Nothing in this stolidly real vista was alterable by even the strongest imagination: there was no foothold for pirates, fairies, golden carriages, knights, or even a hint of swashbuckling. Someone from the street had thrown a brown banana skin over the fence, and there it lay, out of place in the English yard, attesting to the banality of global commerce and how it didn’t bring with it sultans or magic horses—only bananas.
Wendy sighed and turned from the window. Afternoons were the hardest.
In the mornings she still saw her tutor, and there were chores and writing exercises. After elevenses was a good improving book recommended by the bookseller, the one with the handsome nephew.
By then Mrs. Darling had usually either gone to pay visits or was busily engaged in correspondence with her delicate blue pen at her elegant secretary. The gloom never seemed to affect her even if she did stay home all day; she was always gracefully and slowly attending to some task or other: her face; her toilette; her sewing; the little expense book she kept for the house; the pantry; their unpredictable cook, Mary. Wendy used to watch her mother engage in these endless circuits with delight, but that feeling was now tempered with confusion: how could someone remain so serene and glowing while working through the same indoor errands, rainy day in and day out?
Wendy still enjoyed it when Mrs. Darling included her in some of her “feminine rituals,” which usually involved the proper application of powders and creams, tips on how to polish her nails, or ideas for sprucing up an old bow. She loved it when they had enough extra house money to go for a fancy tea out at Saxelbrees, just the two of them. Wendy would admire her mother smiling and laughing beneath her many-times-renewed hat, and would think once again that she was the most beautiful mother in the world. She wondered when she herself would attain that delicate beauty, confidence, and perfection of manner.
But these outings were rare. And anyway, even the most appealing things lost their glamour when held up to the imaginary delights of Never Land.
Wendy turned to her bureau. Normally she tried resisting until the end of the day, as a sort of reward. Like the opera creams her mother secretly indulged in. Mrs. Darling smiled so blissfully while she chewed—she sometimes even popped one before dinner if it was an especially trying day!
Often, when tempted to peek into the drawer too early, Wendy could assuage her longing by pulling out the tiny notebook she always kept with her. It had a very slim blue pencil that perfectly fit down the spine, and was nearly full of her neat, enthusiastic words. Well-thumbed pages were titled with things like “Peter Pan and the Pirates and the Unexpected Zeppelin” or “Peter Pan and Tiger Lily versus the Cyclops of the Cerulean Sea.” And she had illustrated “Captain Hook Is Taught a Timely Lesson by Peter Pan” with a little picture of a clock she had carefully copied from the mantel, as well as the eyes and nostrils of a fierce crocodile—the rest of whose body she had no hope of depicting accurately, and thus chose to submerge.
But today the words looked bleak and worn, and the empty lines beyond them bleaker still.
Wendy couldn’t resist anymore. Not today. Not when everything was so particularly gray and dreadful and hopeless.
She slid open the creaky wooden drawer and picked up an inky-soft bundle that lay neatly folded within. It shook out like a spider’s web, softer than silk and without the little catchy bits that clung to rough fingers. Its outline deformed easily. Only when she laid it out on the floor completely flat could she coax the shadow into its proper shape: Peter Pan.
Four years ago Nana had torn it from the boy. For four years Wendy had kept it carefully safe in her top drawer, waiting for Peter to come back and claim it.
Michael and John gave up first.
In the beginning they had been even more exultant than she at the discovery; in Michael’s case, jumping and crying and generally bouncing off the walls. John had pushed his ridiculous glasses up on his nose and tried to speak in grown-up terms of actual evidence and irrefutable facts and the like.
But…
Weeks turned into months. Into a year. Into four years.
There was no more proof, no more evidence, no more sign of a visitor from Never Land. And though the boys kept stealing quick looks at the shadow, Michael soon began to remark that it was “kind of crummy” and “a bit faded” and John muttered darkly about manifestations of another realm and meteorological phenomena. Somehow, astonishingly, it became just another piece of bric-a-brac, a souvenir from an earlier time or an only slightly more exotic place, like the tiny mosaic mirror Mr. Darling had bought from a man who was traveling back to his home in Kashmir.
But every night since then, Wendy had gone to sleep burning for Never Land. She hoped, the way some questionable but trendy pamphlets suggested, that if she thought about what she desired most of all before she fell asleep, she would dream of it. She drifted off whispering, Peter, I have your shadow.…Peter…
She often woke with a strange golden feeling, like she had just touched the boundaries of Never Land—something about wolves and strange fruit and freedom—but then quickly forgot it; the feeling never stayed.
Wendy rubbed a thumb along the edge of the shadow and shuddered. If she wasn’t careful she would begin weeping.
What had she done wrong?
What was so repulsive about her that Peter Pan wouldn’t return—even for his own shadow?
What about her was so lacking that no one from Never Land ever sought her out again?
She dropped the thing back into the drawer and slammed it closed, crushing a knuckle into her mouth to keep from sobbing.
Soon it would be time to prepare tea, and she didn’t want her mother commenting about unattractive red splotches on her cheeks or rings under her eyes.
In the afternoon her brothers came home, and things should have been better.
“John, Michael,” Wendy said with relief as their boyish humors and exuberance filled the otherwise silent house.
“Greetings, Sister,” John said, handing her his hat while pecking her on the cheek with a vaguely sarcastic air. He was bound for a real university someday, perhaps even Oxford, and had already begun effecting the irony and insouciance necessary for a sojourn there. Michael just kicked his boots off willy-nilly and threw his coat on a chair. Of course, other families had maids to deal with such situations, but aside from the Darlings’ general lack of excessive funds, Wendy enjoyed the routine.
At least, she used to.
Tsking mindlessly, she picked up Michael’s jacket and smoothed it out, hanging it up properly.
“Wendy, you’re a damn fool for not continuing your studies within the sphere of public education,” John announced, sounding like someone else.
“It’s heaps of fun, too,” Michael growled, a stormy look on his face. He was a less subtle wielder of sarcasm than his older brother.
“Well, Father said none of the daughters of his clients go—and they are all very respectable girls. And anyway, I have all the time and books I need,” she added, a little hollowly. It had seemed like the right choice to decline when her parents had—somewhat reluctantly—presented her with the option of attending one of the newfangled public schools. Why should she spend time cooped up in a crowded institution and be treated like a child when she could have a tutor and then putter about the house, dreaming and keeping things in order like an adult?