by A. C. Wise
Even when the footsteps stop, Wendy keeps her chin tucked down. The uniformed man who opened the gate lines his shoes up—far more scuffed and plain—just behind Dr. Harrington’s bright ones. His place at Dr. Harrington’s shoulder is a subtle threat, and despite herself, Wendy looks up. The uniformed man stands a good head taller than Dr. Harrington. There’s a squareness to him, his shoulders broad, his hair cut neat and close. She wonders why he isn’t overseas, fighting.
There’s a name stitched over the man’s breast pocket— Jamieson. He catches her looking and his mouth twists, the expression an ugly one. Wendy starts, a fresh thrill of fear going through her. She has done nothing to this man, and yet Jamieson looks at her as though he wants to do her harm. She knew boys like him in Neverland, bullies following at Peter’s heels, but held in check by the brightness of his games. To Jamieson, she is a wild animal to be muzzled and chained at the slightest excuse. A yearling to be broken if she refuses the saddle.
“Mr. Darling.” Dr. Harrington extends his hand to John, breaking Wendy from her dark thoughts.
Bitterness rises in her all over again, fear momentarily forgotten. Dr. Harrington and John shake hands, so civilized—neither of them looking at her—as though she were a mere business agreement, not a patient or a beloved sister. And all the while, John still has his other hand on her arm. She pulls away roughly.
“I am perfectly capable of walking on my own.” The words snap, and she steps away from her brother; more pettiness. All three men watch her, as if she might turn into a bird and fly away.
Wendy lifts her chin, but does not look at any of them. She won’t even say goodbye. Let that sit on John’s conscience. Without leave, she walks past Dr. Harrington toward St. Bernadette’s front doors. If this is to be her fate, she’ll go to it on her own, not dragged or guided. Her boot heels strike hard against the crushed stone even though her legs tremble beneath her skirt, but she refuses to slow or give in.
“Wendy!” John’s footsteps scuff the path behind her.
It puts even more resolve into her step, and Wendy quickens her pace. She doesn’t turn, doesn’t stop, and hears Dr. Harrington intercept her brother, his voice smooth and practiced, used to soothing patients.
“Perhaps it’s better this way, Mr. Darling. Your sister is in good hands here. Once she’s had a chance to settle, you can visit her, of course.” Implied is that Wendy will be more docile then. There isn’t a speck of doubt in Dr. Harrington’s voice—he will see her cured.
Despite herself, Wendy’s shoulders hunch. Dr. Harrington’s words grate, his tone scraping at her, through flesh to bone. She wants to turn and pummel him, closed fists against his shoulders and chest, but she forces her arms to hang loose at her sides. She’s broken more plates and cups in her rages at Michael and John than she cares to count. For once, she must keep her temper under control.
“Miss Darling.” Dr. Harrington catches up to her, Jamieson still shadowing him. Wendy doesn’t turn to see if John remains on the path, watching. “Allow me to show you to your room.”
Dr. Harrington says the words as though she is a guest, free to leave whenever she wants.
“I think you will find it most amenable here. Our staff and facilities are excellent. The only thing we want in this world is to make you well.”
Wendy’s mouth opens, but no sound emerges. Somehow, they’ve reached the end of the path, climbed the steps. The door frames them. Dr. Harrington takes her arm. Jamieson stands behind him. Even if she were to pull free, there is nowhere to run.
“This way.”
In her determination and pride, she’s walked herself right into the trap, and now it’s ready to snap closed behind her. It’s too late. One more step, and Wendy crosses the threshold. The air changes immediately, heavy and dim. Wendy feels the loss of the sky overhead like a stolen breath. She hadn’t realized how much comfort she’d been drawing from that perfect stretch of blue.
She glances to the ceiling, pressed tin, hung with a chandelier. Rich carpets in patterned jeweled tones cover the floor of the entryway, lovely but worn. A few steps in, and the ceiling gives way to a high, open space. Curved staircases at either end of the foyer sweep up to a balcony that overlooks the ground floor. A stained-glass window lets through light, but its quality tells Wendy it doesn’t look onto the outside. Everything here is enclosed, safe, but false.
Dr. Harrington leads her past a reception desk without even a glance at the woman in a nurse’s uniform seated there. The woman doesn’t glance up either, and Wendy suppresses a shiver at the coldness of it all. She is merely a transaction, one of how many patients marched through the doors because they are inconvenient to their families, or worse, actually sick. Is there anything in this place to heal them?
Wendy tries to take in more of her surroundings, but Dr. Harrington speeds his pace, taking her past a common room with large windows overlooking the garden, and a smaller interior room where two nurses rest their feet. They turn a corner. The air changes again, and Wendy feels it immediately—a transition from the old country estate house to a newly constructed wing.
Fresh panic gnaws at her, and this time it refuses to be tamped down. The hallway stretched before her is plain, and there is nothing hospitable about it—all pretenses dropped. This is not a country estate, a place where people come to rest and get well. It is a place where people are locked away. Where patients scream and no one answers.
Doors line the hallway, set with small glass windows. More twists and turns carry her over gleaming checkerboard tiles. Wendy feels numb, dizzy. They pass larger doors spaced further apart. Medical facilities, treatment rooms. The size of the building eludes her; she can’t hold a picture of the whole in her mind.
“Please, Dr. Harrington—” Wendy’s voice emerges breathless, a weakness she would rather not admit but can’t help. Something in this place presses down on her, and she gulps for air.
And then she stops, the full weight of her body holding her in place despite Dr. Harrington’s hand on her arm. A girl with long, dark hair passes, going the opposite direction, head down so Wendy can’t see her face properly. Even so, the sight of her strikes Wendy as a physical blow, and a name rises to her lips so swift she almost speaks it aloud—Tiger Lily.
She’s sworn to herself to keep Neverland secret here, to guard it close to her chest. Whatever John has told Dr. Harrington can only be half of the truth at best. If Wendy were to tell him anything real, Dr. Harrington would only take to it with a microscope and a scalpel, turning it into something ugly. So she swallows down Tiger Lily’s name, even though it burns, looking away as the girl walks past.
As much as she might wish it otherwise though, her mind rebels. She can’t help recalling a bank of emerald grass beneath the silver drooping bows of a willow tree. Locked away from all the world, she and Tiger Lily wove crowns of reed, linked their hands together—brown and white—and set the crowns on each other’s heads.
The memory aches. She can’t stop herself from glancing up, but the girl has already moved down the hallway. The loss in her wake makes it hard for Wendy to breathe, but she forces herself to keep going. Dr. Harrington looks at her, a frown of disapproval that she has upset the natural order of things.
The girl isn’t Tiger Lily. She knows that, and to distract herself, Wendy tries to reconstruct the girl’s actual appearance from that brief glance, and after a moment, she convinces herself that the girl doesn’t resemble Tiger Lily at all. It was only her mind playing tricks, wanting something familiar in this place of terror, something that felt like home.
“Here we are.” Dr. Harrington’s voice, falsely bright and sharp-edged, brings her back.
He opens a door, unlocking it swiftly and dropping the key into his pocket as though Wendy won’t notice. The opened door reveals a spare, cell-like room, purpose-built with white-painted walls, a narrow bed, and a single chair. The window has no curtains, and on the outside there are bars.
“We have what we like to th
ink of as patient uniforms here.” Dr. Harrington smiles.
The expression is awkward, as though he’s letting Wendy in on a joke.
“Everyone here is equal, no matter where they began. They are all here to get well.”
He gestures to a plain cotton dress folded atop the bed, nearly the same pale gray as the blanket it lies upon. The girl they passed in the hall, the one who isn’t Tiger Lily, wore the same.
With his next words, Dr. Harrington’s tone shifts, all efficiency, dropping the welcoming pretense that Wendy is merely a guest. He speaks by rote, addressing a patient whose individual wants and concerns he means to dismiss, and leaves no space for Wendy to respond.
“A nurse will be along shortly to help you change, and your own clothing will be stored for safekeeping. Your door will be locked at night until you are acclimated. This is for your safety, of course. Meals are served in the dining hall, unless extenuating circumstances dictate otherwise. During your first few days you will be brought meals in your room, again, until you adjust.”
Before she can question what extenuating circumstances might be, Dr. Harrington pats Wendy’s hand, his expression warm and fatherly again. The gesture, she presumes, is meant to be reassuring. It is anything but.
She keeps her lips firmly over her teeth, hiding them. She wants to snarl. She wants to run. She wants to break and fold into herself—abandoned, doubted, disbelieved. She does none of these things, standing still with her hands clasped before her as Dr. Harrington withdraws. The door closes and she hears the tell-tale scrape of a key in the lock.
Silence fills up the corners of the room, a pressure against her skin. Wendy sits on the edge of the bed. Springs poke through the thinness of the mattress. There is a finality to the stillness.
She has no love for the particular dress she’s wearing, but the thought that she’ll have to give it up for the shapeless gray uniform beside her makes her want to scream. The fact that she will not even be trusted to change her own clothing, like an unruly child, is even worse. She fingers the cuffs of her sleeves, touches the rough woolen blanket, trying to let the simple feel of the fabric ground her. It does nothing.
She breathes, focusing on the movement of her ribs, the expansion of air in her lungs. All of this is only a test. Tomorrow, John and Michael will bring her home. She’ll learn to behave. No more broken plates. No more tantrums.
Deep down, Wendy knows John and Michael aren’t coming for her. At least not until she proves she can behave, until Dr. Harrington deems her well. And if that never occurs? If John decides it is more convenient to forget one more thing from his childhood, and leave her safely locked away? Through the bars on the window, the sky is brutalized, chopped into neat sections. No one is coming for her. No one at all. Not even…
The weight is too much. Wendy snatches the pillow from the bed and crushes it against her mouth. She gasps air in shallow breaths, each growing more ragged until her lungs threaten to burst.
Then into the terrible silence around her, pillow-muffled, full of fear and rage, Wendy Darling screams.
LONDON 1931
Wendy returns to Jane’s window. The inspectors from Scotland Yard have come and gone. For hours her house has been filled with men’s voices—their rough laughter when they were unaware of her listening, their questions that she can give no answers to, the stink of tobacco clinging to their uniforms and skin. She hates every last one of them. Now, only her father-in-law remains, and she hates him most of all.
Ned’s father arrived with the inspectors, without Wendy or Ned having spoken to him about what occurred. Wendy can’t help but believe that her father-in-law arranged with the chief inspector—a personal friend—that he would be contacted immediately should any emergency calls originate from their house. Anger simmers beneath her weariness, made worse by the fact that she can say none of this aloud. Silently, she curses her father-in-law, and curses Scotland Yard for spineless cowardice.
As if she and Ned are insufficient on their own to keep their household safe. The thought brings bitter laughter, but Wendy traps it behind her lips. Oh, but she is insufficient. The knowledge twists blade-sharp, stealing her breath. She lost Jane. She let Peter steal her daughter away.
Wendy knots her fingers, staring at the darkened streets beyond Jane’s window. She is tired to the bone, and at the same time, sleep is the farthest thing from her mind. The inspectors and her father-in-law asked her dozens of questions, then asked them all over again to Ned. As if by virtue of his sex he must know more than she ever could. And all the while, questioning or silent, her father-in-law had glared at them both.
Untangling her fingers, Wendy wraps her arms around her upper body, holding onto her elbows to keep from flying apart.
She lied. To the men from Scotland Yard. To her father-in-law. Even to Ned. She told them she simply woke—a mother’s instinct—and came to her daughter’s room to find her gone. The aftertaste of dishonesty lies thick on her tongue. But what else could she say?
She’s been lying to Ned for years, withholding this one vital piece of truth. For eleven years she’s played at being a good wife, a good mother; there have been days she’s even managed to convince herself. But now it’s all falling apart, as much of a sham as her mothering of Peter and the boys in Neverland.
She chose this, she tried, and still she failed. It takes everything in Wendy not to shout, to hurl everything she can lay her hands on and scream the truth until her throat bleeds. She is not, and will not, ever be good enough for anything but lies and make-believe.
She leaves the window, pacing through Jane’s room. Her fingers trail over butterflies carefully pinned under glass, over collections of rocks and seashells and leaves, all held in cases of their own. Jane’s books. The globe atop her shelf, marked with pins for all the places her daughter wanted to visit. Of all those lands she dreamed of, Jane couldn’t have pictured Neverland. Wendy should have warned her. She should have…
Wendy lifts a butterfly case. The label is written in Jane’s neat hand—neater than Wendy’s ever was at her age. Holly blue, Celastrina argiolus. Jane caught it on the holiday they took in Northumberland, so excited she’d clutched the jar like a treasure all the way home.
The memory tightens Wendy’s throat, threatening her with tears. She wants to smash the case, smash everything in the room. Instead, she sets the glassed-in butterfly down as gently as she can.
“Come away, darling.” Ned touches her shoulder.
Wendy jumps. She never heard him enter. How long has she been standing here, staring? His hand is warm and strong on her shoulder and she wants to shrug him away, but she forces herself to turn.
Tiny threads of crimson in Ned’s eyes mark his own grief, and the tightness in his posture is unmistakable. Beneath his neatly trimmed moustache, his lips press a thin line. He’s as afraid for Jane as she is, maybe more so, because he understands even less of what’s going on. She should tell him. She should, but she won’t.
“Where’s Mary?” The words emerge sharp, in place of comfort.
Wendy hates herself, but even so she can’t stop herself from looking past Ned’s shoulder as if Mary might appear in the doorway carrying a tray laden with tea. Her pulse catches. Her father-in-law stands there instead, light from the hallway transforming him into an imposing blot of shadow.
“I sent Cook home.” Ned stresses Mary’s title, his tone matched to hers.
Wendy hears the brittleness under it, but she straightens, stepping back an inch as if too much closeness, even between husband and wife at a time like this, might be improper somehow. She cannot see her father-in-law’s face for the light behind him, but she imagines his frown. Wendy knows his opinion of Mary, and she knows it isn’t one Ned shares. Under normal circumstances, he never would have sent her home. He would call her Mary, rather than Cook, and he might be the one to make tea for all three of them as they shared their worries over Jane. But as long as Ned’s father is here, none of that matters.
To her father-in-law, Mary is that girl—always emphasizing the word. A bad influence on your household, and by that, Wendy knows he means a bad influence on her. You know how their kind are. And those are only the words he’s spoken in her hearing. To Ned, Wendy knows he’s said far worse, calling Mary savage and heathen, dangerous and untrustworthy. Only Ned’s steady touch, his calm, has kept her from lashing out at her father-in-law and forbidding him from ever setting foot in her home again. Not that she could. Despite everything she has worked to build for herself in the past eleven years, so much of Wendy’s life is by her father-in-law’s grace alone.
In addition to being Ned’s father, he is Ned’s employer, and John’s. She suspects, though her brother refuses to speak to her candidly on the matter, that John is indebted to him financially. There was a time, before he began working for Ned’s father, when John put his trust in the wrong man, investing money their parents had left them in what appeared to be a promising business venture, thinking himself a grown man when he was still so young.
Most of this Wendy has gleaned from overheard snatches of conversation, snooping and sleuthing on her own. Any time she’s asked directly, her brother always steers the conversation away, telling her business dealings are not a woman’s concern.
It’s more than that though. A delicate balance exists between Ned and his father, and thus between her and Ned’s father, and even her and Ned—one she is still trying to understand. Ned fears his father’s disapproval, and he craves his respect, craving it all the more fiercely every time it is withheld. Despite everything, despite the man Wendy knows Ned to be deep down, part of her husband still longs to be his father’s image of what a man should be. Thus his bluster before Scotland Yard, thus his acquiescence to every one of his father’s rules. It is an irony Ned doesn’t seem to realize. His father respects strength, yet Ned remains cowed. What would happen, she wonders, if he stood up for himself, if he demanded respect for who he is, and not who his father wants him to be?
