The Real Peter Pan (6 page)

Chapter Eight

I reconsidered my weapons, and I fought Oliver and beat him. With wrecked islands I turned him. I began in the most unpretentious way by telling them a story which might last an hour, and favoured by many an unexpected wind it lasted eighteen months.

It started as the wreck of the simple Swiss family [
Swiss Family Robinson
by Johann Weiss]. But soon a glorious inspiration of the night turned it into the wreck of George and Oliver Bailey.

At first it was what they were to do when they were wrecked, but imperceptibly it became what
they had done
. I spent much of my time staring reflectively at the titles of the boys' stories in the booksellers' windows [and] found the titles even more helpful than the stories. We wrecked everybody of note, including all Homer's characters and the hero of
Paradise Lost
. But we suffered them not to land. We stripped them of what we wanted, and left them to wander the high seas naked of adventure. And all this was merely the beginning.

Before long
I
had been cast upon the island. It was not my own proposal … They found me among the breakers with a large dog, which had kept me afloat throughout that terrible night. I was the
sole survivor of the ill-fated
Anna Pink
. So exhausted was I that they had to carry me to their hut, and great was my gratitude when on opening my eyes I found myself in that romantic edifice instead of in Davy Jones's locker. As we walked in the Gardens I told them of the hut they had built; and they were inflated but not surprised. On the other hand they looked for surprise from me.

‘Did we tell you about the eggs we found in the sand?' asked Oliver, reverting to deeds of theirs of which I had previously told them.

‘You did.'

‘Who found them?' demanded George, not as one who needed information, but after the manner of a schoolmaster…

‘They were found,' I said, ‘by George, the younger of the two youths.'

‘Who stabbed the wild pig?' asked the older of the two youths.

‘Oliver Bailey,' I replied.

‘Was it Oliver,' asked George sharply, ‘that found the cocoa-nut tree first?'

‘On the contrary,' I answered, ‘it was first observed by George, who immediately climbed it, remarking, “This is certainly the cocos
nucifera
, for, see, dear Oliver, the slender columns supporting the crown of leaves, which fall with a grace that no art can imitate.”'

‘That's what I said,' remarked George with a wave of his hand.

‘I said things like that too,' Oliver insisted.

‘No, you didn't then,' said George.

‘Yes, I did so.'

‘No, you didn't so.'

‘Shut up.'

‘Well, then, let's hear one you said.'

Oliver looked appealingly at me. ‘The following,' I announced, ‘is one that Oliver said: “Truly, dear comrade, though the perils of these happenings are great, and our privations calculated to break the
stoutest heart, yet to be rewarded by such fair sights I would endure still greater trials, and still rejoice even as the bird on yonder bough.”'

‘That's one I said!' crowed Oliver.

‘I shot the bird,' said George instantly.

‘What bird?'

‘The yonder bird.'

‘No, you didn't.'

‘Did I not shoot the bird?'

‘It was George who shot the bird,' I said, ‘but it was Oliver who saw by its multi-coloured plumage that it was one of the Psittacidae, an excellent substitute for partridge.'

‘You didn't see that,' said Oliver, rather swollen.

‘Yes, I did.'

‘What did you see?'

‘I saw that?'

‘What?'

‘You shut up.'

‘George shot it,' I summed up, ‘and Oliver knew its name, but I ate it. Do you remember how hungry I was?'

‘Rather!' said George.

‘I cooked it,' said Oliver.

‘It was served up on toast,' I reminded them.

‘I toasted it,' said George.

‘Toast from the bread-fruit tree,' I said, ‘which (as you both remarked simultaneously) bears two and sometimes three crops in a year, and also affords a serviceable gum for the pitching of canoes.'

‘I pitched mine best,' said Oliver.

‘I pitched mine farthest,' said George.

‘And when I had finished my repast,' said I, ‘you amazed me by handing me a cigar from the tobacco-plant.'

‘I handed it,' said Oliver.

‘I snicked off the end,' said George.

‘And then,' said I, ‘you gave me a light.'

‘Which of us?' they cried together.

‘Both of you,' I said. ‘Never shall I forget my amazement when I saw you get that light by striking two stones together.'

At this they waggled their heads. ‘You couldn't have done it!' said George.

‘No, George,' I admitted, ‘I can't do it, but of course I know that all wrecked boys do it quite easily. Show me how you did it.'

But after consulting apart they agreed not to show me. I was not shown everything.

George was now firmly convinced that he had once been wrecked on an island, while Oliver passed his days in dubiety. They used to argue it out together, and among their friends. As I unfolded the story Oliver listened with an open knife in his hand, and George, who was not allowed to have a knife, wore a pirate-string round his waist.

It is a few years ago and I am in a solemn London Club, there to meet a learned American who had vowed that he would show me how to make a fire. We adjourned to the library (where we knew we were not likely to be disturbed) and there from concealed places about his person, he produced Jack's implements, a rough bow and a rougher arrow, pointed at both ends. Then he ordered a pat of butter (the waiter must be wondering still), and, like Jack, he twisted the arrow around the string of the bow and began to saw, placing the end of the arrow against his chest, which was protected from its point by a chip of wood; the other point he placed against a bit of tinder. Jack had no butter, but we had no bit of tinder. The result, however, was the same. In half a minute, my friend had made a fire, at which we lit our cigars and smoked to the memory of Ballantyne and
The Coral Island.

until presently, to the right of the dusty, yellow road, there was a sudden clearing in the trees. Here, in still unspoilt Surrey and the very depths, as it seemed, of the country, the little two-storey cottage stood. On three sides the dark woods came right up to the edge of the garden, and as you climbed the rising ground at the back there were glimpses and then a wide prospect through the tall, straight trunks of acres of tree-tops laid out below. No other house, in those days, was within sight or sound. And though under grey skies there was something a little forbidding about the way that Black Lake Cottage was shut in, the summer poured plenty of sunlight through its windows and over the long, level lawn.
20

An Eden where one might gather and eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge without fear, and learn lovingly the ways of life without losing one's innocence; a forest that had remade for itself a new virginity, and become primeval once more; where beautiful Nature had reasserted her own sweet will, and massed and tangled everything together.

One by one as you swung monkey-wise from branch to branch in the wood of make-believe you reached the Tree of Knowledge. Sometimes you swung back into the wood, as the unthinking may at a cross-road take a familiar path that no longer leads to home; or you perched ostentatiously on its boughs to please me, pretending that you still belonged: soon you knew it only as the vanished wood, for it vanishes if one needs to look for it.

A time came when I saw that No. 1 [George], the most gallant of you all, ceased to believe that he was ploughing woods incarnadine, and with an apologetic eye for me derided the lingering faith of No. 2 [Jack]; when even No. 3 [Peter] questioned gloomily whether he did not really spend his nights in bed. There were still two who knew no better [Michael and Nico, the latter born in 1903], but their day was dawning.