Daddy didn’t mention the fairy photographs again.
We packed every minute of that week with laughter and fun. Daddy filled a hole we’d all felt but hadn’t been able to explain. He was the missing piece of Uncle Arthur’s jigsaw puzzle and Elsie’s lost button. He was Aunt Polly’s stray earring and Mummy’s misplaced glove. He was the lines I’d forgotten in the recital at school. Everything was right with him here. Everything was complete.
Which is why it was always going to be unbearable to say good-bye again.
We spent his final morning together at the beck, pulling faces at our reflections in the water and making each other laugh. The stream laughed with us, capturing our giggles in its gentle chatter as it meandered along. I buried my face in the warmth of his neck, breathing in the scent and feeling the shape of him, so that I wouldn’t forget.
“I’m very proud of you, Frances. Very proud of the way you’ve settled in here.” My heart swelled with pride as he spoke. “And as for fairies at the bottom of the garden,” he added, lowering his voice to a whisper, “I believe you. Don’t ever let anyone tell you they’re not real. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.”
I stored his words away in my heart, to treasure like precious jewels.
“The war will be over soon, and I’ll be back for good. I promise.” He made me look into his eyes. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes, Daddy. I do.”
As the sun sank low behind the horizon that night, I thought of all the poor children whose daddies had never come home, not even for a week, and I was so grateful to have had this time with him, even if it broke my heart to lose him again so soon.
I cried myself to sleep that night as Elsie held my hand.
“It’s all right to be sad, Frances,” she whispered. “You have to let all the sadness out to make room for the happiness again. Remember your daddy’s promise and try to get some sleep.” She squeezed my hand. “I’m here if you need me.”
Seven months later, Daddy’s promise came true and the war came to an end at last.
The fog of fear and worry lifted from Cottingley, leaving everything brighter and clearer. Finally we could live and breathe and hope again.
I wrote to my old school friend Johanna in Cape Town, telling her how we were preparing the Union Jack flags for a victory party. “I am sending two photos, both of me, one of me in a bathing costume in our backyard. Uncle Arthur took that, while the other is me with some fairies up the beck. Elsie took that one. Rosebud is as fat as ever, and I have made her some new clothes. How are Teddy and Dolly?” On the back of the photograph of myself with the fairies, I wrote, “Elsie and I are very friendly with the beck fairies. It is funny I never used to see them in Africa. It must be too hot for them there.”
Over the following months, arrangements were made for me and Mummy to leave Cottingley and start a new life in Scarborough on the East Yorkshire coast, where Daddy would join us as soon as he was demobbed. In Scarborough we would be a proper family again. I couldn’t wait, and yet I was sad to leave Cottingley and the family I’d become part of there.
Mr. and Mrs. Hogan invited Mummy and me to tea to say a proper good-bye. Like everyone else, something about Mrs. Hogan had changed since Mr. Hogan came home. The haunted, distant look I’d seen cloud her face during lessons had all but gone. I overheard her telling Mummy that she still felt a shadow beside her where her daughter should be, but that things were much easier now that Robert was home, and perhaps the Lord would bless them with other children. She crossed herself as she said this, and Mummy closed her eyes and prayed for the Lord to be generous.
As a farewell gift, Mrs. Hogan gave me a book of poetry by someone called W. B. Yeats and a play of his called The Land of Heart’s Desire. She had underlined the words “Faeries, come, take me out of this dull world, For I would ride with you upon the wind, Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, / And dance upon the mountains like a flame.” She said, “You can never have too much Yeats, or too many fairies in your life,” and her eyes spoke to me of secrets known and secrets kept.
My last view of the cottage in the woods was of Mr. and Mrs. Hogan standing together in the doorway, a small pair of black boots beside them on the step, and although I promised to visit in the school holidays, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d forgotten to tell Mrs. Hogan something very important.
Elsie was the hardest good-bye of all.
“I’ll miss you terribly, Elsie,” I sobbed as I clung to her. “And so will Rosebud.”
In typical Elsie manner, she laughed affectionately at my tears. “You’re a daft beggar, Frances Griffiths. True friends never grow apart. We’ll always be friends, no matter where we call home. Here. I drew this for you.”
She gave me a parting gift of a sketch she’d drawn of us dancing together in the front room on Armistice Day. She said it was one of the happiest days of her life. I said it was one of the nicest things I’d ever been given.
As for the fairies, I knew I would always have my memories, but I hated to say good-bye to them all the same. As I sat on the willow bough for the last time, I wished I could stay young forever so that I could always play with the fairies at the beck. But I wasn’t Peter Pan, nor was I a page in a fairy story.
As all little girls must do, I grew up.
And although I thought them forgotten about, the story of our fairy photographs grew with me.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Scarborough, Yorkshire. 1920.
There was much about the seaside town of Scarborough that reminded me of Cape Town. With its long golden beaches and sweeping ocean views, I soon felt at home.