“I’m ready, Frances.”
Splashing back along the edge of the water, I stood behind the dancing figures so that only my head and shoulders were visible above the grassy bank. “What shall I do?” I asked. I couldn’t suppress my dislike for being photographed. Not even now.
“Try and look like you’re watching them dancing in front of you.”
I tried a few expressions of surprise and wonder, which made Elsie laugh. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” she said. “Try to look a bit more . . . I don’t know . . . dreamy.”
I did, but Elsie still wasn’t happy. “You look too stiff. Lean forward or something. Rest your elbow on the bank.”
I followed Elsie’s instructions, leaning forward onto my elbow and putting my hand under my chin. “Like this?”
Elsie bent down to peer through the viewfinder. “That’s it!” she squealed. “It’s perfect. Don’t move.”
As the waterfall tumbled behind me and the lightest of breezes ruffled the leaves on the trees above, I stayed as still as possible, and I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but in the second before I heard the click of the shutter, I thought I saw something stir among the wild blackberries behind Elsie’s shoulder. My eyes flickered away from the cutouts to follow the slightest glimpse of a lavender light disappearing into the foliage.
“Perfect!” Elsie was pleased with the setup. She couldn’t wait to get back to the house and ask Uncle Arthur to develop the plate.
“Is that it?” I’d expected it to take longer.
“That’s it.”
“Did it work?” I dared not move until Elsie was certain we’d got the photo.
“Hope so. Come on, help me get rid of all this, and we’ll take the plate back to Daddy.”
To hide the evidence of our joke, we pushed the hat pins down into the soft ground and tore the paper fairies into pieces. I thought it a shame to destroy all Elsie’s hard work, but she insisted. We scattered the torn paper into the beck, where it drifted downstream like fallen petals.
“There,” Elsie said. “Now nobody will ever know.”
We scrambled back up the bank and through the gate at the bottom of the garden, laughing as we ran to the house. I turned around once to check that we hadn’t been seen. There was nobody about, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere, between the ever-shifting shadows of the trees, watchful eyes had seen everything.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. July 1917.
Time limped painfully along as we waited for Uncle Arthur to come home, the seconds and minutes ticking idly by with no sense of urgency as the camera sat on the scullery table, taunting us with the promise of secrets captured inside. I sat down, resting my chin on my hands as I stared at the camera, wondering if our plan had worked. From the outside, the camera looked the same as it had that morning, and yet the longer I stared at it, the more it felt alive; as if part of me was trapped inside, trying to get out.
I was fidgety and distracted, my thoughts returning continually to the cutouts we’d torn up and thrown into the beck. What if someone saw them? I suggested to Elsie that we go back to check they’d been carried off downstream, but she laughed and told me to stop worrying. I distracted myself with a book of British butterflies while Elsie worked on a new painting. She said it was a surprise and that I wasn’t to be looking over her shoulder.
It wasn’t until much later, after a painfully slow teatime punctuated with unsettling conversations about rationing and the latest battles on the Western front, that Uncle Arthur finally took the camera into his darkroom. There wasn’t room for all of us inside, so while Elsie squeezed in with her father, I waited outside, pressing my ear to the door to listen to what was being said. All I could hear was the heavy hush of expectation.
With each passing minute I grew more restless and eager to know if our plan had worked, picking nervously at the quick of my nail until I drew blood. I had just stuck my finger in my mouth when I heard Elsie’s delighted exclamations through the door.
“They’re on the plate, Frances! The fairies are on the plate!”
My heart thumped beneath my pinafore. It had worked. I jumped up and down on the flagstone floor, squealing with excitement.
The noise brought Mummy rushing to the top of the steps to see what the fuss was about. “What’s all the commotion down there? Sounds like someone’s being murdered.”
Uncle Arthur emerged from the darkroom, peering at me through narrowed eyes. “Been up to summat, these two have, Annie. Seems they weren’t alone today when they took their picture.”
Hitching up her skirt, Mummy made her way carefully down the narrow steps. “What do you mean?”
“Seems their fairies showed up an’ all.” He said the word fairies as if it were a foreign word none of us would understand and flapped his hands like wings to help the translation.
Elsie stepped out of the darkroom, her eyes bright with secrets and mischief. “Go and look,” she whispered, gripping my arm. “They’re all there. It’s ever so good!”
I stepped into the dimly lit room, my breath catching in my throat as I walked toward the bench where Uncle Arthur had laid out the glass plate. I don’t know how long I looked at it—a minute or two—but it felt like forever as I stared back at myself: a perfect negative image of my face, of the flowers in my hair, of my hand resting on my chin, of four dancing fairies in front of me. I leaned forward to take a closer look. The cutouts had come out perfectly, far better than I’d imagined. I shivered, touched by the invisible thrill of mischief. I covered my mouth with my hand to stop my secrets escaping.
I heard Elsie telling Uncle Arthur he would have to believe us now. “You see, Daddy? There really are fairies at the beck, and now we have a photograph to prove it, so you’re to stop teasing poor Frances.” She must have turned to Mummy then. “Now you know why she loves to play at the beck, Aunt Annie. I know I’d much sooner play with fairies than horrible Mavis Clarke.”
Mummy bustled into the room, her skirts brushing against the stone floor with a swish of starched fabric. She looked me straight in the eye. “Well? Where are these so-called fairies?”
I moved to one side to make room for her at the bench and held my breath as she scrutinized the image on the plate. Would she believe us? Would she notice the guilt that flared crimson on my cheeks? She looked at me only once in the two or three minutes she studied the plate. Then, without saying a word, she motioned for me to follow her out of the darkroom. She asked Uncle Arthur what he made of it.