Chapter 6

A Reminder of My Better Self

Later that evening, as the low sun was glowing like an ember, it would have been possible for an observer to have made out a sole figure on the deck, looking towards the West and emulating the melancholy of the dying day with a deep sigh. Captain Hook often stood thus to watch the sunset; to embrace his endless solitude and augment it with the consolation of beauty. We know him to be a man of contradictions, as sensitive as he is callous. It may not be a surprise, therefore, that the exquisiteness of the view before him settled around his weary heart with a poignancy that nearly made him weep, for it only served to accentuate his terrible loneliness.

'Better for Hook, perhaps, that he had never been born', he whispered glassily. A board creaked behind him and he spun round, hook raised in case it was the brat come to mock him- but it was only the Darling girl.

'What do you mean by this, creeping up on a fellow?' He hissed angrily

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you; I was just wandering the deck', Wendy said with an unmistakable look of guilt.

'Were you now? Well, it matters not. I fear I am in no sociable mood, Miss Darling, I apologise for my roughness.'

'Not at all. Um, I wanted to ask you something. Something about yourself.' Hook glanced at her. 'You see,' she continued 'I was reading one of the books you gave me, and there was a press cutting of you as a boy from your old school.'

Hook seemed to turn to stone at the mention of this; all the fire drained out of him. She knew about his school, and, in knowing, knew also of the shame he had brought on its illustrious name. Eventually he choked

'Forget that which you saw, girl, I am an Etonian no more.'

'Then why did you keep that cutting?' asked Wendy, maddeningly She could tell that Hook would lose patience eventually, but she was by this time too bent on finding out about his past to care. Hook leant on the balustrade with his head in his hand.

'Tis a reminder of my better self. I keep it to remember a time when my name was spoken by those whose respect I coveted above all others with pride, rather than fear and disgust. There. You see me now, Miss Darling, for what I truly am. An old man with nothing but pitiful nostalgia to bring me comfort.' He spoke these words woodenly, as though he were talking about someone else. Wendy moved next to him and followed his gaze into the setting sun, and for a moment the pair was silent. Then she turned to him tentatively and asked

'Captain Hook, how did you become a pirate?' The man inclined his head towards her with a look of irritated restraint.

'Miss Darling', he said with dangerous politeness, 'you are not enamouring yourself to me with such endless questions.'

'You said earlier I might ask you anything, captain.' was the quiet response. Hook looked at her, exasperated with the girl's forwardness, then sighed resignedly.

'Very well', he said, 'I can see you are not to be put off. I became a pirate, Miss Darling, because the life assigned to me by birth was, to my youthful mind, a tedious and ignoble one. I see you raise your brow, girl; doubtless you think there is little honour in piracy; but to me, as an ignorant boy, I saw the life as exciting, and demanding courage, so after my time at school, and then Oxford, I succumbed to my romantic inclinations and ran away to sea. Of course, I was never what a puritan such as thee would call a moral youth, I have never, for example, understood or followed the divine mandate to 'love thine enemy', for how is one to win in life in such a degraded state of submission? However, I digress. As I was saying, I was not an ideal product of my Roman upbringing; but I did have a sense of Form, and obtained a letter of marque in order that any activities in which I partook came with the blessing of king and country. I do not baulk at saying that after a few years my greed eclipsed my desire to remain within the confines of law, and I became the pirate you see now. I served under villainous men, Miss Darling, and accumulated some of their worst attributes. Eventually I rose to become captain of this sturdy vessel, and came, in the aftermath of a squall that hit us one fateful night, to be in this accursed place, with no conception of how we got here, and no navigable way to leave.'

'When did you first meet Peter?'

'Pan?' he spat viciously 'The brat thou love so? Aye, it was only a matter of time before thou were't to ask about him, wasn't it girl?' Wendy blushed at this.

'I don't love him. I only wonder why you hate him so much you will not leave this place you call accursed, even though my presence here is proof you have the capability to do so.'

'Because I will be avenged. Because he has no fear, no humility, no conception of ought but his own brilliance. Because he is unrepentant and I will make him repent. I suppose you think I gained this hook' and he brandished the instrument lovingly, 'as the result of some gentlemanly duel in which he fairly bested me. Twas not so, Miss Darling. I shall elucidate for you.

It was not long that I and my crew had been in Neverland before we perceived this flying boy, and were duly fascinated. Some of my crew thought him to be a demon, others to be a good spirit; but his being to me was a matter of intense indifference, I only desired to be free of this island. One day, as I was reposing on deck asleep, with an alarm clock to wake me at the right hour, I felt a pricking in my thigh and awoke to find the boy hovering at me and jabbing lightly me with a dagger. "A duel sir, I challenge thee" he spoke with bravado, and I scarce had time to know what the deuce was happening, or to draw my sword, before he had swiped at my arm and cut off the hand. He laughed, did the brat, and taunted me as I scrabbled to pick up a weapon with my left hand. Flying over board, he seemed to deem it a great amusement to cast my arm, along with the clock, into the jaws of the crocodile whose demise I caused of late. We duelled then, and I will be the first to admit he is a skilled swordsman, but had I been fighting with my natural side, I should have had him many times by now. Eventually, things having reached a deadlock, he grew bored, and, rather than stay and fight to the death with honour, he flew off, with me left behind, quite powerless to give pursuit, and bleeding from the wrist. This is your beloved boy, this is your hero. How noble of him to wake a sleeping man before causing injury; how brave is he to up and fly away when he tires of fighting. At least I can thank him for giving me my beautiful claw. But I cannot forgive his insufferable cockiness, his despicable grin as he despatches enemies, and the fact that he forgets, is not haunted or even affected by their ghosts. That, Miss Darling, is why I hate him and why my very soul bays for his blood. It isn't fair: I would say it though it were with my last breath; it isn't fair.'

Wendy had listened to this story with a growing sense of unease and shame. The trouble was she could easily believe it to be true. Had Peter not, on their very first visit to Neverland, offered to wake up a sleeping pirate merely in order to kill him? As a little girl she had adored, even idolised Peter Pan and hated Hook with all the vehemence of childhood, and it was disturbing to her (as it always is in these situations) to realise that the truth of both characters was more complex. She remembered with mortification the exultation she had felt in seeing Hook fall into the crocodile's waiting mouth, as though he were devoid of humanity.

'I'm sorry' she said, lightly touching his arm, 'I didn't realise. I shan't ask you any more questions. Sorry.'

'Oh, no need for apologies' said Hook, who seemed exorcised after imparting his tale. 'I am still a villain, my beauty, I know that full well. But if thou wilt not object, I would have thee stay with me a while, for conversation like this I have not had in endless years.'

'Of course I shall stay with you if you wish' replied Wendy, trying to ignore the awkwardness this request had caused her to feel. She could hardly keep up with his moods; he seemed to go from triumphant to angry to despairing to wistful in the blink of an eye, and she did wonder how long his equanimity towards her would last. Still, she thought, she had little else to do, and he was such a fascinating character.

Hook had regarded Wendy with interest throughout his description of the origins of his and Pans enmity, and noted with satisfaction the expression on her face as he did so. This was good, this was all to plan. What was not, however, was his increasing feeling of attachment to the girl. When she had looked so sad at his tale, he had been moved for her sake, and when she had had reached out and touched his arm he had felt something akin to an electric pulse shivering up his spine. Observing her now as she leant on the balustrade next to him, he could clearly see her figure, curved and womanly, and her face, which he had begun to think of as pretty. Something in him longed to touch that face, to hold her and feel her lovely little frame pressed against his own. Worse still, she was stood close enough for him to catch her scent, and it was intoxicating; fresh and floral, and sensuous. He weakened and moved closer to her, allowing himself to revel in the warmth of her proximity.

'Miss Darling' he began 'do excuse me, I fear I have been over garrulous about myself without even sparing a thought as to your own comings and goings. Do tell me, my beauty, what has passed for thee in the years betwixt our previous meeting.'

'Oh, nothing much' said Wendy, pleased at the Captain's interest in her 'Of course, I visited this place twice after you…well, after the, um, battle to which we were both party. Since then I have completed school, and would have liked to have gone to university, but-'

'Go to university?' Interrupted Hook incredulously, 'but you're a woman!' He seemed aghast and amused in equal measure. 'Have the universities started admitting females?! Surely not Oxford?'

'Oxford was one of the first, actually' said Wendy, laughing. 'It has not been this way for long, of course, but many universities have started having women's colleges. I was to go to Girton College Cambridge.'

'Ah, should have guessed you were a Tab. Horrible place, Cambridge.'

'Well, I didn't actually go. Mother and Father, you see, wanted me to marry well, and the younger I am, the better the chance of a good match.' There was more than a trace of bitterness in Wendy's voice. 'Mother said she couldn't understand why it was not possible to read and improve oneself without three more years of education, and father thought the whole idea of female graduates to be monstrous. So I wasn't allowed to go.'

'And did your parents find you a suitable match?'

'Oh, hundreds,' replied Wendy sardonically 'all interchangeable, dull, timorous, wealthy young lawyers or clerks or doctors. I haven't liked any of them.'

Hook smiled at this, and a companionable silence ensued as both of them looked out over the water, lost in their own thoughts. Eventually Wendy shivered, for the sun was, by this time, well over the horizon.

'You are cold, my beauty, and the hour is late. I was remiss in asking you to stay out, you ought to go to bed.' said Hook

'Yes, I think I shall' replied the girl, perhaps rather too quickly. 'Goodnight, Captain'

'Goodnight, Miss Darling.'

Wendy walked towards the door that led to her room until she was sure she could not be seen. Unexpectedly, for she is normally a woman of her word, she ducked around a corner and hid. We can only guess at her intentions, for now. Suffice to say that she had, in the past hour or so, formulated a plan, the execution of which was to take place in the very next chapter.