Straight On Till Morning

by Liz Braswell

  “Worried? About me? Everyone?”

  “Oh, please, Wendy. After Christmas it became fairly obvious what your future is. Your brothers will go to university, and you will be stuck helping your parents, and then probably care for your nieces or nephews as their spinster aunt.”

  “With cats,” Phoebe added, not looking away from petting the dog. “You would have cats, of course.”

  “Quite right, lots of cats.”

  “People…are talking…about me? As a spinster? With—cats?” Wendy’s mind was too overcome with this new information to even take offense at it. She was sixteen, for heaven’s sake! She had time. She had just moved out of the nursery not that long ago.…

  And to think of a husband? Now? There were so many other things to think about. Balloons and submarines. Airships and pirates. Deepest Africa and farthest Australia. Peter Pan and fairies and mermaids and centaurs…

  “But now this,” Phoebe sighed, throwing her hands up at the dog as if there were no words. “You know, Alice has a little dog, too! Oh, we should all go walking together! Wouldn’t that be fun? We could bring a ball, or something like that.”

  “He could accompany you to one of our teas sometime,” Clara said thoughtfully. “We have literary ones, you know. Almost like our own salon.”

  “I would like that very much,” Wendy responded before she could decide whether or not that was true. Or if she had even been properly invited at all; it almost sounded like Snowball was really the intended recipient of the offer. Then again—literary salon. That was a place for stories!

  “You could absolutely meet someone there, perhaps, someday,” Phoebe added. “Someone dreamy, who likes dogs, like you.”

  “It’s a project,” Clara said, eyes glittering. “Making you acceptable and finding you a match. But you must promise not to do that thing—not to run off at the mouth the way you do. No one finds that attractive or ladylike.”

  “No one at all,” Phoebe agreed. “You really will end up all alone.”

  “I don’t want to be alone. I have Snowball now,” Wendy said, trying to make her thoughts come out the way they were flowing in her head. It didn’t seem to be working. “But I couldn’t possibly think of a match. Now. And I can’t help talking—I like stories, and telling them. And really, isn’t there another choice? Besides a match, and spinsters, and cats? Something—else?”

  “You’re doing it again,” Phoebe said kindly. She put a finger to Wendy’s mouth. “Shhh.”

  And then the sisters nodded to each other, in full agreement, full of themselves and very happy.

  “I’ll send round my card,” Clara called as they walked off, arm in arm.

  Wendy stood there watching them go and then looked at Snowball, who gazed dimly back.

  This could be the beginning of something really big, and quite different. If she could do things properly, her lonely days batting around the house by herself would be over—there would be teas and salons and parties and group dog walks.

  And boys.

  And dances and happily-ever-afters, where she would attend balls and cotillions, and have a husband and children like Michael and John, and a different, perhaps less lonely old house.

  Was that what she wanted?

  Was it better or worse than what she had now?

  Wendy managed one giant breath.

  It was enough to get her home, running and heaving in a most unladylike fashion.

  When she burst through the front door, Wendy was for the second time that day surprised by the presence of her parents.

  She was a little frazzled, the dog basket dangling on her left elbow while she shook out her umbrella with her right hand, and deep, deep in her own thoughts. She needed time to reflect, to figure out the possibilities resulting from her interaction with the Shesbow twins. This meant journaling. And fiction. With her father home from work early and the new dog and everything, it felt like a day out of time, a holiday—so why not spend the afternoon writing up her latest ideas for Never Land? She would indulge herself, the same way other girls did with naps, baths, and dresses. She had been playing with the idea of linking all her stories together somehow, maybe into a novel.…

  “Oh,” she said, blinking at the unexpected sight of her mother sitting at the kitchen table, her father standing over it, both with very, very serious expressions on their faces. Like someone had died.

  And there, under her father’s hand, was the very notebook she had just been thinking about.

  “Mother, Father,” she added, feeling something flutter and flop somewhere between her stomach and heart. A new organ, she told herself crazily. One whose sole purpose is to react to the uncomfortable tension in the air.

  “Wendy,” Mr. Darling said in his lowest, most managerial voice.

  “Darling,” Mrs. Darling said. “I think…I think we had better talk.”

  Mr. Darling coughed suddenly, like he was trying not to look nervous.

  Wendy had the strange notion of asking if she had been let go from the firm.

  “You read my notebook,” she said instead.

  “Yes, and really, darling, your writing is quite exquisite,” her mother said quickly. “Really. I had no idea you were so talented with words. Your descriptions…Your characterizations…Mademoiselle Gabineau has never mentioned your facility. At all.”

  “She is unaware. May I have it, please?” Wendy said, unable to keep her eyes or attention off her book. The little dog waggled frantically in the basket, causing it to swing. She barely felt it.

  “The thing is, darling,” her mother went on, “the stories themselves are…well…”

  “Oh, enough of this blustering around,” Mr. Darling exploded. “They are the product of an infantile mind. The febrile imaginings of a child. I thought you had done with all this Peter Pan nonsense years ago! You’re sixteen now, for heaven’s sake, Wendy!”

  “It’s my fault,” Mrs. Darling said apologetically. “I have always indulged my baby girl.”

  “You haven’t changed at all since you were little, Wendy. These silly stories—”

  “They aren’t silly,” Wendy said, offended by the word.

  “Well, yes—yes they are, because they aren’t real! None of it is real, Wendy! Not a deuced thing! And you write them with yourself in the stories, like you’re some kind of hero, like you’re still pretending with your baby brothers! Like you think it’s all real!”

  “I never believed it was—”

  But her voice caught in her throat.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She could never knowingly lie about Never Land—she would never betray it that way.

  Her parents saw her swallow. They saw her hesitation, her refusal to finish the sentence.

  Her mother’s head sank toward her chest, and this hurt Wendy most of all.

  Mr. Darling cleared his throat again.

  “I think you have some growing up to do, Wendy. I think you need to see the world as it is, and what must be done in it to live a full adult life. I think you need a break from these environs and thoughts.”

  “Father, what are you—”

  “The Rennets have a cousin with a country house in Conaught. Their governess had to take a leave of absence on account of her mother passing away,” Mrs. Darling said quietly, almost musically. Like delivering the news in operetta format somehow made it less unappealing. “You will join them for several months and care for their five boys.”

  “Ireland?” Wendy cried. “It’s…a long way off.”

  It was the first, the only thing she could think to say: she had been looking at a map of the British Isles just the other day to help fill in some descriptive passages of Never Land, and had been drawn to the county’s green meadows and hills.

  “I know, darling, and I will miss you terribly—” her mother started.

  “Now stop there.” Mr. Darling held up his hand to silence her. “Brave heart. We’re doing this for her own good.”

  “You’re sending me
to Ireland. You are exiling me. To care for a bunch of…of…nasty little boys I don’t even know!”

  “Think of it as an adventure! Like in your stories!” Mrs. Darling said brightly. “They could be your Misplaced Boys!”

  “Lost Boys, Mother. And no, they can’t.”

  “Well, think of it as a nice little excursion from London, then. A vacation, really…”

  “You’re hiring me out to complete strangers hundreds of miles away just because I write stories about Peter Pan?”

  It wasn’t really a question. It was a reaffirming of the facts as presented to her.

  “It’s not just about the stories,” Mr. Darling said, looking desperately at his wife.

  Mrs. Darling raised an eyebrow. She may have been soft in many ways, but Wendy’s mother never, ever lied.

  “All right, it is just about the stories,” Mr. Darling sighed. “And I think you could do with a break from each other for a while.”

  “We will keep the notebook safe here with us while you go,” Mrs. Darling said soothingly.

  “But they’re my stories. They’re mine. They belong to me!”

  Mr. Darling threw up his hands. “Wendy, they are not the product of a happy, normal girl!”

  “No, I suppose not,” Wendy cried, and she fled upstairs, the basket with the dog still swinging from her arm.

  This at least could be said about Snowball: the little thing curled up on Wendy’s neck and breathed his soft wet breath on her cheek while she lay on her bed, dry-eyed and insensate. Nana sat loyally on the floor nearby, perhaps withholding her disdain for the new interloper in view of her mistress’s distress.

  “Ireland…” Wendy finally whispered. “I don’t want to go to Ireland.

  “Unless…maybe I would if I got to go in an airship.

  “Or if I went by regular ship, while chasing pirates.

  “Or if I wasn’t alone. If I was brought there by…

  “Peter Pan.”

  This time hearing her voice aloud didn’t make her braver at all.

  “Peter Pan,” she repeated bitterly.

  “Peter Pan, who only visited when I couldn’t see him. Peter Pan, who left his shadow and never came back for it. Who never came back for me.”

  She turned her head to look out the window, but all she saw was gray. The same gray that was inside her head; the two reached out to each other, like sensing like. Wendy closed her eyes, severing the connection. But it was still gray behind her closed lids.

  What had happened?

  Somehow her life had gone from heady days of playing games with Michael and John and telling stories about pirates to…passing time until they came home. And then there were no more pirates anyway. Something had slipped out of her hands. There would be no pirates of any sort in her future. No fairies, no Peter Pan, no Never Land. Just banishment to another family in another drearily real country. And there? And then back home? The same: social mistakes, misery in a crowd, boys who probably didn’t like her anyway.

  She sighed and looked at Snowball. “Pretty doggy,” she said, giving him a pet. “When they gave you to me they were only trying to make me happy. They really do think this nannying abroad, this.…gothic situation, would be good for me. But I don’t like gothic novels, Snowball. They’re dreary.

  “I suppose it could have been worse, like an arranged marriage. All right, perhaps that’s going a bit far. It’s really a bit more Charlotte than Emily. ‘A serious introduction to a proper boy,’ then.”

  She carefully moved Snowball so she could give Nana a good petting too.

  “I thought Peter Pan was the proper boy for me. But all I have is a shadow of him.”

  She paused for a moment, wondering if that sounded too dramatic.

  “But I really did think he was going to come back, Nana. At least to fetch his property. It’s his shadow, for heaven’s sake. What is he doing without it?”

  She went to the bureau and opened the drawer and regarded the black non-object that lay there unmoving, darkening the shapes under it.

  “He mustn’t need it anymore,” she said thoughtfully.

  “He mustn’t want it. Anymore,” she added after another moment.

  Nana let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a chuff. Almost like she knew what Wendy was thinking.

  Wendy herself wasn’t sure what she was thinking. An idea was just beginning to form in her head—an extremely alien idea, but one that opened a space in the clouds even before it was fully formed, like a sigh that precedes great things.

  Things that did not include Ireland.

  Acquiring these things would be tricky, however.

  Apart from maths, nothing in Wendy’s life was strictly transactional—though certainly there were times when the boys were younger that she’d had to divide time into five-minute slots so each could have a turn playing with a favorite toy. And, of course, she often overheard Mr. Darling going on about how if Mrs. Darling bought a new hat they wouldn’t be able to afford a new tea service—and her mother calmly agreeing, to her father’s never-ending surprise (for she was practical underneath her lashes and perfume, and quite good at maths).

  But the idea of worth…of trade…of something having value to someone else in a way that was useful to her, to Wendy…this was new, and a little frightening.

  Here were the facts: Peter Pan didn’t value his shadow anymore, apparently.

  But someone else might.

  No, scratch that; someone else did.

  She wouldn’t let herself think beyond this. She wouldn’t let her mind chatter the way her mouth did, ruining everything. This time she would do.

  She looked around until she found the perfect thing: a delicate linen and lace envelope for keeping her nightgown in that she had done a pretty job of embroidering. She carefully scooped up the shadow, folded it, and slipped it in.

  What else might she need?

  A sewing kit, a tiny lady’s knife, a muffler, a half dozen extra hairpins, some string and ribbons. She put all this along with the envelope into a worn leather satchel and slipped it under her bed.

  Then she took out a pair of stockings and began to darn them, an innocent and useful task should anyone come upon her unexpectedly.

  Hours later, Michael and John returned home full of their usual youthful energy and droll remarks. Wendy neither remonstrated them nor laughed softly; her brothers remarked on her distracted nature.

  When Mrs. Darling came into the kitchen it was with a tentative step and furtive looks.

  “How is your little pet?” she eventually asked.

  “What? Oh, he’s absolutely adorable,” Wendy said, remembering to toss Snowball a tidbit of mutton. For Nana she reserved the bone.

  “You can…take him with you, you know. To Ireland. He would be a delightful little travel companion.”

  For a moment, just a moment, Wendy looked at her mother—really looked at her, steadily and clearly.

  “You would never send the boys away.”

  The statement fell hard and final and full of more meaning than anything that had ever been said in the kitchen before.

  “But they didn’t write the…fantasies.…” her mother said quietly.

  Then Mr. Darling came in, loud and blustery, talking up Irish butter and clean country air.

  Mother and daughter both ignored him.

  Wendy went to bed early that night, claiming fatigue. Since the sun had almost won its daily Sisyphean battle with the weather, the sky was light a long time before the air became heavy enough to subtly infiltrate thoughts with sleep.

  “Hook…” she whispered, finally drowsing.

  “I have his shadow.…”

  Wendy woke as the clock tolled midnight. If she had any doubts about the reality of her situation or the rashness of her escape plan, this clarified it all immediately. Of course, midnight: the witching hour.

  A foggy memory of instructions whispered to her in dreams guided Wendy’s hands through the act of slipping on her boot
s and lacing them up, of wrapping herself up in a coat and grabbing her satchel.

  She tiptoed down the hall, pausing to look into Michael and John’s room. They were both peacefully asleep. John’s glasses hung precariously from the headboard above him and a book was slipping out of his arms. Michael had fallen unconscious with the force of a tot: immediately and completely, no book, and he hadn’t moved from that position at all.

  “Goodbye—for a little while, at least,” she whispered. “You have your own adventures now. It’s my turn this time.”

  Despite attempting to be a ladylike sister, Wendy knew just as well as the boys where the squeaky stairs were and how to hold on to the banister and silently swing to a more polite step. Mr. Darling was snoring; the house was otherwise silent, and she had a clear path to the back door.…

  Except for Nana, who sat resolutely in front of it.

  “Now, Nana,” Wendy whispered. “If you really loved me, you would let me go.”

  Nana made a sound of doubt in the back of her throat.

  “Nana. I am not going to Ireland. Michael and John don’t need either one of us anymore. You need a safe, warm, loving home and a good fire. I need…something else.”

  Nana’s doggy eyebrows raised plaintively. She whimpered a question.

  “Well, all right. I’ll tell you, so that if anything happens to me you may tell the authorities. I’m making my way to Never Land.”

  Nana sighed, as if to say I wish I had never grabbed that shadow.

  Then she slowly stepped aside and gestured at the door with her head: Well, there it is. Go on.

  “Thank you for understanding,” Wendy said, kissing her on the head. “I’m grateful.”

  She opened the door the smallest crack. “Able to slip through sideways…Wasted away with love and longing,” she whispered spitefully. “Stupid John and his stupid Ovid.”

  She drifted down the walk carelessly for a moment, stunned by the night. The moon had come out, and though not dramatically full or a perfect crescent, its three quarters were bright enough to turn the fog and dew and all that had the power to shimmer a bright silver, and everything else—the metal of the streetlamps, the gates, the cracks in the cobbles—a velvety black.