Daphne by Justine Picardie

Author:Justine Picardie [Picardie, Justine]
Format: epub
Tags: Biographical, Women authors; English, Biographical fiction, Fiction, Forgery of manuscripts, Woman authorship; English, General, Biography
ISBN: 9781408806838
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

And it was impossible to forget Barrie, even now, as the train gathered speed out of London. He came with her, just as he had been there in the Hampstead graveyard, hovering at the margins of the gathering of the ghosts. Could he fly, at last, that small, slight man, who had dreamt of Neverland? They had all been drawn into Jim's kingdom - all of them, even Angela, cast as Wendy when she was eighteen, and already knew the play off by heart, like Daphne and Jeanne, for they'd watched it every Christmas since they were little girls, knowing it was written for their cousins, and acting it out themselves in the nursery, sometimes for Uncle Jim to watch, longing for his applause.

Which is why, perhaps, Daphne could not rid herself of the idea that if her ghostly relations were scudding across the sky above her, they were attached by unseen wires, like the actors had been in Peter Pan; not yet free, and still bound in some way, not only to one another, but also to the material world.

Back in Menabilly, at last, she did not feel comforted by this thought, for it suggested that she would be earthbound, now and always, so that there could be no real prospect of escape. Christmas was coming, and another family gathering, which might bring with it a return of all of the tensions of the summer, Tommy drinking steadily, then becoming unsteady, and everyone pretending that nothing was wrong. Daphne considered, briefly, the whimsy of having Branwell as a distraction at Menabilly - not simply in her head, in an unwritten book (a book that might never be written, if she did not get a move on), but as a guest in the house; a disreputable yet intriguing figure to draw the attention away from Tommy.

And just for a little while, she smiled. Other people's families were generally more manageable than one's own; though Daphne occasionally longed for just an hour of Branwell's company, with a nostalgia as deep as if he had once been part of her past; as if he had been her own brother, or lover, or father, as deeply as she had once longed for Peter Pan, and all the other Lost Boys, when she had willed them to be real, not grease-painted actors; yet at the same time wishing them freedom, taking flight from the dusty wings of a theatre, and out towards the stars of a clear night sky.

Freedom: that was the thing, to be free, not endlessly caught up on a stage, tangled and tripping over the wires; and was that what Michael had sought, unleashed in the water, unlocked from the words? Perhaps that was the only way forward, to be free of everything, of everyone, maybe even to be free of Branwell. . . But could she cut herself loose, at last?

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