Peter and Alice (5 page)

CARROLL
: Come with me, Alice! Double quick!

CARROLL
and
ALICE
hurry into the darkroom
.

Light almost disappears. They are now lit by the muted glow of the darkroom
.

ALICE
: Into the darkroom! Shut the door. Like being lost at the bottom of the ocean, submerged in the deep dark.

PETER PAN
: With the sea creatures!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Are you happy now?

ALICE
: The plate eased into the solution of acid and sulphate…back and forth, back and forth… What could be more thrilling than to see the negative gradually take shape,
yourself
gradually take shape?

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: There you are… But in reverse, topsy-turvy, like everything in Wonderland. You and not you.

ALICE
: Even now, all these years later, the odor of certain chemicals brings me back there, to that room, on that day… This was the second and final time we were alone.

CARROLL
: Look, I'm starting to see you…

ALICE
: Can't my sisters watch?

CARROLL
: The door's shut now. We'd ruin everything… There's your face emerging…

ALICE
: I don't know that I like my expression. I seem a bit dour.

CARROLL
: You seem precisely you, precisely now. It's this moment, captured forever, never changing.

ALICE
: Only it's that moment back there and I've already changed.

Beat
.

CARROLL
continues to develop the picture
.

CARROLL
: Do you think you'll change much as you get older?

ALICE
: I should hope so. Who wants to remain the same forever?

CARROLL
: Do you think you'll remember me?

ALICE
: I don't know.

CARROLL
: Ah.

ALICE
: I'm bound to meet lots of people in my life, and some very memorable. I should think you would be one of the most memorable, but I can't say for certain.

CARROLL
: It's a fleeting time, this we have… When you're like you are now.

ALICE
: You mean when I'm eleven?

CARROLL
: P-p-p-partly that.

ALICE
: Is that why you take so many photographs? So you won't forget?

CARROLL
: I'll never forget. But you will. You'll move on to your adulthood of ways and means, of fancy dress balls and that bluff good fellow you're going to marry, all the things that will make up the sum of your life. And a happy life it will be I know… But no reason to be sad for me. For I have this, don't I?

ALICE
: But that's not me… I know that's not really me.

Beat
.

He continues to work on the picture for a moment
.

CARROLL
: You're coming along nicely… You see how you are? … Never growing older, never growing wiser… Like in my heart.

ALICE
:
(To
PETER
.)
I didn't understand fully.

PETER
: But you understood enough.

CARROLL
: I have a wish for my child-friends. Do you know what it is?

ALICE
: That we always stay like we are. But I don't understand why.

He stops
.

He considers whether to go on
.

CARROLL
: In the place called Adulthood, there's precious few golden afternoons. They've gone away to make way for other things like business and housekeeping and wanting everyone to be the same, just like you, all the lives lived in neat hedgerows, all excess banished, all joyous peculiarities excised. It's grim and shabby. There are no Mad Hatters and there are no Cheshire Cats, for they can't endure the
suffering
of the place.

ALICE
: Please stop…

CARROLL
: That's the p-p-p-place called Adulthood… I'm there now. You'll be there soon enough. And you'll never leave… But here and now, in this room, and on this glass plate, and in the story I'm writing, you'll never be there…
And you'll never be hurt. And you'll never be heart-sick. And you'll never be alone… You will be beloved.

ALICE
is near tears
.

ALICE
: I have to go.

CARROLL
: It'll ruin the picture.

ALICE
: May I go?

Beat
.

CARROLL
: Go, Alice.

She quickly leaves the darkroom, moves away from
CARROLL
, trying to recover her equilibrium
.

PETER PAN
:
(Disappointed.)
That was an awful story!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Shhh.

ALICE
looks at
CARROLL
.

ALICE
: Poor wounded soul. Everlastingly tormenting himself about a sin that didn't exist, but was completely true… I think the photographs were just a way to give him a safe framework to explore some unknown and dangerous landscape. He transformed his desires into paper and silver nitrate. What could be more innocuous?

PETER
: Perhaps we all do that when we grow up. Find safe ways to make dangerous trips.

PETER PAN
: Generally the pirate lagoon is more dangerous than the Indian camp.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Except when it's the other way around.

PETER PAN
: Exactly! … It'll be dark soon. Help me find some wood for a campfire.

PETER PAN
and
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
assemble a campfire
.

ALICE
: I went home that day and told my mother of our conversation in the darkroom. What I could understand of it… She didn't let us see him after that. She made me burn
all his letters. All that special purple ink he used, up in flames… A year later I received the manuscript of “Alice's Adventures Underground” in the post. In his own hand, with his own drawings… I never thanked him.

PETER
: And you never saw him again?

ALICE
: Much later. When I was grown and married. We had tea with my sister Lorina… We were cordial strangers… The golden afternoon was over. I thought it was going to be endless. But it was as quick as the beating of a dragonfly's wing.

PETER PAN
and
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
ignite their representation of a campfire
.

ALICE
and
PETER
are drawn toward it as well…it suggests
CARROLL
's letters burning, the smoke drifting up
.

They all huddle by the fire, it's warm and intimate… We're in a beautiful representation of Neverland now
.

ALICE
: Lord, as many days as are left to me, I'll never forget those letters burning… It was the cruelest thing I'd ever seen: all the lovely words, all his heart's devotion,
gone
. As if they never existed… It was the first time I realized that things don't always stay the same…
(she watches the smoke drift away)…
There it goes; into the vapors… Should life really be that delicate?

PETER
: Life was supposed to be strong and hearty. Like a pirate.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: But sometimes it's gossamer, like Tinker Bell.

PETER PAN
: Like a Mock Turtle's tear… It gets cold at night in Neverland. He didn't write about that.

PETER PAN
shivers, a little chilled
.

PETER
unconsciously puts his arm around him
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: There is no night in Wonderland. No one sleeps much.

PETER PAN
: The Dormouse sleeps… The Mad Hatter I think.

ALICE
: Would the Mad Hatter dream about being sane?

PETER
: Believe me, he would.

ALICE
: And Peter Pan, what would he dream of?

PETER PAN
: Mother.

ALICE
takes in the lovely fire, the stillness, the beautiful nighttime setting
.

ALICE
: It's enchanting here.

PETER
: Oh yes…

He wanders forward, holding
PETER PAN
by the hand
.

PETER
: Neverland is enchanting; it always was to me… I remember the first time I saw the play. I thought it was all real, you remember?

PETER PAN
: Yes.

PETER
: I thought you were real and Captain Hook was real and the painted flats were endless vistas.

PETER PAN
: Aren't they?

PETER
: If they were you would have flown off forever, never to be seen again, onto the next…enchantment.

He leaves
PETER PAN
and steps forward alone
.

PETER
: I wanted to live there, Mrs. Hargreaves… From my box, the first time I saw the play, my brothers at my side, Uncle Jim busy somewhere backstage, I saw Neverland come to life. It was real. It was real… And it was so beautiful… I could fly.

PETER PAN
: You can.

PETER
: After the performance Uncle Jim took us backstage. It was a mad bustle, even that was thrilling. I mean I knew it wasn't
actually
real, I knew they were all actors, and we were in a theatre… But I needed to know if this place existed, if it were somehow
true
, even though it wasn't real.
So as the party was going on and everyone was celebrating I wandered onto the stage by myself. Just me… How large it was… I saw the painted backdrop of Neverland. The pirate ship…the wooden moon… And I closed my eyes and spread my arms… And it was true.

ALICE
: Through the looking glass…

PETER
: For a moment… Then I opened my eyes and heard the party, and Uncle Jim calling me, and my brothers laughing… And life went on.

ALICE
: But it was true.

PETER
: When I was a child.

Beat
.

ALICE
: So was Wonderland. I could chart every foot of it. But the depths of Mr. Carroll, those anguished letters… Those were the Jabberwocky, the dangerous, impenetrable things.

PETER
: Uncle Jim wrote letters too, compulsively, hundreds of them. He poured out his heart to us.

ALICE
: He did love you.

PETER
: Oh yes. But it was a melancholy kind of love, because it was always entwined with an inevitable sadness. He knew we were going to grow up and leave him alone… First George to Eton and Oxford and then Jack and then me and then Michael… Michael, who always set his truest course…

BARRIE
: Dear Michael, The Adelphi House is haunted tonight. I think your brother's namesake is tapping at the window in search of his shadow. Sometimes I feel I'm in search of my shadow as well, but he's busy with his mannish pursuits at Eton…

PETER
: They wrote to each other every single day from the time Michael went to school… Mountains of letters, oceans of words… Sometimes the separation was too much for
Uncle Jim and he would go to Eton and stand on the fringes of the playing fields, watching him from a distance.

ALICE
: Like a lover.

PETER
: Like a sailor's wife waiting for her husband to return from the sea.

ALICE
: And the letters…and the devotion that inspired them… all gone now…like a Mad Hatter's dream…smoke and ash…a little dust in the corner of the box you keep your toys.

She looks at
PETER
.

ALICE
: It is a love story, as you promised.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
hops up, breaks the mood, turning to
PETER PAN
:

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Come here, boy! Dance with me.

PETER PAN
: No!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Why not?

PETER PAN
: Because you're very ugly.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: No I'm not.

PETER PAN
: Because I've many important things to do. There's a staff meeting this morning and I've a luncheon appointment at Simpson's.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: If this is a love story there has to be dancing.

PETER PAN
: Not with me!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Don't you want to fall in love?

PETER PAN
: When I'm old and practically dead. And since I'm immortal, that's never, so there.

He stomps away
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
is hurt
.

ALICE
steps forward and offers her hands
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
looks at her, smiles and takes her hands
.

Gentle music as they dance
.

REGINALD
(
REGGIE
)
HARGREAVES
enters crisply, like a fresh breeze. He's a good-looking, athletic, hearty young man. It is 1879
.

REGGIE
: Alice Liddell, you promised
me
the next dance!