Author's Note: I'm posting two chapters today, because Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 both have very few revisions. This one mostly just has small changes to characterization and weather, to improve continuity. (When I started revising, I noticed that the weather in the first draft of this story seemed to be always snowing and wintry, even though several months pass and therefore seasons should change. Heh. London isn't quite that cold. It is not, after all, located in the Arctic Circle.)
I may upload Chapter 6 this evening, as well, if I get the double-check done, because I'm eager to get to the more heavily revised sections of the story.
Thanks: Thanks again to my husband and Mara Trinity Scully for their beta-reading. And thanks again, also, to those who have taken the time to review!
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me. This fic, however, is mine. Please don't take it without my permission.
Chapter 5
Squalor and Magic
~
Peter was not in his usual place on Oxford Street the following afternoon, nor the following day, nor the day after that. After a full week of seeking him there, Wendy realized she must find some alternate way to search for him.
Remembering that Peter had mentioned the names of two of his friends on the streets, Wendy began to ask after a woman named "Old Maddie" and a man named "Big George." But the people with whom she spoke seemed fearful and resentful of her presence among them, eyeing her finely-tailored dresses and stylish hats with suspicious eyes.
After speaking to a great many people on a great many different days, Wendy at last met an elderly woman on Oxford Street who admitted to being called "Old Maddie." She had few teeth, what few she had were dark with rot, and she wore a dress that was little more than a collection of rags. Her gray hair stuck out in odd tangled tufts in all directions, and she wore no hat, despite the wintry cold. She coughed and spat occasionally into a handkerchief of a color one might have described as "dirt."
"I'm Ol' Maddie, I am, Miss. What c'n I do fer ya, foin lady like ya? Don't want no trouble!"
"No, of course not, Miss ... er ... Maddie."
"Jus' 'Maddie', lass. Or Ol' Maddie, tha's fine, too."
"I'm looking for a boy, Maddie. A friend of mine. His name is Peter. He's about this tall" -- and here Wendy held her hand several inches above her own head -- "and he has light brown hair, and blue eyes with green and gray flecks in them, like the sea. I simply must find him, Maddie! I simply must." Realizing that she had been wringing her hands as she spoke, Wendy self-consciously smoothed down her skirt and tried to regain her composure. Finding Old Maddie after nearly three weeks of searching was rather difficult on her nerves.
Old Maddie coughed into her handkerchief and then eyed Wendy cautiously, looking her up and down as if she were appraising a horse. "Whachoo wan'im for, then?"
"Pardon?" asked Wendy.
"What you want 'im for, our Peter?"
Wendy began unconsciously wringing her hands once more. Aunt Millicent would have been appalled. "He ran away, you see. I'm not sure why, but I simply must find him."
Shaking her head, Old Maddie replied, "Oh, 'e left a ways back, 'e did. Said somebody 'as tryin' ta put 'im in da spoik."
"Spike?" asked Wendy in some confusion.
"Aye, the spoik. The workhouse, Miss. The spoik."
"I assure you, Maddie, that I am not trying to put Peter in the ... the spike ... or the workhouse ... or anything bad. I just must find him. I'm afraid of what will happen to him if I don't!"
Leaning her head back a bit, turning her head, and looking at Wendy out of the corner of her eye, Old Maddie asked suddenly, "W'd you be the Wendy lass 'e talked 'bout?"
Smiling a bright, sudden, relieved smile, Wendy cried, "Yes! I'm Wendy! He talked of me?"
With a sly smile, Old Maddie admitted, "Aye. 'e loiks you, 'e does. 'a's for certain."
"Oh, please, Maddie! Where might I find him?"
But instead of answering her, Old Maddie called out into the shadows of a stairway not far from where they stood. "Big George!" she shouted coarsely. "Big George!" This seemed to start the old lady coughing once more.
A very tall, very broad man with a quite remarkably large belly emerged out of the darkness. He had a quite impressive black beard, though his black hair was cropped close on his head. His clothes were of poor quality, but they were well-mended and fairly clean. He wore an apron, which seemed to indicate he worked at a trade of some sort.
"What you shoutin' about, then, Ol' Maddie?" he growled in a rumbling deep voice.
"This 'ere lady's lookin' for our Peter. You remember where 'e said 'e was goin'? East End, I think it 'as, but I don' remember more partic'larly." Old Maddie scratched her head, and Wendy found herself rather uncharitably wondering if the kindly old woman had lice. She refused to take a step away, however, lest she give offense.
The man who was apparently Peter's friend "Big George" rubbed his belly thoughtfully. "Di'n' he say Whitechapel? I remember 'cause o' the Ripper."*
"Whitechapel?" Wendy could barely contain her excitement at receiving some information after so much searching. "Did he say where in Whitechapel?"
Big George shook his head, "I don' rightly remember, Miss. Ya might look near the station, though, f'r my wife lived near there when she 'as a girl. Might've mentioned it to the lad. 'Fraid I don' remember more'n that." With no more formal good-bye, Big George simply turned around and walked back into the darkness of the stairway. Wendy could hear his heavy footfalls rising upward and away.
Old Maddie smiled her toothless grin and reached out a hand to touch Wendy's arm. "Shore been an honor meetin' ya, Miss. I do hope ya find yer lad. 'e's shore sweet on ya." And with a broad wink, Old Maddie gave a rather awkward curtsy and walked down a narrow alleyway and out of Wendy's sight.
"Whitechapel," Wendy murmured to herself. "Near the station." Nodding with determination, she stepped to the street and hailed a cab.
Unfortunately, three weeks later, Wendy had still not located Peter. She had ridden to Whitechapel every day after school and looked simply everywhere in that area's narrowly winding streets. She had scoured the area surrounding the station, alighting from her carriage frequently to walk where she might speak with the people who crowded the sidewalks.
Whitechapel was quite like a different London entirely from Bloomsbury and St. John's Wood. Smoke from the chimneys drifted in black flakes from the early summer sky as if it were snowing, falling upon Wendy's hat and dress in unsightly streaks. She was never more grateful for Lottie's laundering discretion than she had been since beginning her visits to Whitechapel.
Everywhere there were people, so very many people, all in such a small space, as if they were living quite on top of one another, and so many of them visibly ill, so many huddled barely clothed upon the street, their heads hanging low their clothes almost in rags. She saw barefoot children who looked no more than five years old, begging in the street or aggressively selling lozenges to passersby.
Whitechapel seemed to her almost like a wilderness, a dark and mysterious wilderness filled with dangers with which Wendy had no acquaintance. Everything there seemed somehow helpless, hopeless, unrelieved, and dirty.
Every afternoon that she was in Whitechapel, Wendy worried more for Peter, who had no warm, safe home to return to each night as she had.
What Wendy did not know, however, was that she had an observer. From shadows not only in Whitechapel but also upon occasion in St. John's Wood, the boy she sought often watched her, dazzled by her beauty and her kindness in seeking him. But he would not put himself once more in the power of Wendy's aunt and that infernal doctor -- he would not go to the workhouse -- and so he watched in silence, wishing with the brave part of his heart that Wendy would simply forget him and be happy, away from all this squalor and disease.
But wishing also, with the more selfish part of his heart, if truth be told, that Wendy would find him.
After her visit to Whitechapel one afternoon, Wendy arrived home somewhat later than usual. She had seen a tall boy with tousled light brown hair, and had chased him for several blocks before getting near enough to see that it was not Peter. She was tired and dirty and discouraged, and the last thing she wanted to see as she came in the front door was Aunt Millicent standing in the entryway with her arms crossed and a frown on her face.
"Miss Wendy Darling," Aunt Millicent began, and Wendy knew that this was going to be quite horrible, even only from that beginning, "I should like to know where you have been this afternoon." Striding into the sitting room and seating herself upon the divan, Aunt Millicent watched Wendy with raised eyebrows and her very sourest sour-lemon mouth.
Wendy walked slowly to the chair opposite the divan and sat nervously upon the edge. "I was helping Kitty Eliot with her embroidery," Wendy quietly repeated the lie she had been depending upon for these past several weeks.
Aunt Millicent tilted her head like a strange and curious bird, and then said sharply, "You will never guess whom I met at Selfridge's today."
Her heart sinking in her chest, Wendy answered dully, "Mrs. Eliot?"
With a rather bitter smile, Aunt Millicent replied, "And her lovely daughter Kitty! Strangely enough, neither of them seemed familiar with your after-class embroidery project of these past months."
"Aunt, I can explain!" Wendy cried, moving forward and once more wringing her guiltily-dirty gloved hands together.
"I do not wish to hear any explanations, Wendy Darling. I am deeply disappointed in you, and offended that you think so little of my guidance. If I allow you to behave in such unladylike ways, you shall find yourself quite unmarriagable."
Wendy opened her mouth to reply, to beg for some leniency, but Aunt Millicent's stern face warned her to hold her tongue. In fact, Aunt Millicent looked rather as if Wendy had slapped her across the face, so shocked and dismayed was that elegant lady to have been so shamelessly disrespected by the charge to whom she had devoted her considerable care and effort.
"And so I have made up my mind," Aunt Millicent continued grimly. "You are leaving school as of today, and you will from this day forward be instructed only here in my own home, where I can see for myself that you are behaving as befits a proper young lady."
"Leaving school?" gasped Wendy. "But I was to finish out the year!"
Shaking her carefully coifed head, Aunt Millicent stated flatly, "Your school days are done, Wendy Darling, and you have only yourself to blame. Future education would only spoil you further. Tomorrow, you shall instead spend the day with me."
At this, Aunt Millicent stood and strode stiffly from the room. She paused, however, in the doorway, her back to Wendy, and enunciated clearly, "And you shall bathe and change into less ... soiled garments immediately." She then left the room, thereby also leaving Wendy to her grief.
No school! No more reading! And no way to search for Peter any longer! Removing her soiled gloves with tears in her eyes, Wendy sunk her face into her also rather dirty hands and wept.
The following weeks were more of a nightmare than any hardship Wendy had observed in Whitechapel, for they included a very suspicious and mistrustful Aunt Millicent watching her at nearly every moment.
Wendy had made them both potentially the target of gossip with her lies, and Aunt Millicent was quite determined that she learn the error of her ways, for her own benefit. A young lady simply could not behave so brashly if she hoped to be accepted in good society and marry well.
As summer deepened and bloomed outside, Aunt Millicent and Wendy spent their days in the sitting room, or occasionally the drawing room, both thickly curtained and with little movement of the air. It was rather like living in a lavishly decorated cave.
Wendy played the piano, sewed embroidery upon gloves and handkerchiefs and a scarves, worked tapestries, accompanied her aunt on her social visits with frightfully boring people, and silently did everything she was bid to do ... but always in her heart she was worrying for Peter, wondering where he was and whether he was well, and many a private tear was shed into her needlework and onto the keys of Aunt Millicent's handsome piano.
On the day when Aunt Millicent instructed her niece to dress for visiting the Crawfords, Wendy had no idea that she was soon to be once more touched by fate ... or providence ... or magic ... or whatever it might truly be. Let us call it Magic, and be done.
Wendy and Aunt Millicent departed the house wearing their finest visiting clothes, for the Crawfords were a rather prominent family. Wendy wore her new white hat, which complimented her skin and hair quite well, and to all outward appearances she was like any other young lady abroad in London that day. Anyone would have thought the stiffness of her back due only to propriety and good posture, and never suspected the strength of will she exerted at every moment to keep herself from simply screaming and running away, or collapsing in hopeless tears.
One observer, however, saw what the others did not. He saw her struggle and her grief, and he longed to do something -- he was not sure what -- to help, to see her smile once more.
But the ladies knew not that they were watched, and, in their carriage, they did not converse. Aunt Millicent had insisted that Wendy continue to practice her conversation at home occasionally, but aunt and niece were still currently too much at odds to engage in friendly exchanges without prior arrangement. They saved their polite conversation for the Crawfords.
When they arrived at their destination, Miss Elizabeth Crawford surprised them by expressing a wish to walk in the park which lay just across the street. The summer weather was, after all, most prodigiously fine. With an ingratiating smile, Aunt Millicent assured both Miss Elizabeth Crawford and her elegant mother that they would be delighted to walk, as the sun indeed was particularly bright and pleasant.
It was as the group of four well-dressed ladies began their crossing of the street that Magic once more took a hand, for though they espied the yellow motor car that came suddenly 'round the corner, they found that Wendy and Miss Elizabeth, the two walking in front, were directly in the auto's path, with no remedy in sight. All four ladies cried out in horror.
Suddenly, the two endangered young ladies found themselves pushed forcefully forward, landing rather ungracefully upon hands and knees in their fine dresses. Behind them, where they had been until just this moment, they heard a most terrible crashing noise and a sickening thud, along with the horrified screams of onlookers upon the sidewalk.
It all happened in the briefest of moments, and by the time Wendy turned with stunned expression to see the horrible sight that lay behind her, it was all over. The yellow motor car was motionless in the center of the road, its driver gesturing wildly and insisting that the boy had come out of nowhere.
And there, in the street, bloodied and not moving, was Peter Pan.
* The Jack the Ripper murders occurred in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888, which is what Big George is referring to.