She complained about the heat, saying it made folk weary as she fanned her flushed cheeks with a tea towel. “We need a good dose of rain. I don’t care for this weather at all. Can’t get anything done.” The previous month of “flaming-June” sunshine had scorched the front gardens so that, according to Aunt Polly, the whole street looked like it was suffering from a bad case of jaundice. But I loved the sultry warmth. I liked the tickle of pollen in my nose and the way everyone slowed down, languishing like cats at garden gates to talk to neighbors and friends whom they would have ignored in bad weather in their hurry to get indoors. Like the bees and the rambling roses that bloomed around the garden fence, I thrived in the summer heat. If only Daddy could have been here and the war were over, it would have been the perfect summer Mummy had promised.
Best of all, the summer brought school holidays and more time to play at the beck. Day after day I returned, eager to see the fairies again. Most days I saw nothing other than the usual birds and insects, but on the brightest, warmest days, my patience was rewarded with sightings of my little friends. They saw me, I was sure of it, and yet they never flew away or disappeared into the undergrowth. As I pottered about beside the stream, building dams and writing notes in my diary, they continued with their work among the flowers. I watched in peaceful wonderment, never disturbing them, never disturbed by them, until seeing these curious beings became almost as natural to me as seeing the plants and the birds. Distracted and delighted by what I saw, I often lost my footing on the mossy stones, and Mummy grew ever more annoyed when I continually returned home with wet shoes and sodden skirts.
“Oh, Frances. You’ve been at the beck again. I don’t know what’s so fascinating about it. Go up to your room and put some dry clothes on before you catch pneumonia.”
Everyone dreaded the pneumonia. In the privacy of the bedroom, I said a silent prayer that I would be spared.
Time and again, I was forbidden from playing at the beck. Time and again, I disregarded Mummy’s warnings, unable to resist the remarkable things I saw there. I took my secret to bed with me every night, where, disturbed by the oppressive heat and Elsie’s snoring, I lay awake, playing the images of what I had seen over and over in my mind, determined to remember everything so that I would never forget, not even when I was an old lady back in South Africa.
I was restless at mealtimes, fidgeting in my chair and kicking my toes against the table legs. Mummy said I was giving her a headache with all my writhing around. I overheard her and Aunt Polly talking about me, wondering whether I might have worms and should be taken to the doctor. Aunt Polly suspected me of being lovesick for one of the boys at school. Uncle Arthur declared me “a bit of a rum’n” and delivered a verdict of sunstroke. I was sent to bed with a cold compress and a dose of Epsom salts and forbidden from playing outside for a week.
Elsie noticed the change in me too. She did her best to prize the truth from me as I changed into my nightdress.
“Come on, then. What’s got into you? Summat’s up and don’t deny it, Frances Griffiths. It’s written all over your face.”
I wanted to tell Elsie. With all my heart I wanted to grab her hands and tell her everything, but I said I was weary from the heat. “Sunstroke. That’s all.”
With Rosebud in my arms, I lay on top of the bedsheet, too hot to snuggle down beneath it. I fell into a restless sleep in which my dreams carried me away over misty valleys and moonlit woodlands toward a fairy glen, where I watched their beautiful midnight revels in silent awe as I whispered the words of my favorite poem. “‘You shall hear a sound like thunder, And a veil shall be withdrawn, When her eyes grow wide with wonder, / On that hilltop, in that dawn.’”
As the summer heat intensified, so did my dreams. I dreamed of Daddy walking up the hill in his uniform, smiling as I ran into his arms. I dreamed of wild winds blowing down from the distant hilltops, tossing dandelion seeds around the garden like summer snowflakes, but mostly, I dreamed of the fairies.
They came to me night after night, bright shimmering lights at the window, twinkling like moonlight on frost. They beckoned to me, the ringing in my ears becoming voices, urging me on. Come, Frances. Come and play. And then something changed, and my dreams became real, in a way I could neither understand, nor explain.
I knew I shouldn’t follow the fairies and that I’d be in trouble if Mummy found out, but that particular night they were so beautiful I simply couldn’t resist and slipped quietly from the bed, tiptoeing downstairs to the scullery where I pulled my coat over my nightdress and stepped into my boots, clean and shiny from my diligent polishing earlier that evening. I moved silently across the garden, silvered with moonlight, my feet barely touching the ground. I brushed past fern and tree, following the lights across the stream, toward the cottage in the clearing where I watched a little girl surrounded by light and laughter as the fairies threaded flowers through her hair. I stood out of sight, peering through the tangled blackberry bushes, but the girl saw me, rushing forward, her hand outstretched, a white flower clasped between her fingers. “For Mammy,” she said. “For my Mammy.” As I reached for the flower, I slipped and lost my balance, tumbling down the bank and into the water, and all I could think was that Mummy would be ever so cross . . .
Waking with a start, I opened my eyes. Sunlight streamed through the open window, drenching the room in a soft golden light as a dandelion seed drifted inside. Elsie called them fairies, which I thought rather lovely. Birdsong pierced the silence.
When I stepped out of bed, I noticed a white flower on the floor beside my slippers. I picked it up, turning it over in my hands: a slender green stem, a single leaf, and five bell-shaped white blooms. I placed it between the pages of my picture book and, half in a dream, made my way downstairs.
Mummy was waiting for me in the scullery, holding my boots speckled with mud. “And what is the meaning of this?” Her voice was clipped. Stern.
I stared at my dirty boots. “But . . .”
“But what? I asked you to clean these yesterday, Frances, and what’s worse, you told me you had.”
“But, Mummy, I did. I had.”
She slammed the boots down onto the back step. “You’re to get a bucket of water and start scrubbing. Why on earth you can’t do things when you’re asked is beyond me, really it is. I’ve enough to be worrying about without you making things difficult.”
I felt the tears coming. I didn’t understand. I’d left the boots on the doorstep, perfectly clean, before I went to bed.
As Mummy clattered about in the pantry behind me, taking out her anger on jars of pickled onions and black currant jam, I filled a bucket from the pump, picked up my boots, and began to scrub at them with the brush.
“And put a bit of elbow grease into it,” Mummy called. “There’ll be no more playing at the beck. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, Frances. You’re not to be playing there and coming back with muddy boots. D’you hear?”
I called back that yes, I heard, and rubbed my frustration harder and harder into my boots, until the water in the tin bucket turned a murky brown and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was scrubbing away more than the dirt. I was scrubbing away a memory or a message, but I couldn’t remember what it was, or whom it was for.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE