The Cottingley Cuckoo

by A. J. Elwood

  She pauses. ‘By the time I found out, I was used to it. It was my name.’

  She stares at the crib for a moment. ‘She used to tell me I wasn’t her real baby, though. She called me her little changeling. I didn’t understand, not really. She may have adopted me, but it was never me she wanted. It never really made me yours, did it, Mother? I was never good enough, never the same.’

  There is pain in her eyes as she addresses Charlotte, years of it, all the pain a little girl could feel. For a moment I think I glimpse its echo in Mrs Favell’s.

  Harriet’s expression clears. ‘We got past all that years ago,’ she says, ‘or I thought we did. She had therapy. They called it a form of Capgras Syndrome, Impostor Syndrome: the delusion that someone close to her had been replaced by a double. It seemed to help, giving it a name, some kind of diagnosis. It helped me, though I sometimes think that’s the reason I left it so late to have my own child. And the problem was that it remained true, in a sense. Her daughter had been replaced.

  ‘Now she’s ill and she’s always been bitter, and we’re there again, aren’t we, Mother? Or is it just that you’ve hidden it all these years and it’s only now that you’re being honest?’

  Charlotte doesn’t answer.

  ‘So what has she done to you?’ Harriet looks at me and it’s a simple question but I can’t reply. How do I explain? Charlotte’s done nothing but tell me the truth.

  I only want to hear the truth from your own lips. Tell me. Do you want it?

  I shake my head. She made me tell the truth, too – but the truth can change. The truth can be wrong.

  Harriet speaks more brightly. She thinks her words have changed things, formed them into something else. ‘My mother always hated seeing other women with their children. She hated seeing them happy where she couldn’t be. I think she wanted them to feel how she felt. I was supposed to fix that of course, but I failed. I was only a child. I didn’t understand. How could I? She’d drag me away from the park, crying, because she couldn’t bear to watch the families playing there. To see them smiling, laughing – together, in a way that we never were. As she wasn’t allowed to be with her own daughter.’

  I don’t believe her. I can’t see it. I can’t imagine Charlotte acting out of weakness, out of jealousy. Is Harriet trying to imply that Mrs Favell had been jealous of me – a young woman with a baby on the way? Had she so envied me my child – could I really have had everything she ever wanted?

  I think of photographs in a box under the bed, a mother and her child, never any older than seven or eight. I shake my head. Was that her real daughter? Could she really have replaced her – when she’d managed to seek out the right child, the one she imagined must be meant for her? Is Harriet the only kind of changeling she ever had?

  An image rises, though not of Alexander or even Paul. It’s Edie, sitting at a table with cards in front of her, knowing she will never see her own daughter again, knowing she won’t see her grandchild. And Charlotte had done that. She had relished seeing the pain of Edie’s family too, had triumphed over her when she said, She’s never coming back.

  But that doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t change anything. There may be some truth in Harriet’s words, but one truth doesn’t make everything a lie.

  ‘I really thought you were over it.’ Harriet’s voice breaks and I look at her in surprise, but she’s not talking to me. It’s almost as if she’s forgotten I’m here. There are tears in her eyes, as if she really is crying.

  ‘I thought when I told you I was pregnant that this was all in the past. I thought you’d be happy again, truly happy this time. I thought Robyn would be enough.’

  She wipes away the tears. Are they real or only another glamour? They glitter like diamonds. She looks up at me through her eyelashes. ‘Mother has cancer,’ she says. ‘It’s early days, but they can’t operate. You must have known that. She’s dying.’

  I can’t take it in. The fairies do not die as humans do. I think of the bundle of papers I stole from Patricia, the way I’d leafed past the medical records along with the routine tests, the flu jabs, everything that hadn’t seemed to matter. Was this there too, and I had cast the information aside? Had I seen only what I wanted to see?

  ‘That’s why I prepared this place for her,’ Harriet says, ‘and brought her home. I thought she could spend some time with her granddaughter, enjoy being with Robyn, before—’

  Her words distort and dissolve, then she gathers herself. ‘But you won’t, will you, Mother? You know she isn’t really your blood. You know you won’t get to enjoy her and love her, so – this? You spin some stupid story to this girl, and make her think whatever crazy things you can?’ She tails off into a bitter laugh.

  There is silence as time stops. Everything waits; even the breeze falls still. Charlotte doesn’t answer, and I think to myself what a pair they make; how beautifully they have orchestrated everything.

  And I think of ink in a bottle. Mrs Favell bending over it, a fountain pen in her hand, a sly smile on her face. Had she really written the letters herself? Or were they a kind of heirloom, the story of a delusion that hadn’t only been hers – had her family had some propensity for it? Perhaps she’d simply sought out the relics of ideas that were similar to her own. Then she’d carried them down through the years, until she found the right recipient for her stories.

  Is she only a bitter, dying old woman without any love in her, as Harriet suggested, or something else – a monster?

  Which story do I choose to believe?

  I close my eyes and see Alexander: the last glimpse I took of him before I left the house. His eyes are closed, his fists unmoving. He lies in his bassinet, quiescent at last, as still and quiet as a baby in a photograph.

  Which story can I possibly choose to believe?

  I look down and see Robyn, so delicately formed, so sweetly breathing, so golden. She always rested so gently in Harriet’s arms, the two of them so elegant. She had looked, I realised, as if she belonged there, the two of them perfect together.

  It should have been me.

  I hear a sound and my eyes snap open. Mrs Favell has moved; she stands just on the other side of the crib, unblinking. She reaches for the baby, her fingers like bones. My hand goes to my pocket and I withdraw it, holding the thing I’d retrieved from my bedroom before I left: an old blackened paperknife. It is blunt, but I think it will do.

  Harriet lets out a strangled sound and Charlotte remains motionless. Something Harriet said passes through my mind, sharp and with new clarity.

  I thought you’d be happy again, truly happy this time. I thought Robyn would be enough.

  And I know they don’t deserve her. Robyn should be with her mother, the one who loves her; not cold, distant Harriet, nor someone who can only think of her as just another shadow.

  I gesture with the knife and they step back, like one creature now. Their words are nothing but little cries, meaningless to me, the sounds inhuman.

  Their reaction does not surprise me. They recognise a true mother’s love and are afraid of it. They know I would never do anything that wasn’t out of care for her, though the knife is ugly against the innocent white hangings, the lacy dress. Part of me recoils from it but I can’t listen. The sounds they make are poison. I reach for her, the perfect baby, my baby, the one I so badly wanted, and I turn and run in the direction of the lane, leaving the beautiful garden and their shrieks behind me.

  20

  Their cries ring in my ears as I drive away from the cottage, long after they pass beyond the range of hearing. I’m on the main road again, cars jostling and pouring forth their fumes, virulent yellow and black signage pointing the way. Passers-by walk with their heads down, following some preordained path they can’t even see. I’m cast out of the lovely garden, banished from the summer that lingered in the grass and the gentle air, from the crimson roses that blossomed there.

  I recognise the road I have travelled before. I’ve reached the place where it spans Co
ttingley Beck and I imagine the bright water below, unheard and unseen by anyone. My car passes over it, the changing tone barely noticeable as it crosses the bridge, and we continue on our way.

  I should feel happy. I’ve got what I came for but my mind is blank. I turn off at random in a new direction, a quiet road, wanting to get away from the other motorists and anyone I can see, or perhaps to escape their view. I tell myself that no one’s looking at me, they don’t know anything, but still the sight of them makes me anxious. I need to be alone. I have to be with Robyn; I need to think.

  I try to look over my shoulder, glimpse the back of the baby seat, a spill of white blanket. The car drifts left and I straighten, adjusting the wheel. She’s fine. She isn’t crying, isn’t fretting. She doesn’t miss the woman who’d posed as her mother. Soon she won’t even remember her.

  I wish she’d fade as quickly from my own mind. Harriet’s words are still whispering somewhere deep inside me, sour, poisonous. I can’t allow myself to listen. If I hadn’t listened to Mrs Favell I’d never have been in this situation. I would be with Paul and my daughter, happy, the three of us. I would surely never have wanted anything else.

  The landscape around me changes as the road climbs. I’m heading onto the hills, into the open, and I feel better with only the sky around me. Safer. No one is near. I can be myself again, breathe again, stop the awful litany of thoughts crowding my head. But still they haunt me. I screw up my eyes against them, beat my hands against the wheel. The pain in my palms brings me back, though for a moment everything is a blur. I won’t give way. I can’t show weakness. I’m a mother, a real one now, and I’ll do everything a mother needs to do, and I have; I’ve begun. I have my daughter back.

  I’ve reached silence now. I feel it waiting beneath the hum of the wheels, all around me, emerging from the hills. The land undulates into the distance, nothing crossing it but dry-stone walls. Exhaustion comes over me in waves, weighing down my limbs. Did I really fight off Charlotte and Harriet with an old paperknife? The image is too surreal to be true.

  There’s a lay-by ahead and I ease off the accelerator and pull into it. The car sways like a boat over the pitted surface. I will catch my breath, take stock, decide what to do, where to go. But first I will hold my baby.

  I release my seatbelt, turn and pull myself half over the centre console so that I can see into the baby seat. When I do, I am frozen. I can’t believe what’s in front of me but I blink and it doesn’t change.

  The seat is empty.

  I lunge over it, reaching for her, running my fingers over the straps that should have secured her there. Has she somehow fallen out – will there be a tiny body crushed behind my seat? I climb fully into the back and reach into the space where she should be and realise there is something there after all.

  The thing is a doll. A stock of wood. It is nestled into the bottom of the baby seat, its face hideous, its body motionless and stiff. I can barely bring myself to touch it, but I do; I lift it up before my face.

  I can still see my child, the perfection of her, but she’s beyond my reach. The vision is gone, all of it is, and I let out an odd sound of loss and rage and despair. Did I really think I could win? They are stronger. They always have been. Harriet with her sweet face and her honeyed tongue, Charlotte laughing at my hope, plucking my child from the air with bony fingers, stealing her back again. Exchanging her for this.

  Because I’d said no, hadn’t I? She’d asked me the question and I said I didn’t want her and that was it: the only chance I’d had was gone. Everything after that was already too late, the pact made, the agreement sealed. And they had known that, even while I trespassed in their garden, doused myself in the beck, drove towards them – who’s that trip-trapping over my bridge? Their fear had been nothing but pretence, had only ever been mockery. To them, it never was anything but a game.

  Had the baby in the crib ever been real, or was that only another illusion – a glamour?

  And I bury my face in my hands. I had forgotten. How could I have forgotten? Something I had read about changelings comes back to me: their dislike of water. That was why some immersed them in a pool or left them for the sea. But running water – that was another kind of spell against them, wasn’t it? Because a changeling couldn’t cross it. But I had driven Robyn straight over Cottingley Beck, the most powerful water of all.

  Did that mean the lovely baby in the garden had only ever been a changeling? When we reached the running water, had she melted away into the air? Or was she really my daughter, but it was too late and they had already made a fairy of her – removed her soul?

  I never had seen her eyes open, all the time we had fought over her crib. She never once looked up at me.

  Something breaks inside me, a golden tie severed, turning black. I don’t know what I feel. Nothing has any weight. Not even her, I realise – I don’t remember the solidity of her in my arms. I can’t recall the awkwardness of gripping her as I ran, the way she must have squirmed as I put her in the car seat. I don’t remember any of it. It’s all dissolved, like words into the air.

  Yet words feel heavier now than anything else.

  Tell me. Do you want it?

  My answer is bitter on my tongue. And more questions surface, ones that were waiting there all along; the ones I had buried somehow, keeping them beneath. Where exactly had I thought I was going? What had I imagined I was going to do with her?

  I have nowhere to go. There is no one I can run to. I do not even have a home where I could take her, not any longer. Paul would think I’d gone mad if he saw me with Robyn. How could I make him believe she’s his daughter? He’d call the police himself. They’d call me crazy. They’d drag me off and lock me away.

  Paul has only ever wanted his son.

  Alexander. I close my eyes and see him, his chubby fists, his purple face, his constant screaming. Is it really possible that Robyn was Harriet’s after all? If she is, that means Alexander is mine. But I’ve never felt it to be so. I’ve never sensed any golden thread connecting him to me. He never slept sweetly in my arms. Or is it only that I never gave him the chance?

  He was sleeping when I left, though. Sleeping more soundly and deeply than he ever had…

  I think of him lying motionless in the bassinet, finally at peace. It is all suddenly so clear: a little centre of quiet amid the grimy lounge, strewn with chaos. I hadn’t looked back at him for long. I had only wanted to go. And everything had been so ordinary. There was the kitchen counter strewn with pots to be washed, the kettle, the microwave, the bottle of milk – drained. And yet there is something out of place, something that snags at me, that doesn’t belong. I scan along the worktops as if they are before me again and I see the limp petals of decaying foxglove.

  Suddenly I can’t breathe. How was it that I thought the spell worked – the one to banish a changeling, so that the true child would be restored, reunited with its mother?

  I close my eyes. I know I fed Alexander. I can still feel the weight of him. The line of milk welling at his lip – had it been white?

  As white as snow, I think. As white as snow, as black as ebony, as red as—

  I open my eyes.

  No. This isn’t the true story and I push it all away. It can’t be. The first time the milk was tainted, I hadn’t even done it by my own hand; that was only another trick, played by the fairies. It was Alexander, carrying out a nasty prank to make Paul angry with me; capricious and cruel. And anyway, he had wanted the meat, had needed the meat—

  He had to eat and eat. He had to regain his vitality, drawing it in along with the life he was draining from me.

  You look like a consumptive, Rose.

  I cover my eyes. Why hadn’t I listened to the stories in the first place? I should have put a rusty horseshoe over his crib, a Bible under his blanket. I find myself hunting for something, checking the car seats and the footwells, even though it was always too late; my baby was taken long before he ever slept in a crib.

 
; I replay the events of the last few hours. I think of the way I’d held out an ancient iron knife over another crib, another child. Harriet’s eyes had widened in horror at the sight. She and her mother had backed away, repulsed by the cold iron, as they should have been. And I’d reached for the baby. Her blanket as white as snow. The knife as black as ebony. My love for her as vivid as a blood-red rose…

  I shake the images away. I don’t truly remember any of it, it feels like nothing but a story, and I let it drain from me, leaving my mind empty. I had left the garden behind me, that much was certain. Had I felt the weight of her in my arms? Or on some level, had Harriet actually convinced me? Perhaps I hadn’t snatched her up at all. Perhaps I hadn’t saved her because I had never wanted a baby. That had been the truth as I had spoken it and it was still the truth and always the truth and that is something I cannot change.

  I shake my head. No. I reached out for her – why? To save her – or to let her go? And yet this thing is here, a false child. Had I been so bewitched that instead I’d grasped at nothing but a stock of wood?

  I climb out of the car, slam the door behind me. A cold breeze lifts the hair from my neck, indifferent and merciless, and I shiver. Summer is long behind me now. I feel it in the air, taste the loss of it all around me. The road stretches away in either direction, featureless and grey, across the heath. At one side a grassy bank slopes downward, a few sparse trees clinging to the earth, slanting away from the prevailing wind. Beyond them is a little flash of bright water. It gleams coldly, shining back a wintry light, but when I look up I cannot see the sun. There is only a white blankness where it should be – or can I not see it because I am cursed?

  I walk away from the car, towards the pool. I see now that it’s a small lake, the edges rippling silver where water meets the reeds. It’s abandoned, I know that at once. No one would cast a fishing line over this water; no one would sit by its banks or try to warm themselves by its gleam. It is still and silent. There is no life about it. If summer lingered in Charlotte Favell’s garden, here is where winter holds sway. Perhaps it is even an offshoot of Cottingley Beck, long since cut off from the stream, turning toxic and sour. The sedge has withered from the lake; no birds sing.