Or threw myself into love affairs, high drama, anything to forget the shadow. But, invariably, on the happiest of days, when he had been banished fully, I would catch a glimpse…in the shaving mirror…the shop window…behind me on the pavement.

ALICE: Why did you try to banish him?

He doesn’t answer.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Wendy had looked forward to thrilling talks with Peter about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind.

PETER PAN: Who’s Captain Hook?

ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Don’t you remember how you killed him and saved all our lives?!

PETER PAN: I forget them after I kill them.

PETER: Because he makes me remember.

Beat.

This doesn’t come easily.

PETER: When I look at my own children, Mrs. Hargreaves, I think…I think I know what childhood’s for. It’s to give us a bank of happy memories against future suffering. So when sadness comes, at least you can remember what it was to be happy.

ARTHUR LLEWELYN DAVIES, PETER’s father, enters.

His neck and jaw are in a horrible leather brace. He is dying. It is 1907.

PETER: When it came, I was nine years old. Up until that time we were boys. After that time we were not.

ARTHUR sits painfully.

PETER PAN approaches, watches, almost impassive.

PETER: My father… It was a cancer of the jaw and mouth. The word was never spoken in our house. It was a filthy word… Well, the operations began for this thing we didn’t say, and didn’t end until they had removed half his upper jaw and his palate and his cheekbone. For a time he had an artificial jaw, which was monstrous, he was so disfigured. I couldn’t look at him he frightened me so much, my father, more than Captain Hook, more than anything… He could barely speak. And every word had to be carefully chosen for the effort it cost him.

BARRIE sits with ARTHUR. He’s very gentle with him.

PETER: Barrie was magnificent those last days. The best he ever was. So kind to him, to us all… He paid for everything, you see. My father had lost his job. No one wants a barrister who can’t speak, who looks like that… There was no money and no prospects so in the end, my father was trapped…

BARRIE: Don’t speak, Arthur. Let me tell you about the boys. George wrote to me from Eton that he wants to come for the weekend, but I wonder if —

ARTHUR: Jim.

BARRIE: Are you sure you should?

ARTHUR holds up a hand, he must try to speak.

This is agony:

ARTHUR: There is no money… There is my wife… There are five boys.

It is too hard to continue.

BARRIE: Shall I try to find the words for you?

ARTHUR nods.

BARRIE: You’re thinking about them now, about the future. You wonder once you’ve gone what’ll become of them.

ARTHUR nods.

BARRIE: You look at me and you feel apprehension.

ARTHUR nods.

BARRIE: For you don’t think I’m a good man. For you think I’m closed and cold. For you think my sentimental attachment to your boys is unnatural in ways you can’t fathom, and maybe you could if you were a more learned fellow. But in your heart you feel it’s not right.

ARTHUR nods.

BARRIE: Still you hope that your boys are strong enough to stand on their own two feet and be the fine young men they are going to be, no matter what I do.

ARTHUR nods.

BARRIE: But now we’re up against it and we can’t do things by halves. This room will be closed and shuttered soon, and no one will come in… And what becomes of the boys? Who’s to pay for school? Who’s to keep up the house and staff? … Who’s to be their father now?

ARTHUR nods.

BARRIE: Are you giving them to me, Arthur?

Beat.

ARTHUR nods.

BARRIE: Free and clear?

ARTHUR nods.

BARRIE: Would you say it?

ARTHUR: Yes.

BARRIE: Yes, what, Arthur? I need you to say it. I’m so sorry. I must hear it.

ARTHUR: My boys…my boys…my boys…are yours.

Beat.

BARRIE: Peter, take your father out. Mark him now. That’s a good man there.