Peter and Alice (3 page)

ALICE
: Of what?

PETER
: What does every child fear? … Captain Hook.

ALICE
: The character?

PETER
: The idea. Means something different for every boy I expect… For me it was no more summers of pirate yarns and playing in the grass. All the boys going to school, moving away and getting separated. My brothers not being my brothers anymore, being someone else's husband or father, but not my brothers, not really, not like it was. No more father and mother… Just me… That's a piece of growing up, isn't it? Learning to name the thing you fear? … Captain Hook.

CARROLL
: Or the Red Queen.

ALICE
: Children's stories can't hurt you.

PETER
: You know better.

ALICE
: They don't exist. There is no Captain Hook.

PETER
: Are you sure? Don't you sometimes feel him? … When you're alone, in a dark room, the point of his hook touching the back of your neck?

ALICE
: They can't hurt you. Not once you grow up.

CARROLL
goes to her:

CARROLL
: But, Alice, you must never grow up!
Promise me
!

ALICE
: Really, how can I help from growing up?

CARROLL
: Ah, the question of the ages. We'll have to ask a wise old tortoise. Shall we stroll?

She's disturbed by this bit of her past
.

ALICE
: That long summer. God, would it never end? … We were walking in town. There were illuminations that evening and the street was radiant. My sisters and our governess had wandered ahead, so it was just Reverend Dodgson and me… It was so rarely that, just the two of us alone. Only twice that I can recall.

PETER
: Truly?

ALICE
: It was a different era, Mr. Davies. Unaccompanied in the presence of a gentleman? It wasn't done… I can only remember two times. This was the first…

Gentle and magical illuminations light the stage
.

CARROLL
and
ALICE
stroll. It is 1862
.

ALICE
: But why mustn't I grow up? It seems the most marvelous thing in the world to be old and wear gowns and gloves and hats with feathers.

CARROLL
: Oh, hats with feathers are admirable things, but along with them goes something altogether unlike gowns and gloves. First the squint in the eye and then the hard set of the mouth, followed in quick order by the wagging tongue and the shaking finger. One day you turn around and you've become Mrs. Grundy: soberly disapproving of everything that used to give you pleasure.

ALICE
: I can't imagine that! Shan't I always be able to laugh at things?

CARROLL
: Does your mother laugh much?

ALICE
thinks about this
.

ALICE
: No… Not so much as she used to perhaps.

CARROLL
: And it seems to me even our Lorina is not so amused as she used to be.

ALICE
: She got her first corset, you know.

CARROLL
: Alice, you shouldn't talk about such things to a gentleman.

ALICE
: It's made out of whale bone!

CARROLL
: That's why the leviathans are so terribly fat. They've given all their corsets to little girls in Oxford.

ALICE
speaks to
PETER
:

ALICE
: I watched my sister putting on her corset for the first time. I shall never forget it… My mother sat us down, all three girls, and produced it from a gorgeous purple box,
made of Venetian paper I think. I was intoxicated by the box. And then the bone of the corset was
iridescent
. Here was growing up and becoming a woman: and it was
beautiful
… My mother helped Lorina put it on and tighten the laces. Well then I could see it hurt. Lorina cried… And my mother, the look on her face. She was not a woman given to displaying vulnerability. She was our soldier. But on her face… What was it? Not quite sadness. Acceptance. Resignation to something vast, and helpless to change it. Powerlessness… Here was growing up too.

CARROLL
: We'll have to watch Lorina carefully, like a fever-sufferer, and at the first sign of the censorious eye, we'll strike.

ALICE
: What'll we do?

CARROLL
: Make her stand on her head.

ALICE
is amused
.

They walk for a moment
.

CARROLL
is thinking about something
.

CARROLL
: It's only a matter of the clock now. She'll be up and married and raising a litter of her own soon.

ALICE
: Lorina?! She's still a baby.

CARROLL
: She's 13. That's a whole year past the age of consent.

They walk for a beat
.

CARROLL
: Why, in two years
you
could get married.

There is weight to this
.

ALICE
: What was he trying to say?

PETER
: You know exactly.

ALICE
:
I was ten years old
.

PETER
: You had fascinated him. Beaten out your sisters, like you said; your rivals. You sparkled for him. You got your wish.

ALICE
: Stop it.

PETER
: Don't you like love stories?

CARROLL
: Alice, will you not look at me?

PETER
: I thought all little girls enjoyed love stories.

ALICE
: You're a terrible man.

PETER
: And what kind of child were you?

ALICE
: A
child
is what I was!

PETER
: Not after that night. Might as well start chewing off your leg.

ALICE
: You don't know anything about it! You didn't walk with him. You didn't feel his
suffering
. Like a vibration next to me, like a tuning fork, his
need
was overwhelming.

CARROLL
: Alice? Please look at me.

ALICE
pretends to peer ahead for her sisters
.

ALICE
: Where have they gone? Can you see my sisters? I should catch up with them.

CARROLL
: Of course.

ALICE
: All right. See you later, sir.

CARROLL
: Alice – I've almost finished your story.

ALICE
: You're writing it down, I'd forgotten. That's marvelous.

She moves off quickly
.

CARROLL
immediately stops walking. He stands alone
.

ALICE
recovers herself
.

ALICE
: What would I have done if I looked back and saw him standing there? Would my heart have broken?

PETER
: Does it now?

ALICE
: Children don't have hearts yet, not really. They haven't been hurt into the need for one… You know, Mr. Davies, I think they were born out of sadness, Alice and Peter. Out of
loneliness
, wouldn't you say?

PETER
: Uncle Jim was the loneliest man I ever knew. For a time he could be a part of us, one of the boys, but that couldn't last because…

He stops, realizing where this has gone, inevitably
…

PETER
:
Because all children, except one, grow up
…

PETER PAN
flies in. He's full of bravado and nerve and looks exactly as you imagine
PETER PAN
to look
.

PETER PAN
:
I ran away the day I was born! I heard father and mother talking about what I was to be when I became a man. I don't ever want to be a man. I always want to be a little boy and to have fun. So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among the fairies
.

PETER
: He created the one boy who would never grow up and leave him.

ALICE
approaches
PETER PAN
:

ALICE
:
Wendy felt at once that she was in the presence of a tragedy
.

PETER PAN
:
Would you like an adventure now, or would you like to have your tea first?

ALICE
:
What kind of adventure
?

PETER PAN
: I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back, and away we go
!

PETER
: Away we go…

BARRIE
: To fly and fight and fly again. Shall we do that, Peter?

PETER PAN
:
How clever I am! Oh, the cleverness of me!

CARROLL
, who has not moved, looks up
.

CARROLL
:
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had
peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it
…

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
pops up from a trap door, like one of the Tenniel illustrations come to life. She's a bold and curious girl
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
And what's the use of a book without pictures or conversations?!

CARROLL
:
So she was considering, in her own mind
…

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
As well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid
…

CARROLL
:
Whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies –

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
When suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her!

PETER PAN
and
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
linger nearby
.

They are curious about their real-life counterparts. They interact, examine, imitate, and shadow them periodically throughout the play
.

ALICE
: Once she was born, part of me ceased to exist. As if she had taken part of me.

PETER
: Or like a brother.

ALICE
: Yes! Like I had another sister.

PETER
: Another rival?

ALICE
: No, a twin…
A shadow
.

PETER
: That's it.

ALICE
: Even when I had forgotten her for weeks on end, years on end, I would turn, and even be a little surprised, for there she was.

PETER PAN
shadows
PETER
, almost like a game for him. Not for
PETER
though
.

PETER
: Sometimes I tried to forget him.
Always
I tried to forget him. It was unremitting my whole life: “Peter Pan joins the Army”, “Peter Pan marries”, “Peter Pan opens
publishing firm” … There was a time I drank terribly to forget him. I still do, there's the truth. Or threw myself into love affairs, high drama, anything to forget the shadow. But, invariably, on the happiest of days, when he had been banished fully, I would catch a glimpse…in the shaving mirror…the shop window…behind me on the pavement.

ALICE
: Why did you try to banish him?

He doesn't answer
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
Wendy had looked forward to thrilling talks with Peter about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind
.

PETER PAN
:
Who's Captain Hook?

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
Don't you remember how you killed him and saved all our lives?!

PETER PAN
: I forget them after I kill them
.

PETER
: Because he makes me
remember
.

Beat
.

This doesn't come easily
.

PETER
: When I look at my own children, Mrs. Hargreaves, I think…I think I know what childhood's for. It's to give us a bank of happy memories against future suffering. So when sadness comes, at least you can remember what it was to be happy.

ARTHUR LLEWELYN DAVIES, PETER
's father, enters
.

His neck and jaw are in a horrible leather brace. He is dying. It is 1907
.

PETER
: When it came, I was nine years old. Up until that time we were boys. After that time we were not.

ARTHUR
sits painfully
.

PETER PAN
approaches, watches, almost impassive
.

PETER
: My father… It was a cancer of the jaw and mouth. The word was never spoken in our house. It was a filthy word… Well, the operations began for this thing we didn't say, and didn't end until they had removed half his upper jaw and his palate and his cheekbone. For a time he had an artificial jaw, which was monstrous, he was so disfigured. I couldn't look at him he frightened me so much, my father, more than Captain Hook, more than anything… He could barely speak. And every word had to be carefully chosen for the effort it cost him.

BARRIE
sits with
ARTHUR
. He's very gentle with him
.

PETER
: Barrie was magnificent those last days. The best he ever was. So kind to him, to us all… He paid for everything, you see. My father had lost his job. No one wants a barrister who can't speak, who looks like that… There was no money and no prospects so in the end, my father was trapped…