“Ah, well now. Isn’t that terrible kind of her? Come on in for a minute. You must be frozen stiff.”
A fire crackled in the grate, and I was glad of its warmth as I took off my hat and coat and gloves, which Mrs. Hogan took to hang on the stand. The cottage was as inviting as I remembered from my visit in the summer, but Mrs. Hogan looked as thin and pale as the bare branches on the elder tree outside.
I sat at the small table as she set the kettle on the stove and cut a thick slice of something—cake or bread, I wasn’t sure.
“Tea brack,” she said, putting it on a plate and handing it to me with a smile. “My mammy’s recipe. Best brack in Ireland. Tuck in.”
I hadn’t tasted tea brack before so I couldn’t say if it was the best in Ireland or not, but it was certainly delicious. As I ate, I noticed several new paintings had been added to the collection on the dresser.
“Started as a hobby to keep me busy while Robert . . . Mr. Hogan . . . was away,” Mrs. Hogan remarked as she saw me admiring them. She sighed and placed a hand to her heart. “There have been a lot of days to fill.”
I wished there was something I could do to take away her sadness about her husband being at war and her little girl gone missing, but as I knew only too well, no matter how much you wished someone was with you, it wouldn’t bring them back. “My cousin Elsie likes to paint,” I said, trying not to drop crumbs. “She’s very good.”
“Is that so?” Mrs. Hogan sat in a chair opposite me and poured tea from the pot. “What does she like to draw?”
“Landscapes. Nature. And lots of fairies.” I froze as I realized what I’d said. “But mostly landscapes.”
Mrs. Hogan looked at me for a moment as if she wanted to say something, but changed her mind. “Well, everybody likes fairies, don’t they?” she said with a knowing smile. “And it’s a great skill to draw something purely from imagination.” I nodded in agreement and stuffed my mouth full of tea brack so I couldn’t speak. “My granny used to tell me stories about the daoine maithe—the Good People,” she continued. “She lived all her life among the ancient thorn trees and faerie forts in Ireland. What she couldn’t tell you about the faeries wasn’t worth knowing.”
There was a rare brightness in Mrs. Hogan’s eyes as she spoke, a dreamlike quality to her voice. I put down my brack and listened. It was like hearing my own heartbeat.
“She taught me the ballads and tales she’d been told around the turf fires when she was a coleen. I was enchanted by the stories of the sídhe and the púca, of changelings and leprechauns, the Far Darrig and the banshee. My favorite poem was one she used to recite by William Allingham: ‘Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, / And white owl’s feather!’ Do you know it, Frances?”
I shook my head, almost in a trance. I wanted her to keep talking.
“Perhaps we’ll read it in class. Some people dismiss it all as nonsense, but I believe in the Little People. Some tend the flowers and plants. Some tend the rivers and streams. Others are more mischievous.” She took a sip of her tea. “Not unlike humans, I suppose.”
My secret burned on the tip of my tongue. The desire to tell the truth raged inside me, the need to tell someone about the muddle Elsie and I had got ourselves into with the photographs. But the words wouldn’t come. I sat in silence and gazed at the tea leaves in the bottom of my cup, wondering what secrets they would tell if I could read them.
“If you ever want to talk about anything, Frances, I’m a good listener. It must be difficult for you and your mammy with your father away. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone who isn’t as close to you as your own family. Isn’t as involved?”
The question in her voice was an invitation. Did she know? Had she seen us taking the photographs? In our excitement, we’d forgotten that Mrs. Hogan could see the beck from the cottage, even if we couldn’t see the cottage from the beck. I stared harder into my teacup.
“You know, Frances, I sometimes think there’s too much truth in the world. Too much certainty and scientific fact. We don’t always need an explanation, do we? Sometimes all we need is something to believe in, something to give us hope and to remind us how remarkable the world can be, even in the middle of a war.” She stood up and walked to the window. “Perhaps that’s why we’ve always made up stories—created our own truths—because sometimes they’re easier to believe. That’s not so terrible, is it?”
Before I said something I would regret, I told Mrs. Hogan I’d best be getting home.
“Come and see me again before Christmas, Frances. And bring your mammy. There’s plenty more brack where that came from!”
I said thank you and that Mummy would like that. As I buttoned my coat, my eyes were drawn to a small oval painting on the windowsill. It was of a child with red hair. Her face was familiar, but I didn’t know why.
I thought about Mrs. Hogan’s stories of the Little People all the way home and all through tea and all that evening over card games in the front room. I was still thinking about them as I fell asleep that night, where my dreams were filled with waterfalls and woodland glades and a girl with flame-red hair, handing me a white flower. “For Mammy,” she said. “Please. For my Mammy.”
Christmas came and went in a disappointing manner. Wartime rations meant meager pickings for Christmas dinner, although Aunt Polly’s figgy pudding was declared a triumph, and we all had second helpings to fill the gaps in our bellies. I was disappointed not to find the silver sixpence I’d planned to send to Daddy for good luck. He needed it now more than ever. Mummy tried to protect me from the worst of the news, but Elsie told me about the headlines she saw on the newspaper stands in Bradford and about the things the older women at Gunston’s talked about over tea break. The battles were fierce and the casualties many.
With the arrival of a new year, everyone made an effort to be full of good cheer and to talk of victory coming soon, but I couldn’t allow myself to believe it. The world had been at war for nearly a third of my life. War was as much a part of me now as three of my fingers and toes. All I could do was pray for Daddy’s safety and an early spring and an end to it all.
Mrs. Hogan had said that we didn’t always need an explanation for things. Fairies, I understood entirely. War, I couldn’t fathom at all.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. Spring 1918.