Mrs. Hogan stood for a moment, breathing in and out, her hand at her chest. I stared hard at a new scuff on my shoe, thinking how Mummy would be vexed when she saw it. I stared at that scuff for what felt like an age until I had to say something to fill the silence.
“My cousin told me. Elsie Wright. She wasn’t gossiping, Miss. She just . . .”
Mrs. Hogan placed a hand on my arm. “It’s all right, Frances. There’s no need to apologize. Sometimes it’s better to talk about the difficult things. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away, sure it doesn’t?”
I thought of the many nights I’d lain awake, worrying about Daddy, wishing he would get himself a Blighty wound so he could come home. “No, Miss. It doesn’t.”
Mrs. Hogan must have read my thoughts as we walked on because she said I must miss my father very much. “Do you know where he’s stationed?” she asked.
“He was somewhere called Arras the last we heard, but Mummy isn’t sure now. We haven’t had a letter for a while.”
“’Tis a truly terrible thing altogether, not to know where someone is. If only we knew they were safe . . . It’s the not knowing. Never knowing . . .”
I heard the crack in Mrs. Hogan’s voice and wished I could think of something helpful to say. I scolded myself for having a loose tongue and spoiling our walk.
We followed the rutted laneway where the mud had been baked into hard rough ridges by the sun and sent up puffs of dust as my boots crunched satisfyingly over them.
“How’s your mammy keeping, Frances?”
I said Mummy was keeping well, although it wasn’t really the truth. The truth was that her hair was falling out. She did her best to conceal it with hats and headscarves, but I’d seen her at her dressing table, the back of her head as smooth and pale as a tailor’s dummy. I’d found a wig on her bed, mistaking it for the cat and getting an awful fright when I went to pick it up. Elsie reckoned it was all to do with worrying about Daddy.
“She’ll be happier when Daddy comes home,” I added. At least that was the truth. “We’ll all be happy when the war is over, won’t we, Miss?”
Mrs. Hogan pulled her head up high and turned her eyes skyward. “Yes, Frances. We will. And until then, we have to keep praying that our loved ones are safe.” She crossed herself as she said this, in the Roman Catholic way—touching her forehead and chest and each shoulder. “Do you say your prayers every night?”
“I do, Miss. Me and our Elsie. We pray for Daddy. And for all the brave soldiers.”
“You’re a grand girl, Frances. ’Tis a pleasure to have you in my classroom. You’re fitting in well now you’ve made some friends. Tell me, do you play with the village children at all?”
“Not really, Miss. I’m not sure they like me much.”
“Oh?”
“They call me a funny foreigner because of the way I talk. Elsie says they’re jealous of my grammar school uniform.” I couldn’t explain that I still felt like a stranger in Cottingley; that I stood out no matter how much I tried to blend in. I couldn’t explain how I felt different at the beck; that I felt accepted there, as if I was among friends. Mrs. Hogan wouldn’t understand. Nobody would.
“Don’t be minding the village children. They can be wary of newcomers. I still talk like a funny foreigner as far as they’re concerned! You’ll fit in with them soon enough, Frances. Give it time.”
We would be going back to Cape Town as soon as the war was over and Daddy was home, so it didn’t matter anyway about fitting in with the local children, but I knew Mrs. Hogan was only trying to be kind and decided it was probably best not to say anything.
Mrs. Hogan noticed the book I was carrying. “Black Beauty. One of my favorites. I’m glad to see you’re a keen reader. You can never have too many books or too much laughter in a house. Isn’t that right?”
I looked up at her. “Mummy thinks I read too much. She says I live in a world of make-believe and it’s not good to always be filling my head with stories. She gets cross with our Elsie when she catches her whispering to me at night about goblins and unicorns and fairies. Mummy says Elsie Wright will have my head so full of nonsense there’ll be no room left for anything sensible.”
Mrs. Hogan chuckled. I was glad to have lightened the mood. “Well, I’m afraid I have to disagree with your mammy,” she said. “Make-believe keeps us going at times like this. We have to believe in the possibility of happy endings, sure we do, otherwise what’s it all for?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, and wasn’t sure it was the sort of question that needed an answer anyway.
Reaching the crest of the hill, we stood to one side of the path to make way for a passing horse and cart. I gaped at the great Shire horse as it lumbered past, its brasses jangling on the thick halter around its sweat-foamed neck. One of the lucky ones not to have been shipped out as a war horse. Mrs. Hogan bid the farmer good afternoon. I recognized him as Mr. Snowden, who owned the beck and the land at the back of Number 31.
He tipped his hat to us as he passed. “’Ow do, Ellen. Miss Frances.”
Ellen. Mrs. Hogan’s name was Ellen. It was a gentle name. It suited her perfectly.
“How does Mr. Snowden know me, Miss?” I asked as we walked on, the familiar spire of Cottingley church appearing above the tree line ahead.
Mrs. Hogan smiled. “Everyone knows everybody’s business in Cottingley, Frances. There are things people will know about you that you don’t even know about yourself yet!”
She winked playfully, but her words made me uneasy. Still, I was glad of her company and enjoyed the rest of our walk into the village. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we walked in comfortable silence as I tumbled the newly discovered name of my teacher around in my mind—Ellen Hogan—and all the while the gentle hush of the barley whispered its secrets in the fields beside us.
For Mammy . . . it whispered. For my Mammy . . .
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. July 1917.
Summer bloomed over Yorkshire and Mummy was right—everything was brighter and better. I woke each morning to the sound of birdsong and the glow of sunlight through the window. School would soon be over for the summer, and the prospect of long, lazy days at the beck stretched out before me like a spool of thread. And what days they would be, because a week before the school holidays, everything changed.
It started out as any ordinary Monday, but it was a day I would never forget, even when—years later—people told me it couldn’t possibly have happened at all.