My name is Christopher Oliver Simon Paul Conner. I was ten years old when I fell from my 'pram', which you might think is awful old for a Lost Boy. Ten is the turning point, or almost. But I have always been small for my age, and I lied to Peter, when I first met him, and told him I was eight.
My brother was eight. His name matched mine, almost. Same initials. We used to swap handkerchiefs, because Mama had embroidered our initials on them, mine in blue and his in red. But my favorite color was red and his was blue, so we would swap.
The day I fell out of my pram, so to speak, was the day that Charley Orwell Samuel Peter Conner left this Earth from his bed in the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.
My father was an influential man in London in the fall of 1878. My brothers and I used to hide at the top of the stairs at night, all six of us perfectly quiet. We'd push our heads forward, try to get a glimpse. Gregory, he was the eldest, Gregory always saw the most. He could see my father take off his top hat, see his slicked back hair.
But it wasn't like Father ignored us. Never, never ever. He was a busy man, but he used to spend every Sunday with us. We'd all go to church together the Conner boys. We all had names that matched. My eldest brothers, Gregory and George, then me and Charley, then the youngest, the littles, Joseph and Johnnie. Father called us his 'strapping lads', his favorite boys. We'd all go to church and then he would take us to Hyde Park, to play by the Serpentine and occasionally venture into Kensington Gardens. This was not so long before Barrie's tales of Peter Pan and Solomon Crow, but the pirates were there all the same. We sailed boats on the Round Pond and at least one weekend a month one of us (normally George, who was solemn and serious) would walk home and get a good talking too from Mama and Mamselle Roiux for soaking his Sunday suit. Father would just grin.
During the week, though, he was far too busy to play. He worked for the Prime Minister, my father, and my Mama was just one woman. She couldn't handle six boys, so she handled us over to Mamselle Roiux.
She was kind, for a governess. She never yelled at us without cause. She was a brisk, slim woman with red cheeks and a French accent that twisted and wove throughout her words with a decided appeal. Mama had hired her because Mama was French, and they would jabber away in it when Father was out. He didn't care for it when he was there. He didn't like not knowing what was being said. We boys were taught to, from the cradle almost, and Father felt left out sometimes.
'This whole damned household had their mind set to foreign and no one can flip that switch for me,' he used to fume, and then we boys would throw ourselves at him and tell him he was better than conjugating anytime. That always made him smile.
Two months before I met Peter, my brother George, who was twelve, left to join my brother Gregory at boarding school. Not Eton, though. It seems, reading some stories, that Eton is the only school worthy of mention. No, my brothers went to Rugby, which seems fitting, at least for Gregory. Gregory was fourteen, then, and he was the best of us at sports. Partly age and that advantage, but also he was graceful, when we played. We went a few times, to see him play football (Which had not yet become Rugby, at least not technically) at school. He was the best, no question.
George, on the other hand, was scholarly. Studious. He looked like our Uncle Nicholas in pictures, with the same Conner dark curls and round little spectacles. He used to spend hours penned in our father's library, reading through all the books. Once, when just we two were talking (I can only imagine because Gregory had rounded all the others into some mischief or another) I asked him what he meant to do, when he was all grown up.
"Oh, I don't know, Kit." That was what they called me, Kit, and I called him Georgie. "Sometimes I feel as though I can never grow up. There are still so many things I've yet to do!"
"Like what?"
"Oh, I don't know, Kit." It pleased me to hear him say this twice in a row, because the motto amongst us boys was 'Georgie always knows'. And he had just told me twice he hadn't a clue! "Read, I suppose."
"But you read everything!"
"Not everything, Kit. It shall be a very long time before I read everything. I imagine I will be terribly old, by then."
"Is that why people must grow up, Georgie? Because they need such a long time for things?"
"I think, Kit, that people must grow up because they have so much to experience that it cannot be crammed into such a small skull." Georgie seemed pleased with that answer, for he said it again, then wrote it in his little notebook.
Georgie went on to become an author, when I left. I hope that one day, when I was gone and when Peter Pan was suddenly the toast of London, I hope Georgie went out and picked up a ticket and saw it, and maybe thought of me and of our conversation. Maybe took some comfort in the fact that, though I was a Lost Boy, I was not truly lost. But Georgie probably walked right past any opportunity. He probably supposed himself too old.
I believe, if Georgie had not been quite so young, he might have written Peter Pan. But then, I believe that any child, were there writing capabilities not quite up to snuff, migh have written Peter Pan.
Of all my brothers, I was closest to my match, of course. To Charley. I was a very quiet baby, by nature. I suppose because I was third, and I somehow sensed that, if I gave my mother a hard time she might not have the fourth. But Charley came along, and it was like he was simply holding my mischief for me, and then he transferred it. But being a baby has an impact on you, and so in my childhood I would sometimes stay quiet and trade Charley's wild antics for a taste of Georgie's reason. But in the end, it was always us two, Kit and Charley forever.
If Georgie could have written Peter Pan, Charley could have been him. In fact, in some ways he is him. Because Charley, like Peter, will never grow up. But Charley, not like Peter, is dead.
I guess he isn't him after all.
When I was just short of ten, Charley and I were having a sword fight over the Serpentine bridge when Charley suddenly climbed up onto the railing, thrust his sword in the air, and, with an almighty war cry, jumped.
I was petrified immediately, afraid he would meet some mishap on the way down. He could swim like a fish, Charley, so I wasn't worried about that, but I was sure he would hit his head on something and drown.
I saw him hit the water and I waited, frozen with shock and terror, for six seconds. Then I saw his head break the surface and I heard his laugh, so I started to laugh too.
"Charley, you goose, you frightened me!"
"And the ducks, it would seem!" he shouted back, for a small duck family had started to quack and flap it's wings the second Charley hit the water. They were still at it when Mamselle came by and started to scream.
"Charles, vous garcon vilain ! Comment défi vous haut sale vos vêtements intéressants ! Sorti là, maintenant !" She was yelling, as always when she got upset, in fast, angry French and stalking our way with my littlest brothers, Johnnie and Joseph. Georgie and Gregory were at school.
When she yelled at you in French, you answered in French or not at all. Charley was, as she yelled, swimming frantically to the other side of the Serpentine, to give her some time to cool off. "Mamselle, il juste—"
"Il juste, il juste! Tranquillité, Christopher ! Comment défi vous, Charles, après que toute la difficulté votre maman intervienne pour vous habiller des garçons bien?"
She yelled her head off the whole way home, then shut me and Charley in the nursery in front of a roaring fire. Charley was sneezing, from his damp journey, I supposed, and smiling.
"What do you have to smile about?" I asked nastily. He had gotten me locked in as well, and Ella, the cook, was making my favorite desert tonight and I doubted I would get to sample any of it. "What's so funny to you?"
And then, in quiet tones, he explained. About flying, about soaring through the air with nothing to catch you and still feeling safe.
"You could have died, you know. If you'd hit the water wrong, you could have cracked your neck in two."
"I wouldn't have. There was someone there, Kit. He wouldn't have let me fall, never."
"Who?" I asked, curious despite myself. "God?"
"No. A boy. He was there, next to me. He'd have caught me before I fell, if he'd thought I would die."
I didn't believe him, then, but when I saw Peter Pan, I did. I knew Peter was the boy. But then, after I knew Peter better, I knew that Peter would never have caught my brother, even if he knew. Death never seemed real to Peter like it did to the rest of us. Death was always Peter Pan's great adventure. But to the rest of us, it wasn't very funny.
Charley was rushed to Great Ormond Street Hospital two days later, with pnuemonia and a very high fever. He had refused, on principal, to change to new, dry clothes and had shivered all through the night, until Mamselle insisted he change.
He just kept on shivering and shivering until he shivered away.
Father was heart broken. Though he never said it, we knew that Gregory and Charley were his mimics, his doubles, and we knew he loved them just a bit more for that. Charley's death devastated him, and Mama too. Mamselle was wailing always, and little Johnnie, our smallest family member, kept asking for 'my Chally-pal,' which was his three year old name for Charley. Georgie and Gregory were being called home immediately, for the funeral, and I was left alone, mainly.
I left the house that day through the kitchen. Ella was wiping down the counter again and again, and Minnie and Tessie, our maids, were sitting with Kirk, the gardener, and talking quietly. It was quite easy to sneak past all of them and run, with all my might, to the Serpentine.
I suppose jumping from a bridge is an equivalent to falling out of a pram. I stood there for what seemed like hours, wondering how I could live when Charley could not. I decided, in the end, that if Charley could not grow up and be a man, neither would I.
And I jumped.
Somehow, in jumping, I had missed both the bridge and the lake and the shore, missed any seeable thing and fallen, with a gentle thump, onto Neverland's sandy shores.
I lay there for a while, wondering if this was Heaven (because I was always under the assumption that heaven had clouds in it, and all I saw was blue sky and yellow sand and a lining of very queer green trees along the edge of the beach) and, if it was Heaven, whether Charley was here waiting.
After thinking that, I got up and I started to explore. It was fiercely hot then, and I quickly shed my shoes and stockings and jacket. I was in the process of rolling up my sleeves when I saw a small, diry face peering at me from the top of the tree.
"Charley?" I yelled, but the child landed and gave me a measuring stare. He was burned to a crisp, it seemed, far too brown to be Charley. His hair was a fair, shocking white blonde, in contrast, and he had cocked his head to the side, looking at me.
"Hello," he said, then he spat a great distance. Charley would have been impressed, but I was far too nervous.
"Please," I said, "Is my brother here? His name is Charley, he's dark and pale like me—"
The boy was shaking his head. He scratched the back of his left leg with his right foot. "Is he dead?" the boy asked frankly, then spat again, as if trying to re-impress me.
I nodded, and the boy shrugged. "Then he ain't here. This ain't Heaven or nuthin'."
"What is it, then?"
"Neverland."
I'd never heard the name before in my life, but it sounded warm, like little bells chiming in my ear. I repeated it.
"Neverland."
The boy nodded, looking pleased. "Norm'ly takes some boys a while to 'cept it. You got it, though." He spat again, then came forward with a tanned, dirty hand outstretched. "I'm Blackie."
"How do you do. Christopher."
The boy smiled, suddenly, a flash of very white, crooked teeth against his dark skin. "Oh, not for long," he said. He looked at me for a minute, that measuring glance, and I knew he probably thought I was some kind of sissy, and I knew Charley wouldn't want this silly boy to think I was a sissy. So I did the only thing I could think of.
I spat, real far, right past him.
He smiled and took me to the Tree Fort.