SINCE ROSS HAD started working in the flat, Olivia found a quiet solace in the shop after he’d gone home. She loved the click of the lock on the shop door, loved to kick off her shoes, pour a glass of wine, and take half an hour to read or just to think. She knew that wedding tasks were piling up and people were waiting for her to get back to them, but in those quiet moments alone, she could pretend nobody was waiting for an answer from her and nothing mattered, other than the sound of the sea beyond the window, echoing the sound of her breathing: in and out, in and out.
Such was her reluctance to acknowledge the life she’d left on pause in London that it was with a mixture of joy and regret that she opened a parcel from her manager at the National Art Library, sent with a note to say she hoped Olivia would be back soon and that she might find a use for these in the meantime.
She was delighted to see her bookbinding tools: her bone folder and awl, her French pointe knife and brushes, even her cutting mat. Her manager had thrown in a “few extras,” as she put it, which included book cloth, Somerset text pages with deckle edges, and a selection of flyleaves and silk headbands.
Olivia inhaled the lush vanilla scent of the paper, her hands itching to get to work. She’d always found great comfort in bookbinding, finding something calming about the diligence and care required. As she scanned the shop for inspiration, her eyes settled on the photograph in the silver frame, and then on the manuscript on the desk beside her. Frances’s story. She knew exactly what she would do. While the pages of her own story were unraveling, she would stitch Frances’s story together the only way she knew how: with thread and glue and beautiful gilded leather.
After opening the windows to enjoy the balmy evening, she switched on the radio. Her heart quickened as she heard what was playing—an old Beatrice Lillie recording, and she was singing Mammy’s song. “There are fairies at the bottom of our garden! / It’s not so very, very far away; / You pass the gardener’s shed and you just keep straight ahead— / I do so hope they’ve really come to stay. / There’s a little wood, with moss in it and beetles, And a little stream that quietly runs through; You wouldn’t think they’d dare to come merrymaking there— / Well, they do.” Olivia sang along to the end. It was a sign, she was sure of it. A new pebble for her bucket.
Before she switched off the lights downstairs, she checked the fairy door in the window, remembering how Iris had said if you leave a gift for the fairies they might leave something in return. Olivia looked around the shop but couldn’t see anything small enough for fairies other than paper clips and staples, and she doubted whether fairies would have much use for either. Then her gaze fell on the coffee cup. She took out two of the flowers and set them in front of the little door. “There you are, fairies. A thank-you. From me.”
Feeling more positive than she had for a long while, she settled into bed with Frances’s words, happy to let a young girl’s memories transport her back over the years, to a place where fairies really did exist at the bottom of the garden and anything was possible, if you believed . . .
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. Winter 1917.
Time passed quickly among the familiar routine of school, piano lessons, Monday wash day, Thursday baking day, church on Sunday, and all the things that now formed my life at 31 Main Street. I watched the last months of the year race away over the distant hills along with the swallows and the starlings, taking autumn’s russets and golds with them and leaving the muted tones of winter behind: bare branches, gray skies, barren moorland, empty hedgerows. Winter was coming. It was time for nature, and little girls and fairies, to hide away.
Although my heart was still drawn to the beck, I mostly found it too cold to play there. Even on rare days when the winter sun hung low in the sky, tempting me outside and lighting the way toward the bottom of the garden, it wasn’t the same. Like the leaves and petals that had fallen from the trees and flowers along the riverbank, the magic I’d felt at the beck that summer had drifted away downstream, taking the long journey west along the River Aire.
Uncle Arthur joked about there being “nowt so miserable as a hard Yorkshire winter,” and all too soon I experienced for myself how bitter and unforgiving it was. I dreaded every trip to the lavvy and every bath night, my bones aching with the cold until I thought my blood would freeze like the water pump in the garden. Elsie and I spent long evenings huddled beside the fire, knitting comforts for the soldiers, darning holes in our stockings, reading or drawing by candlelight whenever we could. I felt like a prisoner in the house with everyone’s bad tempers and rotten colds getting on top of each other. Elsie grew ever taller, leaving hardly any room in the bed for Rosebud and me. No wonder our occasional trips to the Picture House in Shipley became such a treat. We spent many happy afternoons there, captivated by the Gish sisters and Mary Pickford, whom I found as enchanting and magical as my fairy friends at the beck.
The winter nights were the worst. In those endless hours, waiting for morning, I longed more than ever for the warm breezes that had ruffled my hair in Cape Town as I walked on the beach with Daddy. I missed him more and more with each week that passed and worried about him being too cold in the trenches, even with all the hats and scarves we’d sent him. I took his portrait from between the pages of The Water Babies every night, shivering as I knelt on the cold floor and prayed with all my might for his safety. When I opened my eyes and looked at his face, I could hardly remember what he sounded like when he spoke or laughed. The picture was worn from being held so often, the image not as clear and sharp as it once was. Like the year, and like my hopes of ever seeing him again, my Daddy was fading away.
It was a rare frost-free day, two weeks before Christmas, when Aunt Polly asked me to take some wool to Mrs. Hogan. “She’s knitting a balaclava to send off to Mr. Hogan in his Christmas parcel, but she’s run out of wool, and the haberdashery is closed until Monday. Be a pet and take this ’round to her, would you, Frances?”
Glad to get out of the house for a while, I put on my wellingtons and coat and set off around the fields, following the woodland path toward Mrs. Hogan’s cottage. It was easier to see without the summer foliage concealing it, but it looked terribly lonely there in the woods, with only a few evergreens for company.
Lifting the latch on the gate, I followed the narrow path to the front door. The two pairs of black boots still stood on the step: one big, one small. The perfect circle of toadstools still grew beneath the elder tree, and just as I had when I’d first come here in the summer, I felt, again, a nagging sense that I’d forgotten to do something.
I knocked tentatively at the door and listened for the sound of footsteps approaching inside.
Mrs. Hogan was delighted to see me when she opened the door. “Frances! What a lovely surprise!”
“Hello, Miss. Aunt Polly asked me to bring you this.” I handed her the two balls of wool.