The Real Peter Pan Read Free

pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing.
    With the Black Lake a mermaids’ lagoon and the surrounding fir trees a tropical forest, together Uncle Jim and the boy began telling a story. This was his way, always had been since he was a child, when one of his friends would tell half of a story he had read, and someone else had to work out the end.
    ‘First I tell it to him,’ said Barrie, ‘then he tells it to me, the understanding being that it is quite a different story; and then I retell it with his additions, and so we go on until no one could say whether it is more his story or mine. A story had to be told together.’
    It is intriguing to read the story of what became the new Act III of Peter Pan and wonder who contributed which parts. Peter and Wendy are marooned on a rock in the mermaid’s lagoon and must surely drown. We may see Michael’s contributions among the prettier parts, including Wendy’s rescue by means of a kite, which he had made only a few days before. Barrie, on the other hand, was always the provocateur in the games with the boys, responsible for the story’s more menacing aspects, and plainly there is his trademark, mock-heroic whimsy here too.
    As for the very last line of the story about death being an adventure, which in an extraordinary way predicts Michael’s own last act on this earth fifteen years later, it is anybody’s guess who putthe idea in Peter’s mind. It had been tossed to and fro since its first utterance. While walking one day in Kensington Gardens one of Michael’s brothers had pointed to two headstones with ‘W St M’ and ‘13a PP 1841’ inscribed on them – they can still be seen on the west side of the Broad Walk in the Gardens today. Uncle Jim said they were gravestones for two children (Walter Stephen Matthews and Phoebe Phelps) who had fallen out of their prams and died. Peter Pan had his work cut out burying dead children, apparently, after 6 p.m. lockout in the Gardens, and would dance on their graves, playing on his pipes to make them laugh as they began their journey in the afterlife. 6
    Barrie had a fascination with the afterlife, and where better to explore it than in the company of the beautiful mermaids of the Black Lake lagoon in such an innocent spirit of adventure as this?
    It is the end of a long playful day on the mermaids’ lagoon. The sun’s rays have persuaded him to give them another five minutes, for one more race over the waters before he gathers them up and lets in the moon. There are many mermaids here … and one might attempt to count the tails did they not flash and disappear so quickly. At times a lovely girl leaps in the air seeking to get rid of her excess of scales, which fall in a silver shower as she shakes them off. From the coral grottoes beneath the lagoon, where are the mermaids’ bed-chambers, comes fitful music. One of the most bewitching of these blue-eyed creatures is lying lazily on Marooners’ Rock…
    Here the mermaids love to bask, combing out their hair in a lazy way. Peter often chats with them and sits on their tails when theyget cheeky. He has already given Wendy one of their combs. The most haunting time at which to see them is at the turn of the moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is dangerous for mortals then.
    ‘Mermaids are such cruel creatures, Wendy, that they try to pull boys and girls like you into the water and drown them.’
    Wendy is uneasy as she surveys the rock, which is the only one in the lagoon and no larger than a table. Since she last looked around a threatening change has come over the scene.