“I know it’s all happened very quickly, love,” Mummy said, her voice softening as she bent down so that her eyes were level with mine. She had pretty eyes. Blue-gray, like the dolphins I would sometimes see in the harbor back home. “But you’ll soon think of Yorkshire as home. I promise.” Her face relaxed into a weary smile as she grasped my hands in hers.
Much as I longed to believe her reassurances, I knew she was putting on one of her Brave Faces. Three weeks at sea, sailing toward an unfamiliar country and closer to the front line of war, had unsettled us all. I’d known about the plans to leave Cape Town so that Daddy could join the British Army in France, but still our sudden departure had come as a surprise. As the mighty Galway Castle had carried us across the heaving ocean, Daddy had explained that our departure was confirmed only the night before we set sail. “You have to be brave, Frances. We all do. Promise me you’ll be brave.” Looking deep into his eyes, I’d promised as solemnly as I could, but standing in the dark Yorkshire streets, I didn’t feel brave at all.
“But I don’t have any friends here, Mummy. And I miss Daddy.”
There. I’d said it. The secret thoughts I’d carried with me for weeks had been spoken out loud, my whispered words snatched away by the frigid air that set my teeth chattering and my body shaking. I’d never been good at keeping secrets, and this one was too big to keep wrapped up inside me any longer. My Daddy had gone to war. I had left the only home and friends I’d ever known. I felt very lost and very afraid.
Mummy fussed at me, brushing the tears from my cheeks and tugging at my black fur hat, pulling it down to cover the pink tips of my frozen ears. I could see the glisten of tears in her eyes.
“Your father will be back soon. When the war’s over. And you’ll make new friends. Once you get settled into school and you and Cousin Elsie get to know each other, you’ll forget all about Cape Town. You’ll forget you ever lived anywhere other than Cottingley!” She smiled her special we have to be brave smile and wrapped her arms around me, pulling my woolen scarf close around my neck so that it tickled my chin. “Everywhere feels strange when it’s dark and cold. You’ll like it much more in the summer with the heather bursting out all over the moors.” She squeezed my hands tightly as she spoke, as if to make absolutely certain of it. “Things’ll get better, love. I promise.”
And right there, in the dark unfamiliar streets of Bingley, the distant promise of summer became something of a talisman to me. By the summer, Yorkshire would feel like home, and I wouldn’t miss Daddy or my friends in South Africa or the sight of the whales blowing out at sea. By the summer, the war would be over and everything would be perfect again. Holding my mother’s hands, I thought of the words inscribed inside Princess Mary’s Gift Book—the book of fairy stories I’d brought with me. “It is only by believing in magic that we can ever hope to find it.” I had to believe in better times ahead, even though it felt impossible right now.
Mummy suggested we sing something while we waited for Uncle Arthur. “It’ll cheer us up,” she said. “And warm us up too.” I loved it when Mummy sang. Nellie Melba was her favorite. “I’ll start and you join in when you’re ready.”
Amid the murky darkness, the first verse of “Lo, Here the Gentle Lark” sounded so lovely and bright. I joined in with the chorus and our song left the narrow street, soaring over the rooftops and church spires and chimneys. I imagined that somewhere, out there in the dark, Daddy might hear us, and that he would be cheered by it too.
We sang until a motorcar pulled up at the top of the street and a tall man emerged from the driver’s seat.
Mummy grabbed hold of my arm. “Look, Frances! It’s Uncle Arthur.” There was a new energy to her voice, a new purpose to her stride as she broke into a funny sort of trot and set off up the hill. “You’ll like him. Come on!”
Clutching Rosebud tightly to my chest, I picked up the small traveling case I’d carried halfway around the world and trudged up the hill after her, hoping all my disappointment and worry would slip away into the gaps between the cobbles that threatened to trip me up with every weary step.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. April 1917.
If I hadn’t been so cold, I might have laughed at Uncle Arthur standing beside the car, waving his arms wildly around his head like sails on a flour mill.
“You made it, then!” His voice was like a bass drum, reverberating off the terraced houses. I’d never heard anything quite like it. “Annie Griffiths—back in Cottingley! Well, I never.”
Mummy grasped hold of Uncle Arthur’s hands, her knuckles turning white with the effort, as if she would never let go. “Back in Cottingley, Arthur!” she said. “Who’d have believed it, eh? I thought we’d never get here. All those hours on the train from Plymouth felt longer than all the weeks at sea. Didn’t they, Frances?”
I nodded and wondered why Mummy’s voice had gone all up-and-downy as I stared at this man called Uncle Arthur who smelled of motor oil and pipe tobacco and was all broad smiles and firm handshakes. He wore dark gray woolen trousers and a gray woolen jacket and removed a funny-looking flat cap from his head, revealing erratic strands of wispy black hair and great bushy eyebrows flecked with gray, like his mustache. I thought it strange that he had so much hair on his face and so little on his head, as if everything had grown in the wrong place. I wobbled slightly as I gazed up at him, still unbalanced by the pitch and roll of the ocean, and was glad when he stooped down to my height, peering at me with kind amber eyes.
“Bah ’eck. Is this really our Frances?” I tried to smile, but my face was too cold. “What’s up? Cat got your tongue?”
Mummy placed a reassuring arm around my shoulder and excused my silence. “Don’t mind her, Arthur. She’s worn out, poor thing. She’ll come ’round.”
“Suppose it’s a bit of an ordeal, all that time at sea. Never did care for it. Makes me go green at the gills. Good to be back on dry land, is it?” I nodded again, mesmerized by Uncle Arthur’s eyebrows, which wriggled about like great fat caterpillars when he spoke. “You’ll be right after a good feed and a decent night’s sleep.”
He stood upright and lowered his voice as he addressed my mother. “Missing her father, is she?”
“She is. They’re very close. She dotes on him, and him on her.”
Uncle Arthur declared the war to be a funny old business, and they both looked sad and shook their heads before Uncle Arthur turned to speak to me again.
“You were nowt but a bairn last time I saw you, Frances. You’re almost as big as our Elsie now! Must be all that sunshine, eh?”