Peter and Alice (7 page)

PETER PAN
: Even better!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: And then of course she sent her sons to the war.

The music and lighting change
.

It is now 1915... The trenches of France...young men off to war… perhaps the distant sound of battle
.

This affects
ALICE
and
PETER
strongly
.

PETER PAN
is delighted:

PETER PAN
: Oh well done! Now we're going to have some
action
! No more dancing! Time for some fisticuffs, my lady!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Boys! You're only happy with dirt on your knees and blood on your nose.

PETER PAN
begins to play his pipe. The tune eventually turns melancholy
.

ALICE
: Is there a moment you grow up? … Not an evolution, not the passage of a summer or a year.
A single moment
… Perhaps it was when my boys first put on their uniforms. The moment it all changed.

CARROLL
: You must hold still, Alice…

ALICE
: When everything fell to pieces.

PETER
: Like Humpty-Dumpty.

ALICE
: Cracked apart.

PETER
: Into a thousand pieces.

BARRIE
: To fight, and fly, and fight again…

ALICE
: The whole fiction of my comfortable life.

PETER
: Never to make sense again.

ALICE
:
Never
.

PETER PAN
: I don't know that word.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: It's a twelve-year-old word in truth.

PETER
: Once the war came, everything you thought you knew…

ALICE
:
Was wrong
.

PETER
: The answer is yes. There's a moment. One day I killed a man, you see. In the deep, dark woods. The forest was choked up with bodies and mud. I was knee deep in it. If you step on a body you can split the stomach and release the gasses, and the stench is appalling, so I was looking down, trying not to step on any corpses, I looked up and the fellow was suddenly just there in front of me and I shot him…

ALICE
: I sent my boys off to the war. So handsome in their uniforms. So smart they were.

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

PETER
: I didn't even know if he was a German, his uniform was so muddy. I just shot him in the chest. I was so scared… I sat down on the ground and watched him die. I knew he was dead when he didn't move, but the fleas did. They crawled away from him, like they knew, like they were abandoning him, it was so sad… I sat on the ground and I watched him die… Then I went mad.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
But I don't want to go among mad people!

PETER PAN
:
Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
How do you know I'm mad?

PETER PAN
:
You must be. Or you wouldn't have come here
.

PETER
: Shell-shock they call it, but it wasn't a shock.
It was a numbing
. I felt absolutely nothing as my life cracked open and spilled out of my head, started pooling around my feet… I was seconded home, in shame. I went to asylums. Light bulb never off: suicide watch. Rubber mouth guard so I wouldn't bite my tongue off… But my life was still pooling around my feet. I couldn't stop it. I was all cracked open.

ALICE
: I saw my boys go away to war…
And everything that had ever happened in my life led me to believe they would return
.

ALICE
waits
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
goes to
ALICE
, wiser than her years:

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a little longer she tried for his sake not to have growing pains… But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter no more than a little dust in the box in which she kept her toys…

The moment has come
.

It's inevitable
.

PETER PAN
: Third Battalion barracks. Company C. 10th May 1915… Officially reported that Captain Alan Hargreaves killed in action 9 May 1915 please to convey deep regret and sympathy of their Majesties the King and Queen and Commonwealth government in loss that parents have sustained in death soldier reply paid Colonel Boscombe.

ALICE
is shattered
.

PETER PAN
: … officially reported that Second Lieutenant George Llewelyn Davies killed in action 15th March 1915 please to convey deep regret and sympathy…

PETER
:
And all the king's horses, and all the king's men…

PETER PAN
: … officially reported that Captain Rex Hargreaves killed in action 25th September 1916 please to convey deep regret and sympathy…

ALICE
is going to collapse
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
quickly brings a chair
.

ALICE
sits
.

She is lost in herself
.

PETER
as well
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
wanders into the no-man's-land of the war
.

A beat as she takes in the desolation…and then turns to
CARROLL
tenderly:

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: In the place called Adulthood there are no Cheshire Cats…for they can't endure the suffering of the place.

CARROLL
steps to her
.

Beat
.

He bows deeply
.

CARROLL
: Queen Alice.

He begins to leave the stage, but…

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Mister Dodgson…

He stops
.

She bows to him
.

He is touched by the gesture
.

He then leaves the stage, and the story
.

Beat
.

MICHAEL DAVIES
enters. He's a beautiful and poetic young man, fragile
.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: My, he's handsome… Maybe he'll dance with me.

PETER PAN
: He won't.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
: Who is he?

PETER PAN
: Michael… My shadow.

PETER
: (
To
BARRIE
.) You used to stand on the fringes of the playing fields, watching him…

BARRIE
: I cannot picture a summer day that does not have Michael skipping in front. That is summer to me…

PETER
: Uncle Jim… White or black?

Beat
.

BARRIE
: Black.

BARRIE
and
PETER
sit, play chess.
MICHAEL
hovers near them, he's nervous about something
.

They are in
BARRIE
's palatial flat at the Adelphi Terrace, where
MICHAEL
lives when he's not at Oxford. It is 1921
.

MICHAEL
: Uncle Jim, I'd thought I'd bring my friend Buxton up to town next weekend. I think you'd like him.

BARRIE
: I need a pipe.

MICHAEL
: Let me.

He cleans, prepares and fills
BARRIE
's pipe during the following. It's quietly domestic
.

PETER
: Your move.

BARRIE
: You're thinking strategically.

PETER
: Played a lot in the war. And not too much else to do in the nutter hospital.

BARRIE
: I wish you wouldn't talk like that.

PETER
: Sorry, “sanitarium.” Oh yes, that's much better.

MICHAEL
: (
Continuing to
BARRIE
.) I know you don't always approve of my mates from school but Buxton's your sort, not a playwright I mean, but
exceptional
really. Sort of a poet, I guess.

BARRIE
: Do what you wish, Michael.

MICHAEL
: That means you'd rather I didn't.

BARRIE
: It means nothing of the sort.

PETER
: A poet?

MICHAEL
: Sort of a poet, yes.

PETER
: What sort?

MICHAEL
: I meant he writes poetry.

BARRIE
makes a move on the chessboard
.

PETER
: You're not thinking.

He quickly takes a piece
.

They play for a moment as
MICHAEL
continues to prepare
BARRIE
's pipe
.

BARRIE
: (
To
MICHAEL
.) Only I see you so rarely.

MICHAEL
: So you'd rather I didn't bring him?

PETER
: Oh just bring him!

MICHAEL
: Not if Uncle Jim doesn't want me to.

BARRIE
: I've no hold on you, Michael, you're twenty years old, do as you like.

MICHAEL
: Oh God!

PETER
: Just bring him!

MICHAEL
: I want you to meet him. It's important to me.

BARRIE
: Why?

MICHAEL
: Because he's my friend.

BARRIE
: Your “poet” friend.

MICHAEL
: I suppose.

BARRIE
: You've a lot of friends.

MICHAEL
: Do I?

BARRIE
: And now a “poet.”

MICHAEL
: Yes, I–

BARRIE
: What next, I wonder?

PETER
: (
To
BARRIE
.) Don't.

MICHAEL
: Look – It's because I – I want you to know him. It
means something
to me that you know him.

BARRIE
: What are you trying to say?

MICHAEL
: We've talked about going away, that's all.

BARRIE
and
PETER
stop
.

PETER
: Going where?

MICHAEL
: France. Paris… To study painting.

BARRIE
: You'll do no such thing.

PETER
: Painting?

MICHAEL
: Yes! Painting! I want to study painting. Buxton says I've got some talent and we ought to chuck it here and go off to Paris for a while and make a go of it.

BARRIE
: I won't hear a word of it. You're being childish.

PETER
: Stop it.

BARRIE
: (
Ice
.) I'll speak my mind in my own house if you'll allow me that… (
To
MICHAEL
.) … You've got to finish your studies and be a practical man. You've got to grow up, lad. Do you think I'm going to pay your tradesman's bills forever?

This strikes like an arrow
.

BARRIE
: I've no interest in pictures myself. Don't see the point of them. Lot of cloud-spinning, I've always thought. But if that's what you want to do, live that sort of life…
Bohemian
… Is that what you'd call it? … Michael…
Bohemian
?

MICHAEL
: I don't know.

BARRIE
: Whatever you call it, who am I to stop you? Do what you will. I don't need to meet this “poet” of yours.

MICHAEL
is near tears
.

BARRIE
: I'll have my pipe now.

MICHAEL
hands him his pipe and quickly moves away from the scene; upset
.

PETER PAN
impulsively goes to comfort him. The lights change as they move away, isolated in their togetherness
.

ALICE
:
You ought to be ashamed of yourself, said Alice, a great girl like you to go on crying in this way! Stop it this moment, I tell you…

PETER PAN
:
But she went on just the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all around her, and reaching half down the hall…

ALICE
:
Her first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea…

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
:
However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears that she had wept…

MICHAEL
:
I wish I hadn't cried so much, said Alice. I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears
.

BARRIE
: Dear Arthur, Every year since your death I have written to tell you of your sons and their progress through life. I've tucked the letters away into a neat bundle, tied with a ribbon. Never did I think I could have a more difficult composition than that of 1915 when we lost George…

Light like rippling water begins to isolate
MICHAEL
and
PETER PAN
.

BARRIE
: But this year, in the month of May, 19th of the month, Michael and his friend Buxton went to Sandford Pond, a few miles south of Oxford. Perhaps you recall it? It's a place where many of the boys swim…