by Unknown
PETER. What is your name?
WENDY (well satisfied). Wendy Moira Angela Darling.What is yours?
PETER (finding it lamentably brief). Peter Pan.
WENDY. Is that all?
PETER (biting his lip). Yes.
WENDY (politely). I am so sorry.
PETER. It doesn’t matter.
WENDY. Where do you live?
PETER. Second to the right and then straight on till morning.
WENDY. What a funny address!
PETER. No, it isn’t.
WENDY. I mean, is that what they put on the letters?
PETER. Don’t get any letters.
WENDY. But your mother gets letters?
PETER. Don’t have a mother.
WENDY. Peter!
(She leaps out of bed to put her arms round him, but he draws back; he does not know why, but he knows he must draw back.)
PETER. You mustn’t touch me.
WENDY. Why?
PETER. No one must ever touch me.
WENDY. Why?
PETER. I don’t know.
(He is never touched by any one in the play.)
WENDY. No wonder you were crying.
PETER. I wasn’t crying. But I can’t get my shadow to stick on.
WENDY. It has come off! How awful. (Looking at the spot where he had lain.) Peter, you have been trying to stick it on with soap!
PETER (snappily). Well then?
WENDY. It must be sewn on.
PETER. What is ‘sewn’?
WENDY. You are dreadfully ignorant.
PETER. No, I ‘m not.
WENDY. I will sew it on for you, my little man. But we must have more light. (She touches something, and to his astonishment the room is illuminated.) Sit here. I dare say it will hurt a little.
PETER (a recent remark of hers rankling). I never cry. (She seems to attach the shadow. He tests the combination.) It isn’t quite itself yet.
WENDY. Perhaps I should have ironed it. (It awakes and is as glad to be back with him as he to have it. He and his shadow dance together. He is showing off now. He crows like a cock. He would fly in order to impress WENDY further if he knew that there is anything unusual in that.)
PETER. Wendy, look, look; oh the cleverness of me!
WENDY. You conceit, of course I did nothing!
PETER. You did a little.
WENDY (wounded). A little! If I am no use I can at least withdraw.
(With one haughty leap she is again in bed with the sheet over her face. Popping on to the end of the bed the artful one appeals.)
PETER. Wendy,. don’t withdraw. I can’t help crowing, Wendy, when I’m pleased with myself. Wendy, one girl is worth more than twenty boys.
WENDY (peeping over the sheet). You really think so, Peter?
PETER. Yes, I do.
WENDY. I think it’s perfectly sweet of you, and I shall get up again. (They sit together on the side of the bed.) I shall give you a kiss if you like.
PETER. Thank you. (He holds out his hand.)
WENDY (aghast). Don’t you know what a kiss is?
PETER. I shall know when you give it me. (Not to hurt his feelings she gives him her thimble.) Now shall I give youa kiss?
WENDY (primly). If you please. (He pulls an acorn button off his person and bestows it on her. She is shocked but considerate.) I will wear it on this chain round my neck. Peter, how old are you?
PETER (blithely). I don’t know, but quite young, Wendy. I ran away the day I was born.
WENDY. Ran away, why?
PETER. Because I heard father and mother talking of what I was to be when I became a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun; so I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long time among the fairies.
WENDY (with great eyes). You know fairies, Peter!
PETER (surprised that this should be a recommendation). Yes, but they are nearly all dead now. (Baldly) You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl,
WENDY (breathlessly). Ought to be? Isn’t there?
PETER. Oh no. Children know such a lot now. Soon they don’t believe in fairies, and every time a child says ‘I don’t believe in fairies’ there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. (He skips about heartlessly.)
WENDY. Poor things!
PETER. (to whom this statement recalls a forgotten friend). I can’t think where she has gone. Tinker Bell, Tink, where are you?
WENDY (thrilling). Peter, you don’t mean to tell me that there is a fairy in this room!
PETER (flitting about in search). She came with me. You don’t hear anything, do you?
WENDY. I hear — the only sound I hear is like a tinkle of bells.
PETER. That is the fairy language. I hear it too.
WENDY. It seems to come from over there.
PETER. (with shameless glee.) Wendy, I believe I shut her up in that drawer!
(He releases TINK, who darts about in a fury using language it is perhaps as well we don’t understand.)
You needn’t say that; I ‘m very sorry, but how could I know you were in the drawer?
WENDY (her eyes dancing in pursuit of the delicious creature). Oh, Peter, if only she would stand still and let me see her!
PETER (indifferently). They hardly ever stand still.
(To show that she can do even this TINK pauses between two ticks of the cuckoo clock.)
WENDY. I see her, the lovely! where is she now?
PETER. She is behind the clock. Tink, this lady wishes you were her fairy. (The answer comes immediately.)
WENDY. What does she say?
PETER. She is not very polite. She says you are a great ugly girl, and that she is my fairy. You know, Tink, you can’t be my fairy because I am a gentleman and you are a lady.
(TINK replies.)
WENDY. What did she say?
PETER. She said ‘You silly ass.’ She is quite a common girl, you know. She is called Tinker Bell because she mends the fairy pots and kettles.
(They have reached a chair, WENDY in the ordinary way and PETER through a hole in the back.)
WENDY. Where do you live now?
PETER. With the lost boys.
WENDY. Who are they?
PETER. They are the children who fall out of their prams when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the NeverLand. I ‘m captain.
WENDY. What fun it must be.
PETER (craftily). Yes, but we are rather lonely. You see, Wendy, we have no female companionship.
WENDY. Are none of the other children girls?
PETER. Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.
WENDY. Peter, it is perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls. John there just depises us.
(PETER, for the first time, has a good look at JOHN. He then neatly tumbles him out of bed.)
You wicked! you are not captain here. (She bends over her brother who is prone on the floor.) After all he hasn’t wakened, and you meant to be kind. (Having now done her duty she forgets JOHN, who blissfully sleep on.) Peter, you may give me a kiss.
PETER (cynically). I thought you would want it back. (He offers her the thimble.)
WENDY (artfully). Oh dear, I didn’t mean a kiss, Peter. I meant a thimble.
PETER (only half placated).What is that?
WENDY. It is like this. (She leans forward to give a demonstration, but something prevents the meeting of their faces.)
PETER (satisfied). Now shall I give you a thimble?
WENDY. If you please. (Before he can even draw near she screams.)
PETER. What is it?
WENDY. It was exactly as if some one were pulling my hairl
PETER. That must have been Tink. I never knew her so naughty before
.
(TINK speaks. She is in the jug again.)
WENDY. What does she say?
PETER. She says she will do that every time I give you a thimble.
WENDY. But why?
PETER (equally nonplussed). Why, Tink? (He has to translate the answer.) She said ‘You silly ass’ again.
WENDY. She is very impertinent. (They are sitting on the floor now.) Peter, why did you come to our nursery window?
PETER. To try to hear stories None of us knows any stories.
WENDY. How perfectly awful!
PETER. Do you know why swallows build in the eaves of houses? It is to listen to the stories. Wendy, your mother was telling you such a lovely story.
WENDY. Which story was it?
PETER. About the prince, and he couldn’t find the lady who wore the glass slipper.
WENDY. That was Cinderella. Peter, he found her and they were happy ever after.
PETER. I am glad. (They have worked their way along the floor close to each other, but he now jumps up.)
WENDY. Where are you going?
PETER (already on his way to the window). To tell the other boys.
WENDY. Don’t go, Peter. I know lots of stories. The stories I could tell to the boys!
PETER (gleaming). Come on! We’ll fly.
WENDY. Fly? You can fly!
(How he would like to rip those stories out of her; he is dangerous now.)
PETER. Wendy, come with me.
WENDY. Oh dear, I mustn’t. Think of mother. Besides, I can’t fly.
PETER. I’ll teach you.
WENDY. How lovely to fly!
PETER. I’ll teach you how to jump on the wind’s back and then away we go. Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me, saying funny things tothe stars. There are mermaids, Wendy, with long tails. (She just succeeds in remaining on the nursery floor.) Wendy, how we should all respect you.
(At this she strikes her colours.)
WENDY. Of course it’s awfully fascinating! Would you teach John and Michael to fly too?
PETER (indifferently). If you like.
WENDY (playing rum-turn on JOHN). John, wake up; there is a boy here who is to teach us to fly.
JOHN. Is there? Then I shall get up. (He raises his headfrom the floor.) Hullo, I am up!
WENDY. Michael, open your eyes. This boy is to teach us to fly.
(The sleepers are at once as awake as their father’s razor;but before a question can be asked NANA’S bark is heard.)
JOHN. Out with the light, quick, hide!
(When the maid LIZA, who is so small that when she says she will never see ten again one can scarcely believe her, enters with a firm hand on the troubled NANA’S chain the room is in comparative darkness.)
LIZA. There, you suspicious brute, they are perfectly safe, aren’t they? Every one of the little angels sound asleep in bed. Listen to their gentle breathing. (NANA’S sense of smell here helps to her undoing instead of hindering it. She knows that they are in the room. MICHAEL, who is behind the window curtain, is so encouraged by LIZA’S last remark that he breathes too loudly. NANA knows that kind of breathing and tries to break from her keeper’s control.) No more of it, Nana. (Wagging a finger at her) I warn you if you bark again I shall go straight for master and missus and bring them home from the party, and then won’t master whip you just! Come along, you naughty dog.
(The unhappy NANA is led away. The children emerge exulting from their various hiding-places. In their brief absence from the scene strange things have been done to them; but it is not for us to reveal a mysterious secret of the stage. They look just the same.)
JOHN. I say, can you really fly.
PETER. Look! (He is now over their heads.)
WENDY. Oh, how sweet!
PETER. I ‘m sweet, oh, I am sweet!
(It looks so easy that they try it first from the floor andthen from their beds, without encouraging results.)
JOHN (rubbing his knees). How do you do it?
PETER (descending). You just think lovely wonderful thoughts and they lift you up in the air. (He is off again.)
JOHN. You are so nippy at it; couldn’t you do it very slowly once? (PETER does it slowly.) I ‘ve got it now, Wendy. (He tries; no, he has not got it, poor stay-at-home, though he knows the names of all the counties in England and PETER does not know one.)
PETER. I must blow the fairy dust on you first. (Fortunately his garments are smeared with it and he blows some dust on each.) Now, try; try from the bed. Just wiggle your shoulders this way, and then let go.
(The gallant MICHAEL is the first to let go, and is borne across the room.)
MICHAEL (with a yell that should have disturbed LIZA). I flewed!
(JOHN lets go, and meets WENDY near the bathroom door though they had both aimed in an opposite direction.)
WENDY. Oh, lovely!
JOHN (tending to be upside down). How ripping!
MICHAEL (playing whack on a chair). I do like it!
THE THREE. Look at me, look at me, look at me!
(They are not nearly so elegant in the air as PETER, but their heads have bumped the ceiling, and there is nothing more delicious than that.)
JOHN (who can even go backwards). I say, why shouldn’t we go out?
PETER. There are pirates.
JOHN. Pirates! (He grabs his tall Sunday hat.) Let us go at once!
(TINK does not like it. She darts at their hair. From down below in the street the lighted window must present an unwonted spectacle: the shadows of children revolving in the room like a merry-go-round. This is perhaps what MR. and MRS. DARLING see as they come hurrying home from the party, brought by NANA who, you may be sure, has broken her chain. PETER’S accomplice, the little star, has seen them coming, and again the window blows open.)
PETER (as if he had heard the star whisper ‘Cave’). Now come!
(Breaking the circle he flies out of the window over the trees of the square and over the housetops, and the others follow like a flight of birds. The broken-hearted father and mother arrive just in time to get a nip from TINK as she too sets out for the Never Land.)
ACT II
THE NEVER LAND
When the blind goes up all is so dark that you scarcely know it has gone up. This is because if you were to see the island bang (as Peter would say) the wonders of it might hurt your eyes. If you all came in spectacles perhaps you could see it bang, but to make a rule of that kind would be a pity. The first thing seen is merely some whitish dots trudging along the sward, and you can guess from their tinkling that they are probably fairies of the commoner sort going home afoot from some party and having a cheery tiff by the way. Then Peter’s star wakes up, and in the blink of it, which is much stronger than in our stars, you can make out masses of trees, and you think you see wild beasts stealing past to drink, though what you see is not the beasts themselves but only the shadows of them. They are really out pictorially to greet Peter in the way they think he would like them to greet him; and for the same reason the mermaids basking in the lagoon beyond the trees are carefully combing their hair; and for the same reason the pirates are landing invisibly from the longboat, invisibly to you but not to the redskins, whom none can see or hear because they are on the warpath. The whole island, in short, which has been having a slack time in Peter’s absence, is now in a ferment because the tidings has leaked out that he is on his way back; and everybody and everything know that they will catch it from him if they don’t give satisfaction. While you have been told this the sun (another of his servants) has been bestirring himself. Those of you who may have thought it wiser after all to begin this Act in spectacles may now take them off.
What you see is the Never Land. You have often half seen it before, or even three-quarters, after the night-lights were lit, and you might then have beached your coracle on it if you had not always at the great moment fallen asleep. I dare say you have chucked things on to it, the things you can’t find in the morning. In the
daytime you think the Never Land is only make-believe, and so it is to the likes of you, but this is the Never Land come true. It is an open-air scene, a forest, with a beautiful lagoon beyond but not really far away, for the Never Land is very compact, not large and sprawly with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. It is summer time on the trees and on the lagoon but winter on the river, which is not remarkable on Peter’s island where all the four seasons may pass while you are filling a jug at the well. Peter’s home is at this very spot, but you could not point out the way into it even if you were told which is the entrance, not even if you were told that there are seven of them. You know now because you have just seen one of the lost boys emerge. Theholes in these seven great hollow trees are the ‘doors’ down to Peter’s home, and he made seven because, despite his cleverness, he thought seven boys must need seven doors.