Peter Pan in Scarlet

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  Peter retorted that if they threw Curly overboard that would mean more silverskins for everybody.

  In short, things were said that should never have been put into words—terrible things. Wendy told Peter that he was a selfish baby and had not saved the ship at all. Peter told Wendy that girls did not count as crew, because they were good for nothing. Tootles tried to punch Peter on the nose for that, but missed. Peter grew pompous, then, and said, ‘I alone shall decide how the silverskins are divided up!’

  Slightly said Peter was so stupid he would not know how to divide a ship’s biscuit between two rats.

  Within minutes no one was speaking to anyone else. They were slumped in different corners of the ship, raging and sulking and feeling badly done by. John, aiming for Peter, rolled a cannonball along the deck but it ran over Slightly’s hand, which really hurt. Curly refused to go back into the crow’s nest to keep watch, because he said they would cheat him out of his fair share as soon as his back was turned. Peter said that, in that case, Curly would be hanged from the yardarm as a mutineer. Worse and worse the insults grew. Ravello was asked to act as referee. But he purred, in his softly cat-like way, that it was ‘not his place’, adding, with a touch of amusement, that they could always give the loot back to Starkey.

  Pan, choking with rage, tugged at the white school tie uncomfortably tight across the throbbing veins in his neck. He called Ravello a fool. He called the League a ‘mutinous coterie’ and a ‘pack of blaggards’—‘filchers’ and ‘pinchers’ and ‘snappers-up’; ‘scurvy dogfish’ and ‘the scum of the sea’. He said he would strand Tootles and Curly on the next rock, or feed them to the sharks. In fact such a stream of abuse poured out of him that he had to shut his eyes for fear they popped. And when he opened them again, everyone was staring at him. Where had it come from, that outburst? Who had loaded him with such a fusillade of words?

  That was when Starkey tried to make his getaway down the anchor chain.

  Ravello brought him back—hoiked him back aboard by the scruff of his shirt collar. (Plainly the hands hidden by the dangling sleeves had a grip of steel.)

  ‘Break open your hatches and deliver up your booty!’ Peter roared in Starkey’s face.

  After years spent teaching manners to Redskin sprogs, Starkey said it without thinking: ‘Now now, son. What’s the little word that gets things done?’

  Again that infernal question! Peter searched his head for the magic little word. But he found only cases and cases more of bad-temper. ‘I don’t know! Is it “Flogging”? Or “Plank”? Or “Maroon”?’

  Starkey was so scared that he broke open his cargo hold with his bare hands. Out popped Fireflyer (who had squirmed his way in easily enough but had much more trouble getting out). The fairy was so crammed with food that he landed at Peter’s feet with a thud like a cricket ball.

  ‘Well, my trusty little spy? What are silverskins?’

  The fairy burped. ‘Onions!’ he said. ‘Spring onions!’

  ‘Onions?!’

  Fireflyer burped again. ‘There were seven thousand two hundred and eighty-four. I counted,’ he said proudly, ‘when I ate ’em.’

  ‘Stow that fairy belowdecks!’ said Pan. ‘He has eaten our prize of war!’ And his lips curled back from his milk-white teeth in a snarl that would have shamed a shark.

  The Ravelling Man ate only eggs. He ate them raw, out of the shell or, more often, swallowed them down whole. Among the creatures of the floating islands were lizards, snakes, and turtles who laid soft, rubbery eggs, and Ravello always had some about his person, hidden away in the woollen linings of his woollen pockets. Their presence, either in his clothing or on his breath, gave the man his distinctive smell.

  He made himself wonderfully useful around the ship, cooking meals, reading the weather, boxing the compass, polishing the brass. He made the Redskins sew their blankets into warm coats for the League. He knew card games and how to tie knots, and the blood-thirstiest pirate stories you ever heard. He took the clapper out of the ship’s bell so that it would not disturb them when it rang the night watches (which it still did of its own accord). And at siesta-time, he rocked them to sleep in their hammocks. Ravello himself seemed never to sleep at all, night or day.

  To Peter Pan he was most attentive of all, polishing his boots, dusting his cabin—even combing the boy’s hair, so that every day it grew slightly longer, slightly darker. It was fun—no doubt about it—to say, ‘Fetch me this, Ravello! Do me that, Ravello, and be quick about it!’

  The altogether excellent Ravello offered to cut the SS Starkey adrift, but it was Peter’s first battle prize and he wanted to keep it. So even when the steamer came unwedged, they towed it behind them at the end of a steel chain, while Captain Starkey and his crew were shut up in the fo’c’sle with bears guarding them. The floating islands bobbed in and out of the sea mist, sometimes visible, sometimes quite forgotten.

  ‘What will you do with the Foe, Peter?’ asked Wendy. ‘Because if you are not going to cut them adrift, I really ought to make them some tea.’

  ‘We’ll sell them for slaves or spit-roast them for supper!’ Nobody believed him, but he sounded wonderfully decisive. Anyway, he cut such a dash in the tricorn hat and thigh-length boots he had found in the bottom of Hook’s sea-trunk: it seemed only right that he should talk like a pirate as well as look like one.

  He did take off the scarlet coat for a time. For instance, he took it off to dive overboard where he fought duels with the swordfish, and won their swords from them, so that his Company would never again be caught without weapons. He wrested bones from the mouths of dogfish, too, to feed Puppy. Happily, his bad temper seemed to wash off in the sea.

  With all the silverskins eaten, there was no point in them quarrelling any more. The unkind things said could not be rubbed out, but they folded up very small and could be slid away into pockets.

  Peter unrolled the treasure map, for everyone to see, and they all gathered round to study the map of Neverland. Inland from the Far Shore and the Purple Moor, the Maze of Regrets, the Elephants’ Graveyard, the Thirsty Desert … a vast blank was labelled ‘UNKNOWN TERRITORY’. At its heart lay Neverpeak, with cartoon clouds around its summit, but inside the Unknown Territory, all tracks and pathways and streams petered out. Landmarks were not listed. Nothing.

  ‘We shall map it as we go!’ said Peter.

  ‘And find the source of the Nevva River!’

  ‘Discover new animals!’

  ‘Take rock samples!’

  ‘You might also care to name mountains and lakes, sir,’ suggested Ravello, setting down the afternoon tea.

  The Explorers were so enchanted with this idea that they instantly began to do it, even before the landmarks had been discovered.

  ‘Bags I the first mountain!’

  ‘The John Darling Falls!’

  ‘Slightly Sound!’

  ‘Twin Peaks!’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ purred Ravello, holding up the scarlet coat for Peter to slip his wet arms back inside, ‘the area is wrongly marked “Unknown”. This Captain Hawk of whom I have heard you speak …’

  ‘Hook,’ said Peter. ‘Jas. Hook.’

  ‘Forgive me. This Captain Hook must have been there to deposit his treasure chest. Should it not be “Hook’s Territory”?’

  ‘Peter Pan’s!’ cried the One-and-Only Child, circling the whole of Neverland with his raven-quill pen. ‘It’s MINE! And so is the treasure!’ Red ink spattered Slightly’s evening shirt.

  There was an awkward silence. ‘Ours. I think the Captain meant to say “ours”,’ said Wendy. ‘Didn’t you, Peter?’

  Peter tugged at the white tie round his neck and coughed. There were bright spots of colour on his cheeks. ‘Pour me a tot of Indian courage,’ he commanded. ‘The smoke from Starkey’s filthy pirate barge has turned my stomach.’

  ‘What’s the little word that gets things done?’ said Tootles without thinking. But Peter glared so fiercely—‘Semolina! Rhubarb! T
apioca! Who cares what the little word is?!’—that she immediately trotted off to brew a pot of tea.

  The tea was never poured. Just as Tootles filled the pot, the Jolly Peter pitched and yawed and began to swing about. The steam-cutter had begun dragging her through the water, even though there was no one on her bridge, no fire in her boilers, no smoke in her smokestacks!

  In fact the SS Starkey was being dragged through the water too—not by another ship but by some invisible power that had gripped her keel. She overtook the Jolly Peter and wallowed northward, back-to-front, dragging the brig behind her, her sails turned inside out. The children could only cling on to the fixtures and fittings, wildly guessing:

  ‘It’s the mermaids!’

  ‘It’s a whale!’

  ‘It’s fairy mischief!’

  The Ravelling Man ran nimbly down the ladders on his heels, and shouldered his way into Pan’s stateroom, to the chart desk. The dirty wool cuffs scrawled circular stains on the vellum as he scoured it for information. Then they banged down on a shaded patch marked ‘DANGER AREA’.

  ‘Lodestone Rock!’ he said. ‘It hauls her in!’

  ‘Magic?’ said Slightly.

  ‘Magnetism,’ said Ravello.

  Soon they could even see it through the brass telescope—Lodestone Rock, a ferrous pinnacle of red rock like a church steeple. Faster and faster the cutter’s iron hull sped towards it like a moth towards a flame. The chain between the two ships was stretched so taut that there was no unhitching it.

  ‘Cub-bages, hie!’ It was a circus-master’s voice again, loud and sharp with authority. The bears went over the side. The Redskins swarmed on deck weeping and shrieking and struggling into cork life-jackets. No need for a telescope now. Lodestone Rock loomed up huge in their path, sea foam boiling all around. Their hulls scraped over rock so sharp that it stripped off all the barnacles. The League of Pan clung tightly to the ship’s rails—except for Curly who was catapulted out of the crow’s nest and into the ocean.

  ‘Throw out the log-line!’ shouted Peter Pan, and they stared at him blankly, all except for Ravello who threw down a knotted rope to Curly who was drowning in the churning wake. Curly grabbed hold and was towed along, scuffing the toecaps of his shoes on the razor-sharp rocks beneath him.

  The SS Starkey struck with the noise of a brass band falling off a tram. The brig, being dragged along behind it, was caught by the swirl of currents around the rock and tossed about so violently that the metal towline snapped like a Christmas paper-chain.

  ‘Now we’ll float free!’ John asserted. ‘The Jolly Peter is wooden! Only metal is magnetic!’ The Jolly Peter was indeed wooden: so what power could the magnetic Lodestone Rock possibly hold over it?

  They found out soon enough.

  The iron nails holding every rib to the keel, every plank to every rib, every spar to the mast were pulled out by the force of magnetism. Like wasp-stings sucked out of skin, every nail and cleat came out of the timberwork, and the elegant wooden brig began to disintegrate around them.

  ‘She is gone!’ cried Ravello, falling to his knees, stricken by either fear or grief.

  ‘Fly!’ cried Peter. John snatched up Fireflyer’s top hat, containing its dandruff of fairy dust. The League of Pan plunged in their hands. But in order for it to work, they still had to think happy thoughts, and it was hard to think happy thoughts as the masts tumbled—one! two!—and the hull peeled itself off like an orange.

  ‘Think of treasure!’ cried Peter. And somehow they all fastened their minds on Neverpeak and, one by one, rose clumsily into the air.

  Peter, of course, arced and swooped with the ease of a summer swallow. He skimmed the wave-tips, to where Curly was floundering in the sea and, grinding a handful of fairy dust into the wet, curly hair, hauled him up from the water by the collar of his rugby shirt. Curly (and the puppy nestled in his pocket) were so happy not to be drowning any more that they quickly gained height and joined the others in the sky over Lodestone Rock.

  Below them, the Jolly Peter foundered, leaving only a pattern of planks floating on the water. The tall figure of Ravello, balancing on the wreckage, nimbly leapt from driftwood to flotsam, from barrel to spar. Finally he flung himself across a sea chest that came bobbing up to the surface. With white water churning, and the spray coming off the Lodestone Rock, his wool-clad form was soon soaked sodden—a hank of ancient seaweed caught on the lid of the rolling, pitching trunk. Ravello, being a full-grown man (or a very tall cardigan), could not, of course, fly.

  A sudden sob broke from Wendy as someone else sprang to mind. Fireflyer, locked up for his greedy wolfing of spring onions, had gone down with the ship!

  Fireflyer bobbed up again like a ship’s buoy, his orange hair brighter than the iron-red Lodestone. His little belly was still bulgy with spring onions and his fingers were spiky with cold. You or I would be bluer for being doused in a cold sea, but Fireflyer, after Peter lifted him up, was rather washed-out, like a sock that has been through the laundry too many times. His temper was just as hot, though, and his fairy dust re-dried on him like a crisp candy coat. He flew in fizzing fits and starts and zigzags, until Peter said, ‘Stop showing off, fairy, or I’ll huff you!’

  Sun and moon were both in the sky, with a serving of early stars and a side salad of clouds. Vital to find dry land! But which way to fly? The compass in Neverland has as many points as a frightened hedgehog.

  ‘Do you still have the map, Cap’n?’ asked John.

  Peter brandished the vellum scroll, but when he tried to open it in mid-air, the wind almost snatched it out of his hands. So they simply flew and, as anxious thoughts took the place of happy ones, sank lower and lower and lower in the air. Spindrift off the wave-tops began to wet their faces, to wash off their fairy dust. Just when things were looking black for the Company of Explorers, they sighted land.

  A long, rocky promontory pointed out to sea like a witch’s finger, ending in a clutter of rocks and white-water reefs. There were sea-pinks growing in every crevice, and cormorants rose squawking into the air as the Explorers came fluttering down. Oddly, the waterline was strewn with the rusty remains of several hundred prams and baby carriages. Moored up like a rowing boat, on the far side of the headland, was an antique sea chest with the letters J. H. on the lid. Oh, and five small islands bobbed at anchor further off shore.

  A tall figure stood on the reef, silhouetted against the sky. A halo of snaky threads coiled all about it, wriggling in the wind; it might have been the Gorgon Medusa waiting to turn someone to stone with a glance. But it was not.

  ‘Welcome to Grief Reef, sir,’ said the figure.

  Peter was again struggling with the map in the blustery wind. ‘Hold this chart flat for me, Ravello,’ he said, calm as can be—just as if he had known all along that his valet would be there ahead of him. And Ravello hurried to oblige, cracking the vellum open with a flick of one hand.

  It was Ravello who explained about the prams: ‘These mildewed and rusting hulks you see before you are all that remain of a hundred sad stories. These are the perambulators and baby carriages once pushed up and down parks and lanes and city streets by nursery maids in charge of baby boys. These are the prams those nursemaids parked up under shady trees while they dozed; or left unattended while they nipped into the post office to buy a stamp; or to flirt with their sweethearts. These are the prams that got out of control because the brake was left off, and ran away down steep hills. In short, these are the prams that boys tumbled out of, never to be seen again. These are the prams that turned baby boys into Lost Boys, and started them on their long journey to Neverland.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Wendy.

  The butler gave a stringy shrug. ‘I am a travelling man, miss. Travelling men get around. They hear things. Rumours. Histories. Shall I go on?

  ‘These are the prams the nursemaids frantically searched, when they realized the boys were gone—flinging out bedding and toys and rattles and bootees, gasping and oh!-
ing and oh-no!-ing. These empty prams are all the wretches were left with, after angry parents sacked them and sent them away without a reference or a forgiving word.

  ‘These are the prams that the nursemaids rebuilt into little boats, and rowed out to sea, determined to search the world until they found those babies. Hearing tell that Lost Boys were sent to Neverland, they jibed and pitched their way across five oceans, and finally came to grief on Grief Reef.’

  At the end of the account, a single question was left hanging in the air, unspoken. Five Lost Boys felt an aching need to ask it, but none of them dared. Wendy spoke it for them. ‘And were any Lost Boys ever found by these questing nursemaids, Mr Ravello?’

  ‘We must hope not, miss! Indeed we must! For imagine the sour rage in the hearts of those women! Sacked! Turned out-of-doors, without hope of another post! Quite ruined! And for what? For the small error of losing a child. No, no! These ladies did not come looking to rescue the boys they had lost. What? They blamed all their woes and sufferings on the babes. All sweetness of nature had been washed out of them by the salt sea. They were half mad from drinking sea water … and they were … they are … bent on revenge.’

  The Lost Boys gulped and turned pale. Peter gave a carefree flick of the hands. ‘But they were grown-up, weren’t they? So they couldn’t get into Neverland, could they?’ And everybody felt so much better that they decided to overlook all the grown-up pirates, Redskins, and circus-masters known to inhabit Neverland.

  Clambering along the narrow headland, slipping on slimy seaweed and frightening off a pair of seals, the Company of Explorers headed inland for the bruised and purple moors swelling into view. In the very far distance they could see the tiny outline of Neverpeak, goal of their journey. The resourceful Ravello, since arriving at the Reef astride the sea chest, had not wasted his time. While waiting for the children to arrive, he had taken the wheels off a couple of perambulators and fastened them to the trunk, so that now he could haul it bumping and bouncing along behind him. He applied to it for useful items—matches, a pack of cards, tea, pen and ink, and pieces of string. Though the floating islands were left far behind in the bay, along with the animals of the Circus Ravello, he never seemed to run short of the rubbery eggs he ate night and morning.