Hargreaves, you would not be here today if you did not.

She grants the point.

ALICE: Memoirs – autobiographies – are the records of the deeds of a life. I have had no deeds worthy of reportage. Not of my own… Those around me perhaps.

PETER: Isn’t every life worth recording honestly?

ALICE: Oh… You want honesty.

Beat.

ALICE: Aren’t you the ambitious young man?

She strolls, considers the room.

ALICE: In your element, Mr. Davies.

PETER: Sorry?

ALICE: Amongst the books.

PETER: For you as well.

ALICE: I was not amongst the books, I was in a book. That’s something different.

She runs her hand along some of the spines.

ALICE: From the outside they are one thing: ordered and symmetrical, all the same; like foot soldiers. From the inside they are altogether singular.

PETER: Do you ever get tired of it?

ALICE: What?

PETER: Being Alice.

ALICE: I’m loath to disillusion you, but people have forgotten me. Thus I fear for the commercial prospects of the House of Davies should you be so reckless as to publish my memoirs. Of course they remember her. But me? … Those days are like the dark ages now, aren’t they? Before motor cars and chewing gum. Before airplanes and cinema and the wireless. Lord, a time before the wireless, can you imagine the silence? You could hear the bees buzzing in the summer… Golden afternoons all gone away.

PETER: With respect, Mrs. Hargreaves, people have not forgotten. Everything associated with the Centenary is taking the fancy of the nation, including the reception today.

ALICE: Momentarily, yes… But before this there was, and after this there shall be, quietude. I like to hear the bees buzzing.

PETER: But don’t you think – ?

ALICE: (Firm.) No, sir, I do not. In your quest for literary “truth” you must occasionally run across those stories you wish you hadn’t told, for the simple reason that no one really wants to hear the truth when it runs contrary – “contrariwise” as he would say – to the comfortable assumptions that people hold so dear. That’s the burden of truth, isn’t it?

PETER: Yes, but–

ALICE: Here’s a burden: the only reason anyone remembers me now as Alice in Wonderland is that I decided to sell my hand-written manuscript of the book. It was this act that brought me back into the public eye… But do you know why I sold the manuscript? Because I needed the money. To heat my house, Mr. Davies… Now, is that the Alice people want to know? Or is it just possible they would rather remember that little blond girl in the dress, eternally inquisitive, impossibly bold, never changing and never growing old?

PETER: But we all grow old! … That’s the story of our lives: the one immutable; the one inescapable. The crocodile in the lagoon, the iceberg on the horizon, death just around the corner, tick tick tick. I’m grasping now but–

ALICE: (Interrupts.) What’s your name?

PETER: Peter Davies, ma’am.

ALICE: All of it.

PETER: Peter Llewelyn Davies.

ALICE: Peter Pan.

Beat.

PETER: There were five of us.

ALICE: Well, this is rich!

PETER: I suppose so.

ALICE: And a little bizarre.

PETER: Mm.

ALICE: Were you planning on telling me?

PETER: No, actually, I wasn’t intending —

ALICE: Of course not. But how could you help being who you are?

PETER: And how can you?

It’s a bit of a challenge.

She moves around the room.

ALICE: Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. We’re practically our own children’s book department… There were five of you?

PETER: Five boys, yes. Five brothers… And there were three sisters?

ALICE: Yes, we three Liddell girls, back in Oxford.

PETER: But you’re “Alice.”

ALICE: As you’re “Peter”… But after all, what’s in a name?

PETER: What isn’t?

She understands.

ALICE: With me, it has been a wholly happy connection. When people find out, they always smile, for they’re bringing so many associations with them: first time hearing the story; first time reading the book; then reading it to their own children. You see it in their faces, the pictures behind that smile of recognition: the White Rabbit; the Mad Hatter; the Cheshire Cat. I think they smile because what they’re really remembering is themselves as children, and for that moment I see the wonder returning to them… When I look over my days I feel I was given a gift by Mr. Dodgson. Out of everyone, there’s only one Alice. He made me special.