Peter Pan in Scarlet
Page 18
‘Till London,’ said Curly.
‘Safe journey,’ said Wendy. ‘Give our love to Nibs.’
‘Don’t drown,’ said Tootles, and shed a tear or two.
Peter turned his back and would not shake hands. He could not understand why anyone wanted to leave Neverland. He had offered to try and pretend Slightly and Curly back to a tolerable size but they had chosen to come here instead. Now Peter could not wait to get back to the Neverwood. Games were calling. Quests were piling up. There was a fort to be built. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Go, if you are going.’
Curly and Slightly-more would also have liked to help build Fort Pan. But the thought of homes and wives and work and Nibs and London buses was working its magic on both young men. They squared their shoulders and walked down to the Maze. Curly turned back only once: ‘I was so young when I got Lost. How will Mummy know me?’ he said, and for a moment he looked a littler boy than anyone there.
‘She will,’ said Wendy. ‘She just will.’
Slightly put his clarinet to his lips and began to play. Curly led the way. Their anxious friends drifted downhill behind them, to watch what became of them.
Women harassed by years of woe and worry lifted their heads at the sound of music. They blinked in confusion at the sight of a youth and a grown man, for they had thought this a place of children, and children were what filled their every thought. They did not fall on Curly, for none could imagine … none had been expecting … anyone like this. He shook hands. The women tucked away stray wisps of hair; some even bobbed a curtsy. Soothed by the music and taken by surprise, they allowed Curly to speak, and the watching children could see him explaining, describing, pointing back the way he had come.
Then he must have mentioned his own name, for through the growing throng of mothers came a woman, lunging like a horse in deep water, stretching and ducking to catch a glimpse, pushing her way through. Plaits that for thirty years had stayed neatly coiled came flying loose and she collided with Curly head-on. The League of Pan shut their eyes … and when they opened them again, Curly was helping his mother to refasten her hair.
Slightly looked up from a particularly difficult key change on the clarinet to find a thin woman with long thin fingers and a thin, artistic face staring at him. ‘You didn’t take this, my darling,’ she said. ‘When you went missing.’ And she produced a baby’s rattle with bells at either end.
Then and there, Slightly’s tunes—the ones in his head, the ones in his clarinet, and the ones in his heart—all came back to doh.
That was when the Twins strayed a little too close to the Maze and heard someone calling: ‘Marmaduke? Binky?’
Now this may come as a shock to you if you thought that the two brothers really were named First Twin and Second Twin at birth. They weren’t. True, they were lost at such an early age that their names were no more than a memory forgotten. But when their mother—hands still clarty with pastry, hair still dusty with flour—came running and staring and blinking and crying and laughing and breaking into a run—‘Marmaduke? Binky?’—they remembered well enough.
Marmaduke and Binky. Ah well. Everyone makes mistakes. Luckily, the Twins took to the names as no one else could, and thought themselves the luckiest boys in the world. For now they had two mothers! Mrs Darling would always be the real one, because she had taken them in when they were Lost Boys, and had raised them and let them lick the mixing bowl and shampoo the dog and wear warpaint in bed and ride upstairs on buses … But here was a NEW mother from longer ago—the one who had given them the best two names in the world.
Wendy turned to Tootles. ‘You could go home this way, too, you know, Princess?’
Tootles shook her head very decidedly. ‘I’m not going ever!’ she said. ‘I’m going to stay here for always and play weddings with Peter!’
A fox in a chicken coop could not have caused more of a stir. Wendy looked at Peter, and Peter looked at Wendy, and there was real panic in his eyes.
‘Tootles! You know very well you have a family waiting for you back in Grimswater,’ said John. But sadly Tootles had forgotten all about Grimswater or The Gentlemen’s Club or being a judge in the High Courts.
‘I’ll be Tootles Pan, and Peter can pick flowers for me and lift up his feet when I am sweeping, and I’ll say to the little ones, “Just you wait till your father comes home!”’
For some reason—I couldn’t say why—Wendy chose that exact moment to run into the Maze calling, ‘Tootles! There’s a Tootles here! Has anyone lost a Tootles?’
A man with a face the colour of morocco leather in a curly lawyer’s wig and with a huge book under one arm stepped out from behind a rock. He wagged a finger at her sternly. ‘Do not be absurd, young lady!’ he said, looking Wendy up and down. ‘Are you trying to pass yourself off as my boy Tootles? Absurd! Poppycock!’ But just as he was opening his book to look up which law Wendy had broken, he caught sight of Princess Tootles, tying the ribbons of her satin ballet shoes and practising her plié. ‘Aha! There you are, son,’ he said gruffly, without a moment’s doubt. ‘And about time, too!’ Then, in an outburst of uncontrollable delight, he took off his judge’s wig, threw it high in the air and danced a little jig on the spot.
‘Fathers, too,’ murmured Smee. ‘Who’d’ve thought it.’
Sitting astride his father’s shoulders and wearing his father’s wig, Tootles rode off without a backward glance. Wendy looked at Peter, and Peter looked at Wendy, and there was a big ‘THANK YOU’ written in his eyes.
‘Can we go, too, sis?’ asked John, infected by all the happiness. It was an odd infection—it made the pouches under his chin ache, like mumps. He began to look this way and that in search of a mother who would choose him.
Wendy’s heart too, was cram-full with the longing to get home and see her own daughter Jane. But she knew this was not her Emergency Exit, not her Way Out of Neverland. ‘There is no one here for us, John. We were never Lost, remember? We flew to Neverland of our own choosing—and home again before Mother could set sail to come looking.’ But she could see John still looking about, still wondering: how life would have been with another mother; a different mother; that one there with the blonde hair or that one there with the red. ‘We shall just stay here, John, until our shadows grow back … and the fairies stop being silly and we can ask them for fairy dust … and Fort Pan is built.’
‘Good,’ said Peter decidedly. ‘I don’t mind you. You play proper games.’
‘Nothing to stop you a-coming with me!’ said Smee, rolling into the conversation on his sailor’s bandy legs. ‘I’m in need of a crew for the voyage home! Reckon I’ll pay a visit to the old country, now I’ve got me a mother aboard for luck.’ Small as he was, Smee had managed to find someone even smaller to clutch the crook of his arm: a tiny old lady with snow-white hair and an angelic smile.
Wendy clapped her hands with joy. ‘Oh, how wonderful! This is your mother, Smee?’
Smee spoke from behind his hand. ‘Nah. I nicked her. But her eyes aren’t up to much, so she’ll never notice. And she seems glad to have me. So, who else is coming, eh? Look lively! All aboard the good ship Dirty Duck, bound for the Serpentine by way of Kirriemuir!’
They lashed together all the prams languishing on the rocks of Grief Reef, making a huge raft. Like eggs into an egg-tray, everyone heading home squeezed themselves into the hollow compartments. Even Puppy. They all fitted.
Finding somewhere for all the happiness was the only problem.
Wendy was the last left on shore. ‘Come with us, Peter!’ she cried suddenly, seizing him by the hand. ‘Oh, do come with us! I know where there are fairies to be found! And when your shadow grows back you can fly back here and …’
But Peter snatched his hand away. ‘I don’t go about with grown people,’ he said, turning his back on the good ship Dirty Duck.
Wendy took the other hand and led him aside. ‘I have a whisper for you,’ she said.
‘Is that like a thimble?’
‘You don’t want to play Weddings?’ squeaked Peter in open panic.
Wendy pulled a face. ‘Peter, just suppose your mother …’
Peter’s face shut like curtains at a window. ‘No.’
‘Oh, but, Peter! Suppose she is just like all these: still hoping to see you again one day! Maybe she even …’
But Peter’s delicate mouth set in a hard line and he put his fingers in his ears. Once upon a time he had flown home only to find the window of his bedroom shut and barred, another boy asleep in his bed. He refused to hear anything good about mothers.
The prams, freed from the rocks, felt the far distant pull of Lodestone Rock and the Dirty Duck began moving out to sea. John and Curly and Slightly and Smee all shouted for Wendy to ‘Come—come aboard quickly! Don’t get left behind!’
For a moment, she did not think she could leave him—her little friend Peter, as wild and fragile and beautiful as an autumn leaf blown by the wind. She did not think she could bear to miss all the games that were calling, all the quests that were piling up. She realized she did not even know where Fort Pan would be built—up in the treetops or jutting out from the precipitous cliffs or standing on stilts in the Lagoon.
But at heart the girl Wendy was a grown-up (just as all grown-ups are, at heart, children). Love of her family was dragging on her, like the far distant pull of Lodestone Rock. Just when it seemed that the space between raft and rocks was too wide even for a circus acrobat to leap, Wendy Darling sprang off the Grief Reef and landed beside her brother, aboard the good ship Dirty Duck.
At Smee’s command, all the pram hoods were raised to catch the wind, and the raft rode the slopping swell out towards the bar. Stricken by yet one more thought, Wendy jumped to her feet, making the raft pitch and the passengers yelp. She called out to the boy on the shore:
‘I think your mother only shut the window to keep out the FOG!’
She saw Peter lift his hands to cover his ears, but too late. His fingers curled into fists, as if he had caught her words out of the air—caught and heard them, like it or not. Wendy waved, and went on waving, until the dazzle off the water filled her eyes with dark.
Peter watched the raft all the way out to the bar—watched it until the dazzle off the water made it disappear. As he turned, with a skip and a jump, to set off on the long walk back to Neverwood, he was surprised to find a little frill of fresh-grown shadow riffling around his feet. No time to wonder what sadness had made it grow back. Games were calling. Quests were piling up.
Meanwhile, not very far away, an old enemy lay along the ground. He lay so still that you would have thought him dead.
But despite his injuries, Ravello had not died. For the first time in twenty years, with his second-best coat for a blanket over him and with Wendy’s kiss on his cheek, Ravello slept—a sleep deeper than the Lagoon. Sleep is a great healer, people are always saying so.
He dreamed of striped rocks with crests as sharp as elbows, grooved into gullies by a million tears. On the top of one such crest stood a woman, ragged striped skirts drawn up at the back, a long and swanlike neck. Beautiful once, she looked now like some statue in a public park worn by wind and weather. And her face was so sad, so very sad, eyes roaming to and fro, searching for something or someone. Voice brittle as lead crystal, she called over and over again: ‘James! James? Where are you, James?’
Ravello slept. Sleep is a great healer; people don’t lie when they say it. Ravello slept. And his greasy fleece, shredded by dog and doctor and thorn-trees … knitted up. The ravelled, colourless wool resolved itself into flesh and cloth and hair. The shining ringlets returned. Scars smoothed. Even the colour of his eyes shifted along the spectrum, from earth-brown towards the brightness of blue.
What unravelled instead was the softness of his assumed name: Ravello—laying bare the hard, sharp shape of the old one: Hook. When after twenty days the man woke, it was James Hook who sat up and cursed the hardness of the ground; James Hook who clutched the School Cup to him in fierce rapture; James Hook who took bearings from his metal compass of a heart; James Hook who slid his arms into the sleeves of the scarlet frock coat.
It became him well.
And he became it.
Clothes can do that.
But when he glimpsed his shineless crocodile boots, the Past came back: a remembered nightmare. ‘Have at you, cock-a-doodle!’ The words emerged like heat from an opening furnace. ‘Revenge will be sweet when we two next meet. Have at you, Peter Pan!’
You are quite right. There was a lot of explaining to do when they got home. Imagine their mother’s surprise when the Twins took her by each hand, and trotted her home to Chertsey. Imagine her astonishment, when they took out front door keys and let themselves in, calling, ‘Hello, Daddy’s back!’ Imagine what she said as she watched them swap clothes with their little ones and grow back—gracious goodness!—into full-size men.
Their children had a word or two to say about it as well.
‘You took my school uniform! I got in awful trouble!’
‘Shoulda taken my green pyjamies, not my red ones! My red ones are my flavourites!’
‘There’s mud on my ballet shoes!’ (That was at Tootles’s house.)
‘That was my best rugby shirt!’ (That was at Curly’s). And ‘Oh, Daddy! You grewed the puppy!’
At Nibs’s house, Nibs drew his children on to his lap and said to the visitors, ‘Tell us. Tell us everything that happened.’
You might think the Maze mothers felt cheated to see their Lost Boys grow suddenly to manhood, but no. Better by far to find a Lost Son, whatever age he is, than never to find him at all.
Slightly, who had no wife or children to go home to, stayed as he was: eighteen. He did not even tell his Neverland mother he was a baronet, in case she bought a book of etiquette and made him act like one. Just once, he slipped away to that jazz club to play the clarinet. But when the lights dimmed and spotlight shone, he found that he could not play the Blues any more, because he was just too happy. So he joined a dance band instead.
As for Wendy and John, they gathered up all the dregs of those troublesome dreams—the hats and arrows and sabres and pistols and hooks—and gave them to Smee, who opened a party shop in Kensington, selling ‘Souvenirs of Neverland’. Of course no one believed there was any such place—except the children who bought the souvenirs.
And over the while, Wendy told Jane everything, naturally. A memory here, an adventure there. Jane thought they were bedtime stories she was hearing; when she told them back to her mother, she changed bits she did not like and added in things that had not happened; Wendy said nothing. It was lovely just to hear the words bouncing round the bedroom again: ‘Neverland’, ‘Peter’, and ‘Dook-a-doodie!’ (which was the best Jane could doodle-do).
Perhaps what happened to Neverland wasn’t Hook’s fault, at all. Oh, he would love you to think it was. But maybe it wasn’t the bottle of mischief in his breast pocket that leaked out and poisoned Neverland. Maybe flying debris from the Big War—shrapnel and bullets and such—made holes in the fabric between Neverland and this world. Dreams leaked out through the holes; grown-up mess leaked in. And that’s when the summerlands were spoiled. For a few ticks, Time moved on where Time was never meant to, and summer turned to autumn, and draughts slithered in, and friends grew cold.
Whatever the cause, it didn’t last.
You know how bruises fade? Black to purple, then greenish blue and last of all yellow? Well, Neverland healed up just like that. The snow melted and watered the Thirsty Desert. The springs welled up and refilled the rivers. Burnt Neverwood re-grew. Finally the yellow sun came out and lingered—sometimes for days on end, because it was enjoying itself too much to go to bed. The Lagoon shimmered with fish and sunlight and mermaids. Villains moored
up. Lost Boys and Girls found their way to Fort Pan.
Mothers came looking for them (of course).
The Tribes held potlatch parties and gave away everything they owned—even quite a lot of things they didn’t—out of sheer joy. The fairies called a truce, though for a long time marauding bands of dandies went about ripping the rainbows out of waterfalls to sew into tunics. Never mind: the waterfalls healed up, too.
Hand in hand, Tinker Bell and Fireflyer quarrelled their way here, there, and everywhere in Neverland, inventing new colours, playing Chinese chequers with the stars, and nibbling the knees out of Wednesday to make it easier to spell. They set up in business, selling dreams to Roarers and pirates in exchange for belt buckles and buttons. It was a dangerous line of work—especially catching the dreams with a tripwire and a net—but the two fairies were so happy that they decided not to get killed for at least a hundred years.
As for Pan, it took an age for his shadow to grow all the way back, because he was so rarely sad. Only when he thought of Wendy and the others did a little more darkness flap out behind him—a leg, a narrow waist, a sword-arm … So he was confined to Neverland, unable to fly, and the Darlings saw nothing of him from one summer to the next.
Don’t worry, though. His shadow is all there nowadays. He can fly as far and as high as he chooses—faster than dreams can flicker through your head—further afield even than Fotheringdene or Grimswater.
He has never broken his terrible habit of eavesdropping. So, maybe that wasn’t the rustle of pages you heard while this story lasted, but Peter Pan himself, listening in. In exchange for a story of yours, he might show you his most prized possession: James Hook’s map of Neverland.
In exchange for a smile, he may show you Neverland itself.
About the Author
Geraldine McCaughrean is one of the most highly-acclaimed living children’s writers. She has won the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children’s Book Award (three times), the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, and is known and admired for the variety and originality of her books, as well as her stunning storytelling skills.