Peter and Alice (6 page)

ALICE
turns to him, surprised
.

REGGIE
: What are you staring at? I've been waiting over there all night like – what? – a Labrador or some other sad sort of whathaveyou. Come on! You won't be so churlish as to renege!

ALICE
: Reggie…?

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
happily hands
ALICE
to
REGGIE
.

REGGIE
: Before we dance, I've got to say something to you. What I mean is…well… Let's clap hands and make a go of it! Lord, what an ass I am! Sorry – didn't mean to say “ass.” Blast it all! Sorry – didn't mean to say–! Look what you do to me, Miss Liddell!

She laughs. He's charming in his inarticulate awkwardness
.

REGGIE
: At least I made you laugh, that's something.

ALICE
: You could always make me laugh.

REGGIE
: I'm an absurd fellow, no use hiding the fact, as if I could, you know me inside and out, those eyes of yours just – ah, what's the word?! – Look here! I'm no scholar, that's God's truth. But I'm a more than commonly good shot and a good bat and a really top-notch spin bowler, I can speak some French, I've got an income and the estate will be wholly mine, and I'm nowhere near good enough for you, I think you might break if I touch you, not that I would ever touch you, with too much vigor I mean! But, but –
Blast
!

He peters out
.

REGGIE
: I've lost the words.

ALICE
: Shall I find them…?

REGGIE
: Please.

ALICE
: I wish you to be my wife.

REGGIE
: That's the second part. The first is this…
(He kneels.)
… I love you. I shall always try to be worthy of you… Say you will be my wife, Miss Liddell.

ALICE
looks at him, but doesn't answer
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: What are you waiting for?!

ALICE
: At the moment… I hesitated.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: But he's so handsome!

PETER PAN
:
(To
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
.)
That's the sort you like: thick-headed kneeling gallants. I'll never kneel to anyone!

PETER
: Why did you hesitate?

ALICE
: I suddenly saw it as a compromise. I would be giving up too much… It was like I was my mother, watching Lorina put on her first corset: resignation to something vast, and helpless to change it.

REGGIE
slumps. He's disheartened
.

REGGIE
: Not much of a lark anymore, is this?

ALICE
: Reggie —

REGGIE
: I'm terribly sorry, Miss Liddell. Forgive me…
(He stands, proceeds with some difficulty.) …
I know you've been raised with certain expectations. You've been around scholars all your life; men of learning and polish. Surely that's what you always imagined for yourself… And I know myself, that's not me, never will be… I had hoped, I see now foolishly, that there was more to life.

Beat
.

REGGIE
: I'll bid you goodnight.

He starts to go
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Wait!

He stops
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
(To
ALICE
.)
Don't let him go!

ALICE
: I wanted to be a writer when I was little, did you know that? I wanted to be an independent woman, like Jane Austen.

ALICE IN WONDELAND
: He's a fine man and he loves you!

ALICE
: Or a poetess.

ALICE IN WONDELAND
: Look at him.

ALICE
: I wanted so much.

Beat
.

She finally looks at
REGGIE
.

ALICE
: I will be your wife.

REGGIE
: Do you mean it?

ALICE
: Heart and soul.

REGGIE
springs to her
.

REGGIE
: God, this is splendid! Dodged a bullet there! Now I've got to talk to your father, should have done that first. Blast! Got it all back-assed – sorry!

He kisses her, ecstatic, and bounds away
.

ALICE
is almost overcome
.

She touches her lips
.

Music builds to a glorious waltz
.

ALICE
: We were married at Westminster Abbey… After the wedding he took me home. The only house I ever lived in outside my father's.

REGGIE
: Place is called Cuffnells, damned if I can tell you why, been the family estate back to good old King so-andso-the-fourth. Some of the richest Hampshire earth going;
plant a stone and it'll grow… Let me present you. Shan't bother with the names, can't remember 'em myself half the time…

He introduces the parade of servants.
ALICE
is in awe of the grandness of the house and the lifestyle
.

REGGIE
: Butler, under-butler, cook, under-cook, footman, other footman, boot boy, coachman, groom, under-groom, head gardener, topiary gardener, under-gardener, and your seven pretty maids all in a row: ladies maid; scullery maid; laundry maid; kitchen maid; other kitchen maid; under-housemaid; other under-housemaid.

PETER PAN
:
(To
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
.)
Say that three times fast!

REGGIE
: You're home, Queen Alice!

A spirited waltz is heard. It's a glittering ball at Cuffnells
.

ALICE
: Who says Wonderland doesn't exist? Who says there are no happy endings? Had I not found mine? … Days and nights of balls and fetes and tableau vivant on the lawns, riding to the hounds, into town for theatre and exhibitions, all those golden things that don't exist anymore, like this music, like the waltz… And then the boys! Best of all, our boys… Alan and Rex and Caryl… Our three sons growing strong and true…

PETER PAN
:
(To
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
.)
Oh, all right! Stop looking at me with those great cow eyes!

He dances with
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
.

ALICE
dances with
REGGIE
.

BARRIE
dances with
CARROLL
.

Even
PETER
is charmed by the music and swirling couples
.

ALICE
: And if as he aged he grew more conservative in his views, tending to be a little stern, a little mean…and if he never read a book, but played golf instead…and had clumsy affairs with those seven pretty maids…and
I was the tiniest bit bored by it…by everything…and I would never be Jane Austen…and I took rather too much laudanum to sleep at all… Well, if that's growing up it held no heartbreak for me. It was not Mr. Dodgson's place called Adulthood, that darkroom horror… It was my life, and in the end my boys made it all worthwhile.

PETER
: Crawling over your lap like puppies.

ALICE
:
My children
. One more marvelous than the last… Alan and Rex and Caryl…

PETER
: George and Jack and Peter and Michael and Nico…

CARROLL
: Alice and Lorina and Edith…

BARRIE
: Wendy and Michael and John…

ALICE
: How could it ever end?

PETER
: If we could only stay here forever.

ALICE
: Stop the clock.

PETER
: Close the book.

ALICE
: Just one more endless summer.

The music suddenly ends as
PETER PAN
breaks the mood
.

Boldly, to
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:

PETER PAN
: I'll never understand grown ups!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Nor I. They have perfectly good breast of guinea hen in front of them, they only want mutton.

PETER PAN
: Any time they're happy, they can't wait to be sad.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Never here and now, always there and later.

PETER PAN
: Always looking at the clock.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Looking over their shoulder.

PETER PAN
: Then back at the clock.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Time for this, time for that, never time for “well, here we are, isn't it glorious?”

PETER PAN
: Go to a party, look at the cake, long for the cake, reach for the cake–

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Don't eat the cake.

PETER PAN
: I love cake.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: I love pie.

PETER PAN
: He loves gin.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: And have you noticed – they're always waiting for it to rain?

PETER PAN
: They carry umbrellas on the sunniest days – which is dangerous because if you're attacked you need one hand for your cutlass and the other for your pistol.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Everyone knows that!

PETER PAN
: Maybe they forgot?

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Sometimes they don't even have pistols.

PETER PAN
: What do they do when the Indians attack?!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: They're always forgetting.

PETER PAN
: When they're not always remembering.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: So there's never time for tarts.

PETER PAN
: Or cutlasses or kites.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Or croquet!

PETER PAN
: Or dancing to the pipes in the deep, dark woods!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Like they used to.

PETER PAN
: I hear the pipes all the time!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: She wasn't always like this, mind, like she is now. She was
wicked
in her day.

PETER PAN
: The old lady? Not likely!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: That darling little sable brush? Pinched it.

PETER PAN
: Good for her!

PETER
: You didn't!

ALICE
: Still have it!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: And she knew men. Grown up gentlemen I mean, in her day. A lot of them.

ALICE
:
(Unpleasantly shocked.)
Oh.

PETER PAN
: He carries a flask and drinks all the time.

PETER
:
(Quickly to
ALICE
.)
I told you that.

PETER PAN
and
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
grow increasingly revelatory, but are entirely without rancor:

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: She took lovers and then grew bored.

PETER PAN
: His children are embarrassed by his drinking.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: She doesn't love all her sons the same.

ALICE
: That's not true!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: 'Tis.

PETER PAN
: He's a great big liar too. Betrays his wife regularly, pretends she doesn't know.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Does she know?

PETER PAN
: Of course she does! He doesn't care.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: She despises tradesmen and blackies and chinkies and pretty much anyone who's not her.

PETER PAN
: He still lives on Barrie's money.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: She bites into her pillow and cries every night.

PETER PAN
: Barrie paid for the publishing house.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: But thinks
other people
crying is weakness.

PETER PAN
: Hates him, but takes the money.

ALICE IN WONDELAND
: She thinks about killing herself.

PETER PAN
: He's hit his children.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: She looks at the bottle of laudanum and wonders.

PETER PAN
: He fears he's going mad.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: She's forgotten how to play croquet.

PETER PAN
:
He's forgotten how to fly
.

ALICE
tries to stop the scene:

ALICE
: Stop this.

PETER
: Mrs. Hargreaves…?

ALICE
: We need to stop this.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: You can't tell us what to do.

PETER PAN
: Never could.

ALICE
: We need to stop right now!

ALICE
tries to escape. But
PETER PAN
and
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
block her way; it's like a game to them. She is increasingly distraught
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Is this a game?

PETER PAN
: What are the rules?

PETER
:
(Concerned.)
Calm down, please…

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Maybe there are no rules!