Peter and Alice (4 page)

BARRIE
: Don't speak, Arthur. Let me tell you about the boys. George wrote to me from Eton that he wants to come for the weekend, but I wonder if —

ARTHUR
: Jim.

BARRIE
: Are you sure you should?

ARTHUR
holds up a hand, he must try to speak
.

This is agony:

ARTHUR
: There is no money… There is my wife… There are five boys.

It is too hard to continue
.

BARRIE
: Shall I try to find the words for you?

ARTHUR
nods
.

BARRIE
: You're thinking about them now, about the future. You wonder once you've gone what'll become of them.

ARTHUR
nods
.

BARRIE
: You look at me and you feel apprehension.

ARTHUR
nods
.

BARRIE
: For you don't think I'm a good man. For you think I'm closed and cold. For you think my sentimental attachment to your boys is unnatural in ways you can't fathom, and maybe you could if you were a more learned fellow. But in your heart you feel it's not right.

ARTHUR
nods
.

BARRIE
: Still you hope that your boys are strong enough to stand on their own two feet and be the fine young men they are going to be, no matter what I do.

ARTHUR
nods
.

BARRIE
: But now we're up against it and we can't do things by halves. This room will be closed and shuttered soon, and no one will come in… And what becomes of the boys? Who's to pay for school? Who's to keep up the house and staff? … Who's to be their father now?

ARTHUR
nods
.

BARRIE
: Are you giving them to me, Arthur?

Beat
.

ARTHUR
nods
.

BARRIE
: Free and clear?

ARTHUR
nods
.

BARRIE
: Would you say it?

ARTHUR
: Yes.

BARRIE
: Yes, what, Arthur? I need you to say it. I'm so sorry. I must hear it.

ARTHUR
: My boys…my boys…my boys…are yours.

Beat
.

BARRIE
: Peter, take your father out. Mark him now. That's a good man there. You'll rarely see his like, and never his better.

PETER PAN
leads
ARTHUR
away
.

PETER
watches
BARRIE
.

PETER
: What did he feel? He had got exactly what he wanted, but he wasn't triumphant. He wasn't crowing like Peter Pan over the body of Hook. Maybe grown ups don't crow.

ALICE
: What do you feel?

PETER
: Like I turned the first page of a book.

ALICE
: What's the book called?

PETER
: The Morgue… I don't run from the tears. I know that's part of life. Not the crocodile tears of a fairy story, but genuine mourning…
Anguish
… Shall we go on? There's more.

ALICE
: No. We needn't.

PETER
: Alice in Wonderland is bolder.

ALICE
: She was younger.

PETER
: More resilient?

ALICE
: More uncaring.

PETER PAN
:
Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me!

ALICE
: Ah, the dear old days when I could fly!

PETER PAN
:
Why can't you fly now?

ALICE
:
Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the way
.

PETER PAN
:
Why do they forget the way?

ALICE
strokes his hair gently
.

ALICE
:
Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless
.

PETER
:
(To
BARRIE
.)
… If only that were true. I wasn't heartless. I felt everything too much.

BARRIE
: You didn't know yourself as boy.

PETER
: Of course I did.

BARRIE
: No, you remember yourself as you are now, only smaller.

PETER
: It was my life, I remember it.

BARRIE
: You weren't the man you are.

PETER
: And I was heartless?

PETER PAN
: I'm not heartless.

BARRIE
: You were never one to cry.

PETER
: What does that mean?! What does that matter?!

PETER PAN
: Crying isn't for pirates!

PETER
: Not like I didn't feel anything.

ALICE
: But did you feel enough?

PETER PAN
: If I'm sad on Monday I never remember it on Tuesday, so why bother in the first place?

PETER
: God, it's all I can do nowadays to keep from crying! Sometimes I think I'll go mad from all the tears. Like a ridiculous little girl…
(To
ALICE
.)
… Like
you
, drowning in a pool of your own tears!

ALICE
: Not me. Alice.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Me?

BARRIE
: This makes me very sad, Peter.

PETER
: Good, you deserve to be! I don't mean that.

BARRIE
: At the grave of your father I looked over the faces, the five of you… And you, Peter, cheeks dry, so stoic… Beautiful and wounded.

PETER
: As beautiful and wounded as Michael?

BARRIE
doesn't respond
.

PETER
calms down
.

PETER
: I wonder… Was I old enough to understand what death was? Things go away and don't come back? That made no sense. Peter Pan always came back. A tap at the window and there he was. That's what you taught me, Uncle Jim.

BARRIE
: Not a tear for your father.

PETER
: I've cried about it since.

BARRIE
:
Or your mother
.

Difficult beat
.

PETER
explains to
ALICE
:

PETER
: It was only three years after my father died. My mother fainted one afternoon, right there in the parlor, her arm fell, I remember that, fell to the carpet and stretched out towards me. Her maid cut her stays so she could breathe. I don't remember if the bone was iridescent, sorry. In any event, we forgot all about it… And then it happened again… It was cancer. Again.

ALICE
: I am so sorry…

PETER
: We were cursed. Like something from one of his melodramas: the family curse… At least she went quickly, with minimal disfigurement, which she would have found intolerable… And from then on, we were his.

BARRIE
: My boys.

PETER
: To exploit.

PETER PAN
: To immortalize!

PETER
: What child wants to be immortal?!

ALICE
: What child thinks he isn't?

PETER
: Did you think you were going to live forever?

ALICE
: I still do.

PETER
smiles
.

ALICE
: May I ask a personal question?

PETER
: You seem incapable of asking anything but.

ALICE
: Were you interfered with?

PETER
: Molested you mean? By Barrie? No, nothing like that… Not
physically
anyway.

This strikes a chord with her
.

PETER
: To be asked to reckon with things beyond your years? Is that to be molested? … To be fixated upon. To be kept too close.

ALICE
: To be forced into feelings you don't understand. To be spoken to about emotions too strong for youth, too deep for childhood.

PETER
: To always disappoint because you don't love back enough.

PETER PAN
: You love back as much as you can, that's all.

ALICE
: To be the dream child in a dream you couldn't possibly comprehend.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Nor should you, because you're only a child.

ALICE
:
Being made to grow up too soon
.

PETER
: Yes. That's it. We've arrived.

ALICE
: Where?

PETER
: At our story… At Peter and Alice.

ALICE
: The love story?

PETER
: Partly… And partly that other book. The endlessly painful one with no happy ending.

ALICE
: Honestly! I gather it's fashionable among young people to be dreadfully grim and depressive, you wear it as a badge of pride, but it's rather a bore. Now I've had my
share of difficulties, but I've always carried on with some hope.

PETER
: “Difficulties” you call it? That's a comfortable euphemism, like finding another word for cancer.

ALICE
: Loss?
Death
? Is that what you want to hear?

PETER
: That's what it is.

ALICE
: I'm not afraid of the words, but I don't luxuriate in them.

PETER
: Is that what I do?

ALICE
: I think so.

PETER
: That's just who I am.

ALICE
: It's indulgent.

PETER
: Sorry.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Stop arguing, it's too boring!

PETER PAN
: Or start fighting at least! Who has a sword?

PETER
:
(Continuing to
ALICE
.)
All right then, let me ask you: these feelings of loss, do you remember the very first time you felt them? … And were you the same person after?

ALICE
: How can I remember something like that? It's too vague.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
approaches
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Now she's telling stories.

PETER PAN
: I love stories! Are there Indians?

ALICE
: I'm not telling stories.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Of course you are! You remember perfectly.

PETER PAN
: And pirates and monsters and ships and battles and motorcars and balloon trips and undersea creatures and…!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: The darkroom, silly!

This stops
ALICE
.

CARROLL
:
Alice, keep still
!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Don't you remember the darkroom?

PETER
: Tell me.

ALICE
: No.

CARROLL
:
You must stay exactly as you are
!

PETER PAN
: I love stories more than anything. Wendy told stories. And then she grew up.

PETER
: Tell me a story, Wendy.

ALICE
looks at him. So be it
.

ALICE
: My sisters and I had gone to Reverend Dodgson's studio to be photographed. This was not uncommon; we'd done it many times…

CARROLL
: You must hold still, Alice!

ALICE
poses for a picture.
CARROLL
is photographing her; a painstaking and elaborate process in 1863
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
strikes an identical pose
.

CARROLL
goes about the minutiae of his task
.

ALICE
: I smell the chemicals still… Bromide and chloride dissolved to make the solution for the negative… Then like magic out comes the polished glass plate, which had to be perfectly clean, I've never seen anything cleaner, no dust, no imperfections, like the skin of a baby, fresh like youth, I don't know like what, like
innocence
!

PETER
:
(Laughs.)
Oh God!

ALICE
: Don't make me laugh, I'm supposed to be standing still… Then he carefully brushed the solution on the glass with a darling little sable brush I always coveted.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
(Re: sable brush.)
Oh! It's ravishing!

CARROLL
: Don't move! Just a little longer.

ALICE
: Then he whisked the plate into the darkroom to dip it into the silver nitrate and then so gingerly back into the camera, like a surgeon those hands, those soft hands, then a final adjustment to the lens…
(To
CARROLL
.)
… I want to move.

CARROLL
: You'll ruin it all.

ALICE
: Lorina's making faces!

CARROLL
: She's a very silly goose and you're my Queen! Hold still, Queen Alice!

ALICE
: Then the moment! Hold your breath! Lens cap off. Time… stops.

Everyone holds their breath
.

A few frozen moments
.

ALICE
: Lens cap on! Move!