Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,
Your go-to podcast that offers you a calm and relaxing transition into a great night's sleep.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now,
And nowhere you need to go.
Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you and let all the worries of the day drift away.
This is your time and your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
There is nothing you need to be doing now,
And nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter One Continued Mrs Darlington first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's mines.
It is the nightly custom of every good mother,
After her children are asleep,
To rummage in their mines and put things straight for the next morning,
Repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day.
If you could keep awake,
But of course you couldn't,
You would see your own mother doing this,
And you would find it very interesting to watch her.
It is quite like tidying up drawers.
You would see her on her knees,
I expect,
Lingering humorously over some of your contents,
Wondering where on earth you'd picked this thing up,
Making discovery sweet and not-so-sweet,
Pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten,
And hurriedly stowing that out of sight.
When you wake in the morning,
The naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind,
And on the top,
Beautifully aired,
Are spread out your prettier thoughts,
Ready for you to put on.
I don't know whether you've ever seen a map of a person's mind.
Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you,
And your own map can become intensely interesting.
But catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind,
Which is not only confused but keeps going round all the time.
There are zigzag lines on it,
Just like your temperature on a card,
And these are probably roads in the island.
But the Neverland is always more or less an island,
With astonishing splashes of colour here and there,
And coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing,
And savages and lonely lairs,
And gnomes who are mostly tailors,
And caves through which a river runs,
And princes with six elder brothers,
And a hut fast going to decay,
And one very small old lady with a hooked nose.
It would be an easy map if that were all,
But there is also a first day at school,
Religion,
Fathers,
The round pond,
Needlework,
Murders,
Hangings,
Verbs that take the dative,
Chocolate pudding day,
Getting into braces,
Say ninety-nine,
Three pence for pulling out your tooth yourself,
And so on.
And either these are part of the island,
Or they are another map showing through,
And it is all rather confusing,
Especially as nothing will stand still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal.
John's,
For instance,
Had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it,
At which John was shooting,
While Michael,
Who was still very small,
Had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it.
John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands,
Michael in a wigwam,
Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together.
John had no friends,
Michael had friends at night,
Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by its parents.
But on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance,
And if they stood in a row,
You could say of them they have each other's nose,
And so forth.
Upon these magic shores,
Children at play are forever beaching their coracles.
We too have been there,
We can still hear the sound of the surf,
Though we shall land no more.
Of all delectable islands,
The Neverland is the snuggest and the most compact.
Not large and sprawly,
You know,
With tedious distance between one adventure and another,
But nicely crammed.
When you play at it,
By day,
With the chairs and tablecloth,
It's not in the least alarming,
But in the two minutes before you go to sleep,
It becomes very nearly real.
That is why there are nightlights.
Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds,
Mrs Darling found things she could not understand,
And of these quite the most perplexing was the word Peter.
She knew of no Peter,
And yet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds,
While Wendy's began to be scrawled all over with him.
The name stood out in bolder letters than any other,
And as Mrs Darling gazed,
She felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.
Yes,
He is rather cocky,
Wendy admitted with regret.
Her mother had been questioning her.
But who is he,
My pet?
He's Peter Pan,
You know,
Mother.
At first Mrs Darling did not know,
But after thinking back into her childhood,
She just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with the fairies.
There were odd stories about him,
As that when children died,
He went part of the way with them so they should not be frightened.
She had believed in him at the time,
But now she was married and full of sense,
She quite doubted whether there was any such person.
Besides,
She said to Wendy,
He will be grown up by this time.
Oh no,
He isn't grown up,
Wendy assured her confidently.
He's just my size.
Wendy meant he was her size in both mind and body,
But she didn't know how she knew it,
She just knew it.
Mrs Darling consulted Mr Darling,
But he smiled poo-poo.
Mark my words,
He said,
It's some nonsense Nana's been putting into their heads.
Just the sort of idea a dog would have,
Leave it alone and it will blow over.
But it would not blow over.
Soon the troublesome boy gave Mrs Darling quite a shock.
Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them.
For instance,
They may remember to mention,
A week after the event happened,
That when they were in the wood they met their dead father and had a game with him.
It was in this casual way that Wendy one morning made a disquieting revelation.
Some leaves of a tree had been found on the nursery floor,
Which certainly were not there when the children went to bed,
And Mrs Darling was puzzling over them when Wendy said with a tolerant smile,
I do believe it's that Peter again.
Whatever do you mean Wendy?
So naughty of him not to wipe,
Wendy said sighing.
Wendy was a very tidy child.
She explained in quite a matter of fact way,
She thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her.
Unfortunately she never woke,
So she didn't know how she knew.
She just knew.
What nonsense you talk precious,
No one can get into the house without knocking,
Said her mother.
I think he comes in by the window,
She said.
My love,
It's three floors up.
Were not the leaves at the foot of the window,
Mother?
It was quite true,
The leaves had been found very near the window.
Mrs Darling did not know what to think,
For it all seemed so natural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she'd been dreaming.
My child,
The mother cried,
Why did you not tell me of this before?
I forgot,
Said Wendy lightly.
She was in a hurry to get to her breakfast.
Surely she must have been dreaming.
But on the other hand,
There were the leaves.
Mrs Darling examined them carefully.
They were skeleton leaves,
But she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in England.
She crawled about the floor,
Peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot.
She rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls.
She let down a tape from the window to the pavement,
And it was a sheer drop of thirty feet,
Without so much as a spout to climb up by.
Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.
But Wendy had not been dreaming,
As the very next night showed.
The night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children may be said to have begun.
