Peter and Alice Read Free Page A

tears himself away. The music fades .
    ALICE : Can’t help yourself.
    PETER : You get caught up.
    ALICE : I know.
    PETER : You can’t breathe.
    ALICE : You don’t want to.
    PETER : That’s their power, these writers, these men of words. Trap baited and sprung, and before you know it you have to chew your leg off to get free.
    ALICE considers BARRIE .
    ALICE : In truth he was a little man.
    PETER : Not when he told his stories.
    ALICE : Who’s the romantic now? … I met him at a reception once and was surprised to find him so terribly diminutive. Famous people should not be so tiny, it seems dishonest.
    PETER : From the first day, he was all words. My brothers and I were playing in the park and the most enormous dog came bounding over. His dog, Porthos, like a lure it was.
    ALICE : There’s that trap again.
    PETER : How he enmeshed himself in our lives! Before long he was following us home and staying for supper, seemed to think it was his right. He just… acquired us … My father was so uncomfortable with him, fully aware he was being supplanted, but what was he to do? My mother loved him, as did we boys… Snap. The trap was sprung.
    He looks at BARRIE .
    PETER : You plain mesmerized us.
    BARRIE : I made you famous.
    PETER : I didn’t ask for it.
    ALICE : Didn’t you?
    PETER : For god’s sake, I was a child. I didn’t know anything!
    ALICE : You listened. You laughed. You sparkled for him. You wanted him to look at you most, to look at you longest. To love you best.
    CARROLL : You’re my favorite, Alice. You’ll always be my favorite.
    ALICE : Your brothers were rivals .
    PETER : Were your sisters?
    ALICE : Yes.
    PETER : It wasn’t that way with us. We were a band of brothers.
    BARRIE : My Lost Boys.
    ALICE : I can see the five of you, each craning over the other, crawling over his lap like puppies. Whose eye will he catch? Who’ll make him smile today?
    PETER : Michael .
    ALICE : What?
    PETER : He loved Michael most… Uncle Jim always said that he made Peter Pan by rubbing the five of us violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame. But that’s not true. It was Michael, bold and fearless Michael… I was never bold. I always had fear.
    ALICE : Of what?
    PETER : What does every child fear? … Captain Hook.
    ALICE : The character?
    PETER : The idea. Means something different for every boy I expect… For me it was no more summers of pirate yarns and playing in the grass. All the boys going to school, moving away and getting separated. My brothers not being my brothers anymore, being someone else’s husband or father, but not my brothers, not really, not like it was. No more father and mother… Just me… That’s a piece of growing up, isn’t it? Learning to name the thing you fear? … Captain Hook.
    CARROLL : Or the Red Queen.
    ALICE : Children’s stories can’t hurt you.
    PETER : You know better.
    ALICE : They don’t exist. There is no Captain Hook.
    PETER : Are you sure? Don’t you sometimes feel him? … When you’re alone, in a dark room, the point of his hook touching the back of your neck?
    ALICE : They can’t hurt you. Not once you grow up.
    CARROLL goes to her:
    CARROLL : But, Alice, you must never grow up! Promise me !
    ALICE : Really, how can I help from growing up?
    CARROLL : Ah, the question of the ages. We’ll have to ask a wise old tortoise. Shall we stroll?
    She’s disturbed by this bit of her past .
    ALICE : That long summer. God, would it never end? … We were walking in town. There were illuminations that evening and the street was radiant. My sisters and our governess had wandered ahead, so it was just Reverend Dodgson and me… It was so rarely that, just the two of us alone. Only twice that I can recall.
    PETER : Truly?
    ALICE : It was a different era, Mr. Davies. Unaccompanied in the presence of a gentleman? It wasn’t done… I