As I made my way out of the kitchen, Mummy called after me. “Frances? Just a minute.”
I stopped and turned around. For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me, and part of me wanted her to. Part of me desperately wanted to sit down at the table and tell her and Daddy everything—about the cutouts and about it only being a bit of fun to get me out of trouble for always falling in the beck. But as she looked at me, Mummy seemed to change her mind about whatever it was she’d been planning to say.
“Nothing, love. You go on out and play. Don’t be going far, though. Tea’s at five o’clock.”
My chance to confess blew away down the street as I opened the front door.
As the day wore on, my thoughts wandered back to Aunt Polly’s letter. Why had she shown the Theosophist people our photographs? I didn’t like the idea of important men in London studying them with their clever contraptions and intellect. I was sure they would make out the hat pins, or the corners on the card where Elsie’s cutting out wasn’t as smooth. I thought about Mrs. Hogan’s words: “Cottingley’s a small village, and small villages can’t keep secrets. They’ve a funny way of setting them free, and who knows where they’ll end up?” I hoped Aunt Polly was right and that it would all blow over.
Aunt Polly was wrong.
It was over tea a few months later that I sensed tension in the air between my parents. Mummy huffed and sighed her way through her lamb chops while Daddy buried his face in the evening paper.
Eventually he cracked. “Tell her, Annie, will you? She’s involved now, whether we like it or not.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
Mummy took an envelope from her apron pocket. “Your Aunt Polly wrote again. You’d best read what she has to say.”
I took the letter tentatively. As I read Aunt Polly’s words, the paper felt like lead in my hands.
2 July ’20
Dear Annie,
More news about the fairies.
Edward Gardner has written several times now. He is most excited about our “Yorkshire fairies.” He is clearly a well-educated man and believes, firmly, in the existence of fairy life, having heard many accounts of them through meetings of the society. He believes in the authenticity of the girls’ photographs and sent our Elsie a box of chocolates, along with his latest request for her to take more photographs, and another offer to send a camera. I replied to say that Frances doesn’t live here and that Elsie can use Arthur’s camera and we’ll send on any more photographs if she manages some. He also asked for permission to make copies of the photographs. Elsie says he can do what he likes with them. He forgets Elsie is a young woman of nineteen now, and not especially interested in fairies.
The two negative plates have also been analyzed by a Mr. Snelling—a top photography expert in London. He has declared them extraordinary and entirely genuine. He even pointed out the evidence of movement of the wings during exposure. So it would seem the girls were not making up stories as Arthur suspected.
And that’s not all. Gardner showed lantern slides of the photographs to a meeting of the Theosophical Society at Mortimer Hall in London, where they caused a great fuss. A lady called Mrs. Blomfield saw them, and has brought them to the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!
In the latest letter from Gardner, Conan Doyle enclosed a note to Arthur. He wrote very politely to say how interesting the photographs are and that he would like to know more about them. He happens to be writing an article about fairy life for The Strand Magazine Christmas number and has asked for permission to use the girls’ photographs. He assures us he won’t mention them by name and has offered to pay ￡5, or supply a free copy of the magazine for three years. He has since written directly to Elsie, saying how wonderful the fairy pictures are (he mentions Frances too), and says that if he wasn’t traveling to Australia he would like to visit Cottingley and talk to her about the fairies.
It is a lot to take in—I know.
I have invited Mr. Gardner to visit at the end of the month. Hopefully a visit to Cottingley will satisfy his curiosity and he will leave us alone. Elsie isn’t especially keen to meet him. I think she would prefer it if Frances were here. Would she be able to come?
Love to everyone.
Polly
xx
The color rushed to my cheeks, staining them scarlet with each astonishing line. “The two negative plates have also been analyzed by a Mr. Snelling—a top photography expert in London. He has declared them extraordinary and entirely genuine.”
How could they believe it?
Folding the letter, I returned it to the envelope and passed it back to Mummy, hoping she didn’t notice the tremble in my hands.
“Lucky Elsie,” I said, “getting chocolates.”
Daddy laughed. “Is that all you have to say about it?”
“Do you think Mr. Conan Doyle will write about our photographs?” I placed my elbows on the table and pressed my palms against my cheeks to conceal the deceit evident in the hot flush that had erupted there.
Daddy peered over his newspaper. “Quite probably, yes, so if there’s anything you want to say about it, you should probably say it now.”
An awful silence hung in the air. It was already too late to tell the truth. With prints of the photographs in circulation and magazine articles being planned and money and gifts being offered, how could we ever admit our “Yorkshire fairies” were nothing but silly cutouts of Elsie’s drawings? We would be in dreadful trouble if we told the truth. If Elsie wasn’t confessing—which she obviously wasn’t—then neither would I. We had sworn each other to secrecy, and a promise was a promise after all. The best we could hope was that we managed to stage one or two more photographs that would satisfy everyone’s curiosity.
“At least our real names won’t be used,” I said. “Nobody will ever know it was us. Will they?”
Mummy patted my hand reassuringly. “That’s right, love. Nobody will know, so you’re not to be worrying about it. You’ve miles of beaches to play on. Castles to explore. Fresh herring straight off the boat. What on earth could any of us possibly have to worry about?”
But I did worry, and so did Mummy. I saw her reading Aunt Polly’s letter over and over, taking it from her apron pocket, sighing and putting it back again. As the days passed, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, either. The fairy photographs were far away in Cottingley, but they were part of me now, part of my story, and there were more pages to be written yet, I felt sure of it.