Scarborough had an event for every season and occasion: brass bands in the market square on Christmas Eve, Shrove Tuesday skipping on the pier, and Michaelmas Day market, where the farmers hired dairymaids and laborers. Most of all, I loved to watch the spectacle of the returning herring fleet when crowds of women lined the harbor wall with their stalls, working quickly to behead and tail the fish, scales scattering like jewels against the cobbles as the fillets were deboned and placed in salt barrels. They worked for hours among the stench of fish oil and brine until the catch was processed. I loved to hear the screeching of the gulls that wheeled overhead before swooping down to snatch a fish head. Mummy didn’t like the fish women’s cursing and bawdy jokes and bustled me past as quickly as she could.
Away from the seasonal events that marked the passing of the months, I loved to walk along the promenade past the magnificent pastel-colored hotels that stood shoulder to shoulder like refined old ladies: the Majestic, the Imperial, the Britannia, and the mighty Grand, which still bore the scars from the German naval bombing during the war. Sometimes I hung upside down on the promenade railings, imagining the sky was the sea and the water the rushing cloudscape, until it made me dizzy and reminded me of how impossibly large the world was, and how little I knew of it.
At weekends and after school, I loved to play in the sheltered sandy coves, loved to run among the sand dunes and pick the wildflowers and collect shells from the shoreline: periwinkles, scallops, and mussels. And above it all stood the ancient castle on the cliff top, where I imagined the battles that had played out along the castle walls and turrets in centuries past. In the evenings, Mummy and Daddy often attended the concerts at the Floral Hall. Nellie Melba and Clara Butt were their favorites. Mummy sang the songs for me the next day, as she always had, but with greater joy and energy.
Life returned to something like normality. I was a happy, carefree twelve-year-old girl. I missed the beck fairies and thought about them often at first, but as the months passed I thought about them less and less, my days occupied with picnics at Cayton Bay, crabbing in the rock pools, Punch and Judy shows on the promenade, and all the other new experiences. It was only at night, with the sound of the seagulls and the wind and the crash of the waves rushing through my open bedroom window, that my dreams pulled me back to Cottingley; back to the pretty cottage on the far side of the stream and the girl with hair like flames holding out a flower for her Mammy.
Some things will always follow you, no matter where, or how far, you travel.
The sky was a sultry gray the day the letter from Aunt Polly arrived. Heavy brooding clouds threatened rain as I arrived home from school to find Mummy hovering anxiously at the kitchen window, ready to fetch the washing in off the line at the sign of the first drops. She made idle chitchat about my day, as she often did when there was something difficult she didn’t especially want to talk about.
The letter was sitting on the table, bearing a Bradford postmark.
“What’s this?” I asked, pulling it toward me. “Is it from Elsie?”
Mummy turned the tap too far, spraying water everywhere as it bounced off the scrubbed potatoes in the pan. “It’s from Polly.”
“Did Elsie write?” Elsie was dreadful at replying to my letters. I missed her terribly and loved nothing more than to hear a few lines from her, but Elsie wasn’t one for writing and, as Mummy reminded me, Elsie was a young woman now and probably courting and had other things to think about than writing letters to her cousin.
“She didn’t, love. Not this time. Read it if you like, but I wouldn’t take too much notice of it if I were you.”
I read Aunt Polly’s neat handwriting. And then I read it again, to make sure.
Cottingley. 5 March ’20
Dear Annie,
I hope you are all keeping well in Scarborough. We are all well here. I am writing with a bit of news.
You’ll remember the meeting of the Theosophist Society we attended together at Unity Hall in Bradford, not long before you and Frances moved to Scarborough. They spoke about fairy life, and at the end of the meeting, I showed the photograph of our Frances and the fairies to a Mrs. Powell. You might recall she found the photograph interesting and asked if she could borrow the negative plate and the sepia print our Arthur had made.
A letter arrived last week from an Edward Gardner at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society in London. He has seen the photograph and is very interested in it. The best example of its kind—anywhere—he says. He has many questions: where it was taken, what time of year, what model of camera, etc. I asked Edie Wright to help me write a reply (you’ll remember her from our musical evenings) and I sent the negative plate as requested.
Well, another letter arrived a few days ago, in which Mr. Gardner offers to send our Elsie her own Kodak camera and negative plates so that she can take more pictures of the “Yorkshire fairies,” as he calls them. He asks if her “friend” can join her (her friend being our Frances). He has asked to borrow the negative slide of the goblin photograph (I corrected him and explained that it is a gnome)—which I will send on.
A peculiar turn of events, isn’t it.
I’ll let you know if anything comes of it, although I expect it will all blow over, as these things usually do.
Do you see the Bainses often? They’ve always been good friends to us. I imagine it must be nice to have a few familiar faces around.
Our Elsie gets taller every day. Maybe you could visit in the school holidays? We would love to see you all.
Much love,
Polly
xxxxx
I sat quietly for a moment as Mummy scrubbed at a saucepan with iron wool. The scraping and scratching set my teeth on edge. It was a long time since I’d thought about the fairy photographs. None of my friends in Scarborough knew anything about the beck fairies, and it wasn’t spoken about between my parents and me. It felt like the whole episode had happened to somebody else, a story I’d read and left behind on the shelf in Cottingley.
“What do you make of that, then?” Mummy’s voice was matter-of-fact, but I could tell she was putting it on.
I didn’t know what to say. As far as Mummy and Aunt Polly were concerned, the fairies and the gnome in the photographs were real, so why would Elsie and I mind if important men in London took an interest in them? But we knew the truth, and it was alarming, to say the least, to discover that the photographs were being scrutinized by “experts.”
I decided the best thing to do was act matter-of-fact, like Mummy. “It would be nice to see Elsie again,” I said, taking an apple from the fruit bowl. “And I promised to visit Mrs. Hogan whenever I went back to Cottingley. Do you think this Mr. Gardner will really send Elsie a camera and plates?”
Mummy wiped her hands on a tea towel. “I don’t know, love. He sounds serious enough.” She leaned against the stone sink. “I didn’t know your Aunt Polly had taken the photographs to the meeting. I was as surprised to see them as Mrs. Powell was. I thought that was all forgotten about.”
“Me too.” A sick feeling stirred in my tummy. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “I’m going out to play. Betty has a new skipping rope. She promised me a go with it.”