Neverland by Piers Dudgeon

Author:Piers Dudgeon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781453218099
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2011-09-02T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Flying Uncle Jim to Neverland

What did the boys think about Uncle Jim coming between their parents? Daphne suggests1 that there was an awareness that something was not quite right, that deep down they were disturbed to see their mother acknowledge Jim as the family’s new leader, but that as time wore on they settled into the new arrangement. ‘He was, after all, a relation, an uncle’, an accustomed figure, and by then they, too, were on a fantasy trip of their own with Jim, who was leading them to the tree of knowledge.

In 1902 Barrie moved with his wife to a house at the corner of Leinster Terrace, close to where Kicky had lived and facing the Bayswater Road. Porthos had died at the end of 1901 – he barely survived the first Black Lake holiday as the pirate Swarthy’s dog or tiger in a papier-mâché mask. To Mary Ansell his death spelled the beginning of the end of her marriage. He was replaced in 1903 by a black and white Newfoundland, Luath, who would be ‘pegged’ as Nana in Peter Pan (no living thing in the inner circle escaped pegging).

It was unthinkable that Mary should live without a dog, in Jim’s company. A dog, she wrote politely, was ‘a most admirable accompaniment to a husband. He supplies those darling little ways, so dear to a woman’s heart, and so necessary to her well-being, that come tripping along so gracefully before marriage, but by the end of the first year have tripped away – less gracefully – into oblivion . . .’

As Jim’s life revolved more and more around Sylvia and the boys, he froze Mary with his silences, which did not ‘speak loudly’ to her, as they had done to Pamela Maude. Then Porthos and later Luath were her salvation. ‘To quote an instance,’ she wrote. ‘Those silent meals. Haven’t most of us experienced them? When the mind of your man is elsewhere, lord knows where, but nowhere in your direction. Just when the silence is becoming unbearable, your dog steps in and attracts your attention. He lays his head on your knee, or he presses your hand, as it is in the act of conveying a succulent morsel to your mouth. “Merely asking for food,” you interrupt. Quite true. But to be asked for anything is a relief.’2

Leinster Corner, as Mary named the house, was close to the Lancaster Gate entrance to Kensington Gardens, a mile or so from where the Davieses now lived in Kensington Park Gardens, and just yards from young George’s school in Orme Square.

In 1902 George turned nine. George was ‘the One’ and the proximity of the school and Sylvia’s hard-earned trust in him gave Jim unprecedented access, and he entered into exclusive sessions with George, dedicated to the production of Peter Pan (1904).

[Peter] escaped from being a human when he was seven days old; he escaped by the window... standing on the ledge he could see trees far away, which were doubtless

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