Books : Peter Pan in Scarlet : Excerpts

Chapter Two: First Find Your Fairy

"Go back!?"

Go back to Neverland? Go back to the mysterious island, with its mermaids, pirates, and redskins? The Old Boys snorted and blustered and shook their heads till their cheeks flapped. Go back to Neverland?

Never!

"Preposterous!"

"Ridiculous!"

"Poppycock!"

"Fol-de-riddle!"

"I'm a busy man!"

In the rosy gloom of her parlour, Mrs. Wendy poured more tea and passed round the cucumber sandwiches. "As I see it, there are three problems," she said, ignoring their cries of protest. "First, we have all grown too big. No one but a child can fly to Neverland."

"Exactly!" Judge Tootles looked down at the straining buttons of his waistcoat. Over the years, he had indeed grown too big, in every direction.

"Secondly, we can no longer fly as we could then," said Mrs. Wendy.

"Well, there you are, then!" Mr. John remembered the evening when a boy dressed in a suit of leaves had flown into his life and taught him, too, to fly. He remembered leaping from the open bedroom window and that first heart-stopping moment when night had caught him in its open palm. He remembered dipping and soaring through the black sky, blipped by bats, nipped by the frost, keeping tight hold of his umbrella.... Oh, how brave he had been in those days! Mr. John gave a start as Mrs. Wendy dropped a sugar lump into his cup with a pair of silver tongs: his thoughts had been up among the moonbeams.

"And before we can fly," Mrs. Wendy was saying, "we need fairy dust."

"Then it is plainly impossible." The Honourable Slightly looked down at the bread crumbs on his trousers, and a lump filled his throat. He remembered fairy dust. He remembered it glittering on his skin like water drops. He remembered the tingling sensation it sent racing through his veins. Even after all these years, he still remembered.

"I think it is best if we do not tell anyone we are going," said Mrs. Wendy. "It might upset those we love. Also it might attract the attention of the newspapers."

There did not seem to be any arguing with her, so the Old Boys wrote down what she said, in their appointment diaries, under the heading Jobs to Be Done:

Must not be grown up.
Must remember how to fly.
Must find fairy dust.
Must think of something to tell the wife.

"I think Sunday week would be best," said Mrs. Wendy. "There is a full moon that night, and the children will not need collecting from school. With luck, this annoying cold of mine will have cleared up too. So, gentlemen. Shall we say June the sixth? I am sure I can rely on you to arrange everything?"

The Old Boys wrote in their appointment diaries:

Sunday, 6th June. Go to Neverland.

Then they sucked their pencils and waited for Mrs. Wendy to tell them what to do next. Wendy would know. Why, even with a cold she did not need an appointment diary to remind her what jobs needed doing!

Next day, Mrs. Wendy's cold kept her from going out, but the Old Boys found themselves in Kensington Gardens with butterfly nets, wandering up and down. Looking for fairies.

There was a stiff breeze blowing. Something white and fluffy brushed Mr. Nibs's face and he gave a shriek. "There's one! It kissed me!" And all the gentlemen went pounding after it. The wind was rising. Other scraps of whiteness scudded past, until the air seemed to be full of flying snowflakes all twirling and dancing, feathery light. The Old Boys trampled the grass flat with running to and fro, swiping at fairies, accidentally swatting each other, whooping and shrieking, "Got one!"

"So have -- OW!"

"Here's one, look!"

But when they peered into their butterfly nets, all they found were the fluffy seed-heads off summer's first dandelions. There was not a single fairy in among the dande-down.

All day they searched. As the sun went down and starlings gathered over the glimmering city, the Old Boys hid themselves among the bushes of Kensington Gardens. Early stars ventured into the sky, their reflections spangling the Serpentine. And suddenly the air was a-flicker with wings!

Jubilant, the ambushers leapt out of hiding and ran to and fro, nets flailing.

"Got one!"

"By Jove!"

"Don't hurt them!"

"Ouch! Watch what you are doing, sir!"

"I say! This is ripping fun!"

But when they turned the nets inside out, what did they find? Midges and moths and mayflies.

"I have one in here! Definitely! Incontrovertibly!" cried Mr. John, cramming his bowler hat back onto his head to trap the captive inside. The others gathered round, jostling to see. The hat came off again, with a sigh of suction; Mr. John reached in with finger and thumb, plucked something out of the satin lining, and held it up to show them -- the iridescent purple, the shiny, flexing, turquoise body...

Only a dragonfly.

Mr. John opened his fingertips, and eight pairs of disappointed eyes followed the lovely creature as it staggered and waltzed back towards the water.

"I don't believe there is a single fairy..." began Dr. Curly, but the others felled him to the ground and clapped their hands over his mouth.

"Don't say it! Don't ever say that!" cried Mr. Nibs, horrified. "Don't you remember? Every time someone says they don't believe in fairies, a fairy somewhere dies!"

"I didn't say I didn't believe in them!" said the doctor, tugging the rumples out of his suit. "I was only going to say, I don't believe there is one single fairy here. Tonight. In this park. I have mud on my trousers, insect bites on my ankles, and I have not eaten supper yet. Can we give up now?"

The other Old Boys looked around them at the twilit park, the distant, glimmering streetlamps. They looked at the soles of their shoes, in case they had trodden on any fairies by mistake. They looked into the water of the Serpentine, in case any of the stars reflected there were really fairies, swimming. No fairies, no fairy dust. Perhaps, after all, they would not be going back to Neverland.

"All for the best. Absurd idea," growled Mr. John, but no one answered.

The Honourable Slightly took from his pocket a gleaming bubble filmy with every colour of the rainbow. "Last night I dreamed I was playing water polo with the mermaids," he said. "This was on my pillow when I woke."

The bubble popped and was gone.

The park gates were locked when they got there. The Old Boys had to climb over, and Judge Tootles tore his best tweed jacket.

In the end, it was Mrs. Wendy who managed it, of course. She led the way to Kensington Gardens next day, wearing a linen coat and a splendid hat with a feather in it.

"But we looked here yesterday!" her brother protested. "There wasn't a fairy to be found!"

"We are not looking for fairies," said Mrs. Wendy. "We are looking for prams!"

Twenty years before, the park would have been busy with nursery maids pushing pramfuls of babies up and down, filling them up with good fresh air. These days, nursery maids were a rarer breed. There were only three today, pushing prams, feeding ducks, wiping noses, picking up rattles thrown out onto the grass. It was a sight that always disturbed the Old Boys....

Once, Curly and Tootles, Nibs, Slightly, and the Twins had all been babies like those in the prams. Once, they had been tucked up, cozy and snug, boggling up at the sky with sky-blue, newborn eyes. But they had fallen out of their prams.

Got lost. Gone astray.

They had been handed in to the Lost-and-Found office, and stored under B for babies, right between A for aquaria and C for cricket bats. No one had claimed them, and after a week or so they had been posted off to Neverland. There they had joined all the other Lost Boys, making do without manners or mothers, making do on make-believe meals and catching doses of adventure along with their captain, Peter Pan.

As a pram rolled past, Mr. Nibs could not stop himself saying, "Oh, do please take care of that baby, young woman! I know there's nothing so very terrible about being a Lost Boy, but even so, do take care that it does not fall out! Lost boys are not all as lucky as we were! They are not all adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Darling and loved and cherished and blessed with custard tarts on Sundays and a university education!"

"Well, I never did!" exclaimed the nursery maid. "I hope you are not suggesting I might lose a baby of mine, sir? As if I would! As if I'd ever..." But before she could work herself into a paddy, the baby in the pram started to cry.

Mrs. Wendy had been leaning over the pram, using the feather from her hat to tickle the baby.

"What are you doing, madam?" said the nursery maid. "That one can't abide feathers!"

"Oh drat," said Mrs. Wendy, vexed with herself and secretly with the baby, too. "Mr. Slightly, don't just stand there! Sing!"

And the Honourable Slightly (who, if you remember, played clarinet in a nightclub) suddenly realized that the success of the whole plan depended on him. Scooping up the baby, he began to sing.

"Orpheus with his lute, with his lute made trees..."

It was no good. The baby howled more loudly still.

"Oh, the grand old Duke of York, he had
ten thousand men..."

Still the baby wailed.

"Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat night has flown!"

"Now see what you done!" said the nursery maid, wincing at the noise and looking around for a policeman.

The Honourable Slightly went down on one knee:

"Mammy! Mammy! I'd walk a million miles
for one of your smiles, my Ma-a-a-mmy!"

And suddenly the baby laughed!

It was a noise like water gurgling out of a jug. It was so delicious that the nursery maid clapped her hands and giggled too. "His very first laugh, bless him!"

In one movement, the Old Boys lifted their hats. Even Mrs. Wendy unpinned hers. Then, to the nursery maid's astonishment, they tossed the baby back into its pram and went racing out across Kensington Gardens, jumping and reaching and wildly waving their bowlers and brown derbies.

"Well!" said the nursery maid. "What is the world coming to!"

Among banks of orange aubretia, beside the war memorial, they caught him -- a tiny, bluish mite, with red hair and eyes the colour of honey -- a fairy! Like a robin out of an egg, he had hatched out of that baby's first laugh, you see, as all fairies do.

The Old Boys were tired and short of breath, but they were triumphant.

Mistakenly, Mrs. Wendy called the fairy Con Brio, not knowing he came ready-fitted with a name.

"I am Fireflyer!" said the fairy indignantly. "And I'm hungry!"

So they took him to the Serpentine Tea Rooms and fed him on ice cream, scone crumbs, and cool tea before bearing him home aloft in Mr. John's bowler, like a little eastern potentate. By the time they reached the house in Cadogan Square, the hat was slightly scorched, but it was also half full of fairy dust.