exactly what Elsie described. I had always suspected he was as fake as our photographs. Now I knew for certain.

  From that moment, our daily vigils with Mr. Hodson became far more enjoyable as we claimed to see fairies six feet tall and fairies flying around our heads. I said I saw water nymphs and wood elves, and Elsie saw a golden fairy and little men trooping along the path in front of us, giving us a soldier’s salute. Mr. Hodson scribbled frantically in his notebook, embellishing our descriptions with his low-voiced mutterings about the spirit world and auric fields and elementals. I was still surprised at the lack of proper scientific investigation into why the fairies appeared when we said they did, or what we believed their purpose was, or how they appeared to us and to nobody else. The most interesting questions were never asked, and therefore never answered.

  When the week was over, Mummy, Elsie, and I waved the Hodsons off and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “That’s that, then,” Mummy remarked as she flopped into a chair, exhausted by the endless cooking and cleaning she’d been doing.

  Elsie said, “There’s nowt so queer as folk, eh? Nowt so queer as them folk, anyway!”

  We all laughed, and although I was relieved it was over, part of me felt a tinge of regret that I hadn’t seen the beck fairies once more.

  As Mummy packed our cases for the trip back to Scarborough, I took one last walk around the village. Privately I knew I was saying good-bye. Even if the men from London asked Elsie and me to try again, we had already decided—in agreement with our parents—that enough was enough. We had done everything that had been asked of us. It was time to draw a line under it. I spent a while in quiet reflection at the beck before making my way to Mrs. Hogan’s cottage.

  As always, she was delighted to see me when she opened the door, baby Martha in her arms, a delightful chubby bundle of smiles and gurgles.

  We sat at a bench in the garden, Mrs. Hogan beaming with maternal pride as she dandled Martha on her lap and blew raspberries on her tummy. I talked about Scarborough and school and how Daddy was getting on with his new job, but we couldn’t avoid the issue of the fairy photographs entirely.

  “You and Elsie have caused quite the sensation in Cottingley,” Mrs. Hogan said. “Reporters swarming about like bees and folk rushing about with nets. I’ve never seen the like of it.”

  I said it was all a lot of fuss over a few photographs and explained how we’d only taken them to show the family, but they had fallen into other hands.

  Mrs. Hogan said she understood. “Sure, don’t I know what it is to be the c
ause of local gossip. It isn’t a pleasant experience, but it doesn’t last forever. They’ll be talking about something else come Christmas.”

  As we stepped inside the cottage to take Martha out of the sun, I noticed a posy of wildflowers in a jug on the dresser—harebell, bindweed, campion, and bladderwort.

  Mrs. Hogan noticed me staring at them. “Pretty, aren’t they? The most curious thing. I found them on the doorstep this morning beside the stone boots. And it isn’t the first time. I often find a single white flower or a posy of wildflowers there.” I felt my skin prickle as she spoke. “I know it sounds silly, but I still see her, you know. Aisling. I see her everywhere. Hear her laugh. Hear her cry in the middle of the night.”

  For a moment, I couldn’t speak, and then it all came out in a rush as my dreams flooded my mind, clamoring for my attention, like a persistent knock on the door that I couldn’t ignore any longer.

  “I see her too.”

  Mrs. Hogan’s face furrowed into a frown. “You see who, Frances?”

  “Your daughter.”

  “Martha?”

  I swallowed hard, my breaths coming quickly, my cheeks flushing red as I spoke. “Aisling.”

  Mrs. Hogan’s face paled as she gripped the edge of the table and nodded, encouraging me to go on.

  “Ever since I came to Cottingley, I’ve dreamed of a little girl with red hair. She always gives me a flower. ‘For Mammy,’ she says. She looks just like the girl in your paintings.” My hands trembled as I spoke. “It’s her, Mrs. Hogan. I think she wants to let you know she’s all right.”