Summary: The fate of the Darling women proves inescapable, even to those who do not have daughters. The orphans of the Neverland Orphanage are swept away by Peter Pan, despite a Darling's best efforts to prevent just that. This story is based on the book by JM Barrie, not any of the movies. The rating has been cranked up because later chapters will be dealing with violence & other non-K things.
Disclaimer: While the characters of the Neverland Orphanage, the descendants of John & Michael, & the new generation of Neverland inhabitants are of my own creation, Peter, Wendy, John, Michael, Wendy's daughter & Wendy's granddaughter, Smee, Tiger Lily, & anyone you recognize from Peter Pan are all belonging to JM Barrie.
Chapter Seven: Changes of Scenery
The lady wasn't a talker, that much was clear.
Unfortunately, Mick thought, little else about her was so readily apparent, and she did not seem about to offer any explanations for the need of a twelve-seat van to transport only herself halfway across London. It hardly seemed convenient, for her or for him. She had to pay for eleven unused seats and he had to navigate the cumbersome van around tight corners, ease it through crowds of pedal-happy motorists eager to get to work early, and dodge potholes and uneven pavement, no small feat in this hulking vehicle. More than once, Mick opened his mouth to address the lady, but everything from attempts at casual chatter to snappy complaints died in his throat when he glanced her way.
She was sitting very still on the passenger side, her back held straight against the seat as if glued there, but still she managed to turn just slightly away from him. Her head was dipped toward the window and her legs, pressed demurely together, were angled in the same direction so that she was subtly curled toward the door. With her chin tucked into her shoulder, a sheet of thick red hair fell down to shield her face and most of her torso from his view. Even as she sat beside him, she was curtained off, completely apart.
At a red light, Mick studied her as best he could out the corner of his eye. A shadow cast by a large truck rumbling next to them turned the window into a translucent mirror, allowing Mick to see the lady's ghostly reflection. She looked blank, her eyes half-lidded and unfocused, her lips troubled by neither smile nor frown. The neutrality of her face was nearly perfect, nearly peaceful, except for some touch of melancholy that Mick couldn't place. It was as if a sadness had somehow inexplicably manifested on the surface of her features. The truck pulled away, wiping her reflection from the glass, and Mick turned his eyes back to the road and waited for the light to change.
Many red lights later, she drew back the curtain of hair, startling Mick with a low murmur.
"This corner up here is fine."
Mick gave a small start, and was even more surprised when he found her looking directly at him, her face unshrouded and visible, and smiling. Though a general sense of sadness hung from her features, subduing her amusement, Mick found it hard to resist smiling back.
"Are you sure you want me to let you out here, ma'am?" he asked, though he didn't worry for her in this neighborhood. He glided the lumbering hulk of the van to a stop alongside the curb she had indicated, peering out the windshield at the swank street before him.
"Actually, I can see why you wouldn't want a heap like this making your introduction 'round here," he chuckled. He turned to face the lady with a friendly grin, but she only smiled in a tight, strained way and paid him.
"Thank you," she called sincerely as she slid out of the van and shut the door with a firm push. She stood for a moment on the sidewalk, straightening the brown traveling dress and coat, which had seemed to Mick rather smart when he had picked her up. Its appeal was somewhat faded now that she was against the backdrop of the posh streets of Bayswater, but she straightened her hemline and walked steadily down the street, as if she did not even notice the finery surrounding her. Mick thought she looked like a woman on a mission, not to be swayed by self-consciousness or fancy houses.
"Good luck, li'l darling," he murmured after her, before turning his mind to his own mission: getting this ruddy van back to the office.
Allison was glad she had asked the driver to drop her off at the end of David's street rather than at the tube stop a few blocks back. The eerie sterility of ritzy Bayswater was making her very uncomfortable. She wasn't necessarily in favor of public urination and rubbish scattered across the sidewalk, but signs of a little class differentiation wouldn't hurt, in her opinion. David's house, number 14, was a pristine white building, three stories, and separated from the street, like the neighboring homes, by two flights of stone steps. Allison looked longingly at the servant's entrance on the street level, but proceeded through the front gate with a sigh.
By the time she reached the door, she deeply regretted her choice of shoes and wondered why she had not just ditched her overnight bag after the first flight. She dumped the bag beside her on the welcome mat, resisting the urge to hurl it down to the street, and massaged tentatively at her shoulder. She could feel an indent left by the bag's strap and poked at it gently, allowing herself a few winces before straightening up and ringing the bell.
The servant who opened the door was dressed in a matching dress and jacket similar to Allison's own. She surveyed Allison with poorly disguised contempt until Allison cleared her throat.
"My name is Allison Darling. I'm here to see Da – Mr. Rochester. He's expecting me," Allison hesitated there, wondering if that was enough information. Deciding that it had bee sufficient, she closed her mouth with a click and nodded.
The servant looked at her in a bemused sort of way before standing aside and allowing her to enter the house. Allison got a quick glimpse of the foyer before her name being called distracted her.
"Allison!" David came striding down the stairs in a brown suit, opening his arms in a way that was half-welcoming, half-presenting himself.
Smiling, Allison stepped forward to meet him at the foot of the stairs and accept his kiss on her cheek. "Hello, David," she said warmly, squeezing his arm in a motherly sort of way as she stood back to take in his appearance.
He was wearing a mustache, a rather bushy one that matched the chestnut brown of his thick hair. Still, he looked young, his once roundish face chiseled into straight lines and firm angles. His green eyes, the common trait between Allison and her cousins, glowed warmly down at her. He towered over her, and as she looked proudly up at him, she was reminded so strongly of his father and their childhood (the weekends in the nursery, the poorly substituted eye patch, Emily) that she found herself looking quickly away, averting her eyes to give the rising tears a chance to draw back.
David noticed the shift of her eyes and turned to follow their path to the staircase behind him. "Ah," he cried, keeping one arm around Allison as he stepped aside to gesture to the stairs. "Alden, Eliezer, Marcus! Come greet your Auntie Allison!"
The boys had grown since Allison had last seen them. Marcus, the youngest, was now five, which was old enough for him to don one of the matching miniature suits his brothers wore. Allison chuckled when she saw the three boys lined up in front of her. Their suits were brown and their chestnut hair was neatly parted and smoothed to the side – they only lacked bushy mustaches of their own to be miniature replicas of their father.
"Hello, Auntie Allison," they chorused, Marcus only slightly out of sync.
"Did you have a pleasant journey?" Alden, the oldest at ten, asked with a mixture of politeness and rehearsal.
Holding back her laughter, Allison assured him that she had enjoyed a nice trip and thanked him. He nodded with such precocious sobriety that Allison nearly lost her battle with the giggles. Fortunately, David closed his pocketwatch with a loud click that attracted everyone's attention.
"I'm afraid I've got to run out for a bit," he said, tucking the watch back into his waistcoat. He turned to Allison with a gleaming smile. "Meetings and all that rot, you understand." Allison raised her eyebrows and gave him a small smile.
"Almeda," he called. The servant who had opened the door for Allison reappeared in the foyer. "Ah, Almeda. Would you kindly take Ms. Darling's bag to her room? Also, please escort the boys upstairs to their recreation room. I take it Hannah is there as well?"
"Yes, sir, Hannah should be upstairs." Almeda leaned down to pick up the bag Allison had left beside the umbrella stand, nodding politely to Allison as she did so.
"Oh, actually, I can carry it up," Allison jumped in, hesitantly. David and Almeda looked at her. "It's, um…it's rather heavy," she finished lamely.
Almeda glanced away from Allison to David. He nodded at her, turning quickly to smile reassuringly at Allison. She returned the smile weakly and accepted the bag as Almeda crossed the foyer to hand it to her.
"Come along, boys," Almeda said, leading the boys and Allison upstairs.
"Allison," David called out. She turned over her shoulder, trying to quickly put a smile in place. "Don't worry about the boys. I'm not leaving them in your charge, I mean. Their nanny, Hannah, she's upstairs and they're her charges, not yours."
Allison smiled genuinely and shrugged. "I'm happy to spend time with my nephews, David, but Hannah's welcome to join us."
David chuckled, smiling in a relieved sort of way. "As long as you know I'm not enlisting you as a sitter..." Allison nodded reassuringly. "Right, well, I'll be back shortly, and Callista will be here in the evening for dinner. She's so looking forward to seeing you again." Allison pushed out another smile. "Well, I'm off then!"
"Bye, David."
"Goodbye, Daddy," Marcus called. Allison turned to find Marcus standing on the step just above her. After the door had shut behind David, Marcus tilted his head up to face Allison. "I could carry your bag for you, Auntie Allison. I'm very strong."
"I've no doubt you are, Marcus," Allison responded, cheerily. "But I'm trying to build up my muscles, you see, and this bag is excellent training for me. Do you mind?"
"Well, no, that's fine." Marcus frowned a little and Allison raised her eyebrows in question. "Do you know where your room is, Auntie Allison?"
"Why, no, I do not," Allison replied, exaggerating the concern on her face.
Marcus brightened. "Would you like me to show you?"
"That would be lovely, Marcus, thank you. What a nice gentleman you are!"
Marcus nodded primly and turned around to lead Allison upstairs. He stepped aside and held out his hand to her expectantly. Smirking to herself, Allison took her nephew's hand and followed him up the stairs.
They were strange boys, Allison thought, though she liked them very much. All three were adorably precocious, putting forth serious effort to look and act like their father. Seated at a small table in the recreation room, Allison observed her nephews at play with a mixture of amusement and confusion. Their "play" was surprisingly quiet, tame that bordered on boring. Eliezer had attempted something very close to rough-housing earlier, but Alden had pushed him firmly away and straightened his suit, huffing like an old man. When Allison had suggested a game in the backyard, Alden had shrugged and settled down with a newspaper. His face as he bent toward the paper had looked disturbingly similar to David's when he checked his pocket watch.
Meetings and all that rot, Allison thought to herself with a wry smile.
Alden had not been so stiff on her last visit. But then, on her last visit, Alden was a rosy-cheeked four-year-old and under the constant supervision of the boys' then-nanny, Noreen. Allison chuckled as she tried to imagine Alden at four, notorious for climbing and jumping off of things he had climbed, in a three piece suit, legs crossed as he skimmed the Finance pages. But much had changed since that last visit.
Hannah, youngish and plump with dark hair, light eyes, and an easy smile, was an addition new to Allison, who thought that a more apt term for Hannah would be "replacement." The household ran through nannies faster than the orphanage ran through uniforms. When Callista was pregnant with Alden, she had hired a woman who would serve as both a midwife and a nanny, but despite her excellent services and instant attachment with Alden, she was gone just after the boy's first birthday. She was followed by Illeana, a shy, gigantic woman from Iceland who spoke very little English and rarely spoke at all. Illeana was selected by a service that one of Callista's friends had recommended. Allison had only met her once, and could clearly remember being dwarfed, even as a woman of slightly above average height, by the six-foot tower of fair skin and white-blond hair. Alden had seemed lost in Illeana's folded arms. But Abigail, a middle-aged, childless widow, was cradling Alden by the next Christmas, and she was soon let go in favor of Susan, whose place was taken by Renata, who was followed by two or three or four others, the names of whom Allison could not recall, before Noreen came to work for the family.
The family had moved that year to Spain, where Eliezer had been born, and where Callista had longed to return. They came back to London a year later, sans Noreen but with a new nanny, Larissa, and a new child. After a party in honor of Marcus, Allison saw David only sporadically throughout the years – he was an enthusiastic supporter of the orphanage and in addition to his generous contributions, he often stopped in to visit the children or hand-deliver newly donated resources. The children adored David, especially when he showed up as Father Christmas around the winter holidays. Most of the older girls harbored crushes on David, and Allison was fairly convinced that Holly was carrying a torch as well.
But David seemed different, as well. The mustache was certainly new, Allison mused, watching absently as Alden laid the newspaper along his crossed leg and accepted the glass of juice Hannah handed him without looking up. Hannah then leaned down to Allison, asking if she would not mind keeping an eye on things while she fetched something-or-other. Allison nodded politely, barely listening, and rushed back to her thoughts. She nearly snorted with laughter as she pictured Holly's reaction to the new facial hair. It could go either way, really.
It was more than the mustache, though. Something about David seemed…blank. Yes, blank, she thought. A bit too perfect, a bit too shiny…manicured. "Distant," she murmured aloud.
A trumpet blared, suddenly, startling Allison out of her musings. Alden looked up from the paper irritably, setting his juice glass down on the table with an annoyed click.
"Eliezer," he huffed.
Eliezer turned over his shoulder from the far corner of the nursery, where he had been fiddling with an old radio that was generally accepted as broken. He beamed at the startled occupants of the playroom as the speaker choked out a deafening dance number, mixing in intermissions of static. Allison thought it sounded like a big brass band was being trod upon violently, and she could not help grinning at Eliezer's pride.
Alden was scowling, folding up the newspaper in a most official and serious manner, but before he could deliver a lecture, Allison leapt up from her seat and caught Marcus under the arms. She lifted him clean off the floor, away from the encyclopedia he had been pretending to read, and whirled him around. He looked at his aunt in shock, staring with wide eyes at her delighted smile as she asked, "May I have this dance?"
Without waiting for an answer, or even for the surprise on Marcus' round face to fade, Allison had clasped one of his small hands in her own, holding their arms out in fine form. Securing one arm around his waist, she leaned a little closer to him. "I'll lead, shall I?" And then they were off, twirling about the playroom. Allison swept around the table, where Alden sat gaping at their grossly inappropriate behavior, and threw in a bit of shimmying and shaking. By the time they had danced over to the window, Marcus was giggling and waved over Allison's shoulder at Alden, who sharply closed his open mouth into a frown. Eliezer, not to be left out, had jumped up from the radio and found a space in the center of the room, where he was dancing erratically on his own. Allison could hardly keep dancing when she saw Eliezer swinging his arms and shaking his smoothly groomed hair out of place, kicking his feet out every which way. Doubling over, Allison set Marcus down and he sprang from her arms, pulling her by the hand over to Eliezer.
"Follow me, Auntie Allison! Follow," he cried, and took off hopping and wiggling in a circle around Eliezer, who was deeply engrossed in his own dancing. Allison obediently mimicked Marcus and followed him around the circle, shaking and clapping and jumping as he did. The three were so involved in their fun that no one noticed when Alden gave an exasperated sigh and laid his head in his hands.
Nor did they notice Hannah's approaching footsteps. "What is all this rack –" The words fell short as Hannah swung open the door, balancing a tea tray that slipped dangerously sideways as she surveyed the scene with wide eyes. Allison had caught up both Eliezer and Marcus and was swaying and stepping with one nephew on each hip. The shirts of both boys had come untucked and their hair bore no sign of the careful smoothing and styling that had been evident before Hannah left. Eliezer was hanging nearly upside down from Allison's hip, his jacket dangling from one arm. Marcus had lost a shoe, and the remaining one threatened to fall at every rhythmic kick of his leg.
Allison kept twirling, swinging Eliezer and Marcus around until they were too breathless to even giggle, as Hannah broke out of her horrified trance and rushed forward into the nursery. She threw the tea tray down onto the table and, without bothering to see if anything had broken or spilled, she dashed toward the crackling, blaring radio and wrenched the knob to the off position.
The silence startled even Hannah, and froze Allison in mid-step. "Aw," Marcus moaned, sadly, as Allison faltered, regained her balance, and turned to face Hannah. With Marcus' forlorn gaze, Allison's puzzlement, and Eliezer regarding her upside down, it was as if Hannah were facing a three-headed, many-limbed monster. Bravely, she charged at it head-on.
"Oh, oh, dear. Alden! Alden, please, find Marcus' shoe, and quickly!" Hannah grasped Marcus under the arms and pulled him off of Allison's hip, standing him on the table. She looked frantic as she began tucking his shirt in, but Marcus held his arms helpfully out of the way, his face expressing a bored sort of patience. "Eliezer," she called over her shoulder. "Come on, Eliezer!"
Allison tore her eyes away from Marcus being put back together on the table when she felt Eliezer moving on her other side. With a compliant sigh, he grasped onto the edge of a bookshelf behind him and neatly tumbled right out of Allison's arm, though he left his jacket behind. Still confused, slightly impressed, Allison retrieved the jacket and shook it out straight. She held it out for Eliezer to shrug into and looked back over her shoulder at Hannah and Marcus.
Hannah had turned her attentions to Marcus' hair. She pulled a comb out from a pocket in her jacket and attacked the mop of brown hair that hung loosely across Marcus' forehead. Marcus allowed the comb to pull his head back and forth on his loose neck, standing relaxed and compliant as Hannah fussed and fretted. She kept murmuring in worried tones, pausing only when Alden returned triumphantly from under the bed with Marcus' shoe. Like a horse being groomed, Marcus wordlessly shifted his weight and raised the shoeless foot off the table, balancing against Hannah patiently as Alden replaced the lost shoe.
Eliezer, meanwhile, had climbed up onto the seat of a vanity across the room and produced a comb from one of the drawers. Leaning toward the mirror, he closed one eye and held the comb at arm's length, sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth. He winked at Allison's reflection in the mirror and grinned when she smiled at his impression of a painter, but then he settled into combing and parting his mussed hair. Expertly, he shaped the tousled mess into the same slick style he had worn when Allison had first arrived. Once finished, he gave himself a final look, turning his head to get a view of the sides, and returned the comb to its drawer with a satisfied nod.
"Boys!" Hannah called. "Oh, oh dear. Boys! Come on!"
Eliezer turned with a mock flourish and sprang off the vanity seat. He trotted over to Hannah and fell into line between Alden and Marcus, whom Hannah had just lifted from the table and set down. When released from Hannah's grip, Marcus stood like a stuffed toy balanced on its legs. The three boys held the same excellent posture they had displayed when they first greeted Allison, while Hannah looked them over and wrung her hands fretfully.
"Yes, yes, I suppose this will do," she muttered, her eyes darting over every inch of the three boys. "Alright!" she cried, louder. "Downstairs to Almeda, now, boys! Alden, you lead."
They turned and marched to the door, leaving Hannah frazzled, and Allison completely bewildered.
"Hannah?" Allison ventured, still gazing in confusion at the door through which the boys had left.
Hannah did not reply, though Allison could still hear her troubled murmurs. Allison turned away from the door to find Hannah muttering as she wiped off the table with the skirt of her dress, gathering up Alden's newspaper and stooping to lift the tea tray, but then pausing with the tray just off the table and turning to look at the rest of the playroom. With a heavy sigh, she dropped the tea tray and bustled over to the corner where Eliezer had been fiddling with the radio. Allison followed, stopping to pick up Marcus' forgotten encyclopedia (which he had been looking at sideways) and tuck it back into the open space in the bookshelf.
Hannah was still mumbling to herself as she surveyed Eliezer's damage. Allison knelt by the resurrected radio and began collecting the various makeshift tools that Eliezer had used to repair the radio. She worked silently, and it seemed to soothe Hannah, whose mutters quieted as she moved away to straighten up the rest of the relatively spotless playroom.
"It's not me, you know," said Hannah, after a few lengthy moments of silence. Allison turned over her shoulder, her hands full of writing implements, bits of wire, and a chipped letter opener. Hannah had dropped into one of the small chairs at the miniature table, and sat frowning while she absently straightened up the contents of the tea tray. "I'm not so strict about all this," she gestured with a teaspoon to the nursery. "Neatness and all, I mean." (She was a bit nervous and rambling, embarrassed even, because she really did want Allison to like her.)
"It's alright, Hannah," Allison said, brightly, standing up and relocating to the chair across from Hannah's. She smiled sweetly at the nanny, who returned a weak but hopeful grimace. (Allison really did like Hannah.) "I understand," she continued. "I know Callista can run a rather tight ship when it comes to appearance. Why, I remember one Christmas –"
"Oh, well –" Hannah interjected, then faltered. "That is, yes, Missus Rochester can be very particular about the boys' attire and grooming. But most of these rules, especially about the playroom, well, they're from Mister Rochester."
A/N: fixed the spacing! the editor & i were having a fight about hr's & sectioning off parts of the chapter. hopefully it's easier to read now.
