Shades of Neverland (3 page)

The girls walked a couple steps in silence musing over the idea.
 

“Poor Aunt Mildred,” said Wendy. Again imitating, she declared, “She could have married James Christopher
Whitby
heir to the largest bank in all Britannia. She could have been the cream of society. Now look at her—a novelist! Oh, my heart will not bear it!” The friends erupted into fits of giggles.

When both girls had sufficiently calmed, Maimie uttered most sympathetically, “Poor Aunt Mildred,” starting their fits anew. It might have gone on like that all afternoon if the wind had not interceded with amusements of its own.

As fate would have it, a gust of wind snatched Maimie’s handkerchief from her hand as she was trying in vain to mop up tears of laughter. The merry girl then took off after the cloth leaving Wendy behind to catch her breath.

As Maimie gave chase to her handkerchief, she nearly collided with a youth, who not only did not pause to retrieve her item, but did not even seem to notice her plight. Not accustomed to being overlooked, Maimie was mildly vexed by this.

Handkerchief forgotten, she watched indignantly as the young man hurried across the park. Though he had the height and form of a man, his movement was still rather boyish. The effect was not altogether unpleasant to watch. Even with his back to her, his impression conveyed a distinct handsomeness. With growing fascination, Maimie watched him scoop something up from the ground; she could not see what—an animal perhaps. He was cuddling and cooing to the thing so tenderly that her heart stirred and her eyes welled up with tears.

Presently a cross looking nurse wheeling a pram came and snatched the thing away. It was a babe! Maimie could not have been more surprised if the youth had flown. In another instant, another young man, this one darker and stockier, took the youth by the arm, led him out of the park and away from sight.

Meanwhile, Wendy had become annoyed at her friend for tarrying so long over a silly handkerchief! Though Maimie hailed from the finest breeding and family, Wendy thought she sometimes lacked the practicality of common sense and planned to scold her thoroughly on her return. As her friend approached, however, something in Maimie’s countenance made Wendy stop short.

“Maimie, tell! What is it?”

“A babe,” replied the trembling girl. “Fallen from his pram and abandoned by his nurse. Saved by a young man who held the infant so tenderly that my throat lumps to tell of it.”

Turning deathly pale, Wendy took off like a shot, running in the direction from which her friend had come. She ran all the way to the park entrance but saw no boy. When her friend caught up to her, Wendy turned on her grasping her shoulders sharply. “Where did he go?”

“He left. Another young man came to fetch him and they left the park.”

But Wendy would not take this for an answer. She dragged the unfortunate girl all over the park looking for any sign of the youth, but after an hour of searching, all they had to show for their efforts was an abandoned volume of Shakespeare. Exhausted, the girls collapsed on a bench. Even then, Wendy made Maimie miserable in the telling and retelling of her story, prompting her to recall every tiny detail. When she was satisfied she had collected all the information Maimie was able to give, Wendy sat as still as a stone in contemplative silence.

Maimie, concerned for her dearest friend but fearful to break the quiet lest she be cross-examined again, sat stoically by, waiting. Finally, she could bear it no longer. “Wendy,” she ventured. “Are you ill? You are so pale and grave. Do tell what the matter is?” The bewildered girl then broke down crying great big tears.

Wendy, unmoved in her reverie, began to speak. “Last night I dreamt of a young man who was trying to save babies from being lost. Baby after baby kept falling out of his pram while his nurse was looking away. The young man could not save them all. The more babies were lost the younger the man became until he was just a babe himself… lost like all the others.”

Maimie thought for a moment while wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “Wendy, the babes in your dream, were none of them girls?” she asked in earnest.

“Oh no,” Wendy answered gravely. “Girls, you know, are far too clever to fall out of their prams.”

CHAPTER 4

The Girl in the Theatre

It seemed to Wendy that there were no words to describe the complexity of her life. How did one explain an existence overcome with inertia and at the same time hurtling forward toward the inevitable with momentum as unstoppable as a runaway train? On all sides, external forces were pressuring her to make a choice about something in which she had no choice.

So often, she had heard her elders speaking enviously about her youth and the promise of a wonderful future yet to come. Despite their words, she did not feel like she had her whole future ahead of her. On the contrary, Wendy felt that her life was on the verge of ending. She could clearly picture each phase as if she had already lived it. In the blink of an eye she would be a colorless, old woman—the end product of a predictable and safe life. Wendy knew with heartfelt certainty that the person she was, whom she was just beginning to understand, would start to disappear as soon as she became a wife.

Just last week, Maimie had reluctantly announced her engagement to an ageing Viscount. It was a sensible match, giving the Sharpe family a title and replenishing the Viscount’s dwindling wealth. When pressed, Wendy had said to her dearest friend that Viscount
Withington
of Perrin Hall was agreeable, but secretly she was of the opinion that the aging count seemed more interested in his brandy and hunting dogs than his young bride-to-be. In truth, he was the type of husband that made a strong argument for the necessity of a lover.

Wendy sat up in bed pushing her bed tray aside. Poor Maimie—to wed such an insipid man! Yet, the whole world seemed to smile on the match as respectable and sensible. And proper.

Where was the fire of Romeo and Juliet? Surely, the England of Shakespeare had awe-inspiring passion. Where had that romance gone? When had Britain grown so tepid and gray? Try as she might, Wendy could not recall to mind one marriage she had personally observed that exemplified all-encompassing love. Was she, like Maimie, doomed to be an agreeable wife to a passionless husband?

Putting on her slippers and robe, Wendy sat at her dressing table. She was certain James was close to proposing. For nearly a year, she’d succeeded in putting him off. Artfully, she had extolled the virtues of young men who were establishing themselves in business before taking a bride. Often she had praised James for being among them. So far, not wanting to drop in her esteem, James had simply nodded along. Lately however, he took great pains to impress upon her his occupational accomplishments. Being of the same world, Wendy knew that James experienced the same pressures as she. Caught in the same web, it was just a matter of time until they both did exactly what was expected of them.

Wendy brushed her hair absently—at least she had the theatre. The Duke of York’s Theatre had been her saving grace. It was passion in a world of propriety; bursting color in the sepia landscape of her life. It was her sanity. The theatre was the only place where Wendy truly felt alive.

Since her most recent birthday, Wendy had been allowed to attend the Saturday matinee performance with Maimie, unchaperoned. Yet the theatre, like everything in her life, had come at a price. It was no secret that Wendy’s family was at the mercy of her Aunt’s purse strings. Even her ability to go to the weekly matinee relied on the spinster’s generosity and good will. In return, all Wendy needed to do was to
receive
James.

At the start, it had seemed like a small price to pay…to live.

Poor Wendy could not see that the true danger in compromise lies not in the act, itself, but in the precedent. Had she known the extent of her indebtedness and the price her heart would eventually pay, she would not have settled on the bargain so easily.

Every Saturday, Wendy Darling and Mamie Sharpe sat in the first row of the Royal Circle at the Duke of York’s Theatre. No matter what the production, they assembled for their weekly dose of passion-infused freedom. As a result, the faithful friends would often see the same production more than once.

Wendy delighted in being able to discern the slightest difference in movement or lines. On their way home, she would share her observations with Maimie. “Irene outdid herself with the speech in act two today” or “Gerald seemed a bit off this afternoon, don’t you think?” or “Nina was positively radiant!” Wendy regarded each performance with novelty regardless of how many times she had seen it. For Maimie, who was of an easily distracted nature, the novelty lay in being unchaperoned for the entire afternoon.

“What thrills you so about the theatre?” Maimie had once asked her friend as they were strolling through Kensington Gardens after their Saturday matinee.

Wendy hardly knew where to begin. “The stories, the action, the swordplay – all of it! Oh Maimie, I wish I could have such adventures!’

“Wendy, such adventures are just stories. They do not exist in real life.”

“But, dear Maimie, those same stories are created in the imaginations of playwrights, who are real people. Actors, who are real people, act them. One cannot write nor act what one does not know. So those stories must be based in some truth.”

“Imagination is not truth, Wendy; it is the opposite of truth. It is escapism from the ordinary and dullness of our lives.”

“Can a blind man understand what blue is? Or red?” countered Wendy vehemently. “That which springs forth from our imagination must have existed at some time in the past. Even if not evident here and now, our instinct tells us what we create is true. Imagination is where truth and instinct meet to form a world that has been, could be, and perhaps shall be again in the future. When you are watching a play can you not feel it?”

“No,” replied her friend smiling devilishly. “Sometimes I feel sleepy, sometimes I feel hungry, and sometimes, if the actor is handsome, I feel…well, I shall just let you imagine the rest!”

Blushing at the memory, Wendy regarded herself in the mirror. She noticed a small scratch on her left cheek. The crimson welt had the appearance of a new wound. Thoughtfully, she ran her finger over it. Strange, she could not recall where it had come from. Perhaps she had scratched herself in the night. Looking over at her bed—disheveled as if she had been thrashing about—she frowned. Her sleep seemed to be growing more and more agitated.

Wendy gazed out the window trying to recall the dream that had elicited such nocturnal movement. Had she been in a play? She remembered vivid colors more akin to stage scenery than real life. She had been on a great billowy cloud, staring down at a beautiful, mysterious island. Then she was falling…but not from the cloud. No, she was falling from something dark and sinister. Skull and crossbones flashed through her mind.

A pirate ship!

Like Mabel in Pirates of
Penzance
, she’d been captured by villainous pirates. They had forced her to walk the plank. She remembered standing on the coarse wood in her nightdress, shivering as a cold, stormy wind tugged cruelly at her hair. The plank began to retract forcing her to edge backwards toward the dark, tumultuous sea…a final step—then nothing. She was falling to her death. As she fell, her left cheek grazed the edge of the plank. Then—blackness.

Try as she might, she could not recall the rest of the dream. She felt sure, somehow, that there had been no splash. Wendy looked closer at the fresh scratch on her cheek.
What did it mean?

The downstairs clock struck the hour shaking her from her reverie. Today she and Maimie were to see a new production of The Three Musketeers. It was already ten o’clock and Wendy had much to do before her friend’s arrival. Daydreaming could wait; now was the time for action.

Clutching his abdomen, Peter sat up in bed drenched in sweat. As far back as he could remember—that is to say ever since the morning of his arrival at Smythe and Sons—his nights were troubled with mysterious and disturbing dreams. He’d been flying through a stormy sky over a dark and churning sea. A dark, menacing ship bobbed in the distance. As he flew toward the ship, its cannon opened fire with a thunderous crack. The cannonball hit him squarely in the stomach and he lost his air. Then he plunged into blackness.

No matter how hard he tried, he could not remember the rest of the dream…but somehow he knew there had not been a splash. Gingerly, he touched his tender stomach.
What did it
mean?

Peter heard movement in the next room. Griffin was stirring. Today being Saturday, the brothers would soon be making their pilgrimage to Trafalgar Square for what Griffin called Peter’s “weekly communion.”

More than a year ago, the brothers had observed a group of men in high boots and swords making their way through Kensington Gardens. Greatly intrigued, Peter had insisted they follow the men to their destination, wherever it may be. And so the boys followed the strangers down streets and alleys, toward the Thames, and right thru the stage entrance of the Duke of York’s Theatre. The men, as it turned out, were actors in the company and scheduled to rehearse the swordfight from Romeo and Juliet. Instantly, Peter was hooked!

For Peter, the theatre opened up a world of adventure that had previously existed only in his imagination. Before his eyes, the creations of Shakespeare, Wilde, Chekhov, Ibsen, and Shaw came to life full of wit and passion. Peter worshipped these actors; these men and women who could make him laugh or cry at their whim. Their characters touched his soul. Whether Shylock, Earnest,
Treplev
, or John Tanner; they spoke to him in truths and he was richer for knowing them.

At first, the stage manager shooed the boys away but, at Peter’s insistence, they returned week after week. However, since the theatre always had need of free labor, and since the crew quickly tired of tripping over them, they were promptly put to work backstage. For Peter there was nothing better than being a part of the theatre. It became his first great love. Over the past year, he had done nearly every task from painting scenery to pulling the curtain. Ironically, it was in executing the latter task, that Peter’s great love was displaced by one even greater.

On the eve of Peter’s birthday—or more accurately his anniversary of waking up on Sir William
Smythe’s
doorstep—the assistant stage manager, known simply as Poole, let Peter pull the curtain for the matinee as a present. On Poole’s command, Peter, in position in the left wing of the stage, began to pull the rope to open the curtain. As the veil between the stage and the audience parted, Peter had a clear view of the patrons in the first row of the Royal Circle.

 
It was her expression that instantly caught his attention. The look of expectancy and pure rapture on her face would have put the angels to shame! The play began and she smiled releasing such undisguised joy that Peter, too, grinned from ear to ear.

She was the loveliest creature that Peter had ever seen. Not fashionably pale like so many young ladies her age, this girl seemed to glow with ruddy color. Her cheeks naturally blushed a rosy pink. Her full, rose-petal mouth conveyed volumes with even the slightest movement; a small smirk registered amusement; the tiniest pout hinted concern. Whether smiling in pleasure or biting her lower lip in distress, the effect was overwhelming.

She had large, perceptive blue eyes that overflowed with emotion and captured his being. When some action on stage caused her to look his way, she would stare down with eyes so bright that they seemed to bore two holes to the earth, and Peter lost sense of everything but her. Laughing or crying, the girl regarded the stage with such fierce passion that it caused Peter’s heart to rise to his mouth.

Every Saturday Peter stood transfixed in the stage shadows mastering the expressions of her beautiful face. It was apt—as Peter had learned through inquiry—that her name was Wendy Darling because nothing would ever be more darling to him than she.

Even now, alone in his room, the mere thought of her caused his heart to heave. Sighing, he closed his eyes wondering what her hair would smell like, whether she would feel hot or cold to his touch, what her voice would sound like murmuring softly against his chest?

Griffin, having never seen his brother so overcome or so helpless, had taken it upon himself to make inquiries as to the young lady’s circumstances. Being the practical older brother, he tried to make Peter face reality of their different stations. But no matter what he argued he could not sway Peter from the object of his affections.